Bones in the Nest (21 page)

The lift juddered towards the tenth floor, but the phone was dead, the battery empty. The lift stopped but the number ten didn’t light up and the doors remained closed. He was stuck between floors.

DCI Khan had turned his chair round and was sitting with his elbows leaning on the seat-back, his head resting in the cup of his hands as if his neck was too tired to support it. Another briefing was due to start in ten minutes and Lizzie wanted to make sure the AV equipment was working so she could share last night’s discoveries from the lab. Khan’s eyes were closed, so she crept past him, assuming he was as tired as she was. They’d both left late last night and somehow ended up wandering into the Taj Mahal restaurant. He hadn’t talked about the case or asked her very much about herself, but he’d opened up a bit about his own life, and she’d ended up feeling guilty about how she’d behaved towards him at the crime scene.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ His voice startled her.

‘Yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting?’

‘I have very low expectations, Lizzie, and they’re getting lower by the day.’

‘I’ll take that as an insult, I think.’

She turned on the laptop, but nothing happened to the projector, which was attached to the ceiling.

‘Do it in a different order. Try turning the projector on first.’

‘You’re wasted as a detective, Sam,’ she smiled. ‘You’d be better off in technical support.’

But he didn’t return her smile. He looked beyond her to the two boards where mirror images of Mohammad Asaf and Taheera Ahmed faced each other.

‘Yesterday, I went to see another parent who’d lost their child,’ he said, standing up stiffly and walking over to the picture of Taheera. ‘I watched the light go out in her father’s eyes. I’ve thought about your theory that it’s a family thing, a so-called honour killing, but when I saw him, I saw that whoever took her life, took his too.’

She waited, but he didn’t say any more. The silence between them was broken by the electronic whir of the projector lens opening up. She started the laptop again and eventually an image formed on the screen. The girl’s arm and the finger-shaped bruises filled the frame. She clicked forward to an enhanced image of the prints, clicked again and added an electronic Post-it note that said ‘pigskin’.

‘Gloves?’ Khan said.

‘Standard gardening gloves. No fingerprints.’

‘Like the ones in the potting shed that Chloe Toms had access to?’

‘Yes. But clean. The pattern’s the same, but the ones I took from the potting shed left traces of soil behind, which were easy to see under the microscope. This glove had never been used for gardening.’

She clicked on to another image. It could have been the wavy edge of a conch shell. When she zoomed out it became a section of the fatal wound across Taheera’s throat.

‘That’s some sort of oil, you see? It’s been picked up in the light source treatment. It may take a couple of days to run all the tests, but yesterday I discovered that the manufacturers use a specialist petroleum-based oil to finish new knives, whereas your average gardener buys an off-theshelf, vegetable-based honing oil. There’s no dirt or rust in the wound, which also suggests it was a brand-new knife. Like this one.’

Lizzie put the open pruning knife, in its clean plastic bag, on the table in front of Khan. He shuddered slightly.

‘A new knife and new gloves?’

‘Exactly,’ she said.

‘I’ll get someone to phone Halsworth Grange to find out whether Bill Coldacre has been to the garden centre recently. He might have provided the girl with new equipment, she’s only just started after all.’

‘You still think she did it?’

Khan shrugged. ‘She didn’t deny it.’

‘So she’s spoken?’

He shook his head. ‘Either she’s mad, or clever, I can’t decide. I was in there for four hours with her yesterday and she didn’t utter a word. She wouldn’t answer any questions, but she did draw this.’

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

‘Who is it?’ Lizzie said.

‘I don’t know. It’s not a great work of art. I’ve got one of
the constables putting it through EvoFIT to see if it throws up a name.’

‘Do you think she saw this person?’

‘Hard to say. But she drew it with her right hand.’

‘So you believe me?’

‘Possibly.’ He rubbed his beard and she could see how tired he was. ‘Yesterday, I was being harassed by the duty solicitor and her probation officer to either charge her or let her go. The probation officer said we could have her recalled to prison if we think she’s breached her licence. The sighting of her on the Chasebridge estate would give us enough to get her locked up.’

‘She seems very vulnerable.’

‘More vulnerable than Taheera Ahmed, who’s dead?’ he said. ‘More vulnerable than her grieving family?’

Lizzie flicked through her slide show and avoided eye contact with Khan. She couldn’t get Chloe Toms’ numb expression and bony ribs out of her mind.

‘I’m not an ogre, Lizzie,’ he sighed. ‘You’re right. We haven’t got enough to hold her. When I came back from the restaurant last night, I arranged her transport and she went back to York.’

‘To the hostel?’

‘Yes. At least we know where she is. I’ve asked the North Yorkshire force to keep an eye on her and let us know if she does anything unusual. Thanks, by the way, for dinner, I appreciated it,’ he was rubbing his beard again. ‘Once she’s over the shock, we’ll try again. I’m sure she knows something.’

Lizzie was relieved, but she didn’t have time to dwell on
it. She still had to put the notes from Donald’s work into the next slide show. This promised to be a long briefing, with three cases to cover. Two homicides and an arson attack had sent Doncaster’s crime statistics into orbit and Commander Laine wasn’t happy.

Sean pressed the alarm but nothing happened. He put his ear up to the mesh of the speaker but there was no sound; he doubted whether it was connected to a control room. It was cool in the lift. The hairs on his arms and legs were bristling. The floor was damp and stank of piss. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to work out which section was the escape hatch. If he was in a James Bond movie, he would push it open and climb out. He shivered. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the lift had stopped between floors. It must be something to do with Terry Starkey. They’d worked out where he’d gone and decided to trap him. He didn’t think thick-necked Gary’s hips would fit through the hatch, but Starkey’s might.

He listened to the building. A door banged quite close, somewhere above him, and he heard the sound of a young child, giggling.

‘Bye bye, dada,’ said the voice.

‘Come on cheeky!’ A woman spoke, only feet away.

The lift had stopped just below the tenth floor. He could hear the wheels of a buggy squeaking and then coming to a stop. There was a pause.

‘Bloody thing,’ the woman said.

Sean wondered if he should call out.

‘It better not be stuck again.’ The wheels of the buggy squeaked and someone was banging on a door. ‘Lift’s broken. Here, Dave, give us a hand down the stairs, I can’t manage her and the buggy.’

There was a man’s voice, indistinct from behind the door of a flat, then the sound of the door opening. Sean didn’t want them to go down the stairs, he didn’t want them to leave him, trapped where Starkey could find him.

‘Hello! Can you hear me?’ he called.

‘Hello, hello!’ The toddler’s voice sang out in reply.

It sounded as if the adults weren’t there. Perhaps the man needed to get dressed, perhaps he was arguing about having to help. The toddler kept repeating ‘hello’ and it seemed like an age before he heard anyone else.

‘I’m going to go down that housing office and I’m going tell them,’ the woman was saying.

Sean took a deep breath and shouted. ‘Hey! I’m stuck in the lift. Any chance you could call the emergency number for me? I’ve got no signal and the intercom’s not working.’

But before she could answer, the lift mechanism whined into life, as if his words had undone a spell. It shook and lurched upwards. The doors slid open and Sean stood, in pants and socks, in front of a young woman, her little girl and a man in a Doncaster Rovers T-shirt. All three stared at Sean. Nobody spoke. Suddenly the door to the staircase was
flung back. There was nowhere for him to hide.

‘Come on!’ Saleem said, breathless in the open doorway. ‘Let’s get up on the roof. We’ll be safe there. I came back to talk to you and I saw Terry Starkey’s lot running round in circles. They’ve been up and down the stairs and now they’ve gone back outside. They’re looking for you, aren’t they?’

Sean nodded, his muscles flooding with relief. He followed Saleem to the stairs and gave the young family one last look but they’d already turned away. The woman was pushing the buggy into the lift and the man gave her a peck on the cheek, as if this was the beginning of any normal day.

Twenty minutes later Sean was being driven away from the Chasebridge estate. It might have been PC Gavin Wentworth’s driving, or it might have been relief, but Sean was feeling very sick. He opened the window and gulped the morning air.

‘Steady on, mate,’ Gav said, laughing. ‘You’ll catch a cold dressed like that.’

Gav had been laughing, on and off, ever since he’d set eyes on Sean crouching on the roof next to the air vents in nothing but socks and boxer shorts. Alerted by Saleem’s shout of: ‘Oi, copper, up ’ere’, Gav had taken the lift and by the time he’d arrived, the boy had disappeared, but not before showing Sean the control panel, in its not-so-locked cabinet on the roof, in case he ever needed to stop the lift again. On the way down they’d hammered on Jack’s door but there had been no answer. He’d either gone out or passed out.

‘Can we go via my nan’s? I need to pick up some clothes.’

‘Well, make sure it’s your uniform. You’re back with me, son, as soon as the briefing’s over.’

‘Great news,’ Sean said. ‘I should have stayed on the roof.’

‘Feeling’s mutual!’ Gavin laughed and pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

The briefing had started when they arrived. As he sat down, something caught Sean’s eye. Stuck to the corner of the whiteboard was an A4 piece of paper with a childish drawing of a face. The cheeks and lips were out of proportion but the eyes were unmistakable. Terry Starkey was staring straight at him.

He couldn’t follow what was being said. In his two days off the job the world had gone mad. A girl was dead. The picture of her body surrounded by leaves and flowers was like something artistically staged. He’d need to be very sure, but her eyes, the set of her nose, even in death, were familiar. Then it struck him. She was the girl in the picture in the library window, in the black and white photo of the playground.

He forced himself to listen. Each whiteboard had its separate family tree, its lines and patterns linking people and places, the fire at AK News, prints on a fragment of glass. DCI Khan was saying that the motive was unclear, but he drew a line in red pen to a photograph of Saleem, who was also being linked to low-level drug dealing on the estate.

Khan was talking about the Asaf brothers, the fathers who were both away in Pakistan. One had lost a son and both had lost their business, so why hadn’t they come back? Sean’s head was swimming and his mouth was dry, then DI Rick Houghton had his hand up, he was saying Sean’s name.

‘PC Denton might have some useful information, DCI Khan, can we invite him to address the briefing?’

Khan nodded and Sean made his way to the front. As he went past, Rick whispered:

‘Tell them about the CUC and Starkey.’

His colleagues were egging him on with grins and even a thumbs up from Carly at the back. Even DS Simkins offered him a nod and half a smile. Sean felt a little light-headed.

‘Excuse me. I think we need to consider that Mohammad Asaf’s murder was racially motivated. I … um … I was at a meeting, by mistake, which turned out to be organised by a right-wing group. A key player in that group is a man called Terry Starkey and, look, sorry this isn’t what I was going to say at all, but that drawing, on the other board, looks very like him.’

If he was expecting everyone to stand up and applaud him, he was disappointed. There was a brief silence, broken by Rick clearing his throat.

‘Um,’ Sean tried to get the ideas in his head into some sort of order. ‘I think Terry Starkey is in the middle of this. It was something Saleem Asaf said. He knew the lads who’d been paid to chase his cousin, presumably to his death. Sorry if that’s not much use, but if Saleem can identify those involved in killing Asaf, maybe we should talk to him again.’

‘And he trusts you?’ It was Khan. The question seemed straightforward enough, no hint of sarcasm. Maybe Sean had been forgiven.

‘Yes. I think he does. He may have just saved my life.’

There was a ripple of laughter across the incident room and Sean realised that news of his escape in his underwear to
the roof of Eagle Mount One was now common knowledge. He sat down again, his face and ears burning, but Khan was watching him, stroking his beard and nodding slightly, as if something had clicked in his mind. Sean needed this briefing to be over so he could fill Khan in on some of the other things he’d worked out, but first he needed get to the toilet. A cold sweat gripped him and his stomach was churning.

People were standing up and a hubbub of conversation broke out around him. Images from the briefing merged in his mind: bodies and fingerprints, Lizzie had been waving a sharp weapon and some gardening gloves, and all Sean could do was breathe in and out of his nose, deep, slow breaths to keep the nausea still. He got to his feet and pushed his way out.

He was only just in time. With one hand on the edge of the cistern he emptied his stomach and then some. He left the cubicle and washed his face, rinsed his mouth and stared at the hollow-eyed fool in the mirror. The more he stared, the more he could see his father’s features starting to creep up on his own. He turned to go and let the door of the gents’ toilet swing shut behind him. Along the corridor the door to the incident room was open and the rows of chairs were empty. He could hear two female voices raised in an argument. He looked in. Lizzie Morrison and DS Simkins broke off when they saw him.

‘Sorry, am I interrupting?’

‘You OK?’ Lizzie said. ‘You look pale.’

‘Rough night.’

‘Lucky you!’ she said.

‘Not really.’

DS Dawn Simkins was smiling at him. It pushed her cheeks into an unfamiliar pattern, as if the muscles weren’t used to it.

‘Good to have you back, Denton. If you’ve got a minute, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you. In private.’

Lizzie was busy removing a memory stick from the back of the laptop. Sean didn’t want her to go, but Simkins was pointedly waiting for her to finish and leave them alone.

‘Catch you later, Sean,’ Lizzie said.

‘Yeah, where can I find you …?’ He faltered. ‘If there’s something I want to … I need to catch up a bit first, but …’

‘Extension 205, any time.’

Then she was gone and the square jaw of DS Simkins was back to normal.

‘Let’s get down to business.’

Sean looked at the boards and the drawing of Starkey. He wasn’t sure what it was he was searching for and then he saw it. Someone had written a list of vehicles under a heading which said:
Halsworth Grange. Small white Fiat. Scout minibus. Dark posh car.

‘Could “Dark posh car” be a blue BMW?’

He reached for his phone to find the photo, but the battery was still as dead as before. Someone here must have the right sort of charger. He’d have to go on a hunt.

‘Never mind that, I want you to look at this,’ Dawn Simkins was tapping the end of a pen on a document printed on green paper. ‘Have a seat.’

Sean sat down.

‘What is it?’

‘Whistle-blowing Policy. Can’t you read?’

Fuck off.

‘Of course I can. I mean, why?’

If he’d been expecting to have the word ‘whistle-blowing’ put under his nose, he’d have seen it straight away, but he was still trying to break it down, match it to something on the incident board, but it didn’t fit.

‘Wendy Gore suggested we have a word. Professional Standards?’ she said, moving closer, the soft muscle of her upper arm pressing against his. ‘Now, I’m here to support you if you want to file a complaint against DCI Khan.’

‘Dawn, can I call you Dawn?’ Sean said, moving away. ‘I don’t need this right now, what I need is a phone charger, so I can get on with some police work. So you can stick your whistle-blowing policy up your arse, and unless you’ve got a phone charger up there too, I’ll see you later.’

He almost skipped out of the room. He might be off his head on lack of sleep and lack of food, but he was buzzing. In the corridor he found Rick Houghton.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing,’ Sean said. ‘Have you got a spare phone charger that fits this? I’ve got a load of stuff. I don’t know what to make of half of it. God knows if it’s even admissible evidence, but we need to look at it. Khan needs to see it too. Our very own DCI Sam Nasir Khan. Let’s keep him here, shall we, where he’s wanted? And send that old trout back to Sheffield.’

‘Sean?’ Rick said. ‘Are you still drunk?’

‘Probably.’