Fever of the Bone (14 page)

So first thing, she’d told Kevin Matthews to cover her back if Blake came looking and set off to drive over the Pennines to Halifax. The motorway route might have been quicker, but it was almost twice the length of the cross-country drive. Carol hesitated to call it the pretty way; there were too many remnants of the area’s polluted industrial past scattered across the dramatic landscape to qualify it for that description. But there was no denying the dramatic approach into Halifax, a long spiral down from the high ridge of the moors to the dark sprawl held in the bowl of the valley.

Vanessa Hill’s company HQ was a squat brick building on the outskirts of the town. Carol parked in a visitor’s slot and had barely turned off the engine when her phone rang. The display told her it was DS Matthews. ‘Bugger,’ she said, opening the line. ‘Kevin, what’s happening?’

‘Paula’s just been on. She’s at a Northern Division crime scene. Anonymous tip, looks like Daniel Morrison. They want to punt it over to us.’

Duty dictated that Carol should turn round and drive straight back to Bradfield. But she’d come this far and she suspected her interview with Vanessa Hill wasn’t going to take long. And Northern Division’s patch was at least on the right side of Bradfield. ‘OK, Kevin. Text me directions. I’ll be there soon as I can. Tell Paula to hold the fort. You get over there now, make sure we’re in the loop. And when they get a positive ID, I want you to go with the FLO to tell the parents.’

‘Got it. Do you want me to alert Tony?’

A routine inquiry, because her team knew that Tony preferred to see the body where it lay if there was any possibility of it being a case where they could use his expertise. But Tony was off limits now. And probably on his way to West Mercia to work for someone who was allowed to appreciate his skills. ‘No, that’s fine. I’ll see you shortly.’

With a fresh sense of urgency, Carol walked up to the steel and glass doors, where she was brought up short by the need to announce herself via the intercom. She hadn’t expected that. Nothing for it but to go for the full pomp of rank. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan to see Ms Hill,’ she said.

There was a long silence. Carol imagined consternation followed by consultation. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ a female voice crackled at her.

‘We don’t normally consider an appointment necessary,’ Carol said as frostily as she could manage. Another silence, then the door buzzed. She found herself in a vestibule that led to a small reception area furnished with discreet comfort. The woman behind the desk looked startled. Carol read her name badge and smiled as she said, ‘Good morning, Bethany. I’m here to see Ms Hill.’

Bethany cast a swift look over her shoulder towards the door that led into the main part of the building. ‘Can I see your ID?’ she said, a spasm of a smile flashing across the lower part of her face.

Carol fished it out of her bag and held it up for Bethany to see. Before she could react, the door swung open and Vanessa Hill swept in. At first glance, she hadn’t changed much since Carol had last seen her. She was still keeping the years at arm’s length, thanks to a hairdresser with a discreet hand on the golden brown dye and her own good eye for the judicious amount of make-up. She remained slender, her figure flattered by a beautifully cut suit whose narrow skirt revealed legs still shapely. However, the lines on her face that had revealed her less than generous nature seemed to have been smoothed out. Botox, thought Carol, marvelling again at the vanity that would persuade a woman that injecting poison into her face was a good move.

‘It’s the police to see you,’ Bethany said, apprehensive as a menopausal shoplifter confronted by a store detective.

Vanessa’s mouth curled in a contemptuous smile. ‘This isn’t the police, Bethany. This is my son’s girlfriend. Nothing to be worried about here.’ Wrong-footed, Carol struggled in vain to find a response. Seeing her discomfort, Vanessa carried on. ‘Come through, Carol. Let’s not discuss family business in front of the staff.’

Bethany looked relieved. Grateful not to have committed some unwitting gaffe, Carol thought, following Vanessa through the door into an open-plan office. Clearly bustling with focused activity. She couldn’t see a man in the place, and none of the women even glanced up from their computers or their phones as they passed.

Vanessa’s office was at the far end of the room. It was smaller than Carol expected, and more functional. The only trace of luxury was an electric massage pad attached to the chair behind the desk.

‘I’m not Tony’s girlfriend,’ Carol said as Vanessa closed the door behind her.

Vanessa sighed. ‘Of course you’re not. More’s the pity.’ She passed Carol and settled into her chair, waving at a comfortless visitor’s chair opposite. ‘Let’s not pretend we like each other, Carol. What are you doing here?’

‘Edmund Arthur Blythe.’ At the sound of his name, Vanessa compressed her lips and narrowed her eyes. Undaunted, Carol continued. ‘Tony wants to know more about him. How the two of you met, what he was doing in Halifax, that sort of thing.’

‘No, he doesn’t. You might want to, but Tony’s got no interest. He’d have been happier if you hadn’t interfered in the first place. Letting him sign Eddie’s estate over to me would have been the best thing for him.’ Vanessa squared her shoulders and folded her hands on the desk.

‘Apart from the small matter of, what - half a million or so?’

Vanessa made a noise that might have been a laugh. ‘If you think my son gives a toss about money, you know a lot less about him than I gave you credit for. Trust me, you sticking your nose in our business has led to nothing but grief for Tony. You don’t understand the first thing about him. Whatever he might have told you, I’m the one who knows what’s best for him because I’m the one who knows what makes him tick. I shaped him, not you.’ She stood up. ‘Now, if that’s all that’s on your mind, I think it’s time for you to sling your hook.’

‘Why won’t you tell me? It’s ancient history. It’s no skin off your nose now. It’s not like you can sink any lower in my estimation. What’s the big secret? Tony deserves to know why his father didn’t want to stick around.’

‘And I deserve my privacy. This conversation is over, Carol.’ Vanessa walked past her and threw open the door. ‘Next time you come here, you better have a warrant.’

Furious and frustrated, Carol walked past Vanessa, head held high. A humiliating waste of time, that’s what this had been. But as she slammed her car door, Carol vowed that Vanessa Hill would not defeat her. Now she had an added spur in her search for Edmund Arthur Blythe’s story. Not just to help Tony but to spite his mother. Right now, it was hard to say which gave the stronger impetus.

It made sense to take the train to Worcester. More time to reread the case information. The possibility of arriving fresh rather than frazzled from negotiating the maze of motorways round Birmingham. A no-brainer. Normally, Tony wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But without a car, he’d be at the mercy of West Mercia Police. If he wanted to drive past Arthur Blythe’s house or take a look at his factory, he’d have to embark on an awkward explanation to some police driver. And if he felt the need to visit the crime scene in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, he’d earn himself a reputation for being even more weird than they were expecting. He decided freedom was worth the trade-off.

By the time he pulled into his hotel in Worcester, he’d lost count of the number of times he’d cursed his own stupidity. Why hadn’t he thought of hiring a car once he’d arrived? He’d estimated two hours’ driving; it had taken three and a half and left him feeling like he’d had the worst kind of workout. Tony laid his head on the steering wheel and tried in vain to loosen the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He dragged himself out of the car and checked in.

He’d barely closed the door behind him when he felt the heavy hand of depression settle on him. He knew there were hotels whose rooms gladdened the heart. He’d even stayed in a couple over the years, mostly when deluded companies had hired him under the misapprehension that he could help motivate their management teams. This was not one of those rooms. The décor - no, you couldn’t call it décor, not in any meaningful sense of the word; there were various dead shades of brown in the room, ranging from cheap-and-nasty milk chocolate to tobacco. The window was too small and looked out on the car park. The TV had only seven channels and the bed had all the give of a wooden pallet. He understood the exigencies of police budgets, but surely there must have been a better option than this?

Sighing, Tony dumped his bag and sat on the bed facing a print of the African veldt. The connection between Worcester and wildebeest was lost on him. He took out his phone and called DI Stuart Patterson. ‘I’m at the hotel,’ he said without preamble.

‘I don’t know how you go about this,’ Patterson said. ‘I think you said you wanted to see the crime scene?’

‘That’s right. It’s a good first stop for me. I’d like to talk to the parents too, if that’s possible.’

Patterson offered to send DS Ambrose over to pick him up. Tony would have preferred a face-to-face with Patterson himself, but working with new teams always meant adjusting to the way they ran the game. So he’d settle for the bagman for now and build a bridgehead from there.

With half an hour to kill, Tony decided to take a walk. The hotel was on the fringe of the city centre and five minutes’ walk brought him to a street of banks, estate agents and the sort of chain stores that had replaced traditional small shop-keepers, selling the same chocolates, shoes, greetings cards, alcohol and dry-cleaning services as every other high street in the country. He ambled along, vaguely looking in the windows until he was brought up short by the familiar name of the estate agency he’d been dealing with.

Front and centre in the window were the details of the very house he was trying to sell. ‘For a man who doesn’t believe in coincidence, I seem to be confronting a few. Might as well roll with it, eh?’ The sound of his voice broke the moment and before he could stop and think, he walked into the agency. ‘Good morning,’ he said cheerily. ‘Can I talk to someone about that house in the window?’

Paula had never been more relieved to see her boss. The police surgeon and the forensics team were eager to remove Daniel Morrison’s body, but she’d enlisted Franny Riley’s support to insist that it stayed where it was till the DCI had seen it. ‘You can’t shift the cadaver till the SIO has signed off on it,’ she’d protested. ‘I don’t care if your guv wants rid. It stays till DCI Jordan gets here.’

Kevin Matthews had turned up in time to back her up. But the atmosphere was growing increasingly hostile as time drifted past and Carol failed to appear. Finally Paula saw her striding up the drive towards them, looking decidedly more chic than usual. Wherever she’d been, she’d made a definite effort to impress. ‘Sorry to keep you all waiting,’ Carol said, charm on full beam. ‘I got stuck behind an accident on the Barrowden road, right down in the valley where there’s no mobile signal. Thank you all for being so patient.’

When she was on form like this, there was nobody like Carol Jordan. She had everybody scrambling to please her, to earn that look of approval. It didn’t hurt that she was easy on the eye, but the set of her mouth and the directness of her gaze meant nobody was ever going to take her for a bimbo. Paula knew she was a little bit in love with her boss, but she’d learned to live with that as an exercise in futility. ‘It’s this way, chief,’ she said, leading the way over to the trench, introducing Riley on the way. ‘DS Riley’s been my liaison, it would be helpful if we could keep him on board,’ she said. Code for ‘he’s one of us, in spite of appearances.’

She stood at Carol’s shoulder, looking down at the grievous distortion of humanity lying at the bottom of the ditch. Dirt and blood smeared the boy’s clothes, and his head inside the transparent plastic looked unreal, like some hideous prop from a straight-to-DVD horror flick. ‘Christ,’ Carol said. She turned her face away. Paula could see a faint tremble shiver through her boss’s lips. ‘OK, let’s have him out of here,’ she said, stepping aside and beckoning the others over to join them.

‘We’re going to assume that we’re looking at Daniel Morrison here,’ Carol said. ‘The body answers the description of the missing boy and he’s wearing the William Makepeace sweatshirt under his jacket. That means we’re sixty hours out from the last time Daniel was seen by someone who knew him. So we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Once we get an approximate time of death, we’ll know how many hours we need to fill in. But I want those hours accounted for. Paula, you liaise with DS Riley, make sure we have all their product. Kevin’s going to go with the FLO to break the news to the parents, but I also want you to do the follow-up, Paula.’ Carol started to walk back to the perimeter of the scene, her team at her heels.

‘For now, Paula, you take the school. Teachers and friends. It’s a private school, you’re going to come up against more than your fair share of wankers, but they’re not going to wind you up and you are going to find out exactly what kind of lad Daniel Morrison was. We’ll get Stacey on to his computer. Oh, and Paula? I want a fingertip search of the roadside from the end of the drive to the main drag. Tell DS Riley I said so.’ At the end of the plastic panels, she turned back to face them, her smile weary. ‘We owe Daniel a result. Let’s do it.’

‘Do I need to pick up Tony at Bradfield Moor?’ Paula asked. Over Carol’s shoulder, she saw Kevin make the throat-cutting gesture with one finger.

The muscles of Carol’s face tensed. ‘We’re going to have to manage without Tony this time. If we think we need a profiler, we’ll have to rely on someone from the National Police Faculty.’

She hid her disdain well, Paula thought. You’d have to really know the chief to realise how little store she set by the Home Office’s blue-eyed boys and girls.

‘One more thing,’ Carol said. ‘We need to check out who knew about this place. Kevin, as soon as you’re clear, get on to the builder, get a list of his crew, also architects, surveyors, the whole kit and caboodle. I’ll arrange some bodies from Northern to cover the initial background checks and interviews, then we can review what comes up.’ She ran a hand through her hair in a gesture Paula recognised. It was her boss’s way of buying herself some time. ‘Anything I’ve missed?’ she asked. Nobody spoke. One day, Paula dreamed she’d come up with something remarkable, something that hadn’t occurred to Carol or anyone else. She turned away and reached for a cigarette. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be today.