Rope Enough - The Romney and Marsh Files #1 Read online

  Marsh turned away to hide her smirk.

  ‘Where are they?’ said Romney.

  Patel indicated an area behind a display of biscuits. Romney walked over and picked up a box. He said, ‘And this is the only brand you sell?’

  ‘Yes. If you’re looking for something a little more specialised, something in the novelty line, there is a shop in the precinct that I understand carries a wider selection.’

  Romney eyed the man severely, but could see no sign he was making sport of him. He replaced the packet. ‘Good day to you, Mr Patel.’

  Romney led them out of the shop. Marsh hung back from his field of vision, fighting the urge to grin.

  Romney said, ‘Make a note, Sergeant Marsh, our attacker likes his Marlboro Lights, and the garage only sells Zeus condoms. Have a word with forensics. See what brand of condom that part of the packet they found under the table came from. If it’s not Zeus it shows he came prepared, and lends more weight to our theory that the rape was pre-meditated. And when Mr Patel’s insurance claim details find their way into our department I want to know about it.’

  *

  They arrived back at the station late afternoon. To Marsh it had seemed like dusk for most of the miserable, grey day. Back in CID they discovered that an earlier, wider search of the area surrounding the garage had recovered no condoms, used or otherwise, and nothing obviously related to the incident.

  The cable ties that had been used to restrain the victims could be bought off the shelf in quantities ranging from individually to by the box, and they were available at three electrical wholesalers in Dover and both of the large DIY stores. Grimes reported that both men whose prints had been recovered from the counter at the garage had freely admitted to visiting the garage in the day for fuel, and both had solid alibis for the evening.

  They went over details, made suggestions and considered ideas, but were soon forced to accept the reality of their situation: they were without significant leads for a suspect.

  It only remained for Romney to inform his senior officer of where they were with things. With nothing else to be done and with the late night that some of them had had the previous evening, he told them to go home.

  ***

  7

  Marsh’s exasperations of her small hours’ experience at the hospital and subsequent lack of sleep were catching up with her. Instead of staying on to work at reducing her backlog of paperwork, she decided to return to her small flat that overlooked Dover harbour, open a bottle of wine, have a bath and an early night.

  Driving along the windswept seafront towards home, she thought she saw Claire Stamp sitting on a bench under a street light staring out over the seemingly infinite darkness of sea and sky. In the summer such a sight wouldn’t have attracted a second glance, but on a cold, blustery winter’s evening on an otherwise deserted stretch of promenade the figure made a lonely and remarkable sight.

  Marsh pulled in at the kerb. Having overshot by some distance, she turned to study the woman. Perhaps she was waiting for someone. She watched her for several long seconds. The young woman didn’t move. Marsh huffed, grabbed her overcoat from the rear seat and stepped out of her car onto the path. The wind was biting as it whipped off the open sea, and before she reached the woman she was shivering with the cold.

  Marsh sat down next to her. ‘Hello, Claire.’ Claire Stamp turned to look at her, and Marsh could see sorrow and hurt in her cried-out eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Marsh said, ‘Come and do nothing in the warm with a cup of tea in the café over the road.’

  ‘All right,’ said Stamp.

  Marsh was relieved. She had expected a prolonged negotiation in the freezing conditions.

  *

  Marsh set a mug of steaming tea before the young woman.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘For stopping, I mean. You didn’t have to. Thanks for caring.’

  They sipped their drinks in silence.

  ‘My mum doesn’t have a very high opinion of the police. I’m sorry she was rude today.’

  Marsh shrugged it off. ‘I’m used to it. What are you doing out here, Claire? It’s seriously cold.’

  ‘I needed some fresh air. I need some space to think.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About where I’m going to go.’

  ‘You’re leaving? What about your flat?’

  ‘That’s not an option anymore.’ She pulled down the high neck of her sweater to reveal angry, purple bruising where someone had had their hands around her throat.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Marsh. ‘Who did that to you? Avery?’

  ‘He was drunk and upset.’

  Marsh had to check her rising anger. ‘Don’t defend him. I’ll arrest him myself.’

  ‘I’ll deny it. I won’t press charges.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I forgive him. Like I said: he was drunk and upset.’ She looked Marsh in the eye. ‘He’s been very good to me. Really good. And I forgive him.’

  ‘Nothing gives anyone the right to do something like that to another human being, Claire.’

  Claire smiled at her, a full smile that truly illuminated her features, and Marsh felt a pang of terrible sadness for the young woman opposite her. ‘You’re wasting your breath. He’s told me to leave the flat, and I wouldn’t stay with him now even if he begged me sober. But he won’t. Seems that what happened to me is too much of an embarrassment for him. He has aspirations you see, and it just wouldn’t fit in with his image if it got about that his girlfriend had been raped and he kept her on. It would make him look bad. Weak.’

  Marsh shook her head. ‘Where will you go? Back to your mother?’

  Claire Stamp laughed out loud. ‘God no. You met her. I’ve got a sister in Blackpool. She’s on her own at the moment. She’ll put me up.’

  ‘What about the case?’

  ‘How is it going?’

  Marsh opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Claire.

  Marsh said, ‘It’s very early days.’ Claire continued to stare at her expectantly. ‘We’re working hard on what we’ve got but there isn’t much. He didn’t leave a trace of himself. Don’t think that means we’ll give up looking. The DI is good copper. And so am I.’

  Claire said, ‘I’ll leave contact details with you. I’ve got until the end of the week to leave the flat, and Simon said he’d give me some money.’

  ‘Buying you off?’

  ‘Let him think that if he wants to. Like I say, I wouldn’t press charges against him anyway, and I’m not staying, so if he wants to give me some money to ease his conscience, why shouldn’t I take it? I’ve got money put by that I’ve earned.’

  ‘My DI isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to lump it.’

  *

  Romney left the station just after six o’clock. Despite the temporary dead end of the case, his mood was not bad. Superintendent Falkner had agreed that all that could be done was being done. He seemed satisfied with Romney’s summary of the action they had taken.

  The flowers that Romney had organised to be sent to Julie Carpenter at her school to both apologise for his abrupt departure the previous evening and show his regard for her seemed to have had the desired effect.

  It had taken Romney a long time in his personal life to realise just how effective sending something as simple and cheap as a good bunch of flowers to a woman at her workplace could be. The flowers themselves were always appreciated, as was the gesture and the thought, but the envy generated in a woman’s co-workers was what really counted. That, it seemed, was priceless.

  Romney lived alone for most of the time and that suited him. A daughter from his first marriage was in her final year at university, and he saw little of her. She had found a life for herself free of her warring parents, refusing to takes sides, happier well out of it. She wou
ld visit him when it suited her, and she was always welcomed.

  Caught up in the DIY development boom inspired by various television shows, Romney had risked the security of a comfortable if rather boring home in the suburbs of Dover that he owned outright to invest everything he had, plus borrowed money, into financing a project that he’d been smitten by one summer’s day while motorcycling around the back lanes of the local countryside. With the passage of time, Romney had come to reflect that, like many things and people that wandered into one’s life, it was only the idea of it all that he had fallen in love with. The reality of the work, time and expense registered far less affection.

  What had started out as an exciting dream had at times been more of a millstone than anything else, especially in the winter when everything seemed perpetually damp, cold and miserable.

  Builders’ rates being what they were, he had opted to make the most of his not inconsiderable talent, his enthusiasm and his spare time to renovate the place himself. It had been dragging on for nearly two years, and he still had a long way to go before he could envisage the end.

  In the short time he’d known Julie Carpenter, he hadn’t yet invited her to see what a monstrous task he’d saddled himself with. He doubted she would be as impressed as she would be if it were finished. And anyway, he knew from bitter previous experience that crossing such boundaries brought perils and suggestions of commitment that he was not prepared to acknowledge, yet. He was quite happy at this stage in their relationship to spend his time with her between evenings out and her cosy, clean, ordered and femininely fragranced home.

  By eight o’clock he was bowling along the back lanes, showered, changed, hungry and excited at the prospect of later undressing Julie’s firmly curved body, making love with her again as they had on the last two occasions before the previous night. Rodrigo seeped out of the car’s speakers, and everything was good in the world. Except that it wasn’t.

  His thoughts wandered back to his interview that morning with Claire Stamp. What would she be doing now? Where was the rapist – the man who had succumbed to, what had Marsh called it, the barely suppressed animal desire inside him? Romney wondered whether that was what was behind his feelings for Julie Carpenter: a simple, basic, primitive urge to possess her, to dominate her. He dismissed that. It wasn’t the same. Similarities might exist on a plane of thought, but normal men didn’t go around acting on such impulses by taking women against their will. It was called civilisation. Normal civilised men knew that they had to work for it, like most things in life. Play the game.

  *

  Detective Inspector Romney next thought of Claire Stamp at around midnight. His evening with Julie Carpenter had gone as well as he could have hoped. She was beautiful, intelligent, attentive, alluring. Romney realised he was experiencing strong feelings for her. The food had been excellent, the restaurant service exemplary, the prices outrageous, and the general ambiance of the gastro-pub that he had heard and read such good things about lived up to the high recommendations.

  On the drive back to her home he felt an anticipation and exhilaration that had been lamentably infrequent sensations of latter years. It seemed natural that Julie would invite him in.

  Inside the darkness of her hallway she pulled him against her and kissed him hard and long before taking his hand and leading him upstairs to her bedroom.

  It was as he was fumbling with the contraceptive wrapping – unable to get a purchase on its oily surface – that he thought of Claire Stamp. Or rather, it was as he put the corner of the square plastic envelope into his mouth and ripped off the top with his teeth that Romney thought of her. And then it wasn’t so much Claire Stamp that he thought of as the man who had raped her. Romney wondered if he, too, in his fit of primitive longings to possess the woman lying before him, had found himself unable to gain entry to the little plastic packet and resorted to tearing off the top with his teeth. And whether he, too, would have found the top of the packet stuck inside his mouth, being coated with his saliva and his unique DNA, before he carelessly spat it out, oblivious of where it might end up and what it might later reveal.

  It was a measure of the power of the urges that Romney was experiencing and giving full vent to that he didn’t interrupt himself, make his apologies, enquire after a pen and paper and write down his epiphany so that he might be guaranteed of reminding himself in the morning to ask forensics to run saliva tests on the little strip of plastic recovered from the crime scene. Instead, he trusted the scrap of priceless intelligence to his less than wonderful memory and for a few intense minutes lost himself.

  ***

  8

  The day began well for Romney. He exchanged brief and sincere endearments with the barely awake naked warmth of Julie Carpenter, retrieved his scattered clothes from her bedroom floor – taking pleasure in their dispersal as testimony to the climax of the previous night – and dressed quickly. Closing her front door behind him, he stood a moment on the doorstep savouring the crisp winter’s morning, breathing in the fresh pure air. As if on cue, the new day’s sun peeped over the battlements of Dover castle, a monument that dominated the town from its raised position and from every approach.

  *

  Despite returning home for a shower and change of clothes, Romney arrived at work in good time. He parked his car and visited the small patisserie across the road from the station to treat himself to a good pastry and proper coffee.

  He entered the station through the public entrance clutching his purchases. The uniformed sergeant on the front desk greeted him.

  ‘Morning, Dennis. Quiet night?’

  The sergeant’s smile split his fat face. ‘Haven’t you heard, guv?’

  Something unpleasant hatched inside Romney. ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Fracas in the town last night. All hands on deck. We had to summon uniform from Folkestone.’

  ‘What? Where? Why?’ The mono-syllabic questions chased each other out of his open mouth.

  ‘Mob of local thuggery turned up at The Castle. Started taking the place apart and whoever they could get their hands on.’

  ‘The Castle?’ said Romney. ‘Is that still run by Kosovans?’ His good mood was evaporating, like a shallow puddle on a summer’s day.

  ‘Yes, guv. It would appear to be a racially motivated attack. But no one seems to know what sparked it.’

  Romney thought he did.

  He dumped his pastry, coat and bag in his office before going down to the holding cells to investigate. The duty sergeant looked tired and harassed.

  Romney said, ‘Busy night I hear.’

  ‘Like the good old days, guv, when the squaddies came in to paint the town red before their postings.’

  ‘Let’s have a squint at the visitors’ book.’

  It was turned through one-hundred and eighty degrees without further comment. The man went back to the pile of paperwork beside him.

  Romney ran his finger down the list of names. Simon Avery’s leapt off the page at him, as he feared it would. He counted six names of British origin and ten of an eastern European flavour.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not counting those in the hospital,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Who came off worse?’

  ‘Score draw if you ask me, guv,’ said the seasoned officer. He had an air of a man who’d seen it all before and refused to be moved by any of it.

  ‘Any serious injuries?’

  ‘One of the local lads sustained a nasty knife wound. Nothing life threatening. Apart from that a few broken bones and a concussion or two.’

  Romney nodded. ‘Mind if I take a peek?’

  ‘Most of them are sleeping it off, guv, but feel free.’

  There were four holding cells: two on either side of the corridor. Once upon a time there had been more, but the need was no longer regularly there, and storage space for reports in triplicate was always in demand.

  Romney flipped the peep hole on each
taking in the forms of men in various reposes. Some slept, others were mumbling, some paced. In the last he saw Avery. He was sitting on the hard, plastic, moulded surface intended for sleeping. His back was to the wall, and he was staring straight at the little aperture, as though he had been waiting patiently for someone to come and spy on him. Romney saw that his jacket was torn and bloodied. He felt slightly better, but not as cheerful as if Avery had lost his front teeth. He was also happy that none of the associated paperwork was going to be his problem.

  As soon as he’d learned of the incident, Romney suspected that this was some sort of Neanderthal reprisal for what had been done to Avery’s girlfriend, Claire Stamp. Or, more accurately, if he were quite honest with himself – although the thought made him suddenly hot – it was a retaliation based on what he had suggested to Avery only to rile him. If he’d stopped to think about it, he might have expected it. Romney chided himself for his lack of foresight, for not considering the consequences of his foolery, for not having predicted the possibility of such an outcome and forewarning his uniformed colleagues of the chances of a lively night.

  At the best of times the tension between the few but significant local competing criminal factions of the town was like a tinder-box. Almost a year before, there had been a similar incident provoked by the vicious assault on a Kosovan by some of the locals thugs. On that occasion, the Kosovans had gathered a sizeable force intent on vengeance. With a fervour that brought to mind news film footage of the recent ethnic cleansing of their homelands – something that had served as an excuse for most of them to seek asylum in the UK – they had gone about destroying a snooker hall and hospitalising several of those unfortunate enough to have been looking for a quiet night on the baize. As it turned out, the Kosovans hit the wrong venue. They should have been at the pool hall around the corner.

  Romney guessed that Claire Stamp would have revealed to Avery the possibility that her attacker was eastern European, and Avery would have put two and two together to make five.

  Romney doubted that the accuracy of Avery’s assumptions would have been uppermost in his mind. He knew Avery well enough through experience and reputation to be one who quickly resorted to physical violence when things weren’t going his way. The locals he was able to influence and command needed little reason to fight another battle in the interracial and intercultural turf war.