A Cry in the Night

by Tom Grieves

  To which Malcolm roared with laughter. ‘This one,’ he said, turning to the boys, ‘has got bigger balls than the rest of you put together.’

  Zoe swelled with pride as he patted her on the back.

  ‘Sam thinks she did it,’ Malcolm said, and she wondered if he’d heard this for real or was just reacting to the arrest. ‘So you make sure we get her. I don’t want that type out. They’re the worst. Mums that kill. The worst of the worst. That’s a sacred bond they’re breaking there.’

  The other young men all nodded earnestly.

  Zoe looked at their eager faces and felt oddly set apart. They knew nothing about the case, and while she wasn’t above casual conjecture on someone else’s inquiry, something about this conversation reminded her of those finger-pointing villagers.

  ‘You go get her, Zo-Zo,’ Malcolm purred. Then he slammed his locker door shut.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sam made it to the police station with five minutes to spare and was a little breathless once he’d raced up to the top floor to find the Chief Superintendent. His assistant wasn’t there, so Sam knocked on the door. Mr Frey was sitting at his desk, his pen hovering over a stack of papers. Clearly pleased to see Sam, he waved him inside with a matey grin.

  Sam sat awkwardly before his desk as Mr Frey made coffee for the two of them. It seemed to take for ever. Finally he sat down and poured milk into both cups.

  ‘I’m sorry about the case,’ he said.

  ‘I moved too fast,’ Sam replied, trying to counter what must be to come.

  ‘I doubt it. Doesn’t sound like you.’

  Sam sipped on his coffee and waited for the second shoe to drop.

  ‘Do you still think she did it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Hard to prove?’

  ‘Very. Unless we find the daughter.’

  ‘She’s alive?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘I’ve always liked talking to you. You’re not afraid to be honest. You can’t imagine the amount of smoke that gets blown up my arse.’

  Sam just nodded. Behind him, he heard a small shuffle and Mr Frey stood up and went to the door of his office.

  ‘No calls for a while,’ he said quietly to his returning secretary. She nodded, glanced in and caught Sam’s eye. But then the door was shut and the men were alone together.

  ‘Are you okay to carry this on with just you and your girl?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Wasn’t helped by your unfortunate visitor last night.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Helen Seymour.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, sir.’

  ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘She knows her stuff.’

  ‘That’s an interesting way of putting it.’

  Sam didn’t think it was that interesting, but he nodded and said nothing.

  ‘Did you read the files I gave you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you understand why I showed them to you?’

  ‘Not entirely, sir. No.’

  The answer seemed to irritate Mr Frey, but he simply took a deep breath and broke into a smile.

  ‘Why do you think Ms Seymour appeared so swiftly?’

  Sam noted the ‘Ms’.

  ‘I was surprised by it.’

  ‘I bet you were. There’s something you’ve missed in the files. Look at who defended every case.’

  Mr Frey tapped the desk four times with his forefinger to make his point. Hel-en. Sey-mour.

  ‘Every one?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Sam considered the coincidence and it made him uneasy.

  ‘Do you know her, sir?’

  Again there was that flash of irritation. Sam was asking the wrong questions.

  ‘I know her,’ Mr Frey said. ‘We’ve grown up on opposite sides of the track, if you like.’

  ‘And you think that …’ Sam spoke slowly, hoping the Chief Superintendent would interrupt or finish the sentence for him. He didn’t. ‘… her involvement in all of these cases is … suspicious?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to form a proper opinion yet, sir.’

  ‘Come on, Sam, you’re not being interviewed here. What do you think?’

  ‘I think she clearly takes a particular interest in a certain type of case.’

  ‘Getting women off murder charges.’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘And what does that make her?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand the question.’

  Mr Frey looked up at the ceiling, as if becoming weary of how slow Sam was.

  ‘Do you believe the story she concocted for Sarah Downing?’

  ‘We don’t know it was made up.’

  ‘All that, in only a few minutes? After she’d barely spoken in the previous twenty-four hours?’

  ‘It’s unusual for a barrister with her reputation to risk inventing a story that quickly. It could easily backfire.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t invent it that quickly.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Maybe she had the story planned.’

  ‘But if that was the case, then she would have needed to know in advance that Sarah Downing was likely to be arrested. She would have needed to …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Sir. Are you suggesting that there is some sort of conspiracy here?’

  Mr Frey shrugged.

  ‘Because I don’t believe in conspiracies. They’re for nut jobs, generally.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re the right man for this case. You’re thorough, you’re sensible and you’re not easily swayed. Look, I don’t know what Helen’s up to. It may be she’s just a perfectly brilliant barrister who happens to have a thing for women accused of murdering children. Are you sure you’ve got enough resources with just you and the girl?’

  ‘I think so, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Come back to me if you change your mind. A child is missing. And if her mother did this, then there’s no way the bitch is getting away with it.’

  He stood up and Sam did the same. A firm handshake sent him out of the door.

  He walked back to CID slowly. He found Mr Frey strange and unreadable, but the questions of last night bubbled up again. Something about Helen Seymour. Something about her polite, calm professionalism. Something about the way she sat and watched.

  Sam started to walk a little faster.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Zoe caught up with Sam on his return from the Chief Superintendent’s office. She’d gone out and bought a couple of takeaway coffees, expecting him to be brooding in his office after the night before. He was a bad loser. But when she found him, she was surprised to see that he was busy. He had several files on his desk and was working his way though them, his pen circling various facts and details.

  ‘What have you got there?’ she asked, placing his coffee on the edge of the desk for fear of it spilling onto the papers.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he replied, his voice distant.

  She waited for him to look up, and when he did, he noticed the coffee she’d brought for him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said a little sheepishly. ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning to you, Guv’nor,’ she said, slumping down in one of his chairs and banging her feet on his desk. ‘I’ll write up the case this morning.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Show you a rough draft. But it’s all clear enough.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You were right to arrest her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Yeah, but this is me, your mate, backing you up.’

  Sam waved his arms in faux worship, showering her with thanks, and they laughed and mocked each other like the old days. Eventually, however, she couldn’t resist the itch that had to be scratched.

  ‘What’s with the files?’ she asked.

  Sam sighed, running his hand over the folder and then closing it as though its contents w
ere somehow embarrassing. Zoe recognised their battered exteriors: these were the same files he’d had up at the Lakes.

  ‘I’ve been asked to see if there’s a connection between the Sarah Downing case and some others,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not the Sarah Downing case,’ she corrected him. ‘It’s Arthur and Lily’s case. Sarah’s not guilty yet, boss.’

  He shuffled the files, a little awkward. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’

  ‘And so what are the files then?’

  ‘Crimes against children,’ he said.

  By women. She knew the cases. Everyone knew the cases.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why would there be a connection?’

  Sam shrugged. He was just doing what he was asked. By the Chief Superintendent, he reminded her. Zoe nodded, but she didn’t like it. It smelled wrong.

  There was a knock on the open door and they looked up to see Adam Brown standing there.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Guv. Got a little job for Zoe if you can spare her.’

  Zoe looked at Sam and could tell he was eager to get her out of the room.

  ‘Sure,’ Sam said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Just some thugs on the estate. Damage and whatnot. Uniform have called it in.’

  ‘Right-o. Zoe, you good with this?’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  She got up and followed Adam out. But before she left she turned back to watch Sam. She saw him pull open the file again and run his hand down a page. His eyes were narrow, his concentration utterly focused on whatever it was he was reading. Something about it, something about him, felt too keen.

  *

  They reached the Heygate estate by car, but parked a few minutes away on a more suburban road. Police cars had been known to be vandalised while unattended and Adam said he was fucked if he was going to let anyone touch his. The estate was a depressing, tawdry spot. A long run of high-rise towers linked by walkways were all made up of the same dirty grey concrete that felt oppressively hot in the summer and brutally cold in the winter. Kids mucked about on pushbikes and skateboards at the bottom while dealers would whistle and vanish as soon as the police appeared. There was graffiti everywhere. Zoe looked up at the tall buildings and saw a few faces staring glumly down at her. There was a sinking hopelessness about the whole place. Someone should just raze it to the ground, she thought. Knock it all down and start again. If you were born here, if you grew up here, then your future was set.

  They passed the marked police car and headed up the concrete steps, avoiding the corners, which stank of piss. More graffiti tags, more litter. On the third floor they followed a walkway along and Zoe looked down at the kids below. They were pointing at the police car.

  ‘Oi!’ she yelled down at them. ‘Try it! Go on. I dare you.’

  The kids looked up at her with faces that were a mixture of defiance and mock innocence. She didn’t move and eventually they cycled off.

  ‘Nice one,’ said Adam. ‘Now they’ll do it for sure.’

  They reached flat 343 soon after. Adam knocked and the door was opened by one of the PCs who had been in the locker room that morning. Gareth Strivens was blond and tall, with that clumsy mix of someone who knows they’re good-looking yet lacks the confidence to do much with it. It meant he could be brash and laddish one moment, then surprisingly diffident the next. Right now, he looked spooked.

  ‘Alright?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ the young man answered, standing aside to let them in. ‘It’s a bit full-on.’

  Zoe clocked how pale he was.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Course,’ he replied, and nodded a little too vehemently.

  Zoe looked past him and saw Malcolm further down the corridor in what must be the flat’s kitchen. He was talking to someone out of view, his hands out – placatory, calming.

  Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll go see if the neighbours heard anything,’ he said, and slipped out. Malcolm must have heard his voice because he turned and gestured for Zoe to join him. As she walked down the narrow passage, Zoe saw that several framed pictures – some photographs, some children’s drawings – had been smashed and now lay on the floor. She stepped over them and entered the kitchen.

  ‘This is Detective Constable Zoe Barnes,’ Malcolm said, introducing her to a tall, thin black woman in her early twenties. She was neatly dressed and pretty, leaning with her back against the sink, arms folded. Her eyes met Zoe’s and she nodded but barely spoke. Zoe could see that she had been crying and also clocked the shudder in her movements. Trauma.

  ‘This is Miss Jade Adeyobe,’ Malcolm added. ‘She lives here with her two daughters. There was a break-in while she walked them to school. She doesn’t think anything was taken.’

  Zoe faced Jade and said all the appropriate things, while trying to work out why CID would be called to a break-in and vandalism case. This was a job for uniform, surely. But she also clocked the sombre tone to Malcolm’s speech.

  ‘May I see the damage?’ she asked.

  Malcolm glanced at Jade, who nodded, clearly close to crying again. He gestured to his right and Zoe followed his direction through the door and into the small living room.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell. Then she saw the graffiti on the walls. Some of it was simple tags. But there was more – abuse, sprayed in two-foot-high lettering on every wall. Slut. Bitch. Nigger. Fuck off. Go home. Get out.

  Everything was overturned. The sofa had had its stuffing ripped out and its yellow foam was strewn across the floor. Chairs had been broken and thrown against the walls – they lay in pieces in the corners of the room. Books had been torn apart, lamps destroyed, CDs and DVDs cast everywhere. There was so much debris that it took a moment before Zoe clocked the dead cat that lay on top of it all. It had been cut open.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ slipped from her lips.

  She stood still, took it all in again so she wouldn’t have to come back in there, and then went back to the kitchen.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ were her first words. And this made Jade cry again.

  ‘Animals,’ snarled Malcolm. ‘Bloody animals.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might …?’

  Malcolm interrupted her. ‘There are a bunch of kids nicking metal, any metal, to sell on as scrap. It’s been going on for a while. Yesterday she came home and caught them trying to dismantle the swings in the playground. So she had a word. That’s all she did. Gave them a piece of her mind.’

  ‘Okay. Would you be—’

  ‘She knows who they are, alright.’

  ‘And would you be willing to testify against them?’

  Malcolm was silent at this and Zoe was given her answer. Jade simply hunched her shoulders, her fingers clutching her sides, digging into her own ribs.

  ‘There are no witnesses,’ Malcolm said, a little more quietly, ‘and the CCTV hasn’t worked for months now. Unless we get fingerprint evidence …’ Malcolm shrugged. He knew it, Jade knew it. They all knew how this worked.

  ‘We’ll have a forensics team over very soon,’ Zoe said, trying to hide their painful, obvious impotence.

  ‘The kids will be home at three,’ Jade said. She was breathing a little faster, her eyes flicking from side to side as she began to consider all of the things she’d now have to do.

  ‘Do you have friends or family that they could stay with? Until you’ve had a chance to get things straight?’

  Jade shook her head. She was all alone.

  ‘Would you excuse us for a moment, Jade?’ Malcolm said, and ushered Zoe back into the sitting room.

  ‘Poor cow,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yeah. Chance of fingerprints?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’ve done this shit so many times before. They know the game.’

  The game. She nodded. They all knew the game. Then she pointed to the tags on the walls.

  ‘Can we nail them for that?’

  The tags were signatur
es. They were blatant admissions of guilt. But even though they said ‘This is me, I did this,’ they were still not enough to win a case in court. A defence lawyer could easily claim that someone else had copied them. Without the compelling evidence of a witness, DNA or CCTV (and that was often too blurred to secure a conviction), these cases were almost impossible to prove.

  Malcolm didn’t bother to reply and she couldn’t blame him.

  ‘I’ll stay with her for a bit,’ Zoe said.

  ‘No, it’s not your job,’ he replied. ‘You go do your CID thing, write it up, log it, blah-blah, bollocks. I’ll stay with her.’

  ‘Sarge?’

  He shook his head, then sighed. ‘I hate this. Feeling pathetic. She’ll have to tidy it all up on her own. She’s the one who won’t sleep tonight. We’re alright. They’re alright. It’s just her that’s screwed. Because she spoke her mind.’

  His radio crackled and he turned it down.

  ‘I can’t even start tidying up for her in case we disturb possible evidence. Bloody obvious there won’t be none, but still. Can’t even turn a table the right way round.’

  He seemed too big for his uniform. His hands swung uselessly by his sides.

  ‘And we know who they are,’ he added with a hiss. ‘You and I know exactly who they are. Eli Robinson and his mob.’

  ‘Probably, yeah.’

  ‘Not probably. Those are his tags on the walls. I’ve spent enough time chasing him to know it.’

  Eli Robinson was known to all divisions of the local police. He was a tall, arrogant lad in his late teens, mixed race, with a history of small convictions that ranged from antisocial behaviour and vandalism to more serious offences such as aggravated burglary. His misdemeanours were a constant source of irritation: a kid out of control who one day would overstep the mark and end up in prison. After that he’d probably come back wiser and quieter, and all the more dangerous for it. But for now he was a wrecking ball of overblown pride and rage, smashing anything he could without hesitation.

  Zoe saw Malcolm’s anger rising and falling. She didn’t know what to say so she patted him lightly on the shoulder and trod carefully back towards the front door where Gareth stood, a useless patrolman.

  ‘Nasty, eh?’ he said.