Power on Her Own

by Judith Cutler

  He smiled, as if acknowledging the effort she’d made. ‘Oh – but you piece things together.’

  ‘Does he still see your friend?’

  ‘Clean break. She’s got another bloke, now. University lecturer she met when she was on a course. Right: back to the grindstone. Did I miss much yesterday?’

  The team that had been watching the school had seen no one suspicious. None of the families contacted by Family Protection and social workers reported any of their children being approached. It was a gloomy and dispirited team that sat in the Incident Room.

  ‘We’ve drawn blanks everywhere,’ Cope concluded. ‘But there’s news that a kid somewhere in Devon, Dawley or some such –’

  ‘Dawlish, Sir?’ Sally put in.

  ‘Dawlish, is it? I didn’t realise you were one of our intellectual high-flyers, Sally. DS Power, now, we all know she’s got letters after her name – didn’t know you had, too. So now we know it’s Dawlish. Little one-horse seaside town. Anyway, this lad’s been approached by a man and a woman. I thought we should go and take a gander. Power, how soon can you be there?’

  ‘By tea-time, gaffer. But I’ll need to go and pick up my car – it’s back in Kings Heath.’

  ‘No. I won’t ask why. I’m sure there’s some explanation you’re dying to favour us with, but frankly, I haven’t time. Take one from the pound, for Christ’s sake. Stay as long as you need. You’re not much use here.’

  Swallow it. She had to swallow it. ‘I shall be back by tea tomorrow, Sir. I coach a football team on Thursdays. Can’t miss that.’

  There was a guffaw. ‘Oh, neither can we, Power, neither can we. All these women running round.’ He joggled imaginary breasts. ‘Tell me when your next game is.’

  ‘Saturday, Sir. Boys’ Brigade Junior League. I coach little boys.’

  As an exit line it wasn’t bad. It covered the seething frustration she felt. No curtains – well, she’d survive. No chance to start searching for that crucial cul-de-sac. No chance of checking her theory with Graham.

  She collected the file Cope had put together, reached for the overnight bag she kept as a matter of habit in her locker, and remembered in time to phone the Manse. She didn’t like leaving her message on their answerphone – they deserved a more personal explanation – but neither Maz nor Giles was at home. And then she was on her way.

  She picked up the M6, and then peeled off on to the M5. Spectacular views of the once industrial, still tatty West Midlands. Someone somewhere ought to be pouring money into the area. It was the heart of the industrial revolution, if not the birthplace – that honour belonged to Ironbridge, didn’t it? Mecca for school trips. She still remembered Blist’s Hill in the pouring rain, then, only an hour later, Blist’s Hill in quite savage sun. Weird, the British weather. Like now: even though you’d have thought the bright Indian summer weather general over the country, she was running into skeins of mist. And that could mean fog.

  Near the M4 turn off, she ran into it. Thick, mucky stuff. She switched on every sensible light, and dropped speed dramatically. At last, she decided she might be safe at thirty. And people were hurtling past her at eighty, ninety.

  Just as she was bracing herself to remember all her first-aid skills, the fog lifted. Brilliant sunshine, as if she’d been imagining everything.

  Time to take a break in any case. She pulled off at Gordano, wondering how on earth it acquired such a name: wasn’t it originally Peter-in-Gordano, or something equally obscure? Easton! That was it. Easton-in-Gordano. No need to speculate why they’d changed it.

  In the cafeteria tea queue, she fell in behind two patrol car drivers. Were they discussing the latest evasive driving techniques?

  ‘Assam or Darjeeling?’ one asked.

  ‘In this weather Earl Grey with lemon might be nice. No, I’ll settle for Darjeeling. What about you?’

  She’d enjoy reporting that to Graham when she saw him.

  There was no reason to avoid or to join them. But when they all tried to reach for the same teaspoon, she laughed, and introduced herself.

  ‘Fancy an escort for a few miles? Burn a bit of rubber?’ asked the younger, a lad of about twenty-five.

  ‘Look, they measure our petrol by the eye-dropper: if I use more than my inspector thinks I should, they’ll have me valeting cars until he reckons I’ve paid for it. Until the millennium, probably. Any news,’ she added, ‘of any nasty weather? I came through a patch of fog, earlier. No warning. No warning messages, either.’ Might as well get in an inter-departmental dig.

  ‘That’s because we haven’t seen any fog. You sure you didn’t fall asleep, love?’

  Jesus! Could she have been nodding off?

  ‘Better have a bun or something – raise your blood sugar level. Going far?’

  ‘Exeter,’ she said. ‘Been some trouble in Dawlish – my inspector thought there might be some connection with a case we’ve got – abduction of little boys.’

  ‘Dawlish! That’s that picture book little place with the railway running along the front. Big red cliffi. Nothing ever happens there!’

  ‘There was the time the heavies from Taunton used to go there to have pitched fights on the grass near the river –’ his colleague put in.

  ‘The Lawn, they call it. Very respectable place, Dawlish. Heart of the Costa Geriatrica. Well, good luck to you. But mind you stay awake, eh, my love?’

  Perhaps Exeter was starting its rush hour exceptionally early, or perhaps it was still recovering from the morning rush. It took Kate an hour to fight her way through, only to find every single parking slot near police headquarters occupied. But when she announced herself at reception, she was greeted cordially enough, and shown straight to the DCI in charge of the Dawlish case, an iron-grey woman in her fifties, who offered her tea.

  ‘I shall have to get rid of the motorway tea first, Ma’am: could you point me to a loo?’

  Iron-grey looked at her askance: presumably in her book bladders came after crime fighting. ‘Leave me the file. Can start flicking through it. OK?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ She kicked herself for having been so casual.

  When she came back, she waited till she was told to sit. The tea was regulation foul, in the thickest of regulation mugs. DCI Earnshaw regarded her and Cope’s file with equal distaste.

  ‘I hope you had a good journey,’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Because you’ll soon be making it back. Why you should bother me with this I don’t know.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  DCI Earnshaw leaned across the desk. ‘DS Power, we all try to make connections between crimes. That’s good policing. But why you should nag your inspector into letting you come all the way down here to bother me with the most tenuous connections, you alone know. Yes, we had an attempted abduction in Dawlish. An eighteen-year-old girl. And the abductor was her ex-fiancé. I really don’t see too many connections with some sick old man buggering little boys, do you?’

  ‘No, Ma’am.’ And then, despite herself, her chin came up. ‘Ma’am, may I ask why you think it should be a bee in my bonnet, no one else’s?’

  ‘My dear girl –’ and then Earnshaw’s voice softened. ‘My dear girl, are you saying this expedition wasn’t your idea?’

  ‘I’d rather be in Birmingham hanging curtains, Ma’am.’

  ‘I think you’d be better employed doing that! All right, Kate. I shan’t show you the letter from DI Cope, because, as you no doubt observed, it’s confidential. But I will favour him with a note, similarly confidential. Meanwhile, it’s well after six, and I for one am going home. Tell me, do you have any accommodation booked?’

  ‘No, Ma’am.’

  ‘There’s some sort of Festival on. Accommodation could be tricky. If you want you can fetch up in my spare room.’

  Despite her awesome facade, DCI Earnshaw – she never thawed beyond the Ma’am stage – produced omelettes and salad, with an absolutely solid – organic? – brown loaf Apples and underrip
e pears for sweet. The house – it called itself a cottage but was in fact a double fronted affair with four bedrooms – had once overlooked the Exe estuary. Now the view was somewhat interrupted by the motorway.

  Over a perfunctory coffee, Earnshaw pushed Cope’s file at her. ‘I’ve got work to do. I’d suggest you read this file from cover to cover. Note any sins of omission or commission. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I will, Ma’am. But can’t I wash up for you?’ She got to her feet.

  Earnshaw looked amused. ‘Can if you want. My weekly woman usually does it. If you shift that lot, she can wash my nets instead.’

  Kate had never heard of anyone saving washing up. But Earnshaw did. Stacks of plates, turrets of saucepans. Nor did there seem to be any hot water. No point in looking for rubber gloves, presumably. In the end, having boiled the kettle eight or nine times – she lost count – and having soaked four tea towels, she felt she’d earned her bed and board.

  Indeed, they seemed to be related. There were hard beds and hard beds. This was somewhere in the premier league of hard beds. But there was a good bedside light – the overhead one might have made it to sixty watts, just, but in any case the shade prevented much light escaping. And Kate, wrapping herself tight in her travelling dressing gown, settled down to read.

  ‘Well?’

  They were eating surprisingly creamy porridge in Earnshaw’s kitchen.

  ‘There is a surprising omission,’ Kate said. ‘The MO. As far as I can see, nowhere in that file is there any reference to the way the boys are damaged.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The perpetrator uses a toy railway engine.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! Pretty significant. Well, you go back and tell your DI from me – no, you can’t, can you? Because your DI chooses to send you on a wild goose chase. So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Do?’

  Earnshaw sighed with exasperation, and plonked the bread on the table. ‘You can’t let him get away with it. Oh, the bullying, you can, if you want to show the guts of a flea. But not the bad police work. Come on, Kate, get your thinking cap on.’

  Kate played for time, attacking the bread with a blunt bread knife.

  ‘Give it here, girl – you’re playing at it. No, what you’ll do is leave the file with me. You’ve got all the original documentation, but we’ll copy it before you go. Evidence, girl, evidence. If you ever choose to use it. And I shall send it back – eventually – with a note commending your impeccable intelligence. And meanwhile we’ll both plot. Tell you what, you pop into Dingles before you go back – should get some nice curtains there.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kate left a short, formal note on Cope’s desk, telling him that she had passed on all the information in the file to the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. She did not favour him with her feelings about being sent on a round trip of three hundred miles – at the tax payer’s expense – at a time when she could have been doing things that were infinitely more productive. Except that omission – that was surely as significant as anything else. What the hell was Cope up to?

  It was a matter of yards down the corridor to Graham’s room. It was locked.

  To do them justice both Derek and Alec were on duty for her practice session. Both were in good shape, sporting natty tracksuits. But they were low on stamina – perhaps too much working on weights, not enough aerobic work, Kate thought. They deferred almost too much to her authority, but she and the boys just got on with the training anyway. At the end of the evening Kate was exhausted.

  ‘You work yourself very hard,’ Alec said, coming up to her as they watched the boys being collected.

  ‘You can’t ask anyone to do what you can’t manage yourself, can you? Well, I suppose you can. I’ve never kicked a ball before except on the beach. All I’m doing is basic keep fit with a few ball skills thrown in.’

  ‘You’re not a soccer fan, then?’ Derek sounded surprised.

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Never miss a Cup Final on TV, but I’m not the sort of person who goes to the terraces whatever the weather.’

  ‘I’ve got a spare ticket for the Blues on Saturday afternoon if you’re interested,’ Derek said. ‘Dad can’t use it. And it’d be nice to see some professionals kicking a ball around, as opposed to us lot, I mean! Saturday morning’s the Big One, isn’t it? Needle match. And your first as coach.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ she said. ‘Depends on work, though. If I’m committed to the team in the morning, there shouldn’t be a problem. But I may have to compensate by going in later.’

  ‘But it’s a Saturday!’

  ‘Free time doesn’t exist when there’s a panic on, and that seems to be most of the time. But let’s assume it’s OK for now, shall we? Tell me all about it.’

  Using people again! She stirred a coffee, dropping the spoon into Maz’s sink, not specially pleased with herself. She’d no idea yet how Derek saw Saturday – a date? or just someone to be friendly with? She hoped it was the latter. As a man he didn’t register with her: he wasn’t much more than twenty-three or four, and though he certainly wasn’t bad looking, he lacked whatever it was that might attract. Maybe it wasn’t a minus, may be it was the plus of that Boy Scout factor that irritated her in Paul. No matter. It would be good to do something quite different from the norm for once, no matter how hard her house called to be cleaned and rehabilitated. Not to mention the garden.

  ‘You’re looking very serious,’ Maz said, dumping an executive briefcase on the kitchen table. ‘How are things, Kate? We hardly see you.’ She looked at the coffee. ‘Fancy a brandy with that? I know I do.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No thanks. Maybe later.’ She smiled. ‘The booze seems to have given me up, doesn’t it? I tell you, Maz, if it hadn’t been for you and Giles I’d be an alkie by now. No, seriously: if I’d been stuck out in my house there’d have been nothing for it.’

  ‘You’d have been OK!’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I frightened myself, Maz. It was bloody close, I tell you. It’s an occupational risk in the Force – drink and divorce, in whichever order. My fault, thinking I could deal with it all. But I should be able to move home soon.’

  ‘Oh, stay until it’s all sorted out,’ Maz said. But her voice wasn’t as enthusiastic as usual, perhaps. Perhaps she heard the difference, too. ‘I mean, you’re not in the way. We hardly see you, and when you’re here you’re looking after Tim. And the next occupant of the spare room could be a teenage drop-out or a visiting preacher with a taste for smelly pipes. And –’ she dropped her voice and grinned conspiratorially, ‘at least I get to see my kid brother now you’re here. I’d love to see Paul settle down,’ she added, sitting at the table.

  Kate passed her a coffee. ‘But not with me, Maz. Not after Robin.’ But that was evasive. ‘Paul’s a nice young man, but he’s not my type. I mean, he’s so – so young.’

  ‘Immature, you mean? Well, he’s the youngest by ten years. An afterthought baby. So he had Mum, and me, and my two elder sisters – all of us mothering him like mad. And then we were surprised when he liked it.’

  ‘Has he had many girlfriends?’

  ‘Loads. Well, you’d expect it, wouldn’t you? He’s such a stunner, though I says so as shouldn’t, as they say round here. But he’s never got deeply involved. We’ve always said anyone taking him on would have to take on the BB as well.’

  ‘He’s being very kind to me,’ Kate said apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t want him to – you know, think I was falling for him in return.’

  ‘Likes helping people. Always has. Always on at me to let him look after the kids. Always doing bits of DIY – well, Giles is hopeless. He’s a nice kid, my Paul. No, don’t look so guilty. I never match-make. Too risky. But if you want to freeze him off, you’ll have to do that yourself – I’m not into being a go-between, either.’

  ‘Tell me about Derek Walters,’ Kate said. ‘He and I are going to watch Birmingham City play on Saturday.’

  �
�Another devoted BB young man. He and his Dad. Funny pair. Very serious. But – hell, Kate, you’re not really thinking –’

  ‘Soccer match full-stop,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not into cradle-snatching. Just want a handle on him, that’s all.’

  Maz shrugged. ‘They’re both accountants. No shortage of money. Both stalwarts of the chapel. Both good men. Both bore the hide off me. OK?’

  ‘OK! So if Blues have a nil-nil draw I could be in for a truly exciting afternoon!’ She yawned. ‘Sorry. All this exercise and fresh air.’

  ‘Fresh? In the car park?’

  ‘All right. Fresh-ish. But I’ll have a quick shower and turn in, if it’s OK with you.’ It was the travelling, she supposed. To Devon and back. As if she’d been in some time warp.

  It was a nightmare, she told herself. She was having a nightmare. She wasn’t buried alive, maggots already crawling over her. She was alive and having a nightmare. She must wake herself up.

  The scream continued after she woke. Hers. But as she forced herself to stop, another continued, wild, desperate. Terrified she might have an attack, her heart was pounding so hard, she was on her feet and dragging at the bedroom door before she realised she could hear Maz’s voice, calm, kind. ‘Mummy’s coming! Only one of your dreams, love. Wake up! Only a nightmare!’

  Only! My God, was there anything worse? Kate padded downstairs to start cocoa for anyone who might want it – she certainly did! It was bad enough having them at her age, when in the warmth of the kitchen she could analyse them away. But for Jenny, a kid, just knowing the terror was as real as anything in ‘real’ life – that didn’t bear thinking of.

  ‘You all right?’ Colin peered at her. ‘Here, I’ll make you a coffee.’

  ‘Thanks. No, not a night on the beer or anything. My landlady’s kid had a series of nightmares.’

  ‘Series? One’s bad enough!’

  ‘Twelve-thirty, one-thirty, and – just for good measure – four-thirty. Poor little mite.’

  ‘Poor little Kate, by the look of you.’