Cross and Burn (23 page)

M
arie was on her way back from the bathroom when she heard the raised voices. If she needed any help in working out where they were coming from, she’d only have had to follow the eyes of everyone who worked within earshot of Rob Morrison’s office. Even with their headsets on, they could clearly still pick up the sound of aggravation.

As she got closer, she recognised Ralph Lauren Man’s arrogant tones. ‘And I’m telling you, we’ll fall flat on our arses if we put this out to Gareth and his merry men in marketing now. It’s going to take at least another six weeks before we’re ready to roll it out to civilian punters.’

‘That’s not what you promised me two months ago,’ Gareth protested. ‘You said it was only a matter of tweaking the front end. Making the user interface more idiot-proof, you said.’

‘And that’s what will happen. It’s taking a bit longer than anticipated, that’s all. How many times do I have to put that in words of one syllable?’

‘“Anticipated” is five syllables,’ Rob muttered.

‘What’s all the bloody rush about anyway?’ Nigel demanded as she pushed the door wider. He had his back to the door but even so, he should have registered the consternation on Rob’s face and the amusement on Gareth’s. ‘Is it the new boss? You’re crapping yourself over a woman? Do you think she’ll even understand what we’ve put together here? Give me a break, she’s only a bloody skirt.’

‘A bloody skirt who outranks you, Nigel,’ Marie said sweetly. ‘And who fully intends to get to the bottom of why your department can’t deliver its promises on time.’ He spun round, fury on his face.

‘What are you doing, sneaking up on us?’ His right hand curled into a fist.

Marie shut the door behind her. ‘I never sneak. I don’t have to. Next time you decide to throw your toys out of the pram, do it behind closed doors, please. There’s a room full of workers out there absolutely agog. Generating water-cooler gossip doesn’t help any of us to achieve our goals. We’re all after the same thing. Success is what makes the world go round. We’ll get there much quicker if we help each other.’ Her smile was as warm as she could make it. Even Nigel seemed to settle down, shifting across the room to lean against a filing cabinet with his hands in his pockets.

‘Boys will be boys,’ Gareth said.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Nigel sneered.

‘I’d like to get to the bottom of this, but not while you’re all wound up. Why don’t you each write me a memo explaining what all the fuss is about? In words of one syllable, obviously.’ She pulled the door open again and walked briskly to her office, feeling quite pleased with herself. There was nothing like finding out where the fault lines were in an office community. And then you could exploit them to the full.

Marie smiled. She had to admit, she enjoyed the exercise of power.

C
arol was at the top of a ladder, prising a reluctant chunk of mortar from the stonework, when the dog started barking. She looked down to see Flash hunkering before the door, front paws splayed in front of her, haunches bunched and ready to spring, head jerking back and forth in a frenzy of noise. ‘Shut up, Flash,’ Carol yelled, only now realising that she didn’t have a command for quieting the dog.

She climbed down as quickly as caution permitted and hurried to the door, clicking her fingers at the dog, who obediently stopped barking and fell in at her side. Whoever was on the other side of the door, she’d bet it wasn’t George Nicholas. But apart from the postie, he was the only person who had visited since she’d moved in. Cautiously, keeping one foot firmly behind the door, she cracked it open.

If she hadn’t recognised the looming presence on her doorstep, his size alone would likely have provoked her into setting the dog on him. Whatever command that was. But it only took seconds for her to make the connection. After all, this had been the place where she’d last seen DCI John Franklin.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile without warmth. ‘DCI Jordan,’ he said, dipping his head in a curt nod.

‘Not any more,’ she said.

‘No, I know. I was…’ He tailed off, and this time, the smile had a twist of sardonic humour in it. ‘I was using it as an honorific,’ he said. ‘Like when officers retire from the regular army and march around in their Barbour jackets and tweed caps calling themselves “captain”. Cops like us, we never really think of ourselves as civilians, do we?’

‘I don’t think of myself as a cop, DCI Franklin. So what brings you to my door? And how did you know it was my door?’

Franklin ostentatiously turned his collar up against the wind. ‘Are you not going to invite me in? This is Yorkshire, we believe in hospitality. Come in, sit down, have a cup of tea.’

‘I don’t remember that aspect of my relationship with West Yorkshire Police.’ What she remembered was blood and death and nobody ever listening to a word she or Tony said. What she remembered was bloody-mindedness and prickliness and men who used words like bludgeons. What she didn’t remember was cosy cups of tea and slices of parkin. The dog picked up on her mood, grumbling gently at her side.

Franklin’s shoulders rose and fell in a huge sigh. ‘Look, Carol – OK if I call you Carol?’ She nodded. Better that than a title she didn’t hold and didn’t want. ‘We got off on the wrong foot and I reckon we’re a pair of stubborn bastards who don’t like to back down. How’s about we call a truce? We’re practically neighbours.’ He spread his hands in a generous gesture.

‘Come in,’ she said, sullen rather than welcoming. ‘There’s nowhere to sit.’ The dog followed her as she walked to the middle of the room.

He proved her wrong by perching on a sawhorse. He looked around and she could see him calculating where he was in relation to what had happened here. She couldn’t complain. If anyone had the right to curiosity about what she was doing to the place, it was the cop who had had to confront the bloodbath up on the gallery, where the blood of her brother and his partner had turned the walls and ceiling into a grotesque abstract painting. But he said nothing about the past or the present state of the place. ‘I suppose a cup of tea’s out of the question?’

‘Only when you tell me how you knew I was living here.’

He gave a dry guffaw of laughter that took all the threat out of his heavy brows and sardonic mouth. ‘This is my patch, Carol. And what happened here is notorious for miles around. I knew the day you arrived. There’s not a soul living round here that doesn’t know you’re living in your brother’s office and gutting the place. What they’re all gagging to know is what you’re going to do with it once you’ve stripped it to the bare bones.’

Carol folded her arms and gave him her best hundred-yard stare. ‘What I plan to do here is nobody’s business but mine.’

‘Fair enough. But I answered your question. Now do I get a cup of tea?’

‘My coffee’s better.’ It was a grudging concession.

‘Happen. But I don’t like coffee.’ He thrust his hands in his coat pockets. ‘Oh, go on, Carol, it’ll not kill you.’

She turned on her heel and marched through to her private quarters, Flash at her heels. She didn’t like anyone inside the barn, least of all a man like John Franklin. Behind that bluster and bullshit, there was a tenacious terrier toughness in play. Whatever his reasons for being here, it wasn’t an act of good neighbourliness. Carol hastily made a mug of tea, and brewed some fresh coffee for herself.

When she returned, he was prowling round the perimeter, studying the exposed stonework and the original beams as if he knew what he was looking at. He’d lost weight since she’d seen him last. His suit hung loose on his big frame, his shirt billowing out above his belt. The lines round his eyes were more deeply etched, his cheeks hollow. ‘Ta,’ he said, taking the tea. ‘You’ve pretty much rubbed out all your brother and his missus did here.’

‘Apart from the far end. Where Michael worked. It’s a kind of guest suite. Or granny flat or whatever. It’s self-contained.’

‘And Vance was never in there.’

Carol’s mouth tightened. She said nothing.

Franklin looked as if he was about to say something then stopped himself. He changed tack, crossing to the sawhorse. ‘You’ll make summat of it, I expect.’

Carol leaned against the wall, one hand on the dog’s head. ‘Why are you here? Is it because of the body over the hill?’

She caught a momentary flash of surprise in his eyes. ‘Still a copper at heart, Carol. How did you find out about that? You don’t talk to anybody round here except George Nicholas, and he’s not on the bush telegraph.’

She toyed with the notion of refusing to tell him. She didn’t owe him anything. ‘I was walking the dog up on the shoulder of the hill. I know what a crime scene looks like, even at that distance.’

He sighed in satisfaction, and not at the tea. ‘Mr Nicholas picked the right day to give you the dog.’

‘Depends on how you look at it. I’ve got no interest in dead bodies or crime scenes any more.’

‘How do you know it was a body?’

‘Too much activity for anything less. A body or a serious sexual assault, I thought. But there’s other places on the way up there if you’re after a bit of lay-by sex. So I assumed a body.’

Franklin drummed the fingers of his left hand on the saw-horse. ‘Here’s the funny thing,’ he said. ‘Well, two funny things. First is, she’s from Bradfield. A misper, but according to DCI Fielding, she’s a match for another body they caught earlier in the week. Looks like the same killer, so I’ve graciously handed it over to her.’

‘Very generous of you. I don’t remember you being so open-handed with that murdered teenager a while back. I had to fight you tooth and nail for that one. Or maybe you prefer brunettes. Blokes always seemed to be suckers for Alex Fielding’s charms, as I recall.’

He shrugged. ‘Never noticed she had any. I was too busy getting into Detective
Sergeant
McIntyre’s ribs.’

Sergeant. She hadn’t known that. It was hardly a surprise. Carol would have promoted Paula in a heartbeat if she’d had the budget for another sergeant. ‘Still,’ she said. ‘You handed it over without a fight.’

‘This one’s Bradfield through and through. The crime scene we’ve got, that’s a body dump if ever I saw one. There’s no blood to speak of, no weapon, no nothing except her clothes and her bag with her ID. Just as well that was there, because there wasn’t much left of her face. I can’t recall seeing a body so badly battered.’

‘Why are you telling me this? It’s got nothing to do with me.’

He put the mug on the floor and stuffed his hands in his pockets again. ‘See, that’s the other thing. To my mind, it’s got everything to do with you. Because she looks like you.’

For a moment, it was too bizarre to be frightening. ‘A woman with no face looks like me? Do you have any idea how mad that sounds?’

‘Not as mad as you think. She’s got the same hairstyle as you.’ He took a second look and corrected himself. ‘Well, the same hairstyle you had when a proper hairdresser used to cut it. And she’s about the same height and build as you. I tell you, Carol, when I first clapped eyes on her, for a few seconds I thought it was you. The resemblance, plus the fact I knew you were living here, right over the hill? Well, it was an understandable mistake, let me put it that way.’

‘Are you trying to scare me, DCI Franklin?’

He shook his head vigorously. ‘Of course not. I’m trying to warn you there’s a killer out there who likes women who look a lot like you. You live in a building that’s already notorious for murder. A stone-cold killer’s out there, looking for victims who fit his type. One that lives in a place with these associations could be irresistible.’ To her surprise, he looked away, staring up to where the bedroom gallery used to be. ‘One crime scene here was enough, thank you very much.’

Carol didn’t know what to say to that. She turned and crossed to one of the lancet windows cut into the thick stone walls. She could see all the way up the moor to the trees on the skyline where she’d walked the dog earlier. ‘I’ll be on my guard.’

‘That would be good,’ Franklin said. ‘Happen it’s nowt to do with you, this body turning up on your doorstep. But if it’s some evil bastard leaving a calling card, you need to take care.’ He stood up and left his mug on the sawhorse. ‘I’m glad you’ve got the dog.’

‘She does appear to be a good guard dog.’

Franklin walked to the door. ‘Aye. She won’t let anybody creep up on you.’

Except George Nicholas.
Carol squashed the thought as ridiculous and unworthy. ‘Thanks for keeping me in the loop.’

He gave another harsh bark of laughter. ‘I’m not in the bloody loop myself. DCI Fielding made that crystal clear. But if I hear anything you should know about, I’ll let you know.’ He opened the door and scowled at the sleety rain that had come out of nowhere, as it so often did up on the moors. ‘You might want to give Sergeant McIntyre a bell. She’s the one with her finger on the pulse.’

Carol watched him leave. She didn’t believe there was a killer out there who was trying to put the fear of death into her by killing women who looked a bit like her. And until she did, there was no reason to put in a call to her old life. No reason at all.

‘I
wish we could have waited until his auntie Rachel was here,’ Elinor said, buckling herself into her seat belt.

‘Me too. But Fielding’s got a point. It’s not like the olden days where information was safe till the next edition of the newspapers hit the street. Now, all it takes is one inadvertent slip or one idiot from West Yorkshire keen to make a bob or two by slipping something to the papers and suddenly it’s all over Twitter. Can you imagine what it would be like to find out your mother was a murder victim from your Twitter feed?’ Paula eased out of the hospital ambulance bay and into the stream of traffic.

Elinor shuddered. ‘I take your point.’ She laid a hand on Paula’s thigh in a companionable gesture. ‘It must have been a horrible shock for you, being confronted with Bev like that.’

Paula sighed. ‘To be honest, Elinor, it was almost a relief. Not seeing her like that, obviously, but for the uncertainty to be over. I’ve been pretty sure she was dead for the last twenty-four hours. She wouldn’t have walked away from her life. She loved her son. No matter how bad things had been for her – and we’ve found no evidence of anything amiss in her life – she would never have abandoned Torin without a word. She had to have been taken. And stranger abductions never end well.’

‘I couldn’t help hoping that she was being kept somewhere. That you’d somehow manage to find her alive. You read about these cases, where people have been kept captive for years and then they’re rescued. And Nadia was held prisoner for three weeks, according to this morning’s paper.’ She bit her lip. ‘I really wanted to believe.’

Paula wished she had Elinor’s optimism. In spite of years of watching patients fail to recover, she still approached every case as if a good outcome were possible. ‘Those cases, though, they all involve very young women or young girls. They’re at an age where they’re compliant and impressionable. They can be bullied and manipulated. They haven’t learned how to stand up for themselves against an adult. It doesn’t work that way with women of our age. We’re too bloody stroppy.’

‘I suppose. What’s it like, working a major case with a new team?’

Paula turned on to the main road that would take them to Kenton Vale School. It was clogged with traffic, cars and vans all doggedly trying to get from one side of the city centre to the other. Times like this, she wished she had a blue light to clamp on top of her anonymous little car. Put the fear of god in White Van Man and carve a path through traffic. ‘It doesn’t feel like a team yet. Fielding is keeping me close. I’ve not had the chance to bond with the rest of the squad. Plus there’s the baggage of coming from the MIT. That’s a red rag to a bull for some people. It’s a no-win. If you do something smart, it’s “Ooh, get you, who do you think you are?” and if you fall over your own feet, it’s “Not as clever as you think you are, are you?” I’m only trying to keep my head down and do my job. And that’s not easy in this case.’

‘Why not?’

‘Partly because everybody knows I knew Bev, so they assume it’s going to be personal. And partly because…’ She momentarily lifted her hands from the wheel in a gesture of frustration. ‘I can’t really tell you. Just, something that’s… problematic about the evidence.’

‘Can you tell me how it’s problematic?’

Paula blew out a puff of breath. ‘It’s a matter of interpretation. And I want to be clear about it before I lay it out for Fielding. It would have been a lot more straightforward with Carol. I could have counted on her and the rest of the team not to leap to the wrong conclusion. I don’t know that I can do that with Fielding. And it’s not the kind of thing I can keep to myself. Plus the only explanation for it is impossible. So I have to figure out a way through it.’

‘You will.’ Elinor’s confidence wasn’t rubbing off on her partner and she could tell. ‘If you take the next left, you can escape the traffic and circle round the industrial estate and come at the school from the other direction.’

Paula gave her a quick glance. ‘How do you know that? Have you been moonlighting as a cabbie?’

‘When I first moved to Bradfield, I had a horrible little bedsit down by the canal. That was the quickest way to get there in the rush-hour traffic.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘My feminine mystique. I have to keep you on your toes somehow.’

They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Paula was dreading what lay ahead. Breaking the worst possible news was something she’d done more times than she cared to remember; it never got any easier. As if she read her mind, Elinor said, ‘No matter how many times I give people bad news, I still feel inadequate to the task.’

‘I’ve never had to tell someone I know.’ Paula turned in at the school gates.

‘Sometimes I’ve grown to know a patient quite well. At least you have a sense then of how to approach it. Take Torin. Like you, he’s already expecting the worst. There’s no leading up to it gently. Direct but kind is the best way for him, I’d say.’

Not for the first time, Paula thought her partner was Blessing by name and a blessing by nature. She’d cut straight to the heart of what was troubling Paula and she’d resolved it. If only the inconvenient issue of Tony’s DNA could be so readily settled.

The news barely caused a ripple with the head teacher, a man who clearly believed that emotional crises needed practical responses. Paula warmed to him straight away. He installed them in a cosy room with soft armchairs and a low table. ‘Our main guidance suite,’ he explained. ‘I’ll send someone for Torin’s form teacher and have her bring him here. What about tea, coffee?’

‘Just water. And a box of tissues if possible,’ Elinor said, matching brisk with brisk. His secretary swiftly brought what they’d asked for and left them to wait. It felt like a long time, but it was only minutes before the door opened and a large-bosomed woman in her forties ushered Torin into the room.

One look at the pair of them and his face crumpled. All his efforts at toughing out Bev’s absence crumbled away, leaving him lost. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ It was a roar of anguish. His knees couldn’t hold him and he crouched low on the floor leaning into the side of a chair, his arms over his head, racking sobs tearing through him.

Elinor was first to his side, kneeling on the floor next to him, pulling him close and folding her arms round him. She didn’t speak. She just held him and let the wave of grief suck him under and drag him with it.

Slowly, the sobbing subsided. Between them, Elinor and Paula helped him into a seat while the teacher watched helplessly. ‘We’re not supposed to touch them,’ she muttered to Paula, who managed to restrain herself. Elinor sat on the arm of the chair, a hand on Torin’s shoulder.

He looked up at Paula, eyes swollen, cheeks wet with tears, lips trembling. ‘What happened?’

She chose her words carefully. ‘Someone took her against her will, Torin. And then he killed her. I’m so very sorry.’

‘Did he hurt her? Was it over quick? Did she suffer?’

The first thing they always wanted to know. With murder, you couldn’t lie because the details would eventually come out in court and they wouldn’t thank you for misguided attempts to spare them. ‘I won’t lie to you, Torin. He did hurt her. But I don’t think she was in pain for long.’

His face twisted with the struggle not to crack up again. ‘Thank you,’ he stammered. ‘For being honest. Did he – Did he interfere with her?’

The other thing they always wanted to know. This was, for some reason, the place where you had to let them down easy, without actually lying. ‘We don’t know at this point,’ Paula said.

Torin started shivering, like a dog left out in winter rain. ‘I d-d-d-don’t know what to do,’ he moaned through chattering teeth. ‘What about the funeral? Who sorts all that out?’

‘Come home to ours,’ Elinor said. ‘Your auntie Rachel will be here this afternoon.’

‘Perhaps your form teacher could collect your bag and your coat?’ Paula said firmly. The teacher looked dubious but left the room anyway. Paula followed her out into the hallway. ‘He’s been staying with us,’ she said. ‘Elinor’s a doctor. She worked with his mum at Bradfield Cross. We’ll take care of him.’

‘Shouldn’t you contact social services? He’s only fourteen.’

‘You think he’d be better off in emergency care?’ Paula shook her head in bewilderment. ‘Listen, in my line of work, I see too many vulnerable kids screwed up by the so-called care system. Let’s see what happens when his aunt gets here. Nobody’ll get on your case for leaving him in the hands of a cop and a doctor, for heaven’s sake.’

‘There’s no need to be like that,’ the woman said huffily. ‘We have a duty of care here.’

‘I understand that. But let’s not get into a ruck. Torin’s just lost his mum. He knows us and he trusts us. There’ll be a family member with him this afternoon. This is the best course of action. If you stand in my way, there’s a simple solution. I can take him in to the police station for questioning and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. That’s not the option I want to take, but I will if I have to.’ Paula heard the words coming from her mouth with a sense of shock. She hadn’t known she was going to take so adamant a line in respect of a teenage boy she hardly knew.
Bloody hell
. What was happening here?

The woman pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips as if she was squaring up for a fight. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get his stuff then.’