The Promise

Book 6: DC Gary Goodhew novels

by Alison Bruce

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

'Bruce is doing for Cambridge what Colin Dexter did for Oxford with Inspector Morse' Daily Mail The promise seemed simple. The scars would last a lifetime. In a single night, Kyle Phipps's life is derailed. His relationship is over, he is denied access to his young son and everything important to him is at risk. His thoughts stumble between fear and revenge. Kyle Phipps has a choice to make. Meanwhile, after the tragic end to a previous case, DC Gary Goodhew finds himself questioning his reasons for returning to work until the badly beaten body of a homeless man is found on Market Hill. Having known the homeless man for several years Goodhew feels compelled to be part of the investigation - but routine lines of enquiry soon take a dark and unexpected turn... Suddenly the Cambridge back streets hold deadly secrets for Goodhew and the only person who has the answers is planning one final, desperate act. Praise for Cambridge Blue : 'Menacing and insidious, this is a great novel' R J Ellory 'A fast-paced gritty tale guaranteed to have you hooked from beginning to end' Cambridgeshire Pride 'A gripping tale of murder and mystery' Cambridge Style

Release date: February 4, 2016

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 304

Sample

The document archive reminded PC Sue Gully of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one where the all-important crate was slipped in amongst so many others that it disappeared.

This building was modest by comparison, but the effect was the same and her ark was in here somewhere. Or so she hoped. The shelves were stacked with document boxes, some containing details of a single case, others packed with many small files of other logs and registers, each filled with hundreds of names.

Much of the newer information had been digitalized but the project to go from the mid-1990s backwards had stalled, so the luxury of accessing the information from the desktop didn’t exist. She was on her own. Literally.

Her hair was two shades darker brunette now and had grown just long enough to tie back into a ponytail; she tightened it, blew her fringe from her eyes, then lifted the next box from the shelf, stacking the library trolley and only wheeling it away when it was fully laden. She used a small square table in the corner furthest from the door, the kind with metal legs that schools use for exams and dinner break. It faced a wall covered in health and safety advice posters.

The surroundings were uninspiring but, if she’d learnt one thing from the death of her friend, it was the importance of moving forwards with the meaningful things in life. Searching amongst these boxes for the answers to a very personal cold case had ceased to be a ‘one day I will’ kind of plan, and she didn’t need any further inspiration than that. So far she’d spent about four months of her spare time amongst the faint smells of printer ink, paper and whiffs of sawdust that reminded her of rodent cages and mouse droppings, reading until the dust aggravated her eyes and left her fingertips feeling greasy and grey. Not knowing a criminal’s name didn’t help of course; she had to follow every possibility, jumping between files and ruling out long-shots. She moved on to the second file of the second box and hesitated. A very familiar name jumped out to greet her: ‘Goodhew’.

She ran her index finger across it. Everything this box held was from 1992, too long ago surely to have any connection to Gary. How old would he have been back then? Eleven? Twelve? She would have moved on to the next page immediately but her gaze was faster than her hands and had already picked out the address in Park Terrace, Gary’s house.

It seemed a strange phenomenon; looking for one thing and invariably coming across another. There ought to be a scientific term for it; there probably was. In this case she’d found a name which seemed to be in both the wrong time and the wrong place.

She’d already followed a paper trail to get to this box, skipping from witness statements to charge sheets before finding her next option was to check unsolved cases from the spring of 1985 onwards. The cases in this box weren’t closed, but dormant, still theoretically capable of bursting into life, and a distraction wasn’t what she needed right now. She’d set her mind against diversions of any kind but, if there was to be an unexpected tangent, it was fitting that the name ‘Goodhew’ was stamped across it.

She cleared the surface of the table, leaving just the one bundle of papers in front of her. The pages were secured with green tie-tags wound through an inch-thick sheaf of hole-punched pages with the form where she’d spotted Goodhew’s name the uppermost sheet. The information on it was minimal; surname, address, case number and the document date. Next to category it read ‘B & E’. Most of the page was taken up with a black box headed ‘OUTCOME’. The black ballpoint ink had yellowed but not faded and read: ‘Merged with case CAM-GOODHEWJ-920716037’. It had been signed off with a squiggle of initials.

She didn’t recognize the form and it gave no clue as to whether this Goodhew had been the victim or suspect. If knowing Gary was any indication, it could go either way.

She turned the page and began to read. The breaking and entry had occurred at Gary’s house. The report had been made by a Joseph Goodhew. She checked the date of birth. Yes, Gary’s grandfather.

She looked up from the papers and whispered the name to herself, ‘Joseph Goodhew.’ It sounded odd. ‘Joe Goodhew.’ Yes, that worked better. It also seemed odd that she’d never heard it before, particularly from Goodhew’s grandmother. Gully’s gaze dropped back to the page.

She read a few more paragraphs then stiffened.

The name she stared at now was far more familiar: ‘DC Marks’. Her fingers had already lifted the corner of the page, poised to turn to the next but, instead, she lifted the whole document, raising it so that it filled her field of vision. DC Marks. Her boss’s name was at the epicentre of her focus. The questions followed quickly, filling her thoughts. How had she never known that there was some kind of history between Marks and the Goodhew family? Why had Goodhew’s grandmother never mentioned it? Was it so incidental that it had been long forgotten? Well, the answer to that question had to be ‘no’, especially since this page was directing her to another case entirely. She let the papers drop onto the table-top and worked her way through the indexing system until she located CAM-GOODHEWJ-920716037.

She pulled it from the shelving, opened the lid and immediately realized that the box and its contents belonged to a murder investigation. Joseph Goodhew’s murder.

By then she only had a single question. Did Gary even know?

She sank down until she was sitting on the cold concrete. She held the top handful of pages on her lap but didn’t begin to read them until the queasy feeling in her gut began to subside.

Instinct told her he had no idea.

At first the sound of Parkside Pool had felt too intense – arrhythmic and booming – and Gully had consequently found it too difficult to gather her thoughts. But after several weeks the sounds had separated; she could now easily pick out the slap of the water and the words hidden in the echo-drenched shouts. There were other bonuses too – the temperature in the public gallery had been set to ‘balmy June’, and, more importantly, this ritual of meeting Goodhew after he swam helped her believe that he would return to work sometime soon. It was too easy to dwell on the moment that she’d seen her colleague, Kelly Wilkes, fall to her death from a rusting fire escape. Goodhew had been elsewhere, answering a different call, and she would never forget the moment when she heard that he lay seriously injured, possibly paralysed. She couldn’t have done anything to save Kelly – neither of them could – but she instinctively knew that they both carried an illogical guilt.

Before his injury Goodhew had always swum and seeing him regain his fitness felt like a step towards normality. He’d gradually built up to his usual one hundred lengths per day and now his speed was almost back too. Not quite, but close.

She’d been certain that he’d swim again, even before she’d heard any news on his recovery. She’d moved desks and sat by a window that offered a better view of Parker’s Piece, and often glanced towards his house. She could have phoned but didn’t. By late autumn she had fallen into the habit of checking for him amongst the pedestrians crossing Parker’s Piece; then, one Tuesday, she spotted him walking slowly from his home to the pool. Goodhew was close to six foot and lean, but from her window she could see that he’d lost weight and that his short hair had grown a little longer. After that first time he appeared more frequently, either first thing in the morning or in the early afternoon. He never seemed to carry a bag or towel but she always watched him until he disappeared inside the entrance, and sometimes she caught sight of him returning home, walking more quickly, often with his jumper or jacket in hand. She’d noted the timings and continued to check some more until he fell into a routine and she decided that she was ready to ‘bump’ into him.

‘Gary?’

She’d caught him by surprise. His green eyes had double-blinked and he’d forced a smile.

‘Sue, how are you?’

Despite always having found it so convenient to live close to Parkside she could now tell that he valued his privacy more; she realized then that she had never seen him glance at the station and he turned his back on it as they spoke. After a few minutes they fell into a polite but heavy silence.

‘I’m about to swim,’ he said finally, and took a step backwards in the direction of the pool, then another.

‘You’re OK then?’

He nodded and had clearly wanted her to do the same. She’d nodded, then he turned to walk away.

‘Will you meet me afterwards, Gary?’ she’d blurted. ‘Let me know how it’s going?’

He’d turned back to face her and she saw him frown, perhaps trying to think of an excuse. It had never occurred to her that this would turn into one of those I-liked-you-when-I-worked-with-you conversations. ‘Coffee, if you like.’

She’d been tempted to come back at him with a comment about his obvious enthusiasm, but his expression remained as unreadable as it had been when they’d first met. ‘It’s not really a coincidence you’re out here, is it?’ he asked.

‘No, not at all.’ She’d scowled as she’d felt her cheeks redden. ‘I’ve made it my personal mission to remind you to get back to work.’ She said it firmly, forcing her words out in a fake bossy tone when her private fear was that he really wouldn’t return.

He was quiet for a few seconds more, but it became easy after that.

The post-swim coffee had become a regular event and today, as with the other days in the last few weeks, she’d turned up just a few minutes before he finished his lengths. It had been a while since she’d felt it necessary to reassure herself of his progress by keeping stats; his lengths were smooth and fast. The rhythm had returned and so had the tone to his arms and shoulders.

The seating area ran in ascending rows down the long side of the pool, and faced out across Parker’s Piece. They sat side by side looking in the general direction of Hobb’s Pavilion and Goodhew’s flat.

‘Woman in the red coat.’

Goodhew tilted his head and picked her out, pushing a pram from the corner nearest the bus station and hurrying towards the centre. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that one, the guy with the ear muffs.’ Goodhew had picked a youngish man in a sombre grey mac, black trousers and turquoise ear muffs. No doubt the ear muffs were a Christmas present.

‘Mine’s going to win, it’s one of those 4x4 performance buggies.’

It was their version of Pooh Sticks, picking two random strangers and guessing who would be the first to pass the lamppost where the paths crossed, which was known locally as Reality Checkpoint.

‘Didn’t you win last week?’

She shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So I should’ve chosen first; challenger breaks and all that?’

‘Bad loser. You never pick anyone pushing a pram.’ The buggy was yards from winning when she suddenly stopped to check inside the pram.

Goodhew grinned. ‘And that’s why. Coffee’s on you.’

‘I don’t think so.’ At the last moment the woman straightened and continued on, cutting in front of Mr Earmuff with just a couple of yards to spare.

‘Pooh Checkpoint champion again.’

Gully grinned too and she nudged his elbow with her own. ‘And biscuits?’

He brought back the drinks and this time they looked out across Parker’s Piece in silence, and it occurred to Gully that they had got to know one another pretty well by not ever saying a whole lot. It seemed to her that the best way to understand some people was by exception; by learning who they weren’t, what they wouldn’t do and the events that made them turn away.

Neither of them had turned away from Kelly’s fall, but they weren’t turning to each other either. Whenever they were together she saw the shadow that Kelly’s death had cast caught up in his expression. She sensed he could see the same in her too. Neither of them commented, but both of them knew. The you-need-to-talk-about-it brigade were undoubtedly correct; there’d be a price to pay for failing to put it into words. Tough shit. She wasn’t taking that route, she’d keep her grieving to herself and some of it would pass; the moment Kelly died never would. And it would be wrong if it did, so she accepted that as more than fair.

‘Sue?’

She turned. ‘What?’

‘Did you hear a single word?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Just your name several times. What were you thinking just then?’

‘Absolutely nothing. But here’s a question for you, Gary, what do you do when you’re too incapacitated to poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. Like now, when you’re not on a case?’

‘I don’t think about anything either.’

‘Such a liar,’ she muttered, her words lost as the public address system rumbled through an announcement. She had so much she needed to tell him, but first, she needed to see him return to work.

The house they rented was small, but still they’d been lucky to end up with it. Cambridge’s property market meant racing to secure anything worth living in. Worth living in. In relation to their house the phrase was certainly dubious. It had too much damp in the bathroom, too much mileage in the kitchen and far too much of the 1980s in every other room. But it was this or a rented flat over a shop in Cherry Hinton. Hannah liked the idea of the flat, convenient for the shops and the bus route into town.

She’d never stopped to consider why Cherry Hinton was absolutely out of the question.

Instead he talked her round to the idea of this rundown post-war end of terrace in Barnwell Road. The convenience of his mother living five minutes away had swung it; Hannah loved the thought that babysitting would be pretty much on tap. And Kyle had loved the simple fact that there would be an upstairs. One floor good, two floors better had sprung to mind. He didn’t share the thought with Hannah, she was the reason the second floor appealed so much. Or maybe spreading themselves over two separate floors was their relationship’s best chance of survival.

Right this minute the plan seem to be failing.

‘Your mum’s happy to have Harry tonight,’ she told him.

Despite starting out with good intentions of spending time with her, so far he had done little apart from watch the slightly hypnotic pattern of the rolling news. She was animated, where he felt lethargic. ‘I don’t think we should wake him now, Hannah, I’ll stay with him. You go.’

He caught the tiniest widening of her eyes, the softening of her mouth. ‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s fine.’

A knowing look flashed across her face. She’d expected him not to come, already arranged company, he guessed.

He went through the pretence. ‘You can’t go on your own.’

‘No,’ she agreed, then frowned. He could have counted down, 3 – 2 – 1, to the moment when her eyebrows shot up with the pretence of a sudden idea. ‘I’ll ask Trudi, see if she’s busy.’ She reached for the bag she’d left on the floor beside the settee, took her mobile and texted. Reply came within the minute. Her voice had a smug edge. ‘Perfect.’

At that moment he felt relaxed enough to see her as others might – and as others probably would tonight, as she and Trudi held court at Lola Lo, or the Revolution bar, or wherever it was they were headed. She was twenty-three but could pass for eighteen, lithe and longing with pouty lips and eyes made up so large she reminded him of a computer-generated avatar. She used pop videos and perfume ads as style guides. Underneath all that she was pretty, almost certainly too pretty for him, but he had trouble seeing her that way now. He had to work on that, Harry was only twenty months old; they had time.

‘Be good.’ He reached the remote and killed the muted screen. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Her expression darkened in an instant. ‘Why wouldn’t you be? Come with me if it’s a problem.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Well it doesn’t seem like it, Kyle.’

‘Because I said “I’ll be fine”?’

She moved in front of him, standing on the spot but adjusting and readjusting her weight. He knew the pattern, often it would be the same. She wanted him, then didn’t, but when she didn’t, she couldn’t stand it if he didn’t mind. And how different was he?

She drew him in and repulsed him in equal measure. Right now she could go to hell, take her too-short dress and flaunt her overly tanned legs in the winter streets. This minute he really didn’t care but, the minute she left, he knew he’d think about little else.

‘You’re probably feeling guilty for going . . .’

‘Feel guilty? Why should I?’ she snapped.

‘You shouldn’t,’ he replied gently, ‘you really shouldn’t.’

She gave no response apart from a growl of frustration, and an angry retreat upstairs where the floorboards creaked and the wardrobe doors banged until, finally, she was ready to leave.

She stood in the doorway for several seconds before she spoke. ‘I won’t be too late.’

But he had a book in his hands by then and barely glanced up. ‘I think I’ll go out tomorrow.’

Her expression hardened again and a final response was to slam the front door. Above him he heard the first notes of Harry’s waking cry.

Harry had gone back to sleep quickly, draped across Kyle’s shoulder and only stirring when Kyle needed to use his supporting hand to turn the page. It only took a few minutes before Kyle laid the book to one side. He could see himself in Harry. Their baby photos looked alike too, his son had the same dark hair and broad forehead. They’d both inherited dark brown eyes from his father and the stubborn expression that filled them from his mother. He hoped his son would grow up a little taller, a little less gawky and a whole lot happier. He pressed his nose to the side of his son’s head and closed his eyes. There was no pretence now, no self-conscious acting out and no hiding the truth. Harry reminded him of nothing bad whatsoever.

‘Harry,’ he whispered. He just liked to hear himself saying his son’s name. The thought of having a child, being a dad, had been frightening and alien. The reality had been momentous.

‘You saved me, Harry.’ He rubbed the little boy’s back. ‘You and Auntie Leah. But mostly you.’ It would have been easy to spend the whole evening like this. ‘Mummy misses out, doesn’t she?’ It was weird the way he found it so natural to speak to his sleeping child who, even awake, barely understood a word he said. How was that different to talking to himself in an empty room? It just was.

How was making love to Hannah so difficult when she hadn’t changed? The answer was the same; it just was.

He knew the change had been his own, but not in any way that should have affected them. But here he was, stuck with a woman he couldn’t talk to. A woman he no longer wanted, but couldn’t let go. There had to be a name for a relationship like this, the clinging, biting death roll that had them trapped and was dragging them down.

Harry lifted his head and turned so that his other cheek rested on Kyle’s shoulder. Harry’s face glowed and he smelt of baby sweat. Harry didn’t deserve to have his family broken up. ‘Do you want Daddy to fix it then?’ Kyle stroked the feathery hair at the nape of his son’s neck. ‘How can I fix it, eh? I’ll think of something, don’t worry.’

Harry dribbled until the shoulder of Kyle’s shirt became damp. Kyle transferred him back to his cot, then went to his own room for a fresh T-shirt.

He owned one drawer of clothes and about eighteen inches of hanging space. The drawer was wide and he kept his T-shirts folded and stacked in two piles at the right-hand end. He grabbed the nearest, pulled it partly over his head before he realized exactly what he’d just seen.

Or what he hadn’t, to be precise.

He smoothed down the fabric, straightening the T-shirt as he continued to stare at the folded clothes. He was aware that his palms suddenly felt clammy and he wiped them on his jeans before sliding the drawer wider and lifting the T-shirts out of it one at a time. He squeezed each in turn in case the envelope had somehow become lost inside one of the garments.

It was unlikely, but he needed to be sure.

He told himself to stay calm, but he already felt the tell-tale tightening of his throat and nausea in his gut. ‘What the fuck?’ he muttered and felt the sweat as it began to break out across the back of his neck. He grabbed the second pile of shirts, his hands moved clumsily and, within seconds, he found himself ripping the drawer from its runners and turning the contents out onto the bed. He shook each item, then tossed it unfolded back into the empty drawer. Once he was done he dumped it onto the floor and pulled out the next. This one only held towels and took a matter of seconds.

The other two drawers belonged to Hannah and he could see the contents of the first through the gaps in the cabinet’s frame. Underwear. Plenty of it. He tipped that straight onto the carpet and kicked through the pile of knickers and bras. There was no possibility of an envelope going unseen in that lot. But he kicked through the items anyway. Then grabbed up the empty drawer and swung it against the wall. The base fell out, the other four sides collapsed into a buckled trapezium. Exhausted.

He immediately turned back and dragged out the final drawer. This one contained papers and what looked like the items that had no other home; he’d never even opened it before. He fought back the desire to throw this one too and instead he sat next to it on the bed. He slowed his breathing, forcing himself to become calmer and letting his thoughts settle enough to allow him to concentrate. He lifted an inch-thick pile of typewritten letters out first. His hands didn’t shake, but they’d become uncoordinated enough for the corner of the top sheet to evade the first couple of attempts at lifting it. At first he only checked between the sheets, not at the paperwork itself. It only took a glance to see that the pages were mainly utility bills and random articles printed from websites.

He just needed the envelope.

He began to find a rhythm, a comfortable speed that kept the pages flicking by without fumbling or dropping them.

About halfway through the first pile he paused, then read the facing page more slowly. The first word that had jumped out at him had been ‘judgement’. He knew the two words that usually preceded that. ‘County’ and ‘Court’. This letter was the threat of proceedings, but it was dated last October. Four months ago. Surely it would have gone to court by now unless it had been paid. The creditor name didn’t ring a bell.

£853.26, plus court costs if it had reached that point.

He spread the next few pages out across the duvet, trying to understand what she’d bought for that amount. He looked through more sheets and found other unpaid bills and bounced payments. But still no envelope.

Downstairs the front door clicked shut. His watch told him it was a couple of minutes after 1 a.m. He didn’t trust it though; it felt as if she had only just left. He must have moved fast then because nothing else registered with him until he found himself in the downstairs hallway. She still stood within touching distance of the door, and he was leaning over her, his right palm pressed against the panel above the catch as though he thought she might try to leave.

‘What are you doing, Kyle?’ She didn’t look frightened, just angry, and shoved past him. He didn’t try to stop her, but followed close behind as she headed for the lounge.

He had no idea whether she would try to ignore him or spin it round and make it his fault.

‘Don’t you dare, Hannah,’ he muttered out loud.

She spun round to face him. ‘Dare what?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I went out with Trudi. What do you think? You accusing me of something, Kyle?’

‘Yeah, I am. But not whatever you think. You are a stupid, selfish bitch, Hannah.’

‘Because of what? A night out? For fuck’s sake. Your head is so rammed up your own arse you don’t even know me. Or how I feel. Or what it’s like for me.’

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. ‘I know what you’ve done.’

There was a moment then when he didn’t pull at her and she didn’t pull away; the challenge, the face-off. She smirked, but he saw it for exactly what it was, defensive and deliberately antagonistic.

He wrapped his other arm behind her back and propelled her towards the stairs. She squirmed, pushing back against him. It made him. . .