by Tania Carver
Nina moved forward, caught up with them. The other two followed. She looked to where John was pointing. There, huddled in the doorway, was a little girl.
The child looked away from them, curled herself into a foetal ball, eyes screwed tight shut; if she couldn’t see them, they wouldn’t see her. Her clothes were dirty but not rags, her face equally grimy; tears and snot had left tracks down it. She clutched hard at a teddy bear in her hands, pulled it towards her chest. She looked like she had been living rough on the street. She looked, thought Nina, like the kind of kid you saw on the TV news from a war zone.
Looking round to see what the others were doing – nothing – Nina knelt down in front of the girl.
‘Careful,’ said Andrew, ‘she might have something —’
Nina turned, gave him a hard stare. He said nothing more.
‘Hello,’ she said quietly. ‘What’s your name?’
The little girl didn’t reply, just screwed her eyes up tighter.
All sorts of thoughts tumbled through Nina’s head. She’d been trafficked, she’d run away from somewhere, she’d been abandoned. She might not even speak or understand English.
‘I’m Nina,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
The little girl started to cry. ‘Go away,’ she said, clutching her toy like it was a life raft.
Nina edged forward. ‘What’s your name? Look, we can help you.’
Nothing.
Andrew knelt down next to Nina, wanting to help. The little girl flinched, seemed as if she was about to cry again. Wide-eyed, he moved back. Nina stayed where she was.
‘Where’s your… your mum? Where do you live? Do you know?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Look, we’ll get help. We won’t leave you, okay?’
The girl still said nothing. Held on harder to the bear.
‘Can you tell us anything?’ said Nina, sensing that words were now futile and they should phone the police. ‘A name? Anything.’
The little girl looked up at them, her eyes wide with ghosts.
‘Why are you here? What happened?’
The girl seemed about to answer but stopped herself. The enormity of what was behind the words too much for her. She looked away from them again, eyes down.
Whatever she had been about to say was now locked up firmly within her.
3
‘Hello.’
Psychologist Marina Esposito smiled, sat down on a chair that was way too small for her. She looked at the little girl in front of her.
‘I’m Marina. What’s your name?’
The girl looked up briefly, eyes wide, then away again. Back to the bear in her hands. Clutching it tightly.
Marina kept her smile in place. ‘You’ve had a horrible thing happen to you, haven’t you? I’m here to help you get over it.’
The girl didn’t look at her. Marina looked at the bear in her hands. It was filthy but she knew the girl wouldn’t give it up. Hadn’t given it up since she had been found.
‘What’s your bear called?’ asked Marina.
‘Crusty,’ the girl replied.
‘Crusty. Nice name. And has he been with you all the time?’
The girl nodded.
‘And what’s your name?’ Marina knew – it was in the report – but she still had to ask.
The girl kept staring at the bear.
When she had received the call, Marina had told them this wasn’t her area. She didn’t usually deal with children, no matter how traumatised. ‘I’m a criminal psychologist,’ she had said on the phone.‘Unless she’s committed a crime, I don’t think I can be of much help.’
‘She’s been the victim of one,’ said Detective Sergeant Hugh Ellison, ‘or at least we think her mother has. She’s disappeared. And the daughter’s the only witness.’ He paused, letting that sink in, went on. ‘Normally we would go with a child psychologist, but your particular skill set makes you a better fit for this. And you come highly recommended.’
‘Right.’ Marina nodded even though he couldn’t see it. She knew who had recommended her. Her husband, Phil Brennan, was a detective inspector with the West Midlands Major Incident Squad based in the centre of Birmingham. She had worked with him on cases before. Helped.
A shiver ran through her as she thought of him. He couldn’t help her now. Not any more. And that was a wedge driven between them, because she doubted he ever could again.
And she couldn’t give him the chance.
‘Anyway,’ DS Ellison had continued, ‘she was found on the street in Digbeth. Said she’d been going on holiday with her mother but her mother had gone off without her. Thrown out of the car, left on the street. Found by some students.’
‘What’s happened to her mother?’
‘That’s what I’m hoping you can find out.’
And the call had ended.
Marina had agreed – with some reluctance – to try and help the girl. She had read every report presented to her. The girl had given her name – Carly – but little else. She wouldn’t tell them where she lived and she looked terrified at the prospect of talking about her mother. Marina suspected that the two things weren’t connected, but the responses suggested some kind of trauma related to each. There had been no missing persons report answering her description, so that was all she had to go on.
Now she found herself at the special reception centre where the girl was being treated and cared for. The walls were bright, colourfully painted with murals of cartoon characters. But even that didn’t disguise the institutional feel of the place.
‘You’re Carly, aren’t you? I got your name from Lesley who’s been looking after you.’
The little girl nodded.
‘How old are you, Carly?’
‘Seven.’
Marina nodded. ‘Good age. I’ve got a little girl. She’s a tiny bit younger than you. Her name’s Josephina.’ She looked at Crusty. ‘She’s got a favourite teddy she never lets go of.’
The girl just stared at her. Marina wasn’t sure, but she saw the beginnings of interest, a tentative kind of trust building within, reaching out to her.
‘So where’s your daddy, Carly?’
Something dark seemed to flutter over the girl. She had almost made eye contact with Marina. Instead she looked away.
‘At home,’ she said.
‘And where’s home?’
‘Home.’ Her eyes guarded, downcast.
‘Do you want to tell me how to get there, Carly?’
She kept staring at the bear. Shook her head.
‘Why not?’
‘Mummy said we were going away. On holiday. Not Benidorm, but somewhere nice, she said.’
‘Benidorm? Why Benidorm? Did you want to go there?’
Carly nodded. ‘Like on the telly.’
On the telly? Marina thought, puzzled. Then it came to her. A comedy. Of sorts. All bright sun and broad acting. She smiled, nodded. ‘The programme. You like that, do you?’
Carly nodded. ‘Mummy lets me stay up to watch it. When Daddy’s not —’
She stopped herself, eyes scared, guilty, once more.
Marina studied her. ‘When Daddy’s not what? Home?’
The girl said nothing. Clutched the bear, knuckles white.
Marina leaned forward. Just enough to be seen, not enough to invade the girl’s personal space. ‘You want to know something, Carly? About your teddy? And about my daughter Josephina’s teddy?’
The girl looked up once more, wary but interested.
‘They protect you. You hold on to them and they protect you. When things get bad, they’re always there for you. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. And you have to be strong to do them. That’s when teddies help.’
Carly kept staring at her. Marina, sensing she had the girl hooked, continued. ‘My little girl, Josephina, when she was even smaller, she… she had to be brave. She had to be strong.’
‘What happened?’ asked Carly, interested desp
ite herself.
‘Well, she…’ Was kidnapped. Held to ransom. And I had to go after her, hunt down the kidnappers and bring her home. ‘She… there were some bad people. And they wanted me to do something for them. So they took her away from me.’
Carly’s eyes widened. ‘Did… did she come back?’
Marina smiled. She hoped it was reassuring. ‘Oh yes. I got her back. She came back home with me. But you know what? When things got bad for her, really bad, she had her teddy to cling on to. All the time, all the way. And he protected her. Made her feel strong. Just like Crusty is doing for you now.’
And it was me that got her. Brought her back. Not Phil, me.
Carly looked at the bear, back at Marina.
‘So no matter what happens in here,’ and to emphasise the point, Marina gestured round the room, ‘you’re safe. Whatever you say, whatever you do, you’re safe. Because your teddy’s with you. He won’t let anything bad happen to you.’
Carly gazed at Marina, her eyes wide, desperate to believe, to trust. Not yet able to take that final step.
‘Is…’ She glanced down at the teddy, looked once more at Marina. ‘Is Josephina safe now?’
Marina smiled. Hoped it was convincing.
‘Of course she is.’
Hoping the girl wouldn’t notice the lie. Hoping she wouldn’t be able to read her mind, know that nowhere was safe for Josephina – or Marina – now. Not any more. Not since…
She put those thoughts out of her head. She would deal with them later. She knew what she was going to do. But now she had to concentrate on Carly.
‘So we’re safe in here, Carly. You’re safe. And we can talk. That’s all. Just talk. Would you like to talk? To me?’
Carly took a long time to make up her mind. Then nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Marina smiled. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’ She arranged her posture into her least threatening, most open and responsive pose. ‘So tell me what happened.’
Carly looked at the teddy, studied it for a long time, as if it was relaying information to her, giving her the will, the strength, to speak. Eventually she looked up. Said one word.
‘Strawberry.’
PART TWO
SATURDAY BRIDGE
4
Rain lashed down, incessant and hard, washing away the life from the city, draining the colour from the afternoon, turning daylight to premature dusk. It was borne on a chill wind that when it swirled and strengthened made the cold wet drops into razor-ice projectiles, reminding everyone, if they needed it, that summer was only a distant memory and autumn was on its last legs.
Not the best kind of day to be out for any length of time.
Not the best kind of day to discover a dead body.
Detective Inspector Phil Brennan of the West Midlands Major Incident Squad stood on Saturday Bridge in Birmingham, looking down on the nearly drained locks of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal from underneath an umbrella, waiting to be given the signal to approach. The two-tone crime-scene tape stretched across the footpath, demarcating where the normal world ended and the other world – the dangerous, murderous, tragic and brutal other world – started. Phil stood with his back to the tape. He had been here enough times. He knew which world was his.
The rain kept all but the most persistent rubberneckers away. The white plastic tent erected on the bank of the canal ensured that those who remained wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. Phil ignored the watchers, avoided eye contact and feigned deafness with the few reporters and TV crews who had braved the elements to chase a story. Shut out everything that was taking up valuable real estate inside his head, just concentrated on what was before him.
The hand holding the umbrella barely shook. That was something. His unshaven look could be explained away as fashionable stubble. His clothes, never very smart, might just look particularly shabby because of the rain. The sunken red eyes with the sleep-deprived black rings around them were harder to explain, though. He just hoped no one noticed. He sucked on an extra-strong mint, focused.
Even with the white tent erected, he knew that the chances of preserving the crime scene in the face of this whipping rain were, unless they were miraculously, religiously lucky, slim to none. But procedure had to be followed. He walked down the raised metal squares of the common approach path, stood at the entrance to the tent.
‘You ready for me yet?’ he called in to Jo Howe, a short, round, middle-aged woman and the leading crime-scene investigator.
Jo was kneeling on the ground, checking all around, careful not to touch the body in front of her. ‘I’ll call you when I’m ready. Get in the pub with the others,’ she said without looking up.
He wanted to say, I just want to be doing something. I need to be doing something. But didn’t. Instead he turned, walked away. Doing as she had suggested.
His wet jeans moulded themselves to his legs like a second skin, constricting his movement in the most unpleasant way possible as he walked back up to the bridge. His leather jacket kept out most of the water, but it still ran down his umbrella-holding hand and up his sleeve, down the back of his neck. He should change his clothes as soon as possible. Might get a cold or flu. Part of him didn’t care.
He pushed through the small crowd, dodged the media, crossed the road and made for the pub. The Shakespeare had been on the same spot in Summer Row for years. Victorian and resolutely old-fashioned, it maintained a sense of tradition beside the more fashionable bars and kitchens that had sprung up next to it.
Phil went inside, flashed his warrant card at the barman, who beamed back. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.
Phil knew the type. Eager to get bragging rights for assisting the police and hoping that some of the glamour of a major investigation would rub off on him. Glamour. Tell that to the dead person on the canal towpath, thought Phil.
‘Coffee, please,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the back room.’
They had temporarily taken over the pub. Uniforms, plain clothes and SOCOs gathered around, sheltering from the rain until the temporary incident unit arrived. Phil saw two members of his team, Detective Sergeant Ian Sperring and Detective Constable Imani Oliver, sitting silently at a table underneath a bust of Shakespeare. He went over to join them.
‘Heard somebody in here once asking if they were brothers,’ said Sperring, pointing to the bust above his head, then to an identical one on the other corner. ‘Shakespeare. Wondered if one did the writing and one did the, I dunno, acting or bookkeeping or something.’
‘And what did you tell them?’ asked Imani, a glint of humour in her eye.
Sperring shrugged. ‘Told them what they wanted to hear,’ he said, expression liked a closed fist.
There was no love lost between the two officers, but Phil had insisted that since they were part of his team, they had to work together. Detective Constable Nadish Khan, the other immediate member of the team, was away on a training course. Sperring, ten years older than Phil and many pounds heavier, was ensconced in the corner, his bulk at rest, looking like he was going nowhere. Imani, keen and alert, was on the stool opposite.
Phil had been settled in Colchester, happy with his position with Essex Police. But when events had taken a near-terminal turn for the worse, the area hadn’t seemed as welcoming, so he and Marina had decided on a change of scenery and picked Birmingham, the city of Marina’s birth, as a destination. It had taken Phil some time to be accepted by his team. And for him to accept them. But out of that animosity had evolved a way of working they could all accept. The team had even begun to respect Phil’s methods, even if they weren’t in a hurry to adopt them.
He took off his leather jacket, slung it over the padded chair and sat down beside them. The pub was warm. He could almost feel the steam rising off his soaking legs. The front of his plaid shirt was wet through, the T-shirt underneath likewise.
Phil never wore a suit for work. He dressed as he pleased. A combo of Red Wing boots, heavy Jap
anese selvedge denim, a Western shirt and a leather jacket was the nearest thing he had to a uniform. This approach had brought him into conflict with other officers over the years, most recently his own team. He believed that creativity in dress led to creativity and intuition when it came to the job. His views weren’t embraced, but he was tolerated. As long as he kept getting results.
‘They ready for us yet?’ asked Sperring, barely glancing up from the mug of industrial-strength tea he was stirring.
‘They’ll call us when they want us,’ replied Phil.
‘Why you been standing out in the rain?’ asked Sperring, looking up.
Phil looked at his junior officer. Sperring had been stabbed on a case a few months previously and it seemed to have aged him. Not that he would admit it; he had wanted to come back to front-line duties the first opportunity. Phil admired his tenacity.
‘Just… waiting,’ he said.
Sperring studied him, eyes unusually compassionate. About to say something else. Thinking better of it.
Phil’s coffee arrived. He thanked the barman, put his hand in his pocket.
‘On the house,’ the barman said.
‘No,’ said Phil, ‘let me pay.’
‘Won’t hear of it. Anything I can do to help our boys in blue.’
The barman loitered in front of them, grinning, hoping to pick up some titbit of information, something he could tell his mates about. Or more likely a reporter.
‘Well, thank you,’ said Phil, dismissing the man. Once he was out of earshot, he turned to the other two. ‘Hate it when they do that.’
‘What?’ said Sperring. ‘Hang around trying to eavesdrop?’
‘No, not let us pay. Like we’re trying to get something for nothing.’
Sperring shrugged. ‘Precious few perks in our line of work,’ he said. ‘A free cuppa now and again’s neither here nor there.’
‘That’s how it starts,’ said Phil. ‘Anyway, who called it in?’
‘Uniform,’ said Imani. ‘Got a call from a dog-walker this morning.’