Death Line (9 page)

Bev stifled a yawn. It was all a bit stagey for her. If the guv was up there, they’d be straining to hear. Message would get through loud and clear, though. Byford was no ham. She glanced
round. Curious the big man hadn’t showed.

Knight had his props ready; he grabbed a stack of newspapers from the desk behind. “How the fuck did this get out?” Bums shuffled, eyes shifted, most of the thirty-strong team
developed a fascination with footwear. Curran raised an uncertain hand. Knight dismissed it with tetchy flap. Right now, he said, the source of the leak was secondary, his main concern was its
consequences. Waving the local rag in their faces, he upped the volume: “Have you any idea how much damage this could do?”

Not in the same league as the harm Haines inflicted, Bev reckoned. She sensed Mac bristling, noticed Powell purse dubious lips. But it wasn’t the point, not the way Knight was spelling it
out. With each salvo, he slung another paper back across the desk. Bev kept a close eye on his skin tone. The pink tinge had been on the rise and now came close to the colour of the Sun’s
masthead, the paper he brandished briefly before it too hit the deck. “It’s not trial by tabloid.” Knight loosened his tie, snatched at the top button of his shirt.
“They’ve hung drawn and bloody quartered the man.”

Haines’s bleeding body parts flashed before Bev’s eyes. Shuddering, she perished the thought. It was difficult to work up pity for predatory creeps like Haines when the yuman rights
brigade did such a good job. She’d save her sympathy for the victims.

While Knight continued reading the riot act, she peered at the papers on the desk. Haines hadn’t just been named, his back story had been resurrected. Reporters had written up as much of
it as they dared, or their editors-stroke-lawyers thought they could get away with. Among a rash of quote marks, stories were scattered with: ‘it’s believeds’, ‘sources
say’, ‘it’s understoods’, and that great catch-all: allegedly. Most damning of all, perhaps, were references to the Bristol court case that never was.

“His lawyer’s out there – ” Knight jabbed a finger over their heads “– banging on about his client’s rights.”
Never?
Bev sat back, legs
crossed, knew the words fair and trial would get an airing next. “Tell me this.” Knight folded his arms. “How the hell is Haines going to get a fair hearing now?”

Close. She sniffed, circled an ankle. Knight left a few seconds’ gap that no one rushed to fill, shook his head, then took his time walking to the water cooler. From the corridor came the
sound of running footsteps. That stopped at the door. Heads swivelled as the wood took a chunk of plaster off the wall. For a sec Bev expected to see Haines’s brief storm in arguing the toss.
They should be so lucky. It was DC Darren New who entered, glancing nervy darts round until he located Knight.

“You need to see this, guv.” A none too steady hand raised a video. Given Dazza had been tracking down sex workers Bev doubted it’d be family viewing. “Haines is on here.
And I don’t think he’s our killer.”

Roland Haines had not dumped Josh Banks’s body. His alibi for even longer than the time in question was tighter than highly strung piano wire, considerably tauter than
the spotty white buttocks spread across the stained stripy mattress now showing at a cinema near you. Not. Darren had treated Knight to a private viewing prior to the home movie being screened to a
packed house in one of the nick’s video suites. The gaffer had come out with that haunted look, like he’d seen a ghost. Bev’s verdict? It left a nasty taste...

Back in the office now, she nibbled a sausage roll, shoved the greasy remains across her cluttered desk. “Sorry, mate. Yours if you want it.”

The cholesterol-fest had been Mac’s shout; he’d nipped across to Gregg’s for a bite to keep them going. Even though breakfast had gone by the board, Bev had lost her appetite.
The recurring vision of Haines’s pasty flesh was only part of the reason.

“Un-fucking believable, eh?” Sour-faced, she slumped back in the chair, hands behind her head. It was a brief respite before heading out to the Quarry Bank estate.

Mac examined his bacon bap. “You can say that again.” She’d rather not.

Either the Balsall Heath informant had lied, made a genuine mistake, didn’t exist – or Haines had a double. While allegedly offloading the boy’s body, Haines had been caught on
film dead to the world in a rented room in Hogarth Row just off the Hagley Road. If there’d been a rent book, the name on it would be Carrie Spinks. But it was cash – among other things
– in hand. Known on the street as Cash and Carrie, Ms Spinks was a working girl.

She also happened to be Haines’s step-sister.

“Darren did good finding her.” Mac’s bap was history; he made inroads on the sausage roll while Bev swigged Red Bull. Daz, she mused, had had a damn sight more joy than the
two-strong team tasked with tracing the mystery caller.

Modesty unbounded, Daz had chalked the success down to his Tom Cruise looks. Another sex worker had tipped him the wink and the address. He’d knocked several times last night but the place
had been empty. Turned out Spinks had been playing away. Daz had given it another whirl en route to work. Leery at first, he’d told Bev, Carrie nearly wet herself when he asked if Haines was
a regular john. She’d soon put Daz straight about the relationship. Course they’d not been doing the bizz, she said.

Bev curled a lip. Yuck. The very thought...

“Bet I know what you’re thinking, boss.” Lechy waggle of bushy eyebrows.

She nodded at his diet coke. “Get that down your neck, mate. Some of us have got work to do.” Sooner they were done, sooner they could hit the road. First preference for Bev
would’ve been the follow-up interview with Haines, but that wasn’t to be. Knight was in there now. He’d just sent word via a uniform, wanted more checks on Haines’s
movements on the afternoon Josh disappeared. The creep had added detail to the earlier version.

Pensive, she wandered to the window, looking for loopholes in Carrie’s story, knowing there weren’t any. She turned her mouth down. Plenty of press guys out there though,
wouldn’t be long before they sniffed out the latest twist.

As Daz had reported it to the squad: Carrie had let her half-brother bed down after he’d turned up at the place three sheets to the wind around midnight on Wednesday. That he came bearing
a few lines of Charlie in his back pocket helped his case. But nowhere near as much as the street camera that had clocked Haines’s arrival and subsequent departure six hours later. Even if
Carrie had been tight with the truth, the closed circuit footage was timed and dated, proof irrefutable. Unless Haines was a member of the magic circle he’d not been in two places at
once.

As for Carrie filming him in the buff? A laff, wannit?

Cracked Bev up. Sighing, she shook her head. It was dead funny except it loosened their grip on a collar for a little boy’s murder. Knight had reconvened the brief, assigned catch-up tasks
to the squad like there was no tomorrow. In a sense, there wasn’t. The Haines cock-up didn’t just mean Operation Swift was back to square one: a day could’ve been lost.

“Why are we waiting, why-eye are we waiting...?” The crooning was crap. She turned to find Mac tongue through cheek, doing a Benny Hill salute and holding the door. “Chop,
chop, some of us have got work to.”

She grabbed her bag, keys, shades. “Lippie git.”

“Takes one to...”

“Enough already.” She raised a palm as she passed. Her lip twitched though. Go mad in this job without a bit of joshing.

And looking on the bright side, they still had a child’s Mickey Mouse sock in with the forensics guys. Assuming the creep couldn’t wriggle out of that one.

“Ask one of your fit-up merchants, Mr Knight.” Roland Haines wasn’t having a laugh, the face was deadpan, the tone dripped conviction. Like a sink estate
Sunday school teacher, he sat all prim and pious, next to a pin-striped brief who could’ve been a night club bouncer in fancy dress. Knight looked to be the one having doubts.

“He’s asking you, Haines.” Powell snarled, leaned menacingly across the metal desk. The DI was doing his bad cop act. He had it down to a fine art. Maybe that’s why the
gaffer had asked him to sit in on the session. Tactics had been worked out before Haines walked in: Knight would play it cool. The tapes had been running fifteen minutes. Looking at the gaffer,
Powell reckoned Knight needed an ice pack.

“Back off, detective.” Haines stared. Powell stayed where he was. The creep didn’t faze him, but Morriss had been right about the eyes. Knight played a pen through his fingers,
sign he was happy for Powell to take over.

“What you scared of, Haines?” Dying of boredom if his expression was anything to go by. “Just answer the question. How did the sock get there? Quit stalling.” He’d
been happy enough to relate his movements Wednesday afternoon, almost thrown in his bowel movements. But nothing on the sock. Genuine? Ingenuous? Powell couldn’t call it. For a few seconds
more, he maintained eye contact before moving casually to reach a jug of water.

Haines gave a theatrical sigh. “What part of ‘I don’t know’ do you not get?”

Smug tosser. Powell took his time drinking, then: “See, I wouldn’t have a problem if it was a few bulbs... pack of seeds, maybe.”

The laugh was more of a bark. “Pardon me while I piss my pants.” He didn’t crack a smile. “The sock was planted. You know that well as I do...”

“Alan Titchmarsh a mate, is he?”

“Tut, tut, tut. Really, Mr Powell...” The brief, bald as Knight but butch with it, wasn’t struggling for words. The condescending tone implied he’d not stoop so low.

Haines had no such qualms. “Do me a favour, Mr Detective, do I really look dense enough to leave incriminating evidence lying round?”

“Now you come to mention it...” Powell squinted, scrutinised the guy’s face. “Yeah.”

“Well you’re wrong, dickhead.” Deliberately, Haines stroked what looked still-tender bruising round his eyes. He’d already dropped dark threats about suing, police
brutality, unfair arrest, prejudicial reporting. All that cobblers. “And soon as the facts are straight, you’ll be paying for that, too.”

Powell balled his fists; Knight’s lips were already tight. No one reacted to a tap on the door. Co-ordinator guru Jack Hainsworth came in with a slip of paper. “Guv. Just come in.
Something you should know.”

“Why in God’s name didn’t he say so before?”

Good work, sergeant. Well done. “Best ask him, gaffer.” Hell should I know? Silence on the line suggested DCI Knight was running through what she’d just relayed. When Josh
Banks walked out of Hyde Lea junior school at three-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon, Haines had been losing several shirts on the three o’clock at Doncaster, the three-thirty from Aintree and
the three forty-five from Goodwood. No wonder he’d junked the betting slips. Not all bad luck though. Ladbrokes still had the tape from its surveillance cameras: Haines watching all three
races with a couple of cronies.

Winner was clear. How long did Lancelot need to work it out? “Means he couldn’t have done it, boss.” Mac tapped her on the elbow with a dark chocolate Magnum. She mouthed a Ta,
mate, watched him amble off sucking an ice lolly. They were outside the bookies on George Road along with a passing parade of shopping trolleys, baby buggies, buses and bikes. High noon; blazing
saddles. Bev could feel the cotton dress sticking to her bum.

“It’s my fault,” Knight said. Not what she’d expected.

“Come again, gaffer.” She was struggling to pull off the wrapper.

“Blinkered vision. I got fixated on the intelligence about Haines being seen dumping the body.”

She shrugged. “We all did.” But then Lancelot was the boss, the buck stopper.

“Yes, sergeant, but I’m the one supposed to have an overview. We got sidetracked. If we’d run a more thorough check on his movements earlier...” She narrowed her eyes,
cast her mind back to the interview room, recalled Haines’s knowing smirk.

“Yeah, but...” Hold that thought. She frowned. Sodding Magnum was a distraction she could do without, a load of gunge was leaking out the paper.

“What?”

She spotted a bin, wandered over, got shot of the mess. “Way I see it, soon as we picked him up, he could’ve put himself in the clear... if he wanted to.”

Knight was speeding up. “You think he was playing us?”

Like the Royal Philharmonic. They ought to do the bugger for obstruction. “He was enjoying it, gaffer. Knew he hadn’t done it. Knew we couldn’t touch him. Maybe thought he
could screw a few quid out of us for the injuries.” A bob or two for the black eyes. “The only time he got antsy was when we told him about the sock.” Because if its presence
wasn’t down to him it meant someone else had joined the game. On the opposite team. “It was news to him, gaffer, I’d stake my pension on that.” Knight was rubbing his chin,
she heard the rasp.

“He claimed it was a plant all along.” The DCI sounded pensive. “Christ, this is all we need. You know what it means...?”

Bent cops, rotten apples, bad press. He could be right. But Bev was thinking about the duff tip-off that had led them to Haines’s door in the first place. Who, where, and more importantly
why, had an anonymous informant pointed the finger in the wrong direction? She was about to share, but the question must’ve been rhetorical.

“Right, OK.” Brief, businesslike, the DCI cutting losses. “He gets a bollocking for withholding information but we’ll have to release him. We need to review, refocus,
redirect the inquiry. Get back soon as you can. Well done, sergeant.”

Better late than never.

“’Kay, boss?” Mac sounding chipper.

She turned to see what he was up to, arched an eyebrow. “Where’d you get that, mate?”

He didn’t even look sheepish as he waved half a Magnum at the nearby bin. “Shame to see it go to waste.”

Still pensive, Knight hung up, picturing a basket bulging with venomous snakes. Bad enough a child murderer was still at large, but it looked as if someone had deliberately
tried to implicate an innocent man.

The DCI rose, walked to the window, thought it through. Photographic evidence made it clear Roland Haines could neither have abducted Josh Banks nor dumped the boy’s body. But someone
– and it could be a police officer – wanted Haines to go down for it. The sock hadn’t appeared in the guy’s bedsit by magic. But wasn’t a bent copper too obvious an
explanation? And the original intelligence placing Haines at the Marston Road crime scene had come from a woman.