He read out a list of names. ‘You’ll come with me to Black Wood. Keep in mind the forensic integrity of the scene,’ he warned. ‘If you find anything that might yield fingerprints or DNA, bag it and document it, per the handbook. If it’s too big to bag, talk to me, and I’ll call in Scientific Support.’
He saw disappointment on the faces of those not chosen and said, ‘I need three more volunteers to go to the Kirkhams’ house.’
‘You really did hit it off with the magistrate, didn’t you, boss?’ Garvey said.
Rickman allowed himself a smile. ‘He felt the risk to Bella Kirkham outweighed any evidential inadequacies, on this occasion.’
Hands were already up, and Rickman said, ‘Garve, I want you to lead this. You choose your team. You will arrest the Kirkhams on suspicion of kidnapping.’
‘It’d be a pleasure,’ Garvey said.
‘Child Protection officers will meet you at the house. Social Services will also send a representative to take the child into safe care.’
They were on their way by twelve forty.
* * *
Ed Shepherd was remarkably calm, given the circumstances. He listened carefully to Rickman’s explanations and instructions, acknowledging each with a nod of his head. He read through the warrant quietly, seated in the back of an unmarked car as they made their way through afternoon traffic.
‘Where’s my wife?’ he asked.
‘She’s consulting with her solicitor,’ Rickman said. There was a stillness in Shepherd that Rickman hadn’t seen before. Perhaps he really had made his peace with his god. A backlog at the station had conveniently delayed the process further. Thus it was that Mr Innes, Hilary Shepherd’s solicitor, only got to meet his client after Rickman and a convoy of four cars had left the station.
Most of the TV crews that had clustered at the entrance of the children’s home the previous day had now relocated to Edge Hill Police Station, but Scientific Support were still at the scene, and the narrow drive to the coach house was taped off. Shepherd glanced at it as they drove past, and Rickman wondered just how much hurt Catholic guilt could cause a man. He hoped a lot.
Hart used Shepherd’s key to open the front door. Shepherd stood between her and Rickman, his hands in his pockets, his mind evidently on other things. Hart stood back to let Rickman through first and he was struck by the smell of furniture polish in the hallway — before, when he and Foster had first visited, it was dusty and even a little stale. He was puzzled, too, that the stacks of boxes he had seen on his previous visit were absent. The hall was empty and glowing, the floors freshly waxed and the wood panelling buffed to a shine.
Rickman had a bad feeling about this.
A middle-aged woman stepped out of one of the rooms to the left. She was dressed in a business suit, and her hair gleamed with almost the same lustre as the woodwork. ‘Just about finished, Mr Shepherd.’ She beamed at Ed, acknowledging Rickman with a polite nod. ‘I supervised the job personally.’
Shepherd avoided his gaze, and Rickman’s unease began to take shape. He looked at the woman. ‘You are?’ he asked.
‘Emily Nickson,’ she said. ‘Top-to-Bottom Cleaning Services. Who are you?’
‘Police,’ Rickman said. ‘Stay here.’ He headed for the couple’s private quarters. The blinds were closed, and Rickman reached for the light switch. The spotlights gleamed on the newly polished wood, highlighting faint oblongs on the walls, where the great photomontages had hung. He turned full circle, noting four places where picture frames had been removed. More photographs had stood on the shelving, he recalled. There was no trace of them. Damn. Damnit!
In the hallway, Shepherd was still in contemplative pose, hands in his pockets, eyes downcast.
‘You knew why we asked you to come in today,’ Rickman said. This realisation triggered another — both Ed and Hilary had deliberately drawn out the interview process to ensure that the house had been scoured by the time they arrived.
Ms Nickson looked to Ed Shepherd for an explanation. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
‘Where are the boxes?’ Rickman asked.
‘Boxes?’ she repeated.
‘The hall was stacked with them.’
‘There were no boxes,’ she said. ‘We’re here to do a thorough clean before the new tenants arrive.’
‘Is that what you told them?’ Rickman asked, but Shepherd remained silent. ‘There are no new tenants, Ms Nickson.’
Hart came down the stairs, ushering three anxious-looking women ahead of her. ‘Not one photograph, postcard or letter,’ she said, looking shaken. ‘Every surface has been recently polished or wiped down.’
Rickman looked again at Shepherd. ‘You’ve been planning this since I came here with Lee Foster two days ago.’
Shepherd roused himself at last. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘there are others to protect.’ For a second, he glanced into Rickman’s face, and Rickman saw that the apparent calm took an effort of will. Shepherd’s eyes burned with feverish excitement.
‘You’re only making things worse,’ Rickman said.
‘For me, yes.’ Shepherd was quite calm. ‘But not for the families we saved.’
‘Saved?’ The man’s arrogance was breathtaking.
‘Yes, saved.’
Rickman looked down the hallway. Hilary Shepherd had arrived. She stood in the small porch, looking a little flushed. Strands of her hair had escaped from her ponytail and she reached up and tucked them behind her ear. ‘We call them our saved children, Chief Inspector.’
‘You admit that you were involved in the buying and selling of babies?’
Hilary ignored the question. ‘Annabelle, Mike and Bella are long gone.’ Her gaze remained on her husband, love and sadness brimming in her eyes — this information, Rickman thought, was no taunt — it was for Shepherd alone. She waited until her husband looked at her. ‘The other families are safe.’
This was the closest Hilary Shepherd had come to a confession.
‘You’ll go to prison,’ Rickman said.
She smiled at him. ‘Wouldn’t you go to prison to protect your child?’ she demanded. ‘Do anything it takes to protect your grandchild?’
‘Grandchild? You buy and sell these children like goods in a supermarket.’
Neither of them spoke.
‘I want everyone off site.’ Rickman reached for his mobile, disgust and rage burning his insides like acid. ‘That includes Mr and Mrs Shepherd.’
Hart began the evacuation immediately. Rickman scrolled down his contacts list to Tony Mayle. ‘I’m at Black Wood,’ he said. ‘They’ve had a commercial cleaning firm in.’
He listened a moment, then smiled at Mrs Shepherd. ‘You think these guys are good?’ He nodded towards the retreating cleaning staff. ‘Wait till you see what our CSIs can do. Their equipment will pick up stuff an industrial vac would miss.’ He saw a satisfying flicker of uncertainty in Hilary Shepherd’s face.
‘While they’re busy with the house, we’ll be checking phone records, credit cards, bank statements — we don’t need the originals, we can go to source for those. And that’s before we even get started with the adoption agencies.’
Hollow though the victory was, Rickman was pleased to see anxiety in the look that passed between the couple. ‘We’ll find something,’ he said.
* * *
Hilary and Ed Shepherd drove away without a backward glance, bumping along the uneven driveway, and steering around the bigger potholes as, Rickman suspected, they had done throughout their lives. When they disappeared at a curve in the drive, he made a second call.
‘Tell me you’ve got something, Garve,’ he said.
‘Sorry, boss. According to the neighbours, the Kirkhams left five minutes before we got here.’
Rickman exhaled slowly. Would one small break on this case be too much to ask?
‘Mike Kirkham took a call on his mobile in the middle of a planning meeting at the council offices. Walked out without a word of explanation,’ Ga
rvey went on. ‘Neighbour saw Annabelle Kirkham loading up the family Espace with suitcases at about the same time — I’ve sent a message to mobile patrols to watch out for them.’
‘You’ve checked the house?’ Rickman asked.
‘Empty.’
‘Secure the scene, and get Scientific Support on the job, will you?’ Rickman said. ‘We need as much evidence as we can get on these bastards.’
‘Already done, boss.’
Rickman broke the connection.
‘Boss.’ It was Naomi Hart. Her Icelandic blue eyes flashed with a rage he had never seen before in her. ‘The cleaning staff have agreed to come down to the station to make statements.’
Rickman felt an answering flash of anger and got a hold of it — he needed a clear head. ‘They’ve been thorough,’ he said. ‘So we’ll need to find a paper trail — I doubt they would be foolish enough to accept cheques in payment, but on their salary, large cash deposits or withdrawals would take some explaining. Phone records are more likely to help us find their contacts.’ He frowned, trying to remember if he had seen a computer in the house. ‘Emails?’
Hart shook her head. ‘No sign of a PC or laptop in the place,’ she said.
‘They must have this stuff stored somewhere. Get someone to check all the storage and removals firms in the area.’
They watched as the first of the white, unmarked CSI vans arrived.
He keyed the number for the emergency hotline and identified himself. ‘Anything from Melanie?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Okay. Call me immediately if she gets in touch.’ He broke the connection. ‘We need to find Melanie or her friend.’
‘Kelly,’ Hart said. ‘Last I checked, we’d narrowed the list down to eight.’ Hart sighed. ‘What kind of person would sell her own baby?’
‘The desperate kind,’ Rickman said. ‘Can you find out who issued the adoption papers? If there’s the faintest whiff of irregularity, we’ll put pressure on them. Hilary’s probably warned them, so we need to act fast.’
‘I’ll make a start as soon as I get back,’ she said.
What else? What else needs to be done? Rickman looked up into a blue sky streaked with mare’s tails, the sign of a coming storm.
* * *
Lee Foster pounced on him when he arrived back at the station.
‘Go back to the drugs team, Lee,’ Rickman said.
‘Just one question.’ Foster followed him onto the concrete stairs of the fire escape, dogging his footsteps. ‘They cleared the house, didn’t they?’
Rickman stopped. It was impossible not to admire the information network Foster operated. ‘You really do have spies everywhere, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Foster said, bitterness and frustration etched on his face. ‘Nothing slips past me — I was working side by side with them two and I didn’t have a clue they were running a cottage industry in off-the-shelf babies.’
Rickman continued up the steps. ‘I can’t talk to you about this, Lee.’
‘I know. But they must’ve cleared out fast — forensics—’
‘Teams of CSIs are scouring the children’s home and the Kirkham family home as we speak,’ Rickman interrupted. ‘Tony Mayle is coordinating. You don’t get better scientific support than that.’ They continued onto the next flight, their footsteps creating a stuttering echo in the bare concrete well.
‘Did they do it?’ Foster’s voice, roughened by emotion, echoed up the stairwell to the top of the building. ‘Jeff — did they kill Mark?’
They reached a turn in the staircase and Rickman stopped again. Foster rarely used his given name on the job — he was asking this question as a friend. ‘No, I don’t think they killed Mark.’
‘But they are running illegal adoptions?’
Rickman started walking. ‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’
Foster ran up the remaining steps. ‘Come on, Jeff, gimme a break!’
‘Lee, you’re off the case.’
‘Jesus, Jeff, I’m just asking for a straight answer. Them two were my childhood bloody heroes.’
The pain in his friend’s eyes told Rickman that he was only just holding it together. A sound lower down the stairwell decided him. Rickman opened the door on to his office landing and held it for Foster to pass through. ‘Come on,’ he said.
Inside his office, Rickman locked the door. ‘The money that was missing from the drugs raid?’
Foster nodded.
‘Seems Mark took it.’
Foster closed his eyes for a moment. ‘The soft get . . .’
‘He offered a hundred thousand to Ed Shepherd to take Bryony.’
‘Have you charged them?’
‘With what?’ Rickman asked. ‘We don’t have any solid evidence, Lee. Our suspects are refusing to talk, they’ve forensically cleaned the scene, and our one possible witness is proving hard to trace.’
Foster grew quieter, his face more grim. ‘So Tony doesn’t hold out much hope on the forensics?’
‘Scientific Support might pick up DNA from the Kirkhams’ house, but it could take weeks, and it won’t help us find them.’
‘Oh, crap.’ Foster slumped into a chair.
‘I’m sorry, Lee,’ Rickman said. ‘I know you want to bring them down as much as I do.’
Foster dragged his fingers through his hair, playing havoc with the carefully gelled spikes — a sure sign of his distress. For a while, he seemed to be struggling with some inner turmoil. ‘Tell you the truth,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t know what I want. They were good to me.’ He shifted position in the chair, folding his arms. ‘What am I on about? They loved me — and hundreds of others.’ Anyone else would be shocked to hear Foster being so honest about such a personal matter, but he and Rickman had seen each other at their darkest moments, and such experiences had only heightened their mutual regard.
‘Ed and Hilary weren’t about professional distance and behaviour modification,’ Foster went on after a lengthy pause. ‘They made you feel safe and loved when the world outside seemed cold and ugly and dangerous.’
‘They took children away from their mothers and sold them on like commodities, Lee.’
‘I know — the cop in me says they should be locked up. But us looked-after kids grow up in a different world from what most kids know — I don’t need to tell you that.’
Rickman had no answer. He knew the ugliness and deprivation most looked-after children came from and were destined to perpetuate.
Foster shook his head, staring angrily at the point of his shoe. ‘I suppose what I want is for all this not to be true.’
‘For your sake, I wish it wasn’t,’ Rickman said. ‘For the sake of the children.’ He didn’t want to think too much about what had happened to the missing boys and girls. He remembered the photographs of happy families on the wall of Ed Shepherd’s private sitting room and wanted to believe the surface image. But Rickman knew a smile could hide a lot of pain.
Chapter 32
Late afternoon. The musical clink of wine glasses and the buzz of animated conversation rose above the constant hum of traffic. The sun burned through a milky haze of high cloud, bathing the city in autumn sunshine. The wind had picked up, plucking at the skirts of the women and ruffling the hair of the men who, unable to find room in the sequestered courtyard at the back of the building, spilled out onto the paved area at the front.
Recently arrived, Rob Maitland sipped champagne and conversed politely with an earnest young man, nodding and murmuring encouragement while he scanned the crowd for more engaging company. Maitland stood out in the suited business crowd. Though not conventionally handsome, his physical charisma meant that the eyes of the other guests would frequently stray to him, and he enjoyed the attention.
A scream from across the street caused a sudden lull in the conversation. Heads turned. A woman and two men appeared from behind the corrugated iron fencing that encircled an old warehouse — one of the few remaining in the cit
y centre that had yet to be renovated. The woman, stoned and uncoordinated, swung wildly at a bearded man in a tattered suit jacket and jeans. He caught her arm, twisted it, and she fell, swearing loudly. The second man laughed and slipped his arms around her waist, groping at her breasts while he helped her to her feet. The screaming continued.
Though the scene played out across maybe twenty yards of waste ground and a busy road, the business types were becoming jittery, and the photographer and reporter circulating the crowd started showing an interest.
Maitland touched his earnest companion’s arm, excusing himself. The restaurant was corralled off from the street by a low wall with iron palings, and one of his men was stationed at the gate, doubling as bouncer and bodyguard. Maitland moved at a lazy saunter, but energy fizzed off him.
‘Sort that, will you?’ he said quietly. ‘It’s spoiling the vibe.’ Then he turned his back on the spectacle as if it meant no more to him than sparrows squabbling over a crust of bread.
Maitland’s man crossed the road onto the wasteland, his shoes kicking up small puffs of brick dust from the bulldozed ground. The woman, by far the most vigilant of the group, stopped mid-scream, instantly wary. She detached herself from the other two and stood twirling a lock of her hair anxiously between her fingers as Maitland’s man spoke.
Across the street, those of the business party who watched saw initial bravado in the two men. Then Maitland’s bodyguard made a half-turn and nodded towards his boss. The ragged threesome stared into the crowd on the restaurant courtyard. Maitland was laughing at some joke with one of the businessmen. He patted the man on the shoulder, then moved on, into a space. With a clear line of sight over the roadway, he stared in silence at the trio who had disturbed the party.
The woman took flight, and the two men followed after, scrambling across the waste ground like mice disturbed by footfall. He watched until they disappeared behind the corrugated steel fence.
The restaurant owner came over, smiling. ‘Got any more where he came from?’ she asked, lifting her fine-boned chin in the direction of Maitland’s bodyguard. She was tall and long-limbed, her hair copper gold and tightly curled, her skin warmed by Jamaican blood a couple of generations down the line. ‘A quiet word from the right quarter and trouble just disappears.’
DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 22
