of course I’m—’ She paused, regarding him for a long time. Then, with slow, careful deliberation, she closed her laptop. ‘Yes, if you want the truth. That’s exactly what it is. Listen, DS Heckenburg …’
‘Call me “Heck”. All my friends do.’
‘DS Heckenburg. I made CID in three years by showing nous and initiative. That’s what I do. That’s my thing. If I get a sniff of something, I chase it down. I work hard. I don’t give up on it. The fact is, I wasn’t at all happy when I heard the coroner’s verdict on the Lansing case. But no one would listen to me. In fact, they said I was barmy.’
‘That’s because the gaffers don’t like unsolved murders. Doesn’t look good on the crime stats.’
She waved a hand, uninterested in his opinion. ‘Will Royton only okayed me to look at this again because he’s a decent bloke.’
‘Not because he trusts your judgement?’
‘Er … maybe a bit of that, but I had to badger him for two or three days before he was persuaded. Course, the truth is he’s not even persuaded now. That’s why I think he’s happy to see you here. He hopes you’ll swan in, some big shot from the Smoke, and wrap this whole thing up in a single day. Then I can get back to my routine duties and there’ll be no more discussion. Well sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.’
Heck sipped at his pint. ‘Sounds to me like you want Harold Lansing to have been murdered?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Neither did I. I mean you want your instinct to have been proved right.’
‘And that’s somehow incorrect of me?’
‘Not at all. Look.’ Heck put his drink down. ‘I’m here for a similar reason. Another officer looked at this case and felt the same way as you. You’ve been very honest, Gail, so I’ll be honest too – I can call you “Gail”? Feels less formal than DC Honeyford.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m only actually in Surrey as a favour to my guv’nor, who’s doing a favour for someone else. As soon as it becomes evident there’s nothing in this case for SCU, I’ll head home. I promise you. You’ll have a clear run at it without any interference from the Yard. But for the moment it can only help if we work on this together. You’ve already gone out on a limb. I appreciate you’re an independent-minded detective, but you must have felt pretty alone on this so far.’
She watched him warily. ‘Just so long as you know I’m not your gofer.’
‘Course not.’
‘I know you work for a specialist outfit and all that, but I’m good at my job too.’
‘I totally believe that.’
‘I’m not going to be bossed around or made to feel like an office junior.’
Heck displayed empty palms. ‘Not my style at all.’
‘Someone else surrendering to your charms, Gail?’ came a gruff but amused voice.
A man had approached them, unnoticed. He was tall, with a big, angular frame, clad in a rumpled brown suit and an open-necked green shirt. He had longish, sandy hair, pale blue eyes, and gruesomely pockmarked cheeks – as if he’d ploughed his fingernails through rampant acne while still a juvenile. He’d wandered over uninvited and now stood so close that Heck could smell his rank combination of cigarette smoke and cologne.
‘What do you want, Ron?’ Gail asked in a patient tone.
‘Me?’ He feigned hurt. ‘Nothing … just a quick pleasantry.’
‘That’d be a first.’
He chortled. ‘Still wasting your time chasing ghosts at Rosewood Grange?’
Gail flicked her gaze to Heck. ‘This is DS Pavey. Street Thefts.’
Heck glanced up at him. ‘How are you?’ he said, nodding.
‘And who’s this?’ Pavey asked her, not bothering to respond to or even acknowledge Heck’s question.
‘This is DS Heckenburg. Serial Crimes, New Scotland Yard.’
Pavey gave a low whistle, and finally deigned to look round at Heck. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’
‘Up to you, I guess,’ Heck replied.
Pavey turned back to Gail; evidently that question had been addressed to her too. ‘You two working on something?’
‘What’s it to you, Ron?’ she wondered.
Pavey smiled to himself before sauntering away to the bar. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, DS Heckenburg.’
‘Dare I ask?’ Heck said, watching him rejoin a group of several other suited men, presumably fellow detectives gathering for an end-of-shift drink.
Gail sipped her lemonade, though she’d flushed a noticeable shade of pink. The ice maiden wasn’t perhaps as cool as she’d have him believe. ‘Do you really need to?’ she said.
‘Idiot from the past, eh?’
‘Not long enough in the past. Don’t worry about it. He’s gone.’
But several times over the next fifteen minutes, Heck caught DS Pavey stealing irritable peeks in their direction. From the expression on his ugly, notched face, it didn’t look as if he’d gone very far.
‘So who arranged Lansing’s funeral?’ Heck asked.
‘His former girlfriend,’ Gail replied as she gunned her canary-yellow Fiat Punto along the twisting Surrey lanes. ‘Monica Chatreaux.’
Heck glanced up from the paperwork littered across his lap. ‘As in Monica Chatreaux the supermodel?’
‘Correct.’
Heck mused on this. He was seated in the front passenger seat. Beyond the windows, woods and farmland skimmed past in sunny shimmers of green and gold.
‘And was she really his former girlfriend … or just his friend?’
‘Girlfriend apparently.’
‘So he wasn’t gay?’
Gail shook her head. ‘I considered that possibility – bloke of his age living alone, but apparently not.’
Heck glanced again through the documentation. ‘Death occurred on 6 July, funeral held on 16 July. Not a lot of time between the two.’
‘Week and a half is about normal where I come
