Grave Affairs

by Maureen Carter

  ‘The man’s face, Mr Burke?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Nah. He had his back to me. And it all happened so fast, you see.’ She saw in his face the epitome of crestfallen.

  ‘Did he say anything?’ Voices could give a lot away: rough age, where someone came from; class as well as county or country.

  He shook his head, stared at his hands. ‘Sorry.’

  Wasn’t Alfie’s fault. And she’d rather he tell the truth any day than the self-aggrandizing pack of lies a lot of over-imaginative witnesses spouted.

  ‘Did you get the impression he’d been drinking at all?’

  ‘What? The way he took off? Nah.’ He gave the ’tache a pensive stroke with finger and thumb. ‘If only I’d not lost me footing.’

  If only. ‘Right-oh, Mr Burke.’ Bev nodded at Mac and they rose in sync. ‘Ta for your help and if anything comes back …?’

  He led them to the front door, slipping her card in his cardie pocket en route. They’d walked a few steps away when he called: ‘Did you get much out of the woman?’

  Bev turned back, shook her head. ‘’Fraid not. She was pretty shaken.’

  Alfie frowned. ‘Nah. Not the old lady. The one standing by the hedge. Had a baby with her.’

  Bev and Mac exchanged glances, headed back to the flat. Smiling, she linked a friendly arm round Alfie’s. ‘About that cuppa, Mr Burke.’

  ‘I agree, gaffer. It’s not the best description in the world. I still reckon we get it out there.’ Bev talked into her phone as she strode back to the car. She’d put in the call to Powell straight after the second session with Alfie Burke.

  ‘I dunno, Morriss.’ Sounded like he was scratching his jaw. ‘What if it muddies the waters?’ She curled a lip. Like the squad was wading through a lake full of leads. ‘Any road,’ Powell sniffed, ‘who says it’s not pure coincidence?’

  A woman with a babe in arms? In the same churchyard Stella Rayne got hustled by a man-in-black?

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure you’re right, gaffer. Sit on it, shall we?’ She hoped the sarcasm wasn’t too subtle ’cause it’d sail right over Powell’s head.

  ‘Don’t be so snarky, Morriss. I’m trying to think it through.’

  She rolled her eyes. Boy, that could take a while. ‘Come on, gaffer, if the woman just happened to be passing, why’s she not come forward?’

  ‘Moot point, Morriss.’ Yeah, yeah, yeah. She knew there could be any number of reasons, but what if one was because the woman was in cahoots with the kidnapper? Alfie Burke was no child expert but he knew what a six-month-old baby looked like. Size, anyway. Had no idea of its sex, and hadn’t seen its face.

  Bev glanced back over her shoulder. Mac must be buying up the bloody caff. Good job she had a set of keys. ‘Besides, not only did a potentially key witness fail to come forward, it sounds like she legged it.’ The woman had scarpered, Alfie said, even before he dialled nine-nine-nine. He assumed she’d contacted the police, anyway. While Powell chewed that one over, Bev let herself into the motor. Shoot. It was sauna-hot in there. She left the door open, fanned her dress to cool down a frac. She could almost hear the blond’s thinking gear. He hated being put on the spot, but she was fed up with the faffing around.

  ‘Are we releasing the description or what?’

  ‘S’pose. I still think it’s shit.’

  Agreed. It wasn’t a lot to go on: five-foot-five-ish, slim frame, white scarf, dark frock, sunglasses. Sounded to Bev like Audrey Hepburn doing a Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or a woman concealing her identity. But when the description hit the papers, it might prompt a pukka witness to call the police hotline. Or scare the pants off a not-so-innocent onlooker. Either way, whoever it was would know the cops were keen to track her down. Far as Bev was concerned, it was a win-win situation.

  ‘I’ll get on to the news bureau, then?’

  ‘OK, and get your butt back here pronto.’

  ‘No worries. I just want to—’ so not listen to the dial tone. She stared at the phone. Ignorant sod.

  ‘Here y’go, boss.’ The car shifted when Mac shuffled his bum into the driver’s seat. The bag he handed her was warm and when she peered in mouth-watering smells wafted from a bacon and egg bap oozing golden yolk. Sod it. Some days there was a lot to be said for the police diet. She managed a ‘Cheers, mate’ before taking a huge bite.

  Eat your heart out, Hepburn. It might not be Tiffany’s but breakfast went down a treat.

  46

  ‘Head back now, boss?’ Mac cut Bev a glance, his fingers on the ignition. Breakfast was toast – as in history. Except for the blob of yolk drying on his lumberjack shirt.

  ‘Nah. Let’s drop by the girl’s house.’ The suburb of Nechells was hardly en route to Highgate, but the sooner they talked to Rayne’s young mate the better. Bev was pretty sure it’d turn out to be a straightforward TIE – trace-interview-eliminate – but at least she’d be able to cross the task off her mental ‘to dos’.

  Mac checked the mirror, pulled into a line of traffic. ‘Powell OK with that, is he?’

  ‘Peachy.’ Bev read the address on her hand. ‘She’s in Canal Street. D’you know it?’

  ‘On the Fox Hollows.’ He groaned. ‘Don’t I just?’

  ‘Take you all the best places, me.’ She twitched a lip. The estate was a mishmash of seventies tower blocks, multi-occupancy Victorian throwbacks and two-up-two-down terraces. Some cops reckoned it housed more petty crims and old lags than the UK prison system. The myriad sick-noters, spongers and illegals living there made Benefits Street look like a workers’ cooperative. Drug deals were done on just about every corner and knives formed part of the school uniform. Even Fox Hollows pitbulls wore body armour.

  ‘I thought Powell—’

  ‘Just a min, mate.’ She checked a new message on her phone: Tonight? Bev snorted. It hadn’t taken Khan long to respond. It was barely ten minutes since she’d messaged him one word: Simpson’s. She narrowed her eyes. If he thought all he had to do was whistle – OK, text – and she’d come running, he was sorely delusional. No can do. Washing my toenails. Saturday or forget it. Her finger dithered over the send button for all of two seconds before she deleted ‘forget it’, substituted ‘sod off’.

  No skin off her nose either way. She sniffed. ‘You were saying, mate?’

  Mac turned his mouth down. ‘It’ll come back to me.’

  ‘No worries.’ She tapped a speed dial number, dictated a draft press release to some guy in the news bureau asking the woman in the churchyard to call the police. She gave the brief description, and told the guy to finish the copy with a bog-standard witness appeal.

  ‘Let’s hope that rattles a few cages, eh, Mac?’ Slipping the phone in her bag, she gazed through the windscreen. They were approaching the estate and the tower blocks more than lived up to their billing: twenty-five storeys of grimy concrete, pockmarked with satellite dishes and mean little balconies draped with washing like flags of surrender.

  Bev nodded at a road sign. ‘Seen that, mate.’ Some bell end with a paint brush and piss-poor grasp on anatomy had rechristened the place.

  ‘Fuck Hole? I bet that’s not in the Kama Sutra.’

  She shrugged. ‘Could be a new entry.’

  He shook his head, took the next right into Canal Street. ‘Clown’s been at it again. Look.’ The artist-in-residence had obliterated the C.

  Bev tutted. ‘Council really ought to get to the bottom of who’s behind this anti-social shit.’

  He laughed. ‘What number we looking for?’

  ‘We’re not. Mo didn’t get it. But it’s a terrace about halfway down on the left with an animal print front door.’

  ‘Should be easy to spot, then.’

  Bev already had. Now standing on the pavement, she gave it the once over. Number 37 wasn’t in bad nick compared to its neighbours. The sash windows were clean and mostly intact; not having a rusty bike or cracked bath out front helped. 37 had an old enamel sink, but it had been put to use as a herb garde
n. Eau de rosemary and mint wafted in the air as they passed by. The fragrance beat the customary blend of petrol fumes and cat piss.

  Mac rang the bell and Bev read the stickers in the window: Save the Whale, WWF, RSPCA, PDSA. Could explain the amateur paint job on the door. She glanced at her watch: half ten. ‘Give it another go, mate.’

  Looked like they’d have to shove a note through the letterbox and hope there wasn’t a marauding polar bear or panda in the hall ready to pounce. She dug her notebook out of her bag; Mac had a pen ready to hand over when the door opened just enough to allow a young woman to peep out. Bev reckoned the false eyelashes made it more of a peer, especially the one hanging like a wonky pelmet.

  ‘I was asleep. Who are you?’

  Where did the voice come? Posh. Smoky. Oozing confidence; it could sell flakes to Cadbury’s.

  Bev held her ID aloft. ‘Perhaps we could have a word inside, Miss …?

  ‘About what?’ The door hadn’t budged and they still didn’t know her name.

  ‘Inside?’ Bev gave a thin smile. ‘Please?’

  ‘I suppose.’ She couldn’t have sighed any harder if she’d tried. ‘But you’ll have to wait.’ Slammed door.

  Bev and Mac exchanged glances before examining the animal print again. Up close, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘Maybe she’s having a tidy-up?’ He took a drag on an imaginary spliff. ‘I’m guessing we’ll hear the flush any minute.’ She gave a token smile. Most drugs went down the pan when the police come a-calling.

  Bev glanced round to find a stray dog cocking its leg over the rosemary. ‘See that, Mac? If she asks, we ain’t staying for dinner, right?’

  ‘Not if it’s lamb.’

  She checked her watch, started tapping a testy foot. What the hell was the girl doing in there? She could’ve had a jacuzzi fitted by now. ‘Don’t think she’s legged it out back, do you, Mac?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t.’ She stood in the doorway. ‘I was getting dressed, if you must know.’ In a crumpled cotton frock with faded pink roses. She led the way down the narrow hall. ‘I didn’t have a stitch on and I’m quite sure you wouldn’t want to see me in my birthday suit.’

  Bev glanced back at Mac who waggled a ‘take it or leave it’ hand. The girl nodded towards a couple of ageing wing chairs either side of an old-fashioned tiled fireplace before parking her butt on a zebra-striped bean bag. With a bird’s eye view, Bev could see where Mac wasn’t coming from.

  Skanky was the word that sprang to mind. The girl looked like she needed a good wash; her mouth was too small for her teeth and now the false eyelashes had bitten the dust, the squint was pretty noticeable. Apart from that …

  She could do with losing a few kilos, combing her hair and wearing clothes that Oxfam wouldn’t put on the sale rail.

  ‘I’m Verity, by the way. Verity Parsons.’

  But that voice. It sure didn’t belong on a sink estate.

  She twisted a hank of dark blonde hair between her fingers. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just a few questions, Miss Parsons, nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I’m not.’ So why no eye contact? And why the studied show of indifference? Bev reckoned the girl looked and acted older than her years; she’d put her at around seventeen, eighteen.

  ‘Student, are you?’ Apart from being a nice easy starter, it was the only reason Bev could come up with for posh girl slumming it. Given the stuffed pandas dotted round the place, she’d take a wild guess at animal sciences.

  The girl gave a slow handclap. ‘Top marks.’ Condescension was like water off a duck’s back to Bev. She cocked an enquiring head. Verity came out with another laboured sigh. ‘If you must know – media studies.’ Bev watched the girl raise an unshaven un-shapely leg to check the state of her toenails. ‘So why are you here?’ Drawl, drawl.

  Good question. For the last couple minutes, Bev had been trying to work that one out too. By now, any idea of Verity being on the game had gone right out the window and even if she gave her body away, Bev couldn’t see Rayne availing himself. So what the hell had they been doing arguing the toss in the back of a cab?

  She pursed her lips. Maybe go for the subtle approach. ‘Nathan Rayne. Back of a cab. What was the row about?’

  She dropped the leg pronto. ‘I don’t know any Na—‘

  ‘Don’t come it, love.’ She sniffed. ‘We’ve got witnesses.’ Plural was pushing it, but, hey.

  ‘They’re liars, then.’ So why were the hazel eyes like saucers?

  ‘Did he owe you? Or you owe him?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ She straightened, tugged the frock down.

  ‘Money. Root of.’ Bev sniffed again; the lingering dope fumes were enough to get stoned on. ‘Now, are you going to share?’

  Her wall-eyed dart flicked between the detectives’ faces, probably trying to work out how much they knew, how little she could get away with telling them. Which had the obvious effect on Bev. ‘Soon as you like, love.’

  ‘What … what’s he told you?’

  ‘I think you’ll find I ask the questions. Isn’t that right, DC Tyler?’

  ‘Ten out of ten, boss.’

  The girl licked her lips, still weighing up what to say. Clearly she needed a prompt. ‘So what do you think he’s told us, Ms Parsons?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s your relationship to Nathan Rayne?’

  ‘Relationship? He’s old enough to be my fucking granddad. What do you take me for?’

  ‘A woman who’s way out of her depth?’ And withholding what could be key information.

  The girl dropped her head in her hands; her stale BO was laced with fear now. Bev could smell it; more than that, she’d clocked panic in the girl’s eyes. Bev narrowed hers. Why was Verity so scared that Rayne had gone to the cops? What could he tell them that she was desperate they didn’t hear?

  ‘How do you know Rayne?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her fingers picked compulsively at a split in the zebra fabric.

  ‘What’s scaring you, Miss Parsons?’

  Unless there was some serious thinking going on, Bev was sick of seeing the top of the girl’s head. She threw in a bluff for her to mull over at the same time. ‘Cooperate and the courts could go a lot easier, y’ know.’ Which was more than Bev did; she was in full busk mode. ‘I’ll even put in a good word.’

  But Verity Parsons wasn’t playing.

  And like the bean bag’s stuffing, Bev’s patience was running out. ‘We do it here or down the nick. Your call.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you can.’

  The trickle of polystyrene pellets turned into a stream. Bev wished the bloody girl would fall apart so easily. She’d tried the soft touch, time to get tough. ‘Nathan Rayne’s wife’s been murdered, his baby’s missing, and you’re dicking me—’

  That brought the head up sharp. ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to do with any of that. You have to believe me.’

  ‘Believe what? You’ve not said anything. Tell me what you know or I’ll run you in.’

  ‘You can’t.’ She sobbed, tears snail-trailing puffy pale cheeks. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Last time I checked, love, cannabis was illegal.’

  She swallowed hard, pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I needed money. A few grand at most. I’d only have asked once.’

  Bev felt her palms tingle, pulse rate take a hike. She kept her voice even. ‘And why would Nathan Rayne give you money?’ She had a damn good idea, if not the detail. ‘Just once’ was a telling phrase: every blackmailer trotted it out.

  ‘He didn’t. He went apeshit. Threatened to go to the police.’

  ‘What do you have on him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  She frowned. ‘Eighteen.’

  Good. No need for a parent to be on hand. ‘Grab your things, love.’

  ‘Why? What hav
e I done?’

  ‘For starters?’ Bev rose, hoisted her bag. ‘Possession.’

  And she had more in mind than drugs.

  47

  Head on chest, Verity Parsons slumped on a bench, kicking her heels, literally. Bev hoped to God a few hours in a police cell would do the trick: that Verity would live up to her name, or at least be cowed enough to cough. Slumming it as a student was one thing, but for an educated, well-brought up gel from Guildford, hobnobbing with some of the city’s sleazy criminal class would hopefully come as a wake-up call. Her details had been run through the system: no criminal record and her background checked out. Unless the current search at 37 revealed more than a few wraps of hash, the cops certainly couldn’t hold her for long.

  Bev took a final glance through the bars before setting off for Powell’s office. He’d called when they were on the way back, demanding to know where the hell they were, swore he’d told them about the meet-and-greet session with the new boss. Maybe he had. Maybe it had slipped her mind. Either way, Bev had been in no rush: Jessica Truss could be the best cop in the world but she’d never fill the big man’s shoes.

  Besides, if Bev’s instincts were on the money, Verity Parsons held vital information that could lead to a break in the case.

  After pacing the office a few times Powell now sat at his desk, hands folded on top of his head.

  ‘I’m not with you, Morriss. Are you saying the Parsons girl’s got something to do with the kidnap?’

  Seemed to Bev he’d heard her out with growing scepticism. ‘I can’t see it, gaffer. The time frames don’t fit. What I am saying is she’s got something on Nathan Rayne. Something she was pretty sure he’d be keen to pay big bucks for, long as she kept her mouth shut.’

  ‘Hush money?’

  Cliché alert. Bev nodded. ‘You got it.’

  ‘’Course, there’s nothing to say it has anything to do with the inquiry.’ Powell traced finger and thumb along his jaw line. ‘And the girl’s not opening her gob anyway?’

  ‘She’s shit-scared of Rayne, that’s why.’

  ‘I could have a stab at her.’

  Please don’t. ‘Let her cool her heels a bit, gaffer.’