Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [109]
‘It’s only because I was so much younger than them that it was different for me. They’ve always had each other, so they wouldn’t care about what he was doing. It affected me the most, but Dad made the rules in our house and we stuck to them.’
FORTY-TWO
Grey areas were always the most difficult to navigate, and as soon as Goodhew had finished talking to Jackie Moran, he found himself in the middle of one, because he didn’t know what to do with her next. He wasn’t about to sit with her until Marks returned, but he didn’t want to leave her alone either. Arresting her didn’t seem appropriate, but considering that she’d just admitted to killing a man, perhaps it was. In the end, he spotted PC Kelly Wilkes arriving back in the car park. As soon as she’d locked her vehicle he tapped loudly on the glass, and when she saw him at the window she pointed at him and signalled to him to stay. By the time she arrived in the corridor, she had her mobile phone in her hand and was brandishing it in his direction like it was on stun mode. Meanwhile, she sliced her other hand backwards and forwards across her throat.
‘You’re dead,’ she whispered, then spoke louder: ‘DI Marks is on the phone.’ She slapped the phone into his palm.
Goodhew guided her through the door to Jackie. ‘Look after her till I get back,’ he said, then shut the door behind him and tentatively raised the phone to his ear. ‘Sir?’
‘You deliberately walked away from me. You were openly insubordinate in front of my team and in public’ His voice was icy. ‘Furthermore, you then refuse to respond to your mobile.’
‘It was turned off.’ Goodhew bit his lip; there was no point in saying anything to excuse himself, he knew from Marks’ tone that he’d gone far too far this time.
‘Go back to your desk, sit there and don’t move a muscle until I arrive. I might not get back for quite some time. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good, because if those ants in your pants take you anywhere at all, I’m going to be treating it as gross misconduct. Where’s Wilkes?’
‘With Jackie Moran, sir. I was just about to ring you.’ Goodhew brought his boss fully up to date, and only hoped that news of the progress made with her and Bryn O’Brien would defuse the worst of his anger.
Goodhew apologized to PC Wilkes for having her keep Jackie Moran company, then returned to his desk with a coffee in one hand and Joanne Reed’s case notes in the other. Even with the challenge of sitting still, he had plenty to do and began searching for the reference to anything that could be construed as ‘kinky’. It didn’t take him long, and in fact he wondered how he’d missed it the first time round, but on the second page of the inventory of items found at her flat were listed the contents of her wardrobe. Item 6 – S and M whip.
One person’s kinky was another person’s bland, but to him there was nothing else on the list that seemed any racier than her lacy knickers. Whoever had picked that description for the item had clearly enjoyed one lad’s mag too many the night before.
He switched on his PC, then drained his coffee cup and wandered off for a refill. When Marks had ordered him not to move a muscle he was sure that he hadn’t meant it literally.
By the time he returned, it had completed booting up, and the hard disk was now silent after chugging through its endless stream of security programs. It always seemed so much more efficient when he didn’t watch it: if only Marks would accept the same excuse from him. Goodhew went straight on to the Internet, ignoring his new emails, and to Google where he typed in Dr Moran Cambridge. The usual long list appeared, headed by a link to eBay, where it seemed items on both ‘doctors’ and Cambridge were popular. One day he would investigate an effective way to use a search engine, but for now expert scrollbar control was his limit. At the bottom of the first page, the word ‘obituary’ jumped out. He double-clicked and in