‘I know, I know.’
‘You weren’t the only one, don’t worry.’
‘Sorry, Kate. But I’m thinking—’
‘That the OCT want my head on a plate if I don’t get on to it this afternoon.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Shit. Would you mind having another word with your lads about this win? Only I don’t have a moment.’
‘Ah. Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself?’
‘Natasha, I have precisely five minutes—get that?’ She held a hand in the air, fingers spread. ‘Five minutes before I leave the building. I want to know about Joe now. No messing. Now. Understand?’
Natasha cowered.
Jesus! You’re supposed to be caring for this kid, and after all that melodrama in the canteen you’re resorting to straight bullying! But it’s working…
Joe was a lorry driver, surprise, surprise, who’d been one of the clients at Vladi’s club. He’d been a nice, kind man, and she’d asked him to help her; Because she’d asked nicely, which Kate assumed was a euphemism for offering sex, he’d promised to take her to his mum’s in Manchester. But Natasha had had enough of men and their promises, so she decided to escape while he was delivering boxes to the market.
‘Any idea what was in the boxes?’
A shake of the head. Natasha couldn’t have cared less, then or now.
Yes, he had to drive here regularly, Birmingham and this other place. Sometimes he did several places in one day, Joe had said. He was a nice man—so far as men went, one gathered. With slight distaste, Madame Constantinou informed them that, without being asked, he produced a contraceptive. The sex was quite ordinary, nothing kinky, but Natasha had found it hard to… Madame Constantinou faltered. Natasha indicated quite clearly giving him a blow-job while he was driving very fast on the motorway and jerking him off at a service station. No, just a technical, problem with the blow-job. She hadn’t minded. A man liked sex, what was new? But she’d had the chance to slip out of the cab and had hidden and then had run and run and then she’d found Kate, she concluded with a beatific smile.
Despite her irritation, Kate smiled back. To Meg Walker, she said, ‘I want every scrap of information about this guy. E-mail, OK? By four?’ Then she said to them all, ‘You’ve worked very hard. Thank you. Have some lunch and come back here. Remember to be very, very careful. We’ll meet at Digbeth at nine tomorrow.’ A thought struck her and she beckoned Meg out of the room. ‘Natasha’s clothes. I take it they were bagged as possible evidence? All that semen flying around: there’s just the chance of the Lewinsky syndrome. It’d be nice if we could find some and match any DNA with—’
‘The DNA of this corpse of yours? OK, gaffer, I’ll get on to it!’
This time she’d get Chief Superintendent Oxnard’s views before she dived in, but she would have placed bets on what he’d say. ‘Get in there, Kate. What are you waiting for?’
‘Do you think we should invite CID to the party?’
‘Your old crowd or an MIT?’
‘Your shout, gaffer. We’d rather have neither, of course.’
‘But you’re short-staffed and wah, wah, wah ‘ Laughing sardonically, he mimed a record going round. Then he said, dead serious, ‘Look, just get on and do it, Kate. Take someone—one of your sergeants, if possible—you can trust not to blab And get on the blower the minute you find anything Or nothing. Oh, and make sure you get the place locked up right and tight afterwards. We don’t want some scrote noticing a broken window and helping himself.’
Alan White, the man who’d helped Mrs Speed, was the sergeant on duty. He scratched his head doubtfully. ‘If it’s an order, gaffer, well, I shall have to, shan’t I?’
‘Who else can I ask?’ she demanded.
‘OK. Let’s hit the road, then.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘At least you lead from the front, gaffer.’
‘Where else is there to lead from?’
He laughed. ‘That’s, what the old gaffer used to say.’
She let him drive to the road in Erdington she’d been to before. She turned her back as Alan produced a highly illegal set of skeleton keys, bequeathed him by a real pro, he’d said, almost proudly. It beat breaking windows any day, she agreed.
They donned gloves and began their search.
Nothing. The central heating had kept the house warm, but it had also kept it stuffy. With a sense of déjà vu, Kate collected the post, dropping it on to the kitchen table, while Alan half-heartedly, it seemed to Kate, turned over the contents of a surprisingly tidy bureau in his search for a passport. Kate stayed in the kitchen. Phil had washed up and stacked the dishes and pans—a bit of a cook, then—but hadn’t got all the grease off them. He’d wiped the work-surface, but left a trail of crumbs.
‘Gaffer?’
Kate joined him. In his hand was the passport. ‘So he’s still in the country. But that doesn’t mean still in Brum. You know what this means?’
‘It means we have to check his clothes and stuff. What are you expecting to find?’ he added, as he followed her upstairs.
‘Not a corpse, at least—we’d have known straight away, in this heat.’ She turned into the back bedroom. ‘God, I hate doing this when you know someone’s dead. When they’re still alive—we hope!—it seems so…’
‘Voyeuristic? What Burglar Bill sees all the time, remember, gaffer, people’s rooms as they left them when they last walked out. Stuff they forgot to put away, stains they’d rather no one saw…’
By common consent, neither spoke much. There were no gaps in his wardrobe, no sign of the holdalls in his boxroom being disturbed. There was no doubting Alan White’s relief when, with a jerk of her head, Kate motioned him back to the car.
Dave Bush looked relieved to see her running back up the office stairs. Paid overtime or TOIL was all very well, but not when it landed you in the middle of the Birmingham rush-hour on a very cold evening.
‘And it’s my Cantonese class, you see,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to miss that. And the parking up there’s dreadful.’
‘It’s a hell of a long day for you, Alan.’
‘Not much longer than those you’re routinely working,’ he countered. ‘And inspectors don’t even get overtime.’
‘No more we don’t. OK, come in, sit down and tell me what Choi had to say.’
He sat crossing and uncrossing his legs like a middle-aged woman nervous of getting varicose veins. ‘Not a lot. He’s seething about something, Kate, and that’s the truth, but he’s not letting on what.’
‘Don’t tell me he was inscrutable!’
‘Well…’ He said he’d heard further disquieting rumours, two of which had really unnerved him. He really does speak like that,—Kate,’ he added, looking up and suddenly letting a grin transform his face.
‘I’ve met him, remember, it’s his mugs we’re drinking out of. “Unnerved”—it’s an odd word, all the same.’
‘You know what,’ Dave began, leaning forward earnestly, ‘from the expression on his face, I’d say it was dead serious. In fact, come to think of it, he messed round with those very words. “Why hadn’t I said deadly serious?” That sort of thing.’
‘So you think we’re talking about, well, literally, a death.’
‘I’ll press him some more tomorrow. I’ve promised I’d lend him a book about the history of the English language—you know, by that travel-writer guy …’ As if aware he was gabbling, he added, ‘Look, mind if I push off? Only I—’
‘Not at all. Dave, thanks for all this. No one else could do it, you know.’
‘Well…’ He flushed with embarrassment and was gone. Kate was already reaching for the phone.
It was strange meeting Rod officially, inspector to superintendent, but that was what she was doing, openly snatching supper with him in the Lloyd House canteen. Any moment they’d be joined by Chief Superintendent Oxnard, so they had an excuse to be talking shop.
‘Poor little Natasha—honestly, Rod, I know I put
her through hell this morning, but really I just want to gather her up and hug her better, like Aunt Cassie used to do.’ She’d had more affection from the old woman during the school holidays than she’d ever had at home.
‘Funny. I’d never have seen Aunt Cassie as a hugger-better. More a woman to give a quick dab with the iodine and an injunction to be more careful next time.’
‘She was. She might have been cavalier about outside knocks but she was very good on inside hurts. The treats I had when this or that spotty teenager broke my heart But we digress.’
‘I like digressing with you. We’ll do a bit more later tonight. Or whenever we next get a moment together. I take it you won’t be hugging Natasha?’
‘And risk an assault or sexual-harassment charge? But she needs a lot of hugs. Nice asexual ones. I wonder what Social Services will do for her?’
‘Whatever their merits, I doubt their efforts will extend to finding her a hugger. We’ll buy her a teddy bear when the case is over.’ Perhaps he stressed the last five words.
Kate took his point and grinned. ‘As Aunt Cassie says, I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking. Anyway, after all the tears and tantrums, she talked about Joe. Here’s all Meg Walker could glean about him.’ She passed across the e-mail she’d printed off.
‘And we’re hoping to find the odd spot of his semen or a few of his hairs on her clothes.’
‘For DNA checks? Excellent.’
‘Maybe not just Joe’s, either.’
‘Quite. But what the hell made her hold out so long?’
‘To get Madame Constantinou a bigger fee? To irritate the socks off Meg and me? Perhaps she wanted to protect the man she sees as her knight in shining armour. To give him time to get away.’
‘Away from where or whom?’
‘Vladi, presumably.’
‘Only it doesn’t seem to have worked, does it? If indeed it was Joe, Vladi and Co. seem to have worked out quite quickly that he let them down and dealt with him accordingly.’
‘And now he’s very dead in one of Pat’s giant filing cabinets.’ She took another bite of cheese baguette. ‘I’m glad I didn’t have meat.’
He indicated his tuna salad. ‘It was a very public execution.’
‘Whoever it was, it was pretty public. Trouble is, we can’t get her to ID him.’
‘Not until the facial-reconstruction experts have had a go at him. Meanwhile, thank goodness for dental records—except his teeth were so good he might not have seen a dentist for some time. And in any case we need to have some handle on him before we can embark even on that.’
‘The lorry? They couldn’t have eradicated all traces of ownership.’
‘No. We’re on to that. A London firm. Lots of casual drivers. Ordinary day-to-day police work for someone finding which of the many.’
‘You’ve started already. You and an MIT.’ They were statements—not even accusations.
‘It was either that or your friendly local CID, headed up by Graham Harvey. I made a preemptive strike. I know I should have discussed it with you first, but you were so lacklustre at the thought of meeting him for lunch—’
‘That I certainly wouldn’t relish the prospect of regular meetings.’ She met his eye ‘He always tried to put me down, Rod Always finding fault.’
‘If he were lying on a couch in my office I’d say he was in denial, sweetheart A state not unknown to me Havel ever apologised for treating you so appallingly when your house had been attacked and you’d had acid thrown at you?’
‘You’ve certainly shown—’
‘I don’t think that’s enough. I am sorry. So very sorry.’ He laid his hand on hers. ‘What my heart wanted to do was sweep you off your feet and take you home and cherish the pants off you. So my head told me to freeze you out of my life. I always have been nuts about you, you know.’
Despite herself, she blushed deeply. And then grinned. ‘And me about you.’
‘This isn’t the most romantic of settings, Kate, but—sir!’
As one they got to their feet Oxnard was towering over them
‘Oh, finish your food. You can brief me as we eat.’ He plonked his tray alongside Kate’s and sat down As he unwrapped his cutlery and gave it a polish, he added, ‘As of about two minutes after your phone call, Kate—good, quick work, by the way—PC Philip Bates is a missing person. Now, you talked about cordoning off part of the wholesale market as a possible crime scene which bit’
The only part she’d never seen, of course. Without so much as a blink, she said, ‘The rubbish crusher, sir. Though I’ve a terrible feeling it’ll be too late.’
‘Too late?’ He held the forkful of chicken casserole two inches from his mouth. ‘And why have you let it get too late?’
She felt Rod stiffen: no, he mustn’t defend her. ‘Because the market generates so much waste I should imagine the end products of the crusher are disposed of every day.’
‘Disposed of?’ At lest he’d started to eat.
‘In the big incinerator, sir, I should think You know, down in Tyseley’
‘Find out. Hang on, you’re not on this case, are you? Not any more.’
‘No?’
‘You’ve got a bloody nick to run, woman, in an area of—what do they call it?—racial sensitivity. And this is a job for CID, if ever I knew one. Who’s the duty CID chief inspector tonight? Harvey, is it? You’d better get on to him, sharpish.’
Smooth as silk, Rod said, ‘With due respect, sir, this case seems to me to have some strong ties with another case I’ve already allocated to an MIT. Could I ask that team to take it on? With officers from Scala House to supplement the team if necessary?’
The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, eh? But help came from an unexpected quarter.
‘You’re not taking anyone from there, Neville. They’re so undermanned they can’t cover everyday essentials,’ Oxnard declared.
Undermanned? What had happened to a nice gender-free term like understaffed? Still, there were moments to protest and moments to keep the mouth firmly shut.
‘Tell me about this new case of yours, Neville, will you, while I eat?’ Oxnard applied himself to his chicken with vigour.
‘I’ve got what looks to me like a punishment or vendetta killing—the one on Spaghetti Junction, sir.’
‘That caused all the chaos the other morning? The one I told you to have a look at, Power, since the lorry might have been coming from the market.’
Kate nodded. How had he known that? Just because he was a fingers-in-every-pie man? ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t have time to check anything out. As you suggested, we got on to the Bates case as priority. And I seem to have another lead to the lorry, but via a different route.’
‘Well?’ Oxnard ate slowly, methodically.
‘I believe I’ve told you about the teenage girl who asked me for help.’
‘The one you’re sending hither and thither for questioning. OK.’
‘She tells me that she was brought up to Birmingham by a kindly lorry driver who’d promised to take her to his mother’s in Manchester.’
‘Manchester? That was a regular part of our man’s schedule,’ Rod put in. ‘According to the company logs.’
‘How would you know?’ Oxnard demanded, pausing for a sip of water, which left the top of his glass rimmed with grease.
‘Part of this investigation into the lorry fire. We don’t know for sure that this driver was the one who was kind to Natasha—’
‘There’s a hell of a time lag. Friday to Wednesday,’ Oxnard objected.
‘Quite. But we’re hoping to run DNA tests on items of Natasha’s clothing to see if we can make a connection. Hair; semen, that sort of thing.’
‘Couldn’t she ID him?’
‘Believe me, sir, no one could ID him.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse.’
To Kate’s amazement Oxnard pushed away his plate uncleared. ‘One of my nightmares, burning to death,’ he said, gruffly.
‘And one of our officers working in the market has disappeared?’ Oxnard looked at them both, holding the gaze of each, suddenly more a stern father than a senior officer. ‘You want to remember what that man at NCIS told you, Kate. We’re dealing with ruthless people here, whoever, they are. I want maximum care. All my officers. At all times. And that includes,’ he added, with a sudden benevolent smile that knocked Kate backwards, ‘you two.’
Chapter 16
Kate flung open the door to one of Scala House’s less attractive rooms. ‘Apparently they intended to convert this into a canteen and gym. Then someone realised how few people would actually be based here so the idea was abandoned. But I’d have thought that it was big enough for your MIT presence.’ The main body would be back at Steelhouse Lane but it made sense to have a token group there as long as any of Bates’s colleagues had to be questioned. ‘What do you think?’
‘An estate agent would say it had potential,’ DO Greg Smith said, gloom oozing from every pore. He was head of the MIT working on the case. He stepped forward, his bald patch gleaming through his baby-blond, baby-fine hair and squinted into the light.
Rod stepped in too. ‘A good clean, a few desks and phone lines, and it’ll be home from home. Your people OK with the invasion, Kate?’
‘They’ll have to be, won’t they?’ she retorted drily.
‘Don’t see why there should be a problem,’ Smith muttered. ‘Come on, Greg, you know we’d rather have done this on our own.’
‘All, right by me. Go ahead.’
Kate avoided Rod’s eye. ‘We just don’t have the bodies. I can’t guarantee a full set of duty teams, let alone detail a set of folk to clear up something as important as this.’
Power Shift Page 15
