Hope Road (2 page)

“Tonight I’m gonna suck your cock til your balls explode.”

One minute later, after a brief and uninspiring speech, he walked back over to her, the bulky plastic award in his hand. She was grinning like a loon.

“I wanted to see if I could give you a hard-on when you walked up there,” she said, leaning into him, her hand running across his chest.

That was the thing with coppers, especially CID. They switch on, they switch off. Only one of those settings is good for you. But you can never tell how long they’re gonna be switched, either way. He’s not complaining, though. He was lucky to find Den, and he knows it.

With a yowl of energy he swings his large frame out of bed and heads for the shower, which is where Miss Casey used to store the paints.

S
he slams the car door shut behind her and looks at her watch. Ten minutes exactly.

There’s already a cigarette in her mouth. She lights it and zips her jacket up to the neck. There’s nothing about smoking that she enjoys, but she always has
Marlboro Lights
with her when she’s working. If you’re going to face a dead body on an empty stomach, you need something.

Up ahead is a red car, its four doors and boot all wide open. Two scene-of-crime officers in white paper suits are working methodically on it, concentrating on the boot and the back seat.

A police cordon runs around the area, yellow and black tape snapping in the wind. A marked police car and three unmarked cars are parked at odd angles nearby.

First impressions: the car has been left on a patch of disused land beneath a motorway flyover, about two miles from the city centre. The land is accessed by a service road that leads to some industrial units and a dead end. Security man at the units? Cameras?

The space itself is banked steeply on one side by the earthworks of the flyover, and the whole area is cast in the shadows of the motorway. She can see and hear the morning traffic forty feet above, the glint of light coming off vehicles, the hiss of pneumatic brakes. Easy access to the motorway? Dump the car and thumb a lift? There’s an exit a quarter of a mile up ahead, less.

On two other sides of the area the ground is slightly raised, boasting the occasional bush of, what is it, gorse? At some point a frugal attempt at landscaping had been made. It’s the kind of place that serves as an unofficial car park on weekdays. Anywhere around here without double-yellows is fair game. People have no choice. But at the weekends there’s no one.

DI Baron is coming towards her, passing through the cordon at the point where a uniform is stationed, log book in hand. The tarmac underfoot is so old and cracked it’s more like loose chippings. Baron’s steps are only just audible against the constant noise coming down from the motorway.

“Hi, Steve.”

Lean and alert, with close-cropped hair, Baron looks with disgust as she sucks in another lungful of smoke. But she knows that he’d have one himself if only he could bring himself to relax a little, to accept that we all have weaknesses.

But it’s
not
a weakness, she tells herself, as she feels the hot smoke spread through her lungs. You see it on the news all the time, soldiers in war zones, disasters of one sort or another. Smoking. Always people smoking. Wherever there’s death, there’s tobacco. You need something. She does, anyway.

“Dead girl in the boot.”

He makes it sound like a riddle.

“Yeah, you said.”

“I’ve just spoken to the Super. Briefing in forty minutes.”

She takes another drag, hating the taste. If the briefing’s so soon, they’ll have to be off to Millgarth before long. Everyone else assigned to the case will be assembling there.

“Good spot to dump a car,” she says. “No CCTV cameras that I can see.” Her eyes follow the steep incline up to the traffic overhead.

“Traffic cameras on the motorway,” he says.

“We taking the car in as-is?”

He nods.

They stand a moment in silence.

September has turned cold, despite the blue skies. Baron’s mid-blue suit seems flimsy, a summer suit, cut a little too near his lean frame.

“Shall we?” She drops the cigarette, crushing it with the toe of a Nike.

He stays where he is.

“Tell me,” he says, eyes down on the cigarette, “tell me about John Ray.”

“John? What do you want to know?” She looks straight at him, until he is forced to meet her stare.

“You still seeing him?”

“I’ve never made a secret of it, Steve. You know that.”

“How long ago was it that his brother was murdered?”

“Two years. I’m surprised you don’t remember,” she says. “Your first case as DI, wasn’t it?”

Den was on that case too. But it had been Baron’s first as Detective Inspector, and his first as Deputy SIO. Tough call, getting Joe Ray’s murder first up as a Senior Investigating Officer. No one was ever going down for that one.

He smiles.

“
Bad on bad
,” he says. “How many of those are you gonna make, eh? Criminal on criminal? Great story, though. Front page stuff. Funny, isn’t it, how the Ray family just keeps cropping up? Someone mentioned them again yesterday night.”

“Really?”

“Young reporter from the
Post
rings me up at home, asks me if it’s police policy for officers to be seen about town with the family of known criminals.”

So that’s why he’s got her down here.

She takes a long breath.

“John’s a car dealer. I was at an award ceremony with him.”

“I know what it was. I saw the paper this morning. This permanent, then, is it?”

“Really isn’t any of your business,
Sir
.”

He turns, starts to walk towards the red car.

She follows, angry as hell, but knowing her anger is stupid. It
is
his business.
Police
business. Of course people are going to raise a eyebrow. It’s human nature. I’m a copper, and John’s family is…

“Hi, Brian,” she says as a uniformed sergeant adds her name to the crime scene log.

“Morning,” he says, a thick-set man in his middle years with a soft face. “Nice day for it.”

Gallows humour. The sun hardly up and a dead body to deal with. Ten hours ago he’s having a quiet drink and a laugh with his wife and friends. Good old Friday night drink. Alarm clock. Dead girl.

Meanwhile, two SOCOs go about their business, moving carefully around the car, hardly making a sound. A photographer is already packing up, and to one side a couple of young uniformed constables stand together, talking out of the sides of their mouths and watching as DI Baron and DC Danson approach the vehicle.

“Here we are,” Baron says as they reach the open boot, the SOCO moving away to give them a better view.

She looks inside. A young woman curled up. Early twenties. Hair in a long bob, a deep, natural brown, almost black, face heavy with foundation, lipstick dark, smudged on both sides.

The dress is expensive. How can you tell, Den asks herself? She has no idea, no interest in clothes. But it looks good. Short and black. Too short, though. With the girl’s legs doubled awkwardly beneath her the dress has ridden up, revealing a black thong and a tiny tattoo of a bird in flight on her thigh. Over the dress she wears a scarlet fur jacket trimmed with leather of the same colour, the kind of jacket meant to be worn tight in at the waist to emphasise the bulk of fluffy fur on the torso and shoulders.

Her eyes, thank God, are closed, just a sliver of white visible from one. There’s some swelling though.

“Late yesterday evening, apparently. Pretty, isn’t she?”

Den wants to punch him in the mouth, send him sprawling on the fucking tarmac. But how many dead bodies will it take before she starts making jokes too? When will she stop feeling any pain for them?

She wants to say something, but nothing springs to mind. A dead girl. A lovely, attractive young woman. That’s how she’d describe the victim. A lovely, beautiful girl.
Fit
, they say in Leeds.
Fit as a butcher’s dog
. Her dad used to say
a looker
, as if the woman was forcing him to look, or she was looking for attention.
A right looker
.

“Tarty,” Baron suggests, as if he’s gonna write it down as his official description of the deceased.

“Don’t you have any respect?” she whispers.

It’s corny, she knows it is. But so what? This silly bitch will have died for something as corny as a few wraps of coke. It’s unbelievably corny, right down to the fucking Ford Mondeo abandoned here, under a flyover.

“Bruising on the head and neck, and a heavy blow near to the temple. Skull cracked, I think.”

Den can see it now, a dark patch of matted hair on the side of the girl’s head.

“She’s been in the passenger seat and the back,” Baron adds. “Red fluff everywhere.”

“Sexual, then,” she says.

He shrugs. “We’ll see.”

She breathes, deep and slow, trying to guard against his deliberate insensitivity, his
dead body manner
. Everyone has one. Steve’s a bloody good detective and a good bloke. Insensitive sometimes, but he’s good. And he’s brought her out here because some arsehole journalist spotted her and John last night.

As she breathes she catches the smell of the girl’s perfume rising from the boot. Fruity, like tinned mandarins and peaches. Plus a woodiness. Incense? John has taught her to describe the tastes and aromas of wine and food, to open up her senses and say exactly what she’s experiencing, unlocking the memory of tastes and smells deep within.

“
Opium
,” she tells Baron, still looking down at the girl. “She’s wearing
Opium
.”

“So. Pretty girl dead in an abandoned car in the middle of the night. Wearing
Opium
and little else. Party!”

Den spins around, ready to snap.

But Baron’s no longer looking at the girl. A SOCO is bringing something over to him, a small piece of card in a clear plastic evidence bag.

“With the documents in the glove compartment,” the man in white says as he hands Baron the bag, before returning to his work on the interior of the car.

Baron examines the card for a second or two, holding it up to the light. A business card.
Tony Ray’s Motors, Hope Road, Leeds 9
.

She doesn’t need to see it up close. Recognises the logo, the same one above the entrance of the showroom. She wants to believe it’s a joke. That Baron planted it there in the glove compartment. But she knows it’s not true.

Jesus fuck.

“John Ray. You with him all last night, were you?”

She sighs.

“Yes.”

He remains calm. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the cordon.”

She marches off before he can see the colour rise in her face. By the time she’s been logged out of the crime scene and is back by her car, fumbling for another cigarette, he’s come across to join her.

“Why don’t I drive you in, Den,” he says. “Y’know, do things right.”

She stops, a new cigarette already between her lips.

“Okay,” she says. “Just give us a second.”

She lights up, then pulls her mobile from a pocket and offers it to Baron.

“You want this?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “No need. I’ll have him brought straight in. It’s not as if you’re gonna ring him from my car.” An articulated truck passes overhead with a great whoosh, its tarpaulins billowing violently in the wind. “Were you with him
all
night?”

She nods. “About eight thirty in the evening til just after you called this morning. We were up late. If he went out during the night it was between four and eight. But I’d have noticed. I’m a light sleeper.”

But you know that
, she decides not to add.

“Right then,” he says, “let’s go. It’s not that I don’t trust you…”

She doesn’t need telling.

Even before they set off for Millgarth, the order has been sent to bring in John Ray for questioning.

And DC Denise Danson, suddenly, is an alibi witness in a murder investigation.

H
e stares at the endless stream of cars and trucks that flash past on the other side of the thick glass. Occasionally he looks up the road and watches one come into view, following it all the way down until it’s gone again. His mouth moves fractionally as if he’s counting the cars as they race past; like a child, he seems mesmerised by their speed and the fact that he can sit so close yet be safe.

He’s not a child, though. He’s twenty-two, over six feet tall, and built like a bear. His grey suit is so badly creased it looks as if it’s made from mail sacks, and his short blond hair is untidy and tufted with dirt. He’s not counting the cars, either. He’s crying, lower lip bobbing up and down just enough to be perceptible to the dozen or so customers in the place.

“Are you all right, love?” she says, standing a fraction further away than she might, and knowing that everyone else in the Little Chef is watching.

She’s just about old enough to be his mother, and she keeps it pally, the way you’d speak to someone to cheer them up. She can see that he’s young, but the sheer bulk of him, the dirty suit straining to contain his massive shoulders, makes him look older, which somehow makes things worse. She’s seen men cry before, but not like this.

The serving staff have been keeping an eye on him. One couple has asked to move, and others look on with nervous curiosity and eat their meals quickly, keen to be away.

“Love, are you all right there?” she says again.

He’s been staring out of the window for an hour. Every so often he’ll cup his face in both hands to muffle a new onset of throaty, hawking sobs, which degenerate into fits of coughing so intense that he seems to be choking on his own grief. Then, with his chest still heaving, he’ll turn back to the window.

What worries her is not the crying. It’s the thought of what might happen next. Does he have a knife, a gun? Could he take a hostage? These things happen, no use pretending they don’t. And it’s not as if anyone here’s going to stand up to him. Young bloke his size? He could do exactly what he wanted…