Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  ‘They don’t want me back,’ he said, his voice full of longing.

  ‘You don’t know that. Phone them from the hostel. Have a hot bath and we’ll talk it all through.’

  Ryan looked at him again, curious and still wary, half fearful, half desperate for any sort of lifeline. After five days of running and near enough going without food and sleep, he knew that he was no streetwise kid, able to fight his way through. He was just a kid. Tired, pissed off with the world and now, having eaten enough food to remind his body of how hungry he really was, Ryan was ready to give in.

  But he wasn’t going home. He couldn’t face that. Not his mam’s tears and his dad’s bullying. But he desperately wanted to go somewhere.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it a go. But no way I’m going back home.’

  The man nodded reassuringly, reached out and thumped Ryan gently on the shoulder. ‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Promise me, though, you’ll make that call, eh? And I promise you, Ryan, no one’s going to make you go back.’

  Ryan was scared. He tried to recall the route they had taken to get here, but his mind baulked at the number of twists and turns that had brought him from the main city centre, through little streets and finally to a block of flats where they’d picked up this other man.

  Then they’d driven here. To this little terraced place at the back of some large buildings that Ryan thought must be warehouses. The street was so quiet after the bustle of the city centre and there were no lights in the windows of the houses. Just the odd pinprick here and there showing through closed curtains and the yellow glow of the sodium lights deepening the twilight.

  It wasn’t anything the men had said or done that had made him afraid. They had chatted to him about his family, about the match last Saturday. About the things he might have expected them to talk about. But all the same, Ryan was scared.

  They’d hardly mentioned the hostel since he’d got into the car. Told him nothing about the other kids that might be there and, when he’d asked, just said he’d find out soon enough. Mostly, they’d talked between themselves, the two men. Sharing the kind of half conversation that adults do when they know each other well and talk becomes a kind of shorthand.

  He should have run away earlier, he told himself vaguely, trying to get the thoughts to sort themselves out in his head. But they wouldn’t stay still long enough for him to make any sense.

  Increasingly frantic, he had stared ahead, looking for traffic lights or give-way signs or anything that might give him a chance. There had been nothing.

  And then they’d stopped here, in this deserted street.

  Ryan knew instinctively that he couldn’t escape now. That no one would hear him if he tried to scream. That he was on his own.

  The two men were laughing about something. Unfastening seat belts. Unlocking doors.

  Ryan reached out casually for the handle and released the catch. Got out as slowly as he could bear. Then, the moment his feet touched solid ground, he began to run.

  He got all of twenty feet before they caught him, brought him to the ground with a crash that knocked the air from his lungs.

  Ryan wriggled sideways. Desperation freeing one leg, he kicked out, made contact of some kind that loosened the man’s hold. He filled his bruised lungs with air and tried to scream.

  But it was no good.

  There was no hostel. No lifeline. No help. Nothing. Ryan never even made a sound.

  Chapter One

  Sunday afternoon

  The house stood at the end of the cul-de-sac. It turned partly outwards from the main group, facing instead the little path that led to the playground.

  The cul-de-sac was a quiet place, a dead end reached after several turns along equally obscure, equally quiet residential roads. There was little incidental traffic. The occasional stranger would get lost and be turned back by the obvious absence of a through road and the slightly anxious, slightly suspicious stares of the local populace, but that was all.

  The residents were not an unfriendly bunch; just, perhaps, a little territorial, a mite over-protective. And, in the main, it was not a place that people came upon by accident. Those who came to the close generally had some business there. Those who came to live either committed to the general sense of belonging, or they left with a noticeable rapidity. Those who stayed tended to. . . well. . . stay.

  It seems to be the rule of such communities — loosely strung, but none the less with a strong sense of bond — that one house should act almost as a transit camp. A point of temporary refuge for those who tried — and failed — to make whatever was the required grade.

  Portland Close was no exception and this tall, three-storey house, facing somewhat sulkily a half-turn away from the rest and looking towards the wider world, was the one designated here as such a passing zone.

  It had seen three families come and go in as many years. Nice people, but whose place was evidently elsewhere and whose departure was marked by no visible regret on either side.

  Then this last family had come.

  Ellie Masouk was never quite certain how it had happened. Events seemed to shape themselves suddenly and irrevocably. She never knew who had cast the first stone. In fact she’d barely become aware of the minor infractions upon community coherence before it seemed that Portland Close and its inhabitants had fallen upon madness.

  And now this man, this police officer, was asking her calmly what seemed to be going on.

  ‘And how long have you lived here, Mrs Masouk?’ he asked, his voice calm and efficient.

  Indifferent, Ellie thought.

  ‘Three years,’ she said. ‘Well, two and a half, really, I suppose.’

  She bit her lip nervously, noting the slight impatience indicated in the tightening of his mouth as he amended her reply.

  ‘So you know the people round here quite well, then?’

  Ellie frowned and hesitated. Did she? ‘Well, some of them. I guess I know some of them quite well.’

  He was looking at her, pen raised a little pointedly above the statement sheet, waiting to see if she changed this reply as well. In the end, he wrote nothing, laid his pen down on the clipboard and asked her, ‘Did you see what these neighbours of yours were doing today?’

  The change of tack caught Ellie off balance. She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again, uncertain of the kind of answer he wanted. She sighed deeply and leaned back in the chair, suddenly feeling exhausted and wishing they would go away.

  The WPC, who’d said little up until now, smiled across at her. ‘How much longer do you have to go?’

  Ellie was startled, then she smiled back, tried to relax a little under the other woman’s seemingly friendly scrutiny.

  ‘About three more weeks. That’s if he waits that long.’

  ‘He?’

  The colour rose in Ellie’s pale cheeks and her eyes, blue like washed-out delphiniums, lit for the first time since these unwanted strangers had come into her tiny, tidy little house.

  ‘I had a few problems,’ she explained. ‘Had to have a late scan and they told us then it was a boy.’

  ‘Bet your husband’s pleased.’ The male officer spoke up again, his hand gesturing towards the photograph of Ellie and Rezah’s wedding. It took pride of place on the wall next to a large baby portrait of Farouzi.

  ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘he is pleased. He’s pleased that there’s nothing wrong with our baby. I don’t think it matters to him whether we have a boy or another little girl.’

  She’d answered him with maybe a little more sharpness than was necessary, but the inference had been so clear. She was an English woman, married to an ‘Asian’ man — Middle Eastern, if you were going to be really fussy about it — and such men wanted sons.

  Ellie found herself deeply resenting this officious little man with his pen and clipboard. She turned back to the WPC and answered the question her male colleague had put.

  ‘Some of the people round here I know quite well. But
we’re very private, really. We get on well with everyone, you know, pass the time of day and that . . .’

  ‘But you saw what happened here today.’

  The man had spoken once again, making a flat statement of his words.

  Ellie gave him a long, cold look and turned once more to his female colleague. ‘I saw something, yes. I saw people in the street. Shouting. People in that house. The Pearsons.’ She gestured behind her in the direction of the big house. ‘I heard them shouting too. Then someone threw a brick and I heard a window breaking.’

  ‘And then?’

  Ellie shook her head and looked away. ‘I don’t know any more than that. Not really. It all went crazy out there. Things being thrown and people yelling. I was in the garden with my little girl when it started and we came inside straight away. I didn’t see any more after that.’

  The WPC looked, smiling, at the little girl curled up asleep on the sofa next to her mother.

  ‘It must have been frightening for you, Mrs Masouk. For you and for your little girl.’

  Ellie nodded. It had been frightening. The Pearsons’ house was only a garden and a little footpath away from hers. She could see the front of it from where she’d been standing. Seen the bricks being thrown and the milk bottles being hurled out at the attackers. Ellie had been frightened enough to abandon her half-hung washing, grab Farouzi and run back into the house as fast as her swollen body would let her.

  ‘But it was you who phoned the police?’

  ‘You know it was,’ she said defensively. ‘It wasn’t just me, though.’ She looked at the woman officer, suddenly frightened by the implications. ‘The man on the phone said he’d had another call just before I made mine. So I wasn’t the only one.’

  The WPC smiled encouragingly, calmly assessing the degree of Ellie’s fear. ‘No, Mrs Masouk, you weren’t the only one.’ She smiled again and said, brightly, ‘You must be getting tired of all this, living as close as you do. I mean, this is the third call-out to Portland Close we’ve had this week. It’s getting to be quite a habit.’

  The male officer snorted somewhat rudely. ‘Nice neighbours you seem to have round here.’

  ‘They are,’ said Ellie, startled into the reply. She bit her lip, painfully aware of their scrutiny. Of what they must be thinking. ‘I mean. I don’t understand it. We’ve been here three years, never had a moment’s problem.’ She looked helplessly at the two officers and finished lamely, ‘They’re nice people, really. Just ordinary, nice people . . . you know.’

  The PC got to his feet, preparing to leave, evidently unwilling to waste any more of his precious time.

  ‘Maybe you should tell that to the Pearsons’,’ he commented. ‘We can see ourselves out.’

  * * *

  Ryan could see little from the window.

  He had tried to open it. Prying at it with his fingertips, his short nails, even the buckle from his belt, but it had been screwed tight shut.

  He thought about breaking the glass. The panes were far too small for him to crawl through, but maybe if he could break a couple he could smash his way through that bit of the frame as well.

  But he was scared. How much noise would it make? Were the two men still downstairs? What if he broke the window and just shouted?

  Despairingly, Ryan gazed out at the view of flat roofs and windowless walls.

  No one to hear. There would be no one out there to hear.

  Miserably, he sat down on the bed and looked around the tiny little room, trying to gain some inspiration, but there was nothing much to help him. Wooden floors covered in old lino. Walls coated in peeling paper, dampened roses and lattice trellis.

  The door, the window. The narrow bed with a single blanket.

  The room stank of damp and old age and now of piss where he’d been forced to relieve himself in the corner.

  Ryan began to shake. He pulled the blanket round his shoulders and wrapped it tight.

  He began to cry. Softly at first, as though ashamed, as though afraid he might be overheard. Then less quietly as despair took hold and pure, physical fear trembled through his body.

  Chapter Two

  Sunday evening

  The food was good, the wine mellow and the company wonderful.

  Mike leaned back contentedly in his chair and accepted another glass, admiring the deep redness of it through a moistly alcoholic haze.

  Maria’s flat at Oaklands was small. Kitchen, living room, bedroom and a cramped bathroom with a particularly uncomfortable corner bath — Mike usually used the shower. Maria’s place had become a second home to him.

  Few of the psychiatric staff lived on site at Oaklands, but Maria found it convenient and liked the fact that the two-centuries-old manor house, converted into a long-term treatment centre, was located in the middle of nowhere. The tiny flat was packed to the gills with books, curious, overly heavy pieces of antique furniture and all of the random bits and pieces that Maria couldn’t bear to throw away.

  Mike, whose own flat, rented part furnished and really never more to him than a place to eat and sleep, loved the eclectic fabrication that was Maria’s home. There was little room for entertaining, though, and, with John Tynan taking up a third portion of the dining table, little space for manoeuvre around the cramped living room.

  He rocked back, tilting the chair on to two legs and holding the wine glass so that it focused and distorted the red shaded glow from the small lamp perched precariously on the oak mantel shelf.

  Pity the fire was gas and not real, he thought. Pity, too, that he would have to leave so early in the morning to get to the office on time.

  ‘More wine, John?’ Maria asked the older man.

  He shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I have to drive home.’

  ‘You could stay over. There’re always spare rooms laid on in case we need extra night staff.’

  John smiled at her. ‘Thank you, my dear, but I want to make an early start in the morning.’

  Mike snorted. ‘Not the only one. Still, at least they let me alone for the weekend.’

  ‘Aahh, poor thing,’ said Maria, her voice lightly mocking. ‘A policeman’s lot.’

  Mike grimaced. ‘This particular policeman could do without the lot that’s been dumped in his lap just now.’

  ‘I don’t envy you this one, I have to admit.’ John nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sounds like a real can of worms.’

  ‘You mean that Fletcher business? Do you think the appeal will get anywhere?’

  Mike frowned. The last thing he wanted, he told himself, was to talk about this tonight. The Fletcher case had been a messy business the first time around. Mike had not been on the investigating team that had got the first conviction, and now it was coming up for appeal and there was all this mire of new evidence to sift through.

  When the dossier had landed on his desk last thing on Friday he had spared it only the briefest of glances, but he had seen enough to know that he didn’t like the feel. And then there were all the departmental toes he would have to tread on. Mike didn’t even want to think about the consequences should he turn up something — anything — that made the original case suspect.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, returning to the question Maria had asked him. ‘I don’t doubt that Fletcher was guilty — there were enough testimonies against him. Adults abused as kids; kids still under his care in the last home he’d been in charge of who’d been too scared to make complaints before. They all came out of the woodwork.’ He tipped himself forward once more and deposited his glass back on the table with a slightly exaggerated thump.

  ‘Twenty years of it. And at least two suicides to his credit. God alone knows what else.’

  ‘So, what’s new? Surely the appeal won’t get Fletcher off the hook?’

  Mike smiled grimly and shook his head. ‘No. Fletcher’s stuck inside for the term he was sentenced to. What’s being called into question is the extent of his guilt. We always knew he wasn’t operating alone but there was never enough ev
idence to convict the others he accused.’

  ‘And now there is? From what I remember about the original case, Fletcher named some real class acts.’

  Mike shrugged. ‘So I understand.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I haven’t read the full report yet.’

  ‘First job for tomorrow morning, eh?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘So that fat set of folders squeezed into the plastic carrier bag isn’t work after all?’ Maria asked him, a wry smile playing at the corners of her mouth, the lamplight warm on her black skin.

  Mike took a moment, just to admire the effect, before acknowledging sheepishly. ‘I don’t have to look at it tonight. It’s just, well, I thought, if I got a spare moment or two. If you were working . . .’

  Maria laughed out loud. ‘Well, as it happens I do have work to do. So you’ve just got no excuse, Detective Inspector Croft, not to be fully briefed by tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I don’t have to spend long on it,’ he protested. ‘Just half an hour or so to get an overview.’ He sighed, ruefully. ‘There’s practically a cabinet full of the stuff back at Divisional. What’s in the bag’s just a CPS briefing.’

  ‘So it’ll spend one hell of a time saying one hell of a nothing.’ John snorted contemptuously.’

  Mike grinned at him.

  ‘Well,’ John went on. ‘I’ll give you a hand with the dishes, my dear, and then I’ll be on my way. Let you two professionals get yourselves ready for your working week.’

  He rose a little stiffly, easing the crunches from his back, and regarded the two of them fondly. ‘Retired from the problems of the CPS I may be, but I won’t have either of you thinking that I’ve been put out to grass. This ex-DI has a heavy week ahead of him.’

  * * *

  It was well past midnight. Maria had taken herself off to bed almost an hour before, but Mike had found himself drawn into the complexities and ramifications of a case he very much did not want to make his own.

  It made disturbing reading. Nothing in the report shook his original belief in Fletcher’s guilt. The man had been abusing the children in his care for the best part of two decades. His own admission and the overwhelming evidence of almost two dozen testimonies left no room for doubt on that score.