Baby Love (15 page)

“Got a new best buddy now.” Powell nodded in Kemp’s direction. She was hugging Josephine Kramer. The MP then gave the gathering the benefit of her take on capital punishment and concluded with a call for the establishment of a
national police body along FBI lines. That was new. Yawn.

Powell checked his hair in the mirror. “Not mentioned castration? There’s a surprise.”

Carol perked up as the first candles were lit. Guidelines had been established showing where and how the candles were to be placed. Within minutes flickering flames spelt the letter W.

Powell’s face creased in puzzlement. “Women? War?”

“Could be wanker.” The merest hint of a lip-twitch.

“Are you...?”

“We calling it a night, then?”

He wavered, not sure. Sixty-odd females bursting into the first bars of
You’ll Never Walk Alone
tipped the balance.

He turned the engine on. “Where d’you want dropping?”

The man in the shadows rather liked his pet name. The Beast of Birmingham had a certain ring to it. He smiled. The women’s chanting had given him a hard-on.

“Cage the beast...cage the beast...”

He’d masturbated along to it. Shame he couldn’t come in their faces. Couldn’t risk being seen, though. Not when he had so much work to do. He’d selected his next prey already. Given the pigs were out in force tonight,
he’d half-expected to see her here. Like last time. He reached in a pocket for the silk French knickers he’d taken from her house. The semen was already stiffening. Shame. They didn’t smell of her any more.

“Cage the beast...cage the beast...cage the beast...”

Tuesday. Eight am. Highgate. Cappuccino in one hand, a stack of printouts in the other, Bev bummed the office door shut and headed for her desk. A picture of a geek from a boy band was propped on the keyboard. Why? Her frown deepened
as realisation sank in. The pretty boy with smouldering looks wasn’t some pop-star wannabe. It was an artist’s impression of the man who raped Natalie Beck. Underneath was an E-fit. Ditto.

A hand-scrawled post-it note fluttered to the floor. It wasn’t signed but Powell’s name was all over it.

Morriss, these are hot off the press via your mate Natalie Beck. They’ll also be on network telly Thursday night. Thought I’d keep you posted – save you poking your nose in again.

Why couldn’t the berk just say
Crimewatch?
Bev sipped coffee, deep in thought. Cosying up to Fiona Bruce would be the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition for Powell. Good for him – if it got them any nearer a collar.

She parked the cup on a beer mat and picked up the visuals again. Something wasn’t right. E-fits were often one-size-fits-all. Christ, some of them were so general they could be your mother. This picture had a fair bit of detail: a mole above
the top lip, a tiny white scar on a dark eyebrow, a crucifix dangling from an earlobe. Bev drummed the desk with her fingers. It was impressive, given that Natalie claimed she’d only caught a brief glimpse of the attacker almost a year ago.

Whatever. She had to back off; it wasn’t her case. She laid them to one side, unwrapped a lollipop and got stuck into her own. Phone-bashing the hospitals was a big job. She’d make a start but it would have to be dished out. The thought
led to Frankie. The girlie night had been great. All being well, Ms Perlagio was coming round on Saturday to lend a hand getting Baldwin Street straight. She’d taken one look at the place and told Bev to call the cops, she’d been burgled. Bev
shook her head and smiled. Mind, not being able to lay her hands on things was getting to be a pain.

On that thought, she rang the General to get the latest on Maxine Beck’s condition. Sounded promising: if the X-rays looked good she’d be moved from IC later that morning.

The letter, marked Personal, was on Byford’s desk when he arrived at Highgate that morning. There was no postmark. Inside, three words typed on a sheet of A4. His hand shook as he read and re-read the contents.

REMEMBER BABY FAY
?

Every day. Every night. He’d never forget that tiny burned broken body.

“Everything OK?” An admin assistant breezed in with a handful of post. Rachel habitually dressed in black but her nickname was Ray, as in sunshine.

“When did this arrive?” The voice was sharper than he’d intended.

She glanced at the envelope, her smile wavering. “No idea. Obviously not with this lot.” She dropped the mail in his in-tray. “Sure you’re OK? Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Bacon roll?”

He almost gagged at the thought. “Don’t fuss, woman.” He’d known her ten years, never spoken to her so harshly, nowhere near. It wasn’t her fault she had a walk-on part in his personal nightmare.

The early brief was tense and tetchy. It was the fourth day of the search for the missing baby. They were seventy-two hours down the line, not a step further forward.

Determination was now tinged with depression. To many, it was no longer a question of finding the baby alive, but when they’d find the body.

As Jack Hainsworth ran through overnight reports, Bev glanced at the guv. He’d not opened his mouth; with a jaw so clamped, maybe he couldn’t. When Hainsworth finished, Bev took over. She moved to the front and outlined the calls that
needed follow-ups: the less outlandish sightings and dubious steers from a public that seemed desperate to help but didn’t have a lot to offer.

By contrast, a sadistic sleaze-ball had reported finding a baby’s body in a dustbin at the back of a butcher’s in Aston. Squad cars were there within minutes. Officers discovered a doll dumped on top of a load of stinking bones and putrid
meat. The sleaze-ball’s IQ barely equalled his hat size. Wasting police time was the charge. He’d be wasting magistrates’ in a couple of hours.

“Sick bastard.” Darren New’s up-sum was universally shared.

“There’s a new line on the arson attack.” Bev hoped for a show of enthusiasm but bodies slouched and faces were mostly down-turned. “As you know, we traced the phone boxes where the calls were made.” Both in Balsall
Heath. “A youth was seen – right place, right time – by three separate witnesses.”

“So?” DC Ricky Shephard: young, brash, bordering on bolshie.

Thanks, mate. It wasn’t earth-shattering but it was a development. If they tracked the kid down, it could open a new line of inquiries. She put Shephard on the trail, then assigned the rest of the actions.

A glance at Byford invited him to chip in. A barely perceptible shake of his head declined. She outlined her embryonic theory that the snatch was down to a woman whose baby had died either ante- or shortly after birth. Given the expressions, people
were thinking it over. Dazza voiced his.

“Hell of a haystack, isn’t it, sarge?”

“It is and it isn’t.” She’d thought it through a bit more. “Zoë wasn’t snatched at random. Whoever took her didn’t hit the Beck house on the off chance a new-born just happened to be lying
around.”

“They had to know Natalie was pregnant. Had to know she’d given birth.”

Bev knew the voice, looked round for the speaker. DC Gosh was at the back. Next to Oz. Bev filed a thought, expounded her idea. “So we’re looking for someone who was maybe in hospital at the same time as Natalie, someone on the same GP
list, maybe a woman who attended ante-natal classes. Anyone with that level of contact.”

“I’ll give you a hand, sarge,” Oz said. “I already contacted some of the likely places on the earlier medical line.”

She nodded thanks, then threw the brief open. Discussion was desultory. It was as though everyone knew the ending. And that there’d be tears.

“I’ve no idea. You tell me.” Byford’s head was in his hands. Bev was floundering. She’d been summoned to his office immediately after the briefing. She’d never heard the guv sound so... diminished?
Defeated? And why hadn’t he mentioned the anonymous letter to the troops? Was he doing a Morriss? Getting personally involved? She placed the paper on the desk between them.

“Could be anyone, guv. It was a big inquiry at the time.”

“Bull.” He strode to the window, perched on the sill, nearly dislodged the cactus. “Whoever sent it knows something. That letter’s a taunt.” He tucked hands under armpits. “And it’s personal.”

She didn’t read it that way. “It’s hardly Sutcliffe territory, guv.” Coppers’ blood still ran cold at the mocking tapes and letters sent by the hoaxer purporting to be the Yorkshire Ripper. It had taken nearly thirty
years to track the sicko down. “It’s just three words. Sounds innocuous enough to me.”

“You weren’t around at the time, sergeant.”

She shrugged. “So what’s behind it?”

“How the devil should I know?”

Least he wasn’t swearing. “What do you want to do about it?”

“What the fuck
can
I do about it?”

“Start by finding out how it got here.” Highgate wasn’t exactly access all areas. Someone in the building must have dropped it off.

Her sharp tone seemed to galvanise him. Back at his desk, he opened the Baby Fay file. “Then we track down the father.”

Bev frowned. There wasn’t so much as a thin hint at the time that Fay’s father had anything to do with his daughter’s murder. “How does that work?”

Byford shook his head. “Unfinished business, Bev.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’m not sure myself.” He took out a picture: the father holding Fay in his arms. Uncertain smile, curly perm, gold stud. “I never took to the man,” Byford said. “Don’t get me wrong. We couldn’t have
checked him out more. His alibi was sound. He seemed mad with grief. But there was something not quite right. Call it a copper’s gut feeling.”

“That the same as a woman’s intuition?”

He didn’t return the half-smile. “And I’ll tell you this, Bev. If that letter isn’t a taunt, it sounds to me very much like a threat.”

“If this is down to you, Morriss, you’ll be on traffic in the morning.” Powell flung the late edition of the
Evening News
on her desk. “M6. Fast lane. Rush hour.”

Powell’s missile sent paperwork flying. Bev had spent the better part of six hours poring over or writing reports. The DI was making another bad day worse. “Fuck’s sake. What’s your problem?”

He jabbed a finger. “Bottom of page five.”

The story had Matt Snow’s by-line, the paper’s crime correspondent. Bev frowned. She’d leaked the news gem to Nick Lockwood, her man at the Beeb. It had been in the way of a sop for pulling out of their session at The Prince. Had
Lockwood then fed it to Snowie? She knew the hacks did a bit of horse-trading from time to time.

“Sod all to do with me, mate.” She’d not said a word to Snow.

“How’d it get out, then?”

“I’m a cop. Try Mystic Meg.” She picked up the fallen papers, turned her back.

“Don’t fuck with me, Morriss.”

“Like that’s gonna happen.”

She hadn’t released it to piss Powell off. She hoped it might rattle the Beast’s cage. According to the papers and the news, the Street Watch cops had lost the plot. The Beast, like everyone else, probably imagined they didn’t have a
clue, let alone a lead. Bev reckoned a line about the Beast’s trophy-taking compulsion might at least capture a few airwaves and column inches, if not goad the Beast. The fact the rapist was still out there irked her almost beyond reason.

“You sure you’re not behind this?” Powell’s arms were tight across his chest, his back ramrod-straight. There were times he put her in mind of some anally retentive housemaster in a poncy prep school.

“Read my lips.” She mouthed a fuck-off-arsehole.

“Can’t handle it, can you, Morriss?” He was doing heavy-breather sound effects.

“What’s that?”

“The fact I’ll be the one bringing in him, seeing him sent down.”

“Soon as you like, mate.” She raised the coffee in mock salute. “I’m behind you all the way.”

He glared. “You surely are.”

“Can’t stand chrysanths, make me sneeze.” Maxine Beck sniffed. “Drop of Gordons’d go down a treat.”

The hospital visit was on Bev’s way home. She bit back a line about beggars and choosers. “Not sure how that’d go down with the doctor, Mrs B.” She took the hard chair next to Natalie. Terry Roper sat on the bed, admiring his
nails.

“Medicinal, innit?” Maxine croaked. Her throat had taken a battering from the smoke inhalation. Though she’d been moved from intensive care to a chintzy cheerful side ward, Bev reckoned it would take more than a gin and tonic to
restore Maxine to her pre-fire self. The woman’s eyes were lifeless, her skin dull, her attitude jaded.

“Brought you this as well.” Bev ferreted in her bag. Since she’d scoffed most of the grapes on the drive over, her fingers bypassed what remained of the bunch. A family-sized bar of fruit and nut was at the bottom. “There you
go.”

Maxine curled a lip. “Got any fags in that thing?”

Yeah. Twenty Drumsticks. “Sorry, love. I’ve stopped.” Bev was still rummaging. “Brought you something as well, Natalie.”

The teenager perked up but her face fell when she saw the newspaper. Her artwork was splashed across the front page. Bev watched like a hawk with binoculars, eager to pounce on any reaction. Her suspicious mind had been in overdrive on the way to the
General
.
What if Natalie had come up with a likeness purely to keep the police off her back? No problem – till it hit the press. Of course, the idea could be a complete no-no. A flash of emotion momentarily ousted Natalie’s sulk but
Bev was hard pushed to define it. Excitement? Pleasure? Semi-smirk? Either way, a jaw-breaking yawn followed as the teenager dumped the paper in the bin. “Seen it already.”

Bev took the wrapper off a Drumstick, sucked it a few times. “Couple of punters’ve already called in.” A whopper but it wiped the scowl off the girl’s face.

“You what?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a name to go on as well now.”

Natalie tightened an already taut ponytail. “So?”

Bev opened her mouth to speak but Roper butted in. “Come to apologise, have you?” He reached casually for the Cadbury’s.

She almost choked. “What?”

“Accusing me of every crime in the book.” Chocolate melted on his teeth. “Waste of time, weren’t it?” Roper was clean. Maybe he just hadn’t been caught. “Time you should’ve been out there searching for
the baby.”