Richard Nowak had drunk too much, and he intended to drink more yet before the night was over. Not vodka – he hated the stuff – but good single malt Scotch whisky. He had his own miniature bar at Lane End, and he made sure it was always well stocked. Alcohol was the only thing that helped him deal with the stress. And these people certainly made him feel stressed. God knew, he needed to unwind. His father Adam had already gone to bed, and Sonya was on the phone to one of her friends. She’d been on the phone all evening, and most of the day. Talking about him, no doubt. Complaining how awful her life was, hoping that one of her friends would give her the right advice. Of course, there was another day to face tomorrow. And who knew what might happen then?
Behind number 4 Chapel Close, Barry Gamble was in his shed. He felt he ought to be out and about in the village, but he knew Monica was keeping an eye out from the sitting room. She’d drawn the curtains back so that she could see the door of the shed, and she was sitting with her armchair turned towards the window. She didn’t trust him, that much was obvious. But all he ever intended was to make sure everyone was safe and behaving in a civilised manner. He thought of himself as the guardian of Riddings. The police were useless, after all. If anything was going on that shouldn’t be, he was the one who would know. But he was wasting his time trapped in his shed. All he could do was check through his collection, pausing for a moment at one particular item.
Another person was up and about in Riddings. If Barry Gamble hadn’t been stuck in his shed, he might well have seen the figure creeping cautiously along the edge of Curbar Lane, ducking behind a tree when the lights of a car went by. He might have seen the person, but he wouldn’t have experienced any feeling of recognition. As far as most of Riddings was concerned, this was a total stranger.
Diane Fry had stopped at the services on the M1 at Tibshelf. A TV was on in the restaurant, a news bulletin with some story about a murder. She heard a mention of Derbyshire, and found herself glued to the screen.
As she watched the item, her coffee grew cold on the table. Behind the reporter on the screen she could see blue crime-scene tape. And beyond that, crime-scene examiners whom she recognised, officers she’d worked with often.
Oh my God. What a time to be sitting on the sidelines.
8
Thursday
The CID room at Edendale was full this morning. As full as it ever was, anyway. Ben Cooper looked around the room, and smiled. The team had a more settled look than it had done for a long time. It was strange to be thinking that, with everything else that was going on at the moment – the cost-cutting and uncertainties, the feeling of walking on a tightrope day by day, not knowing whether your job would still exist next month, or even the division you worked in. But it was true. Somehow, a shadow had been lifted.
Cooper was particularly pleased with the two youngsters, Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst, who were settled in and doing well. A steady lad, Irvine. He reminded Cooper a bit of himself when he was a few years younger. Fair enough, Irvine wasn’t Derbyshire through and through. He came from a Yorkshire mining family, with Scottish blood a generation or two back. But he would do, as they said round here.
Dependable as Irvine might be, it was Becky Hurst who was proving to be the best of the new recruits to Edendale CID. She was like a little terrier, keeping at a task until she produced a result, no matter what the assignment. She seemed to have no ego problems, no reluctance about doing the less glamorous jobs. That was a drawback with some of the more ambitious young officers, the ones who thought they were too good for the routine stuff, but not Hurst. Cooper had to check himself sometimes, to make sure he was resisting the temptation to let Becky do all the legwork. She deserved better than that.
This was what his mother had dreamed of for him, the promotion to sergeant. For her, it had been the culmination of an ambition. Her son had achieved the same rank as his father. Young Ben had finally come up to the standard set by Sergeant Joe Cooper, the great local hero. He remembered the moment he’d lied to her as she lay in her hospital bed. He’d told her he’d been promoted, when in fact he had just learnt that he’d lost out to the newcomer, Diane Fry. One of the most difficult moments of his life, the decision to tell his mother what she so much wanted to hear, instead of the truth.
And now the promotion had finally come, it was too late. Isabel Cooper had died before her hopes could be realised. He couldn’t go home and tell her the news. The lie he had told would have to stay a lie. Too late. They were the saddest two words in the English language.
More bodies trickled in as the time for the morning briefing approached. There wasn’t a room anywhere in the building that had enough chairs, so officers would be perched on desks, leaning against walls. It looked a bit chaotic, but somehow it added an air of activity and urgency. It was as if they were all too busy to sit down, but had just paused for a moment, eager to get on with their important tasks.
The E Division headquarters were said to have won an architectural design award once. But that was back in the 1950s, practically beyond living memory. The building in West Street was ageing badly now, with a constant need for maintenance, an inefficient heating system, and water coming through the flat roofs in the winter. No amount of redecoration could take away the institutional feel of the corridors on the upper floors. A lot of money would have to be spent on providing a new headquarters building – money that just wasn’t available now, of course.
Last year, the loss of A Division in a cost-cutting restructure had really thrown a spanner in the works and focused the minds of the management team. The territory that had once formed a separate Basic Command Unit in the south-east of the county had now been divided up between C and D Divisions. Who knew how long E Division would last, when it had started to look so alphabetically surplus to requirements?
Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh was Senior Investigating Officer on the Riddings murder. A major inquiry was anticipated. That was because there were no obvious suspects, and no apparent leads that might produce one in a short time frame. A HOLMES incident room was being activated next door right now, the technicians and HOLMES operators arriving to set up the system. From now on, the pattern of the operation would be governed step by step as laid down in the protocols for the Home Office’s Large Major Enquiry System. A collator would arrive from headquarters, and a specialist DS to task teams of detectives.
Besides, the division was already facing a constant barrage of criticism, and everyone was aware of it.
‘These villages are quiet, peaceful communities,’ said Branagh, opening the morning’s briefing. ‘We can’t allow violent incidents like these to make people living in this area feel unsafe. It’s our job to keep them safe, and to make sure they feel safe. One way we’re going to do that is with a visible police presence. Our uniformed colleagues will ensure there are patrol cars, and officers on the street.’
It was funny, reflected Cooper, how a visible police presence seemed to be the answer to so many issues. Were the public really so reassured by the sight of a uniform, even when the officer inside clearly wasn’t catching any criminals? Well, that seemed to be the current wisdom. He supposed detectives would be put back into uniform before too long. Plain clothes were contrary to the spirit of high-visibility policing, after all. He was rarely a visible police presence, until he pulled out his warrant card.