‘Suffocated?’
Hannah’s heart jolted. She grabbed the arm of her swivel chair, as if to check that she wasn’t dreaming and this wasn’t some nightmarish hoax. The walls of her tiny new office seemed to be closing in on her. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine sinking head first into the clammy embrace of tons of thick beery grain.
‘In the farm silo,’ Linz Waller repeated. ‘Like I say, she must have climbed up and jumped in.’
So Orla Payne had given up on life.
Shit.
Opening her eyes, Hannah glared at her surroundings. No pictures on the walls, only a year planner, charts, and a list of phone numbers. She kept forgetting to bring in potted plants, and no way was she putting up a photograph of Marc. A fortnight in her new domain, and the smell of paint still lingered. The team had been shifted without a fig leaf of consultation to the other side of the Divisional HQ building. Lauren sold it as a change for the better, on the basis that the windows gave a view of the fells rather than the car park, but the true rationale was workspace planning. By trimming the Cold Case Review Team’s head count, and cramming those who remained into half as many square feet as part of a package of dextrous manoeuvres, Lauren had kept office overheads below budget for the current financial year. Despite the cutbacks, Hannah had heard the ACC singing in the corridor first thing that morning. An off-key rendering of ‘I’m a Believer’. No wonder she was pleased with herself. Keep the politicians and the accountants happy, and the sky was the limit. The smart money said that if she carried on like this, she might even become the first woman commissioner of the Met. Give her two years in charge in London, Les Bryant maintained, and the capital’s police force would boast the highest number of PR apparatchiks in Europe, and the fewest front-line officers.
She wrenched her thoughts back to Linz’s bad tidings. ‘Tell me about the call you took from Orla yesterday.’
‘Listen to the tape, if you like.’
‘Later. First, you take me through it.’
Beneath her expertly applied make-up, Linz’s cheeks were pallid. She’d rung a mate in the Keswick neighbourhood police team to fix a night out. Her friend had just come back from Lane End Farm to make a start on the paperwork about the death of a woman whose corpse had been discovered by a farmer that morning. The body was buried in the grain. The farmer, Mike Hinds, had identified the deceased as his daughter, Orla Payne. She didn’t live on the farm, and he claimed he had no idea why she would have come there to die. They hadn’t spoken to each other since a brief telephone conversation a couple of days before had ended in a quarrel. He said she was drunk.
‘The woman must have been an alcoholic.’ Linz cast her eyes to the heavens. ‘I only took the call because Chantal was on her break.’
Hannah leant across her desk. ‘We’re not playing a blame game.’
‘Will the IPCC need to be involved?’
Every police officer dreaded becoming the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Once the IPCC started to crawl over your career, even the best CV could turn into a train wreck.
‘One step at a time, huh? What did Orla have to say?’
‘She was pissed out of her brain, you can hear it for yourself on the tape.’ Linz folded her arms tight across her chest, hugging herself for comfort. ‘All I could make out was that she had to speak to you, and nobody else would do. When it finally sank in that you weren’t around, she rang off.’
‘All right.’ Hannah exhaled. ‘How did they find the body?’
‘While Hinds was out in his fields, he caught sight of the top of a car parked in a lane at the back of his land. It was so unusual, he went to investigate, only to see it was Orla’s motor. On the way he spotted a brightly coloured headscarf, caught on a bramble. He recognised it as Orla’s. She wore headscarves all the time.
Hannah blinked. ‘Even in the height of summer?’
‘Yeah, seems she’d lost all her hair. Stress-related, apparently.’
‘She suffered from alopecia?’
‘I guess.’ Linz shrugged, a healthy young woman who didn’t know much about illness. ‘When he found her mobile in a drinking trough, panic set in. He and a couple of his men started searching the farm. It was Hinds himself who looked inside the grain tower.’
‘And there she was?’
‘Yeah.’ Linz’s face twisted as she pictured the scene. ‘God, what a way to go. And his own daughter, too …’
‘Suicide?’
‘Or accident.’
‘Strange accident. What else do we know?’
Linz’s expression said Isn’t that enough to be going on with?
‘All right, make sure the tape of the phone call is on my desk in five minutes. Once I’ve listened to it, I’ll decide if we need to make a report to the PSD. Chances are, we will.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Linz bowed her head. The Professional Standards Department would liaise with the IPCC. ‘I suppose I may have been the last person she spoke to before she died.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
As Linz scuttled out, Hannah slumped back in her chair. If only, if only — her life sometimes seemed full to bursting with ‘if onlys’. If only she could have persuaded Orla to talk sense to her, the woman might be alive now. Allowing her a chance to answer that contemptuous question, ‘Don’t you care about justice?’
‘I must talk to Hannah Scarlett,’ Orla Payne said, ‘it’s a matter of life and death.’
The muffled voice of a woman about to die. DC Maggie Eyre paled, listening in silence until Orla rang off, and Hannah stopped the tape machine.
‘She may not have intended to kill herself, ma’am,’ Maggie said. ‘Jumping into a grain silo isn’t a sure-fire way of killing yourself, and if she’d grown up on a farm, she’d know that.’
Maggie, a member of the Cold Case Review Team since its inception, was the same age as Linz, but they had little else in common. Square-jawed and down to earth, she came from a family which had farmed in the county for generations, while Linz was a townie to the tips of her painted fingernails. Linz came up with flashes of insight that Maggie, for all her sturdy common sense, could never match, but the combination of their talents helped to make the team effective despite being starved of resources. This afternoon, Hannah wanted to pick Maggie’s brains. Investigating Orla’s death was miles outside her bailiwick, but she couldn’t bear to wait for information to seep out from Keswick.
‘No?’ Hannah raised her eyebrows. ‘Haven’t I heard stories about farm workers being asphyxiated by grain?’
‘It can happen, but if you’re hell-bent on committing suicide on a farm, plenty of methods guarantee the right result, no messing.’ Maggie looked as though she was about to mount a soapbox. ‘More than one farmer I’ve known has killed himself. Call it an occupational hazard. The work is stressful and tough, the financial pressures can be horrific.’
‘From what I’ve read, the average farm is a death trap. All that dangerous machinery, countless heavy vehicles roaming the fields.’
‘People on the outside don’t have the faintest idea how many farmers take their lives in their hands seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. It’s the nature of the job.’
Maggie’s scrubbed cheeks turned pink whenever she spoke from the heart. Hannah knew her joining the police hadn’t gone down well with her parents, and guessed Maggie still felt a pinprick of guilt for turning her back on their way of life.
‘So if Orla Payne chose to die on her father’s farm, she picked an odd way to set about it?’
‘It wouldn’t be my choice. But the cushioning effect of the grain would break her fall. It’s not quicksand, ma’am. More like ordinary sand. You can walk on it, or lie on it. It’s only if you find yourself deeply buried in it that you’re likely to have a serious problem.’
‘So she wouldn’t necessarily be buried in the stuff?’
‘No, though she’d probably find it difficult to haul herself out of the silo, even if she tried to climb up by way of the bolts holding the steel sheets together. She might be able to make her way up to the top by treading through the loads of grain whilst the silo was being filled. Not so easy if she was drunk. If she couldn’t get out, she’d run the risk of dying of thirst. Definitely not a nice way to go.’
‘What if she banged on the walls of the silo and called for help?’
‘Depends. If the silo was being filled, the noise from the machinery would drown her cries. And she might not have been conscious, and able to make herself heard, if she hit her head on the way down and knocked herself out.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Absolutely. If it didn’t, do you know how far the silo is from the farm buildings, and the spot where the grain is loaded on to the conveyor?’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I’m just trying to get an idea of what might have happened before I break the news to the ACC that the dead woman called us twice before she died.’
‘On the day of the awards dinner?’
‘Mmmm. Not ideal timing.’
‘Rather you than me, ma’am.’ Maggie was no fan of the ACC.
‘You said it.’
‘I can put out feelers if you like. In the farming world, everybody knows everybody else. You say this farm belongs to a man called Hinds? I bet my dad has come across him.’
‘Would you mind having a word? It’s not our case, but I’d like to learn more about Orla’s background. In particular, any feedback on this story about the brother who disappeared twenty years ago.’
‘Will do.’ Maggie nodded. ‘So the farmer lost both his children?’
‘Yes.’ Hannah could not comprehend what it must be like to have both your kids die young. ‘Unlucky man, Michael Hinds.’
Gaby Malcolm, in the PSD, was one of Hannah’s favourite people in the Cumbria Constabulary. The keepers of the force’s conscience were never likely winners of any popularity contest, but nobody could dislike this small birdlike woman from Bermuda. Her manner was so calm that ten minutes in her company felt as soothing as a session with a skilled hypnotherapist.
‘I’ll talk to the IPCC, but there’s really no need for Linz Waller to get her knickers in a twist,’ Gaby paused. ‘Or you, come to that. Ten to one, they won’t want to get involved. You know the drill. As long as nothing improper seems to have occurred, and there’s no hint of the force sweeping the crap under the carpet, they will pass it back and tell us to decide what to do for ourselves. I doubt there will be a need for a local investigation, so we can make a short report to stick in a file, and everything will be sorted.’
‘And if they insist on a local investigation?’
‘Whatever happened to looking on the bright side, Hannah?’ Gaby smiled. ‘Look, you’ve acted immediately, and from the tapes of the two conversations, there’s nothing much more that could have been done. The woman was obviously drunk. There’s no way the IPCC will want to investigate themselves, that’s only if the shit really hits the fan with a bang. Local enquiry? I’d be very surprised.’
Back in her room, Hannah told herself Gaby was right. She needed to lighten up. The clock never stopped ticking, no time to waste in wondering what might go wrong. Time to make the most of life.
Which led, inevitably, to Daniel Kind. He’d encouraged Orla to call Hannah about her brother’s disappearance. He ought to be told what had happened.
Hannah’s hand hovered over the telephone on her desk. She didn’t need to double-check the number of his mobile. By a bizarre trick of memory, it had lodged itself in her mind.
Just do it.
The phone rang out for twenty seconds and then Daniel’s disembodied voice asked her to leave a message.
But what could she say? ‘Sorry, the friend you put in touch with me is dead’?
The phone bleeped and for a split second she thought Daniel must have been blessed with ESP.
No such luck. Lauren Self’s name flashed up on the screen.
‘Ma’am.’
‘You haven’t forgotten that we need to arrive in very good time for the drinks reception, I hope?’
‘Certainly not, ma’am.’
This evening’s awards dinner, down the road at the Brewery Arts Centre, was the last thing she needed. She’d toyed with the possibility of wimping out of it, but the only viable substitutes were Les Bryant, who had come out of retirement to provide his expertise to the team on a short-term contract, and Greg Wharf, a Jack-the-Lad sergeant transferred from Vice after taking one chance too many. Cynicism was embedded in their DNA, and they regarded the team’s recognition in the award judges’ rankings as cause for hilarity rather than celebration. Lauren couldn’t bear either of them.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve changed yet?’
Hannah checked her watch. ‘Not yet, ma’am.’
‘That makes me feel better, at any rate. Suppose we meet in reception in an hour’s time?’
‘Certainly, ma’am.’
She banged down the receiver. Lauren’s face smirked at her from the rogues’ gallery that bordered the Cumbria Constabulary year planner, along with advertisements from ‘carefully chosen partner organisations’. Immaculate coiffeur, glistening lips, perfect cheekbones. The camera loved her. Mind you, the camera didn’t have to work for her.
Hannah stuck her tongue out at her boss’s pretty, unblinking image. The childishness of her small act of rebellion supplied an instant pick-me-up. She intended to do something.
Without a second thought, she dialled Daniel’s number. His voice message greeted her, asking her to leave her number, saying he’d call back as soon as he could.
Should she just ring off?
Sod it, no.
‘Daniel, this is Hannah. I’d like to speak to you about Orla Payne, if you don’t mind. I’m out this evening, but hope to hear from you soon. Bye.’
She leant back in her chair. OK, then, Daniel Kind would have to wait. Never mind.
What mattered was doing Orla justice.
As bad luck would have it, Hannah bumped into Greg Wharf the moment she’d changed into her glad rags. The DS had spent the afternoon giving evidence in court, and as he bustled through the double doors that led from reception, his expression was pensive. Gruelling cross-examination, Hannah supposed. But at the sight of her, he broke into a smile.
‘Well, good evening, ma’am.’
‘Greg.’
Predictable to a fault, his gaze locked on her cleavage. She’d agonised about the lowish cut of this dress in the shop last Saturday, but she’d decided to hell with it, she was going to take the risk. The plan was never for Greg to get an eyeful. A poster on the wall advertised a Federation talk about The Surveillance Society; Hannah felt like a target of it.
‘You’re gonna wow them, ma’am, no question.’
Hannah ground her teeth. Greg had this talent for catching her off balance.
‘It’ll be a miracle if I stay awake.’
‘Too many late nights?’ He treated her to an all-innocence smile that, she knew instantly, he’d bestowed on a hundred women before. ‘Believe me, I’m devastated that I can’t be there. VIPs only, of course, it’s to be expected. No room for the humble spear carriers.’
Sarky bugger. ‘Don’t pretend you’re heartbroken. Especially after what you and Les said when we found out we were on the shortlist.’
‘Churlish of us, ma’am, on reflection. It was no mean achievement; now I see it all.’ He allowed himself another peek down the top of her dress. ‘Obviously, I’m not suggesting for a moment that Les is a bad influence, but the truth is, I’ve recognised the error of my ways. I reckon I could have found this a very enjoyable evening.’
‘Oh yeah?’ She made a move to go, but it was difficult to stride past him in the corridor without brushing against him.
‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, ma’am,’ he said, and with a last lingering leer, he stepped aside.
As she shoved open the double doors, it struck her that his banter no longer annoyed her as it once had. Crazy, really. Greg Wharf was a sexual harassment claim waiting to happen, the sort of officer she’d loathed from the earliest days of her career. But she’d also come to realise that beneath the bravado was a very good detective who didn’t mind putting in extra hours when they were short-handed. To her astonishment, she felt almost sorry she wouldn’t be able to chat to him at the dinner.
‘Congratulations, Detective Chief Inspector.’
Bryan Madsen had limped through the hubbub to join her the moment the final award was presented, the final words of gratitude gushed. The Malt Room buzzed with a hundred voices, the conversations lubricated by generous quantities of alcohol served throughout the five-course dinner. Bryan struck Hannah as strong and vigorous, even if his paunch and florid complexion suggested overindulgence in fine food and wine. Tall, with expensively cut steel-grey hair, he might have passed for a brigadier, or a leading man in a 1950s British black-and-white movie, sporting a stiff upper lip and a gammy leg caused by a shrapnel wound. You wouldn’t cast him as a bloke who had spent a lifetime trading static caravans. During the longueurs of the presentations, Hannah had kept awake by studying Lauren Self’s companions on the top table, and she’d recognised the Madsen brothers from newspaper photographs. They were accompanied by good-looking and expensively attired wives. Bryan often featured in the local press, though never in stories that held the slightest interest for Hannah. A businessman with a taste for politics? She’d stereotyped him in her mind as a boring old fart.
‘It’s an honour to have been in the mix.’
Scary, how the lie sprang to her lips, but she was bound to get away with it. How many captains of industry with a passion for politicking had a built-in irony detector?
‘Your cold case team ran the winners desperately close, I can assure you. Your people did a first-rate job with that dreadful business up at Ambleside last January.’ He mopped his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief, and fiddled with the window to let in a breath of air. ‘Boiling in here, isn’t it? As for the judging process, I suppose what tipped the balance is that your profile in the community only rises every now and then, while the Clean Cumbria Campaign is never off the advertising billboards.’
‘They deserved it.’ She resisted the temptation to simper — better not go completely over the top. Though she couldn’t resist adding, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’
‘Absolutely right.’ He snapped his fingers and a young woman in a short glittery dress materialised by his side. Her sinuous and silent movements reminded Hannah of a magician’s assistant, her smile was cool and enigmatic. ‘Purdey, another glass of Bolly, if you don’t mind. This is Detective Chief Inspector Scarlett — Purdey Madsen. Now I promise I’m not driving, Chief Inspector! But what will you have?’
‘Nothing for me, thanks.’
‘Please, I insist. You sat with the patience of Job through all our speeches.’ An appraising smile. ‘Surely even a senior police officer can let her hair down once in a while?’
Hannah wondered what he was after. ‘An orange juice, please.’
‘Thanks, Purdey.’ As the girl melted into the chattering crowd, he said, ‘Lovely kid, took a degree in psychology last year; such an asset in her father’s team, marketing our holiday homes. I absolutely dote on her.’
And get her to fetch and carry for you. ‘She’s your niece?’
‘That’s right. Gareth and Sally have two daughters; it was a great sadness to my wife and myself that we never … Anyway, past history, long gone, forget it. Do you have a brood of your own, Hannah?’ When she shook her head, he said, ‘Never mind, you’re only young. Plenty of time yet.’
Hannah was saved from the need to reply by Lauren Self, timing her arrival to perfection for once in her life. The ACC was enjoying her second champagne, or possibly her third, to judge by the flush on those taut cheeks. Body-swerving through the crowd like a footballer followed a man she’d seen chatting to Lauren during the dinner. Unmistakably a Madsen, but younger than Bryan and with an athletic build; this must be Gareth. Not even a hint of grey at the temples, but if his light-brown hair had been coloured, he got away with it. He moved with the self-confident swagger of a man accustomed to getting away with things.
As the ACC and Bryan effected introductions, Gareth Madsen glanced at Hannah. In an odd moment of complicity, his lips twitched with suppressed amusement, though she wasn’t sure what he found funny, his brother’s self-importance or Lauren’s photo-opportunity smile. Both, she hoped.
All of a sudden, the ACC was her best friend. ‘Gareth was fascinated by your work on cold cases.’
‘I did vote for your team, cross my heart and hope to die.’ He gave a cheeky grin that tested Hannah’s own irony-detector. ‘Bryan let me down, to his eternal shame. I mean, binning litter is extremely worthy and all that, but your department puts away serious criminals. As good as something off the telly. Finding DNA matches to help you solve old crimes! Bringing people to justice years after they thought they’d got off scot-free!’
‘I’m afraid DNA testing is horrendously expensive,’ Lauren said. ‘The current funding crisis means the generosity of partners like Madsen’s Holiday Home Park is more important than ever.’
‘Our commitment to giving something back to our local community is a core aspect of our mission statement.’ Bryan might have been reading an autocue. The legacy of too many speeches, no doubt. ‘We hope the constabulary thinks of us as a friend in need. Delighted to do as much as we can to help.’
Hannah could imagine. The rules allowed every police force in the country to garner up to one per cent of its annual budget from sponsorships and other business ventures. It was supposed to offer a good way of funding equipment that the government was too tight-fisted to provide. The bait for private businesses was a higher media profile, a chance to brag about their commitment to corporate social responsibility. Nobody ever hinted that the quid pro quo for funding might be a blind eye turned to questionable business practices. That was forbidden. Any suggestion of dodgy dealing would be met with outrage and threats of legal action. Naturally.
‘I’m guessing you’re not a poker player?’ Gareth whispered in Hannah’s ear, as Lauren engaged Bryan in a cosy chat about shared values. ‘Your face is a picture.’
‘Never said a word,’ she murmured.
‘You don’t need to, Hannah — may I call you Hannah? Obviously you don’t approve of the forces of Mammon currying favour with the forces of law and order.’ He narrowed his eyes, mimicking a stage villain. ‘Pity, I hoped our largesse would get me off with a slap on the wrist next time I’m caught speeding.’
‘Forget it, the fines are an even more important source of revenue.’ She placed her empty glass on the window sill. ‘So, do you play poker … Gareth?’
‘I’m an entrepreneur, that’s what entrepreneurs do. To do well, you have to gamble. Business is all about taking risks. As I keep telling my esteemed chairman.’
‘I hear you used to be a racing driver.’
He grinned. ‘Your sources are impeccable, as I’d expect of Cumbria’s finest. I’m afraid I never made Formula One. In my youth I totalled a Porsche and a Ferrari in quick succession and walked away without a scratch, but that kind of luck doesn’t last for ever. Ask Bryan, he never drove so much as an open-top sports car, but when he drove into a tree years back, he nearly died. Can you wonder that we settled for life as businessmen? Not so much fun as racing cars, but you live to draw your pension.’
Purdey arrived bearing drinks. Despite the crush at the bar, she’d managed to get served in record time; no doubt she’d inherited her father’s savoir faire. With her snub nose and long chin, she might not be a raving beauty, but her skin was fresh and her legs slim, and what was that line of Greg Wharf’s — there’s no such thing as an ugly heiress?
Gareth helped himself to the champagne. ‘I think your uncle had better go easy, don’t you?’
‘Cheeky whippersnapper,’ Bryan brayed.
Purdey’s eyes misted over. ‘I can’t believe it, really.’
‘What’s that, sweetheart?’ her father asked.
‘Here we are, out enjoying ourselves, and yet poor Orla …’
Bryan said, ‘Orla’s death is an utter tragedy, but quite frankly, she inherited her mother’s weakness. The poor girl couldn’t hold her liquor, that’s the top and bottom of it.’ He turned to Hannah. ‘Lauren tells me that you’ve heard about this dreadful business?’
Hannah nodded. She’d briefed the ACC about Orla’s calls to the Cold Case Review Team, and her family connection with Madsen’s. It was the last thing Lauren wanted to hear, as a prelude to schmoozing wealthy captains of industry, but she found a crumb of comfort in Gaby Malcolm’s confidence that the IPCC wouldn’t be looking askance at the handling of the phone calls.
‘She rang me two days ago,’ Hannah said. ‘While I was out yesterday, she tried to contact me again.’
Bryan stiffened. ‘Good Lord. Not wanting you to reopen enquiries into her brother’s disappearance, for goodness’ sake?’
‘Had she discussed what happened to Callum with you?’
Before Bryan could reply, a jovial fat man from Commerce in Cumbria slapped him on the back and asked how the hell he was doing. As Bryan disengaged himself, Gareth checked his watch.
‘Come on, we’ve done our duty here. Why don’t we say cheerio to the mayor and then nip round to Mancini’s? It will be quieter, and there will be more oxygen.’
‘Good plan.’ Bryan was in avuncular mode. ‘If you like, Lauren, we could talk some more about whether we can find a way to contribute to these DNA-testing costs.’
Hannah opened her mouth, about to make her excuses, but Lauren was having none of it. ‘We’d love to join you, wouldn’t we, Hannah?’
The ACC smiled at Bryan, and he beamed back at her. Hannah cringed inwardly. Easy to guess what was going through Lauren’s mind.
Don’t get your hopes up, chum. It’s not your body she’s after, it’s your wallet.