Risk of Harm

by Lucie Whitehouse

  Robin headed for her car, scrolling to Malia in her recent calls, but before she could dial, she saw a dark-haired woman jogging towards her up the pavement. Sara Kettleborough from the Post. The street was closed to traffic now, she’d had to park round the corner, and by the time she reached Robin, she was breathing hard. She stopped and, for a moment, it looked like she was going to brace her hands against her knees and put her head down.

  ‘God,’ she panted, ‘I’ve really got to start eating less and exercising more.’

  ‘Same,’ Robin said. ‘Next time I leave the office before ten, I’m going to go to the gym and see if my key still works.’

  ‘Yeah, you must be putting in some hours. How are you doing?’

  ‘Honestly? I’ve had better mornings.’

  Robin liked Sara and she’d thought before that they might have been friends if their jobs didn’t complicate things. Or if either of them had the time. As well as being the Post’s chief crime correspondent, Sara was a single mother to twin fourteen-year-old sons whose hell-raising had already got them expelled from one school and suspended from another. She had the wary look of a woman constantly expecting a phone call that would make her life logistical hell. She was also a good friend of Maggie’s, which was both a grade-A character reference and how Robin knew about the boys.

  ‘Thanks for doing the witness appeals,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, hope it helps.’ Her phone rang in her pocket; Sara declined the call. ‘Anyway, you’re heading off,’ she gestured towards Robin’s car, ‘and you know what I’m going to ask so I’ll cut to the chase.’

  ‘And you know what I’m going to say.’

  ‘Off the record?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I know.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You know me, though – I’m not going to go whipping up public panic just to generate a bit of clickbait. This is about public safety. Because if there is a serial—’

  Robin held up a hand. ‘Whoa, stop. Don’t even think the word.’

  ‘But people need to—’

  ‘We’re in the middle of a knife-crime epidemic, you know that: you did a piece on our homicide figures three weeks ago. Without wanting to sound macabre, a lot of people are getting stabbed in this city at the moment.’ Three so far this week, in fact. Christ, she realized, three since Saturday night, and it was Tuesday. At this rate, three in twelve days would start looking like something to aim for. ‘This is brand-new and we don’t have anything to connect the cases as things stand.’

  ‘Come on, Robin, we’re, what, four roads over from the Gisborne works here?’

  ‘It’s an inner-city area; there’s always a …’

  ‘The victims are more or less the same age, both stabbed, found two days apart,’ she counted the points off on her fingers. ‘And,’ she gave Robin a knowing look, ‘it looks like you’re SIO on both. Homicide so stretched that you’re the only one available? Webster’s got a solve on the Erdington case, hasn’t he? He couldn’t take this one?’

  ‘What age?’

  ‘The girl at Gisborne’s was late teens, early twenties; this one’s twenty-two, twenty-three, isn’t she?’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  Sara took out her phone. When she unlocked it, Twitter was already open onscreen. @ThePrycesRight, Robin read. The profile picture was a headshot of Leon in best weapon-dog mode, eyes like slits, mouth a Joker-esque smile.

  Pray u never see what I did this morning. Lovely young girl, 22, 23, stabbed to death, dumped in an alley in a bloodbath. Whoever did this is an ANIMAL, shd be strung up. RIP.

  ‘Be grateful she didn’t post a picture,’ said Sara.

  Unsurprisingly, Malia’s first question was the same. ‘You think he did both?’

  ‘It’s possible. More than possible,’ she conceded. ‘But at this point, it could still be coincidence, or they are connected but differently. There’s no evidence either way. What I do know is that the media will be on it like a ton of bricks. Sara K literally ran to catch me, and even though she’ll be sensible about it, it’ll get picked up by the nationals.’ Kilmartin was going to freak: Lara Meikle was photogenic but she had appeal beyond that, too: she was the second. Nothing to sell papers like a pretty young dead woman – except two pretty young dead women.

  Malia voiced the other issue. ‘If it is the same man – three days apart?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Because in that case, where had he come from? Two killings so close together didn’t say beginner. Were they coming in at the end of a spree? Were there more, earlier bodies that hadn’t yet come to light?

  ‘We’ve got to find the guy from the Bradford Street CCTV, Malia,’ she said. ‘Top priority.’ She stamped on the brake, coming to a halt inches from the lorry in front.

  ‘I’ve just got the list of the Sohna stockists, and the team’s heading out as we speak.’

  ‘Good. Samir’s giving us more people so let’s put them all on the ground. Emphasize the positive: if the two are connected, we’ve got a whole new area for house-to-house and with luck, a much better shot at some CCTV. I saw cameras on both sides of the alleyway, and on the flats opposite, and it’s right off Gooch Street. There’ll be traffic cams, too. Make sure the house-to-house team has the still and the e-fit of the first girl. I’ll be on my phone for an hour or so if you need me. Can you let the others know?’

  ‘You won’t be at Harborne?’

  ‘I’ve got Lara Meikle’s address, it’s round the corner. Niall’s going to meet me there.’

  Robin caught the pause at the other end. Notifying the family – The Knock – was the job of uniformed officers, not detectives, especially not senior ones. ‘On my phone if you need me,’ she said again and hung up.

  Lara Meikle had lived in a flat on Angelina Street, minutes’ walk from where her body had been found. Before she reached it, Robin pulled in and called her parents’ number. The phone rang twice before it was picked up, and her mother’s murmured ‘Hello?’ told Robin straight away that Luke was still asleep. ‘He was sick after you left – very sick,’ she said. ‘God knows how much he’d had. Thank God he didn’t get stopped, Robin. What if someone had seen him and called it in?’

  What indeed. ‘Never mind that,’ she said, ‘what if he’d had an accident? He was incredibly lucky – as were all the people he somehow managed to avoid killing. I mean, drink-driving – of all the stupid, irresponsible …’

  ‘He was upset! He wasn’t thinking straight. A major blow-out with Natalie like that—’

  ‘It’s no excuse. Nat tried to stop him and he wouldn’t listen,’ Robin snapped. There she went again, their mother, reflexively jumping to Luke’s defence, regardless that what he’d done was actually criminal.

  But then, she realized, what she’d done – in his defence – was criminal, too. You could fudge it as much as you liked, say all she’d asked for was compassion for a man at the end of his rope, but the truth was, her brother had committed a criminal offence and she’d committed another by strong-arming a junior officer into letting him off.

  ‘Mum, look,’ she said, ‘I didn’t ring to have a go. Things are nuts at work, and what I wanted to say was …’ She searched for the right words, enough to get the point across – the importance – without triggering retribution. Would he actually do it? He wouldn’t phone Kilmartin, no, that was far too dynamic for Luke, he’d be intimidated, but a sly email was easy, especially from a bogus account. ‘I’m worried about the state he’s in. Very worried. He didn’t want me to tell you but … I think he’s in a bad way. Mentally – psychologically. I think he might be clinically depressed.’

  ‘He is, love.’ Her mother’s voice dropped again, and the defence was gone. ‘That’s why I’ve been round there so much, it’s not only helping with Jack. He’s been very down.’

  For the second time in hours, Robin felt as if her family was a unit from which she was excluded – they were the planet and she was a moon, condemned to orbit them wi
thout ever making contact. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said, hating the plaintive note in her voice. For God’s sake, why get upset about it now? It was hardly new. And anyway, hadn’t she wanted it? Hadn’t she hightailed it out of here years ago in part to be free of it?

  ‘He didn’t want me to tell you,’ her mother said. ‘You know what he’s like where you’re concerned. How proud.’

  Proud? Of what? What had he ever actually done? It was on the tip of her tongue but she bit it back. ‘Anyway,’ she said stiffly, ‘that’s all it was, really, just to say, keep an eye out. I know you do anyway. A close eye.’

  ‘I will do.’ A pause. ‘Robin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You … well, you have a difficult time, you two, don’t you? You always have, for some reason. So, thank you. For going to get him, bringing him home. Thanks for looking out for him.’

  Chapter Twelve

  There was no answer at Angelina Street. The flat was the upstairs half of a small new build, one of a row of three, and from the front step they could hear the bell ringing inside through an open window overhead. Back in the car, Robin called the station for Lara Meikle’s mother’s address instead. Then she headed back out into the countryside, the GPS directing her to a patch south-east of the city this time, somewhere between Coventry and Kenilworth.

  The house didn’t belong to any particular village but, like several they passed, stood on its own at the road’s edge, an old farmworker’s cottage, she guessed, possibly built for whatever the farm equivalent of a foreman was, given the size. Two windows bordered the road, divided by a front door now apparently out of use and blocked by a row of knee-high pots full of pink and white flowers. Geraniums? Busy Lizzies? Something like that.

  She tucked the car as far as possible into the opposite verge and waited for Niall to pull in behind her. He got out as if he was about to face a firing squad.

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ she said. I’ll be it.

  On the ride over, when there’d been a gap longer than a few seconds between phone calls, she’d asked herself why she’d felt compelled to come, especially when she should be back at the nick. Was it because of what happened to Lennie?

  The bolt on the five-barred gate screeched as she pulled it back. The other side of the gate had been covered with a wire mesh whose bottom brushed the gravel and they soon saw why. The screech had alerted a roiling mass of yapping fur that streamed towards them from around the side of the house – seven or eight black and tan puppies, tails aerial-straight as they galloped then launched themselves at them, giant paws hitting their trousers at mid-thigh. Airedales, a whole litter of them.

  ‘Puppies, no! Get down!’ A stern voice but edged with humour. A woman of about fifty had appeared from the same direction, sweeping greying curly hair back with her forearm and removing a pair of gardening gloves. ‘Push them down,’ she called. ‘They won’t bite, they’re ever so friendly.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said when she reached them. She folded the gloves one inside the other and wedged them into the back pocket of her grubby fur-covered jeans before fending one of the puppies off by the snout. ‘No, Bruno. Sorry, they’re eleven weeks, going to their homes in the next few days, most of them. I’ll miss them for sure but the energy … Stop, Tony.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Named after Tony Soprano, can you believe? Anyway, how can I help?’

  The grenade in her hand, pin out. Here she came, the Angel of Death in a black Jigsaw suit jacket. ‘Deborah Harper?’ she asked.

  The woman bent to detach a paw from Niall’s trouser-leg. ‘Yes, that’s me.’ The puppies caught sight of a blackbird that had foolishly landed on a patch of lawn and bounded after it, giving her a chance to look at them properly for the first time. Robin saw understanding, then fear fell over her face like a sheet.

  ‘Who? Is it Mum?’ she said, all humour gone.

  ‘Your mother? No.’

  ‘Oh, thank God. She’s got dementia and she slips out of the house when her carer’s not …’

  ‘Mrs Harper, I’m DCI Robin Lyons, West Midlands Police. You have a daughter called Lara?’

  The woman closed her eyes tight. Almost immediately she started to shake, a whole-body tremor that started in her torso and vibrated down her arms to fists now clenched tightly.

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Is your husband here?’

  Eyes still shut, she managed the words, ‘In the field.’

  ‘We’ll call him,’ said Niall, glancing at Robin in dismay.

  ‘Let’s go inside. If we leave the puppies, will they be safe out here?’

  Stumbling, supported by Niall, the woman took them in through an extension at the back. A brief length of corridor was lined with family photographs; Robin paused briefly to scan them. Deborah Harper had remarried eighteen months earlier, Varan said, and the photos bore that out, the older ones showing two families – two different couples, one with a pair of sons, the other a son and a daughter – but at the middle, where the newer pictures were, the two families merged, one man and woman disappearing, the new couple pictured together and, in others – some evidently from their wedding – surrounded by all their four children. The girl cycled through hair colours – strawberry blonde, a blue streak, brunette – but it was her, no doubt, the same girl Robin had seen in the alley among the weeds and rusting cans.

  The kitchen was small, the central space dominated by a round pine table and four matching chairs. Two quilted mats at place-settings opposite each other, one still with a side-plate covered with crumbs and a ringed coffee cup. Deborah Harper headed for it automatically.

  ‘Does Lara have a tattoo?’ Robin asked when she was sitting.

  Terror. ‘One. A little crown – here.’ She touched a finger to the inside of her wrist then, gripping the table-edge, she made herself meet her eye. ‘Is it her? Is she dead?’

  Robin nodded. ‘She’ll need to be formally identified, of course, but yes, we believe so. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘How?’

  The second hand-grenade – no car crash or accidental fall down the stairs but the nightmare, the worst-case scenario.

  Deborah Harper’s face registered abject horror. For a moment, she appeared frozen but then she took a single ragged breath and shrieked – a preternatural shard of pain that sent ice down Robin’s spine.

  They’d heard his footsteps on the gravel, the front door wrenched open, but they jumped at Mike Harper’s bellowed ‘Debbie!’ nonetheless. The man from the photographs barrelled into the kitchen like a small-scale bull, plunged to his knees and wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist, his face buried in her lap. Deborah’s tears dripped on to his jacket, turning the light grey fabric the same elephant colour as the top her daughter was wearing when she died. Niall looked stricken.

  Eventually, the first shock receded and the Harpers sat next to each other, swiping at tears with one hand, gripping the other’s as if they’d be swept away if either let go. Niall made the first cups of the inevitable river of tea and Robin asked them questions as gently as she could.

  Lara, they told her, had just turned twenty-three. She’d been an admin assistant for the insurance company for three years but she’d recently been accepted to start training as a nurse. She’d moved in to the flat on Angelina Street with her boyfriend, David Pearce, a supervisor at a call centre, only a month ago, and the pair of them were like the puppies, Mike Harper said, so bubbly and excited about it all you’d think they hadn’t already been together for three years. Pearce, who was twenty-eight, had been suggesting it for a year or so, apparently, and with her nursing place sorted out and her career path clearer, she’d finally felt ready.

  ‘There was no one at the flat when we tried earlier,’ Robin said.

  ‘No.’ Deborah shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t be there, or work, either.’

  ‘Do you know where we might find him?’

  ‘Plymouth,’ she said, looking at Mike. ‘Oh my God, he’s going to be – he’ll be … devastated
.’

  ‘Why Plymouth?’

  ‘He’s gone to help his dad. He’s in hospital there, the Dereford, complications from his diabetes. Dave’s gone to sort things a bit for when he comes out, pay some bills, get some food in the fridge. He’s good like that. Kind. Practical.’

  Robin watched the thought dawn on her.

  ‘Oh no, you couldn’t – No, he couldn’t. He would never … He had nothing to do with this. Nothing.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. But of course we have to notify him, and talk to him. We’ll need to speak to everyone your daughter was close to.’

  ‘Then Dave and Cat – Catherine Rainsford, that’s her best friend. They’ve been best friends since school.’ Another pair of silent tears slid down her cheeks.

  ‘When did you last speak to Lara, Debbie?’

  ‘The day before yesterday. She was coming over at the weekend to say goodbye to the puppies before they go.’ She freed her hand from her husband’s now, propped her elbows on the table and sobbed, shoulders heaving.

  Robin looked at Niall. ‘Do you have the pictures?’

  He opened his file and took out two. When Deborah Harper looked up, he slid them across the table to her, the CCTV still and the e-fit of their first victim.

  ‘Do you recognize either of these people?’ Robin asked. ‘Have you seen them before?’

  The woman blotted her eyes with her cuff and tried to focus. After several seconds, she shook her head.

  Mike Harper had leaned in, too. He put two fingers on the edge of the e-fit. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he said, looking up. ‘I saw it on the news last night. It’s the girl you found in that old factory, isn’t it? At the weekend. What’s she got to do with Lara?’

  ‘Maybe nothing,’ said Robin. ‘We don’t know yet. But the factory where this girl’s body was found is very close to where Lara was found and unless the post mortem finds otherwise in Lara’s case, they both died of knife wounds, so we do have to consider the possibility they’re connected.’