fallen into the juggling act again. Private life and work were up in the air, with me wondering which to catch and hold on to. Last night Annabelle had been her usual understanding self, and that made me feel a hundred times worse. She’d cooked spring chicken bonne femme, with new potatoes. In January! The fish and chips had blunted my appetite, and I struggled with it, even though it was one of the best meals I’d had in years and I refused a helping of apple pie for the firsttime in my life. Annabelle hid her disappointment, but I could sense it.
A quick result would solve my problems, but it was looking doubtful. Nigel was over in Liverpool, trying to arrange a reconstruction of Hurst’s last movements, using Norris’s Roller. Maybe somebody’s memory would be jogged. After that he was visiting the widow. At this end of the enquiry we were still knocking on doors. Heads were being shaken and lines drawn through lists of addresses. Nobody had noticed a luxury limousine being driven up a cart-track, and mud-spattered Rolls-Royces are as common as pink flamingos around Heckley. Maybe we’d have better luck at the Burtonwood services on Friday, but I doubted it.
Poor Harold Hurst’s death had all the hallmarks of a gangland killing, but we couldn’t find the links. His lifestyle was modest and his friends few. Nobody knew much about him and fewer cared. Maybe he saw or heard something while he was driving Norris around. Something to do with the disappearance of Mrs Norris. I was certain that our investigations should be concentrated around Bradley T. Norris, and Shenandoah Incorporated, until Gilbert walked into the office like Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper.
It was a fax from our ballistics boffins in Huntingdon. The bullet that passed through Hurst’s head had travelled down the barrel of an AK47 Kalashnikov, as we thought. The news was that it was a decent matchwith a similar one that had dispatched a suspected IRA informer to the big shindig in the sky, in Belfast in 1988. A sudden piece of information like that is usually just the breakthrough you have been waiting for. Our euphoria didn’t last long, though. We soon realised that it only heaped confusion upon confusion. Gilbert rang Special Branch and I decided to have a relapse.
Like ten million prisoners before her, Marina Norris made another mark on the wall with the heel of her shoe. She’d felt stupid when she did it for the first time, but quickly realised it was the only way she could measure the passing of the days. She counted the marks, touching each with the tip of a chipped enamel fingernail. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. They’d said she might be freed Tuesday, if her husband played ball.
She’d nearly choked to death in the boot of the Sierra. Each time the car had accelerated or braked she’d rolled one way or the other, unable to brace herself with her hands and legs pinioned. She was certain Harold was dead, and that she soon would be.
Eventually they’d arrived, and she was dragged and carried into a building with linoleum on the floor and smelling like a house from her childhood. A dirty, unpleasant house. They went through another door and down some stone steps.
She’d felt a blow, not fierce this time, and fallen backwards into a soft armchair. They’d unfastened her hands and ripped off the gag. There were two ofthem, and they were wearing masks – balaclavas – with holes to see through. Marina had seen similar ones on television, worn by terrorists and protestors and bank robbers in second-rate films. If they don’t want me to see them, she’d thought, they mustn’t intend to kill me; and she’d begun sobbing, partly from fear of what their intentions might be, partly from relief.
As they’d turned to leave her, the door at the top of the stairs had opened and she’d seen the third member of the gang standing there. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and she recognised him as the man with the ugly
A quick result would solve my problems, but it was looking doubtful. Nigel was over in Liverpool, trying to arrange a reconstruction of Hurst’s last movements, using Norris’s Roller. Maybe somebody’s memory would be jogged. After that he was visiting the widow. At this end of the enquiry we were still knocking on doors. Heads were being shaken and lines drawn through lists of addresses. Nobody had noticed a luxury limousine being driven up a cart-track, and mud-spattered Rolls-Royces are as common as pink flamingos around Heckley. Maybe we’d have better luck at the Burtonwood services on Friday, but I doubted it.
Poor Harold Hurst’s death had all the hallmarks of a gangland killing, but we couldn’t find the links. His lifestyle was modest and his friends few. Nobody knew much about him and fewer cared. Maybe he saw or heard something while he was driving Norris around. Something to do with the disappearance of Mrs Norris. I was certain that our investigations should be concentrated around Bradley T. Norris, and Shenandoah Incorporated, until Gilbert walked into the office like Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper.
It was a fax from our ballistics boffins in Huntingdon. The bullet that passed through Hurst’s head had travelled down the barrel of an AK47 Kalashnikov, as we thought. The news was that it was a decent matchwith a similar one that had dispatched a suspected IRA informer to the big shindig in the sky, in Belfast in 1988. A sudden piece of information like that is usually just the breakthrough you have been waiting for. Our euphoria didn’t last long, though. We soon realised that it only heaped confusion upon confusion. Gilbert rang Special Branch and I decided to have a relapse.
Like ten million prisoners before her, Marina Norris made another mark on the wall with the heel of her shoe. She’d felt stupid when she did it for the first time, but quickly realised it was the only way she could measure the passing of the days. She counted the marks, touching each with the tip of a chipped enamel fingernail. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. They’d said she might be freed Tuesday, if her husband played ball.
She’d nearly choked to death in the boot of the Sierra. Each time the car had accelerated or braked she’d rolled one way or the other, unable to brace herself with her hands and legs pinioned. She was certain Harold was dead, and that she soon would be.
Eventually they’d arrived, and she was dragged and carried into a building with linoleum on the floor and smelling like a house from her childhood. A dirty, unpleasant house. They went through another door and down some stone steps.
She’d felt a blow, not fierce this time, and fallen backwards into a soft armchair. They’d unfastened her hands and ripped off the gag. There were two ofthem, and they were wearing masks – balaclavas – with holes to see through. Marina had seen similar ones on television, worn by terrorists and protestors and bank robbers in second-rate films. If they don’t want me to see them, she’d thought, they mustn’t intend to kill me; and she’d begun sobbing, partly from fear of what their intentions might be, partly from relief.
As they’d turned to leave her, the door at the top of the stairs had opened and she’d seen the third member of the gang standing there. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and she recognised him as the man with the ugly
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