The house was small, one of a group of terraces. Bleak, was how Charlie would have described it. Colourless. The town and its environs were a place of contrasts – beauty in the surrounding natural landscape, and cheap, ugly housing tucked away in dowdy corners.
Luscombe parked the BMW in an empty space opposite a run down house with a ‘for sale’ notice leaning at a forty-five degree angle, and switched off the engine. ‘Happy for you to take the lead,’ he said. ‘I’ll chip in if anything gets lost in translation.’ Again came the grin, the sudden brightening of the eyes. Then he was out of the car and walking towards number eleven.
Charlie followed the tall detective through the rusted wrought-iron gate, and along the short path which led to Isaiah Marley’s sister’s front door. The rain, which had begun as they’d left Aviemore police station, was teeming down, and looked as though it was likely to stay that way.
‘Reckon she’ll be in?’ Charlie shivered as they waited for a response.
Luscombe shrugged. ‘Where else is she going to go? People who live in this area don’t tend to move around much.’
‘Unless she was spooked by the phone call.’
‘Maybe,’ Luscombe said. ‘But she must be expecting someone to call about her brother, sometime.’
‘George said she sounded scared.’
‘Aye, well we’ll soon find out.’ Luscombe cocked his head at the sound of a chain being slid aside, or perhaps fastened. The door opened a fraction, and a face peered through the gap. ‘Who is it?’
‘Police,’ Charlie said. ‘Can we have a moment of your time?’
‘This is about Isaiah?’
‘Yes.’
The chain rattled again and the door opened. ‘Thank you,’ Charlie said, and followed the woman inside.
They were shown into a small lounge, where the woman indicated a two-seater settee. The only other chair was an armchair, where, judging by the glass and book resting on the table next to it, she’d been sitting when the doorbell rang. There was a moment of awkwardness as Charlie and Luscombe assessed the available seating. They squeezed onto the two-seater, and Charlie crossed one leg over the other in an attempt to create a little personal space. The woman resumed her place in the armchair.
She was small in stature, of Caribbean descent, dressed simply in a white top, blue cardigan, and jeans. She looked resigned, as if she’d been expecting bad news for a long time. Charlie recognised the signs; the downturned mouth, blank expression, automatic movements. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them both without a trace of curiosity.
Charlie took a mental deep breath and began. For some reason she was more nervous than usual. ‘I’m DI Pepper from the Thames Valley Constabulary in Berkshire. This is Detective Sergeant Ian Luscombe, of Police Scotland. You spoke briefly to my sergeant, George McConnell, yesterday.’
‘I knew Isaiah was dead. I dreamed it.’
‘Perhaps if we can confirm your full name to begin with?’ Charlie gave her an encouraging smile.
‘Grace Elizabeth Baxter, nee Marley. Born 1969.’
‘Thank you. Tell us about Isaiah, Grace. Did he live with you? What was he doing in Berkshire?’
‘Looking for work. An’ he told me he might have found a job, workin’ at the hospital. I said, I could have got you a job at my hospital, but he wouldn’t listen. Stubborn. Always stubborn.’
‘You work at the local hospital?’ Luscombe prompted.
‘I’m a cleaner. They always need cleaners, but Isaiah liked to do things his own way.’
‘So,’ Charlie pressed on, ‘he had his own place here, in Aviemore? Or did he stay with you?’
‘He worked around a bit, used to live in sometimes with his jobs. When he had no job he’d come to me.’
‘Grace, was Isaiah in this country illegally?’ Luscombe pitched in bluntly.
Charlie flinched. That was a potentially interview-terminating question, if Grace took it the wrong way.
‘Sure. Of course. He only came here when our parents died. Otherwise he’d still be livin’ there.’
‘And where is that, exactly, Grace?’
‘Where d’you think, girl? Do I sound like a Spanish woman to you, or what?’
Charlie sensed Luscombe suppressing a guffaw. She smiled. ‘All right, Jamaica would be my guess.’
‘There y’are. So I can see you’re a good detective.’
‘Did Isaiah confide in you? Did you talk?’
‘Only small things. Never any heart-to-heart. That wasn’t his way.’ She leaned forward suddenly. ‘What happened to my brother? Was it his fault?’
A flicker of emotion clouded Grace’s features. Charlie would have guessed her age wrongly; she looked older than her fifty-one years.
‘No,’ Charlie said gently. ‘It wasn’t his fault. His car was hit by an articulated lorry.’
Grace looked into her lap. ‘What was he doing? Was he up to no good?’
‘Did he usually get up to no good, Grace?’ Luscombe asked.
Grace hesitated. ‘He never meant to, but he always needed money. He spent too much – what he didn’t have. My parents, they coddled him, y’know? When they passed away he just expected to carry on, like he always had. He couldn’t get a permit to work here, but some friend of his say he could come anyway, they’d fix it all for him. So he came.’ She shrugged.
‘And yourself?’ Charlie asked.
‘I ain’t illegal, dearie. I can show you my passport. I came here in eighty-nine. I wanted a future, I wanted to see this country. I got married. It was all fine, until my husband died. Since then, I just done the best I could.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said. ‘That must have been hard.’
Another shrug. ‘Life’s hard, ain’t it? No one ever promised you an easy one, eh?’
‘When did you last see Isaiah, Grace?’
She paused, knitted her brow. ‘I see him in January. He come in to tell me he’s goin’ south. He didn’t stay long.’
‘Did he have friends in this area, or contacts? He only had your number in his mobile phone. No one else. Was he hiding something, or hiding from something?’
‘–Or someone?’ Luscombe added.
Grace was silent for a moment, then she answered with her own question. ‘Why you so interested in him? He’s dead, in an accident. What else is there?’
Charlie exchanged a look with Luscombe. He nodded. ‘Grace, there was a dead body in the car with him at the time of the accident. An elderly man. He wasn’t killed by the accident, he was dead already.’
Grace put a hand to her mouth, then made the sign of the cross. ‘Oh, Lord.’
‘We don’t know who killed him, Grace,’ Charlie quickly added. ‘It may not have been Isaiah. We’re trying to build up a picture, to establish where Isaiah had been, where he went and why. Can you help us in any way? Is there anything he might have said to you–’
‘–Like I said, dearie, he never told me nothing.’ This was declared emphatically. Grace folded her arms, looked at them both. ‘My, but you two make a fine couple.’
Charlie felt herself colouring, her cheeks heating up like two beacons. She rummaged in her bag to hide her discomfiture, trying not to catch Luscombe’s eye. ‘Mrs Baxter, if you do remember anything – anything at all – please call me. It’s very important that we find out who did this.’ She handed Grace her card.
‘Sure. But like I said, my brother never told me much about nothin’.’
‘Do you have other relatives in the UK, Mrs Baxter?’ Luscombe had stood up, was smoothing his jacket, straightening his tie.
‘It’s just me. Everyone else is either back home, or dead.’ She paused. ‘Who … who do I talk to about…’ Grace Baxter trailed off, pursed her lips. Her eyes fell to the threadbare carpet.
Charlie reached over and touched the older woman’s shoulder. ‘The funeral? I’ll let you have the necessary contact details. Don’t worry. There’ll be arrangements in place for this kind of eventuality.’ Charlie gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘I’m sorry we had to trouble you today, Grace. But please – call me, even if it seems like something trivial. Nothing is too small, or silly, OK?’
‘OK.’
She showed them out, watched them from the doorstep.
As they drove away, Luscombe voiced Charlie’s thoughts in two simple words.
‘She’s lying.’
‘Yes. She knows something.’
‘Too scared to let it out,’ Luscombe said. ‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course.’
‘She works at the hospital, right?’
‘Right.’
‘And what do cleaners do, apart from clean?’
Charlie considered the question. ‘They chat. And gossip. And keep their ears open.’
‘The hospital, then?’ He turned his head towards her and the eyes did their unsettling thing.
Charlie kept her voice brusque and businesslike. ‘Yep, OK. Let’s do it.’
Chris Collingworth was angry. He’d been assessed – no, not just assessed, the board had put him through the mill, big time – and deemed capable of working in the higher grade of Detective Sergeant. In fact, he’d been highly commended by the board for his performance at the interview. But, for whatever reason, the powers-that-be clearly took the opposite view. What was all that about? Sure, Charlie Pepper was always going to be a tough nut to crack and, he had to admit, he’d failed in that respect. His well-honed charm offensives seemed to bounce right off her, as though she was wearing some kind of bloke-resistant armour plating. But he was getting tired of her constant needling. It was like she went out of her way to trip him up whenever she got the chance. Never took him at his word, nothing was ever good enough.
The internal vacancy had been posted just a couple of days back – Julie Stiles had come over especially to tell him she’d just seen it. That was a good sign. So he waited for Charlie Pepper to put two and two together, call him into her office, acknowledge that, despite the fact they didn’t get on too well, he was clearly the guy for the role. She’d give him one of her tight smiles, congratulate him, make some comment about starting over, clean sheet and all that. Wish him the best in the new job, hope we can work well together, et cetera, et cetera.
Except it never happened.
She obviously knew about it. She got the HR notices too. She was on the email list. So. Two plus two, he wasn’t going to be put up for it.
And then she’d been seconded with that Scottish geezer. Which meant she’d be out of the way for a bit, and when Moran moved into the frame for SIO, that had been one big green light for soliciting the Irishman’s recommendation. If he could get that, put it in front of Higginson, make the promotion a fait accompli before Pepper got back, wouldn’t that be a coup? He’d just love to see her face.
Collingworth ground his teeth and smouldered. He deserved better than this. He was better than the lot of them. He let his eyes wander around the office. George and Bola. Laurel and Hardy, as he privately called them, rabbiting away together like a couple of old women. Bernice Swinhoe – she was another cold fish. Pretty, though, in a forbidding kind of way. She was clicking away on her keyboard, beavering away on some Pepper-related task, no doubt. And there was Delaney, the runner, laughing at some joke with Julie – that wasn’t a good sign.
And here was Moran, heading for his office, limping along as usual. Collingworth’s lip curled as he watched Moran’s awkward progress. There was one guy who should be put out to grass. That was the whole problem, right there: the old never wanted to make way for the young, the more capable. Moran had had his day. He was done. Why couldn’t he see it? Life moves on. The world belongs to the strong.
Tomorrow belongs to me, old man…
Moran was heading in a direction that would take him past this bank of desks. Better look busy. Collingworth tapped a few keystrokes, chewed his pencil until Moran had passed by.
Gutted. Thats how he felt. He’d thought more highly of Moran’s judgement, but after this morning’s car crash of a conversation, it was clear that Moran was just like all the rest.
Collingworth looked at his watch. Midday. Too early for a drink? No. That’s what he needed right now. Sod the investigation. It could wait.
He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, shrugged it over his shoulders, and headed for the lift.