Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (15 page)

‘In
your experience, at least?’ She spoke harshly, seeming to resent him, as a man,
making such prognoses.

‘Be
a remarkable woman who could,’ he said, emphasising his experience with a stern
glance.

‘I -
’ She stopped. She frowned and said, ‘Oh.’

He
waited, but Lucky had lapsed into a cowed silence. The outskirts of Rye gave
way to muddy fields. Raindrops mushroomed on the glass. Jeff flipped on the
wipers and put his foot down.

Where
was he?

The
question rattled endlessly around the recesses of Nina’s mind like the
clickings of bats in a cave. Again she took the mobile phone from her bag to
make sure it was on. She knew it was. She’d called Sandra earlier, to see if
Paul had rung or turned up there. He hadn’t, Sandra had insisted, and there was
no message on the machine.

It
was stupid. She should be glad. He’d be sitting at home feeling like dog shit,
unable to pluck up the courage to call. He’d be sweating, and serve him right.
Except that perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was unrepentant, out with that...
whoever it was; knowing her finding out gave him an excuse to be away.

Why?
came the echo. Is it me? Marriage didn’t go with the Job. She should have
packed it in a long time ago, and it wasn’t as if the income was vital, not
with Mum and Dad being so... She needn’t have volunteered for this pointless
exercise, come to that, she decided, thumping the empty seat beside her with
the palm of her hand. If she hadn’t, Paul wouldn’t have brought back that...
bitch, and she’d never have known.

Why
was she punishing herself? Because this
was
pointless. Even more so now
after the information Meredith had provided. She frowned across at the house.
Half past nine and still nothing. It looked as if Kim’s excursion on Wednesday
was all the excitement they were going to get.

Perversely,
the front door opened just as she’d resigned herself to this. Nina lowered her
head, although she knew she couldn’t possibly be seen at this distance. Minus
his coat, Andrew Clarke stepped out into the street and looked both ways. He
seemed agitated.

Then
his gaze settled squarely on the Mini and he crossed the road.

‘Shit!’

As
if everything else wasn’t fucked up, now she’d blown the obbo as well.
Helplessly she opened the window, sat and braced herself for the earful which,
from Kim and Marie’s accounts of the man, she was sure would come.

‘Officer?’

It
was a diffident voice and she turned her head in surprise. Andrew Clarke was
bending down to the window. She nodded.

‘I
was wondering, could you come with me, please?’

‘Sir,’ Nina said, ‘I’m here on the authority of - ’

‘I
need your advice. I don’t know what to do.’

She
stared at him, wary.

He
sighed and a trace of belligerence crept into his voice. ‘Look, my wife’s at
home. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’

‘I’d
better ring my guv’nor,’ Nina said. Mr Clarke nodded and wandered a few steps
down the pavement while she called Sophia and left a message. Then, having
surreptitiously transferred a can of CS spray from the glovebox to her jacket
pocket, she got out and followed him into the house.

Charlotte
Clarke was waiting nervously on her feet in the living room. Nina shook hands
with her curtly. ‘DC Tyminski,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’d better tell me what
this is about.’

‘Sorry
to trouble you,’ Mrs Clarke said. ‘It’s this.’ She gestured to a low table with
a landline phone, an answering machine and three empty coffee mugs on it. She
pressed a button. There was a bleep and then a man’s voice, sharp and tinny.

‘
You’ll
be pleased to know, Andrew, that I’ve finally tracked Deborah down,
’ the voice said. ‘
She’s
been a very silly girl, and she knows that, but she is truly sorry. If you’d
care to wait in Thornton Heath, at the southbound bus stop on the corner of
London Road and Warwick Road, at about ten past midnight, you can pick her up
there.’Bye.
’

In
the silence that followed, Nina looked from Andrew Clarke to his wife.

‘When
did you play the message back?’ she asked.

‘The
call came in about ten minutes ago,’ Charlotte Clarke said.

‘Why
didn’t you answer it?’

‘He
rang earlier and told us not to.’

‘Said
if he’d talked to one of us live,’ Andrew Clarke added, ‘we could have strung
him along long enough for a trace. So he told us to keep the machine on and
wait for him to call.’

‘You
sound like you know him,’ Nina said.

Silence.

‘What’s
his name?’

‘Edward
Porter,’ Andrew Clarke said.

‘Should’ve
guessed.’ Kim Oliver shoved her hands deeper inside her jacket pockets and
looked, once again, both ways along London Road, on a Saturday night busy even
at this late hour. ‘No wonder we didn’t feel right about him.’ She glanced
across the road to where Andrew Clarke stood under the bus shelter with Sophia.

‘Yeah,’
Nina said. ‘Both in Combat 18 in the nineties. Marches and rallies, football
hooliganism with the Chelsea Headhunters. Would you believe he actually
asked
Porter to look for Debbie?’

‘You’re
joking.’

‘No.’

‘Hey,
so we’ve got an address?’

‘No
such luck.’ Nina shivered in the breeze. ‘He got in touch through another old
C18 pal.’

‘Their
fucking network,’ Kim said.

‘Yeah.’

Kim
looked at her watch. ‘Nothing’s happening.’

‘Night
bus due in a few minutes,’ Nina said. ‘That’s if a bus is what we’re expecting.
Just because he said a bus stop.’

Across the road,
Sophia Beadle and Andrew Clarke watched in tense silence as it hove into view
round a bend in the distance, stopped for some vociferously tipsy teenagers at
a pelican crossing, and finally lumbered up to the stop.

‘I
don’t see her,’ Andrew Clarke fretted. Sophia, trying to conceal her own
anxiety, laid a reassuring hand on his arm.

The
rear doors opened. The only person standing inside was a youth of around
eighteen, who was talking over his shoulder to some others spread around seats
on the lower deck. He climbed down to the bottom step and leaned out. ‘You
Andrew Clarke?’

Mr
Clarke started and said, ‘Yes.’

The
youth held out a small buff envelope. Andrew Clarke took it and the boy
disappeared back inside the bus, whereupon the door closed and it pulled away.

‘Mr
Clarke,’ Sophia said.

Obediently,
he stopped his nervous fiddling and put the envelope into her outstretched
hand, which had a latex glove on it. She clasped the edges between her
fingertips and slit open the flap with a penknife. She used a tissue to extract
the contents. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Kim and Nina crossing
the road in defiance of the moving traffic. Her frown deepened as she
registered the contents of the envelope.

‘What
is that?’ Andrew Clarke demanded in a high-pitched voice, sensing something was
wrong. ‘I’ve a right to know.’

‘Mr
Clarke,’ Sophia began, blue eyes seeming a cold grey under the shelter lights,
‘I wouldn’t advise - ’

But,
more agitated than ever, he snatched it and looked down. His eyes narrowed, he
uttered a strange choking sound and dropped it. Tight-lipped, knowing any trace
evidence was now very likely useless, Sophia picked it up and showed it to Kim.
Nina crowded over their shoulders.

The
thing in the Polaroid photograph was barely recognisable as human. The body appeared
to be naked, but there was so much blood it was impossible to be certain. Kim
recognised the bed straight away, even without the hateful words painted on the
wall. Across the torso and limbs were scores of thick, dark cuts made as if by
the slashing of a knife. One arm lay across the midriff, perhaps where it had
been lifted in an attempt to ward off blows. The groin, in a mockery of
modesty, was covered by a copy of Thursday’s
Evening Standard
. Tarpaulin sheeting kept the
mess off the mattress. Some of it must have dripped.

‘Debbie?’
Nina asked in a strangled voice.

‘I
dunno.’ Kim handed her the photo and walked off, shoulders hunched. Nina peered
at it. The face was that of a young blonde woman. She’d seen photos, but any
doubt as to her identity was dispelled by the sight of Andrew Clarke bent
double on the bus shelter seat, face in hands, Sophia next to him with an arm
round his shoulders; Kim, leaning against the stop staring at them, unable to
bring herself to offer comfort to the grieving father.

Week Two

Monday

A busy and
frustrating Sunday had brought Sophia, Kim and Nina, at least two of them
resentful for the loss of their weekend, little further forward. They’d spoken
to Andrew Clarke’s C18 friend; he’d been able to tell them that he occasionally
ran into Edward Porter but had no idea where he might be now. The contact
information he’d given Clarke was an email address which, to their utter lack
of surprise, was from a web-based mail service, untraceable.

They’d
wanted to talk to Philip Meredith again but Charing Cross, understandably, felt
they had better things to do than drag homeless drunks in front of a
magistrate, and had released him with a caution soon after his interview with
Sophia.

The
first item of business at Monday morning’s office meeting was the distribution
of blown-up prints of the gruesome Polaroid. Most of the team looked at their
copies in grim silence. It was as they’d feared, and the fact that Meredith
didn’t seem to have added much new was what depressed them most. Nina Tyminski
was the first with her hand up.

‘This
does support his story, doesn’t it, guv?’ she said. ‘When he says there was
nobody there when he showed up?’

‘Doesn’t
get us any closer to finding Porter or Debbie though,’ Marie pointed out.

‘Perhaps
not.’ Sophia looked at them both. ‘We did, however, get some information from
Sean Ryder, the mutual friend. He lives in Leatherhead and he told us he runs
into Porter in pubs around there occasionally. I think there’s a good chance,’
she went on, amid stirrings, a sense that they might finally be getting
somewhere, ‘Porter’s gone to ground somewhere in that area. I don’t for a
moment suppose he’s on it, but Kim, if you could get onto Surrey County Council
and get them to do a voter’s list check for him. And I’ll need someone to find
out who the local estate agents are. It’s not that long since Mr Macmillan’s
team lost track, so if he’s bought or rented property in the area in the last
year or two, chances are someone’ll remember him.’

Nina
put her hand up and Sophia wrote her name against the action on the board.

‘I
had a meeting with Mr Coleridge first thing this morning,’ she announced.
‘Because of the sheer size of the task now ahead, we may have to bow to the
inevitable and call in MIT, at least in an advisory capacity.’

This
provoked a variety of reactions, mostly dismay. Sandra Jones said, ‘No
disrespect, guv, but we are talking about murder, aren’t we? And a cold trail.’

‘All
we have is a photograph and an answerphone message,’ Sophia said. ‘On that
basis we can’t be sure whether Debbie’s alive or dead.’

‘She
looks dead.’

The
DCI ignored Sandra. ‘The boffins at Lambeth have been analysing the message,’
she said. ‘There’s a ninety-nine per cent certainty the call was made from a
phone box on a busy main road.’

‘Narrows
it down,’ Marie said. ‘How many phone boxes are there any more?’

‘Got
the list here from BT,’ Nina said in a glum tone. ‘More than you’d think.’

‘What
about the kid on the bus?’ Zoltan Schneider said.

‘Kim
questioned him. “Some bloke” - I quote - walked up to him at a bus stop near
the Elephant and Castle and offered him fifty quid if he’d drop the envelope
off.’

‘Hey,
I
wouldn’t
ask questions,’ Sandra commented.

‘Exactly.’
Sophia afforded her a brief stare. ‘A similar degree of enlightenment on the
photo.’ She shrugged and raised a hand to the greatly enlarged copy on the
board. ‘One thing it does explain - we think - is the rope. As you can see,
Debbie isn’t tied up as we thought she might have been, but look closely and
you’ll see the sheeting underneath the body is secured to the bedposts by that
rope. Best guess, it’s a marine tarpaulin with metal rings round the seams for
lashing down. The rope goes through four of those holes and around the
bedposts.’

Marie
Kirtland had her hand up. ‘If she wasn’t tied up, guv, where did the
epithelials come from?’

‘Good
point; that’s been bothering me too. It’s possible, I suppose, that somebody
handling it at some stage managed to give themselves rope burns. We’ll know if
the epithelials are Debbie’s or not when the DNA comes through.’ She hesitated
again. ‘Don’t let’s get too excited about the tarpaulin. There was no trace of
sea or river water on the bed, or indeed anything much, so it may be new.
You’re looking at any number of marine supply shops in the London area alone,
including one in Croydon. And don’t worry,’ she paused, anticipating the
groans, ‘we will be checking.’

‘You’re very
thoughtful-looking,’
 
Marie said.

Kim,
who’d been still and quiet throughout the meeting, glanced up and frowned
without seeming to see her. She said, ‘Sorry. ‘Scuse me,’ and stood up. She
waylaid Sophia at her desk. ‘Guv,’
 
she said, ‘can I have a word?’

‘Yes,
Kim?’

‘I’m
just wondering about the way this is going,’ Kim said. ‘I mean we started off
investigating the arson, right, but that seems to’ve gone by the wayside.’ She
stopped. Sophia’s blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly what she’d been
bursting to say didn’t seem so urgent.

‘What
do you mean, by the wayside?’ Sophia said.

‘We’re
just like focusing totally on Debbie now,’ Kim burst out. ‘I mean there’s the
photo and that, yeah, but we don’t even know for sure she’s dead, never mind
whether she’s been murdered.’

Sophia
sat and said nothing in an eloquent way. Kim braced herself for the lecture
about the unexpected turns major enquiries often took, how a detective should
never lose touch of the issue that most concerns her: the eventual apprehension
of a suspect, based on the meticulous assembling of evidence.

But
all Sophia said was, ‘Are you concerned because the Bentons are black and
Debbie Clarke’s white?’

Kim
didn’t even have to nod.

‘Rest
assured,’ Sophia said in an expressionless voice, ‘I haven’t forgotten the
Bentons. How could I? I saw them when the paramedics brought them out.’

Kim
chewed her lip.

‘In
fact,’ the DCI went on, ‘there’s a new witness.’ She clicked her mouse and
pulled up an email. ‘Walked into Lewisham nick on Friday and made a complaint
of harassment. Someone tried to warn her off talking to us. Could be nothing,
except that the complainant happens to be Mark Watkins’s cousin. Go and see
what she has to say. Take Marie with you.’

An angry Helen
Wallace had drawn Zoltan Schneider’s attention with a loud thump to the
overnight crime reports. It didn’t take him long to understand why she was exasperated,
and to share her feelings. Either Croydon had gone insane over the weekend, or
the crime desk had. There were things here which were emphatically not Special
Crime property. Friday night had seen a spate of burglaries at a sheltered
housing scheme, all but one of the flats ransacked while their occupants were
on an outing to
Billy Elliot
. The following afternoon a steaming gang had gone on
the rampage down South Norwood High Street, leaving a number of cuts, bruises
and empty tills in their wake. During a ram raid in the early hours of Sunday
morning on a DIY superstore on the Purley Way, a security guard had been tied
up and locked in a cupboard with a fire hose for company. All serious crimes,
of course, but regular CID’s to worry about. In tones that teetered on the edge
of a shriek Helen next waved under his nose an attempted rape in Merton, which
wasn’t even on their ground, for the love of Mike, and goodness alone knew how
that had got in there. Added to which was their legitimate quota of two violent
attacks on gay men, threatening phone calls to a local imam and the attempted
abduction of a teenage girl outside a nightclub.

For
all of these last, Zoltan and Helen would have to find the manpower. Trouble
was, the manpower seemed to be either absent or otherwise occupied. The balloon
had gone up in a major way on the arson enquiry, which no doubt meant more
bodies doing other things. Brian Hunt was still off, not due back until next
week. Anne was in court, giving evidence in the case of a stabbing at a bail
hostel. Across the room Jeff and Lucky were alternately screwing receivers to
their ears and bouncing the results of their calls off each other. Possibly he
could prise one of them away. If not, it left himself, Helen and Sandra Jones,
all of whom had plenty to keep them busy already. Or should have. He could see
Sandra raiding the stationery drawer, a ream of A4 in one hand, chatting to
Lucky over her shoulder. Zoltan saw light. Excusing himself to Helen, he
advanced purposefully towards her.

Sandra
said, ‘You coming Saturday, then?’

‘DC
White’s leaving do?’ Lucky said, grateful for a few moments’ respite. ‘Am I
invited? I mean I don’t even know her.’

‘Course
you are.’

‘We’ve
hardly said two words to each other.’

‘Listen,
if Sandra says you’re invited, you’re invited,’ Jeff grinned, on hold with the
phone hooked over his shoulder. ‘Anne doesn’t have much say in it.’

Sandra
ignored him. ‘You’re team,’ she told Lucky. ‘All the invite you need.’

Lucky
looked unhappy about it. ‘Have to see. Could I bring somebody?’

‘A
date? More the merrier.’

‘No,
not – ’

‘Did
we say Barkeley’s in the end?’ Jeff said.

Sandra
turned to him. ‘Weren’t you there?’

‘Happen.’

‘Well,
where did you vote for?’

‘It
was a tie,’ Jeff said, ‘I thought.’

‘Eyes
down,’ Sandra said warningly. Jeff’s caller came back on and he lifted the
phone to his ear. With practised swiftness, Sandra pushed the drawer shut,
turned on her heel and sat at her desk, promptly engrossed in the report she
was typing. Zoltan wasn’t fooled. Smiling at Lucky, who sat transfixed, he
stood over her and opened his mouth.

‘Don’t
you just
love
British justice?’ a familiar voice said from the doorway.

With an eloquent
sag of his shoulders, he headed back across to where Anne White had just
entered the room.

‘That
was quick.’

‘Judge
threw it out,’ Anne said. Tersely, she told him what had happened. Weeks of
careful preparation just to get the CPS to take the case to Crown Court. Then
at the last minute the young victim, who’d been persuaded at length by Anne to testify
against his attacker on the promise of an almost certain conviction should he
do so, had changed his mind. Anne knew, and the prosecutor knew, he’d been got
at, maybe by threats, maybe by the lure of cash or drugs. But beyond a vain
plea for the lad to think about what he was going to have to live with, there
was little they could do. The accused had stepped down from the dock with a
smirk.

An
old, old story. But one Special Crime was supposed to be designing out.

‘We
can feel his collar again when the time comes,’ Zoltan said.

‘Be
too late for some poor sod,’ Anne sighed. ‘Oh, well, I’ll be long gone. All
I’ve got to worry about now is how to kill time for the rest of the week.’

Zoltan
gazed across the office to the three other detectives. Sandra was now genuinely
busy, also with a phone call.

‘Now
you mention it,’ he said brightly.

The address was in
New Cross, a house in a twenty-year-old estate off Cold Blow Lane that had been
built on the site of the old Millwall football ground. A few hundred yards
distant, the blue and white stands of the New Den could be seen over railway
embankments. Marie parked outside a tiny red brick semi with a neat triangle of
front lawn. The house had burnt timber door and window frames, to which someone
had begun applying a coat of black paint. A small handwritten notice pinned
beside the front door said: BELL OUT OF ORDER - PLEASE KNOCK. Seeing no
knocker, Marie rattled the letterbox as loudly as she could. Presently a figure
appeared through the frosted glass and opened the door.

They’d
been lucky to get hold of Grace Carmichael so promptly. She worked for a
publishing firm and had been in an editorial meeting from which, to judge by
the white blouse, black skirt and tights she still wore, she’d only just
returned. As they introduced themselves she looked at her watch and ushered
them inside. They were led into a small living room with a blue three-seater
couch, a wicker papasan chair, a pine wall unit from Ikea with an iPod dock on
it and no other furniture. A huge cheeseplant had colonised one corner. Drapes,
cushions and beanbags in a spectrum of colours softened the bareness of the
room. There was a faint but fresh smell of cannabis by which Grace Carmichael
seemed wholly unperturbed. Catching the slight wrinkle of Marie’s nose, and her
quick smile, Kim decided they oughtn’t to be, either.

Their
host was in her mid-twenties, breezy, businesslike and slightly bossy. She was
of a similar height and build to Kim, whose skin was a shade lighter. Her hair
was styled in an expensive bob, complemented by bright red lipstick and long,
beaten gold earrings. Her gaze swept constantly about the room. She said, ‘Will
this take long? Only I’m expecting my partner home in half an hour.’