Kelly got up and went to the kitchen. Johnny had left her a note: he’d gone off for a training run, but she should call him if she wanted. If she wanted. It didn’t matter what she wanted. She wanted Jenna Fraser to still be alive, so she could talk to her and explain that no matter what it was she no longer cared about, it was worth fighting for. But she’d spoken to drug addicts before, hundreds of them, and each time she was left in no doubt that a drug-altered mind was a mere shell. She had to let it go.
She opened the fridge and took out a beer. She opened it and took it outside onto the wooden terrace overlooking the river, grabbing a blanket on her way. The night was cold and the weather forecasters said they should expect a white Christmas. She curled up on a lounger, wrapping herself in the blanket. The water was still and the sky was clear, enabling her to gaze at a canopy of bright stars.
Johnny knew the guy who’d found Jenna. Kurt Fletcher was an experienced fell runner and he’d seen some injuries in his time; in fact, at Johnny’s suggestion, he was applying to join the mountain rescue. Kelly had visited the crime scene herself, and she’d studied the photographs for hours. She’d thought hard about who else in her team should see them. Kate Umshaw had three daughters around the same age as Jenna. She remembered a senior officer saying once that the police were just people, and it was true. Jenna Fraser’s body was something that no one should ever have to witness. But at the same time, it was their job.
In London, Kelly had seen gunshot wounds, knife wounds, beheadings and beatings. It was the fact that she was being told that Jenna had done this to herself that she couldn’t stomach. Her deep respect for Ted as a professional fought with her visceral need to seek justice. Ruling a suicide and leaving the family to throw away unopened Christmas presents wasn’t justice; it was criminal. The problem was that suicide wasn’t a crime. The Murder Investigation Manual, used by every detective in the country, said that all death was to be treated as criminal until proven otherwise. But she’d looked at it from every angle, and still couldn’t get away from the fact that Jenna’s death was self-inflicted. She knew that she’d behaved like a child towards Ted, and she also knew that they would have to have a grown-up conversation sometime soon.
She was aware of the front door opening, and craned her neck to beyond the living room, knowing it would be Johnny and smiling in relief. If anyone could understand, it was him. It wasn’t only the fact that during his time in the army he had witnessed the mangling of human bodies, whether it be from execution or war; it was more that he knew what she was thinking. It was the pessimism that accompanied a waste of life that he understood.
He came out to the terrace and kissed her.
‘Case closed today,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sat down. He looked tired and dirty.
‘Where d’you go?’
‘Just up Fairfield.’
‘Just up Fairfield’ was actually a vertical scramble of almost nine hundred feet. Johnny had his sights on the Lakeland 100, a hundred-mile race through the fells beginning at Ullswater that took even elite runners over twenty-four hours to complete. Ninety per cent of entrants dropped out at the halfway point, gaining Lakeland 50 status instead. Kelly thought him crazy, but she knew he’d do it. She looked at his muddy legs.
‘You follow the beck?’ she asked.
He nodded. He moved over to her lounger and placed his hand on her hip.
‘I need a shower,’ he said.
They’d stopped inviting one another over to stay the night. Instead, they’d fallen into a rough pattern of seeing where the day ended up. They led similar lives, in that their rhythms were irregular, a mixture of intensity and complete quiet, and of course Johnny now had Josie to think of. Neither could have existed in jobs that brought a nine-to-five tempo to their days. Each understood the other’s absence and equally appreciated the time they had together between the chaos. As a result, they’d yet to book a proper holiday, preferring instead to hike together and come home to a fire and a bottle of red, or in summer to find a hidden pool or tarn and eat a picnic.
‘I’ve got soup and cheese in the fridge,’ Kelly said.
‘Perfect, I won’t be long.’
She could have told him what Ted had said; it would be normal for her to go into the details of his findings. Sharing her cases with Johnny had become part of unwinding at the end of a long week. Likewise, he shared his experiences of the fells with her; the ways in which people got themselves lost or harmed on the mountainside without preparation or supplies. He knew that she’d talk to him about Jenna when she was ready. She’d already told him that the girl was considered a classic suicide profile. In other words, her mental state had been proven to be such that she’d provided her own motive. In any death, the detective looked for weapons, wounds and whys. Jenna Fraser ticked all the boxes. That was why Kelly had to let it go. Her weapon was forest and crag. Her wounds were consistent with running and jumping. And her why was crippling lack of self-esteem, compounded by learning difficulties and a lack of mental health intervention, along with isolation that had started at the age of eleven.
The girl was bullied for her success.
When Kelly had suggested that she’d been chased off the cliff by a pursuer, Ted had reminded her that she’d had time to remove her bag of medals and place it by a rock, intact. And she’d got high. The symbols of her extraordinary success in life had been left intentionally as the only thing to accompany her to her death. Kelly couldn’t begin to understand the mind behind an obsessive suicide, and that was just what it was: it was carried out with such vigour that it was as if Jenna had been going for another gold.
It was true that where there was a death, there was always blame, but in this case, the perpetrator was already dead.
Chapter 6
Eden House was stifling in the summer and freezing in the winter. As soon as the clocks went back in October, the heating system usually packed up, and it took three weeks to get engineers to come and have a look. The grand old radiators, struggling under countless coats of gloss paint, caused much sucking of teeth, and every year, HQ would refuse funding to get the whole system replaced.
And so they wore coats and scarves.
This was intended to be the last full team briefing before Christmas, and they sat around a large table in the incident room, cradling mugs of coffee. The latest news was the promotion of Detective Constable Will Phillips to detective sergeant. It was, everyone agreed, thoroughly deserved. Phillips was a popular member of the team, and his eye for written detail never failed to prove critical to a case. DS Kate Umshaw, with the help of her three daughters, had made cake.
The promotion had given Will a positive push. At thirty-two, he was doing well, and pay rises were few and far between these days. It had been a toss-up between him and Kate, but HQ believed she hadn’t been a DS for long enough to make the leap to DI. Kelly felt her junior’s disillusionment: they were the same age. But then Kelly had no kids. It wasn’t an excuse, but three girls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen was no picnic, and many times Kate had turned in looking as though she’d locked herself in a wardrobe and started a fight. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she smoked heavily. Kate wasn’t a poor operator; Kelly had just been lucky. Her promotion in London had been quick, and she was handling three murder cases a week there while a DS in the Lakes might handle one in a lifetime.
Their attention turned to what they might expect over the Christmas period. They fully anticipated plenty of GBH and disturbances of the peace, but the bulk of those would fall to the uniforms. Detective work usually dropped off, except for domestics and suicides. Kelly fully expected it to be quiet.
She then announced the desperately sad conclusion of the Jenna Fraser case to the team.
‘It’s not the outcome we were hoping for, but the pathology report is watertight. Rob, any news on Blackman’s computer?’ She couldn’t help but move on quickly. They’d put so many resources into investigating Jenna’s d
eath that, as was always the case with a minor, they’d exhausted themselves emotionally and mentally. Now they had to focus on other things, and it wouldn’t be easy. She had to distract them.
Their most active case right now was the arrest of Keswick teacher Tony Blackman. He’d been reported by a pupil at his school for luring her to his apartment, where he’d allegedly groped her. Upon further investigation, police had found indecent images of children on his computer, alongside the addresses and ages of others. Unfortunately, the case was a constant reminder of Jenna, because she’d attended the same school: the Derwent Academy. Kate’s girls went there too. It was difficult sometimes when cases overlapped and there was personal involvement, but it happened. Cumbria was a sparsely populated county and people knew one another. The school was going through a tough time, that was for sure.
‘Seventy-nine indecent images, fifteen of them of the highest category. CPS says they’re interested, and I’ve got the green light to put the case together.’
‘And we have his confirmed DNA all over the keyboard? What about the hard drive?’ Kelly sounded as though she knew what she was talking about, but in fact she knew little about the workings of a computer, which was why she’d selected Rob to take the case with Will. Things were going to get technical, and they were her geeks.
‘It’ll take time. There are several unusual firewalls installed and some serious threats of multi-systemic contamination,’ Rob said.
They looked at him. He smiled. ‘Sorry, I’ll let you know as soon as the computer people get back to me. Let’s just say that the brain of the computer is protected and doesn’t like being picked apart. It needs to be done methodically – which means slowly – or we might lose everything.’
‘Great,’ Kelly said. Proving ownership in an indecent image case was fundamental. ‘Will, what do you make of the stored details? Potential targets or what?’ She was referring to the files on the teacher’s computer detailing every aspect of the lives of several children who were all in foster care.
‘As a teacher, he has access to secure files at the local education authority that Joe Bloggs on the street couldn’t read, so he could sell on the information, or plan to use it himself. The youngest child is only two years old.’
‘Christ.’ Kelly vocalised everybody’s thoughts. No matter how much one studied human psychology, paedophilia just wasn’t rational. ‘Let’s see,’ she said. Will passed her the file. The others munched cake and waited.
‘What’s up, guv?’ Will asked.
‘We know this boy.’
They all stopped eating and looked at her.
‘Remember the baby left outside the White Lion pub in Patterdale two years ago? The nurses at the Penrith and Lakes called him Baby Dale. His mother was found close to death in the Greenside lead mine behind Glenridding. She disappeared from hospital.’
‘Bloody hell, you think this is him?’ Kate asked.
‘I know it’s him. He was granted asylum and put into foster care. The surname he was given was Prentice, after the judge presiding over his case. It touched a few heart strings. I got a friend at the Old Bailey to let me know how he was getting on. He was placed with a family back here in Cumbria.’
‘We need to find out if he’s OK,’ Kate said.
‘Agreed. Check that out, will you?’
Kate nodded. The room was more subdued after the news and the flashback to one of the nastiest cases they’d cracked. It had turned out that the mother was a refugee from Sarajevo who’d paid somebody in good faith to get her to Britain. As of today, she still hadn’t been traced. Her husband, Nedzad Galic, was also said to have travelled to the UK at the same time, but he hadn’t been traced either.
‘We’ll need to check all the names on that list to see if their guardians have noticed or reported anything suspicious.’
So far, Blackman’s defence was that the pornographic images had been planted by the pupil, whom he’d innocently invited to his flat to borrow a poetry book. Their profile of the girl was a fairly negative one, but that didn’t mean she was lying. It wasn’t a clear-cut case, and that bothered Kelly. When she’d first met Blackman, he’d come across as a decent man: hard-working, committed and polite. Sometimes you just couldn’t work people out, but the CPS saying they were interested meant that that was exactly what they’d have to do. They’d already established that Tony Blackman had taught Jenna Fraser, but they had to try to put that to the back of their minds and separate the cases in their heads. It wasn’t easy.
Tony Blackman had been suspended indefinitely from the Derwent Academy, where he worked in the English department, while the case against him progressed. It was big news in the local press and the guy had been hounded.
‘What’s the school like, Kate?’ Kelly asked.
‘It struggles with discipline issues and drug use is rife, according to the girls. I’m not sure that the teachers have a handle on things. The girls also told me that rumour has it that suicide is now the new cool. There were two other kids a few years ago,’ Kate said.
Members of the team shook their heads. Kelly’s insides stirred and she wondered if the gossip would be the same if she showed pictures of Jenna Fraser’s broken body in assembly.
‘Suicide cool? Jesus,’ she said.
‘The girls can be overdramatic, but they said that another girl and a boy died before they were there. I haven’t looked into it. It could easily be urban myth.’
‘Well let’s find out, for God’s sake!’ Kelly said.
There was an awkward pause, and Kate said she’d go and make the phone call to find out about Dale Prentice. Doubtless she’d squeeze in a fag break too. Kelly looked around the table.
‘Why are you all staring at me? Don’t you think it weird that the school is haemorrhaging kids? I want to know why, and whether we can launch an investigation.’
Her usual cool had deserted her. Everybody had a bee in their bonnet about Jenna Fraser, but Kelly was taking it personally. Maybe it was because parenthood was a sensitive subject at the moment; maybe it was because Ted had described the girl’s injuries in such detail. Maybe it was because she gave a shit.
‘Emma, find out if there’s any truth to the other deaths. I want to know. And I want to know if Blackman taught those pupils too.’
She got up and walked towards the window. The rooms were all airless and dim at this time of year. Only an artificial yellow hue gave them any semblance of light. They were like vampires, arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark. Kelly took a few deep breaths. Kate came back into the room stinking of cigarettes.
‘As far as the authorities know, Dale Prentice is fine and at home. He attends the Little Fellwalkers Nursery in St Bees.’
‘Good.’ Kelly breathed a little easier. ‘OK, I’m on duty over Christmas. Will, it’s your turn for New Year. What are we all doing for Christmas?’ She was trying to recapture the spirit of goodwill that had been in the room before she’d brought up Jenna Fraser and the subject of death.
‘I’ve got the family this year.’ Kate spoke first.
‘What was it at last count? Fifteen?’ asked Will.
Kate rolled her eyes.
‘Christ, good luck with that. The girls will help, right?’
‘Kind of, in between fighting over phone chargers and showers.’ The atmosphere relaxed again and Kelly listened to everyone talking about their families. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t provided her own mother with the pleasure of grandchildren, but her sister Nikki more than made up for it with three of her own. And when Kate got started on one of her tales about A&E and chest infections, or long journeys, or clothes shopping, Kelly didn’t feel as though she was missing out one bit. Josie was handful enough; Kelly couldn’t imagine three of them.
‘Rob? What are you up to?’
‘I’m taking Mia to a lodge in Buttermere.’ He smiled, and the team spotted the fleeting glaze of pure love. They smiled back at him and he snapped out of his haze. Kelly laughed.
Rob shook his head, mortified that he’d let his guard down. He blushed a little and reached for more cake.
‘Don’t go making any babies. They’ll ruin your life.’ Kate did this now and again. Her black humour was used in particularly stressful times when she was struggling with the girls. By all accounts, her husband was useless and spent most of his time at the pub watching Sky Sports. They’d been childhood sweethearts. Nobody at Eden House had met him, but then they all kept their private lives very much out of the office.
‘No, he’s just going to practise.’ Will said what everyone else was thinking. It worked, and the air was cleared.
‘Will?’
‘Just me and the missus this year – pure bliss. I’m locking the doors on Christmas Eve and not coming out again until I’m back on shift.’
‘Same advice, pal.’ Kate chipped in again.
‘What about you, guv?’
‘I’m hosting. Just my mum and … a few friends.’
They all knew Johnny. He’d become quite a local celebrity, as well as helping out Eden House several times, albeit unofficially. But their boss was fiercely private. They knew that her father was no longer alive, and that her mother had a few health issues, but apart from that, the most they knew about Kelly Porter was that she was the first one in the office, and the last one to leave. And she had no kids.
Chapter 7
Michael Shaw sat at the dining table doing his homework, listening to his mum argue with his sister. After twelve years, it was a regular feature of his daily rhythm and nothing to be concerned about. His mum and dad had different approaches to parenting, and he figured that was normal. His mum was soft, but that was how he supposed mums were designed to be, but his dad didn’t like it, and that was what they argued most about. Michael just got on with his homework, or played the Xbox in his room.
Earlier, when his mum had gone upstairs to take a bowl of fruit to Faith, his sister, Dad had registered his annoyance by rolling his eyes.
Bitter Edge Page 3
