wet concrete. Mrs. Crabtree stood there, rain pouring down her face, spouting her mantras, until she was led away.
'It's come,' Sparky informed me as I returned from the morning meeting, a week and a half after we'd brought Mrs. Crabtree in. He followed me into my office and retrieved a brown Home Office envelope from my in- tray.
'Right,' I said, hanging my jacket on its hook. 'Better ask Nigel and Maggie to join us.'
Sparky poked his head out of the door and shouted: 'You and you. Boss says to get your arses in here, toot sweet.'
Maggie arrived first. 'Nigel's on the phone,' she told us.
'It looks like the results of the DNA tests have arrived from Wetherton,' I explained, showing her the envelope.
'What do they say?'
'I haven't looked yet. Sit down.'
'Let me get this straight,' she said, pulling a chair from under my table and turning it round. 'I wasn't in from the beginning. The Crabtrees were under the impression that Dr. Jordan was the father of the baby?'
'Yes.'
'And Jordan wanted Susan to have an abortion?'
'Not quite. According to the counsellor at the clinic he just took her along to explain the options. She listened to them and at first she appeared quite keen to have a termination, but then changed her mind.
The counsellor detected that she was under a great deal of pressure from her parents to let the pregnancy take its course.' I sliced the envelope open with the glass dagger I use as a paper knife. It was a present from the team after an earlier murder enquiry.
'And after it was born the depression set in.'
'It looks like it. She blamed them, they blamed the doctor. Sometimes, it helps if we can put the responsibility on someone else instead of accepting it ourselves.'
'And the Magic Plastic Killer was created.'
'Yep.'
Nigel came in. 'Sorry about that,' he said.
'Did she put the gun in her husband's coat pocket?' Maggie asked.
'It looks like it. She said something about coming with him, but I don't know what she meant.'
'Will she stand trial?'
'Mrs. Crabtree? I doubt it. She's been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She'll spend the rest of her days preaching to her fellow inmates. No doubt they'll hang on to her every word.' I thought about it for a second, then continued: 'It's funny, isn't it? If there is a God speaking to her, putting the words into her mouth, you'd think he'd give her the right quotations, wouldn't you?'
Sparky said: 'You know what they say: When we talk to God it's called praying. When he talks to us, it's called schizophrenia.'
'I'll say Amen to that.' I unfolded the letter from Wetherton. 'Let's see what we have here.' There was a silence as I scanned it. 'Tests were conducted…' I read out, 'at the request of handsome but self-effacing DI Priest of…'
'Get on with it!' Sparky urged.
'Right. Blah blah blah. Here we are 'Conclusions. Examination of the band patterns shows that there is no obvious kinship between the two samples. In answer to the specific question posed, we can categorically state that the donor of sample CP1 is not the child of the donor of sample CP2.' That's it. The doctor wasn't little Davey's dad.' Nigel extended his hand and I gave him the letter.
'So who was?' Maggie asked.
'Big Davey? Whoever he is.'
'Are we going to find him?'
'To tell him his ex-girlfriend and their baby are dead? What's the point?'
Sparky said: 'So the doc was just being kind to her.'
'It looks like it,' I replied.
'Every way we've turned, every avenue we've followed, he's come up smelling of roses. He was a decent bloke, all along.'
'You're right. He was a bit of a lad, but why not? Everybody who knew him liked him. He had plenty of friends. Some of them just happened to be a bit dodgy.'
'Who needs enemies?'
Nigel placed the letter on my desk. 'So it was all a waste of time,' he stated.
'Fraid so.'
'All that… all that grief was for nothing.'
'Yep,' I agreed. 'All for nothing.' And I've still got the scars to prove it.
I never wrote that letter to personnel saying that I wanted out, and the one from pay section is still unopened. Darryl Buxton appeared before a crown court judge last month and pleaded guilty to a charge of rape. He'll be sentenced in a few weeks. The daffodils outside the court looked magnificent.
When we tried to tell Herbert Mathews the good news we discovered that he'd been admitted to a hospice, and he died shortly afterwards. Maggie and I went to the funeral. His old station was represented by a young WPC who'd never met him. They sent a wreath, everybody else made a donation to Cancer Research. On the way Maggie told me that Janet Saunders had applied for a job as a school dinner lady, which would give her a good chance of regaining custody of little Dilly. She'd decided that life was still worth living, and was putting it back together.
I opened the letter that Annabelle sent me, even though I'd asked her not to write. She said she had to. There was no address, it just said London in the top right-hand corner. I was glad she hadn't put an address. It was the best testimonial I've ever received; when I'd finished it I couldn't understand why she'd ever left me. I slowly tore it into a hundred and twenty-eight pieces, and immediately wished I hadn't.
Her house is empty, with a For Sale sign standing in the garden. I think about her, now and again. Wonder where she is, what she's doing, if she's happy. I hope she is. I don't dwell in the past, but sometimes a memory of her takes me by surprise. All sorts of things can trigger it off, but music is the worst. Some of my CDs I doubt if I'll ever play again, but it can be anything: Barber's Adagio for Strings; the Archers' signature tune; when it rains; when it doesn't.
Since the Doctor Jordan case I've let Nigel run the show. He'll be promoted to inspector soon, which will mean a return to uniform.
Meanwhile, I let him play at detectives. I go walking, most weekends, either in the Dales or driving up to the Lakes on a Friday or Saturday evening. The couple who run the B and B I use have become friends, and he suggested I do some back-packing on the Continent. I wondered about the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the USA.
There's a good library in Heckley. One lunchtime, fired with enthusiasm, I went along to see what I could find in their Travel section and discovered that my membership had lapsed. That's a bit like saying that Maggie Thatcher wasn't a chemist any more.
'Could you fill this in please?' the woman behind the counter asked, 'and we'll put you on the computer. We have computers now, you know.'
'Whatever next?' I replied, taking the white card from her. She was wearing wire-framed spectacles and her hair was tied severely back. She believed in conforming to type, but couldn't disguise the fact that she was attractive. I was reminded of one of those Barbra Streisand films where the make-up people have drawn on all the skills of their craft in an attempt to make her look dowdy, fooling nobody except the hapless hero.
'Will that do?' I said, handing the form back to her, holding on to it a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
She studied it and looked at me, her cheeks tinged with colour. 'Hello, Charlie,' she said. 'I thought it was you.'
I imagined her in the last reel, where he removes her spectacles and she lets her hair tumble free, revealing the enchantress we knew was there all the time. 'Jackie?' I said, disbelieving my eyes. 'Is it Jacqueline? Weller fancy meeting you here.'
