Baby Love

by Maureen Carter

  Bev reached for the rest of her pork pie, then changed her mind. The pink bits were too reminiscent of the mottled flesh on Natalie’s skinny legs. Bev’s initial shock-horror-what-a-fucking-mess reaction now included real anger towards the Beck girl. Of course Natalie had suffered a shocking ordeal. But it was infuriating that she hadn’t reported it at the time. Because there was an outside chance that Natalie could’ve been the Street Watch rapist’s first victim.

  The teenager’s attack hadn’t featured missing earrings or hacked pubic hair; Natalie had looked blank at both suggestions. But she was a young slim blonde, more or less fitting the victim profile. Maybe back then the Beast hadn’t yet worked out the sick signature he’d leave in the three later attacks. Bev reached for her drink, scowling. Street Watch connection or not, the Beck girl’s silence had let a rapist get away with it.

  “Don’t be too hard on her, Bev.”

  The glass stopped halfway to her mouth. How did he do that? The guv could run a stall at the end of Brighton pier: mind-reading.

  “I know the horses have already bolted,” Byford said. “But she is going to come in.”

  Natalie said she’d caught a brief glimpse of the rapist. She’d reluctantly agreed to go through the mug shots at Highgate, a none-too-pretty parade of pervs and known offenders. If that failed, she’d work with the E-fit guys, try to compile a likeness. Bev gave an eloquent snort. Eleven months after the event? Just listen to those stable doors.

  “I know how you feel,” the guv said. “Natalie Beck was selfish and irresponsible.” He rubbed a hand over a face etched with exhaustion. “But, my God, she’s paying a high price now.”

  Bev agreed with a sigh. Sixty-five uniforms and almost as many plain-clothes officers had trawled every inch of the Wordsworth estate. All but a couple of dozen householders had been interviewed, more than eighty statements taken. Every empty building had been entered and meticulously searched. Joe and Jo Public had put in more than two hundred calls to the hot-line numbers. The most promising were being acted on first. It was a lot of activity – and nada to show. Nothing had been thrown up that led the inquiry an inch further forward. Not a single hair of the baby’s head.

  Until now, the disused rail line in Moseley was the only rape scene Bev hadn’t attended. This was her second cruise past in the last twenty minutes. It was approaching midnight, bed was calling but the pull of the place was too great. She left the MG on a single yellow line, grabbed a torch to augment pale moonlight, slipped on wellies and headed for the police tape.

  After leaving Byford, she’d nipped back to Highgate, preferring to pore over the latest Street Watch reports than prop up the bar at The Prince with Nick Lockwood. The Beeb man had taken her last-minute cancellation in good spirits, sounding like he’d already imbibed a few anyway. As well as the written reports, she’d studied the visuals. But stills, even video, only went so far. Bev had to feel a crime scene. The smells and touch, the atmosphere, the being there was vital. A good cop had a sixth sense, sometimes more.

  Not that she had any right to be here. Powell was in charge of the inquiry. She was on the missing-baby case. Professionally, she’d rarely been so torn. Talk about a rock and a slab of steel. Zoë’s image was constantly in her head. Bev would go the extra mile and then some to get the baby back. But she owed the rape victims as well. She’d forged a bond with the first two girls. They phoned her now and again to find out if there’d been any developments, sometimes staying on the line to chat about films or frocks. Teenage things, normal things.

  She didn’t want to let them down, so she’d come up with a working compromise. She just hadn’t told anyone at work. She’d decided to give her all to finding the baby, a hundred per cent. Then pull out more, on her own time, for the big girls: Rebecca Fox, Kate Quinn and Laura Kenyon. Though the guv had taken her off Street Watch, there was nothing to say she couldn’t cast the odd glance down the road.

  Carefully she started edging down the embankment to the track. The slope was drier now but she didn’t want to do a Powell. What with the moonlight casting sinister shadows and the gnarled branches and twisted roots, it looked like a location from Lord of the Rings.

  She gasped when a rat the size of an Alsatian darted for cover. There’d be colonies of the buggers round here. Imagine poor Laura lying scared and alone in the dark and rain, dehumanised, dumped like rubbish. Bev hadn’t met the girl yet but hell... How do you get over something like that? She shivered, though it wasn’t cold.

  Another minute or so and she’d seen enough. She wasn’t here to search. There was no point, not when the SOCO A-team had covered every inch. She turned to head back to the Midget and stopped so suddenly she had to shoot out a hand to keep her balance.

  The crime boys hadn’t been here in moonlight. Or torchlight.

  It was probably a ring-pull or a shard of glass, but something near the track had definitely glinted in the light. She backed fractionally, slowly moving her head, adjusting her eye-line, trying to reproduce the exact angle at which she’d spotted it. No good. Probably a rat’s eye. One more go. Carefully, she inched forward, shining the torch in the direction of whatever she’d seen. Yes: a definite glitter. Now she had a firmer fix, it was worth a closer look.

  Inching and sliding, she homed in on one of the rotting sleepers. Down on her haunches, she spotted it at close quarters, reached a fingernail into the cracked timber and pulled out a tiny earring. It was silver and the diamond looked real. Bev closed her eyes, tried to call up the interview notes she’d read that evening. She was certain Laura Kenyon had told Powell she’d not been wearing earrings. Was the girl lying? And if she’d lost an earring during the attack, what had happened to the other? Was it down here as well? Or had the rapist added it to his trophy collection?

  Bev held the earring between thumb and forefinger, twirling it to catch the moon’s silvery light. Deep in thought, she was unaware of a figure in the shadows, barely twenty feet away.

  He was taking great pains not to be seen. Not yet. The time would come soon enough.

  Gondolas, gondolas, more fucking gondolas. The Monty Python sketch popped into Bev’s head every time she set foot in her new home. Only it wasn’t gondolas, it was packing cases. Six months she’d been here and still hadn’t located the microwave, two library books and a particularly fetching pair of French knickers. She was sick of it: bits of her life crammed into crates and cardboard boxes. Towering stacks of the stuff.

  Was it lack of time? Or inclination? The Baldwin Street terrace didn’t feel like home, but if she didn’t do the unpacking and have her things around her it never would. Maybe she needed a housemate. Or a wife. How good would it be to come home to dinner in the oven and slippers by the fire?

  She slammed a piece of granary in the toaster and checked the answer-phone. Frankie. Shit. Bev had forgotten to call that morning to put off their fun for another day. Seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Thanks a bunch, sister.” Not a trace of Frankie’s Italian accent. Not good, then. Bev closed her eyes. Her mate, Frankie Perlagio, was closer than a sister. And she’d let her down. Again. It was too late to call now.

  Her mum’s voice was next: Emmy. “Can you make lunch tomorrow, love? Roast beef and Worcesters. I’ll even do you a treacle pud.” The pause was deliberate. And the lowered voice. “Sadie misses you, Bev. She’d love to see you.”

  Bev clenched her fists. Another stick to beat herself with. Sadie, her gran, was scared of her own shadow since a vicious battering nine months back. An intruder connected to a case Bev was working had broken into the family home. The bastard smacked Sadie round the face before hacking off her lovely long hair. Bev doubted her gran would ever fully recover.

  She sighed. The chances of making lunch – even Emmy’s signature Worcester puds – were as good as Bin Laden doing Big Brother. The bread popped up, burned to a crisp. She slung it in the swing bin and headed for bed. Ten minutes later she was sprawled fully dressed on top of the duvet, snoring for
Europe.

  The Baby Fay case files lay open across the pillow next to her.

  It was twenty-two hours since Baby Zoë had last been seen alive.

  Bill Byford was gazing at the sprawl of city lights glittering like diamonds and ice in the indigo distance. Sleep was a long way off too. He’d got up, made tea, brought it back to the bedroom. He’d been looking out for twenty minutes, looking back nearly twenty years.

  The superintendent didn’t need the case files to remember Baby Fay. He’d been a uniformed sergeant when she’d been snatched in ’88. He and another officer had found the body. Byford had come close to a career change. Only the thought of watching a sick pervert go down for the rest of his life had kept him going. And the loving support of his wife. Margaret had died six years ago. Byford still missed her like a limb.

  An anonymous letter had told the police to search a building site over in Chelmsley Wood where the foundations for a new school were being laid. Without the tip-off they’d probably never have found the baby. The tiny body had been stuffed into filthy sacking; covered in concrete dust, she’d resembled a miniature mummy. The pathologist recorded twenty-three broken bones, eleven cigarette burns and indications of sexual abuse. Fay lived in Byford’s head now. Always would.

  The baby had been snatched from her cot in the middle of the night from a white, middle-class family in Northfield. Fay was six months old and the parents’ only child. Within a year of burying her, they’d separated. The father took off to America, if Byford remembered right. The mother took an overdose. She died three weeks later without regaining consciousness.

  He pressed his head against the window, welcoming the cool on his clammy skin. It took three long weeks to find Fay. After eighteen years, they still hadn’t caught the evil monster who’d killed her.

  10

  “Brought you a stick of rock.”

  Bev looked up from a desk that was in imminent danger of collapse from paper-fatigue. Oz’s smiling face was the last thing she expected to see poking round the incident-room door. She hoped, very much, that the rest of DC Khan was present in the corridor. It was. He strolled in, looking considerably tastier than the proffered stick of sugar and E-numbers. Man in black, today: fitted linen trousers, torso-hugging t-shirt. Lucky t-shirt. It was easy to forget how staggeringly fit Oz was in the flesh: classic bone structure, big brown eyes and first-degree brain. What more could a girl want? A peck on the cheek would be good. No one else was around. Not this early on a Sunday.

  Bev had been in since 6am. Apart from a quick no-can-do-lunch call to her mum, the time had been spent going through the Baby Fay case files. Oz was a sight for extremely sore eyes. She was glad she’d made more of a sartorial effort herself this morning. As usual, Bev was woman in blue; her entire working gear was blue, blue and a touch of blue. But the skirt was new, fitted and knee-length. When she was on her feet.

  She casually crossed her legs and, just to show willing, tugged at the rock’s sticky wrapping before taking a lick. “Thought you weren’t back till tomorrow?”

  “Pining for you, sarge.” So why was he riffling paperwork? “Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, wasting away I was.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I wish. A year ago, maybe...

  He grabbed a chair, turned it and straddled. “I saw the story on the news about the missing baby. Hands-on-deck job, isn’t it? Thought I’d get up to speed on the reports.”

  She bit off a chunk of rock. “How’d the wedding go? Did the bride blush? Did you lose the ring?”

  “Did I what?” Oz winced as she crunched and swallowed.

  “Best man always loses the ring.” She flashed a grin. “Traditional, that is. Like the groom’s hangover and the mothers bawling their socks off and...”

  He was studying her closely. “What’ve you been up to, Bev?”

  “Nothing!” How come he could see right through her?

  “You’ve got that glint in your eye. And you’re babbling like a brook. In flood.”

  Apart from a word in DC Carol Mansfield’s ear, Bev had intended keeping it quiet. But Oz soon had edited chapter and verse of her midnight recce at the crime scene.

  “What’s the guv’s take on it?”

  “Ah. That’s a long story, Oz.” She walked round the desk, slipped an arm through his. “Come on, I’ll fill you in. Breakfast’s on me.”

  “It’s not the only thing, Sergeant Morriss.” His smile was heart-stopping. “Come here.”

  Stay mean, keep ’em keen. “Best not, mate.” She went for coy. “The others’ll be in any time.”

  He handed her a virgin-white cotton handkerchief. “Wipe your mouth, sarge. It’s covered in pink gunge.”

  They nipped to a greasy spoon just round the corner from the nick. Oz was getting the full works: a verbal update from Bev on both inquiries. It was littered with one-liners and caustic comments but as an up-sum it was fast, professional and incisive. She did a mean wheat-from-chaff and it beat written reports into a cocked helmet. Oz was digesting details and ingesting eggs: two, soft-boiled. It was sixteen minutes before the guv’s brief and Bev was ploughing her way through a full English. If an army marched on its stomach, she’d be well ready to join up.

  And judging by the WAR posters that had appeared overnight in the streets of south Birmingham, maybe the whole force should consider enlisting. Women Against Rape had plastered almost as many notices as those pasted up by uniform about the missing baby. Every other lamppost carried signs about the mass protest and candlelit vigil. Those that didn’t showed Zoë Beck’s picture and a plea for information from the public.

  Oz broke a yolk with a soldier. “If the baby’s not found soon, the guv’ll have to re-organise the squads, won’t he?”

  Bev nodded, took a slurp of tea. “I’m already off Street Watch.” Registering his wide-mouthed surprise, she waved a reassuring fork. “I’m cool with it now. He’s made me SIO on the search.” She dabbed at a cluster of beans soaking into her shirt. “Anyway...”

  “Hold on. If you’re off the case, what were you doing at the scene last night?”

  She thought she’d slipped that in but it snagged on Oz’s radar. No point in diversionary tactics now. She leaned in, lowered her voice. “I needed to see it, Oz. I’m off the case but...I can’t just drop it. I want the bastard behind bars.”

  He could barely hear her but was in no doubt how strongly she felt. “We all do, Bev.” He took her hand. “You have to let it go. DI Powell’s...”

  “A plonker.” She snatched her hand back.

  “...a good officer,” Oz persisted. “Have you told him? About finding the earring?”

  She sighed, shook her head. “That’s something else I’m really looking forward to.”

  Oz opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind. He knew when to leave it. Bev hoped the guv’d leave her and Oz as a team as well. They knew each other’s ways, didn’t always see eye to eye but in a tight corner... Oz had covered her back more times than a duvet. He was the only man in the entire universe who knew it sported a tiny rose tattoo. Though they hadn’t shared the bottom sheet much recently. Not since she’d beaten the shit out of the psycho-killer who’d attacked Sadie. It hadn’t been a pretty sight – and Oz had seen it. Now, apart from on shift, he saw a lot less of Bev.

  “There’s a limit to what the guv can do.” Oz was back on safer ground. “He can switch people round, but it’s all a bit Peter and Paul.”

  Bev nodded. Oz was spot on. Whatever Byford said to the media in the public domain, privately he’d told Bev that West Mercia police were already on standby, should he have to call in more bodies. It went against the grain, implying an inadequacy, an inability to cope. But two high-profile on-going operations, constant high-alert security status and normal run-of-the-nick crime were enough to stretch any force to its limit. Maybe beyond.

  Sunday, 8am, day two of the search and it was standing room only. Huge blow-up photographs of the missing baby dominated the briefing room where more tha
n eighty men and women gathered, many – like Oz – turning up on a day off. About a third had been temporarily re-assigned from Street Watch, which explained Mike Powell’s presence – a sort of two-briefings-with-one-stone scenario.

  Bev was seated next to the DI behind a metal desk up at the front. She’d attended hundreds of similar meetings, couldn’t recall an atmosphere remotely like this. It could power the national grid, no problem. Every officer was focused; many were grim-faced. There was no slouching posture, no irreverent asides, no black humour. Most of these people had kids. All were acutely aware that the first twenty-four hours following a crime were important; in the case of a missing child they were crucial. Baby Zoë hadn’t been seen for twenty-nine.

  “We’re extending the search parameters.” Byford was on his feet, centre stage, an impatient hand jiggling keys in a trouser pocket. An enlarged street plan of Balsall Heath and surrounding suburbs had been pinned to one of the incident boards. The map was dotted with coloured markers showing the places teams had already covered. The guv waved a pointer over the areas to be added, plus special-interest sites such as wasteland, derelict buildings, allotments and a recreation ground. Sniffer dogs and handlers were already out there; divers would shortly be dragging further stretches of the canal.

  “Back here,” Byford said, “we’ll continue phone-bashing and putting in the checks. As of now, Jack’s control room co-ordinator.”

  Inspector Jack Hainsworth lifted an arm like a leg of pork. Early forties, thinning ginger hair, he was admired and respected by everyone in the building, not necessarily liked. He was chunky, bull-necked and had the look of a nightclub bouncer wearing uniform for a bet. A Yorkshireman who loathed cricket, he’d read classics at Cambridge and was into campanology. He suffered neither fools nor fuck-ups gladly; in fact, not at all. Hainsworth’s sharp beady eyes would scan every sheet of paper, assess every piece of data; he’d then prioritise and point the inquiry in the right direction. He had a brain like a computer and a mouth like an open sewer. It was currently running through state of play and future activity.