Tania Carver - The Creeper

They reached the top of the stairs, turned the corner. Anni put a hand on his arm. He stopped, turned.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just winding you up.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go out, follow up those client list leads of Suzanne and Zoe’s from the hospital. But I’ll be around later.’ She smiled again. ‘Or you could phone me.’

Fiona Welch came past, walking double time, self-importantly, like she was in an episode of The West Wing .

‘I’ll talk to you later,’ he said and turned, went back to the bar.

Hoping he wasn’t blushing too much.

He reached his desk, sat down. Sighed. Looked round. Fiona Welch was at her desk on the other side of the room, looking at her screen, energised, lips moving in a dialogue only she could hear.

He just might give Anni a ring.

He looked at his own screen, at the scrolling numbers, the lists. Knowing in theory why his work was so important but wishing there was a more exciting way to do it.

Fiona Welch laughed to herself, went on staring at the screen.

He hoped the thing he wanted to talk to Anni about would keep, hoped he was right.

But hoped more that he wasn’t.

Anni stood on the doorstep and rang the bell.

The house was way out in Coggeshall, one of the most photogenic villages on Essex. Anni had always had a problem with the place and others like it, though. Because its main street and offshoots consisted of the kind of old, beamed, uneven houses, thatched roofs, Regency-windowed pubs and quaint, red-brick cottages that spoke of a certain kind of intractable tradition and held a natural attraction to a certain kind of reactionary mindset, being black, female and a non- Daily Mail reader made her feel uncomfortable there.

The bell she rang was only comparatively modern, 1970s as opposed to the rest of the house that looked like it belonged more in the 1870s. It was slightly less well maintained than the rest of the row, the paint round the windows chipped and peeling, the door needing a fresh coat of varnish, the front garden less manicured. She checked her list. It belonged to a writer.

Suzanne Perry and Zoe Herriot’s list of clients from the hospital. In need of speech therapy. Luckily, they hadn’t been there for a long time so the list wasn’t huge. But it was extensive and far-ranging. Socio-economically and geographically. Anni had ruled out the children. She didn’t regard them as a priority and would only start looking at them if the adult list didn’t pan out. There might be a vengeful parent or family member involved somewhere but she doubted it, really. So the adults were where she was starting.

She had cross-referenced the ones that she had flagged up with Julie Miller’s list. There were three that stood out and she was calling on the first one now. He had been referred to a speech therapist following a stroke. Anni had the bare essentials of his medical notes. Writer. Early fifties. Heavy drinker, heavy smoker. Mild to medium stroke. Responded well to treatment, discharged after three months of regular sessions, expected back for a check up in three months time.

She waited for the door to be answered.

The scene in the cell earlier that morning had stunned her. Horrible. Awful. She had heard of things like that before but never witnessed it for herself. Especially to someone she herself had questioned and fingered as a suspect.

Anthony Howe. When Fiona Welch read out the profile his name had jumped out at her. A perfect match. There had been such a sense of jubilation when she had brought him in, the exhilaration of a job well done. Or a good job about to be done. And then this. A total unravelling. Had he done it because he was guilty or because he was innocent? She didn’t know. She hoped he came round so they could ask him.

But the real shocker had been the follow-up she had witnessed. Her boss striking a superior officer. Their superior officer. She had seen arguments before, differences of opinion, sure. On an almost daily basis. Strong personalities clashed all the time when under pressure, no big thing, part of the job. But to actually go so far as to take a swing at a superior officer and to see Phil Brennan be the one to do it, that was unprecedented. Admittedly, there had been times she had felt like doing that to Fenwick herself, but still…

She hadn’t said a word. Knew she shouldn’t, it wasn’t in her best interests to. Knew Phil wouldn’t want her to either. And no matter what had gone on between them recently, she was still loyal to her boss.

And then there was Mickey. With his spiky hair, cocky smile and sharp suit she had dismissed him as just another ambitious young officer, thinking he was a master of the universe and a shag magnet because he had put away a couple of villains, won a few fist fights and made it to DS. That was how she had taken the previous night’s phone call at first, but the way he had behaved on the stairs earlier was different. He seemed serious, intense, even. Worried. In fact, she was beginning to think she had misjudged him.

And the way he had blushed when she had touched his arm. Sweet. She smiled at the memory.

But not too much. She didn’t date guys she worked with. Not after last time.

But maybe he did have something important to say to her. Maybe he would ring her.

The front door opened, putting all further thoughts of Mickey Philips out of her mind. In front of her was a man. Small, grey-haired, portly. He looked old enough to be the father of the man she was calling on. He looked at her, warily.

‘Keith Ridley?’ she said, folding out her warrant card.

‘Yes?’ His voice held a tremor that matched the one in his hand holding the door open.

‘Detective Constable Anni Hepburn. Can I have a few words?’

He slowly stood aside to let her in, closing the door behind her.

She entered and all thoughts of her fighting bosses, Mickey’s tongue-tied attempts to talk to her and the condition of Anthony Howe were forgotten and pushed from her head as she concentrated on the job she had to do.

Forty minutes later she was back out in the sunshine, striking him off the list.

He was a writer of crime fiction, she had discovered, although she hadn’t read any of his books. However, it would have been more accurate to say his real calling was self-destruction as he had sat in front of her chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette with a can of lager on the arm rest of his chair while she questioned him, his shaking hand alternating what he put to his lips.

He told her he didn’t know why he had suffered a stroke, must have been something hereditary. His wife was out at work teaching and he was home alone. Working on a new novel, he said, although he had turned off Homes Under the Hammer when they entered the living room.

He had nothing but praise for the work of Suzanne and Zoe, though. And, Anni thought, genuine shock and regret when he saw on the news what had happened to them. And, most importantly, a verifiable alibi. She had thanked him and left.

Walking to her car, feeling the kind of imagined, malevolent eyes on her that all outsiders were treated to in remote villages, especially black ones, her phone rang.

She answered it. Mickey.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Working through the therapy list like I said I was going to.’

‘Any luck?’

‘Not so far. Got an ex-soldier next. Post-traumatic stress disorder. That’ll be a laugh. See what he comes up with.’

‘Right.’

‘You?’

He sighed. ‘Losing the will to live. Rapidly.’

She laughed. ‘Still hunting for Nemo?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Dory was my favourite. And the sharks.’