Curwen leaned back in his chair and thought about it. Once Adamos had gone, Fletcher would have been less cooperative. He’d kept on the right side of the law, so they didn’t have anything on him. Lavery would have been looking for another way to launder large sums. And suddenly Curwen organises the police raid on the pub, looking for drugs, using a warrant which he was prepared to admit, at least to himself, was obtained on pretty dodgy grounds. Soon after that, Andy Yeatson starts hanging round asking questions. Lavery spots Andy as a cop, thinks they’re on to him, and panics. He tells Traynor they’ve got to cool it for a while, there’s an undercover cop hanging around. Traynor can’t sit on all this cash for weeks – she needs clean money to pay her people, so she decides to do something about it.
He’d organised the raid, and he’d sent Andy in there. How did he feel about that? He felt bad, as bad as he’d felt when he thought Becca the Bar – Becca Armitage had been drowned in the estuary. His own reaction had surprised him – but then it had never been personal. It was the job.
If he’d known what he knew now, would he have done it any different?
But he hadn’t known, and it was too late to change anything. Curwen didn’t go in for existential angst.
People had been arrested and charged, the CPS seemed happy with the cases, one or two people on the periphery had got away with it, but would presumably be more careful in future, and he, Curwen, was back in the good books. He hadn’t been near the pub – as far as anyone knew – and given that there had been successful outcomes, no one was going to blame him for getting in the way of an operation he knew nothing about. He’d get his promotion now.
Debits and credits. The operation had cost Andy’s life and that was a massive debit, but policing was hazardous work.
He gave himself a mental ‘Could do better’, and headed back to the office to write up his final reports.
Chapter 51
Bridlington
Andy Yeatson’s funeral was held three days after the arrests of Carl Lavery, Toby Sharman and Poppy Brooke. Lavery and Sharman had already been charged with murder. The usual post-investigation celebrations had been low-key and muted. They’d made arrests, the evidence supporting the cases was strong enough for the CPS to approve charges. They’d done what they set out to do.
But Andy Yeatson, one of them, had died along the way, in the line of duty.
Dinah reflected on this as she pulled in to what looked like the last parking space in the crowded crematorium car park.
Andy. Her colleague who had given her help and advice in her first investigation as a DC; Andy, who had been almost, but not quite, a friend. His death just seemed like a terrible waste.
She joined the rest of the mourners, following the coffin that was draped in the constabulary flag into the crematorium, edging her way into the pew next to Curwen, who sat slightly bowed over, studying his hands, which were resting on his knees. His face was solemn.
Music was playing and she checked the order of service. It was a cello piece by Bach. It was very beautiful, but Andy would probably have chosen some hard rock to play him out of this world. Funerals weren’t for the dead. They were gone. It was for family and friends. Dinah tried to focus as people stood to pay tribute to Andy: Gallagher, who read the eulogy, talking about his bravery and his sense of duty; a friend, who reminisced about his life before he joined the force; and then Andy’s father spoke.
‘We’ve heard some words of praise for my son, and I don’t argue with any of them. He was a brave man, a devoted father, a good friend and the best son we could ever have wanted. But we’ve lost him and we will have to live with that. I’ll use the words of Shakespeare to say, much better than I ever could, how we feel today:
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang…” ’
Dinah tuned the poem out. She was close to tears as it was. Without moving her head too much, she cast a glance round the chapel. Colleagues she knew, Hammond sitting near the front, other members of the investigation team, Andy’s boss, DCI Gallagher, other people who must be friends or family she had never met.
And in the back row she caught a glimpse of pale red hair. She turned her head a bit more. Becca Armitage was there, her jacket wrapped round her as if she was cold. Her features looked almost sketched-in – the light brows, the colourless lips, given a slight quirk by the scar that stood out, white against her pale face.
The sonnet came to its conclusion:
“ ‘… which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” ’
The final music started, and Dinah hurried from the crematorium to try and catch up with Becca, but there was no sign of her. Dinah stood there, scanning the grounds, beside the sea of flowers that had been laid out in Andy’s memory.
Some were already starting to wither.
Andy was dead, and that had to be the end of the story.
Chapter 52
Hull
Kay looked in the mirror Poppy was holding up. Her hair was cut close to her head, with slightly
