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Chapter 2

I scramble up the metal staircase inside the south entrance to Penbury Police HQ. Late. Should have taken the car instead of waiting for the bus, but I was flustered enough without getting behind a hot, sticky steering wheel. I try taking the steps two at a time, but the thick woollen tights drag on my knees. Unseasonal legs, and slow, but ladder-free at least. I tried my best with my mother’s honey blush tights, but the minute I tore open the packet and the two bits of beige nylon flopped down, I knew they were designed for an underfed tenyearold. And that was before their accident.

I up my pace and clamp my shoulder bag to my side – my one act of rebellion against Mum’s restyling efforts.

“Now all you need is a briefcase,” she trilled at the end of our shopping session.

“But I have to be approachable, Mum – a friendly face serving the whole community.”

“Really, Pippa, darling, you sound like that rather grand lady officer they keep interviewing on the local news.”

I swelled with pride when Mum made that comparison. I haven’t met Superintendent Chattan yet, but I’ll settle for having half the poise the woman exudes in her television appearances.

At the top of the stairs I slow down, trying to get my breathing under control. My bag’s heavy, too much fodder inside. Pink lipstick from Mum, change for the bus home, tissues, sweets, apples, the Penbury CID Induction Pack and a small handmade card in joined-up writing: Good Luck, Sis. Love Jamie.

Rushing along the narrow corridor past the glass-panelled general office, I tell myself I’m not all that late, but I catch sight of four heads already barricaded behind high in-trays and jumbles of phone consoles and computer screens. I break into a trot and wonder which workstation mine will be. What if my new colleagues don’t rate me? Being late on day one isn’t the best way to win them over. They might not speak to me – I hate silences. Hopefully I’ll be out on the road most of the time.

I touch the buttons on my jacket. Too formal? Another idea of my mother’s. Now you don’t have to wear that ghastly uniform anymore. After trouble with toothpaste spatters, I had to change out of her pink lace blouse selection into a royal blue T-shirt, an old favourite. It looks good with the jacket – so long as I don’t undo the buttons to reveal its full glory. If the weather forecast is anything to go by, I’ll have to boil.

Through the chipped double doors, across the stairwell and into the corridor beyond, I reach a line of varnished wooden doors, each bearing a nameplate. I stop before the first one: Detective Inspector Liz Bagley. I re-check my jacket buttons.

I’m about to knock when the door flies open and two unsmiling figures appear. One I recognize as Mike Matthews, the sergeant from my interview panel. But it’s the woman with him who seems more familiar. A mass of dark hair, toned face and full red lips. DI Bagley or Cher?

“You’re late, DC Adams,” she says. A small woman, she has to tilt her head to meet my eye. Her black curls quiver. The fierce northern accent is pure Rottweiler.

“I’m sorry, I …” I wrack my brain for a plausible explanation that doesn’t involve Colgate or laddered tights. “I, ma’am, well, I …”

Bagley steps through the door and forces me aside, barking her orders at high speed. “There’s been a murder and an assault. Almost certainly connected. You go with DS Matthews. He’s your supervising officer. He’s meeting Forensics at the assault scene.”

She breezes past, short strides, high boots, dancing gingham skirt, and stops at the far end of the corridor to lob Matthews an afterthought. “I’ll be on Martle Top, but try and manage without me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he calls. When the wired-glass fire doors bang shut behind her, he mutters, “Ride ’em, cowboy.”

I grin but Matthews’s face hardens. “The car’s in the yard,” he says and sets off. I rush after him.

We reach the car and he manoeuvres it out of a tight space and is soon moving at speed along the street outside the police station. He hasn’t spoken since the corridor and gives no indication of remembering me from the interview. At the time, he didn’t make much of an impression on me either. His questions were about simple textbook scenarios. I’d been awestruck by the other interviewer, DCI James Hendersen, a booming bear of a man determined to trick me with a heavy cross-examination. Matthews appeared meek in comparison.

As DS Matthews drives through the drab industrial part of town, I study him out of the corner of my eye: smart trousers, crisp, short-sleeved shirt and tie. Most of the young detectives I’ve met who made the move from PC to DC swap one uniform for another, namely jeans and a leather jacket. He must have a “dress to impress” mother like mine, or maybe he has a wife.

After a while, I break the silence. “Where are we going?”

“To the attempted kidnap scene.”

“Oh, right. Good,” I say, trying to sound on the ball. When Matthews doesn’t elaborate, I add, “Where is that exactly?”

“A house in Southside.” He touches the brake to give the car in front time to turn off.

“Who’s been kidnapped?” I ask. “Is it a siege situation?”

“I don’t think we’d put you through a siege on day one.”

I feel myself reddening and the silence returns. He seemed innocuous at the interview. What little I can remember of him was of someone sympathetic, about my age, on my side. Perhaps he isn’t as young as I first thought. There’s a slight furrowing on his forehead as he concentrates on the driving but the rest of his face is line-free. In his late twenties? Five years my senior at most. He’s clean-shaven – the sort of man Mum would approve of, except for the haircut, if you can call it that. Wild Afro extends as far as his shirt collar. It puts me in mind of my father’s photographs of touring Jamaican musicians in his early days with the Midlandia Symphonic. Odd that Matthews takes care over the rest of his appearance but has hair left over from the 1970s.

He turns the steering wheel to take a left and catches me looking. I cover my embarrassment by asking another question. “Have the kidnappers been arrested?”

“They tied up a Mrs Gaby Brock in her own home and scarpered. Uniform found her.” He moves out past a parked car.

“Who reported it?” I ask, gaining confidence. I seem to have persuaded him to brief me about the case.

“No one.” He flicks the indicator and turns left again, yanking down the sun visor against the head-on sunlight. We’re in a residential district – rows of tight terraces with postage-stamp front gardens.

“How did we know to look for her?” I choose the word “we” carefully. I can’t bring myself to say “uniform”, not ready to detach myself from my former colleagues.

“Because her husband was found murdered this morning in a ditch at Martle Top, close to his own car, by a pensioner on his bicycle. Stabbed in the chest. Knife by the body.” He looks at me, apparently hoping for some sign of revulsion.

He’s read me right. As my stomach muscles clench, I make a desperate attempt at humour. “It sounds like an Agatha Christie to me.”

I realize my mistake even before all the words are out. Matthews takes his eyes off the road and looks me full in the face. “You what?”

My mouth still not shut, more words tumble out. “In many of her novels, the murderer sets up the scene. You can tell—”

Matthews touches the brakes, nudging us both against our seat belts. “Agatha Christie. Now I’ve heard everything. Don’t tell me I’m working with Miss Marple for the next six months,” he says, not smiling.

“It was a joke.” Don’t detectives have a sense of humour? I’m suddenly homesick for the camaraderie of uniform. Getting through the day with easy banter and Sergeant Conway treating us like favourite nieces and nephews.

Matthews puts the car into gear and continues at a slower pace. We enter a leafy residential area that I recognize as Southside, so named when the town was little more than a village. These days it would be more aptly called Eastside, the town having sprawled out below it.

“This isn’t a joke,” he says angrily. “Know the facts before you laugh about it. These are real-life victims. Gaby Brock was found lying on the floor, shackled to a chair in her own lounge. There was a chain round her legs and across her chest. Her wrists were handcuffed to the chair legs. The keys for the padlocks were in the pocket of the pyjamas she was wearing when uniform got there. And before you get any other fanciful ideas, she couldn’t have snapped the cuffs shut on her own arms and then pocketed the keys.”

“Has the victim been able to say anything?” I try to make my voice sound brisk and efficient.

“They were asleep when two men burst in, gave them both a beating, made her husband tie her up and then dragged him out of the house. It appears they took him to Martle Top in his own car and knifed him. Sounds like drugs to me. Shades of the Easter Day shooting in Briggham.”

I’ve heard of the Briggham case. It’s said to have all the hallmarks of a gangland contract. I feel a twinge of excitement at the thought of what this new case might involve, but decide against quipping to Matthews that he needs to know his facts before judging it to be drugs-related. Somehow I don’t think he’d see the funny side.

He switches off the engine as we pull up across a driveway in a short road of newish detached houses, their dull frontages enhanced by conifers and flowering shrubs. Several hydrangeas are in full bloom at the house in front of us. Someone has stuck a pint of milk under one. But what sets this house apart from its neighbours is the blue and white Police Do Not Cross tape all round its perimeter and a police officer, whom I don’t know, standing outside the open front door. When she sees Matthews, she lets us step under the tape without question.

From the doorstep we can see that the house is alive with scenes of crime staff in their white forensic suits, looking through waste bins, checking drawers, and examining carpets with an E-vac. One of the forensic scientists in the hallway looks up and raises his hand in a latex glove. “Long time, no see, Mike.”

“Hello, Dave,” DS Matthews calls as he slips on his forensic suit. “Didn’t expect to be working with you again. I thought your team had moved to Briggham.”

“We have. Got put on to this job by the ACC himself.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Matthews replies.

“It does me. I’d expected separate teams here and at Martle Top to avoid crosscontamination, but not the cavalry.”

“Depends who the senior investigating officer is,” Matthews says.

“Who?”

“Liz Bagley.”

Dave grins. “Is it true what they say about her?”

“What do you think?” Matthews replies. “She’s persuaded the assistant chief constable to cough up the staff, hasn’t she?”

“Inspector Bagley?” Dave leers. “Expect a Shagley more like.”

Both men laugh but stop when they remember I’m there. Matthews glowers at me and I brace myself for another tongue-lashing, but he just asks me to put on coveralls and check on progress upstairs.

Once suited up, I enter the house and walk up the narrow, carpeted staircase. The bathroom is at the top of the stairs, tidy and ordinary. Apart from a plastic cup on the washbasin containing two toothbrushes and a tube of paste, and two dry towels hanging over the bath, the bathroom suite is clean and free of clutter. I lift the lid on the wicker laundry basket even though the kidnappers are unlikely to have stopped off to do the washing. The basket is about a third full of what looks like pale tops and white underwear – quite unlike the overflowing colour riot of my linen bin. I let the lid fall and turn to the wall-mounted cabinet. Inside is a neat arrangement of cut-price shampoo, shaving foam and razor, full-coverage foundation, concealer and a powder compact. The only person I’ve known with such an immaculate bathroom cabinet (but without the make-up) is my father after he left my mother and before he married Joanne. I close the cabinet and head into a bedroom.