Nowhere to Run

by Jack Slater

  Pete drew a breath. ‘I haven’t dealt with the situation perfectly either. I know that. I just cope in different ways to you, that’s all. When you’ve gone through what we have, it brings out the differences between people. It’s bound to. And, I suppose, in the heat of the moment, those differences can be hard to cope with.’

  ‘Yes, but, if you love each other, you ought to be able to help each other through, hadn’t you? I mean, we seem to be pulling in different directions, not the same one. And I don’t blame you for that. It’s just . . . I don’t know how to carry on any more. What there is to carry on for. We made a son, to carry on for us after we’re gone, and now he’s gone before us. What was the point of it all? What are we doing here?’

  Oh, Jesus. Now she was getting maudlin. How was he supposed to cope with this? ‘What we’re doing here is raising Annie,’ he said. ‘If nothing else, we’ve got her and we need to be here for her. She’s lost a brother, the same as we’ve lost a son. We’re supposed to help her through that.’ Not the other way around, he couldn’t help thinking.

  ‘Well, thanks for pointing that out,’ she sniped, her mood switching abruptly again. ‘That makes me feel so much better.’

  Shit. ‘I didn’t mean it as a dig. Just . . . I don’t know. My poor way of saying I can’t do it all on my own. I need your help sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, just sometimes, is it? Mostly, you can manage on your own, eh?’

  ‘That’s not what I said, or what I meant. If you’re going to twist everything around there’s no point in me saying any more, is there?’

  ‘Oh, here we go. Silent treatment again now?’

  ‘Jesus! You’re just arguing for the sake of arguing now.’

  ‘At least it makes me feel something! Even if it is just anger, it’s better than constant nothingness.’

  The door burst open and Annie rushed in, in her Winnie-the-Pooh nightie. ‘Mum! Don’t argue. Please.’ She ran to her mother’s side and threw her arms around her neck. ‘I don’t like it when you argue.’ She sobbed into her mother’s shoulder.

  Louise’s arms went around her. ‘I’m sorry, love. It’s all right, really. I didn’t mean to upset you. I have a job dealing with things at the moment, that’s all. And sometimes I just lose my rag, for no good reason. It’s nothing to worry about.’

  Pete sighed. He worried about it and had for months now, but what could he do? He silently thanked Annie for coming to his rescue. Reaching across, he stroked her back. He didn’t honestly know how he’d have got through the past few months without her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Pete headed straight for Colin Underhill’s office when he arrived in the morning, bursting in without bothering to knock. He slammed the thin door behind him. ‘What the fuck’s going on in this place, Colin?’

  Colin looked up from the documents he was reading. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Another dead girl was found last night, down by St James’ Weir. I didn’t even know there was another one missing until she was found. I feel like I’m operating in a bloody vacuum here. Nobody’s willing to tell me anything in case it hurts my feelings, yet I’m supposed to somehow know everything that’s been going on while I was off. I’m not bloody psychic.’

  Colin folded his hands together on his desk and sat back. ‘Then maybe you’d better start again from the beginning and try making some sense this time. A girl was found down by the weir . . .’

  ‘Blonde. Roughly ten years old. Naked and recently dead. Her picture’s on the board, with a possible ID that I found last night. I was called because the responding officer thought it might be Rosie Whitlock, but it wasn’t. And I hadn’t been told of any other missing girls, apart from the one who was found over at Powderham, the other week – and that only because I overheard something and asked a direct question of Jane Bennett. I do not need treating with kid gloves, Colin. I wish you’d tell the team that, so they can get over the idea ASAP.’

  ‘OK. Well, I wasn’t aware of any other missing girls either, so you can climb down off that horse for a start. Which means, you need to follow up on that possible ID. Get on to the Missing Persons Bureau and the National Crime Database and get it confirmed.’

  Pete felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. ‘OK then. But in the meantime, can you have a word with the team, anyway? Tell them to put the bloody cotton wool away. If it comes from you as well as me . . .’

  ‘OK. How’s it going, otherwise?’

  ‘We’ve got Rosie Whitlock missing, another girl snatched from outside her home and raped last night and this new one dead in the Exe.’

  ‘I know about the one who turned up at the RDE. How come you caught it?’

  ‘I was here so Barry put the call through.’

  Colin grunted. ‘You going to cope with all three?’

  Pete sighed. ‘Not you as well? If they’re not related, I hate to think what’s going on in this city. So, yes, I’ll cope.’

  ‘OK then. But don’t go assuming anything. Including a link, much as we might hope there’s one.’ Colin picked up the papers from his desk. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s it.’ Pete reached for the door handle.

  ‘Right then. Let me know if you need anything. You’ve seen the vultures gathered out the front.’

  ‘Yeah.’ You could hardly miss the huge TV lorries, film crews clustered around cameras on big tripods, soundmen holding booms with grey, woolly microphones. He had seen Sky News, ITN and the BBC in front of the station.

  ‘There’s two more crews at the RDE, plus another one or two down by the river, apparently. So best behaviour, all right? The whole team. I’ll leave you to tell them that.’

  No doubt, the national newspapers would be hovering around somewhere close at hand, too. Pete had enough to deal with, without the added pressure of working under that kind of spotlight, but there was no way of avoiding it in this day and age.

  He reached for the door.

  ‘Gently, this time,’ Colin said, looking up from his paperwork.

  Pete closed the door and returned to his desk. ‘Dave, have you got this morning’s E & E?’

  ‘Yeah. Here you go.’ He folded the paper in half and tossed it over.

  A stock photo of the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital filled the prime spot on the front page, with a smaller night shot of the place inset in one corner and a report under the banner headline, ‘Another girl attacked in Exeter’. Pete scanned the sensationalist article with Lee Birch’s byline. The bare facts of the girl’s arrival at the hospital, the reason behind it and her condition at the time were interspersed with a lot of hyperbole about the safety of Exeter’s streets and its young people and the lack of activity on the part of the police.

  ‘Cantankerous little bastard,’ Pete muttered, as he flipped open the newspaper. The story that Birch had been at the hospital to cover had been relegated to page three in deference to the much more sensational cover story. ‘Councillor accused in hit-and-run’. He read on. ‘A 57-year-old city councillor was last night charged with leaving the scene of an accident after witnesses saw his 7-series BMW hit 15-year-old Rebecca Davenport, who was riding her bicycle on Western Way, and fail to stop. Rebecca was knocked off her bicycle and narrowly missed by another vehicle, travelling behind the councillor. She was wearing a hi-visibility jacket and reflective strips on her cycle helmet and her bicycle was displaying both front and rear lights. She was admitted to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital with a broken arm and cuts and bruises. The councillor was unavailable for comment, but a police spokesman confirmed that his BMW had sustained damage and the councillor himself had been charged with driving without due care and attention, leaving the scene of an accident and driving while under the influence of alcohol. He is due to be bailed today.’

  Pete closed the paper and tossed it back to Dave.

  ‘Jane told us about the girl who was attacked last night,’ Dave said. ‘White van again. Could be the same guy as took Rosie Whitlock.’

  �
��We hope.’ Pete checked his watch. ‘The artist should be with her any time now, to try for a photofit.’

  *

  ‘All right. Here it is.’

  Pete stuck the new photofit image up on the board. ‘Fresh from the artist.’

  ‘That’s Kevin Haynes,’ Dave said straight away. ‘Got to be.’

  ‘Yep. Who wants to come with me to pick the bugger up?’

  Every hand in the room shot up instantly.

  ‘Preferably someone who’s not going to kick his balls up into his throat in the process,’ Pete qualified. ‘We need to make a case that’s going to stick like superglue on this. Plus, we’ve got the press camping in the car park, watching our every move.’

  All hands stayed up.

  ‘OK. Dave, you interviewed him the first time. It’s your shout. Sophie, will you get DCI Silverstone to sign off on the warrant?’

  She nodded and Dave Miles was out of his chair in an instant, to a chorus of boos from the others.

  ‘We’ll need forensics to go over his van and his house, too,’ Pete told Sophie.

  ‘OK, Sarge.’

  ‘Jane, while we’re out, I need you to get started on the dead girl’s identity. I came up with the possible on the board there last night, but it needs confirming. You know the drill – the Missing Persons Bureau and Missing People databases, then get onto HQ, up the road, Avon and Somerset and the Dorset forces, make sure they haven’t got anything outstanding.’

  ‘Right. Will do.’

  There was a general bustle of movement as Pete headed for the door.

  ‘Hold on, I’ve got some Swarfega somewhere, to cut through the grease. Make sure he doesn’t slip through your fingers again, Dave,’ someone called.

  ‘Gently does it, mate. Not.’

  ‘Best check your handcuffs before you go. Make sure he can’t slip out of them.’

  Dave turned to face the room. ‘Trust me, he won’t be slipping anywhere. Except maybe on a wet patch, so he lands on his face somewhere nice and hard.’

  ‘There’ll be none of that,’ Pete said. ‘The last thing we need is for him to have any excuse to get out of here, once we’ve got him.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  *

  ‘We’ve got you, Kevin. There’s no point in bullshit and fairy stories.’ Pete leaned back in his chair in Interview Room 1. ‘The only way you can help yourself is by telling us everything.’

  Dave was sitting forward, pen poised over his notebook while the video camera and digital voice recorder whirred away softly. Haynes, sitting opposite them, was sweating now.

  ‘Forensics are going over your house right now, and the van. Plus, we’ve got witnesses. The girl herself and someone who saw you leaving the hospital after you dropped her off. And that’s significant, you know – the fact that you took her there. It’ll count in your favour. But you need to talk to us. The more you tell us, the better off you’ll be when it comes to sentencing.’

  ‘And the more likely you are to survive your sentence,’ Dave added coldly. ‘You know how things get leaked from government departments and so on. Happens all the time. A careless word. A document left out by accident when someone’s desperate for a pee. And then the other cons get to know what you’re in for and . . . Game over. A quick shiv in the shower or behind the washing machines and you’re bleeding your life away.’

  ‘You’re threatening me,’ Haynes whined.

  Dave shook his head. ‘Just pointing out the facts of life.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way.’ Keeping his voice level, Pete stifled the disgust and burning rage he’d felt for months now against anyone who took an unnatural interest in kids. He had to try to play the good cop here. To show empathy. Get the guy onside. Get him talking. ‘You tell us everything – not just the one you let go, but the others too. The girl you took the other morning, the one we found last night down by the old Priory and any others that we don’t know about yet. Because, trust me, we will find out. Forensics will see to that. It’s bloody amazing what they can come up with, these days. The tiniest little thing, they can get a DNA profile off it and get an ID just like that.’

  Haynes’ expression had been changing as Pete spoke, his frown deepening, the look of horror in his eyes intensifying. Then it shifted the other way.

  ‘But you won’t find anything from any other girls,’ he said. ‘Because there isn’t anything. I didn’t do any others.’

  ‘Just the one you took to the RDE,’ Dave clarified.

  ‘Yes. And that was your bloody fault. Pressuring me. Hounding me for no good reason. I’d been clean. I hadn’t even gone near an underage girl. Hadn’t even wanted to since I came out. But you had to start on me, didn’t you? Just because I had a record. No evidence against me, but I’d done it once, never mind how long ago, so it had to be me. Well, it wasn’t. I didn’t have nothing to do with that girl the other day. And I’ve never even been down by the Priory.’

  Dave leaned forward again, arms flat on the table as his gaze locked on Haynes. ‘You don’t need to have been there, Kevin, and you know it. You dumped her in further upstream, didn’t you? Let her float downriver, hoping she’d end up in the sea. Well, she didn’t, see. She ended up in the reeds at the top of the weir, there. So we found her and it won’t matter that she’s been in the water, because if we can’t get DNA off her skin, we can still get it from inside her.’

  Haynes’ eyes widened. ‘I bloody hope so, because then it’ll clear me. I haven’t killed anybody. You know my record. You know I’ve never killed anyone.’

  ‘Not before, no,’ Dave insisted. ‘But it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Like you say, you’ve been a good boy now for – what? Three years, is it? Must have been building up something rotten – the frustration. The need. It gets that intense, it’s easy to make a mistake, isn’t it? Press a bit too hard when you’re holding her down. Squeeze a bit too tight when you’re trying to shut her up.’

  Pete leaned forward. ‘What Dave’s trying to say, Kevin, is that murder isn’t necessarily what we’ll be looking at here. If it was an accident then manslaughter might well be an option. But you’ve got to come clean with us. We can’t help you if you don’t help us. That’s the way it works.’

  ‘But I didn’t kill anyone! I’m telling you – that one last night’s the only girl I’ve touched since I came out of prison. And I wouldn’t have done that, if it wasn’t for—’

  ‘The pressure we put you under,’ Dave finished for him. ‘Yeah, you’ve said already.’

  ‘All right. Give us a minute,’ Pete said. ‘Dave . . .’ He stood up and reached for the door handle.

  Dave followed him out and closed the door behind them. ‘What do you reckon, boss?’

  ‘He’s coughed to Molly Danvers, not that he had much option. But the others – he knows forensics will pick up any trace of them in his house or the van, so why wouldn’t he admit to them, too, if he took them?’

  ‘Murder’s a damn sight bigger than abduction or child-sex offences.’

  ‘Yes, but manslaughter? He could be out in four or five years.’

  Dave nodded. ‘We’ll need to check that he hasn’t got any other property anywhere. And make sure the forensics guys go over his car. We don’t know how long it’s been out of commission.’

  ‘Do that, would you? I’ll go back in there and see if I can ease anything more out of him.’

  CHAPTER 17

  Pete leaned forward, elbows on the table. He desperately wanted to pick the little shit up and shake the truth out of him, but he couldn’t let it show. He had to push the urge down. Force it into a cupboard at the back of his mind and lock the door on it so that he could maintain the sympathetic edifice he’d created in an attempt to get Haynes onside. ‘See, Kevin, I’m a simple kind of bloke. I see two and two, I add them together and they always make four. I don’t know any other way to do it. So, I’ve got your van – the one you drive, anyway – on CCTV not two hundred yards from the scene of an abdu
ction, right at the time it occurred. Then I’ve got you picking Molly Danvers up in that self-same van, not thirty-six hours later. And she identifies you. So, what am I supposed to think, eh? Add them or multiply them, two and two make four. That’s it.’ He sat back, hands spread wide in the air.

  ‘Except you’ve read the signs wrong. I’ve got a great big minus sign called an alibi, remember? And you take two from two, what does that leave you? Sweet bugger all. Which is what you’ve got on me and what you’ll get from that van, as far as any girl other than Molly Danvers. Because I didn’t take any girl other than her.’

  ‘So, you’re telling me there’s two of you operating at the same time in a little town like this, and that’s just a coincidence?’

  ‘I wasn’t bloody operating, as you call it, until your boy pushed me so hard he drove me to it. I wasn’t even planning anything when I went out. I just went for a drive. To calm myself down. It wasn’t premeditated, what I did. It just happened on the spur of the moment. The stress . . .’ He paused at a sharp knock on the door.

  Pete turned as the door opened and Dave Miles stuck his head in. ‘Sorry, boss. It’s important.’ He jerked his head in a beckoning motion.

  Pete glanced at Haynes. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ Then he stood up and joined Dave in the corridor, closing the door behind him.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Louise, boss. She just phoned. She sounded bloody awful. Desperate, like.’

  A wave of cold fear swept through Pete’s body. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘All she actually said was she needs to speak to you. But, it was after she said it. There was this wail, like a wounded animal, then she just cut the phone off and now she won’t answer it. It just rings.’

  ‘Shit. Put matey here in a cell. We’ve got him for Molly Danvers, if not the others. I’ll go, see what’s up.’

  ‘Do we think he did the others, though?’

  Pete grimaced. ‘I don’t think so, no. Either way, we need physical evidence. Plus, there’s his alibi to crack for Rosie Whitlock’s abduction. Get on to that while I’m out, eh?’