Barry Maitland - Dark Mirror

‘Very well. Very busy of course, with the shop and the grandchildren.’

‘She’s still looking after them?’

‘Oh yes. There’s Ginny in the shop, of course, and she does a bit of babysitting, but we don’t see enough of each other. Hopefully we’ll get together this weekend. The kids are great though, growing up fast.’

He gave a little smile to himself, scratching the side of his beard as he recalled some memory, and Kathy thought what an excellent grandfather he would have made.

‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ she said.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

‘When we were stuck in that cottage with Spider Roach…’

Brock nodded, remembering the climax of their last big case.

‘… he said that he’d been responsible for your wife leaving you, to protect the baby she was carrying, because she was afraid of what he might do.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when we first worked together, you mentioned you had a son in Canada.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You haven’t kept in touch?’

He drew in a deep breath. ‘I’m still here, in the same place, doing the same job as when she left. If he wanted to find me it wouldn’t be difficult. I’ve left it to him.’

‘So you don’t know if he’s married? If he has a family of his own?’

Brock frowned, looked down at the remains of pizza on the table, and Kathy realised she’d gone too far and felt sad. She shivered. ‘Sorry. It’s cold down here.’

‘Mm, and since we’re in a ruminative mood, have you been keeping tabs on Tom Reeves?’

She fiddled with her empty bottle. ‘I heard he’s living in France somewhere. Calvi, wherever that is.’

‘How is he, do you know?’

DI Tom Reeves, Special Branch, had also been involved in their last case, and, more personally, with Kathy.

She shook her head. ‘No, we’re not in contact.’

‘He resigned of course. A clean break, according to HR. I imagine that’s how he wants it. Well…’ He got stiffly to his feet. ‘Time to go home.’ five

T hings looked a little brighter the following day. When Kathy got to West End Central she found that the inspector had rustled up another five people from different teams within the borough, and the group that he and Kathy briefed that morning looked almost adequate. They shuffled out armed with clipboards, photographs and report sheets, and the inspector took Pip away to work with the local Rainbow Coordinator on the CCTV footage, while Kathy headed back to the London Library, where she’d arranged to interview everyone that Gael Rayner had been able to track down as having been there on Tuesday when Marion had collapsed.

It was a slow job. One of the regular readers, a Mr Vujkovic, said that he had picked up Marion’s belongings from the floor, including her phone, which he insisted no one had opened. The others had little to add, and no one apart from Nigel Ogilvie had seen Marion eating her lunch in the square. But several had noticed her out there on other days, and one woman had sat with her for a while, on the same bench, about a week beforehand. She was certain that Marion had been drinking a bottle of juice, because Marion had commented that she usually carried one with her, in case she needed a sugar fix for her diabetes. The woman described the orange bottle and yellow plastic cap, but had no idea where Marion might have bought it. Kathy immediately phoned the information to Brock’s office, thinking of other cases of industrial sabotage and tampering with supermarket foodstuffs that had been in the news lately.

From time to time she got up and stretched her legs, going over to the big windows and looking out at the uniforms working their way around the square. She knew they’d phone her if they discovered anything interesting, but by mid-afternoon she’d heard nothing from them or from Pip. She had interviewed thirty-six people, not one of whom had a clue where Marion had lived. None had seen anyone tampering with her bag.

As the streetlights came on and dusk began to fall, she collected Pip and they returned to Queen Anne’s Gate carrying sheafs of interview sheets to process. On Kathy’s desk was a stack of reports from the police hotline detailing phone calls from the public following the newspaper and TV coverage that morning of Marion’s death, and on Pip’s was a computer printout of Marion’s phone records. Kathy had a sense of the overwhelming tide of information which so often bogged down murder investigations that didn’t make a breakthrough in the first couple of days.

Brock came in and pulled up a chair beside them. ‘How’s it looking?’

Kathy pointed to the pile of phone messages. ‘It’s touched a nerve-the anonymous poisoner, the hidden assassin, striking you down where you’re most vulnerable, inside your stomach, without you even knowing it’s been done. People convinced they’ve seen someone putting something in the sugar bowls of the local cafe, sticking syringes into pastries, adulterating milk.’

Brock said, ‘We’ve alerted soft-drink manufacturers and distributors and supermarket chains. They say they haven’t received any recent threats. They also point out that they all have tamper-proof caps. Wouldn’t the sandwich be more likely?’

‘Maybe. I’d be more inclined to accept it was a random act if Marion wasn’t so damn mysterious. None of the people phoning in have any information on her, and nobody’s reported her missing. But somebody knows, and they’re keeping quiet.’

The duty officer appeared with a message for Brock. He scanned it and said, ‘I have to go. Good luck.’ He headed off, looking as weary and frustrated as she felt, Kathy thought.

She looked across at Pip and said, ‘Why wouldn’t you tell your mother where you live?’

Pip laughed. ‘Lots of reasons. You don’t know my mum.’

Kathy shook her head, trying to clear the cotton wool that seemed to have accumulated there during her mind-numbing day. ‘But you’d still tell her, unless…’

‘What?’

‘Unless she’d tell someone else who’s giving you grief.’

‘Her husband? What’s he like, the stepfather?’

‘Looked a bit of a thug. Why don’t you see what you can find out about him?’ She checked her notebook. ‘His name’s Keith Rafferty. He looked younger than Marion’s mother, maybe late thirties. Address in Ealing: Flat 3, 37 Bradshaw Street. Works as a driver for an outfit called Brentford Pyrotechnics. They sell fireworks.’

Ten minutes later Pip came over to her desk with a printout from her computer. ‘Assault, actual bodily harm, three years ago. He got four months. The previous year he was charged under the Sexual Offences Act, section 30, living off the earnings, and section 32, soliciting. That case didn’t get to court.’

‘Aha…’ Kathy looked up at Pip’s expression. There was more. ‘Go on.’

‘And Brentford Pyrotechnics don’t just sell fireworks, they also manufacture them.’

‘So?’

‘You know that brilliant blue light they have in star shells? Apparently it’s almost impossible to get it without using arsenic.’

‘Seriously? How did you find that out?’

‘Google.’ Pip shrugged, as if to say, What else?

Kathy checked the time. ‘Got their number?’

•

The manager at Brentford Pyrotechnics seemed unsurprised by her request to pay him a visit; apparently it had happened before. ‘Just last month,’ he said. ‘It’s the terrorist thing, I know, but really, you’ve got no need to worry about us. You’ll see.’ They were working late that night on an order, and he’d be available whenever they called.

The industrial estate lay within a curve of the Grand Union Canal, beyond which the elevated M4 emitted a low traffic roar into the night. Kathy pulled the car into a parking bay in front of the doors of the offices and showrooms, whose windows were lit from within. Pip looked down the darkened flank of the big sheds to their left and gave a pout of disappointment.