Innocent Blood (5 page)

‘Oh that’s lovely, just there.’ Nightingale groaned as his fingers found a knot of muscle in her shoulder and kneaded gently.

‘Bad day?’

‘So-so. A piece of cake in some ways but it’s one that’s left a bad taste.’ She told him about Superintendent Quinlan’s new-found confidence in her and the case she’d been given as a result. When she described her interview with the major he laughed and kissed the back of her neck.

‘That’s why you’re good and why you’re going to have a great career. You can be so devious.’

‘Thanks!’ Her back stiffened and she pulled away to rise up out of the bath.

‘Don’t stalk off just because you know it’s true.’

‘That I’m good or that I’m devious?’ She wouldn’t look at him as she rubbed herself dry.

‘Both, they go together. Talking of your career, has Bob Cooper adjusted to your promotion yet?’ The man lay back in the hot water and stretched his legs until his toes pushed against the taps.

‘Getting there. He’s easier to work with but I think he preferred things as they were last year – everything, I mean.’

‘That was predictable. Just don’t let it get to you.’ She came back to the edge of the bath, her skin pink and fragrant within the white towel and looked down at him, her face serious. ‘I mean it; you’re a great detective but you’re young and people are going to resent you for a while. But you’ll win them over. Relax; don’t let them cramp your style.’

He jerked the plug out and stood up, wrapping a towel around his waist.

‘How are you doing?’ She dropped her towel and hugged his back. ‘There’s a rumour going around that you’re up for promotion.’

He shrugged in answer and turned away from her with reluctance, to pick up his clothes.

‘Well, is it going to happen? If anyone deserves it, you do.’

‘It might. I’ve got widespread support but there’s a lot of competition and the whole process still to go through. I’ll know in the next few months whether it’s this time or if I have to wait. A lot will depend on my boss’s recommendation.’

‘If you were promoted, would it mean you going away?’ Her face was studiedly neutral.

‘I don’t know. I hope not but I might not have much say in the matter.’

He watched her closely but she betrayed no emotion. Her constant self-control was astonishing. It made him want to get under her skin as she had managed to slide under his, and to make her as hungry for him as he was for her. Their affair was dangerous. If it became known it would damage her career and potentially his own, but she appeared not to care about the risk and he was so addicted to her by now that it would have been impossible for him to distance himself even if he wanted to.

‘Do you have time for coffee?’ Her question was casual, as if she were indifferent to his answer. He paused in the act of buttoning his shirt and smiled at her.

‘Why not?’

Andrew Fenwick’s house was in a private road on the outskirts of Harlden, in a location normally beyond the means of a policeman who had resisted the temptation of extra-curricular earnings. He wouldn’t have been able to afford it had it not been for a legacy from his mother’s brother.

When he arrived home from work on Saturday, Nightingale’s car was parked in front of the garage. In the sitting room, she was wedged firmly between Chris and Bess on the sofa, watching a cartoon. Bess’s hand was on top of Nightingale’s and Chris had relaxed his cheek against her arm. As the door slammed shut three heads turned towards him and he smiled.

‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve changed,’ he shouted.

As he walked up the stairs he called out a cheery hello to Alice, his housekeeper, but was ignored. When he had changed into a clean shirt and jeans he went to find her in the kitchen. She was fussing over some potatoes.

‘Hi. Sorry, we’re one extra for dinner – I meant to tell you,’ he said.

‘Is she staying the weekend?’

‘No, she never does.’ Fenwick was confused by her aggression. ‘That smells good. What is it – your home-made quiche?’

Alice was not to be mollified and merely gave him a curt nod. Her attitude towards Nightingale confused him. There was no threat to Alice’s tenure and he couldn’t understand why she resented Nightingale’s occasional visits so much. They’d started at Easter when Nightingale had surprised him by accepting an invitation to join his family for lunch. It had been an off-the-cuff suggestion prompted by the realisation that she would be on her own for the holiday weekend, and he had immediately regretted it.

Alice had been away visiting her brother but on her return it hadn’t stopped her taking against the much younger woman. Unfortunately, the children had spoken of nothing else but the lunch and Nightingale for days afterwards. Looking back he realised that that had been the start of the problem and things hadn’t improved since.

‘Would you like a glass of wine, Alice?’

‘If you’re having red I’ll join you.’ Nightingale normally drank white.

He opened a bottle of both, confident that they wouldn’t be wasted over the weekend. When he took Nightingale’s glass of Sauvignon through to the sitting room Bess jumped up and hugged him about the waist, almost spilling the wine. He could remember when she’d barely reached his knees, now look at her. She was ten, almost a young lady, with her own opinions and preferences. Unaffected and popular at school, she excelled at games and had a growing love of drama that was starting to worry him.

Fenwick kissed the top of her head and sat down on the arm of the sofa next to his son.

‘Hi Chris. Do I get a hug?’

Chris nudged his head against his father’s hip as an animal might butt its feeder. Where Bess was tall for her age, dark and confident, Chris was slight, fair and painfully shy. He was supposed to wear glasses but, despite Harry Potter’s example, he hated his specs and only wore them when nagged. It meant that he was poor at sports and had to sit at the front of the class. Fenwick’s heart ached for his son’s seclusion but he remained at a loss to know how to offer any practical help.

Chris liked Nightingale though. She was quiet, not showy and had surprising patience, which meant she waited for as long as it took him to read from one of the books he’d been set to improve his English.

‘Have you had a good day?’ Fenwick threw the question out to whoever chose to answer.

‘Ssh!’

‘This is good.’

‘You’ll get more out of them when the programme’s finished.’

Nightingale looked at him sympathetically and raised her wine glass in silent salute. When the programme concluded she asked Bess to switch the television off and ignored Chris’s protests.

‘If you want to eat with Daddy it’s time to go and wash your hands.’

To his amazement Chris shut up and both children left obediently. When they had disappeared she explained.

‘Last time I was here you said that you saw very little of them so I asked Alice if they could stay up and eat with you as it’s the weekend.’

‘And she said yes?’ Alice was a stickler for bedtime discipline.

‘Well…’ Nightingale winced, ‘let’s just say that the three of us managed to persuade her.’

‘Supper!’ Alice’s shout prevented him asking more and he decided that ignorance might be better than knowing the truth.

‘It’s on the plates going cold.’ Alice turned away from the table despite Fenwick’s invitation for her to join them and headed upstairs for her evening’s television.

After the meal and a bedtime story for the children, Fenwick and Nightingale took the rest of their wine onto the terrace where moths were beating themselves to death against the outside light. It was a blissful summer evening, one in an unbroken line since Whitsun. The air was filled with the noise of watering systems scattering fine sprays in neighbouring gardens and the scent of honeysuckle and roses from the trellis. A few birds were chirping a sleepy evening chorus. In the darkening twilight the garden almost looked cared for.

‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for ages.’ Nightingale settled back into the swinging seat that Bess and Chris usually fought over. She looked beautiful in the twilight and Fenwick was surprised by the thought.

‘I’m in good shape; you?’

She shrugged in a gesture he recognised. Now that he had moved on to Major Crimes she rarely talked about Harlden, where they had previously worked together.

‘What’s up? Want to talk about it?’ He leant over from his chair and poured her more wine.

‘It’s the usual: politics, paperwork and petty-mindedness.’

‘Oh, you mean the three Ps of police work. You forgot the others – piss-poor pay.’

She laughed, then sighed.

‘You’re right. It’s nothing out of the ordinary but a number of people are upset by my promotion.’

‘That was inevitable; just don’t let it get to you.’

A shadow crossed her face, as if his words were an unwelcome echo.

‘I know, I should forget about them. Now,’ she said, with an obvious effort to change the subject, ‘tell me all about MCS; word at the station is that you’re doing well.’

‘Really? Truth is I’m busier than I’ve ever been. I like being in charge of something and I can still get involved in the complex operations if I want, so I don’t feel cut off.’

‘You’ve always been a sucker for complication. Give me a straightforward life any time.’ Again the trace of shadow in her features. ‘Can you tell me about any of the work? I need a distraction.’

‘Not much.’ The Choir Boy investigation was strictly need-to-know and Fenwick felt uncomfortable in confiding, even to her. ‘But there’s something you might be interested in. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. A boy’s body was discovered on the Downs, not ten miles from here, earlier this week.’

‘Why don’t we know at the station?’

‘It’s being kept quiet for now. Part of the hillside had crumbled, it’s chalk and the ridge is eroding. When workmen went in to clear debris from a minor road, one of the JCBs came off the tarmac and slid down a slope into a tree, partially uprooting it. The boy’s body was underneath.’

‘How did it get under a tree?’

‘It was a small one, a birch. They grow fast at the edges of woodland. Either the person who buried him put a sapling on top or it self-set. Either way, we would never have found him had it not been for the carelessness of the JCB driver.’

‘A burial; so it’s murder?’ He nodded. ‘Then why aren’t Harlden involved?’ she asked, instantly alert.

‘There’s a possible connection with a case MCS has been working on for months. We’ve been given first crack at it.’ He stared at her in a way that made it clear there was no room for argument and, credit to Nightingale, she let the matter drop. Fenwick rewarded her with a blow-by-blow account of the work the forensic team had been doing since the discovery.

‘The body was skeletised so the first job was to estimate approximate date of death, age and sex of victim, the usual. While that was going on I asked the lab to find a dendrologist to analyse wood from the tree that had been growing on top of him and that gave us a minimum burial time – the tree was at least twenty years old, you see. Grey, the pathologist, did an exceptional job in less than twenty-four hours, confirmed that the bones were those of a prepubescent boy, probably aged between ten and thirteen. Using the lab’s analysis and dating from the dendrologist, we were able to produce a shortlist from missing persons; that’s why I’m so late back. We recovered a skull complete with upper and lower teeth so they were cross-checking dental records all morning. They identified him just after lunchtime as Malcolm Eagleton. His parents still live locally so I had to see them.’

She grimaced in sympathy; Fenwick merely sipped his wine.

‘Bad luck. Were they expecting it?’ For all his taciturn, emotionless style, Nightingale suspected that Fenwick loathed breaking bad news to a family as much as any officer.

Fenwick sighed and poured them both more wine.

‘I’m not sure you can ever expect to hear that your child’s dead, even after more than twenty-five years, which is how long he’s been missing,’ he said heavily. ‘And of course they had questions that I couldn’t answer, including cause of death. There were no marks of injury on any of the bones we discovered, including the hyoid—’

‘So he wasn’t strangled.’

‘No. Anyway,’ he heaved another sigh, ‘enough of that.’

Nightingale wasn’t ready to give up.

‘With a murder from so long ago, why is MCS interested?’

It was a good question and one that the ACC would be bound to ask as soon as he heard how old the case was. But Fenwick didn’t want to relinquish control. MCS had been set up for large, complex and sensitive investigations, not to dig over cold cases, but he had to be absolutely sure there was no link to his Choir Boy investigation. He planned to ask H-B’s indulgence until the end of the week and thought he would succeed.

‘Well?’

‘There’s still the ongoing analysis of items we found in the grave with him. Until that’s complete I don’t want to pre-judge.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘A week perhaps. Why so interested?’

‘I’d like the case, of course. It would be my first chance to be SIO on a murder and even one this old will be good experience.’

‘Do you think Quinlan would give it to you?’ Not that he intended to let the case go that easily.

‘If I ask for it, maybe… But you’re right; it’s more likely to go to Blite, particularly if the press is involved. Quinlan’s only allowing me to stay at Harlden as long as I maintain what he calls a low profile. But if I had a head start on the case, knew what was coming, I’d be able to impress him with a strategy before it goes to someone else.’

On two of her previous cases Nightingale had become the subject of unprecedented press attention and Quinlan had threatened to transfer her. That she was still at Harlden said a lot for her powers of persuasion. Her shoulders sagged, forcing Fenwick to smile in sympathy.

‘All, right – wait a minute.’

He disappeared into the house and was back quickly carrying a file that he passed to her.

‘I trust you not to say a word of this to anyone. This is the file on the boy who died.’