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

by Jacqueline Ward

  Jerry steps up.

  “Thanks, Jan.”

  I see my reflection in the window opposite, the same window where I saw Mike only days ago when this case started. I’m thinner and smaller than I’ve been in ages, and my hair’s unkempt. I know I’m drained, but I also know there’s enough inside me to deal with this. I have to. Jerry’s quiet for a moment; then he continues.

  “So on to the business of today. We entered Ian Stevens’ property last night and recovered computer equipment and maps. We’ve had them analyzed overnight, and there are several emails to and from the IP address of the accused, Annie Smith. Fairly nonspecific. I’ve emailed them to you, Jan. There are also road maps of Europe and emails from several IP addresses outside the UK. Mainly about collection and delivery of items. I think we all know which items they refer to. His phone records show international calls on a regular basis. Yet his passport shows no international travel. I think we’re looking at international trafficking here. He’s the first link in a long chain. Any clues as to the nature of the trafficking?”

  I collect my senses. I have to carry on. We all do.

  “I’ve been thinking. Working it out. It has to have something to do with the medical equipment found in the house.”

  Jerry shuffles some papers.

  “We’ve done a background check on Annie Smith. Lived there fifteen years. Previous address in Surrey. Ex-nurse. Worked in the gynecology department. Fired and prosecuted for stealing prescription drugs around the same time she moved up north.”

  I knew it.

  “That figures. She had a lot of equipment in there. And she obviously knew how to use it. She was testing the children for something. And selecting them on the basis of that. So I think we can rule out a sexual motivation.”

  I suddenly feel light-headed and hold on to a chair to steady myself.

  “I think we are looking at two separate lines of inquiry here. The abductions, then the trafficking.”

  Jerry sighs and points to the suspects’ names.

  “Are you still OK to do the interviews?”

  I am. Just.

  “Yeah. I’ll take Stevens first.”

  We walk back to the charge desk, and Stan is there. He shakes his head. No words are needed. We take the first interview room, where Stevens waits with his solicitor. Damien stops me before we go in.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  I face him.

  “If you mean am I going to lose it like yesterday, then no.”

  I shake free from his hand on my arm. No time for sentimentality. I push the door open, walk over to the desk, and click the recorder on.

  “I’m DS Jan Pearce, and this is Dr. Damien Booth. For the purposes of the recorder, Ian Stevens and Paul Truman are present. Now, Mr. Stevens. How long have you known Annie Smith?”

  He looks at his hands.

  “Look. I didn’t know anything was wrong. I was just doing what I was told.”

  I stare at him.

  “How long have you known Annie Smith?”

  “About five years. From around the village.”

  “Why were you at her address yesterday?”

  He glances at his solicitor.

  “To pick up a package.”

  “OK. And where were you delivering this package to?”

  “I’d take it to Piccadilly Station in Manchester and give it to this bloke.”

  I nod.

  “Would this bloke be Leo? The bloke who we heard you speaking to yesterday?”

  “No comment.”

  I pause for a second. So this is how he wants to play it.

  “OK. Let’s try it another way. We found the bodies of two children in the cellar at 45 Pit Lane. Do you know how they got there? Mr. Stevens?”

  He pales. His solicitor looks at him and shakes his head.

  “N-no. Bodies? But the kids weren’t . . .”

  “Dead, Mr. Stevens? So the kids you were delivering, the packages, or items as you put it in your emails, were alive. So what about the samples you were collecting? Gave those to Leo, too, did you?”

  “No comment.”

  “We both know that you are aware of exactly what those samples were for and exactly why those children were being taken. So why don’t you tell us, Mr. Stevens.”

  “No comment.”

  “OK. So the samples? Were there more samples than children?”

  I can see him counting in his head. Tallying up what he has delivered. Children against plastic boxes.

  “No comment.”

  “So. Say there were more samples than children who were abducted and held at 45 Pit Lane. Then you deliver the children whose samples are accepted by this Leo person. What do you think happened to the other children? Those whose samples were rejected?”

  He’s shaking his head.

  “No. She couldn’t have. She couldn’t. Not Annie.”

  He’s sweating and panicking now.

  “Shocked? Shocked that a middle-aged woman could murder children? So what did you think was happening to your deliveries? The kids you handed over? Or were you too busy checking your bank account?”

  His solicitor holds up his hand. But I carry on.

  “We’ve got the samples, Mr. Stevens, and we’ve got your fingerprints on the boxes. And two police witness statements. It won’t take us long to discover what the samples were for. They’re in the lab right now. We’ve got your phone and computer, and we’re going through them. We’ve found your emails and lots of pictures of children on your phone. We’ll soon know exactly who Leo is. So it would be better all round for you if you tell us what’s going on now.”

  He looks at his solicitor.

  “No comment.”

  “Have you delivered Dara Price to Leo?”

  “No comment.”

  But I see a flicker of annoyance. A slight signal that all is not well. Of anger and irritation. Because, as we know, Elise was the target. Elise was the original delivery. Dara was a substitute. Was he duped by Annie, and the girl we found was another replacement for Elise then Dara?

  “Did you fail, Mr. Stevens? Failed to get a suitable child? Plan went wrong, did it? You know what they say, don’t you? You always get found out in the end. And it’s usually when you make a mistake.”

  He stares at me. His cheerful, friendly face is replaced by pure hatred.

  “No. Comment.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stevens. I’ll be back later on to ask you more questions. When we’ve completed our inquiries. Interview ended at nine fifteen.”

  I reach over and click off the recorder. I stand, arms folded, looking at the solicitor.

  “You got kids, Mr. Truman?”

  He nods without looking at me. I leave the room, and Damien follows me.

  Chapter 36

  I lean against the wall outside the interview room.

  “They’ve bungled it. They lost Elise, then Dara wasn’t right somehow, even though they delivered her in place of Elise, so they took another girl. There was a picture of Elise on his phone. That’s the kid he was expecting, and she would have to find another one who looked the same. A replacement. Or two replacements. She would have carried on until they got it right.”

  Damien’s been reading emails on his phone.

  “Yeah. Elise was the original item thirty-four in the emails from his phone. Dara was replacement item thirty-four. And the girl we found was item thirty-five.”

  We read the emails together on his phone, and the chilling reality of the awful transactions hit home. I wonder if I should go back and show them to Stevens, show him we have evidence. But Jerry signals to us, and we go back to ops. He’s got the forensics report.

  “Four samples in each box. Three blood, one urine. One of the sample boxes was for the little girl you found there. Blood type O positive. Blood type for the two deceased children both A positive.”

  Damien nods.

  “Yeah. O is the most common blood group. Anyone can be given O blood.”


  I don’t like the way this is going.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Let’s find out if Elise has O blood. If she does and Dara doesn’t, it means they are looking for O blood to match some kind of medical procedure.”

  He doesn’t want to say it and neither do I. I go to my desk and try to ignore the empty desk opposite. The picture of Della and the kids still smiling out at the world. Damien pulls up a chair, and I pick up the phone. He stops me.

  “Who are you calling?”

  I shake my head.

  “The hospital. Obviously. To find out the blood group.”

  He nods.

  “You’ll probably find Dara’s that way but not Elise’s.”

  “But we know her real name. And her date of birth. Lisa gave all the information to Lorraine.”

  “The thing is, Jan, babies aren’t routinely tested for their blood group. Only if the mother is Rh negative or if there’s a problem at birth, an illness or something. Amy Price told us that Dara had a heart problem when she was born, so they may have hers. But not Elise’s.”

  I think about it. I didn’t even know Aiden’s blood group. Never had reason to.

  “But what about if they needed a transfusion? Surely the hospital would need to know the child’s blood group.”

  He stares at me for a minute.

  “You’re good, Jan. That’s almost the exact line of thinking that I followed to come to my conclusion. Except I know that in a transfusion, group O blood is universal. So there is never any real need to know a person’s blood group. Which made me think of this . . .”

  He’s tapping words into Google as I phone the hospital. Damien is right. Dara is O, but they don’t know the blood group for Elise.

  “How did you know all that, Damien? About the blood?”

  He smiles a little as he performs an Internet search.

  “I studied biology and anatomy at A level.”

  “Anything else you’re an expert at? You seem to have studied everything.”

  “Not everything. But I’ve had a lot of time on my hands with never having a long-term relationship. Knowledge is addictive. Before I went to New Zealand, I wrote papers on cryptology. It’s my hobby. Code breaking.”

  “More patterns? I suppose it fits with the apophenia?”

  He’s nodding, but he’s not smiling now. Damien presses the space bar on my computer and I read snippets of the text on the screen.:

  Live transplant matching…kidney transplantation… donors…blood type…HLA testing… blood tests…compatible….

  I struggle to understand the technical details but when we get to the testing procedure I know he is right. The details in the report directly describe the scenario in Christine’s kitchen. The blood tests. The samples. It goes on to explain about blood types and the compatible ones. For live organs. Damien presses print. It’s unbelievable. But I think he’s right.

  “Stealing children for live organs? That’s why they want type O blood? Because it’s universal?”

  I can’t comprehend it. But Damien nods.

  “Organ trafficking.”

  I shake my head. My god. Organ trafficking. It’s beyond anything that I expected. This. And Mike. It’s almost too much to take in.

  Damien pauses. At first I think it’s out of respect for Mike. But I’ve come to know him a bit better. His little tics. He’s upset. Damien’s a sensitive soul. Then it finally clicks. I understand the endgame.

  “Organ trafficking and snuff porn in the same town? But there’s a common denominator, isn’t there. Because it’s a simple case of supply and demand. Go where the resources are.”

  He shakes his head. He doesn’t realize that Greenfield is hardly the crime center of the world.

  “But they’re unconnected, surely?”

  I explain.

  “No. At first I thought it was the Jameson character, the one Lisa keeps mentioning. Almost fell for my own hype. The usual suspects. But it didn’t click until Jerry just told us about Annie Smith. All that equipment in the kitchen. Too much for what she was doing to those poor kids. I thought that at the time. What would she need all that for? It was like an impromptu operating room.” His face reflects the dread I feel, even as I say the words. “Lisa. The cannula. Her bruises.”

  I think back to Annie’s kitchen. A huge refectory table. A block of wood with the angels watching over it. It clicks with Damien.

  “The table. They brought the girls there.”

  It’s sick. Horrific. More sick than anyone could have imagined.

  “Yeah. You’re right. That’s what it’s looking like. It’s only a short drive over the moor from Charleston House to Pit Lane. I’d put money on those kids’ mothers all having some connection to Jameson’s clubs. And Connelly. And the Gables. I guess we’ll find out for sure when we complete the inquiry and the forensics have finished up.”

  Supply and demand. As if what she did to the children wasn’t enough, Annie was performing surgery on Jameson’s girls. Patching them up when things got out of hand, only for them to be snuffed out eventually. I look at Damien. He says what I’m thinking.

  “What kind of sick fucking world is this?”

  For once I’m at a loss for words. My phone rings, and I see a random mobile number. Even after everything that has happened with Sal, I still think of Aiden. I fumble for the green button and almost drop my phone in my haste to answer the call. Maybe he’s heard what has happened. Aiden liked Mike. I finally answer the call.

  “Aiden . . . is that . . .”

  But it isn’t. I hear a strange voice, and it takes a moment to register.

  “DS Pearce. This is rapid response. The target was located in a vehicle on the Huddersfield Road and neutralized without any harm to police officers or the public.”

  The target. Neutralized.

  “OK. Thanks. Will you be bringing him here?”

  The silence of misunderstanding. Hesitation. Thinking of something appropriate to say. But there isn’t really another way to say it.

  “The target is deceased. He put up resistance, and he was armed. Someone is on their way with his effects.”

  Sal’s dead.

  “How was he located? This was so . . . quick.”

  “We had a report of someone taking a shot at a police car up toward Scouthead. The area was cordoned off, and the target tracked onto the moor and isolated. Then . . .”

  I gag. I suddenly feel nauseous and lean against the wall.

  “Yes. OK. Thank you for letting me know.”

  Damien’s gathered what’s going on and moves forward to comfort me, but I hold up my hands. Relief floods over me. I’m a little surprised that I don’t feel more upset, but after what he’s done to me, not to mention all those young people, how could I? The secrets, the lies, the abuse. And in the end, he couldn’t even face the music. The thing I’m most sorry about is that I wasn’t there to witness it. To make sure that he really is gone. But I can’t have everything, and at least this way I’m not directly involved.

  But he is Aiden’s father. Aiden would have to hear this news, and that it would destroy him. He clearly idolized Sal. I leave Damien, grab some coffee, hurry down the stairs to reception, and hang around until the unmarked car arrives. Rapid response walks in carrying a green bag full of Sal’s belongings. And the gun.

  They’re all so busy dealing with the gun that they don’t see me dip into the green carrier bag and, with my back to the CCTV, take Sal’s phone. I hang around for another few minutes until the gun is secured and signed in, and they turn their attention to the carrier bag.

  Sal’s wallet, complete with a picture of Aiden and Selena falls onto the counter. He has multiple credit cards, all in different names. A bundle of twenties and fifties, a bookies pen. Various receipts and a payslip just like the one that arrived at my house. The key to his flat on an I love Italy key ring. I recognize a key to my house from when it was our house. Stan writes it all down as the debris of Sal’s lif
e is spread on the counter.

  Elastic bands, a cord jacket, more keys on a different key ring. The bag is empty. I need to get away.

  “If you won’t be needing me for anything else?”

  Stan breaks off from the booking in.

  “I expect they’re bring more later on when, well, you know . . .”

  Yes, I do know. When they shut him in the morgue, where he can’t do any more damage.

  “Right. Let me know when it’s all coming together, and I’ll collate. I need to carry on with Annie Smith.”

  I turn away and wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Instead of returning to Damien and going to interview Annie Smith, I hurry out of a side door and to the back of the building, taking care to avoid any cameras.

  I sit down under an ash tree and open Sal’s phone cover. I scroll down and find my own number. This is personal. This is all twisted into my own life, and it occurs to me that I would never have become this involved had I not persisted in my quest to find my son. But if I had left it alone, chances are none of these crimes would have been discovered, not yet in any case, if ever. Sal would have carried on with Connelly, he would have put so many people through lives of suffering and purgatory. Even, it turns out in the endgame, his son.

  I see Aiden’s number in his phone, but I scroll past it. Selena. Some part of me wants her to suffer, too, and as the international tone rings out, I wonder why if I didn’t care about Sal. My answer comes when I hear her voice, perky and crisp. She’s me, isn’t she? Well, she thinks she is in the made-up world Sal has woven for her. He even left Aiden with her.

  I consider ending the call and letting her think Sal is alive for a little longer. After all, who will tell her what he did? How, in some mad way he ended his life with me on his mind? But I decide against it. No. She should know.

  “Sal? Sal? Come on. Stop messing about.”

  God. For all the world they could be a normal couple. I can hear the amusement in her voice.

  “Come on, Sal. Where are you?”

  I listen to the silence. To the background. I’m invisible, leaving a gap. She needs to speak to fill it.