Saffina Desforges' ROSE RED Crime Thriller Boxed Set

by Saffina Desforges

  “Yup. So, you see, your mum doesn’t have to know everything. Especially if you tell me it’s a secret. And as long as it’s nothing serious that I have to tell her, like if you’ve burned your school down, then you can trust me.”

  Ella digested this for a moment, stacking up the dried plates. “So, like, if I told you that Calvin was fifteen, would you promise not to say anything?”

  Fifteen! O.M.G. You’re not even a teenager yet! Red’s mind raced. Pippa would have kittens! She was still coming to terms with Ella starting her periods. As for Richard…

  She said, “You gonna keep it to yourself that I was out boozing with the lads the other night?”

  Ella nodded.

  “In that case, we have a deal.”

  And I need to have a serious talk with you about relationships.

  Chapter 92.

  “Anyone anything to add?”

  Blank faces stared back at Red. Harris looked around, hoping someone might break the silence. Barry Taylor sat next to Mackenzie, looking unusually smug.

  Anna said, “It’s like this guy doesn’t exist, Guv.”

  “Or guy and doll,” Taylor put in. “If that woman seen leaving the hotel is connected.”

  “Terri and I are staying behind tonight to go through the CCTV recordings,” Red said. “Hopefully we’ll get a good look at her. Though personally I still think this is just one person. Male.”

  “Me too,” said Harris.

  Taylor sneered. “Trust you, Jezza. Just coz the Guv thinks something, don’t make it right.”

  “Like you know better?”

  “Unlike you, Jez, I work on evidence, not conjecture.”

  Terri Miller clapped loudly. “Barry! What happened? Swallow a dictionary? Conjecture! I’m impressed.”

  Taylor glared at Terri. “Har bloody har.” She was sitting next to Lee Roberts for the third time running.“It just so happens I’ve been doing my homework while you lot have been pratting around getting nowhere.”

  Red pointed to the wall clock with the whiteboard wand. “Ten to, Barry. If you’ve got an idea, now’s the time to say so. Me and Terri want a quick break before we start on the tapes this evening.”

  “Rather you than me, Guv. I hate that bloody job.” Taylor sat upright, straightening his collar, puffing out his chest. “Any road, I’ve been waiting for Mac to confirm my suspicions.” To James Mackenzie, “Did your son ever get back to you about those chemicals?”

  Mackenzie looked slightly embarrassed. “Not yet, Baz. But I’m sure he will.”

  “No need, mate. My daughter’s beat him to it,” Taylor said proudly. “Well, the ex, actually. But Jenni kicked it off in my head. Then June confirmed it. Sorry Guv, but the chemicals that forensics identified actually make the girl leaving the hotel a prime suspect. We need to find her, and find out where she works.”

  Metcalf leaned forward. “Solved the mystery, have you, Sherlock?”

  “The butler did it,” Anna said. “In the library, with the lead piping.”

  Harris and Roberts thumped the tables. “Good one, Anna!”

  “I loved playing Cluedo as a kid,” said Metcalf. “Probably why I ended up here.”

  “We call it Clue in the States,” Terri said.

  “It was Monopoly in our family,” Roberts said. “I was always the hat.”

  Taylor sat seething.

  Red put her hands up to quell the squabbling. “Okay, I know you’re anxious to call it a day, but let’s hear what Barry has come up with, shall we?”

  Taylor let them settle, then walked casually across to the white board. “Do you mind, Guv?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Taylor fished about for his notebook, then jotted the two chemicals on the board with a thick marker pen. Ammonium chloride and sodium nitrate. He circled them and then added a third chemical beneath them.

  “Hydrogen Peroxide,” he announced. “I won’t bore you with the chemical symbols, but it was my Jen who put me onto this, and then helped me connect the dots.” He surveyed the room, like he had just delivered the Reith lecture and was waiting for the applause to die down.

  “And?” Red urged.

  “Jenni came round during the week, all excited about her biology GCSEs.”

  “What’s biology gotta do with chemistry?” asked Harris.

  “Thank you, Jez,” sighed Red. “I know you like to wear your ignorance like a badge, but do it on your own time. Go on, Barry. Jenni came round, and…”

  “Well, she had a piece of liver with her.”

  “Liver?” Roberts stared at Taylor. “What, as in liver?”

  “Presumably you’re talking animal, not human, Barry?”

  “Lamb’s liver,” Taylor confirmed. “From Tesco. Still in its plastic wrap.”

  “Exothermic reaction?” Metcalf asked.

  Taylor looked crestfallen. “How the hell…”

  “My daughter’s the same age. National curriculum. But don’t worry, mate. I shan’t steal your thunder. You carry on.”

  Taylor brightened up. “So she comes in, my Jen, and says Dad, we did this really cool experiment at school today. Can I show you? So she did. She took the liver out of the packet, plonked it in a dish in the sink, and then poured some hydrogen peroxide on it. You’ll never guess what happened!”

  “You pushed her out of the way, threw the liver in a pan with some onions, and stuffed your face,” Anna suggested, to a roar of appreciative laughter.

  Red stifled a smile. “Go on, Barry. This is very nearly interesting.”

  “Thanks, Guv. Anyway, the liver started fizzing up like a good’n. Frothing like a rabid dog. And the meat went from being liver-brown and smooth to being pink and rough, like it was cooking. Which it was, in a way.Then my daughter stuck her hand in and lifted the liver out and said, feel it, Dad. So I had to touch it.”

  “What, with your bare hands?” Harris gasped.

  “Duh,” said Roberts. “His daughter’s already holding it, so it can’t be dangerous.”

  “And it was really warm,” Taylor continued, determined to ignore the heckling. “Even the dish was warm.”

  “Like I said, an exothermic reaction,” Metcalf explained. “A reaction that gives out heat. It’s all to do with respiration.”

  “What, sweating?” Harris asked.

  “Respiration, not perspiration, Jez. What was that the Guv said about wearing your ignorance like a badge?”

  Roberts thumped the table. “Nice one, Sarge.”

  Harris glared at Metcalf. “I’d rather be ice-cool and ignorant than a clever cu-”

  “Jez!” Red warned.

  “Than a clever constable,” Harris finished lamely.

  Taylor smirked. “Anyway, I asked where Jen had got the hydrogen peroxide from, and she said her mum, my ex, June, uses it at work. So I got on the dog and bone to her, and turns out,” Taylor tapped the board with a marker pen, “she also uses ammonium chloride and sodium nitrate.”

  “I don’t get it. Your missus don’t look nothing like the bird you described coming out of the hotel,” Harris objected. “How can June be the killer?”

  “Doh!” Taylor palmed his forehead. “You are thick as shit, Jezza, do you know that? As in seriously constipated. Permission to knock some sense into him, Guv.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Red said. “Jez, Barry isn’t accusing his ex-partner of killing anyone. It’s her job he’s referring to. Which for the benefit of Pete and Lee you’d better explain, Baz.”

  “You’ve heard of the term peroxide blonde, right?” Taylor asked. “That’s hydrogen peroxide. June gave me a load of rabbit about how it works with ammonium chloride and that other chemical, sodium doo-dah, but basically it’s to do with hair dyes. June is a hairdresser.”

  A silence descended on the room.

  Then Harris piped up, “Yeah, but wouldn’t it be cool.”

  Roberts stared at him. “What, being a hairdresser?”

  “No, if your wife or girlfriend turned out
to be a serial killer.”

  Chapter 93.

  Harris glared at Kevin Marshall’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Do you have to stand there watching me? Ain’t you never seen a bloke shave before?”

  “I need the toilet.”

  “Yeah, well you can bloody well wait. I ain’t having you unzip your trousers behind my back.” Harris kicked the door shut with his bare foot.

  “Are you going out?” Kevin asked through the door.

  “No, I always shower and shave ready for a night in watching telly. Of course we’re going out, you dork.”

  “I only asked.”

  “I only asked,” Harris mimicked cruelly.

  “Jezza, don’t,” Nikki’s voice came through the door. “You’re upsetting Kevin.”

  “I’m upsetting him?”

  “He’s got a weak bladder.”

  Harris threw down his razor. Yanked the door open. Stomped past Nikki and Kevin. “Proves I made the right decision.”

  Nikki pulled the door shut on Kevin, then rushed into the kitchen after Harris. “What right decision?”

  Harris waved her away, staring out of the window at the fire escape. “Nothing.”

  Nikki grabbed him affectionately. “Aw, Jez is in a strop because my Kevin needed the toilet.”

  Harris took her arms and held them away from him. “And look at you, walking around half-naked in front of him.”

  “He comes on photo-shoots with me sometimes. He’s seen it all before.”

  “But he’s your brother. It’s not right.”

  “Don’t talk daft. It’s not like I’m sleeping with him.”

  “Not on the nights I stay over, no.”

  Nikki’s hand caught Harris square across the face, her palm print crystal clear against the shaving foam.“You ever say something like that again, Jez…”

  Harris glared back. His eyes drifted down to Nikki’s chest. “Are we going out then, or what?”

  Chapter 94.

  Red tapped the track pad and another disk began to play. Mind-numbing footage of the taxi rank and a spill-over view across the road covering the steps to the hotel. She scooped up more noodles with chopsticks. “Thanks again for staying late. I hate doing this job on my own.”

  “Four eyes are better than two.” Terri Miller broke open another can of Budweiser. “But that’s not the only reason you asked me to come in, right, Guv?”

  “Terri?”

  “Guv, you’ve been sending out the signals all week, like you can’t wait to get me somewhere quiet.”

  Red put her chopsticks down. Pushed the carton to one side. “That obvious?”

  “Even the boys picked up on it. And you can guess what they were thinking.”

  Red looked horrified. “It’s nothing like that!”

  Terri reached across and paused the video. A reassuring smile. “I know. So let’s cut to the chase, shall we? What happened Wednesday night?”

  “Wednesday night?”

  “Come on, Guv. Ever since our little conversation when you stayed at my place you’ve been wanting to talk about guns. What I said. What you said. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Neither of us can. Then Thursday morning it was like, so much more urgent. I knew as soon as you suggested OT for tonight that it was about the guns. But something must have happened Wednesday night to push you over the edge.”

  Red nodded. Took a deep breath. She told Terri about the box Elizabeth Andrews had given her. Finding the gun inside. Handling it. The flashbacks to the Huntsman. Bill’s murder. The worries about the children finding the gun hidden in the house. The decision to dump it. The close call with the patrol car on the docks.

  “Now it’s in the wheel-well of my boot,” Red finished. “I daren’t have it in the house. Can’t get rid of it safely. And now I’ve decided I don’t want to. So I was wondering…”

  “When and where?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When and where? I’d love to teach you. But we can hardly use the Police facilities. Too many awkward questions. I don’t think they have many public firing ranges in the UK. So far as I can make out it’s all clay-pigeons and pheasants.”

  “There’s a place I know, down in Kent. Ninety minutes each way. An hour there. We could do it one afternoon, maybe. Or...”

  Red’s words were drowned out by the sound of boisterous shouting and noisy doors slamming in the Station car park below.

  “Kicking off early tonight, aren’t they?” Terri took the opportunity to gain some thinking time, wandering across to the window. “Uniform have got their hands full, Guv. Teenage girls. No, let me rephrase that. Schoolgirls. I swear not one of them is over sixteen. And what are they wearing?”

  “You mean, what aren’t they wearing.” Red peered over Terri’s shoulder. “Probably been drinking cheap cider down the park. Christ, look at that one! That’s not a skirt. That’s a scarf! And look at her! That blouse is practically see through.”

  “They’re not that bad, Guv. Don’t tell me you weren’t the same at their age.”

  “At their age I was still so flat-chested I didn’t know what a bra was. But sure as hell my mother wouldn’t have let me go out…” Red’s voice trailed as a wave of nostalgia hit. “Actually, my mother was so out of it herself she wouldn’t have known anyway. But I would never have dressed like that. I still had some self-esteem.”

  “Getting to be quite a confessional tonight, Guv.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to burden you with all my problems.”

  “A problem shared…”

  “Do you mind if I share another?”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “That girl there, standing next to the Range Rover.”

  “What about her?”

  “I know her.” Red slammed the window ledge with her palm. “I thought I’d got through to her last time. Obviously not.”

  “Guv?”

  “Her name’s Miriam. I caught her shoplifting in a department store on the Bank Holiday. I let her go with a private caution. Then I got a bollocking from the Super for not putting her in the system.”

  “Well she’s going in the system this time. You don’t come in the back gate and walk out an unknown.”

  “Tell me about it. Five kids about to have their copybook blotted for the rest of their lives because some over-zealous cop couldn’t exercise some common sense and just send them on their way.”

  “There might be more to it than that, Guv.”

  “No. That’s Julian Davies down there. Jumped up little Hitler. God knows how he ever got sergeants’ stripes. Probably never made a proper arrest in his life. Just picks on easy targets, like these kids. I’m going down to custody.”

  “But Guv, it’s not our business.”

  Red watched Davies herding the girls towards the custody suite. “I’m betting I’m by far the senior officer in the Station right now. I’m making it my business.”

  Chapter 95.

  Red motioned for the custody officer for a private word. They stood in the doorway behind the custody suite service counter, just out of view of the girls crowded into the waiting area the other side. Davies was shouting for order. The girls were noisy, but not excessive. Red had seen worse.

  “Ma’am? What brings you here on a Friday night?”

  “I was upstairs when I saw Sergeant Davies bringing in the girls. What’s the SP?”

  “Haven’t got to them yet, Ma’am, but I’m guessing disturbing the peace, underage drinking, the usual. Nothing serious.”

  “Cider?”

  “No, cheap lager. The supermarkets are practically giving it away. And we pick up the tab.”

  “Not the best use of Police time.”

  “Least of all on a Friday evening, Ma’am. Another couple of hours and we’ll be overflowing. I’d like to get these kids in and out before ten, but realistically none of them will leave before midnight.”

  “Can’t you just give them a friendly warning and send them home?”<
br />
  “I think the days of Dixon of Dock Green are long gone, Ma’am. The moment Davies loads them on the wagon the conveyer belt is running. Fingerprints, DNA, the works.”

  “But they’re underage. They’ll need a responsible adult, surely.”

  “Which is why they’ll be here ’til gone midnight, while we’re trying to contact someone. Then waiting until they get here. Then going through the paperwork. Every time Davies is on Friday evenings he does this. But what can I do? We’re equal rank. He’s out there, I’m in here. There’s no reasoning with him.”

  “I know the type,” Red sympathised. “Spending his Friday night shift processing a bunch of teen girls is a lot easier than manning the club spill-out. Any of these kids been in before?”

  The sergeant cast his gaze around the room. “Not that I recognise, but they may have been in on someone else’s watch.”

  Red saw Miriam stagger forward.

  “I want to make a complaint against this perv,” the girl said, swaying in front of the counter. She was looking at the duty officer in the doorway, but her finger was pointing at Davies. “He touched me up when he put us in the wagon.”

  “Take no notice, Ma’am. They all say that.” The duty officer stepped back to the desk alongside a colleague dealing with a burglary suspect. Red stayed by the door, out of sight. She gestured for Terri to stay back too.

  “Can I have your name, young lady?” the duty officer asked.

  “Sod off, pig!” Miriam turned and high-fived her cheering friends.

  Red cringed. The duty sergeant took it in his stride.

  “Name and address, date of birth, and a contact number for a member of your family. Please.”

  Miriam closed an eye, trying to focus on the man behind the desk. “Minnie Mouse. Disneyland. Born yesterday.”

  A roar of cheers and laughter rewarded her efforts.

  The duty officer smiled patiently. “Let’s try again, shall we? Name?”

  “Donna Duck.”

  More laughter.

  “Sergeant Davies, would you mind?” The custody officer gestured to the holding room at the side.