Corsican Intrigue
This is the first chapter of a novel which uses many of the same characters as in Ivory Nooses. This is the novel I'm currently working on, and the word count is about 40000 at the moment. It was started in response to a challenge on the LiveJournal community Summer Steam, but seems rather to have taken a life on its own.
I'm hoping that JD Shaw isn't actually dead, as that'd rather put paid to the hope of writing a whole series with him as the hero, but I don't know yet ...
The day had already been too long, thought Detective Inspector Charlotte Carter to herself wearily, as she walked down the corridor of Parkside Police Station, skimming the agenda and the reports for the meeting she was already almost late for. More and more of her time seemed to be taken up these days with routine paperwork and administration, and less and less of it on actual, well, policing and catching criminals. She supposed this was the downside of promotion – there were fewer people to whom she could pass the buck of such tedium, and furthermore she also had the responsibility of protecting the DCs and DSs under her from bearing the brunt of it.
So pre-occupied was she by the details of one particular scheme involving better policing of cyclists jumping red lights and cycling at night without functional, or indeed any, lights that she failed to notice the person coming in the opposite direction down the corridor, into whom she barrelled as some speed. Her nascent apology died on her lips as she looked up to see the person with whom she had collided. The last time she had seen Alex, he had been a miserable drunken wreck, and she had been there hoping to arrest him on suspicion of a string of murders. But somehow there had not been enough evidence to tie him to the scene of any of the crimes, he had had perfect (and thus, in her eyes, exceedingly suspect) alibis for several of the occasions and in the end, partially influenced by the knowledge of how JD would react, she'd let him go without charge.
That he'd then moved, without a by-your-leave, to take up a lectureship in Oxford had merely confirmed his guilt in her eyes. This was irrational, as JD had pointed out to her several times, all the while nursing a glass of his favoured single malt. Alex's departure seemed somehow to have unhinged him rather. JD's wife, Mairi, had left him shortly thereafter for a trial separation that Charlotte had always suspected of being far from trial. In one way Mairi had got what she wanted – pregnancy – but in another she knew that, without Alex, JD would only ever be a faded replica of the man she'd married.
And so she'd left. And JD (Detective Inspector Jack Daniel Shaw, to give him his full title) had taken compassionate leave, and had gone to Corsica. And, at the end of investigating a strange series of murders near Aiacciu, had ended up killing himself. Charlotte had found herself promoted to fill his shoes, and had tried to get over the strange sense of loss she felt.
But now Alex was back, to what end she had no idea. But she had a horrible feeling that she was about to find out. And an even stranger feeling that she wasn't anywhere near as sorry as she thought she ought to be to see him back.
"Well, hello," he drawled, a slightest contemptuous sneer playing across his lips. "Fancy bumping into you here!"
God, the man was arrogant, thought Charlotte to herself. She was the one who surely ought to feel contempt for him, and yet he seemed to have the upper hand already in a discussion that had barely even started.
"Dr Alexander Hetherington, I presume?" Charlotte tried to insert as much ice into her tones as she could manage, but there was something about his arrogance, not to mention his unattainability, that made him rather too dangerously attractive to her. "To what do we owe the, no I shan't say pleasure as that would be a lie, the honour of a visit from you?"
"Still the same old charming Detective Inspector..."
"Detective Chief Inspector."
"... I beg your pardon, Detective Chief Inspector Carter, I see."
The opening strikes in a rather bizarre fencing match having been delivered, each of them stood back to survey their opponent. Charlotte was irked to find herself glaring at the man, whilst he merely regarded her with a slightly amused air.
"Your business, Dr Hetherington? Entertaining though it may be to stand around trading insults with an Oxford scholar, some of us have actual work to do. In the real world."
It was silly really, the way he riled her. She had nothing particular against academia, when she bothered to think about it, which wasn't very often. And she hadn't begrudged JD his Cambridge degree – why should she? But Alex, well. She entertained a brief fantasy of managing to get him arrested for that string of murders after all; locked up in jail, having to do some real work rather than lounging around doing so-called research into social anthropology, whatever the hell that might be (although she had a vague feeling that prison might actually provide him with a prime environment for such research); and, best of all, with his pretty-boy looks, used as a fuck-toy by all the other inmates. Although, she thought savagely, he'd probably enjoy that bit of it.
She was somewhat startled to realise that the image of Alex, naked, being used for their own ends by a gang of rough hoodlums had turned her on quite considerably, and she felt a distinct moist feeling in her underwear. Worse, judging by the amused look on Alex's face, he could read her like a book and knew exactly what she'd just been thinking about, and how it had affected her. Flustered, she thought she had better try to regain control of the conversation.
"Well?"
"You mean you haven't guessed, my dear DCI Carter? I thought detectives were supposed to, well, detect things. You disappoint me."
Was it just Charlotte's imagination, or was that a sly reference to what he had just detected crossing her mind?
"I would have thought it was obvious why I was here. It's about JD."
Whatever Charlotte had expected, that most certainly was not it. What on earth could he have to say about JD? JD was dead, by his own hand. She hadn't even seen Alex at the funeral, although he could have been there; her eyes had been so swollen from crying that she hadn't given much attention to any of the other attendees, apart from Mairi. Mairi, six months pregnant at the time, now the mother of two-month old Daniel Fraser Shaw, known to one and all as "Little D". Little D was a chip off the old block, make no mistake about that. Charlotte suspected that he'd grow up to look almost exactly like his dad, and dreaded the day. She was sure that Mairi must dread it too. But no doubt Alex, were he ever to find out about Little D, wouldn't.
"What about JD? He killed himself, he's been buried, end of story."
"That's precisely it, DCI Carter. You may think it's the end of the story. You may choose to believe that he killed himself, but I don't believe that he did. I intend to find out what happened to JD, and I want you to help me."
"Me? Why me? I have more than enough on my plate here in Cambridge without running off half-cocked to start an investigation in Corsica into an event that was perfectly obviously a suicide."
"Perfectly obviously? How do you know it was perfectly obvious? Were you there?"
"Of course not. But the incident was thoroughly investigated by the gendarmes in Corsica. Unlike you, I have sufficient trust in my brother officers to imagine that they managed to perform an adequate investigation. Since they were there, and neither of us was, I rather think they were in a much better position to do so."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. You might not have been there, but I was."
Having dropped this conversational bombshell, he took a step back and surveyed Charlotte with a satisfied smile. She was completely flustered, although she recovered quickly.
"Come to confess to murdering JD, have you? What about the rest of those murders as well, while you're at it?"
"Come, come, DCI Carter. Still holding a grudge that you couldn't find anything to lock me away for? Why is it that you're so keen to imagine me in prison?"
The dratted man really must have read her mind, Charlotte fumed. She wondered if this was one of the things that got taught in social anthropology, and decided that she had better buy at least some sort of primer on the subject, the better to protect herself if this was the kind of trick that got learnt.
"But no, for your information, I did not kill JD. I loved him."
"Well, that'd hardly stop you killing him, would it? Most murders are committed by people who claim to love the person they kill."
Charlotte paused, realising that she'd allowed herself to be tricked into actually considering the ridiculous assertion that JD had been murdered.
"But, anyway, he killed himself."
Charlotte could see as well as hear his sigh of exasperation.
"Were you always this dense, DCI Carter? JD didn't seem to think so. In fact he talked quite highly of you, despite some of your more unfortunate tendencies."
Oh God. Would this man stop at nothing? Insinuating that he and a dead man had had pillow talk about her, and that what her now-dead boss had had to say about her had not been uniformly positive, was just downright mean. And it fuelled her paranoia, as she was sure that he had intended it to.,/p>
"And what would those be, Dr Hetherington?" The ice was back.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" An infuriating smirk, as in one who knows he has the upper hand, flickered across his face, to be replaced by a more sober expression. "In fact, apart from your unfortunate tendency to homophobia – something which I would hope you have now outgrown, if we are to be working together – he didn't have much bad to say about you. He thought you were a good and dogged investigator, with an occasional flash of brilliance."
Damning with faint praise, thought Charlotte. And presumptuous with it – assuming that this was all a fait accompli and that she was both willing to entertain the possibility that JD had not, in fact, killed himself, and that she was prepared to assist him in any investigation he might wish to pursue into the matter. There was also the small matter of her, er, homophobia.
Charlotte cringed now to recall how she'd reacted when JD had first come out to her. She'd been deeply shocked, had lectured him about not hurting Mairi and then, to her eternal shame, had spilled the details of JD's private life to DCI Gerrie Waters over a pint in the Salisbury Arms, even going so far as to describe his as a "damned queer bastard". In the intervening year or so, her views had mellowed considerably, as she had discovered that rather more of her friends and family, including most pertinently her baby brother Antony, were non-straight, or otherwise did not adhere to traditional gender norms.
"Your sexuality would prove no barrier to my working with you, if I were to be working with you which, of course, in this case I have no intention of doing. As a matter of interest, are you completely gay, as JD seemed to imply, or do you swing both ways?"
Damn. She hadn't meant to let that question, which she realised had subconsciously been running through her mind throughout the conversation, slip out. She blushed, which served only to make the situation worse, and looked up to see Alex half-chuckling over her embarrassment.
"Well, now there's an interesting question. I think of myself as almost exclusively gay, but for the right woman I'm sure I'd be willing to make an exception."
Was he flirting with her? Yes, she rather thought that he was. She had the distinct feeling of sailing in rather deeper and more dangerous waters than she was used to. She hadn't had a boyfriend, or even a friend with benefits or just a one night stand, since splitting up with Darren just after JD's funeral. Work-obsessed computer geek that he was, he'd failed to turn up to support her at the funeral, and that had been the final straw in what had already been a rather rocky relationship. She'd stormed out, shouting "You don't need a woman, you're already married – to your bloody machines!" And that had been the end of that, something for which Charlotte had frankly been quite relieved.
But this man. This man was far more complex than any man she'd ever been out with. Not to mention deliciously handsome. She'd told JD when he'd admitted to being in love with Alex that at least he had good taste...
This train of thought was interrupted somewhat abruptly as an out-of-breath, ruddy-faced, PC Sam Smart appeared round the corner.
"There you are, ma'am. We're all waiting for you, and Atwood'll have your guts for garters if you don't get to this meeting right now."
Damn and blast. That tedious meeting had been driven entirely out of her mind by this much more fascinating situation in front of her, with its hitherto unimagined undercurrents. But she knew from long experience of Atwood that Sam was, if anything, understating rather than overstating his reaction to her tardiness. She turned to Alex.
"I'm sorry, Dr Hetherington, but you heard the DC. I'm needed elsewhere. Now, if there's nothing else?"
"Oh, but there is, DCI Carter. I can see that I haven't yet managed to convince you that I am right in what I have concluded. Why, we haven't even got to discussing why I think JD was murdered. I'm not leaving Cambridge until I have this situation resolved. And I'm sure you'd like to see the back of me, once and for all. So perhaps you'd allow me to take you for a drink, or perhaps even to dinner?"
The flirtiness was gone, the academic superiority was back. Charlotte supposed that he was right and she should be glad to see the back of him. The trouble was that she wasn't entirely sure that she would be. Hurriedly, she arranged to meet him at seven in the Cambridge Blue, and fled towards what was bound to be a bruising encounter with Atwood, followed by a possible opportunity to catch up on her slumbers.
"'Ere, ma'am, did that chap say what I thought he said? That DCI Shaw was murdered? Is he the chap what Shaw was carryin' on with, then?"
Mutely, Charlotte nodded. Unfazed, PC Smart, his eyes as round as saucers, continued.
"You always said as what he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, di'n't you, ma'am? Looks like you's been proved right, an' all!!"
They had reached the meeting room. Steeling herself, DCI Carter turned the handle and prepared to face the music. Atwood was grinning with all the charm of a piranha.