“You know, Jan, something’s wrong here. Something’s not quite right. She’s been here a while now, and she hasn’t spoken. She hasn’t asked for her mum or dad or said any words at all. She isn’t deaf. When I asked her to lift her arms up so I could get her top off, she did it. She isn’t showing any signs of fear. Just completely quiet.”
She’s dressed again, now in pajamas that are a little bit too big for her. Lorraine has given her a biscuit and an orange drink, and she is sitting on Lorraine’s knee quietly. I bend down and smile.
“Hello. What’s your name? Can you talk?”
I wiggle the teddy in front of her, but she stares at my face, her big blue eyes melting my heart. Then she scans the room and settles on her biscuit again. Lorraine shakes her head.
“See? Nothing.”
She’s right. No reaction at all.
“What’ll happen to her now?”
“Well, I’ll take her over to social services, and they’ll find her emergency foster care. That’s short-term, but I expect someone will eventually come forward. She must have grandparents who’ll miss her even if her parents don’t give a crap. You could kind of understand it if she was a newborn and nobody knew about her. That would be bad enough, but she’s the best part of two years old.”
I nod, but I know that Lorraine’s common sense deductions come from the rational side of life, where children are kept safe, and everyone has enough to eat. But as a police officer, I know this not to be true. Even while Lorraine speaks those words I can see the shadow of doubt cross her face as she hugs the child close to her. She knows as well as I do that what we imagine is going on out there in the world probably isn’t. It’s probably much worse.
Crime mostly involves objects, things people want and will go to any lengths to get, hoping they won’t get caught. This inevitably involves people as victims. But when children are involved, our feelings as police officers are warped, bending toward the good. I’ve often wondered where the caring and love ends and the cruelty takes over, but it’s difficult to tell amid all the violence and despair, especially recently. In my early career I’d attended calls from desperate children telling me that both their parents were unconscious. Drink, drugs, violence—you name it. I’ve seen children watch their parents do it.
But this is different. And at this early stage of the investigation, there’s still time for the vital ingredient that gets me through every day: hope.
The forensics finishes quickly and leaves the pram, which is now wiped clean. The lead officer hands over two small bags.
“I’ve logged these two. This one was found in the lining of the hood of the pram.”
He holds up a receipt.
“We found some hair and some crumbs in the hood as well. We’ve taken the clothes and samples from the seat of the pram for analysis. And this was in the hood of the coat.”
He holds up a bigger bag with a piece of note paper folded in two.
“Looks like some kind of a list. But we’ll leave these two with you. If you could just sign here.”
I sign for the two bags and follow the forensics team to the desk. I hand the bags to Stan.
“Can you book these in as evidence, please, Stan?”
He looks doubtful.
“Treating it as a MisPer, are we Jan?”
I know what Detective Inspector Jim Stewart will say: refer this to social services. And I want to keep Jim sweet, find out what he knows about Connelly’s whereabouts, so I resist this idea, even though the whole thing stinks.
“No. We can’t start a MisPer. More like one kid too many.”
He looks at the floor.
“I meant the mother. Or father. I mean, a couple of hours have passed now, and no one’s come forward.”
Then forensics starts to leave, and I follow the team to the door.
“So will you let me have the results? Can you run anything against the AFR and DNA databases, please?”
The lead guy stops at the door.
“So this is being treated as a crime, is it? We’ll need something to book it against.”
This needs some thought. It’s not completely straightforward. Someone seems to have lost a child. It’s not a crime as such, and the little girl doesn’t seem to have been neglected. But what if she’s been intentionally left in the alleyway? I almost can’t comprehend that someone would do that.
Even with all my years in the police force, I’m finding it hard to imagine a scenario where someone would just leave a child. But a small niggling doubt, and the knowledge that some people would do things that are unimaginable, makes me uncertain.
Ashton-under-Lyne. A small market town on the face of it, but this is murderous territory. Mr. Wroe’s Virgins, and the Moors Murder victims taken from nearby. And Harold Shipman’s surgery was just up the road. And this recent business with Connelly at the Gables. Things aren’t always what they seem, and Stan is right. Something could have happened to the child’s parents. So I push my own interest back into my soul and concede. I immediately know it’s the right thing to do.
“OK, Stan, open a MisPer on the child’s mother. We’ve got an operations meeting in the morning, and Mike and I will find out the level of the inquiry.”
I leave Stan to open a file with forensics and head back to Lorraine. I pause at the door and look through the safety glass. Second rule of professional surveillance—you always learn more about a situation when someone doesn’t know you’re watching.
I see Lorraine from the side with the child sitting on the chair looking down at her. Lorraine is animated, covering her face and, even though I can’t hear through the door, saying Boo. Aiden loved that game. But this little girl doesn’t. She’s looking around blankly. Lorraine has put a raincoat on her and some Wellington boots, which dangle over the side of the chair on the ends of the girl’s skinny legs.
Lorraine offers her the teddy once again, then sits back and looks puzzled. I take this as my cue and open the door.
“So. Forensics have gone.”
She nods.
“And Karen Barrow’s on her way. Duty social worker. She’s found her a temporary place for tonight. But there’s something wrong, Jan. Something not right at all. I’m going to just get Karen to run her by the hospital to make sure there are no injuries.”
My heart sinks. Lorraine clearly thinks this child has been abused. But there’s nothing I can do now, nothing I can do to save her from what she has to endure. All I can do is look for her mother.
“Right. Mike and I will raise it with DI Stewart tomorrow, and I’ll let you know how we get on. Can you ring me in the morning with the hospital results?”
She nods, and her mobile rings. The ringtone is a Katy Perry tune, and suddenly the little girl is on the seat, dancing. Lorraine looks confused but answers, and as soon as the music stops, the girl sits down and keeps very still. Lorraine takes the call and sighs.
“Karen’s on her way.”
We both look at the child, and I can’t resist a final hug before I leave. She doesn’t hug me back.
As I leave the station, my mind flicks over the possible circumstances again. I grab a coffee from the machine and sit in my car in the car park, looking over the city and listening to a Bruce Springsteen track. “Dancing in the Dark.” Part of my cheering-myself-up program. My mum used to love that song. Funny what you remember about people, what suddenly fires a spark of love. She would have hated to see me so sad. It’s as if she’s reaching out to me, telling me to sort myself out.
The paper cup is very hot in my hands, but I don’t care. It’s better than going back to a cold house. I’ll have to go back eventually because I need to feed my kitten, Percy. I got him to replace Aiden’s beloved cat who Connelly’s cronies killed. I almost love Percy. Almost. Because it’s difficult to break through the hard shell that I’ve built up around myself to protect me from my own feelings.
For now, I watch the starlings gather on the telephone line and think about Mike and his childr
en with Della barking orders at him. I hear her in the background when I call him, her high-pitched voice chattering away to him even while I’m on the phone. I think about what had he said earlier about me being a natural mother, and how, for just a split second, when we carried the child into ops and he opened the door for me, how nice it would be to have a man like Mike.
I never have gone as far as wanting Mike because he’s, well, Mike. He’s like a brother to me, and I feel completely safe with him. On most cases, I lead four detective constables, but it’s a given now that Mike and I work together. I’m suddenly thankful for that, and I start the car. Just as I’m about to leave I see Karen Barrow carrying the little girl to a car.
Someone’s waiting with a car seat, and through the late summer twilight I watch as they strap her in. Will this be her life from now on? Stranger after stranger? Where’s her mother? Or her father? Or will she go somewhere better than she’s known? I still can’t understand why a worried mother somewhere isn’t tearing her hair out, or a worried father pacing, waiting for authorities to bring the news that their daughter was found. Tears, then back to normal, although they’ll always keep a closer watch on their child.
None of it makes sense, and I drive home wondering what DI Jim Stewart will make of it. He’s not big on MisPer, preferring to leave it to the agencies and focus on what he calls real crime. But I’ve got a feeling that this is a MisPer he won’t be able to give away even if he tries.
Anyway, I’ve already booked it in, and Stan had agreed. It’s almost impossible to delete a case once it’s been processed, and this one would be processed overnight. Stan would have told the night shift by now to keep their ears out for anyone missing a toddler.
I arrive home, and Percy trots up the next door drive to meet me. Jenny, the only neighbor still speaking to me since Connelly’s men shot up the neighborhood, waves and shuts the door. I go inside and fall straight into bed, Percy beside me for warmth, and dream about death and blood on pavements.
Chapter 3
Friends. That’s my first thought when I wake up. I go into autopilot to brush my teeth and straighten my hair and go to Aiden’s room, then I remember he isn’t here. I get dressed, a black suit today as it’s the operations meeting this morning. It’s the morning I’m going to find out, one way or another, what my colleagues know about where Connelly and Sal are. I’m still thinking about friends and why I hardly have any as I drive to the station.
I did have friends. Karen, my closest friend since school, was unfortunately also close friends with Lizzy, the woman who Sal slept with. When he left, I naively thought Karen would have an ‘all girls together’ attitude, but she decided to keep out of it. Again, I thought that once Lizzy and Sal were established as a couple, she would resume our friendship. But it didn’t work out like that.
It turned out that Lizzy was just a “quick shag”, as Sal put it over a bottle of his beloved red one night. He’d thought it a good idea for us to have a heart-to-heart, which I interpreted as wanting to get back together, but in fact he wanted to unburden his guilt and tell me how many people he had slept with.
Quite a lot it turned out, including Lizzy and Karen. And two of my colleagues. So now I had no friends except Mike and Lorraine. Lorraine’s in a new relationship, all loved up, and I couldn’t go out socially with Mike, apart from case wrap-ups, because Della would lynch me.
As I pull into the parking bay it strikes me that nothing in life is remotely how you think it is. Not my marriage, not my family. Even in my job it’s difficult to understand what’s really going on. My background in surveillance hasn’t helped. Listening in on phone lines, watching and waiting, always on the lookout for things other people wouldn’t see so obviously, the wordless signals so often missed.
When I first started out, my job involved sitting outside people’s houses for seemingly endless hours using complex listening devices and shooting camera stills. Now it’s different. We still use all of the above, but technology has moved forward and we have moved with it. CCTV, video, mobile phones, even satellites—all are convenient ways to watch people and track what they’re doing. But a big part of surveillance, and one people use that actually helps us observe them, is social networking.
In one way this makes our job easier for us. Whereas we previously had to ask people for information, or watch and listen covertly, now we just log into Facebook and Twitter. People just can’t wait to tell their friends and followers exactly what they think about everything. Including crime and criminals.
On the flip side, it’s gone too far. If social networking gets hold of an idea and runs with it, it can take the whole operation in a certain direction, sometimes the wrong one: a whole trail of breadcrumbs leading us to a dead end. So now part of my job, along with the surveillance team’s, is to figure this out. Along with figuring out the real world I now have to try to work out the online world and its particular nuances.
Snooping in other people’s lives makes you wonder what’s going on in the peripherals of your own. But at work I’m on the ball. I’m at the top of my game, and I won’t let anything get past me, not even a missing parent of an abandoned baby. I’ll solve it. With Mike.
He’s already in the team room and the meeting’s just about to begin. I sit at the back and pick at my nails while DI Stewart goes over outcomes. We’ve just finished a major gang operation around the south of the city, and everyone is waiting anxiously for their next task. Mike shuffles in his seat at the front. He glances at me and smiles. DI Stewart sits down behind the desk at the front.
“So. Well done, everyone, on the Prophesy job.” It jars me to hear this again. Operation Prophesy was my last case. I flash back to The Gables and the dead boy and I have to force myself to concentrate. “Good work. We should get some prosecutions out of it. Obviously, we’re still on the lookout for Connelly and his crew, but it’s a lot quieter out there without him. Right. I expect you’re all wondering what’s next.”
There’s general nodding and whispering around the room.
“OK. Kev and Tracy, you team up with Helen and Sue on drugs up Oldham way. Join with Oldham Station for a three-month secondment. Graham’s team, all eight of you, up to city center to continue with the stolen car operations. I want all eyes and ears out, Graham’s got the game plan. John’s team, you take civil intelligence, we don’t want a repeat of yesterday in Ashton. You’ll need to work with all the borough forces to gather data, they’ve all got some.”
He pauses and flicks the sheet over.
“So that’s the routine work. We’ve got two immediate cases that have come up overnight and need looking at straightaway. One of them is a kid that’s been left in the street after that demo in Ashton.” He jumps off the table and points at me. “You booked it, didn’t you, Jan? So I’m putting you onto this. It seems that there have been some developments overnight, so I’m teaming you up with someone we haven’t worked with before. This is Damien Booth, a case profiler. He’s a psychologist on loan to us from the Met, so be gentle with him.”
There are sniggers from around the room and I scan for the new guy. He’s at the front, his head half-turned toward me. About thirty-five, tall, dark. So clearly not one of us by the way he’s dressed. He’s in casuals and looks like an academic. Longish hair. Sticking out like a sore thumb. I’m already angry. This is difficult enough without someone new. I stand up with my hand half-raised, just like I used to do at school.
“Sorry, sir, can I just ask, what new development and why wasn’t I briefed before the meeting? And you haven’t mentioned Mike. I need Mike to . . .”
Jim Stewart stares at me.
“To be fair, Jan, you weren’t assigned to the case until just now. There’s already some questions about the scene of the crime and why you didn’t call assistance at the scene. From what I can gather, this is going to require some sensitivity and digging to get to the bottom of what’s happened here.” There are outright giggles now at the thought of me handling something
with sensitivity, and lots of raised eyebrows.
But Damien Booth keeps a straight face and stares at me. I can feel my neck burning, and I sit down. DI Stewart turns to Mike.
“And, Mike, you’ll be working on the other immediate case. There’s a major problem with some cash points throughout the city, and I need you and Sam, along with the fraud team, to sort it. You’re leading on this Mike, so don’t let me down. That’s all. Jan, can you come through, and I’ll introduce Damien properly?”
The bottom almost falls out of my already empty world, and everyone begins to drift away. Mike comes to sit beside me.
“So this is it, then. You always knew it would happen one day, Jan.”
I did. I knew that Mike was going for sergeant, but I didn’t realize it would be so soon. I didn’t realize that all of a sudden everyone I valued in my life would be gone, and I’d be all alone. I’m pleased for him. ’Course I am. Leading his own inquiry for the first time. Of course I am. But sorry for myself. More than sorry. For a moment I feel vulnerable, just like the little girl yesterday.
“My god, I’ll fucking miss you, Mike. Who’s going to listen to my whining now?”
He shakes his head and his Ian Brown haircut wobbles a bit.
“Dr. Damien. You’ve access to your own personal psychologist on tap now, Jan. No more of my shit answers. You’ll get all the professional help you deserve.”
We both laugh, but we both know it’s not funny.
“Yeah. Well. I’d better go. They’re waiting for me in the consulting room.”
He nods slowly.
“Let me know how that little girl is. I’ll see you at the Prophesy wrap-up, though, won’t I? You are coming, aren’t you?”
Am I going to the Prophesy wrap-up? I can’t face it. All the people who witnessed what I had done together in one place again. I’m already on the brink, holding my secret close, and it might just send me over the edge. On the other hand, it’s an opportunity to find out how the Connelly case is progressing.
Playlist for a Paper Angel (DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series Book 3) Page 2