A Narrow Victory Read online

  Hillary knew, again from her file, that she was an only child, born of middle-class parents, and had gained a sociology degree from Reading University. What she was doing working in the CRT, Hillary had yet to determine.

  As she met a rather challenging pair of dark brown eyes, Hillary wondered what made her feel that the police service might be for her. A sociology degree tended to indicate a certain personality type, of course, but one look at Zoe Turnbull’s rather ironic gaze left Hillary doubting that this woman had ever considered becoming a social worker.

  Perhaps she was attracted by the prospect of power? Some people, Hillary knew, were drawn in to uniform by the desire to wield control over others. But these usually got weeded out during the training process. Of course, neither Sam nor the other two new recruits had gone through such a process, and Hillary hoped that Donleavy knew what he was doing.

  In normal circumstances, Hillary had no doubts that she could rely on the commander’s bullshit meter firing on all four cylinders. But as she and Steven knew only too well, when resources were sparse, you had to take what you could get. And with the low pay on offer by the CRT for its civilian consultants, what you could get might not amount to a hill of beans.

  ‘So, are we supposed to call you guv, too?’ Zoe Turnbull asked, with a wry and genuinely amused twist to her lips that took much of the sting out of the question.

  Hillary, cautiously, decided that she liked her.

  ‘Oh, take no notice of Jimmy. He’s old school, as you’ve probably already realized,’ Hillary said, holding out her hand to shake Zoe’s. ‘And since I’m not an active police officer, technically I’m not a guv at all. It’s just what Jimmy’s comfortable with. You can call me Hillary, or ma’am if you like, or even your royal highness if I really get on your wick. But since it’s easier to work cases if you have a formal structure, and a clear chain of command, guv is just easiest.’

  Zoe Turnbull thought about that for a moment, then nodded her head and grinned. ‘Suits me. Besides, I always wanted to call someone guv. My dad’s favourite old telly show was The Sweeney.’

  Jimmy coughed back a laugh and turned back to the report he was reading, and Hillary’s eyes swept across the small room to the other stranger.

  A more marked contrast to Zoe Turnbull was harder to imagine.

  For a start, at thirty-three years old, John Barnes was a generation older. And despite the fact that he was also dressed in jeans and a top, he might as well have been wearing a three-piece suit, so marked was the contrast with Zoe’s goth-style attire. His denims were strictly high end, bore a very discreet label, and had an almost knife-like crease running down the length of them. Similarly the T-shirt he was wearing was pristine white and bore a famous brand mark discreetly on the right-hand shoulder. At just on six feet tall, with thick, short brown hair and attractively wide, grey-green eyes, he was almost as good-looking as Steven, Hillary mused dispassionately.

  She eyed him thoughtfully as he smiled and stepped forward, hand outstretched. She took it with a friendly smile, all the time wondering just what his game was. From the moment she’d read his file, Hillary Greene suspected that he had to be up to something.

  ‘John, isn’t it?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘I prefer Jake, ma’am,’ he said, with an open and engaging smile that somehow effected to be just a touch shy. ‘My friends at pre-school started to call me that and it just stuck.’

  Oh yes, Hillary thought instantly. Definitely a game player.

  ‘Only my mother still sometimes calls me John, and that’s usually when I’m in the doghouse over something,’ he added, with a self-effacing shrug.

  Zoe laughed dryly. ‘I can’t imagine the Boy Wonder ever being in the dog house,’ she said, and again, something innately friendly in her voice stopped the comment from being uncomfortably sharp.

  Jake Barnes rolled his attractive eyes at her. ‘Ignore her, ma’am. She thinks she’s being funny.’

  Hillary nodded. But Boy Wonder, she thought with an inner smile, in many ways, suited him. For, according to what she’d read in his file, wasn’t Jake Barnes nothing less than that?

  Coming from a strictly working-class family, he’d attended a local comprehensive school with a bad reputation and left with hardly any academic qualifications worth mentioning. And yet at the age of twenty-four he became a multi-millionaire when he sold off his dot.com business just ahead of the bursting bubble.

  Since then, he’d spent his ‘retirement’ dabbling in this and that, as he’d put it in his rare interviews with the press, inventing wildly successful apps for mobile phones and tinkering around with some internet-based ideas that had paid off even more handsomely. He was currently investing his money in property, taking advantage of the deflated property market to buy, buy, buy. He now owned buildings all over the country and was sitting on a fortune in assets.

  He had married in his pre-boom years but had recently divorced, his ex-wife Natasha getting a surprisingly low alimony settlement. True, there had been no children involved, and he’d obviously taken the precaution, even then, of getting her to sign a pre-nup.

  All of which told Hillary a great deal.

  The man had brains. He’d been lucky. He could be ruthless. He had a good grasp of his personal finances. And he was imaginative but also astute.

  So what the hell was he doing here, in the sub-basement of Thames Valley HQ, working for peanuts in a cold-case unit?

  Because one thing was for sure: Hillary did not buy his explanation. Even though Donleavy – and presumably Steven as well – had both taken it at face value.

  On his application, Jake Barnes had said that, having earned his fortune, he wanted to ‘give back something’ to his community. He wanted to stretch himself by exploring new horizons and doing something more useful than simply making money, and loaning his expertise to the police had seemed like the ideal opportunity to do all of that, and more.

  Hillary could see why his application had appealed to the top brass. As a rich man, he had no need for a working salary and was therefore unlikely to fall prey to corruption by accepting bribes. He was obviously intelligent, and understood the modern world and how it worked. And in the CRT, his apparent bleeding-heart liberalism wouldn’t be allowed to do much damage. Besides, they were all probably hoping that some of his wealth might come their way by various convoluted means. And failing that, someone with his influence and clout had to be a good proposition to have in your corner.

  Oh yes, Hillary could well see why they’d snapped him up. Perhaps it was just her pessimistic nature that was making her predict problems where they might not exist?

  Yeah, right, Hillary thought grimly.

  ‘So, how have you both been settling in?’ she asked now with a friendly smile, and leant one shoulder more comfortably against the doorframe.

  She was looking at Zoe as she spoke but she didn’t miss the slight relaxation in Jake’s shoulders that told her that he’d been tense – which in itself struck her as rather odd. Why should a man with more money than he could possibly spend in his lifetime worry about making a good impression on someone as unimportant as herself? It was not as if he needed a job so badly that it was vital he made a good impression on the boss, was it?

  ‘Well, it’s still early days,’ Zoe said. ‘But Sam and Jimmy have been showing us the ropes. We’re up to speed on the computer systems now, and have a good idea of what we’ll be doing. While you’ve been away we’ve been following up on some old burglary cases that match the MO of some new cases in Summertown.’

  Jimmy grunted and gave Hillary a quick résumé of their progress so far. Hillary listened attentively. ‘So I reckon it’s Knocker Clarke and his old gang back at it,’ Jimmy concluded. ‘You’re not telling me it’s a coincidence that all this has kicked off again three months after he’s let out of Bullingdon.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘From the sounds of it, you and Sam seem to be closing in on them,’ she said, knowing that she didn’t real
ly need to offer encouragement or valediction, but aware that Sam, especially, appreciated it. ‘You two should keep on to it, and make sure you’re allowed in on the collar at the end.’

  Since neither of them were police officers, she knew that when the time came, the CRT would have to hand over their work and any evidence to uniform to enable them to make the actual arrests. But that didn’t mean that they shouldn’t get their share of the glory.

  Jimmy grinned wolfishly. ‘Don’t worry, guv. I’ve got mates in Robbery that’ll be happy to take the file off me and will see us right.’

  Hillary nodded and then smiled at the two newcomers. Part of her remit, she knew, was not only to solve cold cases but also to train the wannabes up. ‘So, it looks as if it’ll be just the three of us taking on the next case together then.’

  She straightened up in the doorway. ‘Speaking of which, I’d better go and see what the super’s got for us.’

  Zoe Turnbull grinned secretly. From what she’d been hearing on the grapevine, the super-sexy Steven (as she’d instantly dubbed him the moment she’d first clapped eyes on him) had quite a lot to give to Hillary Greene, one way or another. What the desk sergeant had been telling her about them had made her ears burn.

  As she watched her new boss turn and walk away, Zoe felt a brief twist of regret that Hillary Greene was so clearly heterosexual.

  Fifty or not, she was definitely a babe.

  Jake Barnes too watched Hillary Greene leave, but whatever thoughts might have been going through his head were definitely not readable behind his attractive, grey-green eyes or handsome face.

  Hillary knocked on the door to Steven’s office and walked in.

  The man seated inside looked up at her from behind his desk and beckoned her in with a smile, whilst simultaneously speaking into the telephone. ‘Yes, sir, I can.’ Pause. ‘Yes, tomorrow will be fine.’ Pause. ‘That’s fine, sir. Yes, goodbye.’

  ‘Donleavy?’ Hillary guessed with a wry grimace.

  She and Commander Marcus Donleavy had either a very complex or a very simple relationship, depending on how you looked at things.

  Although he’d always been the boss that her boss reported to, almost from the moment that she’d first come to HQ, they had soon come to regard each other with a wary but mutual respect that rendered them, in some odd way, equals.

  In Donleavy, Hillary had quickly come to recognize a ruthless efficiency that she admired. Nor had it taken her long to realize that she and the commander had quite a lot in common. They both despised those who preyed on the weak, who bullied and destroyed, ruining lives in the process, indulging in the arrogant belief that they were above the law.

  Hillary and Donleavy delighted in proving them wrong.

  Donleavy, in turn, had quickly come to realize that in the unlikely guise of the crooked and despised Ronnie Greene’s wife was that rare and much prized asset, an astute and clever mind, allied to a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong. Someone who neither despised nor worshipped money and mammon, who could keep a clear head when all around her was chaos, and keep her eye firmly fixed on one goal. Nabbing collars.

  In short, the perfect detective.

  And the fact that she had been able to follow his lead over the years without in any way brown-nosing him, or compromising either of them, was a much-appreciated added bonus for them both. But if all of this had led them to regularly performing a curious kind of dance around one another, neither of them were willing to acknowledge it, either to themselves, to each other, or to anyone else.

  Certainly the rank and file had always been intrigued by the way they interacted. At first, and almost inevitably, the more jealous of her male colleagues had assumed that they were having an affair, but that particular hare had very quickly run its course when it became apparent, even to the most ribald male psyche, that that had never been the case.

  Others had always contested that it was strictly professional between them. When Hillary Greene had risen through the ranks the hard and honest way, via plenty of hard work resulting in a record second to none, they had simply assumed that Donleavy had done as he’d always done: realized the detective gem he’d discovered in-house and right under his nose and cannily used her to the best advantage.

  As was his wont.

  But others, his secretary included, knew that it went much further than that. On the rare occasions when DI Hillary Greene requested a meeting with the great man, she was under strict instructions to agree at once, and to fit her in. Many a time she had sensed ructions in the air, and the advent of something that smelled bad and which interfered with the smooth running of Marcus Donleavy’s remit. And almost inevitably, after the appearance of DI Hillary Greene into her boss’s office, the ructions had ceased – sometimes in a somewhat spectacular and unexpected manner, as in the banishment to Hull of a certain superior officer, other times with barely a whisper.

  It had got to the point where the guardian of Donleavy’s office had come to think of the DI as her boss’s secret henchman. (Henchwoman?)

  Throughout the rest of HQ, the rumours that persisted about them sometimes clashed and overlapped, or contradicted themselves. They were friends; their relationship was tense. He liked her; she didn’t particularly like him. He trusted her; she was wary. It was, however, widely agreed that Donleavy listened to Hillary Greene whereas he very often didn’t listen to his peers. Which was true, but it didn’t necessarily do Hillary any favours.

  Others insisted that Donleavy gave her far more headway than most, and backed her up when perhaps he shouldn’t – which both of them would probably have reluctantly admitted was true but Hillary would have very quickly pointed out that it occurred only when it suited him.

  It was certainly true that, when it came to managing problems strictly and quietly within the force, she and Donleavy were firmly on the same page.

  And so, while the exact nature of their relationship endlessly fascinated everyone from the chief constable down to the bobby on the beat, nobody really understood it, and this included Steven Crayle.

  Now, as he hung up the phone, he nodded, and looked at her curiously. ‘He wants to meet me to discuss “matters of interest”. Any ideas what’s on his mind?’

  Hillary looked briefly amused. ‘Don’t have a clue. The commander hardly keeps me up to date on his daily doings. Especially now that I’m strictly a civilian.’

  Steven believed that as much as he believed in the tooth fairy, but he held up a hand in a show of surrender. ‘OK, OK. I just thought I’d ask. In case I needed a head’s up.’

  ‘Got a guilty conscience, have you?’ Hillary shot back with a smile.

  Steven smiled a very slow and sexy smile at her. ‘Always. But nothing that need concern the commander.’

  At just over six feet tall, he was slender in that way that spoke of masculine elegance. This somewhat sophisticated air was enhanced by the well-tailored cut of the dark suits he wore. He had short dark hair and dark brown eyes, and was good-looking in a way that wasn’t particularly rugged but was hardly feminine either.

  Now, as he smiled that devastating smile at her, Hillary felt her toenails curl.

  She curled her lip briefly at him, like a terrier sizing up which bit to bite first, and demanded flatly, ‘I’ve just been talking to the two new recruits you’ve lumbered me with. I think the goth fancies me.’

  Steven blinked. ‘Really? She didn’t strike me that way. In fact, I rather thought that she fancied me.’

  And who wouldn’t, Hillary thought, somewhat despairingly. Her lip snarled up a little more. ‘And what’s with the Boy Wonder?’

  Steven grinned. ‘Now if I’m not mistaken, that’s Zoe’s pet name for him. Who do you think she sees as Batman?’ he asked.

  Hillary sighed, knowing when she was beaten. ‘All right, all right. At least tell me that you have a case for me.’

  Although she liked this new and easy way they had with each other, and she had been delighted to discover that
they had very much the same irreverent sense of humour, their growing closeness worried her.

  ‘Back, what—’ He glanced at his watch ‘—barely three hours, and already you’re a glutton for punishment.’

  But as he spoke, he reached down his desk to pull open a drawer, and an indulgent look crossed his face, like a parent about to bestow a special Christmas gift on his favourite offspring. He withdrew a thick dusty file and dropped it theatrically on the top of the desk. ‘As it happens, I do have something that should interest you.’

  He opened the file and glanced dispassionately at the top page. ‘It’s a murder case, naturally. This is the preliminary report and findings only. There’s more boxes in the archives that’ll have to be gone over.’

  Hillary fought the urge to roll her eyes and make some spurious comment invoking grandmothers sucking eggs.

  As she reached out to take it from him, his hand came out and rested on hers. She looked at him, surprised for a moment, and then tensed as he smiled somewhat stiffly. Instantly, her suspicious nature made her wonder what was coming now.

  ‘I really enjoyed our week on the Mollern.’

  Hillary blinked, utterly wrong-footed. It took her a moment to drag her mind from the contemplation of whatever was in the files and back to the personal again.

  ‘Oh, right. Yes, so did I,’ she agreed, wondering why her words came out sounding so stilted and uneasy. Because she had enjoyed their time together as much as he apparently had. In fact, perhaps a shade too much? Was that what was making her feel suddenly tense?

  After the disaster that was her first marriage, she had, not surprisingly, been very unwilling to let any man get too close again. And so far, none had. Until now?

  The thought slipped in like a snake in the grass, and she almost literally took a step backwards. Steven Crayle, watching her closely, sighed very softly, and to cover the give-away little sound, pushed the file firmly towards her.