It didn’t resolve the problem of getting a closer look at the house. But maybe she didn’t need to get up close and personal with the bricks and mortar. As far as she could see, none of the windows facing down the cul-de-sac was curtained. There was no light visible within the house. Unless Vance was in the dark in a room at the back of the house, the chances were that the house was empty. And if he was asleep in a back bedroom, Carol would be best advised to stay put. Who knew what motion sensors and cameras he had in place around the perimeter to alert him to intruders. Everything he’d done so far had been well considered and well planned. The house would be the same.
On the other hand, if she stayed put, she would see him as soon as he left the house. She could shoot out of the driveway here and either ram him, block him or follow him. It made sense from a policing point of view.
It just didn’t make much sense from a Carol Jordan perspective. The longer she waited, the more likely it was that Ambrose would turn up mob-handed and fuck up the whole thing. There was only one road in and out of Vinton Woods. If Vance got a sniff that the police were interested, he’d just carry on driving and disappear again. She’d have to try to persuade Ambrose to let her be point man on the operation. They’d have to stay well back, out of sight of anyone driving on to the estate, and trust her to alert them as soon as he showed up. Ambrose had worked under her command before and Carol thought she could probably persuade him that she was to be trusted in that role.
The question was whether she could persuade herself.
The suggestion Tony had passed on via Paula had infuriated Stacey. Not because she thought it was a waste of time, but because she should have got there by herself. She didn’t approve of making excuses for herself – her mother had inculcated her in a culture of taking responsibility equally for success and failure – but she did think that if she’d been sitting at her usual workstation, covering the bases would have been much more like second nature. Trying to run two major operations on a laptop and a West Mercia desktop that had a processor with all the speed of a crippled tortoise had proved trying, to say the least.
Finding the details of Kerry Fletcher’s mother’s death was the work of a couple of minutes. Once she had the woman’s maiden name, running those details against the council tenancy list she’d been accessing earlier that evening was something Stacey could have done with her hands tied behind her back.
Within ten minutes of taking Paula’s call, Stacey was back on the line. ‘You were right about the sixteenth floor. Pendle House, 16C. Sorry, I should have thought it through.’
‘No harm done, we’ve got there now.’
Stacey screwed her face up as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. ‘I know, and I don’t mind when Dr Hill comes up with stuff that’s outside our area of competence. But we’re supposed to be detectives, we should have come up with that ourselves.’
‘The chief would have,’ Paula said, glum in spite of the result.
‘I know. I’m not sure I want to carry on being a cop if Blake assigns me to routine CID work.’
‘That would be crazy,’ Paula said. ‘Everybody knows you’re a complete geek. Why would Blake not want to make the most of your skills?’
‘My parents have relatives whose lives were trashed in the Cultural Revolution. I understand that sometimes people get punished for being too skilled.’ Stacey had never spoken so freely to one of her colleagues before. It was ironic that it was the imminent disbanding of their unit that had liberated her tongue.
‘Blake’s not Chairman Mao,’ Paula said. ‘He’s too ambitious not to exploit you to the full. More likely you’ll be chained to a bank of monitors and only allowed daylight once a month. Trust me, Stacey, nobody’s going to unplug you. All the scut work, that’ll be down to the likes of me and Sam, as per usual. And speaking of Sam – don’t you think it’s about time you said something to him?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t come the innocent with me, Stacey. I am the best interrogator on this squad, nothing gets past me. Ask him out. Life’s too short. We’re not going to be working together for much longer. You might not see him again from one month’s end to the next. Let him know how you feel.’
‘You’re out of order, Paula,’ Stacey said weakly.
‘No, I’m not. I’m your mate. And I nearly missed out on Elinor because I had my head too far up my arse with work. Then she gave me half a chance, and I grabbed it. And it changed my life. You need to do the same, Stacey. Or he’s going to be gone and you’re going to regret it. He’s a shit and he doesn’t deserve you, but apparently he’s what you want, so do something about it.’
‘Don’t you have an arrest to be making?’ Stacey said, recovering some of her spirit.
‘Thanks for the info.’
Stacey replaced the phone and stared at the laptop screen. Then she stood up and walked across to the window, looking down at the parking yard below, turning over Paula’s words in her head. Apparently there were some things you couldn’t figure out by staring into a screen.
Who knew?
52
Vanessa Hill stretched out and refilled her glass, then settled back on her sofa pillows. She loved this sofa with its textured tapestry upholstery, its deep cushions and its high sides. Lounging on it made her feel like a pasha, whatever that was, or a Roman at a feast. She loved to snuggle among the pillows and throws, nibbling at delicate little snacks and sipping wine. She was well aware that the staff at her recruitment agency indulged in lurid water-cooler speculation about her private life. The truth was that what her success and her money had bought her was the right to please her bloody self. And this was what pleased her – her own company, bloody good red wine, satellite TV and an extensive collection of DVDs. It wasn’t as if she got the chance to cosset herself that often. A couple of nights a week, at the most. The rest was devoted to building her empire. She might have a bus pass, but Vanessa was a long way from retirement.
The episode of Mad Men faded to black and the titles rolled. She considered whether to watch another episode, then decided she’d watch the news and come back to the drama. She switched away from the DVD player and came in at the tail end of yet another bulletin about unrest in the Middle East. Vanessa harrumphed. She’d soon bloody sort them out. None of those men had balls enough to say what they meant. She’d thought it would revolutionise things to have Hillary Clinton running American foreign policy, but mostly it had just been more of the bloody same. Even the newsreaders were looking weary of it all. The only person who seemed to thrive on it was that miserable woman on the BBC who only ever turned up when everything had gone to pot. Vanessa gave a tight little smile that showed precisely where the botox had been injected. You’d run for the hills if you ever saw her coming down your street with a camera crew.
‘Former TV presenter Micky Morgan’s racing stud was the scene of a vicious attack earlier this evening,’ the newsreader said, showing a little animation now. Behind him, a split screen showed an apparently idyllic farmhouse and stable block, and a shot of Micky Morgan at her most glamorous, those famously lovely legs crossed and angled across the front of the sofa she was sitting on. Not a patch on Anne Bancroft, Vanessa thought. ‘A stable lad and two horses died in a shocking arson attack at her Herefordshire home. Only the quick response of her staff saved the lives of the remaining valuable racehorses that are boarded at the farm for stud purposes. Another of the stable lads was taken to hospital with smoke inhalation. He’s said to be in no danger.’