Playlist for a Paper Angel (DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series Book 3)

by Jacqueline Ward

  I check my phone, and there are no calls. No texts. I check my Facebook, and there is still nothing from Aiden. Lisa’s songs are playing now, and I wonder if she’s asked Lorraine if she can see Elise. She’ll be at the station for a while, at least until she’s been swabbed and I can get to interview her. I can feel the adrenaline falling now, leveling out and leaving me with a drained feeling. Damien stares ahead, not looking at me, seemingly lost in thought.

  I look out at the moorland, the fading sunlight casting golden shadows. Even in this light it reeks of darkness and harsh conditions. I watch as a bird of prey hovers overhead, my eye following it as it homes in on whatever unfortunate creature it will consume. That’s what today has been about. Lisa’s pathetic life gobbled up by anyone who came along and cared a little. The girls from the village, who were driven to be so afraid and ashamed that they gave their children to a woman they hardly knew.

  Survival of the fittest. Fighting to even live. That’s what Lisa said. She had an eternal struggle just to feed herself and Elise. Amy Price. Probably reunited with Dara now, but her life changed forever. She’ll never be able to trust the world again, because the goodness we’re told to believe in has been proven to be untrue.

  And me. Like them, separated from my child by circumstances of life. No one ever told me this when I signed up; when I saw Aiden for the first time. I’d thought it was all smiles and stories at bedtime, supported by everyone around me. No one ever told me that he might not be there forever, that I might have to fight for him. Or that I’d have to share him.

  And no one ever told me about women like Annie. Of course, I knew all about the worst women in the world. But isn’t that something rare, something that only crops up every so often? A kind of throwback, where downright evil defeats mother love? Now I know differently. I know that women like Moors Murderer Myra Hindley are not as few and far between as we like to imagine. Because we do like to imagine that women are not bad. Not evil. Not murderers.

  Amelia Dyer and her callous trade in baby farming tells us differently. We look back in horror and shake our heads without ever acknowledging that it’s going on today. But aren’t we warned through old stories that there are bad women? I’d believed that the women in these stories—the wicked stepmother, the old witch—all of the women who preyed on children—were psychotic harpies, slightly demented, jealous of those of us who have beautiful children.

  But you live and learn. Maybe I got it wrong. I sigh at the possibility. Maybe, as Damien says, all women are capable of appearing as bad mothers in the pantomime of life, when in fact they are sacrificing their child for the good. And maybe some are cast in the role of wicked witch by rote, when in fact it is the people we least suspect who are the most dangerous.

  I rest my head on the side of the car seat and gaze at the city, over the valley ahead of us. So much to face. Stewart will have the inevitable questions. Then there’s Lisa to question. And Annie. Then I need to find out what Stevens was up to. What he was doing with those kids. Where he was taking them and what for. That’s if I’m not suspended. The car drops onto the Manchester road and we’re halfway there. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  Chapter 33

  Damien pulls into the car park. The news vans are back with the huge dishes on top. I look at my phone and see that it’s teatime already. Some of the newscasters are broadcasting live, microphones in hand, cameras pointed at them.

  I watch as Damien gets out of the car and locks up. Then we walk toward the station. He’s hardly spoken to me the whole way from Greenfield, and now he’s hurrying. Not at all like him.

  We go into reception, and he ushers me through the doors.

  “Formaldehyde.”

  I slow down a little.

  “Sorry? What is, Damien?”

  “The smell in that cellar. Formaldehyde. I’ve smelled it before. It’s definitely formaldehyde. I did a course on taxidermy when I was a kid.”

  It doesn’t surprise me.

  “Of course you did.”

  We reach the swing doors that lead into the ops room, and he stops dead. He turns to me and puts his hands on my arms again. It’s turning into a habit. He’s looking into my eyes, but I shrug him off.

  “What the hell? What’s wrong with you? Is it all that back there?”

  He drops his arms.

  “No.”

  “Well, what then? You’re acting weird.”

  “Jan, I . . .”

  I push myself backward through the swing doors. There’s usually a heavy hum of activity, voices on the phone, inquiries in progress, tapping on keyboards. But it’s completely silent. As I stand there with Damien behind me, all eyes are on me. I spot Lorraine in Jim Stewart’s office. She’s making wild gestures with her hands and shouting at him. He’s not shouting back. Maybe she’s defending me. I walk through the ops room and up the corridor.

  Lorraine sees me, and she stops midsentence. Damien’s beside me now, and his arm touches my shoulder. He opens the door to Stewart’s office, and we enter. Jim Stewart stands up, and Lorraine pulls two chairs forward. I sit down between Lorraine and Damien, and Jim sits, too. I look at the crest of arms above his head. The symbol of my dedication to keeping people safe. I wonder if he’s going to ask me for my warrant card. But he doesn’t. In fact, no one says anything for a while. But I can’t hold it in.

  “Look, I need to explain. I only acted because . . .”

  Jim holds his hand up to silence me. I look more closely at him, and he looks like he’s in pain. Lorraine looks terrible, her eyes red rimmed. I wait a while, and then Jim swallows hard and clears his throat.

  “I’m sorry, Jan. I’m very sorry.”

  I stare at him.

  “It’s Aiden, isn’t it? Is he hurt? Has something happened to him?”

  I look from Jim to Lorraine. Jim leans forward.

  “It’s not Aiden. It’s Mike. He went back to Charleston House and called for backup. But we didn’t know it was so serious. We didn’t know that you’d found Dara until . . .”

  “So where is he then? In hospital? What happened?”

  Lorraine puts her arm on my shoulder.

  “He’s in intensive care, Jan. I’m afraid he’s on life support.”

  I laugh. I know it’s shock. But I still laugh.

  “No. He can’t be. No.”

  She nods.

  “He is, Jan. I’m sorry. He’s been shot. Point-blank range.”

  She’s crying. My whole body feels heavy, and I lean forward. Then I glance out through the floor-to-ceiling glass panes that line Jim Stewart’s office. All eyes are on me. What will Jan do now her partner’s hurt? How will she react?

  I don’t react. I just sit there, thinking it through. Thinking how Stewart wouldn’t listen to me. How the whole case revolved around false thinking, around assumptions. How Damien had been right. How Mike would have gone in there no matter what and done the right thing. Like he always had.

  There would have been no chance without backup. If Lisa was telling the truth, the whole outfit at Charleston House was run by armed lunatics with a penchant for snuff porn. Real evil bastards. They wouldn’t think about consequences or Mike’s kids. Lorraine wipes her eyes.

  “When he got there, they’d gone. They obviously had an exit strategy. One of the girls was upstairs overdosing. He’d already called for backup but been refused. He called for an ambulance and then rang it in again, but was refused again because there was no firearms threat. Then he went out the back to check if there was anyone else outside. He took a single shot to the head.”

  I try to push the image away.

  “The others?”

  “They’re all OK.”

  I wait for a second. I’m exhausted. I can hardly move my legs to stand. I need to get out of here and go somewhere to think. But Jim Stewart begins to speak.

  “Look, Jan, I know this is difficult, and we’ve all made mistakes.”

  I shake my head.

  “I haven’t.�
��

  He looks at his desk and shuffles some papers.

  “We’ve all misjudged this inquiry.”

  I interrupt again.

  “I disagree, sir. I tried to follow up this lead early on, but you stopped me. I had it worked out as soon as I saw the angel, and I wasn’t far wrong. You’re trying to make it seem like a series of unhappy events, but it isn’t. There was a strong connection right from the beginning. Right from the moment Dara disappeared and we knew about the white van, it just took time. But you had to rush in.”

  It’s just like before. He’s going to defend himself to the end. I’m used to him now. I can see him pause, think what’s at risk for him.

  “It was a valid line of inquiry.”

  “And a man’s dead now because of it.”

  He straightens.

  “I don’t think you can blame Mike Waring’s injury on that. And he’s not dead. He might recover.”

  I snort. Even now he doesn’t get it. Even now he’s still in his narrow mind-set, where, somewhere in the back of his mind, he still believes he was right.

  “I didn’t mean Mike, sir. I meant Julian Peters.”

  Lorraine speaks up now.

  “I’ll be filing a report on this tomorrow. I’ll appoint an independent investigator and make sure that no stone is left unturned.”

  Stewart reddens.

  “I’ll be handling the investigation. I’ll take care of that.”

  She stands up.

  “For your department, maybe. But I’ll be appointing a family liaison to look after Jan. And Lisa. I’ll be launching my own inquiry, sir, and referring this to the IPCC.”

  He’s sweating now.

  “Look, there’s no need for that. Mike’s, well, a brilliant officer, but we all know the risks, don’t we? Some nutter with a gun. It was an accident, Lorraine.”

  She sighs.

  “But it wasn’t, was it. It was a consequence of your decision not to allow backup for Jan’s inquiry. Again. Because you were hell-bent on Julian Peters being guilty. With little evidence. Except for Ian Stevens, who, it turns out, was heavily involved in the abduction. So either you’re really fucking stupid or . . .”

  He darts round the desk and faces Lorraine nose to nose. Damien moves toward them.

  “I’m your superior. You can’t overrule me. I’ll . . .”

  She’s staring into his eyes.

  “I’d rather resign than ever work for you again. You haven’t got a human feeling in you. Not anywhere. You’ve had it in for Jan right from the start, and you tried to push her onto Damien Booth to get her off ops and onto MisPer. But you know what? I’m going to make a recommendation. I’m going to recommend that Damien and Jan combine ops with MisPer and families. Focusing on what you like to call soft cases.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “Great. We’ve got gangsters roaming round Manchester shooting our officers and each other, and you want to chase after a load of runaway girls.”

  She raises her voice just a decibel.

  “But a murder’s a murder, sir? Why should dead girls and babies matter less than a high-profile gangster? Headlines, maybe? Is that why you wanted Damien here, because it’d make you look better?”

  He pulls his jacket off the back of his chair and moves toward the door.

  “I’ve had enough of this. We’re police officers, not wet nurses. Hard crime. That’s our business. Not teenage prostitutes who can’t look after their own kids. Or middle-aged women protesting about planning permission.”

  I stand up and face him.

  “Is that what you think has happened? You think we just rescued Dara Price from some bunny boiler who wanted to make a statement? There were two dead children in that house, maybe more. And a lot of medical equipment. Surveillance will be tracing sources right now. Checking out Ian Stevens and why everyone believed him.”

  He walks out and slams the door. Lorraine comes over and sits next to me again.

  “OK, Jan?”

  I shake my head.

  “No. I’m not OK. Not one little bit.”

  I wipe away a tear.

  “Does Della know?”

  Lorraine nods.

  “Yes. She won’t speak to anyone. She won’t let anyone go round. Says she wants to be alone with the kids.”

  Damien speaks now.

  “That’s normal. Completely normal. Those poor kids. You’re going to need some time, too, Jan.”

  “I’m not his wife, though, am I? And I’ve got a job to do.”

  Lorraine puts some papers back in her bag and stands up.

  “Right. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Oh, by the way, Lisa had nowhere to go, so I’ve put her in a cell.”

  She moves toward the door.

  “He was a good man, was Mike. I just hope he makes it.”

  She leaves, and Damien and I walk back through ops silently. I go to my own desk and check my emails. All the statements from the inquiry have been emailed to me. I suddenly realize I’ll have to go to the Sommers’ and tell them about Lewis. And Joanie. I check the actions log and see that Dara was taken straight from here to the hospital. I click onto a news channel and see that it’s made the nationals: MISSING DARA FOUND SAFE AND WELL: WOMAN ARRESTED.

  Damien appears behind me. He looks bedraggled, and he sits on my desk.

  “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  “I’m OK. I want to stay here for a while.”

  “No. Come on, you’re in shock.”

  Am I? Am I in shock? Or am I just getting used to a world that I never dreamed existed? Where angels are evil and a mother’s love isn’t unconditional. It’s not what I thought it was. A world where Mike is lying in a hospital bed in intensive care. I go over to his desk and pick up a few pictures and look at them. Mike at the beach with his kids. Della smiling at Mike.

  He’d better not die. Not Mike. It wouldn’t be the first time one of us has died. My friend Alan was run over by a getaway car as he tried to stop it. Another guy in the department died of lung cancer. Each time I’d gone home and held Sal tight and hugged Aiden before he went to sleep. And that’s why I don’t want to go yet. Part of me wants to stay here at Mike’s desk with Mike’s things. But the bigger part of me doesn’t want to go back to an empty house, because I’m scared of what will happen if I’m alone, if there’s no one to be strong for.

  Damien touches my shoulder.

  “We have to go now, Jan.”

  I leave the ops room, past the booking-in desk. Past Stan, who nods sadly. Nothing to say. There are no words. Into the car and past the news vans. It’s only when we reach the Oldham Road that the images of the day start to replay in my mind. I think about what Lisa said about those poor girls in that house. How that could have been going on and nobody noticed that they were gone. How I’ll get whoever’s behind this if it’s the last thing I do. The streetlights strobe as Damien speeds through the traffic, and by the time we reach my house, the tears have started.

  Chapter 34

  We pull up outside my house and I get out of the car. Damien gets out, too.

  “Oh no. I want to be on my own, Damien.”

  The neighbors are out, and Percy runs up to me.

  “Oh, Jan love. Well done. You caught the bastard. I bet that girl’s parents are bloody pleased.”

  I smile.

  “Yes. Yes, I expect they are. And thanks for looking after Percy.”

  There’s an awkward silence as they look at Damien, expecting some kind of introduction. When none is forthcoming, they turn and go home.

  I walk toward the house, and Damien follows me. I open the door, and he steps into the hallway behind me. Percy is dancing around me, and I go over to the cupboard and pull out her food. She sits and purrs. It seems inappropriate, far too happy for today. When my heart is breaking. Damien fills up the kettle and makes some tea.

  “It’s all right, you know. I’ll be OK on my own.”

  He laughs.

  “I
’m not leaving you, Jan. I’m not worried about you. I’m just not leaving you.”

  He switches the lamps on in the lounge and flicks on the electric fire. I push the TV remote and tune into Sky News. There’s a report about Dara being found safe and well and inquiries ongoing. That she’s at the hospital being checked over and will be reunited with her parents later. I’m happy, but I can’t celebrate because my heart is like a brick in my chest. The pain of Mike is like a weight, adding to the pain of Aiden.

  Damien goes upstairs, and I hear the toilet flush. Then he comes downstairs and hands me a postcard.

  “Behind the door.”

  There’s a picture of Christ the Redeemer in Rio and a message:

  “I’m here. Leave it. I’ll be in touch. A.”

  My heart sinks. He’s warning me off. Telling me he’s OK. If it is even him. I just don’t know anymore. It could be anyone’s handwriting. But it probably is him. The notion swims around in my mind; it’s lost somewhere in between the dead children and Mike. Squashed into bits by the horror story that I’ve had to endure today. Damien comes back with tea and a packet of biscuits.

  “We’ll get takeout for dinner. If that’s OK? If you feel like eating?”

  I don’t, but I take a biscuit anyway.

  “Yeah. I need to keep my strength up.”

  He tilts his head to one side.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Well, no, but don’t expect hysterics. It’s not my style. I’m just dying inside.”

  “Is that from Aiden?”

  Shit. I’d kept it to myself all this time. Only Mike and I knew that I knew he was with Sal. Now Damien knows. The game’s up. I can’t pretend anymore. It’s wearing me out.

  “You read it?”

  “Of course. I’m a profiler. I read everything.”

  I wait a second. It seems disrespectful to talk about anything else with Mike being so ill. This is why it would have been better if I could have been here on my own. No audience. No need to talk about anything. But as he’s here, I might as well.

  “Probably.”

  I turn the postcard around in my hands then hold the picture up in front of Damien.