China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  ‘But I’m his friend …’

  ‘And when you’ve got your breath back, go over there and be with him. Tell him what happened, tell him what we know and what we’re doing about it. But he shouldn’t have to wait to learn that his brother is dead.’

  ‘I told Pete I’d look after him. I told him not to hurry back, because I’d be looking after him.’ Her voice was empty.

  Gorman sighed. ‘You did your best, Hazel. We can’t save everybody. Especially, we can’t always save people from themselves. Sperrin wanted this confrontation. He must have reckoned the chance to bring these people down was worth any price he had to pay.’

  She turned her head slowly. ‘He knew he was going to die?’

  ‘Oh yes. When he used his phone as X marks the spot, he knew it was the only message he was going to be able to send us.’

  Silence descended for a little longer. Then Hazel said, ‘But they won’t go back there, now, will they? Whatever they were using the shed for – as a staging post, somewhere to keep the girls until their new employers’ – she couldn’t bring herself to say owners – ‘had paid for them, somewhere to keep their vehicles out of sight – they won’t go back. They wouldn’t have left David there if they meant to.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Gorman. ‘There’s nothing special about the shed. It’s just four walls and a roof. It was supposed to be empty, waiting for a new tenant. One of the neighbours, stocktaking late at night, saw a van on the forecourt a couple of weeks ago, but he assumed it was just someone checking the security.’

  ‘A light-coloured Transit van, was it?’

  Gorman nodded.

  ‘If they never go back, how are we going to find them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said DCI Gorman honestly.

  ‘Then it was all for nothing. David threw his life away for nothing.’

  ‘He didn’t throw it away,’ Gorman said quietly. ‘He gave it away. Hazel, he knew what he was doing – the risk it could blow up in his face, what would happen if it did. He thought it was worth it. It wasn’t just Rose he wanted justice for. He knew as well as we do there’ll be others, probably a lot of others – past, present and future. Breaking this pipeline is the only way to find them and rescue them. Your friend wanted that more than he wanted to come home safe. He was a brave man, Hazel: don’t ever forget that. I told him not to get involved …’

  ‘So did I,’ said Hazel mournfully.

  ‘It was good advice. He should have walked away and left it to us to sort the mess out; or not. That’s what most people would have done. Sperrin wasn’t prepared to. I don’t know if he really believed he could pull this off – get the information that would let us progress the investigation, and get away safely with it – or if he was past caring. Whatever his motives, whatever unresolved conflicts in his life led to that decision, he staked everything he had and played the hand he was dealt the best way he could.’

  ‘And lost.’

  ‘Yes. But if he thought the prize was worth the gamble, are we entitled to say he was wrong? When we find his killers – and I did say when – a lot of people will owe David Sperrin a debt of gratitude. A lot of frightened, lonely, abused girls will be going home instead of wasting their youth in misery.’

  ‘Somehow, it isn’t much comfort,’ mumbled Hazel.

  ‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’

  No one had ever mistaken the CID offices upstairs at Meadowvale Police Station for Scotland Yard, and no one ever would. Here, teams of forty officers worked one case only in DCI Gorman’s dreams. In the throes of a major investigation, he could ill afford to lose even the most junior member of his squad. In spite of which he took DC Emma Friend off duties for the afternoon and had her drive Hazel out to Byrfield, ninety miles away.

  Hazel protested that it was unnecessary, she was perfectly capable of driving herself. Gorman didn’t bother to argue with her. He tossed his car keys over her head to Friend. ‘Dent it and you’re dead.’

  The local police had been and gone by the time they reached the big honey-coloured stone house, half-screened by its avenue of sycamores on the edge of Burford village. The 28th earl had been watching for them: he came down his front steps as Hazel ran up them and they met at the halfway point in a confusion of hugs and tears. Recognising the moment as one the friends should share undisturbed, the Countess Tracy waited quietly at the top of the steps and DC Friend waited at the bottom.

  After a long minute, Pete Byrfield recollected his duty as host and managed a tremulous smile. ‘Come inside, both of you. You must be tired after your drive.’

  Friend hesitated. ‘Maybe I’ll just nip into the village. I could pick you up later, Hazel.’

  Hazel shook her head. Her eyes were puffy with the tears that hadn’t come until she had someone to cry with. ‘I’ll stay here tonight. Have a cup of tea with us, then head back when you’re ready.’

  But it wasn’t a very cheerful party, and Friend made her excuses as soon as she decently could. ‘Call when you want a lift back to Norbold. One of us will come for you.’

  Byrfield said, ‘I’ll bring her back. I’ll need to …’ He couldn’t think of a way of ending the sentence. But then, he didn’t have to.

  When they were alone – Tracy had diplomatically withdrawn to count calves or something – Byrfield came and sat by Hazel on the long sofa in front of the drawing-room fire; and though it was a very long sofa, they were close enough for her to put her head on his shoulder and for him to put his arm around her.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he mumbled, still deeply shocked. ‘When the policemen came and said … said David was dead. I thought they’d got it wrong. I started saying No, he’s fine, he was in the hospital but he’s staying with a friend now, he’s fine … But they were right, and I was wrong.’

  ‘He should have been safe with me,’ whispered Hazel. ‘I promised you I’d look after him. Oh Pete, how are you ever going to forgive me?’

  She told him everything: all the details that the Cambridge officers hadn’t had. Including how Sperrin had found the people who killed him. She expected Byrfield to push her away then; to get up and poke the fire, perhaps, to take the sting out of it because he was a kind and decent man, but anyway to put space between them. But he didn’t. He continued to hold her close, murmuring into the top of her head.

  ‘David and I knew one another most of our lives, long before we knew we were … related.’ It wasn’t the perfect word, but there probably wasn’t one. ‘In all those years I never knew him do anything he didn’t want to do, or not do anything that he did. You couldn’t have stopped him, Hazel. After what happened at Myrton, he was bent on destroying them if he got the chance, whatever the cost might be. Nothing less would have satisfied him.’

  ‘Then we’ve let him down too,’ she moaned. ‘We’re no closer to knowing who they are or how to find them now than we were a week ago.’

  ‘Has your boss closed the file on this?’

  Hazel pulled back far enough to stare at him. ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then it’s too soon to say that. I’ve met your DCI, I know he’s not going to give up. Maybe it will take time to get justice for David. Maybe it’ll take more time than we think we can bear. But I believe it will happen. I want you to believe that too.’

  Two-thirds of the way there, Ash realised where they were going. Grantham. Cathy had had a partner, in life and in crime, there once. She wasn’t going to find him there today – she’d left him dead on a houseboat on Ullswater – but she must have had other contacts in the area. She was calling the directions from memory.

  Ash saw a lay-by ahead and pulled in. ‘Time for you to keep your half of the bargain.’ He took Mr Boyne’s envelope off the back seat.

  ‘The divorce papers?’

  ‘Yes.’ He passed her his pen.

  After a moment she opened the envelope and ran her eye down the forms. ‘Sole physical custody?’

  ‘It means you can’t take the boys anywhere without my consent
. Which will not be forthcoming.’

  ‘In essence, you’re asking me to give up being their mother.’

  ‘Cathy, you gave up being their mother a long time ago. All I’m really asking now is that you give up being my wife.’

  A brief flicker of displeasure crossed her face but didn’t dwell there. She took the pen and signed and dated the form. She handed it back. ‘Satisfied?’

  It wasn’t the right word. He didn’t know what the right word was. ‘This address …’

  ‘… Isn’t where I’m living, so you needn’t bother Interpol with it. You’re not the only one with a tame lawyer, Gabriel. Anything sent to this address will find me, sooner or later.’

  He nodded, ambivalently. There was nothing more to be said. He said it anyway. ‘What is it you’re involved in, Cathy? What brought you here? What was so important it was worth risking your freedom?’

  ‘I told you,’ she said off-handedly. ‘I wanted to see my sons. And my husband.’

  ‘You told me a business deal had gone bad. What kind of business?’

  ‘Mine,’ she said. ‘And none of yours.’

  He knew he wasn’t going to get anything from her that was both honest and informative. He didn’t know why it mattered to him. ‘Are you in any danger?’

  She laughed aloud. ‘Gabriel! I didn’t know you still cared.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Ash said quietly.

  Looking at his face, at his grave expression that had amused her once and had come to irritate her unbearably, she felt herself unaccountably moved to answer. ‘No, I’m not in any danger. I’ll be out of the country by tonight. I probably shouldn’t have come. I was never going to resolve the situation: it was rather arrogant of me, thinking I could. I’ll have to leave it to the people on the ground. If they make an awful mess of it, as they very well might, at least I’ll be out of range when the shit hits the fan.’

  Ash started the car again, and drove on towards Grantham.

  Ten miles short of the town she directed him into the countryside and finally down a concrete lane that ended in a field. Ash stared about him. ‘Are you sure?’

  Cathy smiled and nodded. ‘Very flat country around here,’ she observed, looking at the distant horizon under its vast white winter sky. ‘Almost nowhere you couldn’t land a light aircraft.’

  And that was it; almost. Cathy got out. Ash turned the car. Cathy leaned down to the window. For a surreal moment he thought she was going to kiss him. But she said, ‘Tell the boys I’ll always love them. In my fashion.’

  After a moment Ash nodded. ‘I can tell them that.’

  He drove back the way they’d come; and he didn’t wave, and he didn’t watch her in the mirror until she was out of sight.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  Hazel nodded. ‘Pete wants to see his brother. I want to take him.’

  ‘You’ll warn him?’ Gorman said gruffly. ‘What happens with head shots.’

  The hand that had been clutched around her heart for twenty-four hours fisted tighter for a moment. ‘I’ll warn him.’

  In fact the Coventry FME had done a good job of making David Sperrin presentable for his visitors. Hazel could guess at the damage beneath the carefully arranged sheet; she didn’t think Pete Byrfield did.

  He said pensively, ‘He looks …’

  Peaceful? Well, perhaps, thought Hazel, in that Sperrin’s own personal war with the world had come to an end. To her he just looked lumpen, now the animating spark that drove him had been extinguished. The savage mocking grin, the wicked humour, the intellectual arrogance, which were impossible to admire and yet hard not to like, had vanished as if they’d never been. Now he looked like any other dead man: shorter than most, probably more dirt under his fingernails, but nothing special. The David Sperrin who had been uniquely, irreplaceably special to his family and friends was entirely gone.

  Byrfield may have been thinking along the same lines. He finished, with a hint of impatience: ‘… So stupid lying there! I want to kick him.’

  Hazel let out a bray that was half a chuckle, half a sob. ‘Be fair: we have him at a disadvantage.’

  ‘All he had to do was leave well enough alone,’ gritted Byrfield, ‘and everything would have been fine. And he couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Of course he couldn’t,’ said Hazel. ‘David – leave well enough alone? Of course he couldn’t. And for the record, everything wouldn’t have been fine if he had.’

  The 28th earl dragged his gaze away from his brother’s face and glanced at her. ‘No, I suppose not. I’m sorry. Right now, this is the only tragedy I can deal with. Maybe later I’ll understand what he did. If it turns out to have done any good.’

  ‘We have to make sure it does.’

  Hazel found the FME, who’d backed away to give them some space, standing at her elbow. ‘You got my report?’ she murmured.

  ‘I haven’t seen it. I’m sure my chief has.’

  ‘I wondered if you had any ideas about the abrasions.’

  ‘Abrasions?’

  ‘Above his right knee.’ The doctor glanced at Byrfield and, getting a nod, lifted the sheet to show them.

  ‘That looks recent,’ said Hazel.

  ‘It is. It was still bleeding when he died.’

  ‘So he didn’t do it jumping on the train.’ She frowned, peered closer. ‘It almost looks like writing.’

  ‘That was my first thought,’ agreed the FME. ‘It isn’t, though. Whatever way you look at it, you can’t make letters out of it.’

  ‘What about Chinese characters?’

  Her companions stared at Hazel with various degrees of incomprehension. ‘What?’

  ‘The people who killed him were trafficking girls from the Far East.’

  ‘You think they did this to him?’ The FME sounded unconvinced.

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know what it was meant to achieve. It didn’t contribute to his death. It would have felt unpleasant, but if I wanted to get information out of someone I wouldn’t faff around scratching his knee with a nail-file.’

  ‘That’s what caused it?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Possibly. Something like that. Maybe a nail; maybe a ring-pull from a drinks can. Not a blade as such, the wounds aren’t deep enough.’

  They all peered closer at the scratches above David Sperrin’s right knee. ‘I suppose it could be a Chinese character,’ said the FME doubtfully.

  ‘There was a picture in your report?’ She nodded. ‘We’ll get an expert to have a look at it.’ Hazel looked at Byrfield. ‘Shall we head back or do you want to stay a bit longer?’

  For a moment he laid his hand flat on the sheet above his brother’s chest. Then he turned away. ‘No, I’m done here.’

  Mary Han was not only an accredited interpreter of Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese for the courts, she was a teacher of Chinese brush painting. If anyone was going to make sense of the marks on Sperrin’s leg, she was.

  She studied the photographs at length, turning them first one way, then the other. She had brought a book which she consulted, reading from the back forwards. Finally she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Chief Inspector Gorman. I cannot identify these markings as a Chinese character, in whole or in part. I can make no suggestion as to what they might represent.’

  ‘Could they be somebody’s name?’ asked DS Presley.

  Ms Han looked surprised. ‘A chop? I don’t think so.’

  After Hazel had seen her out she returned to Gorman’s office, where he and Presley were still poring over the pictures. Gorman straightened up with an exasperated grunt. ‘Could they be somebody’s name?’ he mimicked bitterly. ‘What, you think Chinese murderers go round signing their work?’

  ‘You never know your luck,’ said Presley, unabashed.

  ‘Assuming our expert’s right,’ said Gorman, ‘which we have to, it isn’t Chinese writing at all. And it isn’t English writing. So what is it?’

  ‘It’s too delibe
rate for him to have got it in a scuffle,’ said the sergeant. ‘It isn’t significant enough to count as torture. It’s almost like a doodle – the sort of thing you’d do in your notebook if you were talking on the phone.’

  ‘You think someone doodled on Sperrin’s leg with a nail-file because he was talking on the phone?’ If Gorman had sounded any more incredulous, his voice would have broken again.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ And though Hazel’s voice was low and quite hesitant, the men stopped bickering to look at her. ‘You’re assuming this is something that was done to him.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Presley, rolling his eyes. ‘It’s not a birthmark, is it?’

  But Gorman waved him to silence. ‘Go on, Hazel. What are you thinking?’

  ‘What if he did it to himself?’

  There was this to be said for Hazel’s intuitions: sometimes she was right. Gorman frowned, but that was because he was thinking. ‘What if he did? The same question applies – why? Why would he scratch meaningless patterns into his own leg? What was he hoping to achieve?’

  ‘If they were meaningless, nothing. So unless he was so bored in the last few minutes of his life that he was reduced to drawing doodles in his own blood, they meant something to him. And he believed they would mean something to us.’

  The more she thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. ‘It’s like the phone. He knew he couldn’t use it to tell us what was happening, but he could use it to tell us where. He knew that, there or somewhere close, then or soon, he was going to die. They’d tried to kill him before, they couldn’t afford to leave him alive now.

  ‘But he knew we’d find his body. Nearly all bodies turn up eventually: it’s like they want to be found. So he put his phone where no one was going to find it until we ran a trace on it, and he left us a message the only way he could – scratched on his own skin.’

  Now Gorman was seeing the same picture Hazel was. ‘Under his clothes, where they’d only have seen it if they’d stripped him, and they had no reason to do that. How did he do it without being seen?’

  He sent for the bag of Sperrin’s clothes from the evidence locker. Coventry had made an inventory and then sent them on. Gorman studied the right leg of the jeans, inside and out. There were traces of blood from the scratches, no more – it hadn’t soaked through to the outside – and a small hole in the dense weave of the denim.