Hard Time Read online

  I’ll be pissing on your grave, cop.

  Jenny Page’s overnight hospital stay had been extended for at least twenty-four hours. Bev and Mac were on the way to the Nuffield. Mac was honoured: he was in the Vauxhall’s driving seat. It normally took weeks before Bev would relinquish the wheel to a partner. And never her MG’s. Maybe it was because he’d stuck up for her in the exchange with Powell. Mac could obviously think on his feet and the impromptu stand-up had put him in her good books, unless he overstepped the mark.

  “Does he always try and wind you up, sarge?”

  She considered the question carefully. Before the attack, she’d have had no hesitation saying that Powell saw it as part of his job spec. But she’d seen another side since. In the immediate aftermath, he’d been painfully polite. Not so much skirting the issue as erecting wardrobes round it.

  But who was she to talk? Or not. She’d not discussed the rape in detail with a living soul, including her therapist. “You’re in denial, Ms Morriss, yadda yadda. Not dealing with it, Ms Morriss, blah-de-blah.” True, though. And if it was difficult for her to cope with, it couldn’t be easy for the people around her, especially an emotionally stunted guy like Powell.

  Initially he’d gone for the kid-glove treatment. Like that would work. It was the last thing she needed and she’d hit back hard. In the last month or so, she’d detected his attitude gradually toughening. She smiled and shook her head. Ironic or what? The DI goes in for a few gratuitous piss-takes and she welcomes the change.

  “I give as good as I get, Mac.”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “Next left.” She looked away, smile on her face. It froze as she spotted a familiar figure. Was that Stephen Cross? And who was the blonde? Had Bev seen her before? She swung in the seat but Mac was a member of the Morriss school of driving, fast and furious: the couple were almost out of sight. “Turn round, mate.”

  He pointed at a road sign. “One way.”

  “Sod it.” At least they knew Cross was back in town. Edgbaston, no less. The Nuffield was only a few blocks from his home. They’d pay a house call after the hospital visit.

  Being private, the place looked more like a rest home or a health farm. A nurse showed them to the room and left them to it. Bev hoped Jenny Page didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as she looked. Slumped listlessly on top of a single bed, her sallow skin co-ordinated with the sepia décor, the blonde hair was matted to her scalp. A silver-framed photograph of Daniel stood on the bedside table. Perhaps she’d drifted off staring at the smiling image of her son.

  “Sedation’s kicked in, then?” Mac stood at Bev’s shoulder.

  She glared but the guy was right. Jenny Page didn’t even know they were there.

  “What’d she want to see you for, sarge?”

  Bev shrugged. The message, buried under all the others on her desk, hadn’t specified. “I’ll leave a note so she’ll know I dropped by.”

  She was still scrabbling at the bottom of her bag for a pen when Mac’s phone shrilled. He turned, head hunched, voice so low she only caught the odd word. There were a zillion notices telling people to switch off mobiles and she was about to give him a bollocking, until he turned back and she saw his face. The eyes rendered the words almost superfluous.

  “They’ve found a kid’s body.” He jammed the phone in a pocket. “Wasteland in Selly Oak.”

  25

  The wasteland was close to a council playground, primary colours bathed in golden sunlight. Bev registered the bright tableau as Mac drove past, carried the pictures in her head. Little kids playing happily on a slide, beaming toddlers on the swings, a roundabout standing empty. Paradise Row, it was called.

  The children were out of sight now but the soundtrack of excited laughter mixed with high-pitched squeals carried across the crime scene. A scene as bleak as any Bev had attended. The wasteland abutted a row of pebble-dashed council houses, twitching net curtains and trailing trellis. Similar properties had stood here not that long ago; building rubble littered the site, rusting bedsprings poked through a stained mattress, two supermarket trolleys locked handles as if in weird sexual foreplay. Here and there nature staked claims with colonies of nettles and dandelions, daisies and dock. It was eerily quiet: voices were hushed, movement slow, even the streamers of police tape hung motionless in the still air. Foul smells lingered: dog mess, cat pee – and something sweet, sickly sweet.

  Bev stood a few metres from a shallow grave that partially covered the body of a little boy. White-suited SOCOs were standing by and uniforms who’d fingertip every inch of the land were waiting for a green. Everyone was hanging fire for the pathologist, except the police photographers who’d already shot stills and videos. They’d take more once the body was turned.

  “Poor little man.” The words were trite but Mac appeared genuinely moved. He was kicking grit, head down, hands deep in pockets. She’d watched him brush a tear from his eye. Some officers never showed emotion. Wasn’t macho, was it? Maybe later they did. Over a sixth pint or second bottle. Bev sighed, gave a sad nod. Poor little man was probably as good an epitaph as any. Words didn’t exist that could cover a child’s death. It was the ripple effect across an ocean.

  “Is it Daniel?” Mac asked softly. No one had the answer.

  A tarpaulin sheet lay to one side where, according to the jogger who stumbled across it, a dog or fox may have dragged it. The little boy lay face down, blond hair cropped close to the skull. The body was fully clothed apart from shoes; skinny little legs were crossed at the ankle. One Dennis the Menace sock was higher than the other. Bev bit her lip; recalled Jenny Page burying her face into her lost boy’s t-shirt.

  It had to be Daniel, didn’t it? Who else could it be? Since day one, she’d tried to ignore the stats but they were compelling. If abducted kids are murdered, seventy-six per cent die within six hours of being taken; within twenty-four hours that shoots to ninety-six per cent. After three days, none survive.

  She raised a hand in greeting as a grim-faced Byford picked his way across the site. She knew he’d blame himself if Daniel were dead. They all would, to a certain degree, but the guv would take the lion’s share. It wasn’t just professional can-carrying, it was in the big man’s nature.

  “Where’s Overdale?” He scowled. Bev shrugged. The pathologist had got a call same as everyone, but wasn’t best known for her time-keeping. “Get the bloody woman here now, I’m not having...”

  “Guv.” Bev tilted her head. Dr Overdale’s Range Rover was looming into view.

  “About bloody time.” Unlike Byford, this. The guv didn’t often swear and was Mr Cool in a crisis. Who or what was rattling his cage?

  “Superintendent.” Gillian Overdale’s tight smile wasn’t returned.

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  Apart from pursing permanently puckered lips, Overdale ignored the rebuke. Kneeling close to the little boy, she snapped open the locks on a steel case and peeled on surgical gloves. The first examination was visual, external. Her expert gaze swept the body, searching for signs of injury. As everyone knew, the real work came later in the morgue.

  How did they do it? Bev wondered. She hated being close to dead bodies. Best advice she’d ever had was don’t look. The brain’s a camera. Once seen, an image is imprinted forever, so don’t take the pics in the first place. Easier said than done. Her head was full of the bloody things.

  “Get those ghouls out of my sight!” Byford’s sudden verbal explosion startled a colony of crows in nearby tree-tops. Branches cracked as wings beat and the huge black birds took off, circling and screeching overhead. Both the birds and Byford’s outburst had shattered Bev’s thoughts, jerked her back from the distance she’d deliberately created. She looked in the direction of the guv’s accusing finger.

  A gaggle of thirty or so locals lined the police tape at the edge of the site. Teenage mums with babes in arms, kids in school uniform, middle-aged women with fags in their mouth. Better than daytime telly, this was
. Two uniforms were already on the way to disperse the audience.

  “I take it your people have done their thing?” Overdale asked without looking round.

  “Finished half an hour ago,” Byford said.

  Gently the pathologist turned the little boy’s body, her own shielding it from Bev. Not that she complained. An occasional burst of radio static and a dog’s almost nonstop barking disturbed the silence as Overdale continued her examination. Still kneeling, she delivered her initial observations.

  “Can’t give you a cause of death. Nothing obvious. No apparent injuries. Given the state of the body, he’s been dead hours rather than days. I’ll run the post mortem this evening. Seven o’clock. Can’t tell you anything more until after that.”

  But Bev could. As Overdale rose, Bev had a clear view of the body. The little boy lay on his back, wide eyes staring sightlessly into a cloudless sky. She shot a hand to her mouth, felt the colour drain from her face.

  “Sarge?” Mac reached out an arm as she swayed forward.

  “It’s not Daniel.” She breathed. “Look at his eyes.”

  Big beautiful eyes – almost as blue as Bev’s.

  Any relief in knowing Daniel Page might still be alive was tempered by the fact that an unidentified child lay dead on a steel slab in the city morgue at Newhall Street. DI Powell and DC Pemberton were on the way there. The guv had assigned Mike Powell senior investigating officer to the new inquiry that had been codenamed Operation Hawk. It was seven pm, three hours since the body’s discovery.

  At Highgate, Byford paced an incident room that was still in the throes of being set up. He sidestepped technicians as they carried in gear and walked round electricians installing it. A mobile IU and most of a hastily appointed squad was already active at the Paradise Row site. With two major criminal investigations plus regular smaller-scale inquiries, they were short on space and – more important – personnel.

  Bev and Mac were on hand, with Seth Gregson, the information officer who was running the admin show. Short and stocky, Seth did more than shuffle papers; IOs were human hard disks. Scanning, logging, prioritising, cross-referencing, updating hundreds of witness statements, police reports, messages, phone calls, every scrap of information that could have a bearing on an inquiry. Gregson was one of the best. The top man was on Sapphire.

  “A child can’t just go missing,” Byford said. “Why hasn’t it been reported? Where are the parents, for Christ’s sake?”

  His complexion was tinged with grey, sweat dampened non-designer stubble. He looked as rough as Bev felt. Her throat and chest were still sore from throwing up. The nausea had kicked in back at the nick. It didn’t often happen these days. Delayed shock, perhaps. Plus the heat, and the smell of rotting pork that clung to her hair and skin. As for the electric-blue suit, she was getting shot of it anyway.

  “Bound to get a steer soon, guv.” The search team and dog handlers were still at the location, officers were canvassing passers-by and uniforms were on the knock. Christ, a whole row of houses backed on to the wasteland. Surely no one could dump a body without being seen.

  As well as the police activity, the press boys had been busy. The story had been running on TV and radio for a couple of hours. The media circus had set up camp while the body was still on site. No big surprise, given how many of the locals had mobiles clamped to their necks. There’d been no police news conference but plenty of press speculation: sad-faced, mournful-toned pieces to camera all milking the Paradise Row name. As in hell on...

  Byford finally came to rest on the edge of a desk. “I wish I had your faith, sergeant.”

  Sergeant? Bad as that? She shrugged. She was doing her media-liaising bit in a minute, conveying what little they had on Operation Sapphire with the even leaner offerings on Operation Hawk. The news hounds might be content with the occasional titbit on the kidnap but they’d be chasing every crumb on the dead child. “What if they want you on camera, guv?”

  “Saying what?”

  She spread empty hands. “Appeal for witnesses? Help identifying the body? Usual stuff.”

  “You do it.” He rubbed a hand over drawn features. “I can’t see the point.”

  Bev took in the slumped posture, the flat tone, reckoned there was more than one point the big man wasn’t seeing.

  26

  In his office a few minutes later, Byford was seeing so many points he felt dizzy. A five-year-old boy was in the hands of kidnappers and now the mystery death of another child. Two major on-going inquiries that demanded a hundred per cent of everything from everyone, in particular a fully focused SIO.

  So why couldn’t Byford get Harry Maxwell’s ugly smirk out of his head? Patrols had failed to locate either the crime boss or his right-hand henchman, Jaswinder Ghai. Uniform had been out much of the day trawling massage parlours, casinos, clubs, pubs – all Maxwell’s usual haunts. His home, a detached Tudor pile on the outskirts of Alvechurch, was under surveillance. But for how long?

  Operations Sapphire and Hawk had to take precedence. The detective couldn’t afford to waste valuable resources on a case still based more on instinct than evidence. Death threats and a penchant for hiring Asians weren’t proof of anything.

  He rose, paced the space, hands deep in pockets. He kicked himself for giving Maxwell an easy ride the other day in The Grapes. It wouldn’t happen again. The cocky bastard thought he could walk on water.

  And get away with murder?

  “Boss always like that, sarge?” Mac offered her something that reeked of cheese and resembled a bright orange slug. She was starving, not suicidal. He munched as they walked along the corridor.

  “How’d you mean?” The question was unnecessary; she knew where he was coming from. The guv had been uncharacteristically negative, leading from the back.

  “Wasn’t exactly Braveheart in there, was it?”

  She turned, hands on thrust hips. “Fuck you know, Tyler?” The benefit-of-the-doubt shop was empty. “He’s a bigger man than you’ll ever be.” OK, she knew it was childish: “Fatso.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure.” He casually licked orange fuzz from his fingers.

  She wasn’t expecting that; she threw him a life-threatening glare. “The guv’s got a lot on his plate, right now. Fucking dinner service full.”

  Mac shrugged, shoved the empty pack in his pocket. “Goes with the job. Know what they say about kitchens and heat?”

  Finger jabbing, she let rip. “Don’t slag the guy off. Yo u haven’t got a fucking clue. He’s forgotten more about policing than you’ll ever pick up. Constable.”

  “Know the workings of the great man’s mind, do we, sarge?”

  She moved in, caught a whiff of cheesy breath. “Back off, fuckwit.”

  “Everything OK, Bev?” Vince Hanlon’s head poked round the corner.

  She nodded, held eye contact with Tyler. “As your senior officer...”

  “Act like one then, Bev.” She flinched. Not because Tyler had used her name but the way he’d spoken the words. No hint of aggression or defiance; well-meant advice gently administered. “I’m the new guy, remember? I asked a reasonable question. Your loyalty does you proud, sergeant. But not your attitude.”

  Tears blurred her eyes and she turned her head. She’d heard it before, never really listened. But there was something about this guy... OK, they weren’t going to be instant best buddies – and there’d certainly be no kiss-and-make-up-session – but maybe she’d try to find another benefit-of-doubt place to shop.

  He touched her arm; she didn’t pull back. “OKM?” he asked tentatively.

  Easy peasy. “OK, mate,” she said. His eyes lit when he smiled. There was mischief in hers. “FOF.”

  He worked it out fast. “You swear too much.” Then wagged a finger in mock admonition. “And I’m not fat.”

  DI Powell slumped next to Carol Pemberton on a wooden bench in a narrow corridor at the Newhall Street morgue. The busy black-and-white floor was marginally less nauseating than the
bile-green walls. Neither held a candle to the gut-wrenching odours all around them. Disinfectant hadn’t been invented that could mask the smell of death. A hot shower and a change of clothes would get rid of most of it, but not the stink at the back of the throat. That would be trapped there for days.

  “Is this the short straw, or what?”

  Pemberton raised an eyebrow. Given why they were here, others were a damn sight shorter.

  “Inspector?” Overdale in green scrubs, mask slung round her neck, beckoned to them. Appropriately booted and suited, they followed her into the dissection area. Powell breathed slowly through his mouth, carefully timing each inhalation and exhalation if only to concentrate on something other than the corpse. He hated post mortems with a passion. It was about the only time in his professional life that he found the bravado almost impossible to sustain. It would be infinitely harder now. Until this evening, he’d managed to avoid attending a child’s autopsy. Maybe if he closed his eyes...

  Worse. He saw Sam in his mind’s eye. The DI’s brother had died at about the same age as the little boy on the slab. Sam had been swept to sea off a Greek island, his body never found. It was the Powells’ last family holiday. After Sam’s death, there was no family. Not to speak of. His father walked out, his mother never really recovered. It was no cliché to say her death five years ago had been a release.

  Powell rarely thought about any of it, never talked about it. But his mind was currently running the movie. What was the saying? What doesn’t kill us makes us strong? He’d played the tough guy so long, he’d forgotten the tender part.

  Until now.

  Maybe it was the tag round the tiny toe: a little boy reduced to a number. Or those dead eyes, the shade of the sea on a summer’s day. Powell steeled himself as the pathologist selected a scalpel – passed out as she made the first cut.