Lazybones (16 page)

Carol Chamberlain felt twenty years younger. Every thought and sensation was coming that bit quicker, feeling that bit stronger. She felt hungrier, more awake. The night before in bed, she'd leaned across and “helped herself,” for heaven's sake, which had certainly surprised and delighted her old man. Maybe the battered green folder on her lap would prove to be the saving of both of them…

Jack was still smiling twelve hours later as he brought a plate of toast through to her. She blew him a kiss. He took his overcoat from the stand in the corner, off to pick up a paper.

Carol had been fifty-two, a DCI for a decade, when the Met's ludicrous policy of compulsory retirement after thirty years had pushed her out of the force. That had been three years ago. It had rankled, for each day of those three years, right up to the moment when that phone call had come out of the blue.

Carol had been amazed, and not a little relieved…

She knew how much she had to offer,
still
had to offer, but she also knew that this chance had come along at the very last moment. If she was being honest, she would have to admit that recently she'd felt herself slowly giving in, throwing in the towel in much the same way that her husband had.

She heard the gate creak shut. Turned to watch Jack
walking away up the road. An old man at fifty-seven…

Carol picked up the folder from her knees. Her first cold case. A sticker on the top right-hand corner read
AMRU
.

The Area Major Review Unit was what it said at the top of the notepaper. The Cold Case Team was how they thought of themselves. In the canteen they were just called the Crinkly Squad.

They could call her whatever they liked, but she'd do the same bloody good job she'd always done…

The day before at Victoria, when she'd collected the file from the General Registry, she'd noticed straightaway that it had been pulled only three weeks earlier by a DC from the Serious Crime Group. That was interesting. She'd scribbled down the officer's name, made a mental note to give him a call and find out what he'd been looking for…

Three years away from it. Three years of reading all those books she'd never got around to, and cooking, and gardening, and catching up with friends she'd lost touch with for perfectly good reasons, and feeling slightly sick when
Crimewatch
came on. Three years out of it, but the flutter in her stomach was still there. The butterflies that shook the dust from their wings and began to flap around as she opened the folder and started to read.

A man throttled to death in an empty car park, seven years earlier…

 

A week into his forty-fourth year. The discovery of his burned-out car being far from the low point, Tom Thorne was already pretty sure that the year was not going to be a vintage one. Seven days since he'd rushed back from a wedding to attend a postmortem. Seven days during which the only developments on the case had been about as welcome as the turd he'd found waiting for him in his bed.

Welch's movements between his release from prison and the discovery of his body, painstakingly reconstructed, had yielded nothing.

Forensically, the photos recovered from the locker in Macpherson House had been a black hole.

A hundred and more interviews with
anybody
who could feasibly have seen
anything,
and not a word said that might raise the blood pressure.

The
ACTIONS
outlined and ticked off on the white board. Allocated and diligently carried out. Contacting the sex offenders who had themselves been diligent about signing the Register at the right time. Tracking down those who were not
quite
so assiduous, who had perhaps forgotten, or mixed up the days in their diaries, or buggered off to another part of the country and gone underground. Checking and double-checking the statements of everyone from the traumatized receptionist at the Greenwood Hotel to the semipickled tramp who had been occupying the bed next to Ian Welch for the few days before he was killed…

This was what 99 percent of police work really consisted of. It was procedure like this, together with a little bit of luck, that would provide pretty much the best chance, the
only
chance, of getting a result. And Thorne, of course, hated every tedious minute of it.

While he was waiting for that elusive bit of luck to arrive, even his one moment of genuine inspiration was proving to have been useless…

Sitting in Russell Brigstocke's office—Monday morning and feeling like it—Thorne listened as he was told
just
how useless it was. He had thought that the killer's access to the Sex Offenders Register might hold the key to catching him. Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond was more than happy to disillusion him…

“Fact is,” Jesmond said, “tabloids or no tabloids, the
information's already public property. Every force has a community notification policy. Supposed to be on a case-by-case, need-to-know basis. Information gets released to schools, youth clubs, and so on, but, as with anything else, we can't know for certain where that information goes later on.”

Brigstocke glanced at Thorne, raised his eyebrows. Jesmond was just getting warmed up…

“Yes, we
might
be looking for a prison officer. But we might also be looking for someone who's a friend of a friend of a teacher with a big mouth. Or someone who lives next door to an indiscreet social worker, who likes to natter while they're washing their cars on a Sunday morning…”

“Are you saying that we've been wasting our time for a week?” Thorne said.

The detective chief superintendent shrugged, like he'd been asked if he'd lost weight. “Ask me that again when we've caught him…”

Jesmond seemed to relish moments like this. Thorne looked across at him and thought,
You really enjoy raining on my fucking parade, don't you?

“I see what you're getting at, sir,” Thorne said. “But it can't hurt, I mean, at least in the short term, to carry on assuming that the killer has a direct contact with one of the bodies we're talking about. Social services, the probation service…”

Jesmond cocked his head to one side, waiting to be unconvinced. Brigstocke tried to help out. “It's a decent avenue of inquiry, sir,” he said.

Thorne sniffed. “Our
only
decent avenue of inquiry…”

“Well, I think you'd better go out and find us another one,” Jesmond said. “Don't you?”

Thorne said nothing. He watched the hand pushing
back the wisps of sandy hair. The strange area on either side of the nose where webs of veins met spatters of freckles. He looked at the dry lips cracking themselves into a smile and it struck him, as it always did, that Jesmond smiled with his eyes closed.

Thorne smiled himself, remembering how he'd once described Jesmond's face to Dave Holland. “You know the sort of face,” he'd said. “If you hit it once, you couldn't stop.”

Jesmond leaned forward across the desk. “Seriously, though, let's think about what you're saying. As an example, why don't we look at the possibility that the killer has a direct connection with the police service…”

“A police officer,” Thorne said.

Jesmond simply repeated himself and pressed on. “A direct connection with the police service. Now, apart from the sheer numbers involved, the methods employed to access and utilize the Sex Offenders Register vary wildly from force to force. Some access it via the Police National Computer. Some graft Register information onto existing systems, or create dedicated databases…”

Brigstocke puffed out his cheeks. Thorne could already sense things going away from him, could feel himself starting to drift.

“Some are still using manual, paper-based systems, for heaven's sake,” Jesmond said. “And we all know just how secure
they
are.”

Brigstocke nodded. “How secure
anything
is!”

Thorne was tuning it out. Thinking about those jungle drums…

“The fact is, the whole system's a mess,” Jesmond said. “There is no single strategy for managing and sharing sex offender information, either with other agencies or with one another. Some believe that general access to local officers is vital to obtain the full intelli
gence benefit. Other areas, other stations, simply have a nominated officer who gets informed whenever the Register is updated…”

Thorne could smell another turd in his bed…

The way it was being laid out, the killer could have found his rapists almost anywhere. On the Internet or in a wastepaper basket. It was clear that if they had ten or a hundred times as many officers working on this, tracking down the man they were after the way he'd been hoping to was a nonstarter.

“It isn't just us, either,” Brigstocke said. “The courts are supposed to notify us when there's a need for an individual to register, and for how long, and it should be confirmed by the prison or the hospital or wherever when he gets released. Well, that's the bloody theory, anyway. Sometimes the first you hear about a sex offender on your block is when they tell you
themselves,
for fuck's sake…”

Jesmond leaned back in his chair and smiled. Eyes closed. “So, when I say you'd better find us another decent avenue of investigation, I'm simply being practical. I'm thinking of the best way, the fastest way, to catch this man…”

Thorne nodded. Said it under his breath…

“Ooh! Whay-hay! Clack!”

 

In the Major Incident Room, business carried on as usual, but each officer was keenly aware that things might be about to change. Each man or woman on the end of a phone or hunched over their paperwork glanced across occasionally in the direction of Brigstocke's office, knowing that behind its closed door, decisions were being made that would affect them all.

Each casual conversation full of unspoken concerns. Some less to do with overtime than others. Some, at bottom, fuck all to do with work at all…

“Jesmond had a face like fourpence when he marched through here,” Kitson said.

Holland glanced up from his computer screen. “Looked much the same as he always does, if you ask me…”

“I know what you mean,” Kitson said. “He's a miserable sod. Still, I think we must be doing
something
wrong. They've been in there awhile.” She looked across to where the Incident Room led out onto the corridor that housed the small suite of offices—Brigstocke's, the one she shared with Tom Thorne, Holland and Stone's…

Kitson sat down on the edge of the desk. She placed a hand on top of the computer Holland was working at. “Can't you do this in your office?”

Holland peered at his screen. “Andy's working in there…”

There was grime on the top of the computer. Kitson took out a tissue, spat on a corner, and began rubbing at the heel of her hand. “Not a problem, is there?”

Now Holland looked up at her. “No, it's fine. Just easier to concentrate in here sometimes…”

Kitson nodded, carried on rubbing, though her hand was clean. “Sam Karim tells me you've been putting yourself up for quite a bit of overtime lately. Working all sorts of hours…”

Holland clicked furiously at his mouse. “Shit!” He looked up, blinked. “Sorry…?”

“It's a good idea. Trying to stash a bit of money away before the baby arrives.”

Holland's face darkened for a second. The smile he conjured didn't altogether chase the shadows from around his eyes.

“Right,” he said. “I mean, they're expensive, aren't they?”

“You think nappies are a price, mate, wait until he
wants CDs and the latest trainers. Is it a he or a she? Do you know…?”

Holland shook his head, his eyes meeting Kitson's for half a second and then sliding away to her chin. “Sophie doesn't want to know.”

“
I
did.” Kitson's voice dropped down a tone. She opened up the tissue and began to tear it into small pieces. “My other half wanted to wait and see, but I've never really liked surprises. I sent him out of the room after we'd had the scan so they could tell me. Did it with all the kids. Managed to keep it secret right up until the births…”

Holland smiled. Kitson crushed the pieces of tissue into her fist and stood up. “Are you going to take any time off afterward?”

“Afterward?”

“All this overtime you're piling up now, you can probably afford a break, spend a bit of time at home with Sophie and the baby. Mind you, the Federation's still fighting to get paternity leave up from two days. Two days! It's a bloody disgrace…”

“We haven't really talked about it…”

“I bet she'd like you to, though.” Kitson saw something in Holland's eyes, nodded sympathetically. “She must hate all this extra work you're having to do…”

Holland shrugged. Let his head drop back to his computer screen. “Oh, you know…”

Kitson took a step away from the desk. She opened her hand above a wastepaper bin and sprinkled the pieces of dirty tissue into it.

Holland watched her go, thinking,
Actually, you probably don't.

 

Thorne stuck his head around the door of the Incident Room, tried not to gag on a breath of late afternoon hot air and fermenting aftershave. He waved to Yvonne Kitson. She clocked him and walked quickly across.

“Get everyone together at the far end,” Thorne said. “Briefing in fifteen minutes.”

Without waiting for a response, Thorne turned and moved away, back up the corridor toward his office…

Sensing that Jesmond was probably right. Knowing that
he
was right about the Register, but that even if the killer was a social worker or a probation officer or a copper, they were going to have to get him some other way.

He threw his jacket across the desk, dropped down into the chair. There was a small pile of mail he hadn't dealt with. He began to sort through it…