This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016
A Kindle Scout selection
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
For my mother
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Playlist for a Paper Angel
About the Author
Book Club and Reading Group Questions
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 1
I sit in my car looking out at the yellow tape and the traffic cones, already thinking that this is no ordinary day. Again. Mike sits beside me, staring into space and chewing gum. I open the window a little; the air outside still bristles with tension. I leave the phone ringing for a while.
We’ve been attending what was supposed to be a demonstration in a small northern town, and I’ve already had enough. We were briefed by intelligence that it would be a few right-wing protesters marching through a bigger crowd of left-wing protesters on a Saturday afternoon. We were supposed to be observing, just watching, while three uniformed police officers stood nearby, making sure that the demonstration remained peaceful. It didn’t. Just twenty minutes after the protesters arrived, High Street in Ashton-under-Lyne flooded with rent-a-mob, flailing fists, and baseball bats. We’d radioed for assistance, but it was too late. Shoppers scattered and children cried through the noise.
Eventually, more police officers arrived and quickly cordoned off the streets. It was all over in a couple of hours. Now we’re sitting here looking at the debris. Broken windows, ripped clothes, and telltale spatters of blood across the grey pavement—which just about describes policing in Greater Manchester.
I don’t need this. Not right now. I’m only just back from extended leave. I’m still numb from finding out my son has left the country with his criminal father. To make it worse, only I know about it and I can’t tell anyone because if they find him with his father, he’s implicated in his father’s employers’ illegal activities. I want him back. And I’m going to find them, which is why I’m back at work and looking for them when I’m probably not ready to be. My phone’s still ringing, and Mike looks at me. I press the green button.
“Jan Pearce. How can I help?”
Steve Pullen, a police constable in our department at Manchester Headquarters, sounds stressed.
“Jan. You and Mike just round the corner?”
“Yeah. We’re just on Old Street. Do you need assistance, Steve?”
He pauses, and I listen through the silence—the first rule of professional surveillance. Background noise. I can hear a woman’s voice. It sounds like Steve’s shift partner, Sue Lewis. And something else. A child crying.
“I think you’d better come and have a look. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. We’re in the alleyway at the back of Katherine Street.”
He ends the call, and Mike starts the car even before I tell him the location. After five years of working together, we’ve almost got a psychic connection. He’s a detective constable with the force, and while I’m trained in surveillance, he’s into the technical side of missing persons. Identity theft, use of bank accounts, benefits transactions. I tell him the destination, and in minutes we’re there and out of the car. I see Steve and Sue standing in the alleyway. As we walk toward them, they part to reveal a crying child in a pram.
A little girl.
I rush forward and look closely at her. She’s about eighteen months old and wearing a blue anorak. Her hair is blonde and it falls in curls to her shoulders. She’s screaming. When I look more closely, I see she’s strapped tightly into her pram. More tightly than normal, as if someone doesn’t want her to go anywhere. I lean forward to unfasten the straps, but Mike hurries over.
“Evidence. Forensics will want to . . .”
I continue unfastening the tight straps as the red-faced little girl sobs.
“Yeah, I know. But this is a child. A human being.”
Mike nods, but Steve’s trying to reason with me.
“Shouldn’t we check for a booby trap? I mean, anyone could have . . .”
It’s too late. I’m hugging the upset little person to my chest, whispering in her ear that it’s all going to be all right. My body begins to sway backward and forward, muscle memory from my own baby-nursing days not so long ago. She quiets, but her chest is still rising and falling in deep sobs from crying. Has it been minutes or hours that she’s been here? I move around slowly, looking for a mother or a father, scanning the back alleys for someone desperately searching for their child. Eventually, Sue speaks.
“I’ll call an ambulance.”
I think for a moment. An ambulance will mean that she’s placed in some accident and emergency department, then fostered out. I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and something tells me not to let her go.
“No. Mike and I will take her in. I expect that her parents will be there waiting. If not, the medics can have a look at the station, before they come to collect her.”
Steve and Sue look at each other, and as I’m the most senior officer present, they nod.
“There’re a couple of bin bags in the back of Mike’s car. Put the pram in one and anything else in the other.”
Sue looks around.
“Nothing else. Just her and the pram. You’d think there’d be a nappy bag or something, wouldn’t you? Or shopping. Or something?”
They cover the pram and push it into the trunk of the car, and I get in the back with the little girl. It’s late afternoon, nearly teatime, and she looks sleepy. I hold her against me, and I can feel her breathing as she dozes. Mike starts the engine and drives off. He’s looking at me in the rearview mirror.
“You’re a natural.”
I half smile at him.
“Yeah. I was.”
It doesn’t seem two minutes since I was rocking Aiden back and forth, holding him close. Mike’s eyes are back on the road, but he’s frowning now.
“We’ll get them, you know. We’ll get Connelly.”
I smile at him and hug the little girl tighter. She smells a little, so I turn my head. As I open the window, she stirs. Natural mother. I
t’s true, I am. But it’s funny how divorce affects you. I had always wondered if Sal and I would last. He was manipulative, and he had a temper. Then he slept with my friend. He blamed it on my late shifts, late nights studying for Detective Sergeant exams. He felt neglected. I was devastated, but I didn’t stand in his way. He left, and I filed for divorce. It hurt badly, but I had a vague feeling that life could go on.
It was when the family arrangement papers came through that my real devastation began. He wanted half custody of Aiden. Our son. My son. My first reaction was to fight with everything I had to keep him from having more than Sunday afternoon and weekend nights with Aiden. But the law was on Sal’s side, and I had made it worse for myself by fighting.
He ended up with two nights a week, which he always made sure were weekend nights, one week at Christmas, and four weeks in the summer on the premise that I had all the other holidays and half term breaks.
I resigned myself to this and worked long hours. Anything to ward off my loneliness when Aiden wasn’t there. Now I know the truth. Sal was involved with Sean Connelly and implicated in the horrendous crimes that I had uncovered. Crimes involving young boys and girls at the Gables. I could never have known what was going on at that abandoned meat factory, the decades of hidden crimes against children, but that doesn’t make it feel any better. All the time he was manipulating Aiden, turning him against me, pushing him to leave with him.
I’d entertained the thought that maybe Sal was trying to escape Connelly’s grip himself, get Aiden to safety. But when I’d seen the footage of them at the airport laughing and joking, I knew that I was kidding myself. The note he had left read “I won.” And he had. All I had left was a contract out on me, a deep pain in my soul, and a missing piece of my heart where my son once resided.
Sitting here in the back of the car with the little girl in my arms was the most comfortable I’d felt in months. It was as if I’d somehow transported myself back to when Aiden was a baby and used to snuggle up against me and sleep in my arms. I had taken a full year of maternity leave, and when I returned to work, I had rushed back home every day to see him. Even recently, although he is fifteen years old, I still hugged him tightly every time he left with Sal, and tighter when he came back. Except he never came back that last time.
I look at the little girl and wonder where she came from. Why she’s alone, crying in a back alleyway. How her frantic parents must be looking for her. How she’ll have to be woken up to go through procedures at the station.
I glance out of the car window, and for the first time in ages I notice the rows of terraced houses and the trees as we drive up the wide roads toward Manchester, turning off at police headquarters. Then I suddenly realize how lost I am, how I’m still living a make-believe life. I look at my wedding ring, still shiny on my finger even after all that’s happened. I knew that woman, the one with a husband and a child, but I’m not sure about this one.
We park up at headquarters. This is where Mike and I are based. We float between tasks depending on what’s going on. Usually tracking gang members or missing persons, but sometimes we get involved in the end process of the big cases, when they need someone to listen in to get that final piece of evidence to tie up a case. We’re based in the operations department, and at this level our jobs are varied, which is another way of saying we’ve seen almost everything.
I look at Mike now, and I know that’s what he’s thinking—that he’s seen almost everything. But he’s never seen a child left alone in an alleyway.
He’s thinking that we should have called an ambulance and followed it to the hospital, gone through the proper procedure. But he knows that he would have had to prize the child from my arms and that after today and the unexpected riot, neither of us had the strength for a fight.
The little girl stirs in my arms and opens her eyes. They’re light blue with long fair lashes. Her face is a little bit dirty, and she has some food stuck in her hair. I go to pick it out, but then remember that she isn’t mine and that she will have to go through forensics. I loosen her zip and see she’s wearing a pink T-shirt with white velvet edging. Her legs are bare, but she’s wearing one little white sock and a denim skirt.
She’s not dressed for a long trip outdoors. Surely someone must be looking for her. As I get out of the car, I can see into reception and wonder if any of the people standing around there are Mum and Dad. Mike locks the car and joins me as I walk across the car park.
“Steve’s just texted me. They’ve gone back to Ashton Station and radioed HQ to tell them we’re on our way with madam here. And they’ll email their reports through. They’ve asked us to let them know what’s happened to the little ’un.”
I bet they did. I had seen the doubt on their faces, wondering if I should be back at work after what had happened.
“Right. I’ll get her inside.”
Mike opens the door. He knows the drill, and he knows cuddle time is over. Like me, he scans the reception area, and we wait for someone to rush toward us to claim her. When no one does, we go through the security door. Mike opens all the swing doors for me and the girl, who’s wrapped her arms and legs around me and is twirling my hair.
“They’ll have brought them through. You know, to wait for her. They’ll be in one of the incident rooms upstairs.”
I nod, but as we walk through operations and toward the booking-in center, I sense something’s wrong. All the other officers look surprised that Detective Sergeant Jan Pearce, better known for her no-nonsense attitude and tough exterior, is rushing through the building hugging a small child. No one seems to know what’s going on, which means no anxious parents are waiting for their daughter. Mike realizes this and guides me toward the admin desk. Someone pulls up a chair, and Sergeant Brown appears.
“So who do we have here, then?”
The little girl looks at him and starts to scream. He leans over the desk and pulls a comical face. I look up at him.
“Come on, Stan, this isn’t funny. We found her alone in a back alley. No one’s come to claim her. She’s traumatized. It’s not some kind of a joke.”
He pulls another funny face, but the little girl screams louder.
“She might have just wandered off or something.”
Mike looks doubtful.
“She was strapped into a pram in the middle of a civil disturbance.”
Stan gives up trying to entertain her and gets down to business.
“Well, one thing’s for sure. Someone’s missing a little girl. We’ll put out an alert to all areas. See if there’ve been any phone calls or anything. How long . . .”
“We found her at four forty-seven. By the look of things she’d been there a while.”
I’m heartbroken; it’s five fifty-six now.
“Wouldn’t you think that someone would have called us out by now?”
Everyone’s quiet except the girl, whose screaming has turned to a low whine.
“Or they would have if they lived in or surrounding Manchester. But no one has. We don’t even know if she’s local. There were people from all over the country in Ashton today.”
I look around and no one seems sure.
Stan comes up with a sensible solution.
“Little lass must be starving. Somebody get her something to eat, and I’ll do an all-forces alert. We need to get Lorraine to phone social services.”
My grip on the child tightens at his last two words in an attempt to grasp at a final piece of comfort before letting her go. Something’s not right. I can feel it.
Chapter 2
Lorraine Pascoe is the family liaison officer. She swings through the operations room door with a teddy bear in one hand and a box file in the other.
“All right, Jan. Aren’t you supposed to knock off at six? I’ve got forensics coming, so could you stay a bit longer? How come they weren’t called to the scene of the crime?”
This is the bottom line. Everyone will want to know why I didn’t call this in right away.
It’s not as if I’ve got anything to go home for. An empty house, full only of memories, all sterile and wiped clean after Connelly came after me but killed three of my colleagues instead. I look at Mike and raise my eyebrows. He holds his hands up in mock horror.
“No, Jan. Not tonight. Della’s going out, and I need to look after the kids.”
Our eyes meet, and he looks genuinely apologetic. He loves Della, but she doesn’t love me. I would go as far as to say she hates me. She knows Mike and I are close, and she can’t handle it.
“Anyway, someone’s bound to turn up to claim her, aren’t they? I mean, who could just leave a little girl like that?”
And that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Lorraine stops shaking the teddy bear in front of the unresponsive child and shakes her head.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? She’s been with us for an hour and a half, now, and no one’s claimed her. You could understand it if she’d wandered out of somewhere, if she’d been asleep on a sofa or something and just got up and wandered out the front door. Or out of a school, where someone thought she was safe then later on found out she had gone. But left in a pram? In the middle of a busy town?”
Mike looks at his watch.
“Look, I’m going to have to go. I’m back on at ten tomorrow for the ops meeting. See you then.”
We both watch him leave. Mike looks like he hasn’t a care in the world, but recent events have had their effect on him. After seeing the horrific scenes at the Gables, he told me that he was leaving the force, spending more time with his kids. But I expect he feels the same way as I do. It’s like a stone weighing me down, something gnawing at my conscience and saying find them before they find you. He knows full well that Connelly will find a way to get to us. He always does.
As Mike disappears around the corner, forensics arrives with the pram, and we move to a purpose-designed, child-friendly room. We watch as two women undress the girl. Her clothes are placed in separate bags, and even her nappy is stored. When she is changed, two men examine the pram, dusting off debris from the seat and removing the hood. The girl lies on the changing mat the whole time and stares at the white ceiling. After a while, Lorraine turns to me and frowns.
Playlist for a Paper Angel (DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series Book 3) Page 1
