Grave Affairs

by Maureen Carter

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘’Cause with Daisy missing we’ve got all the time in the world, haven’t we?’

  Like she needed telling. Bev tightened her lips. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the baby’s face, that gummy smile. ‘That’s why I’m gonna head out to Rayne’s place. Talk to the organ grinder.’ She shouldered her bag. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Nah. Take Tyler. I’ve got something on.’ He reached for his jacket. ‘Jessica wants me to show her round, introduce her to some of the guys.’ Bev raised an eyebrow. Jessica. How jolly. ‘And you can take that look off your face, Morriss. Give her a chance. I think you’ll like her. She’s …’

  Yada yada yada. As Powell banged on, Bev clocked the glint in his eye, the way he kept smoothing his hair. She masked a smile. She didn’t know about hearts on sleeves but she’d no doubt Powell’s was racing. It was plain as the nose on his face: the blond fancied the thong off Jessica Truss.

  Thong. Truss. Oh shit. ‘Ta for that. I’d best be off.’ ’Cause if she didn’t get out any second she’d piss herself laughing.

  ‘Hey, Morriss,’ he called from the door. ‘What’s so bloody funny?’

  Rayne couldn’t remember the argy-bargy in the cab, let alone the girl. ‘None of this means anything to me. Why do you ask?’

  Bev sat next to Mac on one of the teal leather settees. Rayne, she suspected, was being less than candid.

  ‘See if this jogs your memory.’ She handed him a ten by eight pic downloaded from Verity Parsons’ Facebook page. The flattering shot did the girl more than justice, but it couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else. It opened Rayne’s eyes, literally. He couldn’t hide the split-second barely-perceptible reaction, but Bev had clocked it.

  ‘Gave you a false name, did she?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her before. And this is a pointless distraction.’ He slung the pic on the coffee table, started pacing the room. ‘My baby’s out there somewhere. Why don’t you people concentrate on what matters?’

  Bev interpreted the petulant outburst and compulsive pacing as a deliberate diversion. Two could play at that game. Calmly she listed how many officers were working the case, how many patrols they had on the streets, how many people had been interviewed, statements taken, properties searched. She mentioned the almost constant appeals in the media and social media. When she was sure he was off his guard, she fired another question.

  ‘Why would Verity Parsons make it up, Mr Rayne?’

  ‘Make what up, for God’s sake?’

  ‘About asking you for money.’

  ‘How would I know? She must be some sort of fantasist.’ He ran both hands through his hair. ‘Surely you can see that?’

  What Bev saw was a man nearing the end of his tether. In his hour of need, she wondered, where was the all-caring, all-sharing Frankie? A trace of Nina Ricci in the air wasn’t much balm to the soul.

  ‘Miss Parsons claims you went apeshit. Threatened her with the police. Doesn’t sound like the sort of fantasy most girls have, Mr Rayne.’ She held out empty palms. ‘Sooner we get it sorted?’

  Sighing, he wandered back to his seat. ‘OK. I should’ve known it was going to come out.’ Hoo-bloody-rah. ‘It must be three months back? Gone midnight. I saw her standing at a bus stop. Laddered tights, short skirt. She looked scared, vulnerable. I offered her a lift home. We got chatting. She asked me in for … coffee.’ ’Course she did. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking, sergeant. I … kissed her goodnight. That’s all.’

  What was he so scared of, then? Kiss ’n’ sell? If he was telling it straight, Verity didn’t exactly have a lot to go blabbing to the red tops with, and a peck on the lips wouldn’t set the Twitter-sphere alight. Bev waited for him to fill the silence.

  ‘She knew who I was, of course. Got my number somehow, said she had something important to tell me. Stupidly, I agreed to meet. She wanted ten grand. If I didn’t pay, she’d call rape.’ He’d refused point blank, countered with a similar threat to bring in the law. ‘I’d done nothing wrong. I wasn’t going to be blackmailed by a little slapper.’

  Bev narrowed her eyes. Verity wasn’t the only person who’d asked Rayne for cash. Brian Tempest had approached the guy too. Rayne had maintained it was a brazen request for a handout and he’d obliged with a few quid for old times’ sake. But was there more to it than that? More money, more reason. Had Rayne paid Tempest not to dish dirt? And would Tempest have done an Oliver Twist and gone back for more?

  If he’d lived to tell the tale.

  She glanced round when a rustle or something outside the door broke her train of thought. Just as well: she needed to get the questioning back on track. ‘Did Verity threaten you or your family harm?’

  ‘No. She buckled immediately; knew she was on a hiding to nothing. I thought I’d seen the last of her.’

  ‘But you admit kissing her?’

  ‘Yes.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

  ‘So why not report her?’

  ‘Not long married? New baby? How could I risk … losing it all?’

  Bev and Mac exchanged glances. The irony was lost on no one, least of all Rayne, who dropped his head in his hands.

  They’d check the story out but it sounded plausible enough. Bev was hard pushed to see the girl as anything more than a money-grabbing chancer. As for Tempest, the jury was out and either way, there’d be no retrial. Today’s little drama had helped Bev see Rayne more clearly, though. His initial adamant denials had been total bollocks; he’d looked Bev in the eye and lied through his teeth. Again and again and again.

  It spoke volumes for the guy’s credibility.

  ‘Is your mother around, Mr Rayne?’ Might as well have a word before they hit the road.

  ‘She’s in bed, resting.’

  Bev glanced at her watch: gone midday. Fair dos, she supposed. The old girl wasn’t getting any younger and she had a broken arm. Even so … time, essence. Bev stifled a sigh as she got to her feet. ‘We’re trying to trace another witness to the attack. When Mrs Rayne surfaces, can you ask if she saw a woman with a baby standing near the hedge, far side of the churchyard?’ She shouldered her bag. ‘Get her to call me?’

  ‘Of course.’ He rose to see them out. ‘I’m pretty sure she’d have mentioned it though, sergeant.’

  Are you? Bev wasn’t.

  They were at the door when the post dropped through the letterbox and a white envelope landed at Rayne’s feet.

  No one left the house for a while.

  48

  It’ll end soon. I’m letting Daisy go.

  ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ Rayne had read the note standing at Bev’s shoulder. ‘Look sergeant, look, she’s coming home. I can’t believe it.’

  Neither did Bev; she’d spotted the smaller typeface at the bottom of the page: PTO. She followed the instruction, stifled a gasp: it was almost too cruel.

  She wants to be with Mummy.

  Rayne’s smile froze as the implication sank in; he dropped to his knees on the kitchen tiles, where he rocked back and forth whispering his baby’s name.

  End soon? Bev had to believe it wasn’t already too late. She reread the note, then placed it on the black marble top. The kidnapper hadn’t actually said Daisy was dead. And Lucy was going nowhere. It was just possible the mad psycho git meant the words literally and he’d make for the grave at Green Lodge. It would take a while to set up a covert police operation and as outside chances went it was up there in the stratosphere. She beckoned Mac to one side, asked him to go and bring Powell up to speed. Given their lack of leads, it had to be worth a shot.

  Alone with Rayne, she hunkered down, placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. ‘If there’s anything you need to tell me, Mr Rayne, now’s the time.’

  ‘Nathan, what’s going on?’ Stella stood in the doorway, clutching the frame for support. She had one arm in a silk dressing gown, presumably couldn’t manoeuvre the other because of the plaster cast. Her glance fell o
n the note. After reading it, she slapped a hand to the bruised cheek. Even Bev winced. ‘Dear God. What are they going to do?’

  Good question, but … ‘More to the point, why are they doing it at all?’ Bev stood. ‘You got any ideas, Mrs Rayne?’ And look at me, not your precious son.

  ‘None.’

  ‘When you were attacked, did you see a woman in the churchyard?’

  She circled her neck with her fingers. ‘No.’

  ‘Had a baby with her around Daisy’s age?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Boss.’ Mac stepped just inside the room, pocketing his mobile. ‘Powell wants us to head back.’ A couple of DCs were on the way to take over at the house, he said.

  Bev nodded. Fair enough. They’d not be on much more than minder duties. And rightly or wrongly, she’d already had a bellyful of the Raynes. Slipping the note in an evidence bag, Bev told them to think on what she’d said. When she glanced back, Rayne was on his feet, Stella desperately trying to foist a one-armed embrace on him. His face was creased in scathing contempt as he pushed her away. It looked to Bev that Nathan Rayne, unlike Daisy, had no desire to be with his mummy.

  ‘This is likely to end in tears, you know, boss.’

  Unsmiling, Mac flashed his lights as a patrol car passed them on the Moseley Road. Presumably part of the increased uniform presence Powell’s new oppo had sent in.

  Bev cut him a glance. ‘Tell me about it.’

  It was rare to hear Mac sound downbeat, almost resigned to a case ending in failure. Fact was, as well as the baby, the perp held all the cards. The cops didn’t even know what game he was playing. Though clearly Happy Families could be ruled out.

  ‘The bastard’s playing with people’s lives.’ Mac shook his head. ‘And the way I see it, Daisy stands to lose.’ He opened his window to let in some air. ‘I mean, I feel sorry for Rayne and everything, boss, but telling all them lies? He’s a right shifty sod.’

  ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself, mate.’ Well, she could: two-faced, fork-tongued, bloody-minded toerag sprang to mind for starters.

  Mac rolled a shirtsleeve up his arm. ‘Why not just come clean about Verity Parsons?’

  ‘He’s big on image, isn’t he?’ She lifted her fringe with a sigh. ‘Getting mixed up with a girl like that would hardly do him any favours.’

  ‘Mixed up’s pushing it. He said he only—’

  ‘He said a lot of things, Mac.’ It’d be interesting to hear what the girl had to say.

  ‘Point taken.’

  Bev scrolled through the backlog of messages on her phone: nothing to write home about. She was slipping it in her bag when it beeped an incoming text: Saturday at 9 do you?

  And miss out on all that expensive drinking time? Cheapskate. She curved a lip. Seven. At the table. Don’t be late.

  She dropped the phone in her bag. ‘You bumped into the new Detective Super yet, mate?’

  ‘Briefly. You were in the custody suite booking in the girl.’

  Go on then. She stared at his profile. ‘And?’

  He shrugged. ‘Seemed pleasant enough.’

  She sniffed. ‘Remind me never to ask for a character reference.’

  ‘What makes you think you’d get one?’

  ‘Powell’d give her one.’

  ‘What? A reference?’

  She winked. ‘What else?’

  49

  ‘“It’ll end soon”?’ Standing hips spread centre front, Powell finger-raked his hair into a Daffy Duck quiff at odds with his stony expression. The hastily arranged extra brief had just kicked off, the latest visual on the whiteboard a copy of the kidnapper’s third message. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Thank Christ the scrote’s so specific, or we’d really be up crap creek without a stirrer.’

  Bev sniffed. It looked to her as if Daisy’s current situation exercised the squad’s thinking a damn sight more than Powell’s shit analogy. She glanced round at the dozen or so detectives present, whose gaze kept straying to the baby’s photograph. The image appeared next to the chilling words, and Daisy’s freeze-framed guileless smile seemed utterly incongruous now.

  Carol Pemberton picked at her bottom lip. Goshi’s dark eyes glistened. Mac’s immobile features looked carved out of rock.

  Bev held a can of Coke to her forehead. Why the hell didn’t the sun come with a thermostat? Though the windows were wide and the door propped open, the air in there was static and increasingly stale.

  Seated near the front, she crossed her legs, brushed her skirt. ‘“She wants to be with Mummy” seems pretty straightforward to me, gaffer.’

  ‘Yes and no, Morriss.’ Powell walked to a desk, perched on the edge. ‘I grant you, it sounds like he’s not giving the baby back.’

  Mealy-mouthed git. ‘As in – he intends killing her?’

  ‘Sadly, that’s been a risk all along.’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK then.’

  He scowled. ‘Of course it’s not, but this idea about mounting an operation at Green Lodge isn’t going to happen. There’s absolutely nothing to say that’s where they’ll end up.’

  She stifled a sigh. If he couldn’t see it for himself, was there any point labouring it?

  ‘It’s where her mother’s buried, sir.’ Carol sounded considerably calmer, not to mention more civil than Bev. The Pemberton charm offensive.

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ Powell flapped his shirt front. ‘If you recall, I was there at the time.’

  Snark-arse.

  ‘Well, then,’ Carol said. ‘If the perp says he’s letting her go so she can be with her mother, where else is he going to take her?’

  Nice one, Caz.

  ‘It’s not the point, Pemberton.’

  ‘What is, then?’ Bev asked.

  ‘Have you any idea how much an operation like that costs?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m not paid to bean-count.’

  ‘Got that right, Morriss. But somebody has to. Even if we knew exactly where, exactly when, we’re talking … mega-bucks.’

  She stifled a snort. Clearly, he’d not crunched the numbers either.

  ‘See what you mean, gaffer.’ Mouth down, she gave a sage nod. ‘Must be dead difficult, that. Putting a price on a baby’s life.’ Below the belt maybe. But if it was up to her she’d authorize the operation in a heartbeat.

  ‘Don’t try that guilt-trip shite on me, Morriss. What you’re pushing for is an open-ended surveillance involving God knows how many officers working God know how many hours on what could be the biggest goose chase since … since … the last one.’

  ‘Come on, gaffer, he’s not gonna try anything in broad daylight, is he?’

  ‘How should I know? I’m not privy to the inner workings of the nut job’s mind.’

  Nut job? When he’d already run Olympic rings round the cops? She spread both palms, softened her voice. ‘It’s all we’ve got, gaffer.’

  ‘It’s not good enough, Morriss.’

  ‘Tell me, DCI Powell, have you anything better?’

  Bev frowned. Someone else had graduated from charm academy. She swivelled her head, wondered how much the striking-looking woman framed in the doorway had heard. Bev certainly didn’t need to be a detective to realize it was the new boss. And that while Bev had dissed Powell big time, Detective Superintendent Jessica Truss, though subtle, had still taken what sounded like a pop.

  ‘The sun sets at around ten, first light’s just after four. Six hours is hardly open-ended.’ Long legs crossed at shapely ankles, ring-free fingers laced, Detective Superintendent Truss sat totally at ease in Byford’s executive chair. ‘I’ll get clearance for tonight, then we’ll play it by ear.’

  The new boss had wanted a few words after the brief. Bev hadn’t been sure whether she was in for a wrist-slap or a pep talk, but what she’d heard had been music to her ears. ‘Appreciate it, ma’am.’

  ‘No, don’t get up, sergeant.’ Truss waved her down. ‘People have told me a lot about you.’

  Bev gave a mental groa
n: it wasn’t the first time she’d heard that. She flashed a token smile. ‘You know what they say, don’t bel—’

  ‘Not all of it good.’ Truss raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘But I like officers who think for themselves and aren’t afraid to voice an opinion.’

  ‘You’ll love me, then—’

  She raised an index finger. ‘When they don’t interrupt and what they say’s worth hearing.’

  Truss peeled herself off the chair and rose to a height of around five-ten. With the blonde chignon, porcelain complexion and carved cheek bones, she was the sort of woman who starred in Hitchcock movies, except the classy taupe linen suit and kitten heels were bang on trend.

  ‘A few things you need to bear in mind.’

  Bev closed her gaping mouth and watched Truss walk round, perch on the desk and pick up a white china mug. She was close enough for Bev to catch a hint of Chanel and clock tiny gold specks in caramel-coloured eyes.

  ‘I’m a good deal older than you and considerably wiser.’ She raised a palm this time. ‘Hear me out. I’ve been where you are, and know it’s the pits being given orders by often misogynistic men, usually only senior in rank, who think giving women a hard time is part of the job description.’

  Warm to her? Bev wanted to marry her. Powell, eat your heart out.

  ‘I don’t include Acting DCI Powell in that category. Clear?’ Ish. Taking a few sips, Truss stared at Bev over the mug’s rim. ‘Sorry. I didn’t quite catch that.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Clear.’

  ‘He’s a more than competent detective but tends towards the old school. You have to be smart enough to play the game. And given how long you’ve been in the force, you shouldn’t need me to tell you the rules.’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ Well, that worked. Speechless, she swallowed.

  ‘OK, that’s it. End of lecture.’ Truss pushed herself off the desk and stood, waiting for Bev to make eye contact. ‘I only deliver it to detectives I’ll be keeping a close watch on, mainly because I’d hate to lose them.’

  Eyebrows knotted, Bev watched her walk back to Byford’s chair. Had she just been given a glowing review or a warning notice? Bloody hell. The woman was harder to read than Sanskrit.