The Cold Calling

‘Bollocks!’

The mountains were hard as prison walls. He needed to be miles away. In a town. With traffic and fumes and the sound of kids he used to teach, now ram-raiding Curry’s.

‘Marcus?’

He stopped. Because he’d had his eyes on the ground, he hadn’t noticed he wasn’t alone in the meadow.

A still figure in white stood a few yards away. Unearthly, somehow, because it was so unexpected. The dog strolled over, tail waving.

‘Get you some tea?’

‘Thank you, Mrs Anderson, I don’t think I can spare the time.’

‘Busy man, huh?’

Riggs didn’t reply. She’d seen him a few times at the hospital. Big guy who seemed even taller the way he carried himself: with dignity — whatever you heard about Riggs you’d never believe it to look at him. And — face it — very few had heard anything, only the likes of Bobby and Emma Curtis and Vic Clutton.

He wasn’t smiling and yet he was. There was one big, smug smile fizzing away inside this guy, she could feel the heat of it. Mr Riggs was on a roll. Mr Riggs was focused.

‘Time to stop playing, Mrs Anderson.’

‘I don’t have time to play. I’m a working woman.’

Standing in the living room doorway in his bulky leather coat. An energy in him, all right. It made her nervous; she hated that.

‘Let me come to the point, Sister,’ Riggs said, loud enough for them to hear next door. ‘I believe you know where my officer is.’

‘Your officer?’

‘Maiden,’ Riggs said patiently. ‘Bobby Maiden.’

‘No my responsibility.’ Andy wrinkled her nose. ‘He walked off the ward. As was his right, but anything happens to the guy after that, it’s no our problem.’

‘My understanding is that you considered Bobby to be very much your problem.’ Leather creaked, Riggs flexing his shoulders. ‘My understanding is that you established quite a rapport.’

‘You have to do your best. With Bobby, his senses were a wee bit fuddled. Wouldnae surprise me if he had no memory of me at all by now.’ Looking straight up into Riggs’s tawny eyes. ‘Wherever he is.’

‘Where did he go, Mrs Anderson?’

‘Like he’d tell me?’

‘If you were with him, he wouldn’t need to tell you. According to Detective Sergeant Beattie, you were rather evasive about your own whereabouts on the night Bobby disappeared.’

‘Aw, come on …’ Andy spreading her hands, laughing. ‘You think Bobby and me ran away together or something? Jesus God, his head was no that messed up. His eyesight was fine.’

‘No.’ Riggs smiled. ‘I didn’t imagine for one minute that you and he were … romantically connected. If so, he was two-timing you. With a woman named Emma Curtis.’

She tried not to react. Telling herself she didn’t know an Emma Curtis.

‘‘But it’s over now,’ Riggs said. ‘I think I can say that.’

‘Aye?’

‘Last night, Bobby Maiden and Emma Curtis booked into the Collen Hall Hotel in South Wales.’

‘Really?’ Andy’s brain racing. What was going on?

‘Under the name Mr and Mrs Lazarus.’

‘Neat,’ Andy said. And why was Riggs on his own? Superintendents never went around without a sergeant or two in tow, maybe a couple of uniform guys. Bearing in mind what Bobby had to say about Riggs, how official was this?

‘You heard from Bobby Maiden this morning, Mrs Anderson?’

‘What the hell is this about? No, I haven’t. Why should I? What’s goin’ on?’

Riggs’s eyes were searching the room.

‘Mr Riggs, I just got off shift, I’m very tired.’

‘Does your radio work?’

‘Why, you follow The Archers or something?’

‘A little early for The Archers, as I recall. But we might catch the eight o’clock news. May I …?’

Andy shrugged. Riggs fiddled with the radio. They heard some stuff about a row at the Labour Party conference. Riggs sniffed.

‘I’ll tell you this much, Sister Anderson. If you do know where Maiden is, and you fail to tell me while you have the chance, I’ll have you in.’

‘Have me in? Listen, pal, either you bloody tell me right now what this is about, or I’ll have you out.’

‘On suspicion of being an accessory,’ Riggs said, as if she hadn’t spoken.

‘To what? Jesus God, you bust in here-’

‘Ah!’ Riggs lifted a finger. ‘Here we are. I think you’d better sit down.’

The dog wagging his tail. Going right up to Maiden and Maiden kneeling down on the grass. Greeting each other like old friends after an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Tears in Maiden’s eyes again. Both eyes exposed, the patch gone, the bad eye still purple. Maiden still in the sweatpants and the white T-shirt that said something about Fun.

‘Time is it, Marcus?’ White-faced, bloodless lips.

‘Oh … Eightish. I suppose.’

Maiden stood up slowly. Looked like something that rolled off a mortuary trolley.

Poor sod.

In the dawn, he’d followed them down from the Knoll, hadn’t said a word. Nobody had. Back at the farm, Maiden had gone directly to the cottage — he’d need to sleep the bloody clock round after last night. And then what? God knew, Marcus didn’t.

‘What’s happened?’ Couldn’t have had more than two hours’ sleep and here he was wandering the fields like a lost soul. ‘What’s happened, Marcus?’

‘Don’t ask me about it,’ Marcus said. ‘Just don’t bloody ask me.’

Maiden looked slowly from side to side. As though he was seeing the place for the first time. As though he’d fallen asleep somewhere else and awoken here. Marcus was aware of his eyes. He didn’t usually register the colour of people’s eyes. But these were blue and clear and unblinking. Once had these inane, born-again Christians at the door. Or maybe it was Mormons. Fanatics, anyway. They all had eyes like this.

‘Better get some breakfast.’ Marcus turned, unnerved, and headed back towards the farm.

The radio said, Police investigating the brutal stabbing of a thirty-two-year-old woman in a hotel room in South Wales say they want to question a senior detective from the Midlands. Detective Inspector Bobby Maiden disappeared from the hospital where he was being treated for serious head injuries. Peter Tilley reports.

Andy did sit down. On the sofa by the bookcase. She felt her face muscles go slack. In a framed black and white photograph on the wall opposite, the early sun came up between the pinnacles of the tower of St Mary’s church.

On the radio, the reporter said, Mrs Emma Curtis, daughter of a Midlands businessman, was found dead early this morning by staff at the four-star Collen Hall Hotel, near Abergavenny. She had multiple stab wounds resulting from what police have described as a frenzied and vicious attack.

Police say Mrs Curtis, a divorcee, was staying at the hotel with thirty-six-year-old Detective Inspector Maiden, who was based at Elham in the West Midlands. Several days ago he disappeared from the town’s General Hospital where he was being treated for head injuries following a hit-and-run incident near his home.

Police in Gwent and West Mercia have declined to expand on a joint statement naming Inspector