The detectives exchanged a glance, both thinking the same thing: Joe Lilton had made a complaint of assault against Henry.
Both were wrong.
Myrna stirred. Her head was still resting on her forearms. She was stiff and aching. For a few moments she did not move, keeping her eyes closed and breathing in deeply through her nostrils. She sat up and stretched the feeling back into her blood-starved limbs. The crinkle of pins and needles was painful and pleasurable at the same time. She rolled her neck and winced as her back muscles protested.
The clock on her desk told her that ninety minutes had passed since her last phone call to Karl Donaldson in London. Dawn had already revealed itself across Miami; soon the office cleaners would be in, followed shortly by the more enthusiastic workers amongst the staff.
She rubbed her eyes, cleared her throat and glanced across to Tracey.
‘ Holy shit!’ were the first words Myrna uttered.
The girl had disappeared.
The custody officer pulled the custody record out of its plastic wallet.
‘ We don’t know who she is — she won’t tell us,’ he said to Danny and Henry, ‘but she’s about eleven or twelve; she’s as pissed as a rat, glued up to the eyeballs, as violent as any girl that age can be and basically a real bitch to deal with. I gave her a drink of tea which she promptly threw all over me. Luckily most of it missed; now she’s stripped herself stark naked and is prancing about in the buff in a juvenile detention room, having urinated and then shat in one corner. She’s now smeared excreta all over the walls.’ He raised his nose. ‘Can you smell it?’
Henry inhaled. ‘Ahhh, yes, the smell of shite.’ He smiled empathetically at the Sergeant; Henry was pleased to announce that his spell as a custody officer had been brief but horrible, done a short time after his promotion to uniform Sergeant, somewhere in the dim, distant past. The role was unenviable, having to be a kind of unloved intermediary between the investigating officers and the prisoners. Always a no-win situation. It was a job Henry had quite happily left behind.
‘ So it’s a crap job you’ve got,’ said Henry. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’
‘ It’s probably all balls, I suppose, but she said she knew who killed Claire Lilton, but she wasn’t going to tell us — then she stuck two fingers up at me and lobbed a turd in my general direction. I’m getting too old for this,’ he whined, rubbing his neck. He was twenty-seven. ‘Just thought you’d like to know, that’s all. Take it or leave it.’
‘ Nothing lost having a word, is there?’ Danny said.
Myrna shot out of her chair and crossed quickly to the restroom. Tracey was not there. She began a systematic walk through the offices of Kruger Investigations. Ten minutes later she returned to her office, pretty certain Tracey had gone. She sat down heavily and reached for the phone to call night security down at the front entrance. As her hand drew the receiver to her ear, she noticed her purse was open. With a curse playing on her lips, she grabbed the black bag and rummaged through it.
Tracey had beaten her to it.
She had been cleaned out.
Juveniles are not detained in normal cells, but in juvenile detention rooms which, instead of cell doors, have thick wooden ones with toughened glass windows. There are no toilets in such rooms and every time the occupant wishes to pay a visit, they have to ring the bell. Henry hated dealing with kids. Give him a hardened professional criminal any day. Much simpler.
He and Danny stood outside the DR and tried to peer through the layer of faeces the young lady had smeared over the window. They could just see her, sitting cross-legged on the floor, naked, singing at the top of her voice, then shouting obscenities between verses. They could smell her very well.
The cell was covered in it and so was she.
Danny turned to the custody Sergeant. ‘Why was she arrested anyway?’
‘ A nothing of a job really. Caught shoplifting in W H Smiths. The store detective chased her, she ran away down the Prom and she kicked off when she was collared. She gave the store detective a real shiner, I’m told. Took three bobbies to bring her in.’
‘ And we don’t know who she is, yet?’
‘ No.’
‘ Yes, we do,’ came a triumphant voice, interrupting the Sergeant’s reply. It was one of the arresting officers. ‘Been leafing through the Missing from Home reports, just in case — and voila!’ He flapped a message switch. ‘I think it’s this girl.’
‘ Well done,’ the Sergeant commented.
‘ What’s your plan of action?’ Danny asked.
‘ Hm… got to get her cleaned up before we do anything with her. Going to have to get a couple of policewomen into overalls, drag her out and dump her under a shower. This DR’ll have to be steam-cleaned now — little madam. Danny?’ He looked questioningly at the DS. ‘Don’t suppose you’d be interested in grabbing a pair of overalls and helping out?’ It was a fairly rhetorical question. ‘No, supposed not.’
‘ We’ll come back and speak to her when she’s clean — and sober,’ Henry said.
The custody officer looked severely miffed at the problem. Bloody kids, he thought. Should be shot at birth.
‘ Just got off speaking to the States again. A woman named Myrna Rosza, remember? She was the one who originated the information on Charlie Gilbert.’
‘ Yeah, I remember.’ Henry had the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder, sipping a cup of tea, dunking a ginger biscuit at the same time, saturating it to the point of near-disintegration before dropping it skilfully into his open mouth. Gorgeous.
‘ Done anything with that yet?’
‘ No,’ he mumbled. ‘Filed for the moment. Too busy with other things.’ He reached for another biscuit and dunked it.
Karl explained the phone call he’d had from Myrna. ‘Sounds very interesting,’ Henry commented. ‘Why does she want to speak to Danny Furness?’
‘ Dunno, but that was the gist of the message; she’s supposedly a witness to that murder and she’ll only talk to this Furness guy.’
‘ This Furness guy happens to be a girl, actually.’
‘ So be it.’ Donaldson took a breath. ‘But having said all that, there’s a bit of a sorry twist in the tail. The girl has now disappeared.’
‘ Oh, that’s handy. What do you reckon to the story anyway?’
‘ Myrna is ex-FBI, very bright, don’t take no shit, and wouldn’t bother me if she didn’t think it was worthwhile. I think the girl is genuine.’
‘ But she’s done a bunk?’
‘ As you say — done a bunk.’
‘ I’ll speak to Danny Furness for a start, Karl.’
‘ You know him — her?’
‘ Yes. I’ll see what she knows about this girl, if anything. Let us know if she turns up again; I don’t really see us getting too excited until then. At the same time I’ll liaise with the murder team over in Darwen and let them know what’s happening — oh shit! Sorry, Karl. Just had an accident here.’
Henry had misjudged his timing and whilst in mid-air, on the journey from cup to lip, his ginger biscuit disintegrated all over his shirt and tie.
There was, undeniably, the smell of shit in the air: disinfectant, cheap soap and shit.
Danny’s nostrils dilated as she sat down opposite the girl. A woman from the social services sat next to the girl, a stern look on her face. Her nose twitched.
The girl slumped in the plastic chair, a sneer slashed across her face, contempt oozing from every pore in her body. The white zoot suit was far too large for her, made her look stupid and vulnerable.
She peered closely at the girl’s face and saw the redness around her nostrils and top lip, symptoms associated with glue-sniffing. Danny’s eyes looked into the girl’s which were wild, pupils still dilated. Danny speculated how far gone she was, whether it was recoverable or had her brain and vital organs been irreparably damaged by the fumes.
Danny pitied her. She made a note to get the police surgeon to check her out.