Settled Blood

by Mari Hannah

  ‘Yuck, that must be yours,’ he said, pushing the bag towards her. Diving into the other, he pulled out a stottie filled with Warkworth ham and Northumberland cheese. He took a big bite and spoke with his mouth full. ‘You going to tell me what I missed?’

  ‘We’ve been wasting our time, Hank.’ Daniels lifted the phone and dialled out. ‘If I’m right, Laura Somers will confirm it.’

  ‘And if you’re not?’

  ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing.’

  Gormley was too busy with his sandwich to care. Getting up, he took one more bite of his stottie and then set it down on the desk. He picked up Daniels’ kettle, shook it to check if there was water, then switched it on and placed two level scoops of Harvey Nick’s coffee in her cafetière. ‘You want it black?’ he asked.

  ‘Black’s fine.’ Still no one picked up.

  ‘Just as well.’ He pointed through her door. ‘Those bastards have had all your milk.’

  The phone stopped ringing. Daniels introduced herself to Rachel’s mother. ‘You haven’t been entirely honest with me, have you?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the woman said.

  ‘Mrs Somers, I’m very busy.’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Cut the crap!’ Daniels snapped. ‘You know fine well who Mark is, don’t you?’

  Gormley was back in his seat. He stopped chewing and paid attention.

  Daniels rolled her eyes as the line went quiet. ‘I haven’t got time to mess around, Laura. Tell me the truth or I’ll come round there and lock you up for wasting police time. Another girl’s life may be at stake.’

  The woman began to cry.

  ‘Fuck!’ Daniels slammed the phone down.

  ‘Great interview technique.’ Gormley swallowed what was in his mouth. ‘I take it Harris was telling the truth?’

  Daniels nodded.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I was asking myself why Riley, rather than Rachel’s family, had reported her missing. The answer was obvious. They knew about Harris all along. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but Laura Somers actually dropped the phone when I questioned whether Rachel knew anyone called Mark. I only remembered when we were interviewing him.’

  ‘Then where’s the girl?’

  ‘She’ll be back, if for no other reason than to give her mother a mouthful.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  The kettle began to boil. Gormley got up and began making coffee she knew would be as weak as dishwater. It always was when he made it. In need of a strong one, she told him to add another scoop to the pot and looked at her watch, wondering how the search team were going. It was already quarter to seven and there was only an hour and a half of daylight left.

  As Gormley sat down, she slid Harris’s file across her desk.

  ‘Put this in for referral, Hank. We’ve got more pressing matters to attend to. And tell the squad we’ll hold a briefing at eight o’clock sharp. They don’t get to go home tonight and put their kids to bed, I’m afraid. It’s all hands on deck until we work out where we go from here.’

  ‘And where do we go from here?’ Gormley asked.

  Daniels sighed. ‘Fucked if I know.’

  41

  Daniels forced herself to eat her salad then made a few phone calls: first to the TSG, then to Weldon, to find out how they were getting on with the search. His answer was not what she wanted to hear. The weather hadn’t improved any and progress was slow due to the dangerous conditions.

  ‘Mineshafts are waist-deep in water,’ he said, forced to raise his voice against driving rain. ‘I can’t risk anyone going underground until the levels drop, Kate. We’re about to call it a day. I’m really sorry. We’ll be out again, crack of dawn, I promise you.’

  ‘Did the geologist get in touch?’

  ‘I wish he would. It’s vital we narrow down the search area.’

  ‘OK, leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do to hurry him along.’

  She rang off and then made the call. The geologist wasn’t available so she left an urgent message for him to contact her. Deciding that from now on she should run the incident wholly from the MIR and not split between two sites, she called High Shaw. She was expecting to speak with DS Robson, but it was Kevin Hook who answered. There was still nothing doing on the house-to-house. Robson had apparently left and was on his way to attend the briefing. Even better, Daniels thought. She’d give him the good news in person. In truth, she’d missed having him around. She was worried that his isolation up at Hadrian’s Wall could trigger more Internet gambling, particularly if he was bored with little to occupy his mind. She instructed Hook to clear out High Shaw first thing in the morning and decamp to the city.

  ‘And make sure you leave the place how we found it,’ she said finally.

  ‘Will do. Er, before you go, ma’am,’ Hook hesitated. ‘Any update on my secondment to the murder investigation team?’

  ‘It continues.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘From what I hear, you’ve earned it. But drop the “ma’am”, eh?’

  His obvious delight lifted her mood. Glancing at her watch, she ended the call, figuring she had just enough time before the briefing to update Adam Finch on developments and call the liaison officer assigned to Amy Grainger’s parents. So many people were relying on her and yet, six days into the enquiry, she was back to square one. There wasn’t one tangible lead, apart from Matt West’s assertion that the sample he’d examined had come from the area now being searched.

  This case would keep her awake tonight.

  A large white binder caught Daniels’ eye – her Murder Investigation Manual. It was an SIO’s bible, a thick strategic document several hundred pages long, covering every aspect of murder investigation. She’d read every page, had committed to memory much of the information contained within it, for all the good it did when there was no crime scene to examine and little intelligence to exploit.

  Sometimes an SIO’s only way forward was to go back.

  Daniels needed to re-examine the basics by using standard analytical procedures, check out her victim’s history and associations, past and present, not just Amy Grainger’s but Jessica’s too. In the case of the latter, the DCI was convinced that someone knew something and wasn’t letting on. She would need to review the accounts given by Finch, Pearce, Townsend, Mrs Partridge and Robert Lester; and then there was the artist, Fiona Fielding, she’d yet to interview – the woman with whom Jessica had spent a good deal of time, if the stunning oil on canvas above the fireplace in her father’s library was anything to go by.

  Adam Finch had implied that the painting had been very expensive to commission. It had taken him many months to find the right artist, one capable of depicting the next generation of the Finch dynasty for display in his ancestral home. In order to capture a true representation, he would have insisted on the traditional painstaking process whereby the subject was required to sit for hours at a time over a period of weeks. There would have been no shortcuts, no copying the likeness from a digital image; Adam Finch was too much of a traditionalist for that.

  An awful noise set Daniels’ teeth on edge and caused her to look out of her office window. The red-and-white security barrier to the station car was stuck halfway with a rusty old R-Reg Fiesta waiting to gain entry. DS Robson wound his window down manually and stuck his arm out of the vehicle, swiping his warrant card again and again. The barrier shook, then – with the ear-splitting sound of metal scraping on metal – slowly began to lift.

  Completely unaware that he was under observation, Robson parked close to the perimeter fence and got out of the car. He opened the rear door and reached inside, retrieving something from the back seat, his baggy suit trousers testament to the fact that he was still losing weight. His personal battle to overcome his addiction was obviously not going well. Daniels felt guilty for not having been around to help him in recent days.

  Maybe he’d tur
n the corner now he was returning to the fold.

  Comforted by that thought, she made more phone calls. She’d just hung up when Gormley arrived in her office with Bright in tow. Obviously in a foul mood, the Superintendent announced that he would be sitting in on the briefing.

  In other words, he’d rather not go home.

  Daniels knew only too well what that felt like.

  But that wasn’t the only reason he was there. Apparently, Adam Finch wanted answers. He’d been calling in favours from local politicians, demanding that they put pressure on senior brass in the force. And Bright certainly had the look of a man under pressure. His usually immaculate suit was crumpled, his tie askew, the top button of his white shirt unbuttoned. His hair was flat to his head, damp from the rain, and he was sporting a heavy five o’clock shadow flecked with grey. He sat down as a flash of lightning lit up the room, an ominous precursor of what was to follow.

  As a mentor, there was no one better than Bright. He’d taught the DCI all she knew about criminal investigation and was largely responsible for her promotion through the ranks. The downside was, he had a tendency to deal with his frustration by giving her a hard time. For more years than she cared to admit, even to herself, she had put up with his vitriol in silence. But not today.

  The moment he started poking his nose in where, in Daniels’ opinion, it didn’t belong, she bit back: ‘This is my case, guv. I’ll run it how the hell I like. And that means investigating who the hell I like, including Finch. If he wants results, I want full disclosure – I can’t afford to be selective.’

  ‘Why are you so hung up about the fact that he can fly?’

  Gormley made a face. ‘I would have thought that was obvious, guv.’

  ‘Who asked you?’ Bright said sourly.

  Daniels leapt to Gormley’s defence. ‘Come on, guv. Don’t tell me his being a pilot doesn’t cast suspicion on him. If the two of you weren’t mates, you’d—’

  ‘Was a pilot,’ Bright reminded her. ‘His licence expired years ago.’

  ‘And that makes him less of a suspect?’ Gormley shook his head. ‘All it means is he can’t hire a plane without forging documents. You know fine well how easy that is if you have the right contacts and the money. You can buy a licence on the net and have it delivered to your door these days with little chance of detection.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’ Bright eyeballed Gormley. ‘You think he killed a girl and then pretended to kidnap his own daughter? It’s ridiculous.’

  Daniels began pacing. Her hackles were up and it showed. ‘Well, I’m pulling his army records, and those of Pearce and Townsend too. I’m not happy with any of them. Don’t you think it’s strange that he employed the pair of them after they left the forces?’

  ‘Not really,’ Bright said. ‘I told you, he’s a nice guy. You’d see that for yourself if you took the trouble to look. If you weren’t so busy making wild accusations—’

  ‘Now hold on!’ Daniels wasn’t having that. ‘I’m not making accusations, wild or any other kind. I’ll be sure to let you know if I do. He lied to us, guv.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘His relationship with Jessica for a start.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Robert Lester for one. And for what it’s worth, I believe him.’ Daniels watched Bright’s colour rise. To avert the risk of him exploding, she sat down – calmed down – until she judged it was safe to continue. ‘According to Robert Lester, Adam Finch is a manipulative control freak with a nasty temper. I don’t doubt he’s charming at the golf club. All I’m saying is he has another side to his character, a side he doesn’t want you to see.’

  ‘Seems like you two have a lot in common then,’ Bright quipped.

  Daniels just looked at him. She’d wondered how long it would take him to raise the fact that she’d misled him on the previous enquiry, failing to disclose a conflict of interest when Jo Soulsby was charged with her ex-husband’s murder – wrongly, as it turned out. This time Gormley came to her defence, telling Bright in no uncertain terms that his last comment was a lowballer, uncalled for . . .

  ‘Downright bollocks, in fact.’

  ‘I said he was a nice guy, not a saint.’ Bright back-pedalled slightly, realizing he’d gone too far. ‘Come on, Kate. His only daughter is missing. He’s not about to bare his soul and say they didn’t get along, now, is he? Would you?’

  ‘I’m not talking about me!’

  Bright looked at his watch. ‘I’m out of here. Let me know how the briefing goes.’

  ‘I thought you were—’

  But he was already gone.

  ‘Why’s he being so defensive?’ Gormley asked.

  Daniels raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘There’s something he’s not telling us.’

  42

  The invitation to supper was sudden and unexpected and her first thought was to reject it. But then Detective Superintendent Ron Naylor’s excitement got the better of her when he suggested – no, demanded – that she leave the Toyota at the station, insisting that a taxi had already been sent to pick her up.

  Daniels pocketed her mobile, curious to know what he had to say to her that couldn’t wait. She scanned the crowded incident room. The review of the case had gone well, given that the murder investigation team were scratching around in the dark. As often happened when enquiries stalled, her staff lifted their game. No thanks to Bright, who’d spat his dummy out and walked off in a huff. In the past hour, several lines of enquiry had been agreed and prioritized and DS Robson had news of the elusive artist, Fiona Fielding, who was in New York for an exhibition.

  No starving wretch in a garret then.

  ‘Does she know, or even care, that I need to speak to her?’ Daniels asked.

  Robson nodded. ‘According to one of her understudies, she does. I gather she’ll make contact on her return to the UK. She should’ve been back by now. I’ll get on to it first thing.’

  It was nice to see Robson back where he belonged, at the core of Daniels’ team. She hoped he’d turn his life around and stop buggering about spending money he didn’t have. Thanking him, she moved on, asking DC Maxwell to trace and eliminate the couple seen acting suspiciously near Hadrian’s Wall in the days leading up to the discovery of Amy Grainger’s body. Uniforms were supposed to be following up on responses from the press release but they weren’t doing it quickly enough.

  ‘You have my permission to put a rocket up their arses,’ she said.

  Someone threw in an oddball theory that Jessica Finch may have been caught up in the prostitution ring Durham force were investigating, though how this tied in with the threatening letter Finch had received they didn’t know. It wasn’t likely, Daniels countered. Jessica was training to become a doctor and was hardly a struggling student short of cash.

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out, boss. People do stuff for kicks, not just for money,’ Gormley reminded her. ‘If Jessica was caught up in something shady, maybe someone’s threatening her father with it. Maybe he’s trying to protect his reputation, his coveted family name.’

  ‘Nothing surprises me any more, Hank.’ Daniels took in the clock on the wall. ‘I’m due to meet Ron Naylor in around fifteen minutes. I’ll run her name by him and see what gives.’

  ‘Bit late to be fraternizing with the enemy, isn’t it, boss?’ Maxwell was grinning. ‘You sure that’s the only thing on your agenda this evening?’

  He was unable to help himself. Anything salacious in the office and he was always first there. Daniels could have – perhaps should have – put him in his place there and then, but she knew it would only add fuel to the fire. For years, rumours had been circulating about her relationship with Naylor, insinuations and innuendo she’d never really stamped on. If she was being honest, it suited her to let them continue. Naylor wasn’t married, had never been, so what was the harm? No. The way Daniels saw it, if people thought they were an item then they weren’t looking into her real affairs – and they were f
ar more interesting.

  Gormley, the only one who truly knew Kate Daniels, gave her a wry smile.

  She ignored him in favour of Maxwell. ‘Ron Naylor is a mate, Neil. Sorry to disappoint your overactive imagination.’

  But Maxwell was off again. ‘Nice of you to put that one to bed,’ he quipped.

  A giggle went round the room.

  Keen to get off the subject, Daniels turned her attention to the murder wall. Using a remote, she brought up images of Amy Grainger and Jessica Finch. Looking at them gave her an idea. She turned back to the squad and focused on Carmichael. Her physical similarity to the victims was difficult to miss.

  ‘Fancy a spell undercover, Lisa?’ Daniels asked.

  As she explained what she had in mind, Carmichael’s face lit up. This would be her first time undercover, and it was obvious she couldn’t wait to get started. Daniels was transported back a decade or more to her own undercover debut. She had been part of a drug squad team selected to infiltrate a gay club on the beach at South Shields. When she walked up to the bar to order a drink, she was immediately approached by a girl of her own age. ‘Watch out if you’re looking to score,’ she’d said under her breath. ‘The place is full of cops.’ Later, when the bust went down and she realized her mistake, she’d simply blown Daniels a kiss as she was led away in cuffs.

  Wonder where she is now?

  Safe from harm, Daniels hoped.

  Carmichael was still grinning.

  With everyone clear about what they had to do, the DCI sent them on their way, turning her thoughts to Adam Finch. Despite her guv’nor’s assertion that she was wrong about him, she planned to put pressure on him first thing in the morning, along with the Mansion House staff.

  Leaving the MIR, she went downstairs to the female shower block, putting her hair up as she walked through the door. She took a quick shower, changed her clothes and applied fresh make-up, then stood back to check her appearance in the mirror. Not perfect, but Naylor wouldn’t care. It was ten o’clock in the evening and she was coming off a sixteen-hour shift.