Crooked Street Read online

  He fell silent and Joanna simply held his hand and kissed the top of his head again. ‘Coffee,’ she prescribed.

  8.30 a.m.

  She’d been right about the weather. It was cold – she was glad of her gloves and leggings – but there was a bright optimism in the air which sparkled in rain-washed freshness. A new day. She almost felt like singing, though with her dubious voice she’d better not. ‘Don’t sing, Joanna, you’ll scare me and the birds and make it rain,’ her father used to say, but ultimately it wasn’t her voice that had frightened him away.

  Her legs seemed to spin round the pedals, hardly slowing even on the inclines. On her bike she felt alive. She bent over the handlebars, relishing the feeling of power. Energy seemed to flow through her body. The ride in to Leek across the moorlands was spectacular, the sun causing steam to rise from the water-logged land. There was something clean about this newly washed landscape that seemed to put the world to rights. And it always felt good to be on her bike. She took the hill with extra vigour, pedalling in a fury, panting at the top but loving it.

  She arrived at the station half an hour later, pleased with her time, locked her bike to the railings then went to the cloakroom for a shower and change. Cycling shorts were hardly de rigueur for a detective inspector of Her Majesty’s police force.

  Instead, she changed into dark blue trousers with a cotton shirt and wedge-heeled boots. There – dressed and ready for action. ‘Morning.’ She greeted Hesketh-Brown who was manning the front desk and looked as though he was ready for a good day’s sleep.

  ‘Hi,’ he said back, understandably not mirroring her jaunty tone after such a night.

  ‘Anything much to report – before you get some shut-eye?’

  The traffic and pub incidents didn’t take him long. They would be the responsibility of the uniformed boys anyway. Then he told her about the missing husband.

  And like Danny, she didn’t take it seriously. ‘So …? What’s the story?’

  ‘Jadon Glover. Age thirty-two. Wife, Eve, rang in,’ he stated. ‘Her husband was expected home last night around nine. Never turned up. Still not back this morning. I’ve checked,’ he added before she asked the inevitable. ‘Mobile phone off. No sightings of the car.’ He grinned. ‘And it’s the sort of vehicle that would be noticed.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mitsubishi Shogun Warrior. Black. And wait till you hear the reg.’

  ‘Go on. Try me.’

  ‘Ready for this?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s too early for me and too late for you to play guessing games, Danny.’

  ‘J4DON. Get it?’

  ‘As you say,’ she said, ‘not a car to go unnoticed.’ Her mind was quickening. ‘Is there anything suspicious about this man’s no show last night?’

  Hesketh-Brown grinned and leaned across the desk. ‘They’ve been married two years. According to his wife there’s been no arguments, no disagreements. I wish,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm. Go on. I’m not getting much of a clue here.’

  ‘He doesn’t have any health problems. Not a drinker, not a gambler.’ His eyes flicked up to hers. ‘His wife says he’s as reliable as clockwork. Never home late. She describes him as a perfect husband, Jo.’

  She couldn’t stop herself laughing. ‘Perfect husband?’ she echoed, rolling her eyes and recalling her own husband’s bleary red eyes this morning. ‘That’s suspicious in itself. There’s no such thing, Danny Boy.’

  He yawned. ‘Oh, yes there is,’ he said. ‘Ask my Betsy.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She couldn’t resist pulling his leg. ‘I rest my case.’

  He gave yet another cavernous yawn. ‘Well, it’s over to you now. I’m off for some shut-eye, if Tanya will let me.’ Tanya was his small daughter, a child who made her presence known at every occasion, according to her doting Daddy. He handed Joanna the note with Eve Glover’s contact details and she took it without enthusiasm.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said.

  Once in her office she dialled Eve Glover’s number herself. The voice that responded was high pitched with anxiety tinged with disappointment when she realized it was not her husband on the other end.

  Joanna took it gently. ‘Mrs Glover, it’s Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy here, Leek Police. I understand your husband’s missing?’

  It had been the wrong word to use. Eve Glover drew in a sharp breath. ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she said, panic making her voice tight and stressed. ‘He should have been home last night around nine but …’ She sniffed. ‘He’s not missing exactly.’

  Joanna heaved a sigh. Tripped up by semantics. ‘OK,’ she said wearily. ‘He hasn’t turned up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has he ever been so late – stopped out – before?’ Is this a habit?

  ‘No.’ A pause. ‘We’ve only been married for two years. Jadon’s completely reliable. Never ever been late before. Not even half an hour late. I can’t understand it.’ Her voice was rising towards hysteria. ‘And why is his phone off?’

  ‘Maybe a dead battery?’

  That didn’t impress the wife. ‘Please, listen to me. Something’s happened to him.’

  Joanna picked up on the note of desperation. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s so out of character. He’s never late.’

  Joanna began to wonder: was there something more to this?

  ‘OK,’ she said slowly. Her office door had opened and closed again. Korpanski had entered and was watching her, his antennae quivering, wondering what she was doing on the phone. ‘I’ll come over and see you later this morning, Mrs Glover. You’ll be in?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’ll wait in for you.’

  ‘Good. I’ll see you later. Please let me know if he turns up.’

  She put the phone down and looked up. ‘Morning, Mike,’ she said.

  He grinned back at her. ‘Hi, Jo.’

  She studied her sergeant. He was looking really well these days. Hours at the gym gave him a muscular, beefy build, well suited to a detective. Loyal as a Staffordshire bull terrier, he was not only her colleague but also her good friend. And he looked extra happy today – almost glowing. His two children were rapidly growing up and his wife had a job with more sociable hours as a nurse so family life was making him contented. He and Ricky, his son, had a shared love of football and followed Stoke City in father-and-son bonding trips and Jocelyn, Mike’s daughter, now a teenager, had the petite build of her mother and the dark good looks of her father. She was a stunner. Added to that, she had a sharp intelligence. Mike proudly boasted of her grades at school. Oh, yes, Joanna thought. Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski was a happy family man these days. And there was more to come.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said, dropping into his chair and swivelling around to face her, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘Ricky’s been offered a place at Birmingham University. Three Bs.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘To do what?’

  ‘French,’ he said, laughing, ‘of all things. There’s nobody French in our family. I speak a bit but I’m no great linguist.’

  ‘You managed OK with the French families in the autumn.’

  ‘Just about but I can’t even speak more than two words of Polish, to my dad’s disgust. We’re not good at languages in our family.’

  She laughed too. ‘Well, you are now. Ricky’ll probably end up working for the EU, Mike,’ she said, still laughing, ‘if we’re still a member state.’

  He laughed too and it seemed a good work environment. Two happy detectives.

  He finally came down to earth. ‘So,’ he said, ‘anything exciting happening? Who were you talking to on the phone?’

  She sidestepped his question by turning it into one of her own. ‘Tell me, Mike,’ she challenged, facing him. ‘Is there such a thing as a perfect husband?’

  ‘Besides me, you mean?’

  She lifted her eyebrows in response.

  ‘Wel
l, I would have thought Levin,’ he continued grudgingly, giving her a sly sideways look. Between the two men who were closest to her existed an uneasy truce. When they met they skirted around each other like wrestlers new in the ring preparing to lunge but never quite making contact.

  ‘Levin,’ she confided drily, ‘was half sozzled on whisky last night when I finally got home.’

  ‘Oh?’ Korpanski looked up. ‘Is that a habit he’s going to develop?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’d had to do a PM on a four-year-old and it’d upset him.’

  ‘Funny,’ he remarked. ‘You don’t think a pathologist would get upset at a post-mortem.’

  ‘He does – when it’s a child.’

  ‘That little Rice guy?’

  She nodded and he continued, ‘I read a bit about it in the paper but I have to admit I turned the page over quickly. I hate reading stories like that.’

  ‘Yeah. Nasty business.’ She turned back to her computer. ‘And we have enough to deal with here.’

  ‘So what’s all this about a perfect husband?’

  Briefly she told him about the disappearance – unexplained – and the wife’s assurance that this was out of character, that her husband was beyond reproach. ‘I thought I’d go round there later, give Mr Glover a chance to turn up and make his excuses. Speak to her.’

  Korpanski waited and finally she admitted: ‘There was something in her voice, Mike. Something panicky as though she’d half expected something to happen. I just wondered why.’ She glanced through Hesketh-Brown’s notes. ‘Financial advisor, married two years.’

  ‘It’s a good job we don’t get called out for every husband who fails to arrive home,’ Mike said grumpily. Always mercurial, his mood had quickly dampened.

  ‘Just what I thought.’

  ‘So what did you tell her?’

  ‘Took down her details. What else could I do? Promised we’d go round there some time in the day and asked her to call if he turns up.’

  ‘Yeah. That’ll do.’

  ‘So …’ She searched through the computer. ‘Nothing else much interesting happening, is there? We’ve nailed the garage owner. It’s up to Trading Standards to take him to court. Apart from that Leek’s getting quite law abiding.’

  ‘Well, it won’t last,’ Korpanski said, positively gloomy now and with one eye on Joanna. ‘Rumour has it that the Whalleys are coming up for parole.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘More or less.’ Mike’s face changed. ‘Mum and Dad I don’t mind too much. They’re just a couple of stupid burglars who pretty well always get caught. And Tommy – well, he’s so stupid he’ll never be much of a problem. Besides, his MO is so obvious you can always tell it’s him. I ought to tell him not to bother to wear gloves – he leaves a trail of DNA all over the place.’ He laughed. ‘I practically know his bar code off by heart. No, it’s Kath that I worry about. She’s got a wicked streak in her that I find unnerving. She’s plain nasty – the sort that sets cats alight by the tail. She nearly blinded that old lady – all for twenty quid. No …’ Mike was shaking his head. ‘She’s bad.’

  ‘I know.’ Joanna sighed. ‘We don’t want her back on our patch.’

  ‘Well, rumour says this is where she’ll be heading, straight back to Leek – and you.’ Korpanski’s face was tight with concern. ‘She’s sworn vengeance on you, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, Mike, but there isn’t a lot I can do about it, is there? This is my patch. My life. I can’t move. Even if I did she’d follow me. Anyway, surely she’s more likely to head for a big city: Manchester, Glasgow, London, Birmingham?’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  She frowned. ‘How come she’s out after so short a time? She’s only been in for what …’

  ‘Eight years,’ Korpanski supplied.

  ‘Doesn’t seem long for robbery with violence. She must be … early thirties?’

  ‘Somewhere round there.’ Korpanski half smiled. ‘A social worker described her day-to-day life inside. She got a lot of sympathy and boy is she a good actress! She played the victim to perfection in the witness box. Did a really good job convincing the jury that she was the real victim.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘How come you don’t remember all of this?’

  She flushed. It had been in the days when Matthew was still married to Jane, his first wife. ‘I think I was going through turbulent times, Mike,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d taken my eye off the ball for a bit.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, it all ended well, Jo, didn’t it? I mean, you’re a happily married woman now, aren’t you?’ He couldn’t resist smirking.

  Oh, for the days of a desk charged with missiles. She could have thrown a rubber at her sergeant. But these days there was little more than a mouse mat. No good at all.

  So she contented herself with making a face at him and returned to the business of the day. ‘So we’re reduced to searching for errant husbands. There’s bugger all else interesting going on. You’re right. Leek is getting boring. Perhaps we should look forward to the release of the Whalleys. At least they’ll give us something to do that’s a bit more like proper police work than looking for the …’ she wiggled her fingers in quotation marks, ‘… husband who didn’t come home at night.’

  ‘Yeah, we sure want a crime-wave from our burgling family,’ Korpanski said sarcastically.

  Joanna sighed and logged on to her computer. ‘Well, we’d better get on with filling out statistics and crime reports on that nasty little pranger that happened on Brook Street yesterday. That guy, I can tell you, deliberately turned out from Aldi in front of the Ford Focus. A witness said he’d accelerated right into it. It’s an insurance fraud so let’s look into what else Billy the Basher’s been involved in.’

  It took them two tedious hours but in the end they had eight cases where William Arthur Stratton had been involved. Joanna frowned into the screen. ‘I don’t know this guy,’ she said. ‘Is he new to the area?’

  ‘We’ve got a previous Stafford address.’

  ‘So he’s moved up here to create trouble in a new patch.’ She grinned across at Korpanski. ‘Forgetting, I suppose, that it’s still Staffordshire. Maybe we should be paying him a visit instead of our mystified wife. Or, Mike, we can alert the insurance company and let them do all the hard work.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’

  ‘And now …’ she stood up and reached for her jacket, ‘… I suppose I’d better call round to Mrs Glover’s and see what’s happening.’

  ‘Want me to come?’ Korpanski was already on his feet.

  ‘No, thanks, Mike. I’ll take Phil Scott. He’s coming up for his sergeant’s exams so it’ll be good training. You can speak to the insurance company and then I want you to dig around and find out why this guy is not a perfect husband.’ She gave him a wicked leer. ‘Find his flaws.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. Sounds fun.’

  But at the door, Joanna hesitated. ‘I’ll just ring her again. I don’t want to drive round to …’ she looked again at Hesketh-Brown’s notes, ‘… Disraeli Place and barge straight into a domestic, a sheepish husband rolling in halfway through the morning.’

  But the phone connected with an anxious voice and when Joanna asked if her husband had turned up she said, in some distress, ‘There’s still no sign of him.’

  ‘His mobile?’ Joanna asked hopefully.

  ‘Still straight through to answerphone. Mind you,’ Eve Glover continued as though desperate for a rational explanation, ‘he’s not great at keeping it charged up.’ She sounded as though she was trying to convince herself.

  ‘OK. We’ll be round.’ Joanna put the phone down and jerked her head at Korpanski. ‘Just look him up,’ she said, ‘before I head off.’

  Korpanski blew his cheeks out and leaned back in his chair as he scanned through Hesketh-Brown’s notes and searched on the computer. ‘Name, Jadon Glover. Age, thirty-two. Works as a financial advisor in the Potteries. Where, presumably, Eve probably thought h
e was working last night. No police record apart from speeding over thirty miles per hour.’ He grinned at her. ‘And who, I wonder, hasn’t got one of those? It’d be more suspicious if he was squeaky clean.’

  But Joanna was distracted, already tracking towards a series of questions. ‘I wonder if he often works late.’

  Korpanski shrugged.

  She continued, ‘I’m not sure whether I’m suspicious at the description of him or just sceptical in general. Basically I think already that this man cannot be for real.’

  Korpanski simply shrugged again.

  ‘No children?’

  He glanced back at the screen. ‘No.’

  She leaned forward. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said. ‘He works for?’

  ‘Johnston and Pickles. Hanley. You already told me that.’

  ‘I take it he hasn’t turned up for work yet?’

  ‘Just about to check.’

  She frowned. ‘You miss my point, Mike. Why didn’t his wife ring his workplace?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He was alerted. He found the telephone number for Johnston and Pickles and dialled. But the conversation did not go as anticipated.

  It began as expected with Korpanski introducing himself and asking if a Mr Jadon Glover was at work.

  That was when the conversation changed. Joanna watched as Mike’s shoulders stiffened. He glanced across at her, his eyes wide. ‘What?’

  Joanna’s skin prickled.

  Then: ‘Are you sure?’

  More words, then: ‘Can you just check your records, please, sir?’

  That produced an angry roar which even Joanna could hear. Every word. ‘It’s not exactly a forgettable name, is it? I know who works here.’

  She watched, bemused, as Korpanski’s face looked confused. Finally, after a polite apology, he ended the call.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Apparently,’ he said, ‘our missing financial advisor doesn’t work at Johnston and Pickles at all.’

  ‘What?’

  Korpanski simply nodded.

  So instead of heading out she paused in the doorway for some thinking time.

  If asked, Joanna would have described the job of detective as being one that consisted of asking questions.