The Doll's House - [65]

She sat in darkness, her glass of water untouched, and clicked on to the next page. She was careless of all around her, hooked in now to her examination of Helen Grace. Her exchange with Tim was already long forgotten and for a moment it was as if he didn’t even exist.

105

It’s hard to be inconspicuous, when you are the size of a small whale. This was one very good reason why heavily pregnant officers tended to find themselves assigned to desk jobs.

It was early morning and the inhabitants of Georges Avenue were slowly surfacing. Curtains were being drawn, cups of tea drained, and the early birds were now climbing into their cars and vans, occasionally shooting a quizzical look at the pregnant stranger leaning against the lamp post.

Charlie suddenly felt tired and foolish. They only had one car and even though Steve wasn’t using it today, Charlie had avoided it. Steve loved that car and kept meticulous care of it. He wasn’t a controlling person, but he would nevertheless have noticed the spike in miles on the clock that a journey to and from Northampton would have caused. So she had taken a cab, then a train, then another cab – eventually being deposited in a Northamptonshire village with nothing to do but wait. It had cost her money, her feet ached and a headache was brewing and yet… she had felt compelled to come here. Unwittingly she had played a part in a conspiracy that might yet claim Helen’s scalp. If there was a chance that she could now influence proceedings, Charlie had to seize it.

She heard the front door shut and looked up. DI Tom Marsh paused as he walked to his car, turning back to wave to his wife who now appeared in the front window. Charlie found herself marching towards him.

‘Can I help you?’ DI Marsh looked at her quizzically. ‘Have you come to see Rose?’

‘No, Tom, I’ve come to see you.’

Suddenly Marsh looked less certain. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie could see his wife watching on from the front window. She wondered what romantic crimes Marsh had been guilty of previously and whether this could be used to her advantage. Being confronted by an angry pregnant woman wouldn’t look good to his wife – or his neighbours.

‘I’m sorry I don’t know who you are and I’ve got to get to work,’ he said, attempting to brush past her. But Charlie caught hold of his arm firmly, stopping him in his tracks.

‘You don’t know me, but I am a police officer and a friend of DI Grace.’

Charlie was pleased to see the colour fading from Marsh’s face.

‘You have played your part in a nasty little conspiracy and I’m happy to fill your wife in on your role – she looks pretty intrigued already – but I guess that would involve you confessing how much you were paid by them. Does she know you take bribes?’

Marsh shot an anxious look to his wife. Her face asked a thousand questions and Charlie was amused to see sweat breaking out on Marsh’s forehead.

‘But I’ll spare you that indignity if you tell me when and where Harwood first contacted you. If you can give me that and corroborate it in writing -’

‘Harwood? I don’t know any Harwood.’

‘Come off it, Tom. I know she contacted you, warned you Helen would find you, asked you to record -’

‘I never met with a woman,’ Marsh interrupted. The front door was now opening and Marsh shot another anxious glance towards it.

‘Then who? Who told you to record your conversation?’

‘He said he was called DI Latham, but I never believed him. I’d recognize him again if I saw him though. Tall black guy with a South Coast accent.’

‘A tall black guy?’

‘You heard me,’ Marsh spat back, turning to face his concerned wife.

‘What’s going on, Tom?’ Rose Marsh said, her eyes fixed on Charlie and her bump.

‘Sorry to have bothered you. I can’t raise anyone at number eighty, wondered if you knew when they might be back?’

Charlie smiled an awkward thanks and walked off, not caring much if her lie had been believed. A little domestic trouble was the least Marsh deserved. As she pulled out her mobile to ring for a cab, Charlie’s mind was already spooling forward to what she had to do next.

It was time for a one-to-one with Lloyd Fortune.

106

The two men sat in silence, breakfast laid out in front of them. Lloyd always made breakfast for his father – tea, soft-boiled eggs, brown toast, day after day – and often he was comforted by the regularity of this routine. Today, however, he was on edge.

He had hardly slept last night. And the night before had been little better. Ever since his exchange with Ceri Harwood at her house, he’d been gripped by a deep feeling of unease. The fact that she had propositioned him sexually was bad enough, but this was just the foreplay to something infinitely more serious and alarming. Rock-solid Ceri Harwood, who had insisted that only good would come of him participating in her scheme to remove the ‘cancer’ of Helen Grace from Southampton Central, was now rocking, personal traumas and professional disappointments colliding in a perfect storm. What a fool he’d been to take her at her word. But she had seemed so sure and as she spoke the road had seemed to open up in front of Lloyd. Taking Helen’s place, he would have been the youngest DI Hampshire Police had ever had – finally he would be able to look his dad in the eye.