Hard Time (24 page)

“A few words. That’s all we need.” Bev glanced at Colin Henfield but the FLO had no chance of voicing support.

“I said no.” Page’s folded arms and planted feet reinforced the message. Short of Colin pinning the bloke down while Mac and Bev legged it upstairs, they’d not be
questioning Jenny today.

“OK, Mr Page. But we’ll speak to her sooner or later.”

“That’ll be later, then.” It was the way he said it that riled Bev. “Hey! Where are you going?”

The sitting room. She didn’t look back. Sun spilled across the carpet through french windows, picked up dust, the odd cobweb. Bev took an upright chair, adopted similar stance, let her
body language talk. The prickly silence did the trick, or maybe the fight had gone out of him.

“I’m sorry.” Page actually sounded it. “There aren’t any how-to books when it comes to your child being kidnapped. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m
doing or saying. I’m out of my head with worry. I’ve lost Daniel. And I’m losing my wife...” He turned away. The raw emotion was at odds with the arsy attitude of a minute
ago.

It moved Bev but Daniel’s ordeal moved her more. “One question, Mr Page, then we’ll...”
Leave you in peace?
Hardly. She waited, willing him to turn round, wanting
the eye contact. “Mr Page?” It was a gentle prompt. She rose, moved nearer, almost reached out. “Mr Page, I need an answer. And I need the truth.”

Upstairs, Jenny was crying, the faint sound an echo of her husband’s sobs. The kidnappers were slowly destroying Daniel’s parents. God knew what they were doing to the boy. Page was
listening but still not looking. She couldn’t wait any longer and there was no point pussyfooting round the privet.

“Are you dealing direct with Daniel’s kidnappers?” He muttered something she couldn’t quite catch. “Sorry?”

He was inches from her face when he turned, squared up to her. “I only wish I were!” Again the mood switch was sudden, unexpected; the voice dripped venom.

She stood her ground. Just. “I’d strongly advise...”

She flinched when he flung out an arm. “I don’t want your advice. Six days he’s been gone. And what have your lot done?”

“We...”

Like a child, he clamped hands over his ears. “I don’t want to know. Get out of my house. Don’t come back till you’ve got something worth saying.”

“Never asked, did he?” Bev was driving, needed to feel in control. Page’s verbal attack had left her trembling. Initially she’d put her response down as
scared, but she wasn’t. She was fucking furious.

“Never asked what?” Mac lifted his glance from
The Sun.
Sports pages.

Her hands squeezed the wheel. “If we had any news.”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We’d’ve said straight off.”

“Not the point, mate. If you had a kid and it was snatched, it’d be your first question.” She ignored his wince as the gears crunched. “Christ, Colin’s one of us
and he asked before we’d set foot over the door.”

“Maybe Page was being protective.” He glanced at the speedometer.

Protective of who? His wife? Himself? Who was protecting their son? She slammed the wheel with a fist. “What if he was just dodging questions? Deflect us with a show of emotion? We got his
Mr Mad-With-Grief and a bit from Mr Angry. Guy did the whole sodding gamut, didn’t he?”

“He’s going through it, sarge. Cut him a bit of slack.”

“I’m fresh out of slack, mate. Daniel’s hidden away God knows where...” She was welling up. The fury and frustration was aimed at herself and the entire police operation
as much as the parents. Six days they’d been at it and were as far from a result as on the first. There’d not been the slightest move, let alone the sense of an imminent break. They
were short of witnesses, suspects, forensics. “And we haven’t got a sodding clue.”

Compared with what they had got, smoke and mirrors looked like bricks and mortar.

The wall had a few dents, dirty smudges and the paper was flaking. Daniel collected the tiny white scraps each time so they didn’t stand out against the dark carpet. The
nasty woman hadn’t noticed, or he’d have been smacked. But had anyone else noticed? The little boy had no idea who lived next door, or if they’d heard him knocking.

He always waited till he was alone in the house. Before leaving, the nasty woman would come to the bedroom and tie his hands and feet with a rope. She used a scarf like Mummy’s to gag him.
He would wait until he heard the two doors close before shuffling across the floor on his bottom. The knocking wasn’t loud because he couldn’t work his hands properly. But he had to do
something.

If he got out of here, Mummy would be so proud. He tried not to think about Mummy too much. It made him cry and hurt inside. The nasty woman seemed to like it when he cried. He sensed she was
losing patience. She snapped at him more and more.

Daniel knocked on the wall as hard as he could, five knocks, then a count to five, then five more knocks. He repeated the pattern again. And again. And... The little boy pricked his ears, held
his breath, then shuffled a little closer to where he thought the noise had come from. Maybe he’d imagined it.

He tried again: knock, knock, knock...

Suddenly the bedroom door flew open. He banged his head against the wall. Or had the nasty woman slammed it? It happened so quickly he couldn’t be sure. Like the five muffled knocks
he’d thought he’d heard. Were they real or had he imagined them?

The seedy house was in a row of condemned terraces in a Stirchley back street. The sash windows were grimy, and grey weeds poked through the brickwork. SOCOs had already
searched the property. DI Powell had spoken briefly to one of the officers before driving over to take a look. He left the Vauxhall straddling the kerb, waited as DC Pemberton joined him on the
narrow pavement.

The place had been home of sorts to the couple who’d died in a stolen fume-filled car half a mile away. A scrawled note on the dashboard had led police here; led them to believe that the
deceased were Irina and Josef Kupiek.

Powell glanced round. The couple had clearly been squatting. The houses were due for demolition and there was an air of squalor and neglect. Previous occupants had probably left the few bits of
tatty furniture. Faded daisy-patterned paper hung off the wall in places; bare floorboards creaked underfoot in others. The electricity had been cut off, so burnt-out candles and used matches were
in evidence. Little of the couple remained – no personal documents had been found – so why had the note pointed the police here? And how long had they been holed up? According to the
housing department, the last actual tenants had been re-housed six months ago.

“Why stay in a dump like this?” Carol asked. “The council...”

“Hasn’t heard of them. They’re not on record.” Social services, job centre, immigration, national insurance, DVLA, you name it, the DI had been there but the Kupieks
hadn’t. Officially they didn’t exist.

The two detectives wandered, looked round as they talked. “Do you reckon they were illegals?” Carol asked.

Powell had been thinking along the same line. Human trafficking was big business, especially across parts of Eastern Europe. The couple could’ve fallen off the back of a lorry, shoved by
some ruthless bastard who saw them as nice little wage earners. It would explain the lack of documentation. It was a known fact that gang masters withheld passports, official papers, anything
valuable as insurance till debt bondage was cleared. Like some time never. And until then, their human cargo was as good as slaves. Unless this pair had done a runner.

“More than likely,” Powell said. “Maybe they were hiding here.”

“From?”

“Whoever brought them in.” Organised-crime fat cats who feed poor suckers a pack of lies, backed up with violence and intimidation.

“Wonder where they came from?”

Albania? Kosovo? Moldova? Lithuania? “Probably never know,” Powell said. Photographs and details were being faxed to European emigration officials. But if the couple had come in by
the back door, the authorities would never get a hit.

“What about the little boy? Think he was their kid?”

The DI nodded. The search hadn’t uncovered anything definite but circumstantial evidence pointed that way. He was pretty sure the relationship would be confirmed once they had the DNA
results back. He couldn’t work out why the couple had left a note with this address in the car. And he was struggling with another mystery. Why did the child die? Why was his body left on
waste ground two miles away?

Unless the gang boss had tracked down his parents and they’d paid the ultimate price. If the boy had been snatched, maybe the couple thought life wasn’t worth living, saw death as
the only permanent escape. Was the note a final pathetic act of defiance against their masters? Did they want to leave a fuller message, but didn’t have enough English? A million thoughts
jostled: what a fucking mess. He turned, brushed a finger under his eye.

“You all right, sir?”

“Cut the Spanish inquisition, Carol.”

There was a shuffling noise outside. They spun round; the DI ducked as a brick hurtled through a window. Carol took off like a bat on a rocket. Powell was hard on her heels until his foot struck
a rotten floorboard. The wood gave way under his weight, pain shot up his leg. He was thigh-high in flooring when Carol returned, breathing hard, swearing softly.

“Fucking little toe-rag got away on a bike.” Her eyes widened as she watched him prying himself loose. “Jeez, sir, you all right?”

“Hurts like shit. I’ll need a tetanus.” He winced as he gently lifted the ruined trouser material. The pale skin was broken, oozing blood.

Carol handed him a tissue. “Kid was this high.” She raised a hand four feet in the air. “Probably doing course work for the next ASBO.”

Her forced smile faded. She’d spotted something as the DI struggled to his feet. She knelt, reached a tentative hand down through the gap in the wood. The search team had done a crap
job.

“What is it?” Powell asked. She shook her head, carefully untied a frayed pink ribbon from a few crinkled yellowing papers. As they were released, a stale smell wafted into the air.
Human sweat. The DI picked up on it, pictured one of the couple strapping the bundle next to their skin. A makeshift body belt for items more precious than cash.

Handwritten letters, presumably from loved ones, and a photograph. The picture wasn’t recent, was badly creased and the light was poor. But it was unmistakably of a little blond boy with a
sunny smile and sea-blue eyes. Powell had last seen his lifeless body lying on a steel slab.

Julia Tate only used the guest bedroom for sewing nowadays. Needlework was not a great passion; truth was, she didn’t really care for it. She was in there now, sitting in
a wing chair, attempting to thread a purple silk for a fire screen. It would be a raffle prize for the WI Christmas bazaar. Julia gave a wry smile. Given the speed of her handiwork, it might just
be ready for next year.

No, when it came to pastimes Julia preferred baking, or sitting down with a good detective story, a crossword, perhaps Sudoku. Enid always called it Sudafed. Julia laid her work down for a
minute or so as she pictured her old friend. Her fond smile was tinged with sadness. Enid had died seven months earlier and Julia missed her greatly.

It was one of the reasons she’d hoped to make friends with the new people next door. Julia was sure now that it was a little family, not just the rather pretty young woman and the small
child. Julia had heard a man in the house. And it wasn’t a voice on the television or the radio. The blush-making noises she’d also heard were not for public entertainment. Certainly
not daytime.

Julia picked up her needle again. She’d hate to be thought of as an interfering old busybody but actually it was rather embarrassing. She wondered if she ought to mention how thin the
walls were. Naturally she couldn’t make a direct reference; that would be so coarse. But a subtle hint?

Not that there’d been any opportunity. Sometimes she thought the new neighbours were deliberately avoiding her. A sudden noise made her jump. Her hand jerked and a bead of blood appeared
on her thumb. She sucked it, frowning. Her hearing wasn’t what it was but she thought the sound had come from next door.

Yes. There it was again. Someone knocking on the wall. Then silence. Then another knock and another and... Julia struggled to her feet, laid her work on the chair, hobbled across the room.
Having sat in the same position for so long, she was stiff. She lowered herself gingerly to her knees, ignoring the complaints from ageing joints. A pattern emerged. Five knocks, five
seconds’ silence, five more knocks.

Was it the child playing games? Did he want her to answer? She gave a little smile, then rapped the wall with her knuckles – once, twice, three times, four, five...

The scream made Julia’s blood run cold. And the loud thump. Had the little one fallen? Was he hurt? Julia covered her mouth with her hand. The woman’s voice sounded very cross. Had
she smacked him?

Clutching the wall for support, she struggled to her feet, torn with indecision. Maybe she was a just a lonely old woman letting her imagination run away with her. Maybe they’d been
hanging pictures or something. But not once had she seen the child leave the house or a playmate visit. And surely he should be in school? It wasn’t healthy to be cooped up all the time. And
the cries still haunted her.

The uncertainty had drifted too long. Julia headed for the stairs, mind made up. If the woman didn’t answer the door this time, Julia would phone the authorities.

Better safe than sorry, as her old friend Enid would say.

“Come in, come in. Sorry about the mess. You’ll have to take me as you find me.”

Darren New and Sumitra Gosh exchanged bemused glances as they followed a scrawny little woman through an immaculate hall into a pristine front room. Nell Fallon’s council house in Lords

The detectives were currently on loan to Operation Phoenix and DCS Flint had assigned them what Daz regarded as a particularly short straw. Long one was Sumitra. He’d clutch on to her any
day. Sumi had the whole Bollywood thing going for her – blue-black hair, café-latte skin, dark chocolate eyes. Best of all, he reckoned, she was smart without being lippy. Well, she
didn’t answer back. Much.