Baby Love (7 page)

“You’ll be lucky.” Her eyes flashed, defiant now. “I don’t know all the fucking names.”

A moue of distaste flickered across Byford’s features. Bev doubted anyone else had noticed. “Then you’d better start with those you do.” Splinters of ice.

Maxine stubbed a butt into an overworked ashtray. “I’m her mum, Mr Byford, and I’m buggered if I know who’s had his leg over.”

Byford passed a hand over his face. What could he say? Bev retrieved a cold greasy chip from the floor, tossed it in a mug, then jerked sideways to avoid a backlash of tepid tea. Kids were playing ball in the street; excited shouts and laughter
mingled with bursts of static from police radios.

The rasp of a match indicated Maxine was on her next nicotine hit. Must be catching. Roper lit a Marlboro, tapped Natalie’s shoulder and handed her the baccy. Bev caught another furtive exchange. Was something dodgy going on there? Had Terry
been keeping it in the family, so to speak? Was Maxine’s toy-boy Zoë’s dad? It could explain Natalie’s adamant refusal to come up with a name.

Bev gave it some more thought. Despite Maxine’s slapdash – to say the least – parenting skills, she didn’t doubt Natalie’s deep love for her mum. And vice versa. On the other hand, if it turned out Maxine was doting
granny to her own lover’s baby... The familial knock-on didn’t bear thinking about. But its implications were a damn sight more serious. It provided a hell of a motive to get rid of the kid.

SOCOs had taken the house apart and found nothing incriminating. Had they been looking in the wrong place?

Roper broke the silence. “Natalie.” He paused, waiting for her to make eye contact. “No point hiding it any more. I think it’s time you told them the truth.”

The baby was lying on the bed next to the mousy woman. For hours now, she’d been stroking the fine down that feathered the tiny scalp, fascinated by the gentle flicker of a pulse under the translucent skin of the fontanelle.
The child was glorious, perfect; the woman thought she could happily gaze forever into those innocent trusting eyes. She could barely drag herself away, but the next bottle wouldn’t prepare itself.

She’d hoped to feed the baby herself, but didn’t have the milk. It was unfortunate but not a tragedy. Still, it would have been wonderful to feel the baby’s cheek on her breast, those gorgeous lips clamped greedily around her nipple,
those deep-blue-sea eyes staring adoringly as tiny fingers stroked her flesh. The mousy woman sighed. Surely a bond like that could never be broken?

Gingerly, she eased herself from the bed and gazed down at the tiny wriggling form on the vast mattress. She loved the baby so much it hurt. There was a physical pain in her heart when she thought of all the horrors in the world, the terrible things
that could befall the child. Any child. Then she laughed out loud. What rubbish! She’d never allow anything bad to happen to that tiny baby. She’d rather die. Or kill.

The child was sleepy now, white-blue eyelids growing heavy. The mousy woman nuzzled the warm tiny neck, drinking in the precious baby-smell. But if she didn’t prepare the bottle soon, it would be too late. The baby would drop off, dead to the
world, then wake starving and fractious. Again.

A shadow of a frown appeared briefly on the mousy woman’s forehead. The baby did seem to cry a lot.

It wasn’t necessary to pass through the nursery to get to the kitchen. The detour and the tapping of the mobile had become a habit, a superstition almost. With the touch of a finger she set it in gentle motion, then stood back smiling as the
rainbow swayed and countless sequins glittered in a thin shaft of weak sunlight.

How, she wondered, how could anyone ever harm a single hair on the head of a tiny child?

When Terry Roper suggested Natalie tell the truth, it was a close call which of the Beck women was more horrified. Maxine was dumbstruck, slack mouth gaping open, hand clasping her chest. Had she suspected it all along? Had she
detected traces of Roper in the baby’s features? Roper’s face revealed nothing now. Unlike Natalie’s. It was wide-eyed, pleading with the man to keep his trap shut.

“Come on, Nats,” he cajoled. “It’ll be better for everyone if you tell them.”

Her bottom lip trembled, panda eyes begging him to stop.

Roper glanced at Bev, shrugged an ‘over to you’.

“Let me take a wild guess,” Bev said to Natalie, acutely aware the teenager was the only person in the room not looking at her. In an ideal world, Bev would’ve run her thoughts past the guv first. But this was Balsall Heath. And she
knew what she’d seen.

“Zoë’s dad’s not a million miles away from this room, is he?”

More shifty looks and furtive glances. Bev couldn’t keep up with the optical delusions.

“Enough.” Byford’s patience was paper-thin. “There’s no time to piss about playing games,” he snapped. “What the fuck’s going on?” This from a man who reckoned swearing was the sign of a shit
vocabulary.

The Becks and Blue Moon struggled for words. Bev cleared her throat. “The baby’s father? My money’s on him.” She pointed at Roper. “That right, Terry? You the loving dad?”

Raucous laughter from the street broke a stunned silence. No one in the room was amused, especially Natalie. “You stupid fucking bint.” The words dripped vitriol.

Bev shrugged. She didn’t expect a round of applause.

“I ain’t snogged the bloke,” the girl snarled. “Let alone shagged him.”

She didn’t expect that either. Or believe it. “Yeah, right.”

If Natalie had been on her feet, she’d have stamped one. “Tell her, Tel. Tell the silly cow.”

“I’m not the baby’s father, sergeant.” Roper took Natalie’s hand, cradled it in his own. “Natalie barely caught a glimpse of him. She got pregnant after being raped.”

The Cricketers was a pub best avoided. Big on spit, not hot on sawdust. Its regular clientele were local businessmen and traders, which on the Wordsworth meant drug dealers and pimps. The landlord was a fat slap-head whose jukebox
blared out pop pap and so-called rock classics. No wonder he had a hearing aid.

“Any more bright ideas?” Byford nursed a bitter lemon; Bev was two-thirds of the way down a large Grouse. They were both near the end of a long day. Just not near enough. This was a pit stop in which to tank up and thrash out a few
thoughts. In theory. As it happened, she could barely hear herself think, let alone talk. Probably best. She’d mouthed off enough already.

“Bright ideas?” She raised her voice. “Fresh out.”

“Small mercies.” A fleeting smile took the sting from the quip.

A massive guy with bad skin and butt-length dreads ambled past, trailing ganja fumes. Bev reached out a hand to steady the table, wondering if he’d knocked it deliberately. She caught the drift of a few words muttered in his wake: pigs, off,
fuck summed it up. She’d heard it before; couldn’t get exercised. Not when there was so much new stuff swirling round in her head.

It had taken two hours to drag the story from Natalie Beck. Top lines, not small print. According to the girl’s account, the rape happened back in January, about one in the morning. She’d been grabbed from behind and dragged into an
alleyway only a couple of streets from home. The rapist had a knife and stank of beer but used a condom. She didn’t think about pregnancy till the foetus was five months. Not for a nanosecond had she considered getting rid of it. Abortion was dead
wrong, wasn’t it? Couldn’t have coped without Terry. He’d been a rock. No one else knew she’d been attacked. Especially Maxine. Her mum would have been gutted. What irony: Natalie protecting her mum.

Bev reached for the rest of her pork pie, then changed her mind. The pink bits were too reminiscent of the mottled flesh on Natalie’s skinny legs. Bev’s initial shock-horror-what-a-fucking-mess reaction now included real anger towards the
Beck girl. Of course Natalie had suffered a shocking ordeal. But it was infuriating that she hadn’t reported it at the time. Because there was an outside chance that Natalie could’ve been the Street Watch rapist’s first victim.

The teenager’s attack hadn’t featured missing earrings or hacked pubic hair; Natalie had looked blank at both suggestions. But she
was
a young slim blonde, more or less fitting the victim profile. Maybe back then the Beast
hadn’t yet worked out the sick signature he’d leave in the three later attacks. Bev reached for her drink, scowling. Street Watch connection or not, the Beck girl’s silence had let a rapist get away with it.

“Don’t be too hard on her, Bev.”

The glass stopped halfway to her mouth. How did he do that? The guv could run a stall at the end of Brighton pier: mind-reading.

“I know the horses have already bolted,” Byford said. “But she is going to come in.”

Natalie said she’d caught a brief glimpse of the rapist. She’d reluctantly agreed to go through the mug shots at Highgate, a none-too-pretty parade of pervs and known offenders. If that failed, she’d work with the E-fit guys, try to
compile a likeness. Bev gave an eloquent snort. Eleven months after the event? Just listen to those stable doors.

“I know how you feel,” the guv said. “Natalie Beck was selfish and irresponsible.” He rubbed a hand over a face etched with exhaustion. “But, my God, she’s paying a high price now.”

Bev agreed with a sigh. Sixty-five uniforms and almost as many plain-clothes officers had trawled every inch of the Wordsworth estate. All but a couple of dozen householders had been interviewed, more than eighty statements taken. Every empty building
had been entered and meticulously searched. Joe and Jo Public had put in more than two hundred calls to the hot-line numbers. The most promising were being acted on first. It was a lot of activity – and nada to show. Nothing had been thrown up that
led the inquiry an inch further forward. Not a single hair of the baby’s head.

Until now, the disused rail line in Moseley was the only rape scene Bev hadn’t attended. This was her second cruise past in the last twenty minutes. It was approaching midnight, bed was calling but the pull of the place was too
great. She left the MG on a single yellow line, grabbed a torch to augment pale moonlight, slipped on wellies and headed for the police tape.

After leaving Byford, she’d nipped back to Highgate, preferring to pore over the latest Street Watch reports than prop up the bar at The Prince with Nick Lockwood. The Beeb man had taken her last-minute cancellation in good spirits, sounding
like he’d already imbibed a few anyway. As well as the written reports, she’d studied the visuals. But stills, even video, only went so far. Bev had to feel a crime scene. The smells and touch, the atmosphere, the
being there
was
vital. A good cop had a sixth sense, sometimes more.

Not that she had any right to be here. Powell was in charge of the inquiry. She was on the missing-baby case. Professionally, she’d rarely been so torn. Talk about a rock and a slab of steel. Zoë’s image was constantly in her head.
Bev would go the extra mile and then some to get the baby back. But she owed the rape victims as well. She’d forged a bond with the first two girls. They phoned her now and again to find out if there’d been any developments, sometimes staying
on the line to chat about films or frocks. Teenage things, normal things.

She didn’t want to let them down, so she’d come up with a working compromise. She just hadn’t told anyone at work. She’d decided to give her all to finding the baby, a hundred per cent. Then pull out more, on her own time, for
the big girls: Rebecca Fox, Kate Quinn and Laura Kenyon. Though the guv had taken her off Street Watch, there was nothing to say she couldn’t cast the odd glance down the road.

Carefully she started edging down the embankment to the track. The slope was drier now but she didn’t want to do a Powell. What with the moonlight casting sinister shadows and the gnarled branches and twisted roots, it looked like a location
from
Lord of the Rings.

She gasped when a rat the size of an Alsatian darted for cover. There’d be colonies of the buggers round here. Imagine poor Laura lying scared and alone in the dark and rain, dehumanised, dumped like rubbish. Bev hadn’t met the girl yet
but hell... How do you get over something like that? She shivered, though it wasn’t cold.

Another minute or so and she’d seen enough. She wasn’t here to search. There was no point, not when the SOCO A-team had covered every inch. She turned to head back to the Midget and stopped so suddenly she had to shoot out a hand to keep
her balance.

The crime boys hadn’t been here in moonlight. Or torchlight.

It was probably a ring-pull or a shard of glass, but something near the track had definitely glinted in the light. She backed fractionally, slowly moving her head, adjusting her eye-line, trying to reproduce the exact angle at which she’d
spotted it. No good. Probably a rat’s eye. One more go. Carefully, she inched forward, shining the torch in the direction of whatever she’d seen. Yes: a definite glitter. Now she had a firmer fix, it was worth a closer look.

Inching and sliding, she homed in on one of the rotting sleepers. Down on her haunches, she spotted it at close quarters, reached a fingernail into the cracked timber and pulled out a tiny earring. It was silver and the diamond looked real. Bev closed
her eyes, tried to call up the interview notes she’d read that evening. She was certain Laura Kenyon had told Powell she’d not been wearing earrings. Was the girl lying? And if she’d lost an earring during the attack, what had happened
to the other? Was it down here as well? Or had the rapist added it to his trophy collection?

Bev held the earring between thumb and forefinger, twirling it to catch the moon’s silvery light. Deep in thought, she was unaware of a figure in the shadows, barely twenty feet away.

He was taking great pains not to be seen. Not yet. The time would come soon enough.

Gondolas, gondolas, more fucking gondolas. The Monty Python sketch popped into Bev’s head every time she set foot in her new home. Only it wasn’t gondolas, it was packing cases. Six months she’d been here and still
hadn’t located the microwave, two library books and a particularly fetching pair of French knickers. She was sick of it: bits of her life crammed into crates and cardboard boxes. Towering stacks of the stuff.