Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Read online

  ‘How did I do?’ he asked.

  ‘Bloody shambles. I’ll face a court martial for sure.’ Their habitual exchange.

  ‘And so soon after your promotion – shame.’ The crown on her epaulettes had not long replaced captain’s pips.

  She made a face and jerked her head for him to follow. His civilian suit was waiting for him in the solitary little room where he’d changed earlier. Wishing he’d had the foresight to bring spare socks and shoes, he placed both on the huge iron heating pipes while he changed. They were still damp when he pulled them back on but deliciously hot.

  With a perfunctory knock Pierson entered with a bottle and two glasses. ‘Courtesy of you-know-who,’ she said, cracking open the seal. Royal Lochnagar Selected Reserve – single malt distilled near Balmoral Castle, the Queen’s Highland retreat. ‘Not that you deserve such lofty favour. I trust you’re taking care of that,’ she indicated the cane leaning against a chair. It was she who’d scrounged it on his behalf on the day of his medal award to save him hobbling before his Queen on crutches; an elegant masterpiece, the arched silver handle a leaping tiger, and the snakewood shaft with its tiger-like variegated grain and secret sting. Property of the Duke of Edinburgh before he’d insisted Stark keep it. Lofty favour, as she’d alluded. She meant was he looking after himself, of course, but would never say as much.

  ‘I am,’ he smiled. ‘Sweet of you to ask.’

  She pulled a face. Their relationship had begun with intense friction and settled into a kind of sibling détente, with her the disapproving older sister. Sometimes Stark thought back with a tinge of nostalgia to the days when everything he did or said left her spittingly angry. But you could say one thing for Pierson, she never poured short measure and she knew how to enjoy a good whisky in comfortable silence. Today though she looked uncharacteristically pensive. ‘Have you given more thought to the events schedule?’

  ‘No more than the last time you asked.’ The Ministry of Defence were constantly trying to trot him out on parade and he was constantly refusing. ‘Today was remembrance. The rest is PR.’

  ‘You really are consistently irksome.’

  ‘A message that doesn’t seem to get through.’

  ‘We’re not done talking about this.’

  ‘We are today,’ he replied flatly.

  The Major bit down her frustration, and nodded. Today wasn’t the day. Another skirmish. Another ceasefire. ‘Still seeing that girl, Kelly?’ she asked. An unusual topic. Stark shook his head, eliciting a disapproving tut. ‘Pillock.’ Stark shrugged. ‘Her decision or yours?’

  ‘Mine.’ Not his proudest moment. Pierson arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to expand, but Stark had nothing more to say. If he closed his eyes he could still see Kelly’s frustration, her tears. It was seven weeks now. He missed her. That was that.

  Pierson turned back to the window. ‘Was it the future that spooked you, or the past?’

  Stark searched for a way out of the conversation. ‘Both.’

  She shook her head. ‘Always the throwaway truth, the one-word dodge.’

  Stark said nothing and she continued to stare out at the leaden sky. ‘Would you go back?’ she asked quietly. ‘If you could?’

  It was clear what she meant. Another topic usually skirted. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unfinished business?’

  ‘I suppose.’ It wasn’t that simple. War never was.

  She nodded. ‘What if you could go back in time too, would you do things differently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What would you change?’

  ‘Everything I could,’ he answered honestly. But there was no time machine. He’d taken lives, saved lives and failed to save others; there was no way now to alter the tally. Grasping at if-onlys gave no comfort. He looked at her, struck by this atypical conversation, but she offered no explanation.

  She turned to look at him, her expression unreadable, then smiled faintly and raised her glass. ‘Life is for the living.’

  ‘If you say so,’ replied Stark, chinking crystal.

  They both drank, then she turned back to the window and they lapsed into silence again.

  Stark took a long swig and closed his eyes at the delicious burning, tasting the rich aroma in the back of his nose, feeling himself relax for the first time that day.

  ‘I think your phone’s buzzing somewhere,’ commented Pierson.

  The damn thing had slipped his mind. Muttering a curse, he fumbled for it in his coat but it stopped before he could fish it out. Seven missed calls, Stark read with a sinking feeling. Not a cold caller – the office. No messages. Fran despised voicemail. And she never called with good news.

  Giving Pierson an apologetic look, he took a deep breath and called back. ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ she demanded.

  ‘Seriously?’ he asked, deadpan.

  He could almost imagine her checking her watch and rolling her eyes. ‘Yeah, all right … but where are you now?’

  ‘Dimly lit room with a bottle of single malt and a dangerous dame.’

  ‘Hilarious. How soon can you get here?’

  ‘Why?’ There could only be one reason. There was little use reminding her that he was on leave, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her.

  ‘Just get your arse in. We’ve got a grisly double murder to pin on someone.’

  2

  ‘About bloody time,’ Fran pronounced by way of greeting, hovering inside the tape in ill-fitting blue overalls. She scowled over his shoulder at the departing cab, taking in his holdall and frowning at his cane. ‘What’s with the face? No medals from Madge this time?’

  ‘Sarge,’ replied Stark stoically. It was always best to play it safe until you were sure of her mood. Smart, funny, fiercely loyal but famously prickly, Detective Sergeant Francine Millhaven was a force of nature. As she was his immediate superior, Stark’s level of happiness on any given day was proportional to how far the world had got under her skin. And yet, of his colleagues, she was the one he felt closest to. Another sister figure, the most disapproving of all, worse than his actual sister, and Louise took some beating. Add his overbearing mother to the list and Stark often felt his life was ruled by strong-willed women whose only consensus on what constituted his best interests was that they each knew best.

  ‘Where were you, anyway? Surely your thing finished ages ago.’

  His thing. She was also indecently nosey, but Stark wasn’t going to give her anything for that.

  ‘Wendy displeased with you as ever?’ Fran made no attempt to mask her smile at the thought.

  Stark could not imagine a day when hearing the indomitable Major Pierson referred to as Wendy didn’t jar. ‘It’s our default position.’

  Fran set her jaw. ‘You’re a copper now. You wear blue.’

  Stark made no comment. Outside in the road, the usual crowd hovered. Concerned residents. Curious passers-by. Speculative paparazzi. A TV crew had plucked one animated man from obscurity to vent his ill-informed opinion to camera at the behest of a blonde reporter in a tailored red coat and matching lipstick.

  Stark turned away to inspect the house. New mock-Tudor, large and ostentatious, in the Blackheath Cator Estate, a series of private roads for private money, tucked away south of the village itself. The house had a Disney feel; mock-perfection. It would hardly have surprised Stark to find the manicured garden was entirely plastic and the building itself moulded in fibreglass. The only incongruity was the police tape across the gate and the harsh glare of the crime-scene lighting dotted around the drive and garden, already bright in the wintry afternoon gloom. ‘What have we got then?’

  ‘Thomas and Mary Chase. Husband and wife. Fifty-four and thirty-six,’ said Fran. ‘No kids. Owned and ran a security firm.’ She glanced at Stark. ‘The legit kind, apparently.’

  Stark’s first case after joining the Murder Investigation Team had involved the other kind. ‘Non-crime pays, from the looks,’ he commented, nodding at
the shiny grey Range Rover on the gravel drive and lipstick-red convertible Merc in the open garage, both new.

  ‘Right up until crime finds out and shoots you dead in your home,’ Fran said. ‘State-of-the-art intruder alarm, not set, of course. Cleaner found the husband just after ten, uniform found the wife upstairs. Neighbour says he heard something just after midnight, maybe shots, but put it down to fireworks this time of year. Might’ve heard a motorbike in the distance after. Williams and Hammed are already canvassing the area with uniform.’

  ‘Guv’nor inside?’ asked Stark.

  Fran shook her head. ‘Spinning plates for the super.’ Her tone added the unspoken word, again. Superintendent Cox had been making ever-greater demands on DCI Groombridge’s time of late. Upper-echelon wrangling of some kind. Optimists thought Cox was vying for promotion and grooming Groombridge as his replacement, pessimists that the latest round of cuts was about to break the Greenwich Murder Investigation Team up or merge them with Lewisham, or, worse, Bexley. Groombridge would not or could not comment, but neither could he fully mask his frustration. Fran was left to take up the slack and made no secret of hers. They were already short-handed. They’d been without a DI for two years. DS Harper had transferred away and DC Bidden emigrated, neither replaced. Post-crash austerity in action – make do and bend to breaking. ‘Bloody SOCO are still pissing about,’ said Fran, shivering. ‘I’ve been freezing my tits off out here over an hour!’

  Security firm? Stark peered again at the house. There were discreet pairs of infrared CCTV cameras on each corner, another over the front door and over the automatic gate intercom. ‘What about those?’

  ‘First thing I asked,’ sighed Fran. ‘The boys in white say the DVR is missing.’

  Stark raised his eyebrows. The digital video recorder would have been locked in a cupboard out of sight somewhere. The killer knew what he or she was doing. He stepped into the transition area, a flimsy plastic pergola with cheap plastic crates for shoes and coats, and ripped the plastic off a set of blue disposable overalls and boots.

  A few minutes later they were beckoned inside.

  Scene-of-crime officers in uniform white overalls were crawling over the wide hallway and paid the blue interlopers scant attention.

  Oak flooring, pristine white walls, ornate mirror and silk flowers in a crystal vase. Discreet alarm key-panel recessed flush into the wall, PIR sensor in the corner where walls met ceiling, alarm contacts on the front door and stairway window. SOCO checkerplate stepping stones.

  And at the foot of the stairs … a man in a business suit and raincoat staring up at the ceiling, two bullet holes in his chest, congealed blood pooled beneath him. No expression of surprise or pain, nothing of life; just the cold, glazed eyes of fish on ice. The bodies changed, but the eyes …

  The best one could say was that at least they weren’t staring at you, cursing you. Stark had seen too many dead to be … he nearly thought disturbed, but really, he’d just seen too many dead. However inured experience left you, the urge to close those eyes, or avert your own, rose in your throat like bile. He swallowed both with a dose of obstinate detachment. But out there beyond the firelight, the same old outrage and guilt stirred, pacing, waiting for dark. The eyes saved their blame for your dreams.

  ‘The wife’s upstairs, apparently,’ said Fran.

  ‘In equally poor health,’ announced a voice from the stairs. Marcus Turner, forensic pathologist; a slightly portly, greying man in his mid-forties with a perversely cheerful manner, who Stark thought an amusing match for Fran – a notion she rebuffed forcibly every time he teased her with it. ‘I’ll try to expedite the autopsies, but barring any surprises both look like plain old plumbum intolerantia. First shot from around here, wouldn’t you say, Geoff?’

  One of the anonymous white shapes stood up and pulled down his mask. Geoff Culpepper, Crime Scene Manager. Marcus pointed a finger pistol towards the corpse from the lower flight of the stairs, and the CSM nodded. Marcus plodded down to the floor and stood over the body, pointing down at the chest. ‘Second from here to make sure.’

  ‘Weapon?’ asked Fran.

  ‘No shell casings,’ said Culpepper. ‘Either removed or still in the gun.’

  ‘Revolver?’

  ‘Thirty-eight if I had to guess,’ said Marcus, nodding at the corpse. ‘Won’t know for sure until I pull one out.’

  ‘Old school,’ Fran remarked.

  ‘No phone or watch. Wallet stripped of any cash and dumped there,’ said Culpepper, pointing.

  ‘Robbery then,’ said Fran.

  ‘Or a greedy assassin,’ suggested Marcus, smiling. ‘A little too soon for assumptions, Detective Sergeant.’ Fran rolled her eyes at him.

  ‘Photographer just finished there if you fancy a nose,’ said Culpepper.

  Fran wrinkled her nose. Not squeamish, just impatient. She liked headlines – means, motive, opportunity. An investigation might hang on the ‘nerd work’, as she called it, but couldn’t wait for it.

  Stark crouched to peer at the discarded brown leather wallet beside its numbered plastic evidence photo marker. Fat, worn and stretched with too many cards, which the killer had sensibly ignored. Use them and get tracked, sell them on and create loose ends. Plastic was for amateurs. Missing watch tan mark indicated late autumn sun. No wedding band, but a heavy gold signet on the right hand. Valuable, but the victim’s fingers were too thick to remove it easily and the killer too skittish or squeamish to go and find a knife. There was a world of difference between shooting someone and taking a blade to them.

  Stark sighed faintly, pointing it out to Fran. The signet was inlaid with a silver compass-and-square symbol on blue enamel with the letter ‘G’ picked out in tiny diamonds. Great Architect.

  Fran kissed her teeth in displeasure. Her feelings on the subject were no secret. Open disapproval of Freemasonry was unlikely to boost one’s career in the force, but Fran wasn’t one to let that stand in the way of a decent rant. Besides, for someone who believed she always knew best, Stark suspected she would be more than content to stay a sergeant forever.

  ‘All right,’ she sighed, ‘let’s have a look at the wife then.’

  3

  Mary Chase lay face down on the deep, blood-soaked shag-pile, sprawled before an empty wall safe concealed in the back of a walk-in wardrobe crammed with couture and killer heels. Shot through the back of the head – a crime-noir tableau in silk pyjamas, platinum-blonde hair and gore, her pretty face marred by a grotesque exit wound, the forensic photographer strobing the scene with flash-light indifference.

  The bedroom itself had been turned over violently, more search than a struggle from the look of it. Jewellery boxes emptied. ‘This room was searched after,’ said Stark. There were items scattered over the top of blood spatter. A wedding photo, the couple tanned and happy, white sand and turquoise sea, glass smashed.

  ‘Maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for in the safe,’ suggested Fran.

  ‘Or they did, but didn’t want us to think so.’

  ‘Or, it’s just easier to take the jewellery after your hysterical hostage is dead,’ suggested Marcus helpfully. ‘And on that note … Time of death between ten p.m. and three a.m. I’ll narrow that down later. Shot point-blank in the back of the head, kneeling, then twice more in the back to be sure. No early indications of blood or skin under the fingernails or defensive wounds to suggest she fought the killer. No sign of her phone. Watch and wedding rings missing. Marks on her neck hint that a necklace might’ve been ripped off, probably just post-mortem. Earrings gone too. Early indications suggest this killing was first, and the husband shortly after.’

  The bedroom faced the rear, thought Stark. ‘The killer may not have heard the husband’s car arrive home.’

  ‘So he forces her to open the safe,’ said Fran, ‘kills her, and her husband arrives home at just the wrong time to interrupt his escape.’

  ‘Supposition is your department.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘And there ar
e no indications yet as to the killer’s gender.’

  Fran waved a hand dismissively. ‘This sort of thing is always a man.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Marcus smiled faintly at the sweeping generalization. ‘Only men can tolerate loud noises?’

  ‘Guns are just another form of penis extension,’ replied Fran, deadpan.

  Marcus huffed in amusement. ‘While women put poison in your tea?’

  ‘Or an axe in your head,’ she riposted, smiling sweetly.

  Stark stared down at the woman’s corpse. Lives shouldn’t be ranked according to value, but obstinate detachment had its limits. Men had always fought and died; but women and children paid the price. Old-fashioned views, perhaps. Soldier thinking. At least there were no children this time. Stark had never worked a child case, but he’d seen the cost of war in their eyes, living and dead.

  His fists bunched so tight the fingernails stung his palms. Better that than shaking hands.

  A strand of hair hung over her mouth. Stark wished he could sweep it behind her ear for her.

  Had she known what was coming? What had the killer thought, standing over her, aiming the gun? Stark knew what it meant to kill and what it took, though no longer how it felt – except in dreams. The ones that chased him awake. How such a thing could fade was a mystery. He sometimes wondered if it was only this unlikely ability, to forget, that allowed the human spirit to persevere. Pain. Rage. Love. If only people paused to recall how past certainties faded with time, perhaps they might stop at the brink of acts such as this.

  Regret was the only feeling one could never outwait.

  Marcus stayed to supervise the removal of the bodies while Culpepper showed them round the rest of the house, culminating in the downstairs loo. The small top-light window was ajar. ‘Jemmied open from outside.’

  ‘Tracks?’ asked Stark.

  ‘Patio all round, and rain.’

  Stark stared at the window. Tight for a grown man. Skinny. And lucky; like all the openable windows and doors, this one had alarm contacts.