Flesh And Blood (32 page)

‘But you told Angel about Donald,’ Maureen said. ‘Warned her.’

‘I wanted her to know, that’s all. I wanted her to choose.’

‘Let’s hope she chose wisely.’

‘He won’t hurt her,’ Della said.

‘You seem certain.’

‘He loves her, too. In his way.’

‘Would he hurt somebody else?’ Elder asked.

Della looked at him squarely. ‘I do not think it was him, if that is what you’re asking. I don’t think it was him, killed that poor girl. They have been here working. Both of them.’

‘We need to find them,’ Elder said. ‘Nevertheless.’

Della looked back at him without speaking.

‘Does she have family?’ Maureen asked. ‘Angel?’

‘None she would go to.’

‘None at all?’

‘She was in foster homes, I think. Liverpool, somewhere. And then, I think, Stoke-on-Trent. That’s all I know.’

‘And a name? Aside from Angel.’

‘Angel Elizabeth Ryan, that’s what she was baptised.’

‘The caravan they stayed in,’ Maureen said. ‘Is it all right if we have a look?’

Della was about to say no, but then shrugged. ‘Why not? It can’t do them any harm.’

They appeared to have taken what was theirs and left. There were a few magazines, the crumpled pages of a newspaper, a pair of laddered tights, two odd socks, a stained T-shirt that could have belonged to either one of them, several tea bags, a bottle of milk going off, a tin of beans, two almost empty plastic bottles of shampoo, a Lil-lets box with one tampon still inside, a comb missing several teeth and, squeezed tight behind the edge of the mattress where it had fallen, a strip of film.

It had been taken in one of the instant photo booths that were found in stations and the like, four pictures one above the other; Shane and Angel with their heads jammed close together, smiling, squinting, mugging for the camera. In one Angel was kissing the underside of Shane’s chin; in another, she was staring at him, her face angled upwards, while Shane’s gaze was fixed firmly on the camera, brazening it out. Thirty and seventeen, they could have passed for twenty-one or -two and fifteen or even less.

♦

The sky was losing light as they drove back, Maureen at the wheel.

‘How long have we known one another?’ Elder asked. They were just going past the Marton roundabout, heading south.

‘Total? Five years, six maybe.’

‘And we worked together for what? Three of those?’

‘Where are you going with this?’ Maureen asked.

‘Five years,’ Elder said, ‘and all I know about you is you’re good at your job, prefer your whisky with water, draught bitter over anything out of a can. I’ve a vague idea where you live, but I’ve never seen inside; I don’t even know if you live with someone else or if you live alone.’

‘That’s right,’ Maureen said.

‘And doesn’t any of that strike you as strange?’

‘What is this?’ Maureen asked. ‘Is this about Joanne? Has she been getting to you in some way? Getting under your skin?’

‘You see, you know everything there is to know about me, just about.’

‘You choose to tell me, that’s why.’

‘And you don’t.’

‘That’s correct.’

One night, on a journey not dissimilar to this, but longer, down from Scotland, in fact, and in rain, he had unburdened himself about Joanne’s affair with her boss and Maureen had listened, saying little, making no comment at all when the story was over, though Elder had been able to sense her disapproval radiating through the small space around them, all the more fierce for being unspoken.

‘Do you think it’s him?’ Maureen said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Everything seems to point that way.’

‘I know.’

‘But you’re not convinced?’

Elder shook his head. ‘Something about it – I don’t know – it doesn’t feel right.’

‘If he’s not guilty, why run?’

‘Wake up to find your picture all over the front pages, headlines accusing you of murder, what would you do? Give yourself up, hope it sorts itself out?’

‘Not if I were Donald I wouldn’t.’

‘Precisely.’

A few miles further on, Elder said, ‘Guilty or not, he’ll have to be reeled in.’

Maureen nodded. ‘If they stay together, it’ll be easier.

I’ll get on to social services, see if we can’t get some kind of history, a list of foster homes at least. She might just remember one of them kindly enough to think of it as a place to go, a place to stay.’

‘They’ll need money,’ Elder said. ‘Soon, anyway. They’ll either steal it or try to find work. We should try and check out any small fairs, seems it’s what they both know.’

It was darker now, dark without ever becoming really black, the sky largely bereft of stars, the moon a sliver in the corner of one eye. Had Maureen been right, Elder wondered, had that evening with Joanne – less than an evening, barely an hour – had that got to him in some way he’d failed to recognise at the time?

No, it hadn’t been that.

‘Where do you want me to drop you, Frank?’ Maureen asked as they came close to the city’s edge.

‘Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.’

‘I can pass near Willie Bell’s if that’s where you’re going.’

‘That’ll do fine.’

Before she had turned off the main road, Maureen’s phone rang. She identified herself, listened, acknowledged and broke the connection.

‘Gartree. McKeirnan wants to see you.’

‘I’m only just back from seeing him. And much good it did me.’

‘Well, he wants to see you again. He says it’s important. Seems he’s been getting some interesting post.’

The postcard showed a length of concrete promenade, tapering into the distance like some vast utilitarian defence against the sea; a few huts selling plastic buckets, spades, black-and-white footballs inside yellow mesh, Bob the Builder T-shirts, mugs of tea and ice-cream for the beach. Families sheltering behind wind-breaks on bleached-out sand. And then the sea, spreading like dead grey skin towards a grey horizon. ‘
Welcome to Mablethorpe
’ in bright red cheery type.

McKeirnan held up the card between finger and thumb for Elder to see. When Elder reached out to take it, McKeirnan moved it swiftly out of reach.

‘You said this was important,’ Elder said.

‘It is.’

‘Then don’t play games.’

‘C’mon,’ McKeirnan said, ‘now you’re here, what’s the rush? Relax. All the time in the world.’

‘That’s you,’ Elder said.

‘And you? Detective Inspector Frank Elder, retired. What is it now? Bingo? Bowls? Senior citizens’ discount at the massage parlour Friday afternoons?’

‘Don’t fuck with me, McKeirnan.’ Elder looked at his watch. ‘If I get up and leave, I’m not ever coming back. No matter what.’

McKeirnan held his gaze for maybe thirty seconds longer, then reversed the card and slid it across the dulled surface of the table for Elder to read.

‘
Alan – Having a lovely time. Wish you were here
.’

The handwriting, in blue biro, was uneven, somewhat rushed, sloping slightly downwards left to right. The final full stop pressed hard enough to make a small indentation on the other side. There was no signature.

‘So what?’ Elder said.

‘Look at the postmark.’

It was dated Saturday, the day Emma Harrison’s body had been found.

‘Coincidence,’ Elder said.

‘You think?’

‘Tell me otherwise.’

‘You’re the detective. Least, you were. You tell me.’

‘You’re saying it’s from Shane?’

‘Am I?’

‘McKeirnan…’

‘No, I’m not.’ A smile, deep in McKeirnan’s eyes. ‘Not Shane. Not exactly.’

‘Riddles, McKeirnan.’

‘And you don’t like to play.’

‘I don’t like to be jerked around by the likes of you.’

‘Poor baby.’

Elder sat on his hands. Controlled his breathing. Counted to ten.

He picked up the card and looked at it again. ‘You’re claiming there’s a connection with the death of Emma Harrison.’

‘I am.’

‘You’ll need to be more specific than that.’

McKeirnan smiled. ‘He did her, that’s the thing.’

‘How do you know?’

The smile became a grin. ‘He promised me.’

‘Who?’

McKeirnan leaned back in his chair. ‘Remember what you said before? When you were here. How you wouldn’t bargain? Well, now you will.’

‘And you told me, I’m washed-up, retired. Even if I wanted to, there’s nothing I can do.’

‘I’m not unreasonable,’ McKeirnan said, ‘no grand ideas of pardons, early release. But if I’ve, what, another six years to do, I want them easy. I want out of this place. I want to be reclassified. Category C.’ He laughed. ‘I want to get ready for the outside world, get prepared.’

He leaned forward again suddenly, his face close to Elder’s, skin stretched tight across the sockets of his eyes.

‘The girl, he didn’t kill her right away, did he? Kept her for a while, a day or two. Things he had to do. To her. You don’t have to tell me what they were, ’cause I know. You, you can only imagine, but I know. And I know something else. It won’t stop there. Not with one. He’ll do it again. Unless.’

‘What you’re asking,’ Elder said. ‘I don’t have the power.’

‘Then get me someone who has.’

♦

‘How do we know he’s not bluffing?’ Bernard Young asked. They were in the superintendent’s office, early afternoon. Young yanked open one of the drawers of his desk and slammed it shut. ‘Christ, I hate being held over a barrel by scum like that. Hate it.’

The silence in the room caught and held: only the sounds of four people breathing less than easily, of water refreshing itself in the fish tank to the side. The constant blur of traffic moving back and forth. The muffled trills of telephones.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Elder said, ‘I believe him.’

Bernard Young swivelled his chair away and back again. Less than half an hour before he had come from a particularly awkward session with the ACC. The need for an early result, the reputation of the force. Some catnip at the Home Office had been badgering the chief constable. Down in London, a team of high-flyers from the Met were already sharpening their pencils and the toes of their boots, ready to step in and review the way the investigation was being conducted. And then there were the faces of Emma Harrison’s parents, turned towards him, eviscerated as their daughter.

‘All right, Frank,’ he said, ‘tell me how you see it.’

Elder cleared his throat. ‘We have to assume McKeirnan knows who sent the card. And knows him well. Which could mean they’ve corresponded on the internet – I assume he’s allowed some kind of access, monitored some of the time – or there’ve been letters going back and forth. My guess, the amount of censorship in McKeirnan’s case would be practically nil. But I think it’s more than either of those. I think it’s someone he knows, someone he’s talked to face to face, which means a fellow prisoner.’

‘In which case,’ interrupted Gerry Clarke, ‘we can track him down ourselves.’

‘Go through all the prisoners aged thirty and younger who’ve been released from Gartree within the last – what? – five years.’

‘Why under thirty?’ Clarke asked.

‘That’s part of it,’ Elder said. ‘I’m sure.
Not Shane, not exactly
– McKeirnan’s words.’

‘Couldn’t he be lying to protect Donald?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘For one thing I doubt there’s any love lost between them. And for another…’ He was remembering the expression on McKeirnan’s face.
He did her, that’s the thing. He promised me.
The relish with which he’d said the words.

‘No,’ Elder continued. ‘I think this is somebody new, someone who, for whatever reason, wants to do McKeirnan’s bidding. Wants his approval. Whoever this is, he wants to be like Shane Donald. McKeirnan’s acolyte. His helper. Disciple. The postcard is a way of testifying, showing he’s made good, kept the faith, kept his word.’

‘Why now?’ Maureen asked. ‘Why act now?’

‘If Frank’s right, that’s simple, surely,’ Clarke said. ‘Whoever it is, it’s because he’s only recently been released.’

‘Agreed,’ Elder said, ‘and not only that. It’s because Donald has been, too. And he knows Donald’s on the run. He wants to put us off the track, assume that Donald’s to blame.’

‘But wants McKeirnan to know the truth,’ Maureen said.

‘Yes.’

Bernard Young leaned forward, elbows on his desk. ‘Gerry, if we do the follow-up ourselves and let McKeirnan go hang, how long before we can expect a result?’

‘Well, first, we need a list from Gartree of all the recently released prisoners who might have come into contact with McKeirnan. Cross-check it against the lists we’re already working on of offenders with a profile of violent or sexual crimes. Start off with Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire maybe, take it wider if we need to. Once we’ve got all that information on to the computer, we just might get a match by the end of tomorrow. More than one, probably. Maybe a dozen.’

‘To be traced and checked,’ Maureen said.

Clarke nodded his head.

‘So we could be looking at another two or three days, possibly more.’

‘Possibly, yes.’

‘All right,’ Young said. ‘Belt and braces time. Gerry, get the search started, stress the urgency. If you get there first, all well and good. Meantime, I’m going to speak with the ACC and then the governor at Gartree. The Home Office, if I have to. Maureen, you and Frank be ready to leave within the hour.’

♦

McKeirnan looked Maureen Prior over with a tired leer.

‘Putting it to her, Frank?’

‘Sit down, McKeirnan,’ Maureen said.

Taking his time, he sat. Neither of them would be there if he weren’t in the driving seat, and he knew it.