“I wasn’t going to tell you this. It’s private.”
“But…”
“But now PSD are involved…”
She didn’t share his disdain for Carl’s colleagues, but she wasn’t going to look a gift house in the mouth.
“Why was he off work?”
Donnelly looked around then leaned in. “He was suspended pending an investigation.”
This wasn’t a surprise. “Why?”
“There was an allegation that he’d been taking bribes.”
“Bribes? Who from?”
He raised his pint and took a long drink. She could sense him weighing up how much to tell her.
“You’ll just go blabbing to PSD, won’t you?”
“Surely you’ve spoken to them.”
“Not yet.” He threw his head back to drink more.
“I think PSD know more than you’re crediting them for,” Zoe told him. “Seeing as they’ve taken over the case.”
“Hmmm.”
“Who were the bribes from?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Criminals.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “It’s hardly likely to be righteous upstanding citizens. What kind of criminals?”
“Drugs. There’s an investigation going on. I’ve been told to appear at Lloyd House for an interview tomorrow. But I’ll be square with you here, Zoe. I didn’t know what he was up to. I just heard the rumours.”
“He was a member of your team, but you knew nothing?”
“He’s a DS, I’m DCI. I oversee CID in that nick as well as two others. I don’t have my fingers in all the pies.”
“Has there been any suggestion other members of the team might have been taking bribes too?”
He held her gaze, unblinking. “None whatsoever.”
“None at all? They’re not interviewing you because they suspect you?”
He leaned back. “PSD fucking suspect everybody. But no. They’ve got nothing to worry about from me.”
Mo pulled out his phone and held it in front of Donnelly. “Does this mean anything to you?”
Zoe squinted at the phone. She frowned at Mo: what is this? He gave her an apologetic shrug.
Donnelly grabbed the phone off Mo and peered at it. “No. Sorry.”
“Fine.” Mo took back his phone and pocketed it.
Donnelly downed the last of his pint. “I’ve got a team to get back to, and a bloody unhappy one at that. I’ve got nothing else to tell you. And you’re not supposed to be working this case anyway.”
Zoe said nothing. Donnelly knew what she was like. He’d hauled her over the coals for it enough times. But neither of them would say out loud that she was going to keep digging at this.
He stood up. “Nice to see you. Good luck with the Osman trial.”
She stiffened. “Thanks.”
Zoe and Mo watched Donnelly stride across the pub and leave through the double doors at the front. When he was gone, she held out her hand. Mo handed over his phone.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Adi found it on the wall, next to the body.”
“When?”
“While you were at the office.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Nor does Adi.”
“And nor does Donnelly, it seems.”
“Hope you didn’t mind me showing it to him,” Mo said.
“It was useful to get his immediate reaction.”
“Seemed legit to me.”
“Me too. So who did this? The killer?”
“Could have been the victim.”
She almost dropped the phone. “He was alive and functioning for long enough to do something like this?”
“Adi’s looking into it. DNA, blood patterns. And the results of the post-mortem will help shine a light.”
“Yeah.” She stared down at the image. It was a bull, in a circle. A logo, or a callsign. Donnelly hadn’t recognised it, so it was nothing to do with the local police.
In which case, what was it? And how had it come to be drawn right next to the dead body of a corrupt officer?
Chapter Nineteen
The front door slammed. Carly was upstairs in her room, her laptop confiscated. The girl’s phone was in Anita’s bedside table.
She stiffened as she waited for David to come into the kitchen. She’d made lasagne from a Bolognese she’d found in the freezer. She and the girls had eaten already, an awkward meal conducted largely in silence. David’s portion was, as so often, under clingfilm waiting to go into the microwave.
She turned as she heard his footsteps behind her. She pulled on a smile. “Hello, darling. How was your day?”
He shook his head, his face screwed up. “What’s for dinner?”
“Lasagne. Yours is in the microwave.”
“Heat it up for me, will you, sweetheart?” He gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “I’m getting changed.” He turned and paced out of the room.
Heat it up yourself, she thought as she listened to him thumping up the stairs. She opened the microwave, pierced a hole in the clingfilm, and slammed the door shut. She jabbed at the buttons to turn it on, her vision blurred.
He reappeared at the kitchen door wearing a pair of tan trousers and a blue shirt. He still looked crisp and tailored. “Thanks, love. I’m starving.”
“I need to talk to you about something that happened today.”
“I haven’t got time. I’ll be appearing in court tomorrow and I need to prepare.”
She approached him and lowered her voice. “It’s Carly. She got into trouble at school.”
He frowned then looked past her at the microwave, which was bleeping. “I’ll eat in here and you can tell me.” He turned to the fridge, brought out a bottle of beer and sat at the kitchen table.
Anita stared at him. You can’t even get your own dinner out of the microwave? She grabbed the plate from the microwave and put it on the table in front of him, her movements jerky.
“Take it easy,” he said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
She lowered herself into the seat next to him. She needed to deal with this situation calmly, rationally. Like a concerned mum, not a woman on the edge of losing her mind.
“So.” He shovelled a forkful of lasagne into his mouth and spoke through it. “What happened?”
Anita looked towards the kitchen door. She should close it. But she didn’t like shutting the girls out. They came downstairs rarely enough as it was.
“She was accused of biting another girl.”
He laughed, almost spitting out his food. “Biting! What’s this, kindergarten?”
“I’m serious. I got a call from Mrs Healey, the head of year. We met her at parents’ evening, remember?”
He shrugged. He’d barely paid attention at parents’ evening, he’d been on his phone half the night.
“They told me to take her home. She was kicked out of PE.”
“That’s no hardship.”
“David, this is serious. They think she’s angry about something. Suggested we talk to her.”
He let his knife and fork clatter onto the plate and eyed her. “Angry about what?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we need to talk to her. You’ve always been closer to Carly, maybe you can…”
He shook his head. “Not right now, love.” He stood up with his plate and placed a dry kiss on the top of her head. “I’m sure you’ll do a much better job.”
He took his plate to the sink and left it on the draining board. “I’ve got to work. Let me know how you get on.”
“David. I can’t do this on my own.”
He turned to her, his fists balled. She shrank back. “And I can’t do this at all, Anita. This bloody trial is the biggest thing that’s happened to Force CID in years. I’ve only been head of the unit for six months. This is fucking important.”
“More important than your daughter’s welfare?”
He grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes. “Right now, y
es. This impacts my welfare, Anita, and the welfare of all my team. If I don’t get this right, it’ll affect yours too.”
She frowned, her hand itching in his grip. “How?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m sorry I can’t help, but it’s just bad timing. I’ll be a fully present dad when this thing is over, promise.” He gave her a false smile. She stared back at him, her chest hollow.
“Good,” he said. The smile dropped. He dropped her hand and hurried to his study, leaving her staring after him.
Chapter Twenty
Zoe’s phone rang as she drove across town to Harborne. It was just after seven pm and she wasn’t returning to the office. Instead she was making for the White Swan and her meeting with Adi.
“DI Finch,” she said, answering it.
“Zoe, I hear you had a run in with PSD today.”
“Frank.” She wondered if Dawson was still in the office. Maybe she should go in, show willing.
Maybe not.
“So?” he said. “What happened?”
“To be honest I’ve got no idea. One minute I was talking to the victim’s senior officer, the next DS Kaur was throwing her weight around and kicking us all out.”
“She give you a reason?”
“You know what it’s like. She said this was a Professional Standards investigation and we were to get out. She let Adi stay put, though.”
“That’s helpful.”
Zoe yawned. She’d slept badly the night before, her cat Yoda waking her at 3am yowling for biscuits. “How so?”
“Adi’s a mate of yours, isn’t he? He can tell us what’s going on.”
“We’ve been told to leave the case alone, Frank. I don’t think…”
She thought of Adi, waiting for her in the pub. She should have picked somewhere further from the office.
“Come on, Zoe. We both know you better than that. You’ll be wanting to know what’s going on and why this guy was murdered. Even if it isn’t our case.”
“I’ve got a full workload. I’m sure handing this one over to PSD will—”
“Bullshit. You already told me you were talking to the guy’s senior officer. What about?”
She indicated to turn off the Five Ways roundabout. “I asked him why DS Starling was no longer working out of Erdington nick.”
“How did you know that?”
“Come on, Frank. It’s my job to know things like that.”
“Fair enough. So what did he say?”
She swallowed. Could she trust Dawson with this? He sounded as eager as her to pursue the case, and if so, it would make things easier.
“He was suspended,” she told him. “Suspected of taking bribes.”
A whistle came down the line. “That explains it, then.”
“Mo and Adi found some sort of symbol etched into the wall where the body had been.”
“What kind of symbol?”
“A bull, surrounded by a ring.”
“The Birmingham bull?”
“Who knows?”
“Send it over to me, will you? You on your way home?”
She hesitated. “Back to a cosy evening in with my son.”
“Sounds nice. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Zoe hung up, perplexed. When she’d been poking her nose into the Magpie investigation into the New Street bombing, Dawson had come down on her like a ton of bricks. What had changed?
She pulled into the pub car park and found a spot. The pub was busy, even on a Monday night. She turned up the collar of her jacket against the cold and made her way inside.
Adi was at a table at the far end, two pints of Diet Coke in front of him.
“Cheers,” Zoe said as she sat down and picked the full one up.
He raised an eyebrow. “Did I say it was for you?”
She put the glass down and looked towards the bar. “Sorry. Is someone else with you?”
He laughed. “Got you, Zoe. Nah, it’s yours. Don’t worry about sharing your germs with my imaginary friend.”
She smiled and took a long swig. “Ta, Adi.” It was nice to have him back to normal. “So what did you want to talk to me about at the house?”
“Has Mo told you about this?” He held out his phone with a photo of the etched symbol.
“He has. Means nothing to me or to DCI Donnelly.”
“You shared it with him?”
“We did.” It wasn’t for Adi to question her or Mo’s investigative methods.
“OK. Anyway, I did some more analysis of the area around it.”
“Go on.”
“I’m really not supposed to be sharing this with you. DS Kaur said—”
“I’ll worry about DS Kaur. What did you find?”
“There was blood staining consistent with the victim moving around.”
“Moving around? Not being moved?”
“Yeah. Fingerprints, swipe marks. The angle would be difficult to achieve by accident. And there was urine, he pissed himself.”
“Couldn’t that be post-mortem?”
“It was on the floor. He’d tried to pull down his fly, we reckon.”
She shook her head. “So he was alive down there, on his own.”
“Looks like it.”
Zoe slumped in her seat, suddenly sombre. “You think he drew that thing.”
“It’s got blood smears on it. His fingerprints. He could have rubbed against it with his hand, but it’s not the kind of staining you’d get if you brushed the wall. It’s the kind of distinct prints you’d get if you were using your fingertips to hold something steady against the wall.”
“Like a knife. But if he had a knife, why didn’t he use it to fight back?”
Adi shrugged. “It isn’t a knife. We found an old pen, no ink in it.”
“He managed to etch that symbol with a biro?”
“It was cracked, sharper than it might have been. And the plasterwork was soft.”
“Prints?”
“The victim’s. Nothing else.”
“What about the marks on the patio door? You said they were recent.”
“They were. We found smears in the dust upstairs, too, a box that had been moved.”
“What box?”
“A wooden box full of keepsakes. Old jewellery, photos, that kind of thing.”
“That’s odd. It was just a convenient empty house to dump a body. Why did they go rummaging around?”
“Someone was rooting through that box, Zoe. I think someone took stuff from it.”
“So they killed Starling, dumped him in the cellar, then went upstairs and nicked stuff.” Mo would be talking to the owners of the house. Could they be involved in all this, after all?
“Maybe they were there for a burglary and they came upon him,” said Adi.
“Taken by surprise? Killed him because of that?” Zoe shook her head. “Not with him being suspected of corruption. It’d be too much of a coincidence for him to find himself mixed up in an unrelated burglary. And besides, why was he at the house?”
Adi shrugged and slurped his Coke.
“Adana says the victim had been dead for a week,” Zoe said. “How long do you think he’d been in the cellar?”
“Since no more than a day before death. Probably hours. The condition of the blood stains, the urine.”
“So if the killer got in via the patio door, that means he came back after Starling was dead.”
“I guess so.”
“This makes no sense,” Zoe said. “Why come back to check on someone, days after killing them?”
“Maybe the plan was to move him again, and they were disturbed.”
“It’s a possibility.” Zoe drank the last of her pint. “Anything else useful?”
“Not yet. DNA has gone off to the lab, the patio door’s going to be removed tomorrow for analysis. The dogs will be coming in, too.”
“And the post-mortem will tell us a lot. Not that I’ll have access to the report now.”
“You don’t think Adana w
ould help you out? You two seem pretty tight.”
“She’s way too professional.” Zoe stood up. “Thanks for this. I know you’re sticking your neck out.”
“Always happy to help my favourite detective.” He grinned. Zoe laughed.
“Cheers, Adi. I won’t ask you to keep me informed, but…”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He winked at her.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Hey, Mum.” Nicholas was in the kitchen, stirring a pot of something. Zoe leaned over it and inhaled.
“Smells good.”
“Thai curry. Zaf’s coming over.”
“You want me to get out of your way?”
Zaf was Nicholas’s boyfriend. There’d been some tension between the two of them after Zaf had been imprisoned by a killer who targeted gay men, but things seemed to be improving.
Nicholas shrugged. “It’s OK, we’ll go upstairs.”
“I don’t mind. I could do with seeing Mo.” She hesitated. “And Carl.”
Another shrug. “Up to you.”
“That’s decided then. I’m not going till I’ve eaten some of this curry, though. Smells bloody lovely.”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”
She went back through the living room to the hallway and hung up her jacket. She returned to the kitchen, rolling up her sleeves and pulling her long red-brown hair out of the band she’d tied it back in.
“Gran called,” Nicholas said as he spooned rice onto a plate.
“Shit. I’m sorry, I forgot all about that.” Zoe glanced at the fridge. “Did you manage to find the number for the plumber?”
“It wasn’t the boiler, it was her thermostat.”
“How d’you know?”
“Because I went round there and took a look.”
“You were supposed to be studying.”
He ladled a portion of the curry onto the rice and started opening cupboard doors, looking for something. “I’m ahead of my schedule.”
“That doesn’t mean you can afford to take time off.”
He turned to her. “Mum, don’t.”
She raised her hands in supplication. “I just want you to get the grades you need.”
“And I’ll do that without you nagging me.”
Zoe mimed stabbing herself in the chest. “Ouch. I’m not a nag.”
Deadly Fallout (Detective Zoe Finch Book 6) Page 7