Risk of Harm

by Lucie Whitehouse

  And she’d been there that terrifying night sixteen months ago when Robin had faced the possibility – the likelihood – that her own daughter’s life would end like the girl’s today, that she’d never see Lennie alive again.

  The darkest point of a dark, dark time. Within twenty-four hours of Robin being forced to move back to Birmingham, her best friend, Corinna, had been murdered here, her body found in her burned-out house. For her killer, that hadn’t been enough: Corinna had deprived him of what he believed was rightfully his, so he’d taken a substitute: Lennie. A rapist, a multiple murderer, he’d snatched her from outside her new school, driven her away to a remote farm building. The chances of Lennie surviving – surviving unharmed, untouched – had been so small. Even now, Robin couldn’t think about it without feeling immediately nauseous.

  Samir had headed the rescue team, and he’d posted Malia with her, allowing Robin to see her gift for unobtrusive empathy for the first time. Now she was the first person Robin called whenever a case came in. She’d been sure she’d never find as good a fit as Gid, her DS back at the Met, but she’d been wrong about that.

  A light-skinned black woman with yoga-teacher poise, Malia was the acknowledged babe of Homicide. Even in crime-scene gear with an elastic ring round her face, she managed not to look entirely ridiculous, a feat no one else pulled off. Out of the gear, she was lovely-looking, and chic, too. Slim black trousers today, the cuffs of her pale shirt turned back twice – Detection by Ralph Lauren. Last year, while Robin’s own life was orbiting the plughole at warp speed, it had felt pointed – This could have been you if you’d managed to keep your act together – but now she just made her feel a bit dishevelled and graceless which, frankly, was not beyond her usual realm of experience.

  ‘I was thinking about it,’ she told her now, the sick feeling turning her stomach. ‘How close she came. How easily it could have been her.’

  The lights changed and they moved off. ‘Lennie’s everything to me,’ she’d told Samir that night at the hospital, trying to express her gratitude, her giddy sense of vertigo at the chasm that had yawned at her feet. He’d nodded. ‘I know.’

  He’d never said so – of course, he wouldn’t – but to anyone, like Malia, who cared enough to think, it would be clear that he’d been protecting her. In the year since Robin had joined West Midlands and he’d been her boss, there’d been three cases involving women under thirty and Samir had given them all to other people.

  It looked like the grace period was over now.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Why the hell would she go in there?’ Robin asked. ‘In broad daylight, let alone at night.’ She made a right turn and had to stop almost immediately for an old man crossing the road at a glacial pace.

  ‘She was forced?’ said Malia. ‘Physically carried? Even if one person did the stabbing, they might not have been acting alone.’

  ‘No obvious bruising, though. Maybe she went in willingly with one other person – looking for somewhere to have sex?’

  Malia looked sceptical. ‘If she was turned on by end-times scenarios.’

  ‘Or to do drugs.’ There was no evidence of long-term use, according to Olly, but they’d need the labs for anything recent, and it would be days before they got those. ‘I don’t think she was living rough.’

  ‘No, and if she turns out to have been working, I’ll be surprised but we’ll see if the local teams know her. What if she was one of these urban explorers as well?’

  ‘Interesting. And if she died towards the end of Faulkner’s time frame, she wouldn’t have gone in at night, would she? What time was sunrise?’

  Malia checked her phone. ‘Four forty-four.’

  ‘Right. Either way, the house-to-house is going to be patchy at best – industrial and office space, Saturday night, early Sunday morning.’

  They’d had a look at Bradford Street while they’d waited for Rafferty to come and get them. It was pretty typical of Deritend, inner-city Birmingham mid-regeneration. The premises next door to Gisborne’s had been derelict, too, but the Victorian red-brick factory directly opposite had been redeveloped as an office complex, all wrought-iron gates and inner courtyard with topiary planters. Whatever had originally occupied the plot next door but one had been bulldozed and replaced with a snazzy new Asian banqueting hall.

  ‘They might have had an event last night – it’s wedding season, graduation time, more or less. We could also get lucky with people on their way home from a night out.’ Not so much on Warwick Street, maybe, but Bradford was a thoroughfare to and from the city centre.

  The phone rang through the Bluetooth suddenly, making them both jump. Sara Kettleborough, the chief crime reporter at the Birmingham Post. Robin answered.

  ‘Robin? I’ve just seen you on Twitter. The girl in Deritend – you’re SIO?’

  The phone rang again as she indicated into the station car park.

  ‘Where are you?’ Samir said.

  ‘Pulling in now.’

  ‘Could you come straight to my office? Assistant Chief Constable Kilmartin’s with me.’

  Kilmartin – on a Sunday morning? Was the golf course closed?

  ‘On my way.’

  Climbing the stairs, she did a mental run-through of what they had so far. When it came to Kilmartin, she liked to be iron-clad. Aside from her interactions with the homicidal, there’d only been two or three times in her life when she’d felt a deep-tissue repulsion towards a person, a vestigial lizard-brain shudder. It was chemical, she’d concluded, molecular level, which was not to say that some of his elective behaviours weren’t also repellent. He hadn’t noticeably gained weight in the time she’d known him but every pair of trousers she’d ever seen him in was too tight; walking behind him down the corridor, you’d be treated to the full outline of a pair of budgie-smugglers. Was it a security thing or was he getting a kick out of it? A question she never wanted answered.

  Samir’s office was on the corridor between the two largest incident rooms, buffered from the hoi polloi by the small anteroom occupied during the week by his PA, Rhona. She wasn’t in today so Robin knocked on the inner door herself.

  Most of the senior officers she’d worked with over the years, men and women, kept their offices like operating theatres, presumably to communicate either that they’d reached a plain beyond the need for paper or that even this was only a pit stop on the relentless march to the top, no point settling in. Samir’s, by contrast, had undeniable human touches; despite the featurelessness of the room’s shell, at certain times of day, when the light was soft, it bordered on hospitable-looking. There were two plush eau-de-nil bucket chairs for visitors, a cluster of plants on the shelf and a bamboo tray with a coffee pot and cups. His in-tray contained real, live paperwork and she knew from taking a stealthy look one day when he’d stepped out for a minute that the pair of Perspex frames on the desk corner held photographs of his wife, Liz, with Harry and Leila, one fairly recent, the other from when the children were younger, about five and three. Her eyes had lingered on the newer one, Liz sitting with her arms round the children on the steps of a church in Italy or Spain, probably, an azure wooden door behind them, all three of them in shorts and sandals, Liz slim-shouldered in an olive vest top, slightly pink in the cheeks. She was grinning soft-eyed at the camera, wisps of brown hair escaping from a loose topknot.

  Head of Force Homicide. At the start of last year, it had felt like a cosmic joke. Of course she’d known what he was doing – over the years, she’d had to employ top-level fieldcraft to avoid him at conferences – but after thirteen years of evading him while she was making a success of her life, they’d come face to face when she’d blown it all sky-high. Of course.

  Even after a year of seeing him most days, though, she still had moments like this, when she looked at him and instead of the Samir nearing forty, she saw his eighteen or nineteen-year-old avatar, skin lineless, hair still completely black, none of the hatching round the eyes or silver over the ears. He’d
been six foot one by the time he was fifteen, lean from cross-country running then, more solid now but still a runner, pounding pavements and parks before work, and in his navy suit and tie, the white shirt, it was easy to remember him as he’d looked in his sixth-form uniform when they’d gone to his house after school. His parents were both hospital doctors, they’d worked late, and so they’d spent hours lying on his bed listening to music, talking, kissing. She’d been the first person he’d ever slept with.

  He was standing behind his chair, hands resting on the back, no doubt because Kilmartin was standing, too, posing his bantamweight frame in front of the long window, hands wide on the sill, upper body manspreading at the focal point of the room. She’d wondered before whether he’d actually studied how to do it, Physical Dominance for Men of Slender Means, a two-week online course. Compared to Samir, he was a slip of a thing.

  ‘DCI Lyons,’ he said in his reedy voice. ‘Take a seat.’ He gestured towards the chairs.

  ‘No.’ She wasn’t going to give him the height advantage; they were at eye level now. Samir flashed her a look. ‘I’d prefer to stand. Thank you, sir,’ she added, slightly too late.

  Another gesture, faintly courtly, as if to say, against my better judgement but as you wish. ‘I hear Superintendent Jafferi has given you the Deritend case. The girl.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Robin glanced at him again – See, I can play the game – but Samir was watching Kilmartin with an expression of deliberate focus.

  ‘Now, as we’re all well aware, we’re working in straitened circumstances across the board but we need to be completely on top of this. Dead girls are media catnip, as you know, especially if they’re photogenic …’

  There was a questioning rise at the end that Robin pretended not to hear. She was dead, for Christ’s sake; could they leave whether she was hot or not out of it for a couple of hours?

  ‘It’s very hard for people to imagine,’ he went on, ‘a wife or a daughter …’

  Oh, wives and daughters. ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

  ‘What have you got so far? Who’s the pathologist?’

  ‘Oliver Faulkner.’

  ‘Hm. Does he think it was sexual?’

  ‘To be confirmed, but it doesn’t look like it. She was fully dressed, her clothes weren’t disturbed or damaged.’

  Kilmartin pursed his lips. ‘That’s something.’

  ‘He’s going to prioritize the PM tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. Obviously, you’ll talk to DI Webster this morning about the boy in Erdington, see if they’re connected?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He let go of the windowsill and paced a little, affecting interest in Samir’s potted peace lily. He reached out a hand to touch a leaf then seemed to think better of it. ‘I’m wondering,’ he said, back still turned, ‘whether you should be the public face of this one, Samir.’

  ‘Why?’ Robin said, before she could stop herself.

  ‘Why?’ This time Kilmartin did touch the leaf, rubbing it speculatively between his thumb and forefingers as it were a piece of cloth whose quality he was assessing. ‘As I said, I think it’s got the potential to blow up, PR-wise, and I want to be totally sure we’re putting our best foot forward.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m our best foot.’ She was conscious of Samir glaring now, and ignored him.

  Kilmartin turned, giving her a cold-eyed smile. ‘You’re not our most senior foot. As Head of Force Homicide, DCS Jafferi has the advantage of rank, and I think the public would find it reassuring to know this was being handled from the top.’

  DCS Jafferi also has the advantage of a pair of balls, which is what you’d find reassuring.

  ‘Clearly we need to do what’s best for everyone here,’ Samir said, letting go of the back of his chair and doing some pacing of his own. ‘My team as well as the public. So let’s keep that in mind as an option. But I’m confident DCI Lyons will do an excellent job, as she has done across the board since she joined us. We know she’s a first-class investigator, which is why I wanted her on this case.’

  ‘And indeed the force, am I right?’ Another reptilian smile.

  Was he alluding to their past – was that possible? Thanks to Corinna, it was known in Homicide that she and Samir had gone out years ago but he’d told her Kilmartin wasn’t aware. When she’d badgered him about it at drinks before Christmas, he’d finally said that the ACC’s animus towards her – he hadn’t denied it existed – was about what he saw as West Midlands taking the Met’s cast-offs, especially a cast-off who’d been dragged through the tabloids only months beforehand.

  ‘Yes,’ Samir said now, decisive. ‘Exactly why I wanted her on the force.’

  ‘So, DCI Lyons, a nice quick solve is in order.’ Kilmartin paused, giving her the same assessing look he’d given the plant. ‘Let’s see if DCS Jafferi’s faith in you is warranted.’

  ‘Wives and daughters,’ she said as she watched him exit the building directly below. He was evidently doing some Trump-level hair manipulation; from an aerial view, he was much balder than he looked face to face. ‘Does it help them imagine that women are relevant in some way, or is it a chattels thing?’

  ‘Don’t.’

  She heard Samir sit down and turned to look at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Let it into your head. He’s an old chauvinist, he’s never going to change, and if you let him get to you and get lippy, it’ll be you who gets torched.’

  ‘Back in your box, Lyons, in other words.’

  ‘In other words. For your own sake.’

  ‘Yes, Most Senior Foot. Christ, Samir, how do you do it, being so bloody political all the time.’

  An upward flick of the eyebrows. ‘What was the scene like?’

  ‘Something out of J. G. Ballard. Totally porous, a forensics nightmare, lived in by a ton of homeless people, minimal CCTV coverage.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  Kilmartin’s BMW slid silently out of the car park. ‘And even though he was stating the bloody obvious, he’s right about the media attention,’ she said with a sigh. ‘And she probably was photogenic before she was murdered and dumped in a sea of trash in a bit of foetid carpet.’

  She felt it again, the glow behind her ribs. It went without saying that she’d put everything she had into ‘a nice quick solve’ but it would be for the victim and her family, nothing to do with Kilmartin tossing down his pathetic gauntlet.

  Chapter Three

  Her last Major Incident Team in London had been based off Putney High Street in an office building in dire need of renovation, and the team had complained non-stop: it was old; it was cramped; on summer afternoons, it reached volcanic temperatures. ‘I’ve spent cooler weeks on the Costa Brava,’ Gid used to announce, struggling to make himself heard over the aerodrome roar of the desk fans. Robin had loved it. The closeness heightened the drama: the sound of phones and computer keys bounced off the walls and low ceiling like they were in All the President’s Men.

  Force Homicide’s purpose-built offices were spacious, decently appointed and about as architecturally interesting as a car dealership on a trading estate. They’d been built in the Eighties or early Nineties on the site of an old toy factory – Police! A toy factory! The jokes! – in a style Robin thought of as Late-Twentieth-Century Call Centre, bog-standard red-brick girt with characterless strips of windows. For a week after she’d accepted the job here, she’d felt panicked: the Midlands had won, she’d been sucked back in by everything she’d tried so hard to escape. You can take the girl out of the provinces … Corinna’s voice, still talking in her ear as if nothing had happened.

  When she walked into the incident room these days, however, all she noticed were the similarities, the same smells of printer toner and coffee mingled with body-spray heat-hazing off the younger bucks, the same chatter of keyboards and phones. And today, there was the same unmistakable new-case edge on the air. For now, everything was pristine, immaculate, the possibility of getting every detail r
ight unsullied by hour upon hour of recalcitrant witnesses and dry-eyed computer-gawping, runs of eighteen-hour days and ’bab van dinners. This was the golden hour – for now, it could still be the perfect case, a boxed example in the next edition of the Blackstone’s handbook.

  DC Varan Patel was already at his desk. The day Corinna died, he’d come with Malia to interview Robin and even through the fog of disbelief and horror, she’d registered that he looked about fifteen years old. He was twenty-nine, she knew now, though if she sent him undercover in A-level History, she doubted anyone would rumble him; when the chubby older guard teased him for his skinniness, it was always along the lines of ‘Isn’t your mum feeding you, Varan? A growing boy?’ She was increasingly fond of him; he was sharp and precise with a tendency to workaholism that, as his guv’nor, she appreciated.

  ‘Two calls from families with missing girls already,’ he told her, standing. ‘Their voices, all that hope and fear mixed together.’ He shuddered. ‘They heard about it from public posts but I’ve put ours up now, so we’ll get more any minute.’

  ‘What about the two?’

  He shook his head. ‘One was too old, the other was Chinese. The first pictures have just come in from the SOCOs.’

  He handed them to her, still warm from the printer. There she was, exactly as they’d left her, but the distancing had already begun, the start of the process by which she would slip away. The photos had reduced her to two dimensions, turning her into something they could fix to their board, a butterfly on a collector’s pin. By this afternoon, she’d have been removed from the real world forever, no longer a person but evidence, part of Rafferty’s crime scene, labelled and stored in a mortuary drawer.

  Once they had an ID, they’d ask her family for as many photographs as possible, plaster them all over the board. It was something Robin had picked up years ago, when Corinna’s dad had been dying of his alcoholism. One of his nurses had urged the family to bring in photographs that showed Trevor as he had been: a family man (of sorts, for a handful of years), a good-looking, funny man, anyway, until it had all gone pear-shaped. The point, she’d said, was to remind the medical staff that, however bad the condition of the patient, they’d once been out in the world like everyone else, a human being with friends and family, favourite foods, vanities, quirks, insecurities. It was true for their murder victims, too, and part of her job, as Robin saw it, was to make sure no one forgot it.