Blood Money (15 page)

He picked up the Waterman, tapped it against his teeth. “We don’t even know it’s cat blood on the knife.”

No. But she’d now asked the lab to fast track the tests. “Should hear later today.”

“The guy could be anyone, Bev. Who’s to say it’s the...?”

“Thing is, guv, we’re not exactly drowning in leads. I know it’s long odds, but if the kid did clock the Sandman...” She left it hanging; he’d be aware of the
consequences of failing to follow it through.

Byford raised an eyebrow, reached for Daisy’s daub. “Think Al Copley’s around this afternoon?”

Oh, yes. “Want me to check?”

“Keep me posted.” He flapped a hand towards the door. They were almost out of the office when Byford called, “Nice work, Rees. Oh and Bev?” She glanced back. He had a
knowing look on his face and a PDR aloft in his hand. “Guess whose?”

“Cheers.” Bev toasted Danny’s brownie points from the guv with a steaming mug of canteen tea. The young cop had offered to buy her a drink as thanks for
holding his hand at the audience with the big man. They’d grabbed a table near the radiator. Not hard in the post-lunch lull, tougher finding anything half-decent to eat. The ratatouille
looked like puke and she’d turned her nose up at the liver and onions. Mind, Fareeda’s toast was still festering at the bottom of her bag. She’d ferret it out when she got back to
her desk, assuming she still had a desk, she’d not seen it since the early brief, it could have been swept away in a sea of paper by now. And why did Danny look so ecstatic not.
“What’s up, mate? You should be well chuffed.”

Gazing at the Formica, he circled his finger in a pool of spilt milk. “Why didn’t I see it, sarge?” Missing cat: bloodstained knife. “If you’d not been
there...”

“Bollocks.” True actually. But she’d been in the game a damn sight longer, and her middle name was suspicious. The rookie needed positive rope not a kicking. “Who was it
got the kid drawing?” She blew on the tea. Al Copley was primed and set to go soon as the girl and her mum showed. “Masterstroke that was, Danny.”

He gave a lip service smile, still beating himself up. She’d been there, done that, knew it was a waste of time. Glancing round, she spotted Sumi at the counter and raised a hand. Sumi
mouthed a See you later. Bev glanced at her watch: four hours to be precise.

“And the way you played it with the boss?” Danny interrupted her not particularly welcome train of thought. “I thought Byford would never go for it. He was eating out of your
hand by the end. I wouldn’t have known where to start.”

She shrugged. “The guv and me go back a long way, Danny.” Shame there didn’t seem to be so much ahead. And that the time had gone when it wasn’t her hand he wanted to eat
from.

“Yeah, but...”

“No, but.” And quit the whinge-fest. “Get over it, Danny. You’ve got the makings of a decent cop. Just remember – look, listen, and learn. Don’t be afraid to
ask questions and never believe a word anyone says. Keep your eyes open, your mind focused and your mouth...”

“This the lesson according to Saint Bev? Mind if I take a pew.” Smirking, DI Powell placed a tray on the table, parked his bum on the next seat. Powell didn’t suffer her offal
aversion; the plate was swimming in liver. She nearly gagged on the stink. “Don’t mind me,” he said, waving a magnanimous fork. “You were banging on about your mouth.”
He nudged the new boy. “This I must hear.”

“...and your mouth zipped.” She gave a disingenuous grin. “’less you’ve got something worth saying.” Powell opened his for a comeback but Bev got in first.
“’specially when you’re eating. Sir.” She winked at Danny, drained the mug, scraped back the chair.

Powell muttered, “Lippy tart,” as she walked away. God, it was good to have the DI back. He was PC as a Playboy mag. She smiled then remembered the Bullring fiasco, turned back.
“You got the short straw this morning, sir. Sorry to hear that.” Couldn’t have been a barrel of laughs. You’d not wish it on your worst enemy. Tight-lipped, he waved the
fork in what she interpreted this time as dismissal. She stepped back smartish but not before noticing his eyes. It looked very much to her as if the DI was tearing up. She walked away without
another word. On rare occasions, even Bev knew when to button it.

Soon as she dropped her bag on the desk, Bev opened the office window, breathed in deeply. She could still smell Powell’s liver. Lips puckered, she sniffed her jacket.
Picked up traces of almond body lotion but that was about it. Bloody stink was clinging to the back of the throat. Like a bad crime scene.

Powell on the verge of tears, though? She narrowed her eyes. Maybe he was mellowing in his early middle age. She gave a thin smile. Nah. It was probably the onions. Snorting, she sat down,
recalled an incident from DI Powell’s glory days as a PC, his
Silence of the Lambs
moment. She’d dined out on the story for months; even now there was a smile on her face.
Super-cool Powell had seen the movie when it first came out and watched Jodie Foster dab Vick under her nose to mask the reek of corpses. FBI technique, wasn’t it? Course the DI slathered it
on at the first rank opportunity. A pungent PM if she remembered rightly. He’d come in next morning with a top lip like he’d done ten rounds with Rocky. Station wags called him Vicky
for years. She preferred Clarrie.

Enough of this. She sighed, surveyed her desk. The paper mountain looked more like the Urals. Get the old crampons out, girl. She fumbled in her bag, took out breakfast-lunch-high tea and pulled
a face. Covered in fluff, hair and bits of tobacco, the toast lost what little attraction it had held. A further scrabble elicited an almost full pack of Polos. Her eyes lit up: beggar’s
banquet. After half an hour at the admin rock face, the door nudging open was a welcome distraction. She knew who was there without looking up. “Don’t you ever...?”

Mac bustled in. “Couldn’t, could I?” Closing the door with his bum he ambled over, bags in hand. Top man.

Arching her back in a lazy stretch, she gave an unwitting flash of lacy black bra. “God, you know how to treat a woman, Tyler.”

Hastily redirecting a lecherous ogle, Mac slipped the goodies in front of her. “Choc chip muffin and a caramel macchiato? Must be where I’ve been going wrong.” Perched on a
desk corner, he told her he’d been chasing mask suppliers, nipped in to Starbucks on the way back.

“Catch anything?” Mouth watering, she peeled the paper from the cake, licked the crumbs.

“Nah.” He’d shown an image of the mask lifted from CCTV footage, but none of the outlets stocked it. “Gave me a few places to try though.” She muttered something
through a mouthful of muffin. “Say again, boss.”

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she told Mac they had a date for later. “Charlotte Masters. Fixed it on the phone.” Surprisingly easily as it happened. Maybe the girl had
seen sense or Bev’s grovel master-class had paid off.

“Back at Park View?” Distracted, Mac cast uneasy glances round the office.

Bev breezed on regardless. “You’d-a thought. Dutiful daughter caring for grieving momma and all that. But she wants the meet at Selly Oak...” Bemused, Bev paused as Mac hopped
off the desk, made for the bin, gave it a good shaking, studying the contents. “... she’s got her own pad there.” She finished the sentence though she might as well have been
talking to herself. “Lost something, mate?”

“No offence, boss, but there’s a funny smell in here.” Mac spotted the brownish stain first, pointed a stubby finger at the package on her desk. “Hell’s
that?”

She frowned. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten the parcel; she’d been keen to break the back of the paperwork first. Looked on it as a carrot after the stick. Mouth down, she
pulled the box nearer, tore open the paper. Whether it was the sight or the smell that greeted her, she slapped a hand to her mouth. “What the fuck?”

It was animal rather than vegetable. And it certainly wasn’t a novelty clock.

The heart wasn’t going anywhere. Bev had her back to it gulping fresh air through the now wide open window. “Where is she, mate?” Querulous. “Thought
you said she was in the building?”

“She is,” Mac said. As luck would have it he’d clocked the police pathologist chatting to Vince Hanlon at the front desk no more than ten minutes back. Gillian Overdale popped
in on path business from time to time, but it was pure happenstance she was around when they needed expert opinion. Paging her had seemed the best and quickest way of finding out exactly what they
had on their metaphorical hands. “She’s on her way.” He peered into the box again: fat, muscle, valves, ventricles. Mac was no medico but it looked human. “Chill.”

“Chill? Chill?” She lowered the volume. “How chilled you be, matey, if someone left a bleeding heart on your doorstep?”

She’d never know. There was a rap on the door then the pathologist poked her head round. “What have you got for me then?”

Thank God for that. Arms folded, foot tapping, Bev nodded at the opened box on the desk. “You tell us, doc.”

Overdale barged in looking as if she was on the way to a Cotswold shoot. The tweeds, brogues, distressed Barbour were typical of her habitual county look. The pudding basin steel grey bob did
nothing for her shiny moon face. Through gold-framed bifocals, Overdale took a good look at the heart. “You don’t need me, sergeant.” Was that thin lip twitching?
“You’d be better off with a butcher.”

Bev didn’t see the funny side, her fists were balled. “Perhaps you’d like to be more specific.” Ultra polite.

She sniffed. “It’s a cow’s. They look human but they’re bigger.”

“A cow’s? You sure, doc?” Mental cringe. Dumb question, or what?

“I can’t tell you her name and address, sergeant, but yes, pretty sure.”

“Anything useful you can say?” Thin smile.

“It’s past its sell-by but not by much or the smell would be worse. So it’s fresh-ish or it’s been frozen.” Was she taking the piss? “Seriously, sergeant. It
was probably kept in a fridge until whoever it was did whatever they did.” She retrieved her steel case from the floor. “But as I told you – it’s not my territory. Try
Waitrose.” She was still sniggering when she reached the door. “The meat counter.”

“Boss.” Mac’s low warning and extended arm halted Bev in her tracks. Gritting her teeth, she slammed a fist into her palm. “Cool it, sarge.” Mac in placatory mode.
“Here y’go.” He proffered a bottle of Highland Spring. Body temperature. Where’d he keep these things? Pulled a second from a different pocket. She drank greedily, wiped her
mouth with the back of a hand. Chances of tracking down where the organ came from, or more to the point who left it, were on a par with discovering weapons of mass destruction in the Vatican.

Mac perched on the desk, arms resting on beer belly, genuine concern in his warm brown eyes. “So who’d pull a trick like that, boss?”

She’d given it serious thought since first setting sight on the bloody thing. Someone obviously wanted to freak her out. Was it a warning, a message, a sick joke? But who? And why? Pound
to a penny it was someone she’d pissed off big time. She affected a who cares shrug. “Where shall I start?”

The dark-haired man sat on a velvet kidney-shaped stool studying his gym-toned physique in the dressing table mirror. Light bulbs round the glass were switched on Hollywood
style; heavy gold velvet drapes were drawn against both casement windows though it was only mid-afternoon. An older woman, her back to the man, lay on the king-sized bed behind, an ivory negligee
revealed lightly tanned and slightly parted thighs.

The man was naked – apart from the clown mask. Preening this way and that, he admired his taut lean body, repeatedly flexed well-defined muscles. He shuffled forward, adjusted the mask,
called the woman’s name to make sure she was watching, then ran a moist pink tongue along the red rubbery lips. Their glances met in the mirror. An observer might have found the man’s
lascivious gesture faintly ridiculous. For Diana Masters it was almost the ultimate turn on.

“Do stop that, Sam.” The lazy smile was indulgent, her normally sleek hair damp and mussed, perfect make-up smudged. “I have to get ready.” She pointed a mock
schoolma’am finger. “And you, Mr Tate, should not be here.” Plus, if he felt anything like her, he’d be shagged out.

“Always time for a quickie, Dee.” Confident bordering on arrogant, the young man rose, padded slowly towards her, flicked a long black fringe from eyes that were nearly as dark.
“You know you want it.” She couldn’t take her eyes off him, everything about him was beautiful. And growing more so. Teasing and playful, he flaunted the fastest growth area
inches from her open mouth.

Slowly she turned on to her back, deliberately flashing her inner thighs. “No more than you do, darling.” Diana meant the refusal though. It was a risk Sam even being here.
They’d kept the affair secret for six, seven months. They’d met during one of her stints at Oxfam; he worked in the hair salon opposite. The attraction had been instant, unstoppable.
They’d come so far – a cock-up now wasn’t an option. Though deadly serious, she smirked at the unintended mental pun. Obviously the house wasn’t crawling with cops any more,
but there could be a knock on the door any time, that dreadful Morrison woman back again with the fat man, or any of the interchangeable woodentops. There’d been so many. Imagine!
They’d wanted her to have a family liaison officer around the place. Ludicrous. Risible. On the other hand, wasn’t the risk part of the thrill?

She knew the answer when he tried to enter her. Her laughing protest was merely token; both knew she could never say no. His dark sensual eyes glinting through the slits turned her on even more.
But now she wanted the complete picture. Careful not to cause damage, she gently removed the mask, laid it on the bed; both aware it would be needed again – business and pleasure. Parting her
lips and legs, she drew his beautiful face towards her. There was nothing in the world that Diana Masters wouldn’t do for the Sandman.

Byford squinted as he held the image at arm’s length. “I don’t know, Bev. Releasing it could be more hindrance than help.” Thank God he’d dropped
calling her sergeant, but more than that she hoped the guv’s verdict on the e-fit was down to dodgy eyesight rather than Daisy Towbridge’s vision. For the better part of two hours, the
little girl and her mother had been ensconced with Al Copley and a child witness officer working on a composite of the cat thief’s features. Byford now held the image – and its future
– in his hands.