Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (8 page)

‘Tenuous.’
Zoltan lapsed for a few moments into silent thought. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll get
on to Records, see if any of this rings a bell. Lucky, stick around and listen
in. We need to circulate a request for any knowledge of similar cases. On that
note, Nina, Jasmin, start ringing round the women’s refuges and rape crisis
centres. I know they’re confidential but it’s worth a try. When that’s done you
can all have a go chasing up the investigating officers, see if they’ve
anything promising to say.’

‘What
about the victims?’ Jeff asked.

‘Only
as a last resort,’ Zoltan said. ‘We don’t want to dredge up bad memories if we
can avoid it.’ He paused. Taking it he’d finished, they started to get up. Over
the scraping of chairs he added, ‘Let’s all keep our eyes open. Chances are
there’ve been other attacks that either weren’t reported or haven’t been
linked.’ He stopped and frowned. ‘Lucky?’

‘Sir?’
She was halfway to the corner of Helen’s desk where she worked.

‘That
meant now.’

She
stood and stared at him for an instant. She said, ‘My biro’s run out.’

Zoltan
nodded acquiescence and stood. He gave the impression he could wait all day if
necessary.

What had seemed the
comparatively simple task of locating Luke Benton and informing him of what had
happened to his family had proved, owing to the destruction by fire and water
of much of the material evidence, to be anything but. There was no other close
family, and house-to-house enquiries in Chapel View had failed to yield
confirmation that Luke even existed, never mind where he was. It had fallen to
a finally filthy Sandra Jones and Anne White to sift through the blackened
remnants that had survived the blaze, contact what relatives and friends the
search turned up, and confirm that Luke was in Greece, though not the resort
nor which hotel he was actually staying at. Having bathed and changed, they’d
then had to call every airline that flew there before they were able to track
him down to Rhodes, and fax to the UK consulate there a request to put him on a
flight home.

A
sign of the times, as Sophia remarked, irritated at having to expend so much
energy, time and manpower on a routine task - effort which should have gone
towards finding the arsonists. The Bentons had lived in Chapel View for five
years yet no-one, not even their next door neighbours, seemed to have paid them
any more attention than it took to nod when passing in the street.

Sophia
considered it her duty to take care of Luke Benton personally, and so it had
been she and Sandra who’d met him at Stansted and driven him to Croydon
University Hospital to confront the travesty of human dignity that was his
younger brother. His college friend Nick, a muscular, quietly-spoken black man,
had cut short his own trip to accompany him home, and now sat beside him in the
living room of his parents’ house in Thornton Heath.

‘It’s
been a tough few hours for you, Luke, I realise that,’ Sophia said. ‘Maybe
you’d like to try and get some sleep before you answer any questions.’

‘I
couldn’t sleep.’

Sophia
frowned at Luke. He was a tall youth, light-skinned, with the shadow of a
goatee whose successful growth was compromised by his being too young. He
slumped in an armchair, bare-chested under a white cricket sweater, red beach
pants stained and crumpled from wear and travel. He hadn’t rested since being
plucked from a nightclub dancefloor at midnight by a policeman who, Nick had told
them, he was sure was going to plant something on him. Then the breaking of the
news, the escort to the airport and the ten-hour wait for a flight. Finally the
return home, to find the nightmare was true, that his mother was dead and that
even if he survived, his brother would be disfigured beyond recognition,
condemned to a life of helpless pain while Luke, unscathed, tried to get on
with his. It was a situation Sophia, with all her experience of the horrors
that went with the Job, had never had to face. As a young PC, and then
sergeant, she’d sometimes handled something similar as the result of a house
fire or a road accident; but never when the next of kin was this particular
age, too old to be fostered or taken into care, too young, really, for the awful
responsibility that had been thrown upon him; and certainly never when the
whole family had been subjected to an attack of such barbarity and when only by
chance, perhaps, was Luke not now lying alongside them in the burns unit or on
a mortuary slab.

‘Fair
enough,’ she said. ‘Let me know if you’re finding it a bit much, and we’ll
stop. We can always come back to it after you’ve had some rest.’

Nick
beckoned her to one side. ‘Can’t it wait anyway?’

‘I
think we should get this out of the way as soon as possible,’ Sophia said. ‘As
yet there’s no clear motive for the crime. Obviously Robin will be in no fit
state to tell us anything for some time. It’s possible Luke might have some
idea why they were picked on, or even who might have done it.’

Nick
sat down beside his friend and said something softly into his ear. Luke nodded
bleakly.

‘Thank
you, Luke,’ Sophia said. ‘So far we’re in a bit of a bind. None of the
neighbours seem to have seen anything, despite the fact that someone setting
fire to a cross in your front garden would have been pretty hard to miss.’

‘I
can tell you why,’ Luke said.

‘Oh?’

‘All
shit scared, case they get put on the spot. I know who did it and I know why.’
He saw his listeners’ expressions change. He steepled his fingers and leaned
forward, elbows on knees. ‘Robin’s babysitter knows about it. Debbie Clarke.
Talk to her.’

Concealing
their surprise, Sophia and Sandra told him about the circumstances surrounding
Debbie’s disappearance. With much prompting Luke, already distressed enough, was
able to clarify why they’d found what they had.

Although
Doreen Benton had been left adequately provided for by her late husband, her
status as the family’s breadwinner had required her, for her own peace of mind,
to return to the job market she’d abandoned when Robin was born. His starting
school had finally given her the opportunity, and she’d been lucky enough to
find a job that corresponded roughly with his school times, leaving only the
hour or so afterwards unaccounted for. Debbie Clarke was the latest in a string
of babysitters employed through cards put up in Mrs Blissett’s shop. She was
also the prettiest, and Luke, despite some misgivings about her age, had asked
her out.

‘She’s
sixteen, though,’ Sandra remarked.

‘Yeah,
but she acts younger sometimes. She’s sort of in the angry teenage phase. I
never should’ve involved her but it’s difficult to take no for an answer with
her.’

‘Involved
her in what, Luke?’ Sophia said.

He
sighed, struggling to marshal his thoughts. ‘Long story,’ he said. ‘I picked
her up one night, she was in a right strop. Something on the news about a
robbery, and her dad had been spewing his middle class crap about all black men
being muggers and rapists. Then of course
we
got dragged into it ‘cause
Debbie sits for us, and she flew off the handle.’

‘Do
the Clarkes know about you and Debbie?’

‘You
joking?’ Luke scoffed. ‘Bad enough their little girl even being associated with
us - working for Sambo. Oh, they never say as much, least not in my hearing.
But it’s plain enough.’

Sophia
nodded. Believable, if Kim’s impressions of Andrew Clarke were anything to go
by. She said, ‘So you think they might have found out?’

‘Eh?’
He looked puzzled. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’m just telling you how it
started. Anyway, she knew I was involved with this pressure group, Justice for
Mark Watkins.’

Sophia
stiffened. Kim had mentioned a possible link. She’d have to talk to her when
they got back.

‘D’you
remember it?’ Luke asked, noticing her reaction.

Sandra,
who’d been uncharacteristically taciturn so far, said, ‘I was on the
investigation.’

Luke
and Nick turned piercing stares on her. Luke said, ‘D’you reckon it was
Carruth?’

Sandra
hesitated, conscious of Sophia beside her. ‘We were pretty certain he was
involved,’ she said. ‘And we
knew
he didn’t act alone. But because he never talked…’ She
tailed off, knowing as she had known then that it wasn’t enough.

Nick
made a loud, dismissive noise with his tongue. The tension in the room had
risen.

Sandra
said, ‘A person can’t be tried twice for the same crime. That’s the law.’

Nick
wasn’t impressed. He chewed his lip and then said, ‘You reckon he had something
to do with - ?’

‘I
checked him out.’ Sandra shook her head. ‘He’s got the perfect alibi. Emigrated
to America two years ago and he’s in jail in Florida. How he got a green card
with his record is anybody’s guess, but there you go.’

‘He’s
been spoken to,’ Sophia added, ‘but he denies knowing anything. I think,’ she
ventured, ‘we’ve drifted from the point.’

‘Yeah,
sorry.’ Luke scratched his head. ‘Debbie started asking me about it. Kept on
about how unfair it was. Eventually she talked me into taking her along to a
meeting.’ He glanced at Nick and then frowned at Sandra. ‘I went to the same
gym as Mark Watkins, and I’m telling you he was no wimp. I know Carruth’s in
the clear legally, but like you said, no way he did it on his own. We knew it
as well as you lot did. So we formed the group to try and push the police, or
the CPS or the Home Office, into reviewing the case properly. But Debbie,’ he
wiped a hand across his mouth, ‘seemed to get the impression we were some sort
of vigilante brigade.’

‘Why
do you say that?’ Sophia asked.

‘She
told me. She was all fired up, wanting to do something. You know how it is:
she’s sixteen, thinks she can change the world. She was standing up and
mouthing off and getting clapped; of course that only encouraged her. Trouble
is,’ his expression clouded, ‘it got her involved with some people.’

‘Some
people?’

‘Far
left militants,’ Luke said with sudden venom. ‘You know the ones: they always
turn up in a group like ours and they’re always white. We knew they’d be
trouble but we can’t turn them away because they never actually do anything to
justify expelling them.’ His anger, fuelled by worry, boiled over and he
slammed his fist down on the arm of the settee. ‘They used her and I couldn’t
fucking stop them.’

Sophia
waited for him to calm down. ‘How did they involve Debbie?’

Luke
shook his head, almost out of his reason now with anxiety. ‘These guys were
after this neo-Nazi outfit they thought was behind Mark’s death.’

‘Thrall,’
Sandra said, her voice pregnant with excitement. ‘I remember the name coming
up, but we never got close.’

‘Explain
about Debbie,’ Sophia stepped in. ‘Are you saying they used her to get at
Thrall?’

‘The
way she went on about it, you’d think she insisted,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘She
was just too scared to say no. She’s still so scared,’ he raised his voice,
‘she won’t even tell
me
what she’s doing. She stopped going out with me. If I see her in
the house when she’s babysitting she won’t even look at me. I don’t know how
deep she’s in. I fucking don’t know.’

He
put his face in his hands, then looked up, stared appealingly at Sophia. There
was a long silence while the DCI pursed her lips and thought. At last she
nodded. He had a right to know.

‘The
devices that started the fire,’ she told him, as gently as possible, ‘were set
inside the house. They were placed without whoever brought them there having to
break in. Besides you and your mother, the only other key we’ve been able to
trace belongs to Debbie.’

Emotions
flashed across Luke Benton’s face like sunlight and shadow on a time-lapse
film. Surprise, betrayal, horror, grief, worry. But finally anger. Impotent
anger.

‘Oh,
God,’ he said, and crumpled, head in his lap, shoulders heaving, as for the
first time since they’d met him at the airport he cried. The entire weight of
what had befallen his family, befallen him, had finally descended, and Nick,
stunned, put his hands on Luke’s shoulders and his face close to Luke’s and
tried to comfort him.

‘You don’t need
telling,’ Sophia said at the office meeting she’d called that afternoon, ‘that
this makes it even more crucial for us to find Debbie Clarke. She alone outside
the family had keys, and there are no fingerprints at the scene that haven’t
been accounted for. Having said that, it does tend to confirm what we already
know: it’s inconceivable she acted alone. Firstly, the sixteen year old
daughter of a building society executive does not have knowledge of incendiary
devices and how to place them. Secondly, that cross did not appear out of thin
air, however much the house-to-house made it seem so.’ She paused for the
inevitable wry laughter. ‘What Luke’s account does throw into question is
motive. If he’s to be believed, she’s passionately anti-racist to the point
where she was prepared to try and infiltrate an extreme right wing group. But I
think we might be on our way to some answers. Shortly after we fed the name
Thrall through the computer, I got a call from DCI Macmillan from the Flying
Squad. He’s agreed to tell us a bit about who we might be up against.’