Chapter 6
1280 Words
6
In the early hours of the morning, the team began to assemble in the incident room for Culverhouse’s first briefing on the case. There would be further briefings in which the members of the team kept everyone else updated on progress in their particular areas of investigation, but these were far less regular than they’d be in any other CID incident room.
The Mildenheath CID team was much smaller than others, and it also had the added advantage of being a good twenty miles from the county’s main CID offices at Milton House — a purpose-built concrete and glass monstrosity towards the north of the county. Being in charge of a small, satellite CID unit suited Jack Culverhouse down to the ground. It meant he could, largely, do things his own way.
‘Right. First incident room briefing for Operation Mandible, yada yada. People assembled et cetera et cetera. I’m DCI wassisface, you’re all minions. Got it?’
Culverhouse often found his disdain for process and bureaucracy difficult to hide, and at times of increased pressure that tended to make itself known even more so than usual.
‘We’re looking at a serious case of arson on a residential property in Little Walgrave. There may or may not be casualties. To be honest, the house is massive and the fire’s going to take a little while to put out. Never seen anything like it in my life. The fire officers won’t let us anywhere near it until they’ve made everything safe, and that could be a while yet. They reckon they’re starting to bring it under control, but whoever did this definitely wanted to make sure the whole place would be razed to the ground. It looks like they might have managed it, too.’
Culverhouse looked at Wendy, as if signalling that she should talk. Nice of him to warn me, she thought.
‘Yes. Well, the fire officers seemed pretty certain that this was a deliberate act of arson,’ Wendy said, standing. ‘So once we know a bit more about who owns the property we can start to look at reasons why someone might have wanted to do them harm. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to do that before morning, though. The house is pretty isolated. No neighbours nearby — closest house is about a hundred and fifty yards away — so at this stage everything is still pretty unknown. We should start to find all that out soon enough, but at the moment the focus is on letting them put out the fire, so everything else is a bit up in the air.’
‘So why have we all been called in at stupid o’clock?’ Detective Sergeant Frank Vine asked.
Culverhouse gave him an icy stare that told Frank everything he needed to know.
‘In the meantime, I think we need to sit tight,’ Wendy said, trying to defuse the tension. ‘We can identify the homeowner from land registry records and we should get out and speak to any neighbours, too, even if they are hundreds of yards away. Someone’ll know who lives in that house and we can start to get ahead of ourselves a bit. PNC checks, known issues in their lives. You know the drill.’ The Police National Computer was often invaluable in finding out information about a person, should any police force in Britain have encountered them in the past.
Wendy had recently started to get more of an inkling of the pressures that were put on senior investigating officers from above. She knew Culverhouse wouldn’t be in the team’s good books for getting them up during the night when there wasn’t a whole lot they could do at this stage, but she also knew that the Police and Crime Commissioner would have Culverhouse’s guts for garters if he’d failed to react quickly and there were lives at stake.
The elected PCC, Martin Cummings, wasn’t Culverhouse’s biggest fan. The feeling was mutual. As far as Culverhouse was concerned, politics and policing didn’t mix, but unfortunately for him the government disagreed.
‘I’ll be keeping in touch with the bloke in charge at the scene,’ Culverhouse said. ‘He’ll be updating me regularly, and I’ll pass on those updates to you. But in the meantime there’s plenty we can be getting on with. If you’re really stuck, Frank, feel free to clean my office.’
Culverhouse gave Frank Vine another icy stare and headed into said office. Detective Constable Debbie Weston gave him a few seconds, then followed.
‘Guv, I was just wondering if I might be able to have a quick chat,’ she said, hovering by the doorway.
‘By all means.’
Debbie closed the door behind her. ‘I was hoping to speak to you over the next couple of days anyway, but seeing as we’re here, and as it’s the calm before the storm...’
Culverhouse folded his arms and leaned forward on his desk. ‘Spit it out, will you?’
‘Well, the thing is, my mum’s really not well. She’s been in the home for a few years now but she’s recently started to take a turn for the worse. I’ve been getting down there as much as I can, but it’s a good couple of hours each way and squeezing it in between shifts just isn’t feasible.’
‘Right. So what are you trying to say?’
Debbie sighed. ‘I’m trying to say would it be possible to request a temporary transfer — a secondment — to a force closer to her? Just so I can see her as much as possible. To be honest, it might not be for long.’
Culverhouse could see from the look in Debbie’s eyes that this was upsetting her. She’d been the most stable and valuable member of his team for as long as he could remember, and had never had ambitions to become a sergeant. She’d been quite happy to get the work done to the best of her ability, and she’d proved to be the catalyst that unlocked an investigation on more than one occasion. She was, quite simply, his steadiest foot-soldier.
‘It’s not quite as easy as that,’ he replied, stuck between genuinely wanting to help Debbie and not wanting to lose her — even temporarily. Besides which, a few weeks working on the south coast would probably make her change her mind about coming back to Mildenheath. He wouldn’t blame her. ‘I could ask, but there are no guarantees. Far from it. An operational secondment would be one thing, but there aren’t any operational reasons to send you down to the south coast.’
Had Debbie been less loyal and more driven by career progression, there would have been a possibility of being sent on secondment to use her specialist skills. But on this occasion her modesty had been to her detriment.
‘I know, but I thought perhaps there might be something on compassionate grounds. If not, I completely understand,’ she said. ‘I mean, I guess I could use up some of my leave. Even if it’s unpaid. I could stay in a hotel down there and—’
‘On a Detective Constable’s salary? With a mortgage and bills to cover?’
‘It might not be for long,’ Debbie said quietly, the subtext clear to both of them.
‘Look, I’ll bend a few ears and see what I can do, alright? But there’s definitely no promises.’
Debbie smiled. ‘It’s just that... Being so far away, I feel...’
She got no further, before breaking down in tears in front of the DCI. Culverhouse, in his usual style, had no idea how to deal with this. Interpersonal skills really weren’t his bag.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you take some time off? We’ll call it sick leave, yeah? Just take a couple of days to get your head straight. Pop down and see your mum if you want.’
‘But the new case...’
‘Forget it. We’ll sort it. Besides which, you’re not much use to me sitting here blubbering away.’
Debbie allowed a slight laugh to break through the tears, recognising that Culverhouse was at least attempting to be sympathetic.
‘I’ll need you to get through today if you can. It’s still early days on the case and we don’t want anyone getting wind of you leaving after you’ve only been here an hour. Tomorrow morning I’ll say you rang in with the shits or something.’
Debbie chuckled again. ‘Thanks, guv. I won’t let you down.’
- Writer
