Blood Money (3 page)

“Of course.” If there were qualms, the woman hid them well. She crossed slim legs at thin ankles, smoothed slightly trembling fingers over an already crease-free velvet dress,
blackcurrant. Whether the moves were to skirt Mac’s proffered handshake was anyone’s guess.

“Appreciate it.” Bev resumed her place alongside the victim. She’d motored straight here after catching breaking reports of the incident on her police radio. In a toss-up
between late arrival at the Highgate brief ball and heads up at a breaking crime scene it was a no-brainer. Bev needed the brownie points, and could get by without colleagues’ questioning
looks. Again.

When she’d first arrived the woman had been in a state of shock. Now Bev had the shakes. The tremor, she knew, was DC- as much as DT-induced. That Mac had accused her of lying about the
phone was so far below the belt, it was ground-breaking. She might come out with the occasional white one to oil the wheels, but whites-of-the-eyes whopper? No way. Not to a professional
partner.

“Whenever you’re ready, Mrs Winters?” Mac was in gentle-coax mode. He’d opted for a chunky armchair facing the woman, adopted a non-threatening stance and wasn’t
overdoing the eye contact. He was pretty good at the victim-interview stuff. Bev had seen him in action; it was Mrs Winters she observed closely now.

Asking the victim to run through the story again wouldn’t just bring Mac up to speed. Few witnesses have total recall when they first relate an incident – if ever. This time round,
the woman might dredge up a nugget or two, a little extra detail. Bev took a metaphorical back seat, clocking body language, listening for discrepancies, contradictions, nuances, ready to pounce on
anything that needed elaboration and/or follow up.

Mrs Winters fidgeted incessantly but the story emerged fluently and coherently. A man wearing dark clothes and a clown mask had entered her room, tethered her to the bed, subjected her to verbal
abuse and physical attack. He’d ransacked the house, stolen property, left his mark. Bev had seen it: a £ sign traced on the woman’s belly with a knife. Not deep, not
life-threatening. Just because he could. And like he’d done before. Three times.

At previous crime scenes, he’d not shed so much as a skin cell. The cops hoped for bigger things here. Uniforms were on the streets, others were finger-tipping grounds at the back of the
house. The odd muffled bump overhead signalled the presence of forensic scene investigators: FSI. The name change from SOCOs was still fairly recent. Why the West Midlands service hadn’t
adopted the more common initials, CSI, Bev hadn’t a clue. Hopefully they did by now – they were upstairs videoing, dusting, lifting, fine-tooth combing, bagging and tagging anything
with potential.

“I lay there for hours.” Mrs Winters picked loose skin at the side of her thumb. “I was... it was...” She swallowed. “Then June found me... called you
people.” The cleaner. Bev had spoken briefly. June Mason had been adamant the back door was locked. There’d been no sign of forced entry anywhere. Begged the question did the intruder
have a key? The alarm hadn’t needed deactivating. It hadn’t been switched on.

The sequence of events was easy to picture, Bev had witnessed some of the aftermath: the shredded wedding photograph, the shattered glass, four thin cords still dangling from bed posts.
Imagining what the woman had gone through was more difficult. Mrs Winters had her voice under tight control, but the twitching and fiddling told a different story. The upper lip was starched but
Bev reckoned Faith Winters was a quivering wreck inside. Took one to know one. As for the woman’s attitude – there was a slight shift, something Bev couldn’t quite pin down. It
was more the way she spoke, rather than what was said.

The narrative – though not word-for-word – was close enough to the original for Bev to know the woman wasn’t making it up as she went along, adding spice, aggrandising her ego,
or even just pleasing the cops. Amazing how many punters did, fantasists getting off on their own fiction. People lied all the time. Lied. Bugger Mac. Bev balled a fist. Her mobile
was
missing. Only doubt was whether she’d lost it for good or it would turn up where she least expected it. Sodding nuisance either way.

“Any questions, sarge?” Mac’s snide tone suggested he thought she’d tuned out.

Finger still on the button though. “How many keys are there to this place, Mrs Winters?”

It looked as if she was totting them up in her head. “Six.” The cleaner, a neighbour and the gardener had copies, which left Mrs Winters’s plus two spares.

“And they’re still around?” Nonchalant query from Bev.

“Of course.”

“Check recently?”

“Well, no...” It didn’t take long. She was back in a couple of minutes. “I keep them in the kitchen drawer normally.” Normally. “Maybe I moved
them?”

“P’raps you could have a search round later, Mrs Winters?” Mac urged gently.

The missing keys added to Bev’s growing doubts that the burglary was random. “You say the intruder knew your name, Mrs Winters. Any chance you’d come across him
before?”

She drifted back to the sofa, shaking her head. “I’ve thought about it but can’t see how or where. I don’t know many young men.”

The woman and the burglar didn’t have to be bosom buddies. Their paths could have crossed casually in any number of places: supermarket, garage, restaurant, coffee shop. Mrs Winters
wasn’t an agoraphobic hermit. On the other hand, the letter rack in the hall contained household bills, correspondence – all addressed to Mrs Faith Winters. Bev had spotted it, likely
Coco the frigging clown had as well. Best keep an open mind for the mo.

“What makes you say young man, Mrs Winters?” Mac asked.

“His clothes.” The description boiled down to man-in-black. “The swagger. What he said, how he said it.” She traced an eyebrow with an aubergine fingernail.

“Tell us about the voice,” Bev prompted. “Did he have an accent?”

“He may have...” Hesitating, she circled the finger where her wedding ring had been. Bev spotted the slight indentation in the flesh. “I had the feeling he was disguising the
way he speaks. He sounded just a little different every time he opened his mouth.” She shuddered, closed her eyes. The word must have revived an image of the gross red lips. Bev was freaked
and she’d only heard about them.

“So you’d not recognise the voice again?” Bev asked.

“That’s not what I said.” Tad sharp. “At the moment I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.”

“Anything else you can think of, Mrs Winters?” Soothing interception from Mac.

“The worst thing was when he ordered me to close my eyes... the sand... then the pillow over my face... I thought... I was afraid... I...”

“It’s OK now, Mrs Winters.” Bev’s outstretched hand was rebuffed.

“But it’s not, is it? I was utterly humiliated. He made me feel worthless, insignificant. And I was so very afraid. If Rod were alive...” She closed her eyes, visibly trying to
compose herself. Bev mouthed, husband, at Mac. The uneasy silence was shattered when the widow whacked the arm of the sofa. “And he’s still out there. He could come back.” The
attitude shift was more pronounced, the growing hostility unmistakeable.

“We’ll put a police guard on the house, Mrs Winters,” Bev said. “There’s no way he’ll...”

“And how do you stop him attacking someone else? I’m not the first, am I?” She grabbed the paper she’d been reading, thrust it at Bev. “Page thirteen,
sergeant.” The headline in the week-old copy of the local rag read POLICE SEEK BURGLAR.

It wouldn’t set Wolverhampton alight let alone the world. Nor the bland bog-standard story that appeared below the fold. The guv had wanted it down-played. That it was.

Mrs Winters rose, paced the carpet, arms folded. “I vaguely remembered reading the article before. When you went out, I retrieved that from the recycling box.” The finger pointing at
the paper was none too steady. “It’s him isn’t it?” She didn’t sound certain, there wasn’t much to go on in the story, but her conjecture was smack on. Bev
reckoned she deserved the truth.

“Yes. It could be.”

“Why no mention of the mask? The torment he puts his victims through?” She flapped a dismissive hand. “That’s no warning to vulnerable women. Any woman. If I’d
known...”

Bev stood, met the woman head-on, tried peacemaking. “It’s a fine line, Mrs Winters: alerting people, alarming them, causing unnecessary panic.” Fine line and the guv’s
official line, another one Bev didn’t much care about toeing.

“Unnecessary panic?” she sneered. “What a great comfort, sergeant.”

“We’ll catch him, Mrs Winters.”

“Then what?” She threw her head back. “A few months in jail? Time off for good behaviour? And me? I’ll be looking over my shoulder every day, too scared to sleep at
night. The man who did this should go to prison for life – and it still wouldn’t be long enough.”

Big Ben chimes broke the silence. There were muffled voices in the hall. PC Rees popped his head round. “It’s the television people, Mrs Winters. Do you want to speak to
them?”

“What do you think?” Defiant glare. “I asked them here.”

“And, sarge?” Rees cocked an eyebrow. “Something you need to see.”

Bev and Mac trailed Rees to a large detached white house just round the corner. One of the uniforms had spotted it: a small black-handled knife under a hedge. Crime scene
manager Chris Baxter was just about to bag it.

“Hold on a min, Chris.” Bev got down on one knee, gently nudged the knife with the tip of a Bic to turn it over. Except for blood on the blade, there was nothing to distinguish it
from a zillion others. Nada. Worth a look before it entered the black hole of the labs though. She rose, brushed a dead leaf and damp grit from her Levis. “All yours, Chris.” The sigh
she’d tried stifling escaped.

“What’s up, Bev?” Baxter joshed. “Hoping there’d be a name on it?” Sandy-haired, freckle-faced Baxter fancied himself as a bit of a wit.

Tad distracted, Bev’s quip was on auto-pilot. “Address, phone number, inside leg. Y’know me. I’m easy.”

“I’d heard that, babe.”

Easy or babe? Nerves. Raw. Touched. “Don’t friggin’ babe me. Savvy?”

“Joke? Hello?” Was that a flush of embarrassment or anger? Baxter wasn’t a bloke to get on the wrong side of. He mirrored her glare with one of his own. She broke eye contact
first, raised a palm in token appeasement-stroke-apology, headed back up the road, coat-wings flapping. Mac kept pace. If not peace.

“How to win friends and influence people. Nice one, boss.” The tuneless whistling of
Happy Days Are Here Again
didn’t help: she’d got the message.

“I’m sorry, OK?” Arms splayed. “Got a splitting head.” Not to mention the hangover, and multiple post-attack hang-ups. Her verbal strikes were defensive, but they
were a pain in the butt for anyone in the firing line. She knew they needed curbing. Easier said than...

“Sarge?” She turned to see PC Rees jogging towards them. “Pretty damn good, eh, sarge? Think the perp dropped it running away?”

She reckoned Danny was from the Labrador puppy school of policing: boundless enthusiasm, not much nous. DC Darren New was a founder member. “Makes you say that, Danny?”

Frowny face. “He cut her, didn’t he?”

Given the number of blades on the street, so what? With a knife crime every four minutes in the UK, Danny’s assumption was a tad premature. “We’ll see.”

“Come on, sarge. So close to the scene?”

Dead convenient that. It bugged her. Coco hadn’t put a foot wrong so far. Now they find a bloodstained weapon within spitting distance of the latest burglary. Seemed to Bev the only thing
missing was the gift wrap. Course, she could be wrong. And there was no sense ruffling more feathers. “You’re prob’ly right.” She gave a lopsided smile, buttoned her coat,
brought out a card from the pocket. “Give this to Mrs Winters, Danny. Tell her she can call me any time.” She crossed out one of the numbers. “Say I’ll get back to her soon
as there’s news.”

Mac tilted his head towards the crime scene. “Vultures moving in, boss.”

A lanky guy clad in denim and toting a camera was just entering the Winters place, a big-haired blonde in killer heels brought up the rear. Remainder of the colony would doubtless be on the
flight path, though a few would be circling Highgate nick.

Bev pursed her lips. The guv wouldn’t like that. Byford loathed having his back against the wall, ’specially when it had been pinned there by the media. Tough. Though Bev
hadn’t warmed to Faith Winters, the woman had a point. If she’d been better informed, she might have been better protected. Now they were all in spilt milk mode. Pass the Kleenex.

They were alongside the MG when Mac reached into a back pocket. “Here y’go, boss.” She frowned. He’d dropped a blister pack in her palm. Fact it was still warm was not a
thought to hold. “What’s this?”

“Paracetemol.” Blank look from Bev. “Splitting headache?” he reminded her.

“Top man.” She peered closer at the pack, felt her lip curve as she fumbled in her bag for car keys. “Sort the door-to-doors for us, Mac?” Police teams needed briefing,
pointing in the right direction. Blenheim Avenue being a well-known insomnia hot-spot whose residents had nothing better to do at four in the morning than gaze through windows, note car numbers,
video neighbourhood thugs. Yeah right. She unlocked the Midget.

“No prob,” Mac said. “Where you off?”

“Carphone Warehouse.” Casual. “Need a new mobile.” Throwaway remark.

Mac caught it, reddened slightly. “’bout that, boss...”

“’s OK, mate.”

“Yeah, but...”

“No sweat.” She gave a mock salute. “And no worries – the lips are sealed.”

Mac’s brow was plough-able, the lines deepened as she slipped him the blister pack. He clocked the word, Viagra, and screwed his eyes. “Shit!”

“Makes you come – and go?” Her mouth developed a speculative pout. “Well I never.”

The big man was running late. Half a dozen squad members were gathered in the Magpie incident room at Highgate nick waiting for him to show. The extra curricular brief was
supposed to kick off at midday. Wall clock showed 12.10. Weak sunlight glinting on smeared glass suggested the window cleaners were overdue as well. At least the snow hadn’t put in another
appearance.