‘I know what you mean. Not forty years old yet, and three kids to bring up. You’d think they’d be on the breadline like the rest of us poor saps who have families draining every penny from our pockets. But Jake Barron is in line to take over the family business. The Barrons have a chain of carpet warehouses across South Yorkshire – Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, all those places. His dad is still company chairman, but Jake is chief executive. I guess he’s taking a fair whack out of the company.’
‘Hasn’t the carpet trade suffered from the recession?’
‘No, the opposite. People have been spending their money on home improvements instead of moving house. New furniture, new carpets, that sort of thing. There’s no recession so bad that somebody doesn’t benefit from it. They say the pound stores are booming.’
Detective Constables Becky Hurst and Luke Irvine arrived together, and shared the results of their interviews with neighbours. No one had seen or heard anything, it seemed. As far as the residents of Riddings were concerned, the Barrons’ assailants had come and gone like ghosts.
‘Who has details of the Barrons’ children?’ asked Cooper.
Hurst held up a hand. ‘I can tell you that. There are three of them. Their names are, let’s see…’ She consulted a notebook. ‘Melissa, Joshua and-’
‘Fay,’ said Murfin. ‘Melissa, Joshua and Fay.’
He couldn’t resist a note of satire in his voice as he read out the names. His own kids were called Sean and Wendy.
‘But I don’t suppose they were in a position to see or hear anything. I bet none of them even went near a window to look outside.’
‘We need to keep knocking on doors, then,’ said Cooper.
Murfin wiped a hand across his brow and fumbled in his pockets for sustenance. ‘We need more manpower to do all this door-to-door.’
‘I’ve been promised there’s more coming.’
‘Some people have got out from under anyway,’ said Murfin grumpily.
‘Like who?’
‘Diane Fry, that’s who. The Wicked Witch of the West Midlands. Let’s face it, she’s just phoning it in these days. Secondment to a working group, I ask you. It should be me phoning it in. I’m the one who’s done his thirty. I’m the one who’s so close to retirement it’s practically singeing my arse. But look at me – still pounding the streets, knocking on doors. It’s cruelty to dumb animals.’
‘Gavin, I really don’t think you’d want to be on a working group. Implementing Strategic Change? Think about it.’
Murfin chewed his lip ruminatively. ‘Okay, I thought about it. And I fell asleep.’
Cooper thought of the Barrons’ house again. They were getting nothing from the neighbours, so the answers must lie at Valley View. Everything would depend on forensics from the scene, and he was missing out on that.
‘Better keep knocking on doors, Gavin.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
Murfin looked at the main street that ran through the village.
‘I’m not walking up that hill, though. Someone will have to drive me to the top, and I’ll work my way down.’
It was true that Murfin had never been cut out for country treks. No matter how many memos were sent out by management about the fitness of officers, he had been unable to lose any weight. From time to time he’d compromised by taking his belt in a notch, which had only succeeded in producing an unsightly roll of spare flesh that hung over his waistband.
His wife Jean had been putting him on diets for years, but they never worked. Now he was so near to completing his thirty years’ service and earning a full pension that he didn’t really care any more, didn’t feel the necessity to meet the fitness requirements or respond to emails on the subject. It was odd, then, that the prospect of approaching retirement hadn’t made him more cheerful. Instead, he was becoming more and more lugubrious, like an overweight Eeyore or Marvin the Paranoid Android.
A woman came past walking a terrier. Surely the same woman Cooper had seen gardening only a short time earlier.
‘How’re you doing, duck?’ said Murfin with forced brightness.
The woman glared at him coldly.
‘What are you selling?’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, we don’t want any.’
Murfin sniggered as if she’d told a dirty joke and sidled up to her to show his warrant card.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘Oh, I know – I can’t believe it either. They take anybody these days. Can you spare a minute, duck?’
‘Okay,’ said Cooper. ‘While Gavin is out ingratiating himself with the locals, let’s get some real work done.’
‘Ten to one he’ll end up being offered a cup of tea,’ said Hurst, watching Murfin with a hint of admiration.
‘Fresh coffee,’ said Cooper. ‘But if I know Gavin, it’ll be the biscuits he’s interested in.’
A car pulled alongside, a metallic blue Jaguar XF with the number plate RSE1. The passenger window hummed down, and man leaned towards it from the driving seat. Iron-grey hair swept back, a sardonic eyebrow, a loud and commanding tone of voice.
‘Police?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cooper.
‘You know what’s going on around here, I suppose?’
‘Yes. We’re aware of it.’
‘So what are you doing about it? Anything? Or nothing?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, but put his car back in gear and accelerated off down the hill.
‘Great.’
‘Nice to know we have the support of the public,’ said Hurst as she watched him drive away.
‘When people get upset and frightened, they need someone to blame.’
‘Surely they should be blaming the thugs responsible for the crimes?’
‘But no one knows who they are, do they? So we’re the nearest target. That’s the way it works, Becky.’
‘That’s so unfair.’
‘It happens.’ Cooper glanced at her. ‘You’re going to have to get used to our relationship with the law-abiding public.’
While Fry waited in the garden of the Seven Mile Inn, she checked her phone and saw she’d missed a call from Angie. There was a voicemail message.
Hi, sis. We haven’t talked. We need to talk, you know? Call me.
She saw Mick or Rick coming back towards her with their drinks.
He smiled as he handed her a glass. ‘A boyfriend?’
‘No, my sister.’
‘Right.’
His smile became a smirk, as if he’d just been given some kind of signal. Fry gritted her teeth. Just because the call wasn’t from her boyfriend didn’t mean she hadn’t got one. But that was the way some men’s minds worked. They read an invitation in the slightest thing. She supposed it must be some instinct from their primitive past, sniffing the air to detect the presence of a rival, then mating with anything that stood still long enough.
He sat opposite her, gazing into her eyes, his mind evidently searching for the right conversational gambit. Best to stick an oar in straight away.
‘So, what do your people down in Leicestershire think about the plan for elected police commissioners?’
She lifted an eyebrow at him over her glass. For a moment, he looked pained, as if she’d just kicked him under the table. But he recovered well.
‘The scrapping of performance targets and minimum standards is okay. But locally elected police commissioners? That’s not so welcome. Everyone thinks that, don’t they?’
Fry supposed that was true. As with all kinds of amateur interference, the role of elected politicians tended to be viewed with suspicion. Most officers preferred the idea of power resting in the hands of the chief constable. After all, he or she was a police officer, a colleague who had come up through the ranks.
That said it all really. It was ‘us and them’ again. The police and the public. The constant blurring of the lines was viewed as a threat. Even creeping civilianisation was regarded as an insidious disease.
‘Politics has no place in the police service. The idea of an elected commissioner with the power to sack the chief constable makes my blood run cold. Are police numbers sustainable in the face of budget cuts? Who knows? Who wants to wait around to find out?’