Blunt Force Read online

  After seeing how much she’d improved, Elliott invited her to visit an ‘impressive’ gun club with him.

  ‘You’ll find it similar to a lot of the training in America where they use moving targets representing police officers, innocent bystanders, an armed bank robber and a guy holding a knife. Hopefully Calamity Jane won’t let me down like my previous trainee, who not only shot the unarmed pedestrian, but also the police dog,’ he joked.

  Jane was flattered he had that much confidence in her, but wanted to keep her gun training quiet for the time being.

  ‘Thanks for the offer,’ she said with a smile, ‘but I think I’d better wait until I’m a bit more proficient.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jane was having dinner with her parents at a small Italian restaurant to celebrate her birthday. It was just the three of them as Pam, her sister, had cancelled due to one of her sons having mumps. Jane was trying to be relaxed but really didn’t feel it. She was unhappy about being thirty years old, as well as the fact that she was now working out of Gerald Road police station. She made no mention that her position with the Flying Squad had been short-lived or that she was disappointed to have been sidelined. She was having a problem winding her spaghetti into the spoon as she had a nasty bruise on her thumb from a session at the shooting range, but like everything else in her life, she kept it to herself.

  ‘I don’t know where that station is,’ her father said, as he expertly wound his spaghetti around his fork.

  ‘It’s in the heart of Belgravia. It’s a really nice location.’

  ‘Oh yes, close to all those posh shops,’ her mother said, not attempting to spin the spaghetti but slicing it up with her knife and fork. Jane’s parents were both relieved about her transfer. They’d been concerned for her safety when she had worked with the notorious Sweeney.

  As a birthday gift to herself, Jane had traded in her VW and had bought a second-hand Mini Cooper, and she had at last been able to repay her father the money he had loaned her for the deposit on her flat. She was now keen to sell and was looking for something larger – not that she had anyone to share it with, she thought wistfully.

  She tried to be as good-humored as she could throughout dinner – even when her mother insisted on asking if she was seeing anybody. She just changed the subject and told them that she had been reunited with an old colleague, Spencer Gibbs, from her early days at Hackney Station and then at Bow Street.

  ‘He feels he’s being sidelined as well,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ her dad asked.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just he did something he shouldn’t have done and . . . ’

  ‘But you said he was sidelined “as well”. So have you done something that you shouldn’t have done?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Dad. It’s not a question of something I did.’

  ‘But why did you say you were being sidelined as well as Spencer Gibbs if you haven’t done something wrong?’ her mother said nervously.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s not something I have done wrong or Spencer has done wrong, just leave it alone.’

  ‘It’s only because we are concerned about you,’ her father said, obviously shocked by her tone of voice.

  Jane tried to control herself. ‘There is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. As I told you, I am working at a station in Belgravia that mostly investigates petty crimes. That’s all there is to it.’ She got up. ‘Please excuse me, I need to go to the ladies.’

  As soon as Jane was out of sight, Mrs. Tennison lowered her voice. ‘Well, something has to be wrong. I have never seen her like this. And she’s lost weight.’

  Mr. Tennison kept his eyes on the ladies and leaned closer to his wife, almost whispering: ‘If something’s bothering her, she’ll tell us when she’s ready.’

  ‘She never has in the past,’ Mrs. Tennison replied, not bothering to keep her voice down. ‘Oh dear God, what do you think she’s keeping from us now? I knew something had happened. Has she been demoted as well, just like her friend Spencer?’

  Mr. Tennison quickly signaled for his wife to be quiet as Jane returned to the table. At the same time a waiter appeared with a cupcake on a plate decorated with icing sugar. To make it even worse, stuck into the cupcake was a candle with a silver 30 on it. Jane squirmed in embarrassment as her parents began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and some of the other diners and a couple of waiters joined in. Jane blew out the offending candle and forced herself to keep smiling as the cupcake was sliced into tiny pieces.

  When her father took her hand and squeezed it, looking as if he wanted some kind of assurance that she was all right, she nodded.

  ‘Female officers still aren’t totally accepted in the force. I suppose I might have rattled a few cages.’

  ‘But you are dealing with it?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes, Dad, I am dealing with it,’ she said with more confidence than she felt.

  *

  The following morning Jane parked her Mini in the street behind the station. She went into the yard and saw Spencer Gibbs’ motorbike chained up in the bike shelter.

  He’s in earlier than usual, she thought.

  After a quick breakfast in the canteen, she went to the CID office. A cleaner was just finishing emptying Chinese food cartons from the bin beside his desk, but there was no sign of Spencer.

  Jane nodded to the other members of the team already at their desks.

  ‘Is Gibbs in?’ she asked a young DC, Gary Dors.

  ‘No, he was at some gig with his band last night over in Camden Town.’

  Dors was pale-faced, with a short haircut that made his ears seem to stick out.

  Jane hung up her coat and sat down at her desk to look over the night’s reports. Two burglaries, a hit and run, a stolen E-Type Jaguar, and a drunk and disorderly charge against a man who was still being held in the police cells. She checked the CID crime reports, which were recorded in a large notebook by the late turn and night duty officers and then had to be allocated to a detective by the early turn DS, which was herself.

  ‘Harrods really need to sharpen up their security,’ Dors said.

  He flicked over two pages of the report that described how goods were being stolen. The company believed goods for delivery were being reboxed and sent off to a different address by some storeroom workers, and the losses had so far been estimated at over £2,000.

  ‘It’s beyond belief. This is the second report this month.’

  Tony Johnson, another DC with the desk next to hers, who was equally wet behind the ears, looked over at Jane. The other three desks on the opposite side were empty as the DCs were having breakfast in the canteen.

  ‘Did you see that report on the seventy-five-year-old shoplifter? Eight previous convictions. Wears a mink coat lined with pockets. She was picked up yesterday morning.’

  Jane continued reading her reports, only half listening.

  ‘Rich pickings at Harrods,’ Dors said, beginning to type.

  Johnson nodded. ‘Yeah, then there’s Burberry and House of Fraser, and you’re right by Beauchamp Place with all the posh shops along there, not to mention the high-end jewelry stores next door.’

  Jane didn’t say anything. Being inundated with shoplifters meant a lot of tedious paperwork, even though the uniforms actually dealt with them. Sometimes Jane had to teach the young probationers how to make these arrests, taking them through the interviews and showing them how to process the prisoner.

  There was another report on her desk from the previous week from Harrods’ security. They had discovered that boxes of items delivered to their soft furnishings department had been removed using forged Harrods delivery forms redirecting them to a warehouse address. When the legitimate Harrods delivery vans arrived there, the goods were then put on board another van previously stolen by thieves, which was dumped later that day.

  The monotonous sound of Dors’s heavy-handed, two-finger typing made everything seem even more
mundane. Jane had been used to experiencing real excitement in her previous roles.

  The incident room door banged open as DCI Leonard ‘Lenny’ Tyler marched in, carrying a large box of groceries.

  ‘Morning, everybody.’

  The team murmured their replies as he maneuvered between the desks towards his private office.

  ‘It’s Hannah’s tenth birthday party this weekend and I’ve had to get balloons, party hats and games. The bloody magician won’t be pulling any rabbits out of his top hat as he fell off a bus in Edgware Road. That means we’re going to have fifteen kids and no entertainment, unless . . . ’

  He looked towards Dors. ‘Unless Big Ears over there can find me a substitute.’

  He stood in the doorway to his office and looked around.

  ‘Is Spencer in yet? I’ve had a complaint from the uniformed chief superintendent that he’s taking up two spaces with his motorbike and stopping the chief from getting into his bay. He’s got more chains wrapped around that bloody bike than Houdini.’

  ‘He might be in the canteen,’ Jane suggested.

  Tyler glanced towards one of the empty desks in a coveted corner position by a window, which had a chair with a back-press cushion pushed underneath it.

  She couldn’t tell whether he’d heard what she’d said as he closed his office door. He was a very easy-going man to work for, but at times it was clear that his own life wasn’t always easy. He often left the station in the early afternoon in order to do the school run while his wife was busy studying for a mature student university degree in economics.

  But during the short time that Jane had been stationed at Belgravia, she had never heard Tyler raise his voice. He had piercing blue eyes that sometimes appeared to look straight through you. At over six feet tall, he was one of the major players in the Mets rugby team and was clearly very fit. At the rate things were going, however, Jane doubted if she would ever get the opportunity to see if Tyler did have more to him than met the eye.

  ‘How much does he want to pay for this magician?’ Dors asked. ‘Some of them I’ve looked into are quite expensive. Does he want someone from the magic circle?’

  Jane sighed. ‘Just look up children’s entertainers, not magicians.’

  ‘I’m only doing what he told me to do, Sarge!’ Dors snapped.

  ‘Go and knock on his door and ask how much he wants to pay for the children’s entertainer.’ Jane returned to work, while the office CID clerk and a typist arrived and took up their desks, carrying in their personalized mugs from the canteen.

  Johnson had departed to take a statement from a woman whose handbag had been stolen on the Brompton Road. It had contained a staggering £2,000.

  Tyler remained in his office and it was after eleven when a very disheveled Spencer Gibbs walked in, carrying a mug of black coffee. He muttered ‘good morning’ to everyone as he walked over to his desk. There was already a pile of detectives’ reports regarding cases awaiting trial at the Crown Court for him to check over. Jane noticed that he needed a shave and, although she had been working with him for over five weeks now, this was the first time he had looked as if he had slept in his clothes all night.

  Back in the days when they had worked together at Hackney, Spencer had often been the butt of jokes regarding his rock and roll attire. Then, when they were together in Peckham, he had changed his style. Spencer had discovered a second-hand gentleman’s outfitters and had turned up in an elegant tweed suit, waistcoat and trousers that had the telltale signs of being let down to accommodate his lanky six-foot frame. He took the jokes about him wearing a dead man’s outfit in his stride, and boasted that at least the winkle-pickers had been his own – until he found an elegant pair of two-tone brogues that he felt better suited his outfit. When he played with his band, however, he would wear flamboyant frilly shirts and cowboy boots.

  ‘I hear you had a gig last night,’ Jane said, turning her swivel chair towards him.

  ‘Yeah, but it was a pain in the ass. I’m getting too old for this. There were two punk bands on that were smashing the place up and I wasn’t going to let the buggers damage my speakers. I didn’t get out till after twelve, and we only got fifty quid each. Bloody disgusting.’

  Spencer lit a cigarette. Jane hated the smell of smoke, which always hung in a cloud above his head. He still had thick curly hair that often stood up on end from his habit of running his fingers through it when he was concentrating. It appeared even more unruly now, as for some reason he had decided to cut the sides short. Spencer was still an attractive man, but his sense of humor seemed to have soured and he was often moody and impatient with probationers.

  ‘Well, this is all very exciting, isn’t it?’ he muttered. ‘This old lady in the fur coat has been arrested how many times? And we have to spend how many hours doing paperwork, taking her to fucking court just so some equally ancient judge will release her because of her age? Someone should tell our guys not to bother arresting her anymore.’

  ‘Have you seen the report about the woman who had her handbag nicked on the Old Brompton Road?’ Dors asked. ‘She had two thousand quid on her.’

  Spencer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Really? Isn’t that fantastic. Held up at gunpoint, was she?’

  ‘No, a kid on a bicycle nicked it.’

  ‘I was being sarcastic, Gary.’

  Jane shared Spencer’s frustration. She felt that the dealing with the petty crime that took up all their time was a waste of their experience. Like Spencer, she had years of training behind her. As if reading her mind, he crossed over and sat on the edge of her desk.

  ‘Not sure how much more of this I can take, Jane. I know I’ve blotted my copybook a few times in the past, but this is really testing my patience. I’ve applied for a promotion and I’ve had a couple of interviews but they’ve led to nothing. No one has had the balls to tell me the reason I’ve been sidelined. I know you didn’t get on with the lads in the Flying Squad, but they’re a bunch of wankers anyway. And they turned me down.’

  Jane nodded. She knew it was unwise to join in with Spencer’s disgruntled rant, and she’d learned to keep her mouth shut. Spencer remained perched on the edge of her desk, kicking the side with the heel of his scruffy shoe.

  ‘I mean, it’s bordering on bloody ridiculous. I haven’t had a single criminal worth wasting my time on, and the paperwork just gets more and more every day.’

  He nodded over to the empty desk that belonged to Detective Inspector Timothy Arnold, lowering his voice. ‘I see he’s still not back yet. He should have a visitor’s book instead of a duty status if you ask me. It’s unbelievable. He’s a bloody hypochondriac. He doesn’t get a simple headache, it has to be a full-blown migraine. He can’t just get a cold, it has to be flu. And if he gets flu it’s bloody pneumonia!’

  Jane felt uncomfortable about the banter, because it showed a complete lack of respect. At the same time, since she had been there, DI Arnold had taken frequent sick days and he had now been absent for almost a week.

  Spencer leaned closer. ‘You tell me, what kind of man has an effing battery-operated Mickey Mouse pencil sharpener? And he doesn’t even have any kids. Mind you, if you saw his wife Bronwyn, it’s no wonder.’

  Jane turned away, not wanting to listen to any more. Spencer wasn’t finished, though he did have the forethought to keep his voice low.

  ‘You know what he’s got in his drawer? Antacid tablets, Epsom salts and hemorrhoid cream. And he keeps a St Valentine’s Day mug in the canteen.’

  ‘That’s enough, Spence,’ Jane snapped. ‘Apparently he’s down with gastroenteritis.’ Her desk phone rang. Jane held up her hand as she answered. ‘Yes, sir, I’ll ask him now.’

  She replaced the receiver and looked over at Dors. ‘The guv wants to know if you’ve found a kids’ entertainer for the party on Saturday.’

  Spencer slid off her desk and raised his arms. ‘You see what I mean! What’s he bloody going on about a kids’ entertainer for? I’m fed up to the bac
k bloody teeth with this. I’m seriously about to throw in the towel.’

  Dors pushed back his chair. ‘I’ve got a bloke who can blow up balloons and make them into animals, you know, poodles and things like that.’

  Spencer looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘What in Christ’s name does this have to do with anything? Blowing up ruddy balloons for a profession?’

  ‘He charges fifteen quid an hour, plus transport.’

  Spencer shook his head in frustration. ‘Maybe I should think about blowing up fucking balloons. Certainly pays better than working here. I’m going for breakfast.’

  Jane felt sorry for Spence. He rarely, if ever, discussed his private life, but she knew he had married a young, aristocratic girl called Serena. It was clear that it wasn’t a good match. All he’d ever said about it was that after Serena had told Spence she was pregnant, her father had threatened him and he was persuaded to marry her. Serena’s parents had bought them a flat in Shepherd’s Bush. There had been a miscarriage, and Spencer had inferred that he had been unashamedly relieved.

  *

  The remainder of the week was as mundane as usual. She and Spencer each spent a day in court, but apart from that there had only been a domestic assault inquiry and the search for a missing pupil from the prestigious Hill House. Thanks to the school’s odd-looking uniform of burgundy knickerbockers, a beige V-neck sweater and beige socks, the search was soon called off after the pupil was spotted playing with the puppies in Harrods’ pet department.

  Jane was having lunch in the canteen when Spencer, his tray loaded with shepherd’s pie and green fruit jello, came and stood at her table.

  ‘OK if I sit with you?’