‘The one thing none of them could work out was why he stayed single. In all the years this woman worked for him, he never turned up at an office event with a woman on his arm. One or two of them thought he was gay, but she didn’t think so. He appreciated women too much, she thought. She wondered if maybe he’d been widowed or divorced when he was really young. So I checked out the records at the Family Records Centre. He never married.’
Tony gave a laugh. ‘Sounds like he was as good at relationships with women as me.’ And probably for the same reason. We were both fucked up by Vanessa.
As if reading his thoughts, Carol said, ‘Well, there is a common factor there.’
Tony reached for his beer. ‘Vanessa’s toxic. But I can’t blame her for everything.’
Carol looked as if she didn’t agree. ‘Well, one thing we can say is that, once Arthur moved out of her orbit, he really made something of his life. I know you can’t set aside the fact that he ignored your existence while he was alive, but from what I’ve learned about him . . . I don’t know, it feels like there must have been a good reason for his absence. And if anyone knows what that is, it must be Vanessa.’
‘In that case, it can stay a mystery. I’ve no plans to talk to her in the foreseeable future.’ Tony pushed his plate to one side and signalled to the waiter. He hoped Carol would read his desire to change the subject. ‘You want another beer?’
‘Why not? When are you going down to Worcester?’
‘Probably tomorrow or the day after. I need to talk to DI Patterson again in the morning, once I’ve taken another pass through the stuff he sent me. I don’t imagine I’ll be gone for more than a couple of days. Nobody’s got any budget for luxuries like me any more,’ he added drily.
‘It’s that teenage girl, right? I’ve seen the news coverage. How are they doing?’
He ordered the beers and gave her a crooked smile. ‘How do you think? They’re calling me in. That should tell you all you need to know.’
‘So, bugger all to go on, then?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘I don’t envy you.’
‘I don’t envy myself. One body, it’s always hard to draw strong conclusions. You know how it goes. The more deaths, the better I get.’ It was, he thought, the worst thing about profiling. It gave a whole new meaning to profiting from someone else’s misery. One of the hardest things he had ever had to come to terms with was that he was in the only job where he relied on serial offenders to make him look good.
It didn’t help him sleep at night.
CHAPTER 11
Paula picked her way across the oblong plastic stepping stones that provided an authorised route from the periphery of the crime scene to its heart. It was bloody bleak up here. She wondered what it had been about this barren hillside that had convinced some speculative builder to develop the site. Even a nature lover would struggle to find much appeal up here. There was a distant cluster of trees, through which she could make out what looked like a low stone house. A hill farm, probably, given the sheep grazing the slopes above and beyond the building site that had become the focus of such intense activity.
‘At least it’s not raining,’ Franny Riley greeted her as she reached the knot of people at the end of the pathway. The unlit cigarette in his mouth bobbed up and down as he spoke.
‘Good morning to you too, Sarge,’ Paula said. A couple of the other detectives at the scene gave her a curious glance, but the white-suited forensic team didn’t even raise their eyes. They were more concerned with the dead than the living. ‘Thanks for the heads-up.’ She’d been less than thrilled when her day-off, lie-in sleep had been broken by the insistent bleat of her mobile, but Franny Riley’s news had certainly been worth a wake-up call.
‘I think we’ve found him,’ he’d said, his voice sombre so she knew it wasn’t the good kind of finding. ‘I’ll text you directions. ‘
She’d called Carol, showered in four minutes and a further twenty minutes later she’d given her name to the officer running the access to the crime scene. He’d clearly been expecting her, reinforcing her sense of Franny Riley as an effective copper. And now here they were, standing a few feet away from a concrete-lined trench where the presumed body of Daniel Morrison lay.
‘Who found the body?’ she asked.
‘Anonymous phone tip. He sounded very fucking frightened. ‘ Franny gestured with his thumb towards the tarmac drive. ‘There’s some fresh tyre tracks where somebody’s pulled off. Fresher than the body, apparently. And a mess of bootprints. All since yesterday afternoon when it rained, the lads who know about these things are saying. It’s looking like some gobshite drove up here on the off-chance of finding something worth robbing and got more than he bargained for.’
‘Do we know for sure if it’s Daniel Morrison?’
‘Chances are.’ Franny rolled his beefy shoulders inside his anorak. ‘Come on, let’s get outside the cordon so we can have a fag and I can bring you up to speed.’ Without waiting for a response, he was off across the plastic plates like a man on a mission. As soon as they were clear of the police tapes, his cigarette was lit. Joining him, Paula caught a couple of disapproving glances from uniformed officers. These days, it felt like smoking was up there alongside child abuse on the list of social crimes. She kept meaning to give up, but somehow it always slipped off the agenda. She’d stopped before, but after she lost a friend and colleague to the dangers of the job and came close to death herself, she’d embraced nicotine like a lover returned from peril. It was a better drug in times of crisis than others she’d seen claim friends and colleagues. At least it didn’t impair your judgement or lead you into compromising positions with scumbag dealers.
‘So, what’s down there in the trench?’ Paula said.
‘A young lad. Answering Daniel’s description. Wearing the right school sweatshirt.’
‘Don’t you have photographs?’
Riley sighed a stream of attenuated smoke. ‘We’ve got pics. But until we get the body on the slab, that’s not a huge help. He’s got a plastic bag over his head. Taped tight round his neck. Looks like that’s how he died, judging by the state of him.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s not the worst of it, though.’
Paula’s stomach contracted. She’d seen enough to understand what that short sentence might comprehend. ‘Mutilated?’
Riley looked over her shoulder towards the distant trees, his battered face a forbidding mask. ‘Just a bloody hole where his cock and balls should be. No sign of them in there with him, but we won’t know for sure till we lift him.’
She was glad she hadn’t had to look at the body. She knew only too well the pity and horror that always walked hand in hand with the bodies of the violently dead, particularly young victims. They always looked so short-changed, their vulnerability an accusation. ‘What’s your boss saying?’ she asked. ‘I mean, this is about as major as it gets.’
Riley snorted. ‘He’s crapping himself. I think we can safely say it’s pass-the-parcel time. We’ll carry on processing the scene, but you need to tell your guv’nor it’s all yours now. I’ll make sure all the paperwork’s in order and over to your office soon as.’
‘Thanks,’ Paula said, reaching for her phone. A chance to prove themselves to Blake, she thought. But Daniel Morrison had paid a hell of a price for that chance. And his family hadn’t even made the down-payment yet.
What had always driven Carol Jordan was her desire for justice. It infused her personal life as much as her professional one. When it came to the people she loved, she felt deeply the responsibility to put right whatever wrongs afflicted them. In Tony’s case, she’d mostly been frustrated because the roots of his damage lay too deep for her to grasp, far less put right. But meeting Vanessa Hill had opened up possibilities. Never mind that the woman was a shallow, selfish bitch who should never have been allowed to raise a child. Carol would have swallowed the woman’s insults and insinuations if she’d thought it would help her to help Tony. But when she had uncovered Vanessa’s devious scheme to deprive her son of his inheritance from the father he’d never known, she knew Vanessa had burned any bridges that might possibly lead to co-operation.