Death Line (16 page)

Probably.

She cast a final glance from the door. Least no one could accuse her of dithering.

“You coming, boss?” Mobile in hand, Mac stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Daz wants a word.”

Several actually. Brett Sullivan hadn’t come home. His mother wanted to report him missing.

“Reckon he’s playing games?” DCI Knight was in Byford’s office. They’d both observed Powell’s interview with Eric Long, just viewed the tape
again. Body language, facial expressions reflected and reinforced the man’s slack attitude.

“I don’t know.” The guv stroked an eyebrow. “And I’ve even less idea why. But either way, what we’ve got is pretty flimsy, Lance.”

“You don’t think we should’ve brought him in then?” Defensive bordering on prickly.

“All we have are anonymous allegations.” Wasn’t much more than they’d had against Haines.

“I know, guv, but two sources now have mentioned a red car. If we could trace that.” Checks with Long’s neighbours had proved inconclusive so far. None could swear to the last
time they’d seen him in the Vauxhall. The registration had been circulated to other forces so they could keep an eye out as well.

Byford heard the hope in Knight’s voice, or was it despair? The guv rose, walked to the window. He knew the feeling, been there, done that. Wanting a collar so badly, homing in on one thin
line, one tiny shred of what might be evidence.

“Worth sending a team out with Long’s picture? Marston Road? Streets on the Quarry Bank?” The big man perched on the sill, sun felt warm on his back.

“On it.” DCs Rees and Gosh had been despatched.

“What about the lad who rang in?”

“Brett Sullivan. Should’ve mentioned it, guv. Could be a connection between him and Josh Banks. We only picked it up this morning but a newsagent on Marston Road claims Sullivan and
a few of his mates used to bully Josh. Picked on the boy when he came out of school.”

“What’s Sullivan got to say?”

“Seems he’s gone AWOL.” Knight relayed what he knew.

“And his mates?”

“Checking now.”

“If they were around on the Wednesday...”

Knight didn’t need telling. “...it’s possible they clocked Long. Yeah. We’re chasing that, too.”

They needed to do more than chase, they had to possess evidence. Or they’d have to let Long go. Byford sighed, he too had read the newspaper reports Mac had dug out for Powell. The big man
had also printed off more material of his own. It lay in his top drawer now inside an old file full of yellow dog-eared cuttings he’d recently retrieved. The treatment meted out to
Long’s victim was reminiscent of what Baby Fay had suffered. He’d give his right arm to bring both the bastards to justice.

“Want the God’s honest truth? I wish it were me as killed him.” Bobby Wells on Roland Haines. Try as she might and she wasn’t trying hard, Bev
couldn’t picture Wells on Stacey Banks. A shrimp with a comb-over clambering up a Great White sprang to mind. It wasn’t an image on which to dwell. Wells was a short
skinny-to-the-point-of-skeletal bloke who talked the talk through gaps in chipped sepia coloured teeth. As for walking the walk, Bev reckoned the little guy would lag behind on two left feet and a
wooden leg. Metaphorically speaking.

They’d tracked Wells to a dive that called itself a pub round the corner from his Ada Street maisonette. The owner of the kebab shop below who was also Wells’s landlord had pointed
them in the right direction. Wells had been sitting on his own in the corner of a deserted dingy bar. Bobby-no-mates was nursing half a bitter shandy, scrawny shoulders hunched over
yesterday’s much creased copy of the
Racing Post.

When Bev flashed her ID, Wells had looked ready to do a runner till his darting ratty eyes settled on Mac meandering over carrying drinks: Saint Clements. Two.

Bev sipped hers now. “Friendly that is – wish you’d killed him.” It had been Wells’s response when questioned about his wording on the card:
the bastard’s
gonna rot in hell.

“Scum like Haines need putting down.” Wells’s hollow cheeks caved in as he sucked furiously on a stubby pencil. “Hanging’s too good.”

Pur-leeze. Save us. Bev rolled her eyes. Despite Wells’s ranting, she reckoned the only danger was in not taking seriously anything else the puny little twit came out with. “You say
you never laid eyes on Haines?”

“Seen his picture in the paper.” The cheeks were at it again. “Read about him. Makes your skin creep.”

“He wasn’t convicted.”

“Yeah.” He sniffed. “No thanks to you lot.”

Sunlight poured through the pub’s stained glass windows, cast shimmering red and green shadows across cracked mud brown lino. Anywhere else it might’ve brightened things up. Bev
grimaced. No wonder they had the Grotsville Arms to themselves.

“OK, Bobby?” Or maybe not. The call came from a man-mountain who’d just entered and was lumbering towards the bar.

“No sweat, Jimbo.” Wells lifted a scrawny white arm.

Bev raised an eyebrow. Jumbo was nearer the mark. The guy’s grey hoodie and flapping trackies maybe added to the elephantine impression, but he was seriously big as in morbidly obese.
Every podgy finger boasted at least two rings, the heavy link chain round his neck was almost lost in the folds of fat.

“When’s the last time you saw Josh, Bobby?” Mac asked, rolling his shirt sleeves.

They waited ten, fifteen seconds while he pinched the bridge of his nose, leaving pale indentations among open pores. “Weekend before he die... was killed.”

“Where’d you go?” Mac sank a mouthful of juice.

“Kicked a ball round Canon Hill Park, had some ice cream, fed the ducks, sat in the sun.” Wistful half-smile.

Nice. The idyllic picture cut no Colman’s with Bev, not when a child dies every ten days in the UK at the hands of a parent. And Bobby Wells, though no father of the year, hadn’t
been quite as hands-off as Stacey had led the cops to believe.

“Always there for him, were you, Bobby?” Bev said.

Earnest nod. “Tried my best.” Dense sod. She’d be less heavy on the sarcasm next time.

“Tricky, that. Not living in the same house.”

“That supposed to be funny?”

“You and Josh got on well, did you? No tensions?”

“Course we...” His small eyes narrowed. “Fuck is this? What you saying here?”

She narrowed hers, leaned in closer. “Josh was murdered. It’s our job to find out who did it. You have a problem with that, we can always go to the station, continue this little chat
there.”

“Hey, Bobby. Awright?” Elephant man again. Podgy elbow sprawled on the bar. Butt out, big boy. Bev cut him a withering glance.

“It’s cool, ta, mate.” Wells had previous, knew the score. It was minor stuff, thieving mostly, shops, warehouses, couple of criminal damage charges. Wasn’t the first
time he’d been questioned by police, he knew what they were after.

It took about ten minutes. Mac recorded detail as Bev elicited Wells’s movements at relevant times, the night Haines was killed, the afternoon Josh disappeared and the early hours when the
boy’s body was dumped. If the alibis were sound, his name could be crossed off the list. Standard TIE: trace, implicate, eliminate. Or not.

“See,” Bev said. “Wasn’t difficult, was it, Bobby?”

Trembling slightly, Wells drained the inch or so of drink in his glass then fixed her with a hard stare through watering eyes. “However much you sneer and shitbag – I loved my son. I
wasn’t always there for him. Should’ve been around more.” He bit a cracked bottom lip. “I was only a kid meself when we had him. Wasn’t his fault me and Stacey
didn’t always hit it off. Last couple a years we’d been getting to know each other. Wasn’t easy, I’ll admit that. But I’d’ve done anything for that boy. And some
bastard snatched it all away.”

Momentarily she caught a shadow of the little boy’s likeness in Wells’s raddled prematurely-aged features. She sensed the guy was telling the truth, it wasn’t dissimilar from
Stacey’s take on the current father-son relationship. Impassive, she said: “I’m sorry for your loss, Bobby.” Meant it, too. And when Wells said he’d do anything for
Josh... had he meant that? And had it included murder? She wasn’t a betting woman, wouldn’t be laying odds, unlike Roland Haines who’d liked a flutter.

“Follow the horses, do you, Bobby?” She cocked her head at the runners and riders he’d been studying in the paper.

“Not against the law is it?”

“Where’d you go to bet?” The same bookies as Haines?

“Here and there. What’s it to you?”

Casual shrug. “Just wondered.” What was that old saying? Keep your powder dry? They’d check it out. See if he was known to the staff at Ladbroke’s. Even better, if the
security cameras had captured Haines and Wells on tape at the same time, Wells would also be caught out in a lie. Never laid eyes on the guy, he’d said. It wasn’t much to go on. But
given they were thrashing about without too many leads, it was better than nothing. No mileage in tipping off Wells.

She nodded at Mac, scraped back the chair. “Not thinking of leaving the country are you, Bobby?”

“Yeah, jetting off to the private condo in Saint Kitts first thing.” He scowled, muttered, “Stupid tart” under his breath.

She opened her mouth, thought better of it. It was big talk from a little man. But Wells wasn’t Bobby-no-mates. Fatso at the bar was worth bearing in mind. If Wells’d had a big job
on recently, he could have used a heavy.

Halfway to the door, she turned back: “Hey, Bobby? Say that again and I’ll send the boys round.”

“Very mature, boss,” Mac muttered. But she did let that go.

“Are charges imminent then, Mr Knight?”
Birmingham News
crime correspondent Toby Priest was on the phone. The DCI was on a short fuse, shortening by the
second. Priest’s call had been put through by a secretary in the press office who didn’t have a clue how to handle the reporter’s query.

Knight was struggling to handle the increasingly persistent Priest. “I’ll ask again: where did you get your information?” He tightened his mouth. Where was Paul Curran when he
was needed?

Only a handful of officers at Highgate, and no support staff, were aware a man was helping with inquiries in connection with Josh Banks’s murder. The suspect’s name was known to even
fewer. The information had been circulated on a need-to-know basis, Knight ordering the clampdown in the hope of staunching further leaks. That was the thinking... Seemed like a good idea at the
time.

“I never reveal my sources, Mr Knight.” Bright, breezy, like: you should know that. “Is it true?”

Which part? Sighing, Knight ran a hand over his bald head. Priest was privy to the lot: Eric Long’s identity, age, address, criminal past and uncertain future. If the anonymous allegations
proved well-founded. Priest knew about the well-wisher’s letter too, had even quoted from it. The detective heard sounds on the line that suggested the reporter was drumming his fingers on a
desk. Impatient? Irritated? Keen to get to the bottom of it? Snap, Knight thought. This was no leak, it was Niagara bloody Falls. And whoever was behind the disclosures was going to be in deep
shit. Priest was chewing now, and still waiting on an answer. Noisy little masticator.

Knight cleared his throat. “I never comment on rumour and specula...”

“Wouldn’t expect you to. The intelligence is on good authority.”

“Whose?” Knight fired back.

Priest dodged. “The best.”

It had to be a cop, didn’t it? Knight ran through a mental list of officers he knew were on the inside track. “As I say, I don’t com...”

“I don’t want comment. Story’s already written. I’m asking you to confirm that Eric Long faces charges in the...”

“What!” Jumping to his feet, he strode to the window, flung it open and was hit by exhaust fumes and hot air.

“...in the morning in connection with the death of Josh Banks.”

“No. He absolutely will not. Print a word of that...”

“Thanks, Mr Knight. You just admitted he’s in custody.”

“Your informant word’s not good enough?”

“Course it...” The tapping stopped. Priest had been forced into an admission too.

“What’s the going rate for a tip-off, Priest?” Thirty pieces of silver?

“Going rate?” All innocence.

“No one gives this stuff away, do they?”

“Don’t know where you’re coming from, Mr Knight. Digging out news, finding stories – it’s what I do.”

“With a little help from your friends?”

“Anyway.” The sniff was dismissive. “These charges...”

Knight kicked the bin. “Ever think of the consequences when you get it wrong?”

Pause for remorse? Maybe he’d hit a nerve and Priest would hang fire, reconsider.

“Yeah, all the time. Do you?”

The DCI’s mental list of officers who knew that Eric Long had been brought in for questioning was now on paper. Byford had found it on his desk after the late brief along
with an explanatory note from Knight. Holding it between his fingers, he ran his gaze over the names: Ed Keynes the DC who’d questioned Long’s neighbours first thing; Powell and Carol
Pemberton; PC Tim Bloore who’d kept an eye on Long in the interview room; Mac Tyler; and two uniforms who’d knocked doors later in Drake Street: Ken Gibson and Steve Hawkins.

Byford would have a word, of course. But the seven would be acutely aware they’d come under immediate suspicion if Long’s identity got out. He couldn’t see any of them risk
losing their pension for a few quid. Pensive, he wandered to the water cooler, poured a drink, drained the cup. Likelier, surely, the leak had sprung from someone not officially in the know.
Christ. The nick was full of people whose job was finding things out. Even if they didn’t always succeed.

Back at the desk, he opened the top drawer, stood looking down on a file. The name written in black ink was fading. His mental image of baby Fay was sharp and in colour, helped by the vivid
nightmares that had recently returned with a vengeance. Fay’s death was the big man’s only unsolved murder and he urged himself not to let it become an obsession again. He’d
retrieved the file shortly after Josh Banks went missing and had been adding related material, similarly unresolved cases, almost as if to assuage his sense of guilt. So he could convince himself
he wasn’t the only cop who’d failed a child.