by Louise Voss
‘Mike?’ Patrick asked, but from the expression on Mike’s face he had a horrible feeling of foreboding.
The detective sergeant lowered his voice. ‘They’ve found a body. A little girl.’
Chapter 7
Larry – Day 2
‘Hey, could one of you do me a big favour, please?’ Larry had put on his politest face, the one he used for the headmaster. The butter wouldn’t melt face, his mum called it. He casually slewed his bike sideways in the wide alley running alongside Sainsbury’s, and addressed the two schoolboys coming towards him in black blazers and stripy ties – from that nobby stage school across the Green, Larry recognized. They came to a halt, glancing at each other from under their fringes, but with curiosity rather than fear. The tall one was literally two feet taller than his mate, but something about them told Larry they were probably in the same school year, maybe 9 or 10.
‘What, bruv?’
Bruv? Larry almost laughed out loud. This lanky posh twat had actually called him bruv? He matched his own language accordingly.
‘Yeah, sweet – can I borrow your phone for a minute? Need to call me mum, innit, see if she’s home as I ain’t got a key and some tosser nicked my iPhone yesterday.’
The tall one hesitated, but the tiny one immediately put his hand into his blazer pocket and pulled out a phone. ‘No worries, pal,’ he said, smiling earnestly at Larry. ‘As long as she don’t live in Australia!’
They all snarfed politely. Larry took the phone. ‘Galaxy S4,’ he said, turning it over. Then he did two things simultaneously: popped the phone’s back off, whipped out his flick knife and pressed the open blade menacingly but discreetly against the waist of the tall one, under his blazer.
‘Sorry about this, but needs must, eh?’ he said conversationally. ‘But being decent, I’m letting you keep your SIM – take it out and I’ll be out of your hair. Unless you want me to take the whole thing, you’d better be fucking quick about it.’
The mouths of both boys gaped open in shock and outrage as Larry handed the phone back to its owner. He applied a little pressure to the knife handle. ‘Quick, I said.’
Panic in his eyes, the tall one removed his SIM card and reluctantly handed the phone back to Larry.
‘Good boy,’ Larry said, pocketing it and, still holding the knife, turning his handlebars towards the end of the alley. It was at that moment the smaller boy seemed to wake up out of his terrified trance. He gave a high-pitched yell, a girly sort of squeal, and made a lunge towards Larry, swinging at him with a small fist. Larry laughed, and kicked hard at him, his foot connecting with the boy’s kneecap. The boy’s yell turned into a howl and he doubled over. The tall one made a similarly ineffective pass towards Larry, but Larry could tell it was only done because he didn’t want to look like a pussy next to his tiny mate.
‘Oh, give over, you twats,’ he said, pushing his feet up on the pedals of his bike and surging away towards the end of the alley. ‘It’s only a fucking phone. Get mummy to claim it on the insurance.’
Half an hour later Larry arrived at his next destination, the piss-stinking echoey grey concrete Kennedy Estate in Whitton. He had cycled hard all the way there, to try and quash the nerves – bordering on terror – that he always felt whenever he came to visit Jerome. But, as he’d said to the schoolboys, needs must. He needed the money that Jerome would give him for the four purloined mobiles currently swinging together in the inside pocket of his jacket as he stood on his pedals and rode as hard as he could. That way, he could blame his pounding heart on the exertion from the exercise and not on the sight of Jerome’s mean, yellowish face as Jerome opened the steel door to his flat and narrowed his eyes at him, as he always did.
Larry carried his bike up to the eighth floor – no lock, and he knew it would be nicked in a nanosecond if he left it downstairs. Plus, it gave him another reason to be panting acceptably.
‘What you got for me, Lawrence?’ said Jerome with no preamble, through a crack in the door.
‘Awright Jerome?’ Larry patted his jacket pocket, and Jerome jerked his head to indicate he could come in.
‘Leave the fucking bike, mate. Don’t want no mud and shit on me carpets.’
Larry reluctantly propped it outside the flat, figuring that at least it was less likely to be stolen this far up. He followed Jerome inside, surprised and unnerved as always at how tidy and minimalist the place was. It was like bachelor pads he’d seen in movies set circa 1985, all chrome and smoked glass, grey and black patterned wallpaper on one wall, pale grey paint on the others, and a framed monochrome print of all those 1920s construction workers in New York eating their lunch on a girder thousands of feet up on a half-built skyscraper. The only thing currently out of place was the chunky black girl in a crop top and Day-Glo orange leggings sprawled on the sofa smoking a big spliff. She didn’t acknowledge Larry at all, and Jerome didn’t introduce her.
‘Let’s ’ave ’em then,’ he said impatiently.
‘Three Galaxies and an iPhone 5,’ Larry said, trying not to sound smug. He quashed the mental image of the phones’ former owners, the terror on the face of the middle-aged woman on the top deck of the bus at the sight of his blade, the expression of pain on the schoolboy, the bemused businessman on the Tube, the young girl pushing a pushchair, startled and afraid as he’d simply plucked the phone from under her chin where she’d wedged it as she walked along chatting. His mum would be so upset with him if she knew. But they were only phones.
He felt a flare of anger at his mum. Why couldn’t she get a job? She wasn’t some useless chav; she was a nice lower middle-class woman who’d been a housekeeper for the same family for fourteen years. Since they made her redundant a year ago – the kids were all grown up now and they didn’t need her anymore – she hadn’t been able to find anything else. The pile of red bills on the windowsill behind the telly was getting so high that it would start blocking out the fucking light soon.
None of his mates knew how tight cash was for him and his mum. The two of them lived in a terraced cottage in a nice area of Teddington, decent enough that he sometimes had people over, when his mum went out. He’d never had Alice round, though. He felt too intimidated by her poshness and the size of her folks’ place, and he wanted to impress her. The relationship was still new enough that he feared she might drop him for someone richer if she saw where he lived.
Jerome’s chin jerked briefly upwards in a nod.
‘Three of them have SIMs in,’ Larry gabbled. ‘That one don’t.’ He pointed at the schoolboy’s phone.
‘Whatever,’ Jerome said, bored. ‘I’ll give you forty pounds for the lot.’
Larry forced himself not to look disappointed. This was less per phone than the last time, but he was too scared of Jerome to point it out.
‘Sweet,’ he said wearily.
Jerome took an enormous bundle of notes out of the side pocket of his combats and peeled two twenties off the top. Larry held out his hand to take them, and at the last minute Jerome snatched his own hand back again. Suddenly he was looming right up into Larry’s face, his terrifying greenish pallor giving off some sort of rancid scent – or was that his breath? His teeth were disgusting, crumbling and bright yellow, and his eyes dead and flat. Larry had always assumed that Jerome was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, but up close he could see that he was probably younger – maybe only a few years older than himself. Larry’s legs wobbled but he forced himself to stand his ground.
‘What?’
Jerome tipped his head slowly and menacingly to one side, scrutinizing Larry from mere inches away. ‘You tell that evil little slut that I’m on to her. She owes me, more money than anyone’s ever owed me before and lived. Tell her to watch her fucking back cos, make no mistake, I am gonna hurt her. Now piss off out of here.’
Larry obliged with alacrity, running so fast down the stairs that he bashed his bike handlebars on every corner, and almost fell several times in his haste to be as far away as possib
le. Shit shit shit, he thought at every step. She’s really done it now.
Chapter 8
Patrick – Day 2
The sun was shining in the park in which the body had been found. Patrick and Carmella stepped out from beneath a canopy of horse chestnut trees and the strong sunshine caused spots to dance before Patrick’s eyes. He paused, took a drag on his e-fag and almost swooned as the nicotine and bright light hit his exhausted brain. Shadows swayed and stretched on the cracked earth at his feet and he stood still, focusing on the trunk of the nearest tree, waiting for his vision to return to normal. His left ear was whistling crazily, his tinnitus turned up two notches.
‘If this is Frankie Philips or Isabel Hartley,’ Patrick said, ‘by the end of today this place is going to be the centre of the biggest shit storm south-west London has ever seen.’
‘I’ve got an umbrella in the car,’ Carmella said. She looked almost as sick as he felt. For the past week, he had known this moment would come. In cases like this, when seven days had passed, there were only two outcomes. A body. Or nothing, ever.
There were three unmarked cars and a van full of cops waiting behind them, and the Home Office pathologist had been alerted. But Patrick and Carmella were going in first.
‘You’re going to need the biggest umbrella ever when the media get wind of this,’ he said.
For the past couple of years, the existence of the travellers’ encampment in Crane Park in Twickenham had been one of the hottest – no, most incendiary – topics among locals. It was rare for the local paper to run without a story about the travellers, who had been blamed for everything from a dip in property prices to a surge in petty crime, with endless miniature moral panics whipped up by journalists, whether it was down to sanitation or the travellers’ dogs crapping in the park, taxpayers’ money being spent on benefits or the cost of towing away abandoned vehicles that had been dumped outside the encampment, rumours of ‘drug-dealing gypsies’ selling weed to local teens, or people complaining that they feared letting their children play in the park.
Personally, Patrick wished people would leave them alone. This was partly because moral panics and witch-hunts always made him bristle – he had a natural fear of mobs, whoever the target – and partly because he witnessed every day the very worst of what went on in the so-called respectable world, the city outside the camp’s walls. But he knew that if the Crane Park encampment and the Child Catcher case collided, it would be the local equivalent of the president of South Korea going on TV and accusing Kim Jong-un of using his nuclear missiles as a tiny penis substitute.
A young man was waiting for them at the gates – deeply tanned, with thick black hair and a checked shirt gaping open to reveal a hairy chest. He wore a solemn expression and, without speaking, tipped his head to indicate that Patrick and Carmella should follow him.
They walked through the camp: mobile homes set up in a jumbled formation; cars in varying degrees of nick; men and women sitting around in the sunshine, kids running about in shorts, dogs sniffing at wheel rims. To look at, it reminded Patrick of a music festival – but the atmosphere was very different. The air was charged, rippling with barely suppressed hostility as they walked past.
The young man walked with his hands in his pockets, not talking, until they reached a large, gleaming mobile home at the centre of the camp.
‘Mickey’s waiting inside,’ he said, knocking on the door.
They stepped up into the vehicle where a man with wiry grey hair, a flat nose and forearms like Popeye’s stood waiting for them. They shook hands and the man introduced himself.
‘I’m Mickey Flanagan,’ he said, gesturing for them to sit down. The man had testosterone coming off him in great musky waves. He was around fifty but looked fit, like a retired boxer. They sat opposite him around a small table. Mickey picked up a can of Dr Pepper and took a swig, but didn’t offer one to his guests.
‘It was you who reported finding a body?’ Patrick asked.
Mickey nodded. ‘It was.’
‘And where is she now?’
The other man paused. ‘I want you to know straight up that it was no one in this community. I can promise you that.’
‘Just tell us the facts, Mr Flanagan.’
Mickey thumped the table. ‘This is a decent community. You think we don’t know what they say about us out there? What they’re going to say when they discover a babby was found here?’
Patrick waited, keeping eye contact with the other man.
Eventually, Mickey sighed. ‘Alright, so. It was that bloody little idiot Wesley. He found her.’
‘What’s Wesley’s full name?’ Carmella asked. Patrick noticed how she accentuated her Irish accent when talking to the traveller’s leader.
‘His last name’s Hewson.’
‘And where is he now? It’s better if we hear it from him.’
Mickey stared at Carmella and muttered something under his breath. He stood up, went over to the door and leaned out. A minute later, a man of around eighteen or nineteen came in to the mobile home. He was wearing a white polo shirt with baggy jeans and had gelled-down hair that accentuated his jug ears. He held himself straight, trying to give it some attitude, but the moment Patrick fixed him with his steeliest glare the façade of bravado crumbled away.
‘Tell them what happened, ya eejit,’ Mickey said.
The moment Wesley spoke it was clear he wasn’t the brightest star in the firmament. In Patrick’s childhood, they would have called him remedial. He wouldn’t look anywhere near them as he spoke.
‘I found her round the back, by the bins, like. She’d been—’ He screwed up his face ‘—just left there, you know, with a, like, black bin liner over her. There were all flies buzzing about. It was minging.’
Patrick swallowed. ‘Her?’
‘A little girl. Just a tiny little thing, you know. About the same age as my daughter.’
Mickey nodded. ‘Wes here is a father of two.’
‘When was this?’ Patrick asked, expecting to hear the time of day.
‘Monday.’
It took a second for the reply to sink in. He and Carmella exchanged a look of shock.
‘Monday? That was six days ago.’ So it wasn’t Frankie.
Wesley hung his head like a dog who’d been caught stealing Christmas dinner and Mickey said, ‘He was hiding her.’
‘Where?’ Patrick asked. The heat was making him sweat and he felt sick, dizzy with dread. Carmella had gone a shade paler too.
‘Tell them,’ Mickey said, cuffing the teenager around the back of the head.
‘Round the back of the camp, behind where the bins are, there’s this, like, old building.’
‘Used to be public toilets,’ Mickey explained.
‘I put her in there. Covered her up with this old, like, tarpaulin. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
Patrick stared at the boy. There had been few times in his career when he’d been lost for words, but this was one of them.
‘Listen,’ Mickey said, stepping in front of Wesley. ‘He may be a fucking eejit, but he did it because he knew exactly what people would think. Travellers – murdering those little kids that have gone missing. He panicked. Decided to hide her till he’d figured out what to do.’
‘And, what, it took him six days to decide to—’
‘Tell me. Yeah. And I called you straight away.’ Mickey looked as sick as Patrick felt. ‘That little babby needs to be buried by her family. And you need to catch the sick bastard who did it.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Wesley said again.
An hour later, Patrick propped himself against the bonnet of his car, swigging from a bottle of water and trying to ignore the growing buzz in his ears, a buzz that echoed the noise of the flies in the abandoned public toilets. The SOCOs were in there now. The whole encampment had been sealed off and Wesley was on his way to the station in the back of a police car.
Carmella came up and put her hand on his arm. ‘Hey, you OK?’
How could he answer that? He had just lifted the crinkly green tarpaulin to stare at the naked body of the three-year-old girl he had spent the last week praying was still alive. He knew without a doubt it was Isabel Hartley. He took another gulp of tepid water.
‘Somebody needs to tell the Hartleys,’ he said, thinking not just of them but the other two families. Of how their terror would ramp up to a higher pitch when they heard this news.
‘The FLOs can do that.’
‘And we need to sort out what to say at the press conference. DCI Laughland is setting it up now.’ He looked at the fence of the encampment, scrawled with graffiti: GIPPOS FUCK OFF. In the distance he could hear squeals of excitement from the children’s playground. The shit storm really was about to descend on this place. ‘And I want every man, woman and child in the camp questioned. What did they see? What do they know? Wesley’s story is stupid enough to be true. But he’s still our only suspect right now. And right behind him are all the other people on this camp. They—’
He broke off, rubbing his face.
‘You’re going to conduct the press conference?’ Carmella asked.
‘Of course.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘With respect, you look like a tramp I gave a quid to on the way in this morning. And smell only marginally better – that shower obviously didn’t work. Why don’t you go home, take a proper shower, get changed?’
‘Are you my mother?’
‘No, but I reckon she’s the only one who’d be able to sort you out right now. Go home, Pat. See your daughter, give her a cuddle.’ She put her hands on her hips and he squinted up at her. ‘Rinse the taste out of your mouth.’
Patrick let himself in to his parents’ house – he couldn’t bring himself to call it home, even though it was where he had been brought up – to be greeted by the sound of Bonnie howling from upstairs and the cajoling tones of his mother trying to be heard over the noise. ‘Come on now, petal, we’re going to playgroup soon, and you can’t wear your pyjamas to playgroup now, can you? All the other boys and girls will be dressed. You don’t want to be the only one in pyjamas, do you now?’
