Len ran upstairs straight away to put her pyjamas on and Robin went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. A cup of tea before bed was Lennie’s new thing – cups of tea at any time of day, actually. She and her new friends were forever huddling round the kettle, wrapped in long cardigans like a gang of preternaturally smooth-skinned old ladies at a WI tea-urn.
The boards creaked overhead. Len’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the tiny outside space. She’d left a gap in the curtains and a bar of yellow light lay across the decked area and up the back wall. They’d moved in September, too late to use the garden much before it got cold last year, but she had visions of reading out there this summer, Saturday breakfasts, lunches with Len and her friends. A couple of weeks ago, she’d bought a little barbecue and she could see it hovering in the shadow outside the double doors, a friendly red UFO.
Len reappeared in her vest top and baggy striped pyjama trousers tied with burgundy ribbon. Fifteen going on twenty-five but, without the mascara she seemed to think Robin couldn’t see, also entirely recognizable as the five- and six-year-old she’d been what sometimes felt like decades ago, sometimes about a fortnight.
The same age as Victoria Engel when she’d vanished without a trace.
‘What?’ Len said.
‘Nothing. Just thinking how lovely you are.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Right.’
‘What? You are.’
‘You’re somewhat biased.’
‘Doesn’t mean it’s not true.’
Len shook her head in pretend despair, squeezed her teabag against the edge of her mug then carried it over to the bin. ‘Mum, you’ll be late again tomorrow, won’t you? Is it okay if I go over to Asha’s with Niamh? We need to finish our project.’
And, the unspoken subtext, I won’t have to sit alone in the house after dark.
Chapter Five
Robin handed a cup into the car, retrieved her own from the roof and lowered herself into the passenger seat. She pulled the door shut quietly then glanced around the circle of sleepy semis outside. No sign that she’d drawn attention to herself: good.
Maggie already had the paper bag open. ‘Pain au chocolat?’ she said, at Attenborough-in-the-bushes volume, peering in. ‘How did you know?’
‘Wild guess,’ she murmured. It was still only quarter to seven but as usual Maggie was fully made-up and rattling with silver jewellery, her black hair backcombed and doubtless crisp to the touch. Bar a marginally lighter hand with the eyeliner, it was the full Alice Cooper. She spent her days hanging round suburbs and industrial estates but if ever an Eighties hair band needed a last-minute stand-in, she was ready. Even now, Robin found it bizarre that Maggie was one of her mother’s best friends. Talk about the odd couple.
‘How’re things?’ she asked. ‘How’s Richard?’
‘Oh, you know,’ Maggie shrugged. She swallowed her mouthful then said, ‘Your ma hasn’t told you?’
‘Told me what?’
‘Well, it’s fine, everything’s fine. You know we’re moving in together, or I’m moving in with him, to be accurate?’
‘Yes, I knew that bit.’
‘He’s furious with me because I won’t sell my house until I know I can do it – live with someone again, I mean, after all this time.’ Maggie had been divorced since Robin was a teenager.
‘Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.’
‘Well, we’re birds of a feather like that, aren’t we, you and me, too used to calling our own shots. He says it shows a lack of faith. I say, it’s bloody miraculous I’m even considering the idea and he should think himself lucky.’ She started one of her fox-bark laughs then remembered she was supposed to be inconspicuous. ‘Anyway,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ll see. He’s being melodramatic, that’s all.’
Robin nodded towards the window. ‘Who’s your date here?’
‘Scummy little benefit fraudster at number seven.’ Bangles chiming, Maggie tore off another bite of pastry. ‘On the sick with an alleged shoulder injury for thirteen months,’ she said, chewing, ‘while working full-time cash-in-hand for his mate’s plastering business. You can feast eyes on him yourself in a minute: the mate’ll be along to pick him up.’
Cul-de-sacs at dawn was how Maggie had described her private investigation work when she’d offered Robin a job eighteen months earlier. ‘Pictures of people up bright and early, suited, booted and slinging their briefcase/toolbox in the back of the car/van, delete as applicable, are of the essence.’ As it turned out, she hadn’t been entirely honest about her job, either, however, and while most of her closest friends still believed she only did benefits and insurance work, on Robin’s first day, Maggie had had to confess to her own side gig, albeit mostly unpaid, working to help women in jeopardy. Their first – and last – case together had been a missing woman.
‘This poor girl in Deritend, is it?’ she asked now, sipping her coffee.
‘I wondered if you’d heard anything on the vine. Anyone you know of gone AWOL?’ Most of Maggie’s side work came via the police but there were other avenues for people who wanted to stay low-profile.
‘No, I’d have been in touch.’
Robin nodded. ‘I know. I wanted to show you a couple of photographs, though, just in case. I couldn’t email them for obvious reasons.’
She brought them up on her phone. The first was a full-face shot. Lying on her back, make-up-free face drained of colour and framed by her hair, the girl looked not so much old-fashioned as hundreds of years out of time. Robin imagined her suddenly as a poor novice dead of plague, awaiting burial at some chilly fifteenth-century convent. In the second picture, her eyes had been opened to show their colour, irises muddy green, rings of amber round the pupils like sun flares. Her nose was probably bigger than she might have wanted, the kind of nose you grew into, that made you look characterful rather than pretty. Maybe she’d moaned about it but by her thirties and forties she might have appreciated it. She’d never get the chance now.
Maggie looked at the pictures for some time. ‘No, I’ve never seen her,’ she said at last.
‘Sure?’
‘Definite.’ She handed back the phone. ‘But she does remind me of someone.’
‘Who?’
‘I can’t think. No one relevant. Probably some D-list celeb from one of those reality shows, Big Brother or Has-Beens-on-Ice or what have you.’
‘Really? I think she looks old-fashioned.’
‘Yeah, I can see that, too.’
They fell silent as a front door opened on Robin’s side of the close. A man in his thirties stepped out, locked it behind him then walked to a silver hatchback. He hadn’t noticed them.
‘How’re things otherwise?’ Maggie asked as he pulled off. ‘Len all right?’
‘I think so. Her Easter grade card was great, Mum probably told you.’
‘She didn’t – the academics are more your line, I think. She says Len had her friends over to Dunnington Road for dinner a week or ten days ago, you all made pizza?’
‘Yeah, Asha and Niamh, her new besties. They’re good girls – sparky. Quite hilarious, actually, some of the banter.’
Maggie glanced at the rear-view mirror. ‘Incoming.’
Passing alongside now was a Ford Transit, its side painted with the details and logo of Philip Ramsey, ‘Master Plaster’. It looped the cul-de-sac and came back, facing them now, to hover in a space at the opposite kerb a couple of cars behind. The height of the cab gave them a clear view of the driver. Maggie’s phone was ready on her knee, camera app open, and she picked it up and took bursts of photos as a skinny bloke in paint-flecked jeans and a Whitesnake T-shirt loped down the path from one of the houses and swung himself easily up into the passenger seat. A few words to the driver and they were away.
Robin waited until they rounded the corner. ‘Whitesnake – blast from the past.’
‘The past? Do you mind?’
‘Maggie, different note, have you ever come across Martin
Engel?’
She turned, surprised at the change of direction, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Martin Engel – is that the one with the missing daughter – Vivian, is it? No – Victoria, of course it’s Victoria. The dad who’s still in the papers from time to time?’
‘He turned up at the nick late last night – he was waiting for me in the car park when I left. Lying in wait’s probably more accurate.’ A sense-memory, the knuckleduster keys cool between her fingers.
‘For you specifically?’
‘He’d heard about the girl in Deritend and he knew I was SIO. He knew all about me – the case in London, which station I’m at, my car.’
Maggie frowned. ‘I don’t like that. Did he think the Deritend girl might be her?’
‘So he said but, given how involved he’s been in her case over the years, he must have known we’d have gone back through the records straight away. She’s probably the highest-profile misper on our patch.’ Of course he must, she’d realized, lying in bed, cogs turning. ‘I don’t think that was really why he came. He pretty much admitted he’d been keeping an eye on me for a while; I think this was just his way in.’
‘You should tell someone. Waiting for you in the dark – and he knows your car?’ Maggie shook her head. ‘God, don’t tell your mother, will you? She’ll freak out. Do you think he’s unhinged – been unhinged by it all? You could hardly blame him.’
‘Dunno. He’s definitely … intense.’ But if things had gone the other way with Lennie, or if she’d vanished without a trace, she’d be the same. She’d turn over every blade of grass in Europe.
‘Tell someone. Tell Samir.’
Robin half-nodded, non-committal. ‘I’ll handle it. Really, I wanted to ask if you’d had any dealings with him? On the other side of your business.’
‘No. He’d have gone with someone higher-falutin’ than me, if he went the PI route.’
Which, again, he must have done, Robin thought, given how much else he’d thrown behind it.
‘Don’t get involved,’ warned Maggie. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate and he’s already overstepped. Leave it.’
‘Yeah.’ She shook her cup: empty bar a last mouthful. ‘Okay, I’d better get going.’
‘That’s me, too. Drop you at your car?’
‘No, don’t worry, it’s only round the corner.’
‘Well, thanks for the breakfast. And keep me posted.’
Robin started walking, raising her hand as Maggie passed, feeling an odd sense of loss as her car disappeared from view. Things were better between them now, the mess she’d made of working for her receding into history, but once you’d lost someone’s confidence, she didn’t know if you ever totally got it back. Not that it was stopping her from trying. She’d wanted to ask about the dead girl, of course, but she’d also wanted to show her how assiduous she was, how on it. She knew Maggie missed police work so here she was bringing her titbits, too, dropping tasty morsels of information at her feet. Pathetic.
Lennie had still been asleep when she left so she got out her phone to ring her. Before she could bring up her number, however, it buzzed.
‘Morning, boss,’ Malia said. ‘I’ve just had a call. A woman rang Crimestoppers – she saw the two guys from the sketch heading into a soup kitchen in Bordesley Street. Uniforms are on their way and I’m heading straight over.’
Robin mapped a mental route. ‘I’m only a few minutes away. I’ll meet you there.’
Like many of its neighbours in Digbeth, Bordesley Street was a mix of the few Victorian red-brick factories that had survived the war and a jumble of modern builds, a lot thrown up in the Fifties and Sixties, some slightly better ones in the Nineties. Behind a chain-link fence, a large ‘Overflow Car Park’ – overflow from what? – occupied what Robin guessed was an old bombsite, undeveloped since. The squad car was parked down the street outside a large plumbing wholesalers.
‘Didn’t want the smell of bacon putting people off their breakfast,’ said one of the officers. ‘There’s two doors, front and side, we’ve got them both from here.’
‘Okay. Bring the car up now, then wait. If it is who we’re looking for, we’ll need you to take them to Harborne.’
The Good Hope Kitchen occupied what had once been a workshop or a garage, a flat-roofed single-storey building with narrow reinforced windows at the outer edges and an isolated central doorway probably put in when a rolling grille was taken out. The pebble-dash was recently whitewashed, though, and a Plexiglas case displayed a bright patchwork of flyers for LGBTQ groups, social events for pensioners, AA and confidential HIV testing. She glanced at a card giving ‘Kitchen Hours’: 7.00 until 9.00 for breakfast, lunch daily from 12.00.
More flyers covered the walls of a narrow entryway that smelled of toast and frying onions. Beyond was a square room dominated by three long picnic-style tables at which thirty or forty people were seated, some talking, in groups, others pointedly alone. One man seemed to be bodily protecting his plate, hunched with an arm curled around it.
Despite the plain clothes, they were identified as police within seconds and watched the awareness spread through the group, conversation dying away. Alerted by the quiet, a woman in a yellow T-shirt at the hatch halted, serving spoon in mid-air.
Even if they hadn’t been looking for him, the younger of two men at the end of the centre table had flagged himself as worth questioning in connection with something: the panic on his face as he looked for the exit was vaudeville-worthy. The sketch had got him just right, filthy combat jacket and black scarf, the face that was somehow round and thin at the same time. His jacket might once have fitted him or it might have belonged to someone twice the size.
The other man’s likeness hadn’t been quite as good. The hatching had made him look older but he was in his mid-thirties at most, even allowing for lifestyle. He was still easily recognizable, however, in the same green and blue plaid shirt belted with what did in fact look like a tie, the black baseball cap with a fraying peak. His straggling facial hair was red.
In front of them were half-eaten plates of scrambled egg, plastic knives and forks abandoned. Robin watched the older one lean forward, hand feeling for the backpack at his feet.
‘Can I help you?’ Another woman in a yellow T-shirt approached from her position by a giant toaster on a side table. She was in her late twenties, with a shiny hennaed bob and a small silver ring through her left nostril. A yellow lanyard hung round her neck: Annika, Morning Front of House. On her T-shirt, the letters of Good Hope were printed in an elongated font to look like rays around a rising sun.
They showed her ID. Malia’s posture, full meerkat, told Robin that she’d seen the hand on the bag, too, the tension in the two men’s bodies. The older one had a finger on the other’s forearm now: Wait, wait.
‘We’d like to talk to a couple of your patrons over there, please,’ she said. ‘We’re—’
Now. With surprising agility, the men spun on the bench, freed their legs, and surged back between the tables towards the rear door. She and Malia lunged after them but there were too many people, none of them fast-moving, and before they were even halfway across the room, the younger man had his hands on the bar of the fire door and they were out, away. Running footsteps up the alley to the street but then came shouts – ‘Oi’ – scuffling, and noisy complaints.
When they reached them, the uniforms had both men on the pavement, arms behind their backs. The older man’s bag, strap torn, lay at the kerb.
‘We haven’t bleeding done anything,’ he yelled, cheek against the tarmac. ‘We’re only having breakfast.’
Chapter Six
Malia led the interviews, Varan in with her. Robin watched from upstairs, one eye on the monitor, the other on her brimming inbox. Two of her cases from last year were about to go to trial, and the volume of CPS email was doing her head in.
The elder of the two men was Stuart Granger, known as Stewpot. At thirty-seven, he’d been living rough on and off for six years aft
er the break-up of a long-term relationship, punctuating stretches on the street with stints in hostels and, for a while, he said, tears welling, at the flat of a friend who’d OD’d. Now he kept himself going by panhandling outside the Rag Market and a couple of other spots round the Bull Ring. At close range, his beard was visibly matted, and inhaling too deeply through the nose was a mistake Robin had only made once in his company. When Malia asked him to identify himself for the tape, however, he’d leaned forward and enunciated his name as if he were recording a professional voicemail message.
‘Why did you run this morning, Stuart?’ Malia asked him.
‘Because you’re police.’ Robin watched as his fingers moved to a loose thread on his cap-peak. He pulled on it, dipping his head momentarily, hiding his eyes. ‘Because I’ve already got two cautions and I can’t afford a fine.’
‘Cautions for what?’
Stewpot’s look said, Come on, you already know. ‘I had some smack on me, didn’t I? In my bag.’
‘What about yesterday? A witness says she saw you and Martin jumping out of a window and running from the old Gisborne works on Bradford Street.’
He scratched his forearm savagely. ‘We thought it was police then, too.’
‘It?’
‘A shout – this bloke shouting.’
‘Had you seen police entering the building? Vehicles outside?’
‘No.’
‘Other people live there, yes? But your mind still went straight to police?’
He shook his head, as if he regretted being put in this position. ‘Because we knew she was there.’
‘Who?’
‘The dead girl. We found her.’
Malia let his words hang, leaving a vacuum. When he didn’t fill it, she asked, ‘Was she dead when you found her, Stuart?’
‘Yes.’ Emphatic. ‘Yes.’ Even remotely, Robin could see that his forehead was shining with sweat. ‘We went back there, into that room, and we saw her. Wrapped up in the carpet, only her feet and hair sticking out.’
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