Fever of the Bone (37 page)

‘I’ll just call him,’ he said. ‘Who shall I say it is?’

‘Carol Jordan. Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan.’ Now she could afford the charming smile.

‘Mr Blake? I have Carol Jordan here to see you . . . Yes . . . Fine, I’ll send her up.’ He put the phone down and ushered her towards the lifts. When the door opened, he reached past her and pressed the button for the top floor. Before she could enter, her phone rang.

She held up one finger. ‘Sorry. I have to take this.’ She stepped away from him and answered the call. ‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Looks like we’ve found Niall.’ The heaviness of his voice told her the lad hadn’t shown up at his mother’s flat with an unrepentant grin.

‘Where?’

‘Between Bradfield and Manchester, on a forestry road by the big Stonegait reservoir.’

‘Who found him?’

‘We don’t know. It was an anonymous tip on the triple niner. From a phone box in Rochdale. I went over with a team from Southern. We found him right away. Looks like he’s been there a few hours. The wildlife’s been snacking. It’s not pretty.’

‘Same MO?’

‘Identical. This is number three, no doubt in my mind.’

Carol massaged her scalp, feeling a dull headache beginning at the base of her skull. ‘OK. Stay with it. I’m about to talk to Blake. Tony had some interesting stuff to say. Is Sam still at the mother’s?’

‘I think so. Stacey too. Not that she’s the one you’d choose for the death knock.’

‘Get an FLO round there from Southern to liaise with Sam. I’ll be back at the office once I’ve talked to Blake. This is a nightmare,’ she sighed. ‘Those poor bloody kids.’

‘He’s on a tear,’ Kevin said. ‘He’s hardly pausing for breath now. Just culling them.’ His voice cracked. ‘How’s he doing it? What kind of animal is he?’

‘He’s managing to do it so fast because he’s got them groomed and prepped already,’ Carol said. ‘And because he doesn’t spend time with them once he’s taken them. We’re going to get him, Kevin. We can do this.’ She tried to project a confidence she didn’t feel.

‘If you say so.’ His voice dragged. ‘Talk to you later.’

Carol closed her phone and leaned her forehead against a marble pillar for a moment before she gathered herself together and headed back to the patient doorman and the lift.

Blake was waiting by the doors when she emerged. She suspected he was wearing what passed for casual in his wardrobe - an open-necked Tattersall check shirt tucked into fawn twill slacks, leather slippers on his feet. She wondered what the other tenants made of someone so lacking in what passed for cool in these parts. ‘DCI Jordan,’ he said, his voice and expression equally sour.
Not delighted, then
.

‘They’ve just found Niall Quantick,’ she said.

He jumped on her words with hope. ‘Alive?’

‘No. It looks like the same killer.’

Blake shook his head gravely. ‘You’d better come in. My wife’s here, by the way.’ He turned and made for one of the four doors on the landing.

Carol hung back. ‘I didn’t come here to tell you about Niall. I’ve only just heard about that. Sir, we’ve got a complicated situation here and I need you to sit down and listen to me with an open mind. Talking about it in front of your wife is probably not an option.’

He glared at her over his shoulder. ‘You want me to come into the office?’

Before she could reply, the door ahead of him opened to reveal a trim woman in a uniform Carol recognised. Caramel cashmere sweater, single strand of pearls, tailored trousers, kitten heels and immaculately waved hair. Her mother had friends who looked like this, who read the
Telegraph
and had thought Tony Blair a jolly nice young man at the outset of his premiership. ‘James?’ she said. ‘Is everything all right?’

Blake introduced them, the veneer of politeness kicking in automatically. Carol was aware of Moira Blake’s scrutiny and classification as her husband spoke. ‘I’m afraid DCI Jordan has something that won’t wait till tomorrow, my dear.’

Moira inclined her head slightly. ‘I imagine she’d rather talk to you alone, James.’ She stepped to one side and waved Carol into the apartment. ‘If you’ll give me a moment to get my coat, I’ll take myself off for an exploration of the neighbourhood. I’m sure there are many little gems my husband hasn’t discovered yet.’ She disappeared behind a Japanese screen that separated the sleeping area from the main living space, leaving Blake and Carol to exchange awkward, hangdog looks. Moira returned with the inevitable camel coat over her arm and kissed her husband on the cheek. ‘Call me when you’re free,’ she said.

Carol noticed Blake’s eyes followed Moira from the room with a look of fond appraisal that made her like him more. When the door closed behind her he gave a brittle cough and led the way over to a pair of sofas at right angles to each other. The coffee table between them was swamped with the Sunday papers. ‘We don’t often get a Sunday without the girls,’ he said, vaguely waving at the sea of newsprint. ‘Their grand-mother’s holding the fort this weekend.’

‘You can never call your time your own in this job. But I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t vitally important.’

Blake nodded. ‘Fire away, then.’

‘Dr Hill came to see us today,’ Carol began.

‘I thought I’d made myself clear on that subject?’ Blake interrupted her, his cheeks growing even pinker than usual.

‘Abundantly. But I didn’t ask him to come in. I’ve deliberately told him nothing about our cases that he couldn’t have read in the papers. He came in because he believes the two murders - three now - that we’re working on have been committed by the same killer he’s been profiling in another jurisdiction.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s pitiful. Is he so desperate for work that he has to thrust himself upon us with flimsy excuses like that? What’s his problem? Is he jealous of young DS Parker?’

Carol waited till he’d subsided, then said, ‘Sir, I’ve known Tony Hill for a long time and I’ve worked closely with him on several key cases. He just doesn’t have that kind of ego. I admit I was sceptical about his analysis at first. But there’s substance to what he has to say.’ She worked her way through the list Tony had laid out for her, thanking her eidetic memory for the power to repeat them verbatim. ‘I know it sounds far-fetched, but there are too many elements in common for coincidence to be an acceptable explanation.’

Blake had looked increasingly gobsmacked as Carol’s recital had unfolded. ‘You’re sure he had no access to your team’s information?’

‘I believe him,’ she said. ‘He’s a lot more interested in closing down a killer than he is in his own self-image.’

‘What does Parker think of all this?’

Carol tried not to scream. ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t discussed it with him.’

‘You don’t think he’s the person you should have consulted before you came to me? He is the profiler assigned to this case.’ Carol blinked hard. ‘He’s an idiot. His so-called profile is a joke. Any one of my team could have come up with something more useful than his first attempt. And the second version was only marginally better. I know you set great store by the training they’re doing at the faculty, but DS Parker is not going to make any converts. His work is callow and superficial. ‘ She shrugged. ‘There’s no other word for it. I can’t work with him. I’d rather do without a profiler than have one with so little insight.’ Carol stopped for breath. She could almost smell her boats burning. Blake looked thunderous.

‘You’re crossing a line here, Chief Inspector.’

‘I don’t think I am, sir. My job is to bring serious criminals to justice. Every member of my team has been hand-picked because of the unique contribution they make to that goal. I’d have thought you would have supported my drive towards excellence. I’d have thought you would be glad that I’m willing to nail my colours to the mast and say, “This is not good enough for Bradfield Metropolitan Police.”’ She shook her head. ‘If we’re not on the same page on that aspiration, I don’t know that I have a long-term future in this force.’ The words were out before she’d had time to consider whether she wanted to say them out loud.

‘This isn’t the time or the place for that conversation, Chief Inspector. You’ve got three murders to solve.’ He pushed himself to his feet, his struggle with the sofa revealing a man less fit than he looked. He walked over to the tall windows that overlooked the canal and stared out. ‘Dr Hill makes a strong case for this West Mercia murder being part of our series. He may be overstating the case, you understand?’ He turned and gave her a questioning look.

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘What I’d like you to do is to talk to the SIO in Worcester and see what he has to say. Once you’ve spoken to him, you’ll have to decide whether Dr Hill is right. And if, on balance, it seems that he is, you’re going to have to bring West Mercia on board with us. They may have the first in the series, but we’ve got more victims and he’s still active on our patch. I want you heading up the task force to deal with this. Is that clear? This will be our investigation.’

‘I understand.’ Now she understood. Blake thought Tony’s actions were about ego because that was his own guiding principle. ‘Does that mean I can bring Dr Hill fully on board with our cases?’

Blake rubbed his chin between fingers and thumb. ‘I don’t see why not. It’s West Mercia’s tab, though. They brought him in. They can pay for him.’ He gave the first genuine smile she’d seen all afternoon. ‘You can tell them that’s the price of admission to the party.’

The team of officers on the knocker in the Brucehill flats didn’t take long to turn up the two Asian lads who’d stood at the bus stop with Niall the previous afternoon. It was clear from the get-go that this murder was not connected to the quotidian villainies of the estate, so for once there was no threat to anyone local in talking to the police. The normal rules of grassing did not apply. True, some refused to talk to the cops on principle, but there were plenty who still thought the murder of a fourteen-year-old who wasn’t connected to any of the estate’s gangs should not go unavenged. There had been enough people more than happy to give up the witnesses.

So within a couple of hours of the discovery of Niall’s body, Sadiq Ahmed and Ibrahim Mussawi had been huckled into Southern Divisional HQ for questioning. Sam, who had left Stacey and the FLO with Niall’s mother, had a brief discussion with Paula on how to play it. Neither wanted to work with an unfamiliar partner, but the alternative was for them to take one witness and to leave the other to a pair of detectives from Southern about whose abilities they knew nothing. ‘What do you think?’ Sam said.

‘Look at their sheets. Mussawi’s got half a dozen arrests for minor stuff, he’s been in court. He knows the system. He’s not going to be going out of his way to help us. But Ahmed, he’s a virgin. Never been arrested, never mind charged. He’s going to want to keep it that way, I think. We should take him, you and me. Leave Mussawi to the local boys and hope they get lucky,’ Paula said.

They found Ahmed in an interview room, lanky limbs in a hoodie and low-slung designer jeans, gold chain at his neck, feet in outsized designer trainers, laces undone. A couple of hundred quid’s worth of gear on a fifteen-year-old kid. Well, there’s a surprise, Paula thought. Dad works in a local restaurant, Mum’s at home with five other kids. She didn’t think Ahmed was getting his spending money from a paper round. She sat back while Sam did the introductions.

‘I want a lawyer, innit.’

Paula shook her head, doing the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ look. ‘See, there you go. Making yourself look like you’re guilty of something before I’ve even asked your name and address.’

‘I haven’t done nothing, I want a lawyer. I know my rights. And I’m a minor, you need to get me an appropriate adult.’ His narrow face was aggressive, all sharp angles and twitchy little muscles round the mouth.

‘Sadiq, my man, you need to chill,’ Sam said. ‘Nobody thinks you did anything bad to Niall. But we know you were at the bus stop with him, and we need you to tell us what went down.’

Ahmed rolled his shoulders inside his hoodie, trying for nonchalant. ‘I don’t got to tell you nothing.’

Paula half-turned to Sam. ‘He’s right. He doesn’t have to tell us anything. How lovely do you think his life is going to be in these parts when we let it be known that he could have helped us catch a stone killer, only he didn’t want to?’

Sam smiled. ‘Exactly as lovely as he deserves.’

‘So there you have it, Sadiq. This is probably the one and only time in your life that you’re going to have the chance to do yourself a favour with us without it coming back to bite you in the arse.’ Paula’s voice was at the opposite end of the kindness scale from her words. ‘We don’t have time to fuck around on this one, because this guy will kill again. And next time, it might be you or one of your cousins.’

Ahmed looked at her, calculation obvious in his face. ‘I do this, I get a free pass off you twats?’

Sam lunged forward and grabbed the front of his hoodie, almost yanking him off the chair. ‘You call me a twat one more time and the only free pass you’ll be getting is to Casualty. Capisce?’

Ahmed’s eyes opened wide and his feet scrabbled on the floor for purchase. Sam shoved him away and he teetered backwards before his chair settled on all four legs. ‘Fu-u-uck,’ he complained.

Paula shook her head slowly. ‘See, Sadiq? You’d have been better off paying attention to me. You need to start talking politely to us or the next thing you know you will need a lawyer because DC Evans here will be charging you with police obstruction. So, what time was it when you and Ibrahim arrived at the bus stop?’

Ahmed fidgeted for a moment, then caught her eye. ‘About half three, twenty to four,’ he said.

‘Where were you going?’

‘Into town. Just to hang about, right? Nothing special.’

A little light larceny. ‘And how long were you there before Niall showed up?’

‘We’d only just got there, like.’ He leaned back in the chair, feigning cockiness again.

‘Did you know Niall?’ Sam asked.