She headed for her car, feeling for the key, but as she turned the corner of the building, she heard footsteps. She turned, expecting one of the night shift – new information in, she was needed back upstairs – but instead saw something moving in the deep shadow round the cars along the fence. Not something – someone. Hand tightening round the key, she glanced towards the gates and saw they’d been left open again. For God’s sake.
‘I’ve seen you,’ she said, voice echoing. ‘Come out.’
A moment later, a tall figure stepped into the moat of floodlight around the station itself. A man, late forties or early fifties, with broad shoulders and a large head of tufty silver-grey hair. Jeans and a jumper, no jacket. Lace-up shoes.
She squinted: did she know him? No – and yet he looked familiar. She’d definitely seen him before.
‘What are you doing in here? This is police property.’
‘DCI Lyons?’ He took a couple of steps closer and Robin put her hand up, Stop.
‘Have we met?’
‘No.’ His voice was deep, with a local accent. ‘You’re running the investigation in Deritend. The girl’s body found this morning.’
‘That’s right.’ Was he an ex-con? Not one of hers, she’d recognize anyone she’d put away, but maybe she’d seen his picture.
‘I’ve been busy all day,’ he said, ‘I volunteer at a place in Coventry on Sunday, and I only heard the news a couple of hours ago. I came straight away and your car was here,’ he pointed towards it, ‘so I waited for you. I thought you’d have to go home sooner or later.’
Robin gripped the keys harder, moved two of them between her fingers. Her car – what the hell? ‘I’m sorry, what’s going on here?’
‘I’m Martin Engel.’
He said it as if Robin would know immediately who he was. She frowned – she did know the name but … Ah – suddenly the picture clarified. Martin Engel – Victoria Engel’s father.
Four or five summers ago, aged fifteen, Victoria Engel had gone shopping in the city centre on a Saturday afternoon. She’d bought a dress at H&M and said goodbye to her friends before heading to the bus stop. She’d never been seen or heard from again. Robin hadn’t been in Birmingham at the time but the case was flagged at the Met, too, and it would have been hard to avoid even if you weren’t police. Victoria’s picture was splashed across the papers for weeks, and Martin Engel had done everything he could to keep it in the public eye since: daytime TV, interviews in the Daily Mail and women’s magazines, Five years on: tragic dad won’t give up hope for his daughter. He’d set up a website with artist’s impressions of what Victoria might look like now, a little older, with different hair; talked about how she would have been finishing her A-levels, leaving school, starting university.
Engel, Robin thought now, could do parallel pictures of his own. Five years ago, he’d been good-looking, with gym muscles and a tan – the family had recently taken a beach holiday somewhere hot, she remembered. When he didn’t fade from view within the generally accepted time frame, however, some in the court of public opinion insinuated that he was trying to leverage his daughter’s disappearance to get himself unrelated media gigs. Another wave of commentary followed when his wife left him: who could blame her? Who could live with someone who refused to move on, who wouldn’t try to make any sort of a life again? And, of course, there’d been people who’d thought maybe Martin Engel knew more than he was admitting about his daughter’s disappearance.
Whatever the truth, he was no longer the man he had been. The gym-muscle was gone, the jeans were too big, and his hair needed a cut. His face was most changed, though, pale and prematurely aged: he looked as if he were being eroded from the inside out.
‘Martin, it isn’t Victoria,’ she said gently. ‘My team’s been through all the local missing-from-homes from the past ten years, including Victoria. It’s not her.’
‘You’ve seen her picture? You know what she looks like?’
‘Yes.’
His body seemed to sag as the news sunk in, his head dipping towards his chest, but then, suddenly, he swung his face up until he was looking at the sky, as if offering thanks. Thank you for not taking her, for letting me go on.
‘Mr Engel,’ Robin asked, ‘how do you know my car?’
‘I follow you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘In the news. On social media. I saw videos of you in the car tonight when I searched for the story on Twitter, you and your sergeant outside the factory this morning.’ A prickle ran down Robin’s arms – how did he know Malia was her sergeant? – but he didn’t register her unease. ‘You’ve been in Birmingham for about a year. You were in London before, with the Met. You’re good, aren’t you?’
‘I’m a decent detective, if that’s what you mean.’
He gave a small snort. ‘It’s not, don’t give me that self-deprecating bullshit.’ Real vehemence, apparently out of nowhere. ‘You give a toss, that’s what I’m talking about. You give a toss what happens to people. That guy in London, the one who got you in trouble – you wouldn’t charge him because you didn’t think he’d done it. And you were right.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t have approached me like this – half ten at night, waiting in the dark. You should have called the incident room, the number’s all over our social media.’
He shook his head. ‘I needed to see you. Face to face. If it wasn’t her, you wouldn’t have seen me, would you?’
He had a point.
‘I need you to help me find my daughter.’
‘Mr Engel, this is completely … Apart from anything else, I’m a homicide detective and it’s not a homicide case – there’s never been any evidence, has there, that Victoria—’
He cut her off. ‘I’m not saying she’s dead. I’m asking you to find her.’
She got him off the premises but he was still standing on the pavement as she pulled out, still watching when she took a final glance in her rear-view mirror before turning the corner. Maybe it was accidental, a chance intersection of the pool of streetlight and the disappointment that stopped his feet moving any further, but to Robin, the scene looked calculated, a symbol of intent: I will not stand down. It was unnerving. But anyone would have been unnerved, she thought, annoyed at herself for letting him disturb her peace of mind. And at least having stayed there, it’d be harder for him to follow her in the car. Even so, she was glad she wasn’t going directly home.
Since she and Lennie moved out, her parents had started having family dinners at Dunnington Road on Sunday. Eighteen months ago, Robin would have assumed her mother, Christine, was doing it to show her up: here’s what you should be doing, providing Lennie with a proper family life, everyone back to the Fifties and conventional gender roles, enough of this female breadwinner nonsense. These days – God, she was mature – some of the heat had gone out of their relationship and she understood that her mother had been sad when Lennie moved out, especially as before that, when they’d lived in London, she’d only seen her a couple of times a year. The suppers were her way of making sure she saw her granddaughter at least once a week, though, as it had turned out, she saw her a lot more than that.
Robin suspected her mother had another motive, too, though: a hope that by bringing them together regularly, she could gradually effect some sort of truce between Robin and her brother. It was the ultimate triumph of hope over experience: Luke had loathed her from the day she was born. Robin still had the scar on her foot from when, aged two and a half and jealous of the attention she was getting, he’d sunk his teeth into her. Her childhood had been filled with sly kicks and pinches and ‘accidents’, and then, as she’d only found out last year, as a parting shot before she left home, a lie so cruel it still shocked her.
She followed her dad into the sitting room and stooped to drop a kiss on Lennie’s shiny hair. ‘Sorry I’m so late, lovely.’
‘S’okay.’
She perched on the arm of the sofa. The windows were
closed – her mother felt the cold like no one else – and the air was hot and over-breathed. The furniture alone filled the narrow room to near-capacity, let alone people actually using the furniture, and now even the triangles of space between armchair and sofa, sofa and door were occupied by a multi-coloured Fisher Price bouncer and a rainbow basket of stackable hoops, rubber blocks and stuffed toys. Space aside, it was an improvement – and the threat of imminent bodily harm had driven the Spode figurine of an Edwardian lady into exile from the mantelpiece, too, Robin hoped for a good long time.
Luke lolled in her parents’ seashell-shaped armchair like a pound-shop Neptune, Natalie, his wife, an adoring sea nymph on the rug at his feet.
‘You’re here late, too,’ Robin said to them.
‘Yeah, nice to see you as well,’ said Luke.
Natalie made an agonized face and flapped her hands – Ssssh – before springing to her feet and cartoon-tiptoeing the three steps across the room to shut the glass doors. For all the good it would do – there were speakers that transmitted sound less effectively than her parents’ house.
‘Jack’s finally gone to sleep,’ she whispered to Robin, going back to her spot. ‘He hasn’t slept properly all weekend and he’ll wake up and need feeding again as soon as we move him. It’s so late but to sit down for a couple of minutes and actually finish a glass of wine …’
Robin nodded. ‘Oh, I remember.’ Not that she’d had wine then unless someone had brought it over. She and Corinna had run to occasional Singha beers from the corner shop.
‘What?’ said her dad, Dennis, from the sofa. ‘You were never like that, were you, Lennie? You never gave your mother a hard time?’
Lennie rolled her eyes. ‘No, Grandpa, of course not.’
‘How’s he otherwise?’ Robin asked.
‘Brilliant.’ Natalie smiled. ‘Gorgeous.’
Both she and Luke were madly in love with him. They’d tried for years to have a baby and Nat had had several miscarriages – to say he’d been wanted was the understatement of a decade. And he was gorgeous. At dinner a couple of weeks ago, he’d been sitting up independently for the first time, legs frogged, chunky little back rod-straight. He’d looked around at them all, mouth an O of wonder and showmanship, Check this out! His brown hair was still wispy and baby-fine, just like Lennie’s had been at six months.
Having him had chilled Natalie out significantly. Even as a teenager, when she and Luke had first got together, she’d been wound very tightly, ferret-like in going after any perceived slight or encroachment on her territory, but there’d been a couple of occasions lately where she’d made vaguely self-deprecatory comments. The first time it happened, Robin assumed she’d misheard. She’d always been a diet zealot – ‘Must be like shagging a geometry kit,’ Corinna said once when they were at school – but it seemed extreme thinness was no longer a priority, and the stone or so of baby-weight she’d held on to so far suited her. She looked warmer.
‘How’s it going, Robin, love?’ her dad asked, settling back in his spot at the other end of the sofa, tummy filling out his jumper. ‘Are you making any progress?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘We watched you on the news,’ her mother said. ‘We thought you did very well.’
Robin wished she could do a better job of masking her surprise – Who knew you were so competent? – but she was trying. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘What a nightmare,’ her dad said. ‘That poor girl. And her family.’ He shook his head.
For a moment, the air shimmered with memories of that horrendous night sixteen months earlier. This room was where they’d waited for news about Lennie, sick with fear.
‘Do you think they’re connected, these two cases?’ said her mother.
‘I don’t know. Different parts of town, different gender, different race – I don’t want to presume anything but I think it’s unlikely, to be honest. They’re similar in age but my girl’s a few years older, which matters in your teens, doesn’t it? Kieran Clarke was …’
Luke muttered something Robin didn’t catch. She saw Natalie give him a hard stare.
‘What was that, Luke?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’ A tiny pause. ‘I said it’s gangs, isn’t it, all these knives? These black kids in gangs, the Burger Bar Boys, Johnson Crew, whatever. Drill videos – they boast about it, what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it …’
‘Kieran Clarke was in the middle of his GCSEs. Why do you think he was in a gang? Did Webster say so on the news?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said her mother, missing the point. ‘Was he?’
‘No, Mum. Luke assumes that because he was black.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘Language,’ said Dennis wearily.
‘What? She’s putting words in my mouth – I never …’
‘You did, actually,’ Natalie said. ‘You said gangs – black kids in gangs.’
‘Oh, don’t you start.’
‘I’m not starting – you said it. You did.’
Surprised, Robin and Lennie glanced at one another. Natalie never took issue with Luke in front of other people.
‘Let’s not any of us start,’ Dennis said, standing. ‘It’s gone eleven, Monday tomorrow. Speaking of GCSEs, Robin, get this girl of yours home and into bed.’
‘Have you eaten?’ her mother asked. ‘I know what you’re like when you’re at work all hours.’
‘I’m going to have some toast when I get home.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’ve made you up a box of roast chicken. Take it for lunch tomorrow. You’ll get ill.’
‘What?’ Luke said, indignant. ‘I thought we were having the chicken for lunch tomorrow.’
‘I’ve made us some fresh soup. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment first thing but I’ll bring it round with me after that. I thought we’d take Jack to see the ducks in the afternoon.’
Even if it had been logistically possible at the time, Robin wouldn’t have wanted her mother’s help with Lennie but she still felt a pang at how much she helped with Jack. As the lower wage-earner, Luke had resigned from the phone shop in Solihull to look after him but since Natalie had gone back to work, her mum was round there every day. She shopped, she did their washing and ironing, and apparently she made Luke’s lunch as well.
‘Doctor’s appointment, Gran?’ Lennie asked as they followed her into the kitchen.
‘Just a check-up, love. They’re on at me about my cholesterol. Here.’ She handed her a rectangular tin painted with tulips.
‘What’s in there?’ Robin asked.
‘A lemon drizzle. I know you don’t have time for baking when you’ve got a new case. I thought Lennie would like it for after school.’
They’d had their own place for nine months now but as she put her key in the lock, Robin experienced a moment of deep appreciation nonetheless. Living with her parents had grown easier over the eight months they’d been there – nothing like a crisis to put things into perspective – but it had been a glorious day when she’d signed the lease on The House on Mary Street, as the family always called it. Their own front door, their own sitting room where they watched what they wanted on TV, delivered from her dad’s Meg Ryan double bills, Luke’s frequent unannounced incursions and her mother’s relentless meal-provision. Day after day, week after week, the dinners rolled from the kitchen, nutritionally balanced, painstakingly prepared and delicious, and utterly stifling to any notion of spontaneity between the hours of six and eight p.m. daily. Drunk on liberty, she and Lennie had eaten beans on toast for three nights in a row when they’d moved here – rock’n’roll – and they had accounts at both the Indian and Lebanese down the road. She never baked.
Mary Street was long, bisecting Balsall Heath and running more and more steeply uphill as it extended away from the city centre. After fifteen years in London, one of the things she’d found most depressing when she’d come back was the flatness of Hall Green. Birmingham was built on a plateau but
from her parents’ house you couldn’t see anything taller than two storeys. Stunted was the word that had come to mind then; at her lowest, the acres of uninterrupted sky overhead had felt threatening, like something might come swooping down out of them, and so the hill was one of the reasons she’d chosen the house: elevation, literal and spiritual. Plus which, from the other side of the road, the rise gave a view of the city centre: the Bull Ring, the spike of St Martin’s. She’d never want to live in the centre but she needed to feel in touch with it. In suburbia, too many people can hear you scream.
The house was an Edwardian terraced worker’s cottage, one bay window on the ground floor, two dormers upstairs, all three in need of painting. Inside, though, the kitchen had been recently refitted, and the staircase – which had been on the point of collapse when he’d bought the house, their landlord told them, explaining the lingering smell of sawdust on the air – had been replaced, too, along with the windows at the back.
The house had come unfurnished so what furniture there was was Robin’s own, a fact that still gave her a pathetic sense of personal satisfaction. In London, she’d always rented furnished flats so that, other than a couple of lamps, Lennie’s single bed and the small amount of kitchen stuff she’d accumulated over the years, she’d owned embarrassingly little for a woman of thirty-seven. When she’d signed the tenancy agreement, however, she’d taken out a small loan and bought furniture from eBay and junk shops plus new sheets and towels, three new rugs, plates and glasses and mugs. It was all quite civilized.
Risk of Harm Page 4
