To Catch a Rabbit (20 page)

Lizzie pushed her drink away. ‘I’m going to need a clear head to think this through.’

Rick looked at her quizzically. ‘Anything you want to share?’

‘Possibly. If what Sean says is right, I’ll need check the vic’s DNA against the semen samples from the catering trailer.’

Rick sighed. ‘You’ll have a job. DCI King authorised the disposal of all the evidence in the Chinese girl’s case. Straightforward OD. Nothing to investigate. All we’ve got is the written notes on her blood samples and a bit of hair that we sent off for a toxicology test.’

Lizzie looked stunned. ‘Even though he knew that I…oh, shit. No, he didn’t know. I wonder if my authorisation got through in time? You see, Rick, I was following something up, some DNA with the catering trailer girl, it had a link with the Human Trafficking Service but I kept it quiet.’

‘Why keep it quiet?’ Rick asked.

‘Because I don’t like him. And I know that sounds unprofessional, but ever since I started here, Burger’s been meddling in my work. Do you think I’m going to be in trouble?’

Sean wasn’t sure he should be even listening to this conversation, but he was part of it now. He couldn’t unlearn what he knew.

‘I’ve been around this station for a few years,’ Rick said, ‘and you might say I’ve been waiting for a moment like this. I think it might be the right time to have a chat with the Chief Superintendent. He’s coming in first thing tomorrow.’

They sat in silence for a while. Sean’s glass was empty so he offered to buy another round.

‘Always the gentleman,’ Lizzie said brightly. ‘Mine’s an orange juice.’

‘Gentleman? Well, makes a change from me being an arsehole, I suppose.’ He meant it to sound light-hearted, like he was taking the mick out of himself, but it didn’t come out right. She coloured instantly and looked like she was ready to slap him.

‘Am I missing something?’ Rick said. Sean and Lizzie both looked away. ‘Actually, I think it’s my round. You two have been very helpful, as it goes.’

He went up to the bar, leaving them sitting in silence, Sean cursing himself for being such an idiot.

‘Look. I’m sorry about the party. I was drunk.’ He rushed the words out, aware they sounded insincere. Since the things he really wanted to say to her couldn’t be said, everything else seemed false.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She shrugged. The snooker player pocketed the red and cheered himself on as if he’d won the championship.

‘So,’ Rick said, when he got back to the table, ‘let’s stop work now, shall we? Did everyone have a nice Christmas?’

Sean mumbled something about it being all right.

‘How about you, Lizzie?’ Rick said. ‘Big family do?’

‘Actually it was grim. My parents rowed and my younger brother announced he was leaving university after one term to get a job as a diving instructor in the Maldives. I spent the whole day going from room to room trying to get everyone to pull themselves together.’

Sean pictured her house, big enough to have plenty of rooms for everyone to sulk in separately. He tried to shake off the fact that he minded. It was pointless being jealous of her. He’d save that for Guy of the Rovers; he had to admit he was jealous of him.

‘What about your Christmas, Rick?’ she said, giving Rick that lovely smile that had originally fooled Sean into thinking she actually liked him.

‘It was my turn to have the kids on Christmas Eve and the wife had them Christmas and Boxing Day. I didn’t mind; I spent the whole day in my pyjamas watching TV and eating and drinking what I wanted, when I wanted.’

‘Sounds bliss!’ Lizzie raised her glass. ‘I was so relieved to get the call yesterday. I couldn’t stand another day with them, if I’m honest.’

‘Me too,’ Sean said. ‘I never thought of my nan as the fussing type but now I’ve got two women trying to look after me, I’m beginning to feel smothered.’

‘Two women?’ Rick winked at him. ‘Something you’re not telling us?’

Lizzie kicked him under the table. They were supposed to be keeping Arieta secret. It was a nice kick though. A kick that meant they were a team again.

‘Friend of my nan’s is staying on the couch,’ Sean said quickly. ‘Double trouble.’

Arieta was still awake when he got back. So was Maureen. They were playing cards at the kitchen table, betting with matches.

‘There you are, love, fancy a brew?’

‘No, ta.’

‘What about a snack? Carole came round again. She had a load of more of those crisps with the Paki writing. Dirt cheap, she wanted rid of them, I think. I bought a whole box. I know you like them and Arieta’s partial too.’

‘Very nice,’ Arieta said, licking salt off her fingers. ‘Like at home. Spicy. You want?’

‘Arabic writing, Nan. Not Paki. And no, thanks, I’m going up. I’m done in.’

‘Is it true they found a body?’ Maureen said without looking up from her cards. ‘They were talking about it in the paper shop at lunchtime.’

Arieta was dealing a fresh hand, two piles, face down.

‘Yeah, it was in a caravan, belonged to that farmer I went to see. It turned up in the quarry, not half a mile from the farm. It had been on his land all along.’

Arieta’s hand hesitated and a card hovered in the air. She brought it down slowly on the table.

‘Damn. I lose count. I start again.’

His alarm called him out of a very deep sleep at seven the next morning. It was unusual to find the kitchen still in darkness. He put some bread in the toaster and flicked the kettle on.

As he made his way along his normal route, up through the Chasebridge Estate, he stopped. There was a BMX bike leant up against the frame of one of the swings on the recreation ground. He could see why it had been dumped; the front wheel was buckled. It wasn’t that particular bike that interested him though; it was Lee Stubbs. Stubbs had remembered Philip Holroyd’s face, and more than that, he’d recalled the exact date he’d seen him. Bonfire Night.
Busy night. Lots of parties. He did some business with me. A little package. D’you get me
?’ Oh, yes, I’ve got you now, you little shite.

‘Lizzie, hi! Look I think it was Stubbs, Lee Stubbs, who sold the heroin that was in the caravan. He sold it to Philip Holroyd the day he went missing. He as good as told me.’

‘Jesus, Sean, don’t you sleep?’ She sounded like she was chewing something, he tried to visualise what she had for breakfast. ‘What are you saying? Stubbs is linked to the girl on the Chasebridge Estate and to Holroyd?’

‘Must be. I saw him with Taneesha McManus. We just need to link him to Flora Ishmaili and I bet we could get him for Su-Mai as well.’

She said she would mention it to Rick. Meanwhile she had something for him in return. The forensic sample for Human Trafficking had got to the lab before Burger had the chance to get rid of all the Su-Mai evidence, and the result was back. There was an ongoing case against a haulier based in Grimsby and it was ninety-nine per cent certain that their girl was in one of his lorries at some point.

Sean sat down on the wall of the rec and adjusted the phone against his ear to hear her better.

‘Which means?’

‘It means she was trafficked and DCI Moon from HTS is coming over from Sheffield. He needs live witnesses, though, not dead ones. I think we should introduce him to Arieta. Maybe she’ll open up to him.’

‘What about Burger, what’s he up to?’

‘You haven’t heard? He’s off the case, pending an internal investigation. Rick Houghton’s been brought in to act up as DCI in charge.’

The coloured lines on Sean’s chart were beginning to connect. When he got home, he would put a bit more detail on. He’d picked a nice purple marker from the stationary cupboard. That would do for the Chinese connection.

‘Are you still there?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.’

‘Well, don’t overdo it.’

She sounded kinder than she had done for a while. He wasn’t going to read too much into it this time, he promised himself. He rang off and turned the corner at Eagle Mount One. A pair of seagulls was circling the top of the block. As he quickened his pace, his phone began to vibrate in his vest pocket. He took it out and was surprised to see his nan’s number on the screen.

‘She’s gone.’ Maureen’s voice sounded like she’d been crying.

‘Arieta?’

‘Taken her suitcase. Like she was never here. I know she wanted to go home, back to Kosovo, but Sean, she hadn’t got enough money for that. I was putting a bit by for her, but she didn’t know.’

‘I’m coming back.’

He texted Lizzie with the news and set off down the hill at a run, walking only when he had no breath left. His phone pinged with an incoming text as he turned the corner into Clement Grove: Massive pain in neck, Sean. You’ll have to find her. LM

‘Talking Heads, great band, great.’ The man did a little dance with the cocktail shaker. ‘Once in a lifetime!’ he sang off-key, ‘La, la, la, la!’

She smiled for real then. From the recesses of memory she had a feeling his name was Gavin and they had been introduced about two hours ago. It wasn’t just the Manhattan iced iea, but nothing would stick. Grief was like childbirth, where memory was slippery. At eleven-fifteen, Max appeared in the kitchen doorway carrying their coats. She had just started on a gin sling, courtesy of Gavin.

‘Are you coming?’ It seemed a bit early to be leaving, especially as she was having such a good time. Max read her bemused look. ‘To hear the Minster bells?’

Of course. ‘Where are the children?’ She was slurring a little.

‘Sophie’s coming, and Ben’s asleep under Paul’s desk on the landing. I’ll wake him up, he wouldn’t want to miss it.’

She put her glass down beside the sink. There was a bit of her that was still functioning. She would take Ben home. That would be the best thing for him, and for her too. The thought of being hugged and kissed by strangers on a damp street at midnight made her feel queezy.

‘Thank you for the drinks, Gavin, you’d make a great anaesthetist.’

He bowed extravagantly. ‘Glad to be of service.’

Max glowered at him. She had to turn away. A cocktail induced smile was snaking across her face.

Ben didn’t wake. She took his shoes off and tucked him into bed. When she came downstairs, Arnold the cat shifted on the sofa and rearranged himself on her lap. She put the television on and flicked channels until she found a movie that was half way through. It was a western that she’d seen before but she couldn’t remember the title. She was drifting off to sleep when her mobile vibrated in her pocket. She answered it without looking.

‘Hello?’

‘Happy New Year,’ Charlie said. Then she was fully awake. ‘Is this okay?’ he said, ‘I just wanted to…’

‘It’s great.’ She muted the television and let the bullets fly across the Mexican village in silence. ‘Everyone’s gone to hear the bells.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘I want to see you,’ he said, ‘tomorrow.’

She wanted to see him now, feel him holding her, but she didn’t say it. The conversation turned to practical matters. A place, a time, he would pick her up from outside the RAMA office. She’d find some excuse, a New Year’s Day walk, a ramble of some kind. If she left early enough the children wouldn’t be awake, so there would be no question of them coming too. She hoped she could get away with telling Max that she’d mentioned it ages ago and he must have forgotten.

She put the phone down and stared at the muted film. There was a man lying in the dust on the street, his gun falling out of his hand. The phone rang again.

‘Happy New Year, Mummy! We’ve been trying to get through for ages!’

She walked out of the house at eight o’clock the next morning. The note on the kitchen table said she’d gone for a walk to clear her head and she might have a look round the January sales. She was thinking, as she walked into town, how sleazy it all was, but how little she’d had to lie. Her head really did feel as if someone had wrung all the moisture from her brain and left it clattering around her skull like a walnut.

Outside the office, she turned her back on the dead eyes of the china dolls in the shop window. She realised that she didn’t know what car he drove. In the end there was no mistaking it. When a black, new style VW Beetle pulled up, there wasn’t another soul in sight.

They drove east towards the coast through a world empty of people.

‘I brought a picnic,’ he said. ‘Did you have breakfast?’

‘Just coffee. When did you have time to sleep?’

‘I didn’t much, but I’m used to it. I used to do a lot of surveillance work. The mechanism’s pretty fucked to be honest.’

At Bridlington he parked on the front, facing a grey-green sea and a piercing blue sky. The wind rocked the car.

‘I’ve been asking a few questions around Doncaster police station,’ he said.

‘About Phil?’

He nodded. ‘About where he was found. There’s something you need to know.’

‘Are you allowed to do that? I mean if it’s not your case?’

‘Told them it was for a colleague. That’s sort of true. RAMA are becoming a very important partner to the HTS.’ He squeezed her thigh and left his hand there. She folded her own hands around it.

‘Another half-truth,’ she said. ‘I’m getting good at those too.’

A pair of herring gulls hovered overhead. They appeared to be flying backwards as the wind took them.

‘We could spend all day discussing the morality of my intelligence techniques,’ Charlie said, ‘but do you want to know what I found out?’