Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1)

by Ian Mayfield

  Marie said, ‘Just a few more things.’

  ‘Fire away.’ Andrew Clarke waved a petulant hand.

  ‘We need to know where you both were between three and half four.’

  Charlotte Clarke closed her eyes, and appeared to be praying, but an outraged smirk was spreading across her husband’s face. ‘Oh, so that’s it? You think we’re in on it?’

  ‘That’s not what we said, sir.’

  ‘That’s not what she said, Andrew,’ Charlotte Clarke muttered, almost inaudibly.

  ‘You think I’m the Croydon chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, do you? Or Charlotte, perhaps?’

  Kim looked up.

  ‘She didn’t say that.’

  ‘Then why do you want to know?’ Andrew Clarke scowled, as if it had been them, not his wife, who’d made the denial.

  ‘Standard procedure, sir,’ Marie said. ‘We have to account for everyone’s whereabouts so we can eliminate them.’

  ‘Or accuse them of bloody arson. I’m phoning my solicitor right now.’

  ‘Andrew, really!’

  ‘That’s your prerogative, sir,’ Marie said.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  Kim said boldly, ‘Are you afraid of what we might ask?’

  ‘No. I’d just rather my legal interests were represented in a more tangible manner. In fact I don’t see why I should tolerate your continued presence in my house.’

  ‘If you’d like us to leave,’ Kim said, standing, ‘we’d be glad to continue this later on at the station.’

  ‘With your solicitor if you prefer,’ Marie added.

  ‘You can’t order me - ’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  He broke off in mid-rant, his mouth agape. He looked at his wife. She was sitting bolt upright and staring, white-faced, ahead of her.

  ‘They’re just doing their job!’ Charlotte Clarke shrieked. ‘Do you think you’re helping anyone, yourself, me, least of all Debbie? Will you stop wasting valuable time and just tell them what they want to know instead of pumping up your ego with this stupid bluster.’

  Recovering from his shock, he rounded on her. ‘No-one speaks to me like that in my own - ’

  ‘Well, maybe they bloody should once in a while! If you don’t want to tell them, I will.’

  ‘Charlotte!’

  Ignoring him, she turned to Marie and Kim. ‘He was at work. That’s all.’ She laughed, skirting hysteria. ‘That’s where this criminal mastermind of a husband of mine has been all afternoon: hard at work behind his desk at Nationwide, with about twenty staff to vouch for him.’

  ‘Is that right, Mr Clarke?’ Marie asked him.

  He hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which branch?’

  ‘No, not at a branch - head office.’ He recited a City address. ‘I, er... I left soon after Charlotte rang. At about... five past five.’

  ‘And you say there are people who can confirm that?’ With prompting, he was able to supply ten names, which Marie wrote down. ‘What about you, Mrs Clarke? Whereabouts were you?’

  ‘I was here,’ Charlotte Clarke said. ‘At home all afternoon.’

  ‘Anybody else can corroborate that?’

  ‘I’m - I’m afraid not.’ She frowned. ‘Debbie was here until just before three, but obviously then she went off to get Robin, and I haven’t seen her...’ Realising what she was saying, she tailed off and gulped down a deep breath. She said, ‘After that, apart from the policewoman, I’ve been on my own until Andrew got in.’

  ‘Which was when?’

  She looked at her husband. ‘When was that, dear?’

  Andrew Clarke glared at his visitors. ‘I drove like a mad thing... Must’ve been about quarter to six. I didn’t stop to look at my watch,’ he couldn’t resist adding caustically.

  ‘I see,’ Marie said.

  Kim said, ‘And nobody rang you, Mrs Clarke - I mean before we called? Nobody like that what could confirm you were in?’

  Charlotte Clarke shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘So,’ Andrew Clarke said, ‘are you going to put the cuffs on her?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Kim said. She waited a moment, then added, ‘That’s about it, I think. We won’t disturb you any more for now.’

  ‘What happens next?’ Andrew Clarke said, as they prepared to leave. He held his hands by his sides, clenched into worried fists.

  ‘We’ll keep you posted, of course, sir,’ Kim said.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Feel free,’ Kim took a business card from her purse and wrote Marie’s name and extension on it, ‘to call one of us any time.’ She handed it to him.

  ‘One more thing, Mr and Mrs Clarke,’ Marie said. ‘Once the machinery’s in place, sooner or later the officer in charge of the enquiry’ll likely be paying you a visit. I thought I’d better warn you.’ She paused. ‘It’s possible she’ll want to get you on radio and TV, do an appeal. Er - make it worth Debbie’s while by not threatening to skin her alive if she does come back. That sort of thing. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte Clarke said.

  ‘You bet your life,’ Andrew Clarke said.

  Kim took a perverse glee in saying, ‘I really wouldn’t come the heavy father bit, Mr Clarke. If she’s in hiding, a bollocking in front of five million viewers isn’t gonna bring her running.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice, officer,’ Andrew Clarke said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘What’d you think?’ Marie said outside, noticing Kim looking smug. ‘They in the frame?’

  ‘The mother ain’t.’

  ‘How d’you figure?’

  ‘She didn’t say a word about the Bentons, like ask how they were, not once,’ Kim said. ‘Even when I fed her a line. She just doesn’t give a shit. Take it from me, if she’d been in on this she’d’ve been falling over herself to express concern, throw up a smokescreen. Seen it before, million times.’

  ‘Point,’ Marie nodded. ‘Him?’

  ‘Him I dunno,’ Kim said. ‘If he is, he’s a bloody good actor with his all piss and wind bit. On the other hand...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Might be nothing. I know that cross must’ve been on the news and all,’ Kim said, ‘but he was the one what brought up the Ku Klux Klan. We never did.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Marie said, mulling this over for a moment. ‘What d’you want to do?’

  Inside the trailer, Sophia Beadle listened to their account and the impressions they’d gathered, then asked to see the diary. She took one look at it and made her pronouncement on their next actions. It didn’t surprise them.

  Wednesday

  On her first day on the beat, Larissa Stephenson had discovered the mouldering body of a tramp under a pile of dry leaves and newspaper at the back of a garage. Three weeks later a nervous caretaker, hearing her footsteps inside the vacant office premises she’d entered to investigate an open door, had drawn the obvious conclusion, locked her in and dialled 999. It was not her fault she’d been issued with a dud radio that night, and so had to remain there until the area car arrived a few minutes later. With her track record established, it was inevitable that the relief should bestow upon Larissa the handle ‘Lucky’, by which she’d been known ever since.

  It was a fair reflection, she had to admit. She was one of those people who attract disaster to themselves like piranhas to a ripple. If there was a virus to catch, a bone to break, a fragile object to drop, a wrong turning to take, a date to be late for, a practical joke to be the brunt of, it seemed Lucky seized the opportunity with both hands - smashing it to smithereens in the process.

  But such incidents were speed bumps along the generally smooth and happy road of her life. At twenty-two she was a well-adjusted, intelligent woman, popular and outgoing. She was strikingly beautiful, a quality for which she believed she had her mixed lineage to thank. Five feet six inches tall, slim, shapely, her long, black, silky hair, cinnamon complexion and luminous brown eyes complemented startling
Indic features that somehow arranged themselves to give her the look, almost, of a young Audrey Hepburn. She’d achieved straight As in three A Level subjects, but had deferred going to university and joined the Met straight from sixth form. Four years on, despite the occasional mishap, she’d developed into an outstanding bobby.

  This had not gone unnoticed by her superiors, by whose grace she was now embarking on a new phase of her career. Yet even this seemed to have come about by virtue of her luck. Last Christmas, she’d been first on the scene when a call had come in about a jumper at the NTL transmission tower on Norwood Hill. Lucky had climbed out onto the girder to which the man was clinging, and persuaded him that plunging to his death from a height of four hundred feet was not a good idea. She’d received the expected mix of praise and reproof, some local media attention, then a commendation, and thought nothing further of it until, several months later, there came a summons from Chief Superintendent Linighan, her station commander. No less a body than the Royal Humane Society had got wind of her actions on the tower, and were proposing to award her their Silver Medal. As if this were not enough to put her off her stride, she’d then found herself on one side of an unnerving interview. What, Linighan had asked, pretending neither of them were aware that her personnel file was open on the desk in front of him, were her career goals? Was she aware that the opportunity was open to her to obtain detective experience in a plain clothes unit? What would she say to a secondment to Special Crime at Croydon, of whom she had no doubt heard great things?

  Lucky said that she would be very interested.

  A few weeks afterwards, she was interviewed by DCI Beadle, the creator and current commanding officer of the Special Crime Unit. And here she was, about to set out on her first day in plain clothes, as what had once been known as a CID aide but now, in keeping with the Met’s sleek new 21st century image, was called a trainee investigator.

  She’d thought a lot about what to wear. PCs on crime squads tended to be given free rein to dress as they pleased; but Special Crime was CID, and CID had the reputation of being rather smarter. She opted for a light grey trouser suit, ribbed white top, sturdy black beat-pounding shoes. Underneath, why the hell not, a matching cream silk bra and panties set she’d just bought herself at House of Fraser on a shopping trip with her friend Juliet. This was a day to feel good, from skin outwards. Breakfasted, dressed, she took a last look at herself in the hall mirror, sighed and opened the front door on a bright New Addington morning.

  There was a tall, pale young man hovering on the pavement by the hedge, watching her. Lucky flicked a polite smile in his direction as she marched down the path. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said, hurrying over as she closed the gate, ‘didn’t you used to go to Edenham?’

  She stopped rummaging for her car keys and looked up at him, puzzled. ‘Edenham? Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘I remember you. You was really brainy.’

  Lucky shook her head, uneasy. ‘Sorry, I don’t - ’

  ‘Don’t remember me, yeah? No reason to, really. Prosser. Micky Prosser.’

  Light dawned, dimly. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Remember now?’ He grinned, pleased with his success. ‘Your name’s Melissa or summink, innit?’

  ‘Larissa,’ she corrected him. Not knowing why, she added, ‘My mum’s Bulgarian.’

  ‘Really?’

  Vague memories were crystallising about the name and face. Michael Prosser. He’d been in her year at school. Streamed at fourteen with the ablest pupils like Larissa, he’d blossomed - if that was the word - into an underachiever; not a major troublemaker, just the sort who sat sniggering at the back with his mates, aggravating teachers and generally being thick. He seemed about as interested in the ethnic origin of her name as he had been in his schoolwork.

  Conversation stopped, stalled by the acute embarrassment of meeting someone you haven’t seen in years and didn’t particularly know or like in the first place. Lucky, never at a loss for long, said, ‘So what you doing nowadays?’

  ‘I’m a machinist at Carter’s, over on the Purley Way.’

  ‘Yeah?’ She was mildly mystified. Purley Way was several miles away on the other side of the borough. New Addington was hardly en route, unless he lived up here, and she’d never seen him around before. She asked, ‘Making what?’

  ‘Car components. Wing mirror motors, seatbelt housings, stuff like that.’

  ‘Right.’

  Prosser said, ‘So what do you do?’

  Lucky dreaded this question. Coming out as a copper tended to have the same social effect as loudly announcing that you had the clap. It was bad enough close friends knowing; it was the last thing she wanted to tell a total stranger. She gave him her stock response. ‘Civil servant.’

  It sounded so boring it worked nine times out of ten. Prosser said, ‘Home Office, yeah?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  An awkward silence fell again. Lucky jangled her car keys.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘better get going or I’ll be late.’

  ‘Me and all,’ Michael Prosser said. ‘See you around.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Lucky said, having no intention of seeing him around and praying that he wouldn’t ask for a lift. ‘Nice running into you.’

  He raised his hand in a perfunctory wave and went back to the bus stop. Lucky drove away and didn’t think about him again.

  As a coherent picture emerged from the confusion of the firefighting, Sophia Beadle was able to act. It was established that Doreen Benton, a widow of forty-four and a first-generation Guyanese immigrant, had died in the fire and that her six year old younger son Robin was gravely ill at Croydon University Hospital, suffering from up to ninety per cent burns, many of them full thickness. So disfigured were both of them that it had been far from certain they were Mrs Benton and her son; in the end it had taken dental x-rays to confirm it. Sophia had given to Sandra Jones the task of contacting Robin’s elder brother Luke, an archaeology student on a field trip in Greece.

  Forensic were of the opinion that there had been no forced entry. The fire investigators’ initial report stated that the fire had been set using four home-made chemical devices, probably with delayed action triggers, unsophisticated but effective, the sort of thing a five-minute web search would tell you how to build. Meanwhile the cross had been identified as fashioned from two lengths of two by four pine, almost certainly cut to order at any of several dozen timber merchants and DIY warehouses in the Croydon area. The crosspiece (three feet long) had been fastened to the upright (six feet) with five six-inch nails. A hole had been dug in a flowerbed, and the cross planted in it before being doused in white spirit and set alight.

  As to who had done all this, the search for witnesses was continuing. But as the count of shaken heads on doorsteps increased, so hope diminished. It was as if the fire, the blazing cross, had come from nowhere.

  The Clarkes had confirmed that Debbie had her own bank account and debit card, but although Kim had asked Nationwide to flag it, so far it hadn’t been used. She had an email account, which they’d managed to access, but other than spam it had seen very little traffic in several months; as practically everyone under the age of twenty communicated through Facebook, Instagram and text message nowadays, this was no surprise. Debbie hadn’t backed up her phone contacts to the cloud; Kim and Marie had therefore spent yesterday evening tracing the names in her diary, comparing numbers with the call records, stopping only when it became too late to ring people. The call records themselves showed no activity after the time of the fire. Kim had left several voicemails but the phone was still either off or out of range of a cell tower. Today one of them would have to see the borough archivist and obtain back copies of the registers for Riddlesdown High School, which Debbie had left last summer, on the grounds that many of her former classmates would remember her and might still be in touch. But a pattern had already developed. They’d spoken to several school friends whose names were in the diary, who remembered her as a bright girl and expr
essed surprise that she hadn’t continued to A Levels; but she had not, to their knowledge, kept in touch with anyone much after leaving. Those who had heard from her reported that she had said little about what she was doing now. No-one knew of a boyfriend or other secret ally. All that had come out of the exercise was yet more names to chase. It was beginning to look as if Debbie had achieved that state most sought after by fugitives, and disappeared off the face of the earth.

  They’d both felt the need to escape. Even at this early hour the urgency and buzz of a major enquiry pervaded the office. Sophia had been in since six, delegating actions to the uniformed PCs she’d borrowed from early turn. A couple of hours later the rest of the team started to appear; many of them were instantly summoned, actioned and shooed out again. On the DCI’s desk was a mountain of reports and printouts, through which she was ploughing doggedly, casting impatient glances at the two technicians who were inputting data to the HOLMES computer as fast as she could throw it their way. Exhausted though they were, Kim and Marie had felt guilty, and made their getaway to the canteen. Their work was now spread out across a table there. This was a constant source of antagonism between coppers and canteen staff, who tended to respond to the former’s complaints about egg yolk on witness statements with remarks along the lines that if they didn’t like it then they shouldn’t bring paperwork in with them.

  ‘These new names,’ Marie said, a last, desperate attempt to get their unwilling brains working again.

  ‘Oh, give it a rest, Marie,’ Kim sighed. ‘Casual encounters at parties and clubs. First names is all we’ve got for most of ‘em, dead vague descriptions for about two. I mean where do we start?’

  ‘Morning, fellow members of the finest crimefighting force this side of the Thames.’ They looked up. Detective Sergeant Gary Harper, the extrovert, handsome and tragically married blue-eyed boy of the local Major Investigation Team, breezed in and marched past their table on the way to the food. Gary was bagman to Detective Superintendent Noel Heighway, Sophia’s boss; he acted as his driver, collator, organiser, PA and general gofor. Kim and Marie felt wary.