All That Is Buried

by Robert Scragg

  She offered to stay, but he waved her away, checking his watch. Kam Qureshi had said to give him a call this morning. He apparently knew someone who could help prove or disprove Porter’s theory, after Jake had spent chunks of Sunday turning over different possibilities, pulling them apart, and seeing how easily they went back together.

  The more he thought about it, the more it made sense that the rose garden itself had some sort of significance. He’d logged on, looked through the photos they’d taken before digging the roses up and, sure enough, not all the bushes looked quite the same. Seemed to be a couple of different types. They’d all still be across there. Kam had arranged for the bushes to be re-potted, preserving them. It stood to reason that as they’d been growing in the same soil the bodies had lain in, they might contain trace evidence. What if the perp had snagged on a thorn, Kam had argued? Left a pinprick of DNA behind?

  Porter walked slowly into the park, taking his time, looking around and wondering which entrance their killer had used when he brought the bodies. Another possibility bounced up and down in his head, like an attention-seeking child. Bodies uncovered in pairs. What if the pairs had been buried at the same time? Could one person have transported both without being seen? Had he been going about this all wrong, sending his team searching for an individual? It wouldn’t be out of the question for there to be an accomplice.

  Despite the temperature creeping up into double figures, he felt the breeze chill him, tickling the strands of hair around his ears, making his scalp prickle with tiny pins and needles. He looked around: dozens of people going about their days, not one of them appearing to pay him a blind bit of notice. If that were true, why could he not shake the feeling, a slow crawl down his neck and across his back, that someone was out there, watching the park, watching him?

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ‘Ah, there you are, Porter. Just in time.’

  ‘For what, sir?’

  ‘I’m running a press conference at ten on the Victoria Park case.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s wise, sir?’

  The words slipped out before he could stop himself. Milburn’s face darkened as he tilted his head downwards a half inch, so he could give Porter the full schoolteacher effect of looking over the rims of his glasses. Porter reworded hastily before Milburn could speak. ‘What I mean to say is one of our working theories is that the island is like a shrine for them. Somewhere they might visit again. More press coverage might scare them off.’

  ‘More press coverage?’ Milburn repeated. ‘More than that part where you let a news team trample over the scene and hide cameras? I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?’

  ‘Not necessarily, sir,’ Porter protested. ‘I don’t mean your average perp just popping back to admire their handiwork type of affair. This place was special to them. Maybe special enough to take a chance when they think we’re all done with it.’

  Porter held back mentioning his theory about the roses for now. Without any hard facts, Milburn would swat it away.

  ‘And in the meantime, I just pay overtime to have officers taking nice long walks in the park?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t—’

  ‘There’s a press conference arranged for lunchtime. When I said you were just in time, I meant to start prepping for it, not for me to ask your permission to do it. One dead child is bad enough, but nine? Might have been different if we could have controlled the narrative, kept the numbers out of the public domain for the time being, but seeing as you couldn’t manage that, we need to get out in front of this and dictate the flow of information. The bloody Standard have already thrown in their first serial killer strapline.’

  No sense arguing, Porter thought. When Milburn made his mind up he was like a truck with its brakes cut. He’d keep going until he hit something else big enough to stop him.

  ‘You’ll be leading, I assume, sir?’

  Milburn gave a curt nod. ‘I’ll read out a statement, and you can field any questions, or any you can actually answer at least. We’ll be appealing to anyone who has visited the park in the last few years, asking if they’ve noticed any unusual activity, anyone clambering round on that island, that type of thing. I take it we still don’t have IDs on all victims?’

  Porter shook his head. ‘Working on it.’

  ‘OK, so we also include an appeal for anyone with a missing child that fits the age profile, for any links to the park, anyone who might have taken their child there before they disappeared.’

  Times like this, Porter wished Milburn would stay behind his desk, stick to the politics and leave him be. A press conference at this stage could do more harm than good. Asking parents if their kids had been to the park could bring dozens, hundreds even, of calls flooding in. They’d already confirmed that several of those they’d identified had never set foot in the place, so if there was a link, it was unlikely to be that. Some battles weren’t worth fighting, though, especially not with stubborn bastards like Roger Milburn.

  Rock and a hard place though. If they didn’t feed the press something, unchecked speculation could be just as bad. Worse in some cases. Best case, a flood of calls. The flip side, maybe someone sees someone acting suspicious, takes matters into their own hands.

  ‘I’ve asked Anthea in comms to pull a statement together. Let’s meet in my office half an hour before to go over it.’

  Porter barely had time to nod agreement before Milburn was marching off down the corridor. Quick check of the watch. Half an hour before he had to be in the superintendent’s office. No time to go and see Kam until afterwards. He headed back to his desk, doing a mental run through of what he’d say to the usual press conference questions, wondering whether somebody out there would be watching who knew the children. Cared about them. Had killed them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Milburn oozed confidence as he read out his pre-prepared statement, a politician addressing his constituents. The questions that followed were almost exclusively batted to Porter by his Teflon-shouldered boss. Did they have any suspects? How were the children killed? Should the public be worried that a serial killer was stalking the streets? With the likes of that last one, he sometimes wondered whether they expected or even wanted anything other than a vague answer that would give them leeway to speculate, spicing up their headline with some kind of cheesy pun.

  He was getting ready to finish up and close it down when a familiar voice piped up, one final spanner slipped into the spokes of his day.

  ‘Detective Porter? Amy Fitzwilliam, Sky News. What can you tell us about links between this case and the disappearance of Libby Hallforth?’

  Subtly different from many of the others. Open-ended, assuming. Porter took a sip of water, working through the best way to answer, the one that left the least gaps to poke back through.

  ‘At this stage we’re not treating the two as linked, but as you know, I’m leading on both, so if any links do present themselves, I’ll be sure to investigate those thoroughly.’

  ‘So Simon Hallforth being arrested is purely a coincidence, then?’ she asked, sweet as a daughter wrapping dad around their finger.

  They hadn’t gone public with that. How the hell did she know? No time to question where her information came from. Better to act like it was a throwaway soundbite, something he cared as much about as what he’d had for breakfast.

  ‘Mr Hallforth has been arrested,’ he confirmed, seeing it land, rippling around the room in a dozen surprised faces, impressed and annoyed that she’d been the only one to know. ‘But it’s not in connection with either his daughter’s disappearance or the Victoria Park case.’

  ‘What’s he been arrested for, then, and how likely is it he’ll be charged?’ she fired back, not giving anyone else in the room time to react and piggyback on her success.

  ‘As I said, Miss Fitzwilliam, it’s an unrelated matter, and we’re just here to talk about Victoria Park today. Now, if there’s no more questions,’ he said, pushing up and away from the table, i
gnoring the clamour of whats, whys and whens that flew his way from the assembled journalists. Milburn fired up a winning politician’s smile and followed Porter through a door, and back into the corridor beyond.

  ‘You want to tell me where she’s getting her information from?’ he snapped, after checking the door was closed.

  ‘We’ve got a tight team, sir. No way this came from one of them,’ Porter said.

  ‘You’d stake your reputation on it?’

  ‘I would,’ Porter answered, no hesitation.

  ‘In that case, you just did. I find out this came from your team, it’s on you.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, does it really matter that they know he’s banged up? Doesn’t affect our other cases.’

  ‘It’s the principle. We need to control the flow of information. We lose that, we lose credibility.’

  There was more to it than that, though. Milburn had become Porter’s boss, when his previous one, George Campbell, was found to have been in the pocket of Alexander Locke, the very crime baron that Porter had been tasked to take down. Campbell was guilty by association in a number of deaths, and it had been swept under the carpet, all in the name of avoiding giving the Met a bloody nose. Granted, the evidence against him had been circumstantial without Locke alive to corroborate, but Milburn would dance around the facts like Fred Astaire if he deemed it in the interests of the force. He’d done it then, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

  ‘Speaking of controlling information,’ he said, checking his watch, ‘I’m due in the deputy commissioner’s office now to bring him up to speed. Call me if anything breaks.’

  And like that, he was off again, dropping his orders like a mic on stage, walking off with no right of reply.

  Porter shook his head, pulled out his phone and called Kam Qureshi. It seemed to ring forever, and Porter was wondering if something was up with the voicemail that should have kicked in by now. He was about to end the call and take his chances dropping by when Kam answered, breathy, as if he’d sprinted to grab his phone.

  ‘Now a good time?’ Porter asked.

  ‘There’s never a good time,’ Kam said. ‘Just degrees of inconvenience.’

  ‘Well, here’s hoping I’m the least inconvenient problem you have today,’ Porter said, getting back to his desk and dropping into his chair. ‘You said to give you a call anyway?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Something between a swallow and a slurp. ‘Sorry, protein shake. Yes, so your text said you need to speak to someone about roses. I assume it’s not just you getting romantic in your old age?’

  Another side reference to him and Evie, or just Kam’s attempt at humour?

  ‘Yeah, something like that.’

  ‘There’s a guy I know at Kew Gardens. Helped me out with a case a few years back, you remember the Leo Olivera case?’

  Porter hadn’t worked the case himself, but knew the detail. Leo Olivera was a Brazilian, living in London, who had killed his mistress when she called things off. He’d denied having been at the scene, or even seeing her at all that week, but the nail in his coffin was pollen. He’d sent her flowers earlier on the day she died, and when the police had arrested him, they’d found traces of pollen on his sweater, from the same flowers that had only been in her apartment for less than an hour. Turned out he’d watched them getting delivered, then called her, trying to woo her back. Apologies and begging turned to anger and broken windows. She had thrown the bouquet at him when he got inside, and enough had stuck to make the case tight enough to see him get life.

  ‘Wasn’t one of mine, but yeah.’

  ‘His name’s Marc Booth. I’ll text you his number. He’s expecting your call.’

  ‘You’re a legend, Kam.’

  ‘Flattery gets you everywhere. Got another little extra for you to perk you up. We gave the roses a once over and found a few bits and pieces. Don’t get too excited, I’m not talking enough to give you someone’s name, age and inside leg measurement, but there are some trace fibres snagged on a few thorns. Goatskin, if you can believe it.’

  ‘Goat.’ Porter sounded as confused as he felt. ‘What did they do, swim across? I didn’t see anything like that on the island.’

  Muffled laughter from Qureshi. ‘Not from a live goat. The guy isn’t making pagan sacrifices. No, goatskin is used in some of the higher-end gardening gloves apparently.’

  ‘So good enough to match if we find who owns the gloves?’

  ‘Should be, yep.’

  ‘Seriously, mate, I owe you.’

  ‘I’ll stick it on the tab, shall I?’ he said. ‘Still got a few results to come back from the bits and pieces we found with the bodies, clothing fragments and the like. I’ll let you know as and when.’

  Porter thanked him and signed off. Quick glance at the time. Five whole minutes since he’d walked out of the press conference. Might as well pop back up to where his team sat and see if the tip-off calls had started rolling in while he waited for Kam to text through details of the Kew Gardens guy.

  Styles looked deep in conversation with Gus Tessier as he walked in. They both clocked in around the six four mark, but with Gus’s bulked-out physique, it looked like Styles could fit in his jacket twice over. Styles looked up as Porter joined them.

  ‘True what they say, the camera adds ten pounds. You look much better in the flesh.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the guys,’ he batted back. ‘You saw the press conference, then?’

  Styles nodded. ‘Our friend from Sky News, she’s a bit of a terrier, isn’t she?’

  ‘Don’t get me started,’ Porter said. ‘Need to have eyes wide open around that one.’ He turned to look at Tessier. ‘Did we get anything back on the contractors, Gus?’

  ‘Thirty-four in the last five years, boss. Working through them now. Some are still with Nexon, others have left, but we’ll work through that,’ he said in his low rumble, like an idling motorcycle. ‘Give me till tomorrow. Speaking of which, I’d best get back to it.’

  ‘What next, then, boss?’ Styles asked, leaning back in his chair. ‘We working both cases today, or sticking with the park?’

  There’d be headlines and photos from today’s conference in the evening editions. Porter knew what Milburn would say, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon Libby just yet. A half-formed plan pressed its nose up against the glass in his mind. Not without risk, but what didn’t have a slice of that these days?

  ‘Bit of both. I’ve got something I need you to chase up,’ he said, running Styles through his theory about the roses, and the fibres Kam had found.

  ‘You think they’re like a calling card, then?’

  ‘Careful,’ Porter wagged a finger. ‘You know who leaves calling cards, don’t you? And yes, I will make you pay the tenner if you say it. I’m thinking more of a tribute. Whoever planted them, he had to know his stuff. What they’d need to grow. How much light, water, general maintenance, that sort of thing.’

  As if on cue, Porter’s phone buzzed. A text from Kam with the number he’d promised, which Porter then forwarded to Styles.

  ‘How about you? What you up to while I call Kew Gardens?’

  ‘Easier if I tell you later,’ Porter said. ‘That way, you can’t get in trouble for not trying to stop me.’

  ‘Cos of course I’ve got a good track record of stopping you from doing what you want,’ said Styles, smiling, but Porter could see the concern in his eyes.

  ‘I need to speak to Evie about something. I’ll be a couple of hours tops. Cover for me if Milburn comes sniffing.’

  He left Styles to chase up the rose line of enquiry, grabbed his car keys and headed downstairs. Traffic was light for the time of day, and his drive took around forty-five minutes. Long enough for him to question the sanity of what he was about to do. Short enough for him to avoid changing his mind. He called Simmons as he pulled up at his destination.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ she asked.

  ‘Can’t it just be because I wanted to
hear your voice?’ he said, making the most of the light mood before he soured it.

  ‘Could be, but it isn’t, is it?’

  ‘Nothing gets past you. You should be a detective.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ she said, waiting him out past the jokes.

  ‘We might actually be making some progress in the park case,’ he said, giving her a whistle-stop tour of where they were at. ‘Just as well, cos that’s all Milburn wants to talk about. As far as he’s concerned, Libby Hallforth is yesterday’s news until this gets wrapped up.’

  ‘I’d love to contradict you, but I know what he’s like,’ she said. ‘You know if there’s anything else I can do to help, I will.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, a sigh giving away his mood. ‘That’s why I called actually. I’m following up a lead on her case today, but I didn’t want to get you in any trouble.’

  A pause. ‘What kind of trouble? Jake, where are you?’

  ‘I’m down at Creekmouth Industrial Estate,’ he said, waiting for the penny to drop. That took all of one second.

  ‘Jake, you can’t!’ She spoke low and urgent, clearly somewhere she couldn’t raise her voice, no matter how much she wanted to.

  ‘I can’t sit around and do nothing, Evie. The longer she’s missing, the less people care. I figure your team will have eyes on the building, so they’ll see me go in. I want you to go and see DI Maartens. Tell him you have reason to believe I’m heading to Creekmouth, and that you tried to talk me out if it. Should save you from any fallout. If I don’t call you back in half an hour, you might want to send someone in looking for me.’

  He batted back her attempts to change his mind, and told her again to call Maartens, then hung up and went to meet Branislav Nuhić.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  On the face of it, the building was a bakery factory. The loading bay to the right was full, six trucks decked out in the blue and white company colour scheme. A steady stream of men decked out in white overalls carried trays from inside the building, sliding them into racks inside the vans.