Blood Atonement

by Dan Waddell

  He feels certain that someone in your team must have leaked the details --'

  He stopped abruptly. Foster had thrown the file he was holding down on to the table in front of him. The brief stopped talking. Foster didn't even look at him.

  'I know you didn't do this, Trevor. But I'm probably in a minority of one at the moment.'

  A mixture of hope and bewilderment spread across Vickers's large, pale face.

  Foster picked up the file, which contained the details of his previous. 'You took your PC in for repair. You see, right there, very stupid. You can't hide four pictures of under-age girls, so I don't know how we expect you to actually hide a living, breathing fourteenyear-old girl.'

  Anger flashed across Vickers's face. 'I thought they were grown women dressed as schoolgirls,' he said slowly.

  'Course you did. You deleted them immediately when you found out they were under age.' He scanned the file again.

  'Or, two hours afterwards anyway. The fact is there were only four pictures; there was no evidence you'd done anything like this before so you escaped with a caution. End of story'

  He threw the file back on the table. 'But let's get the formalities out of the way before we get on to what I think you can help us with. What were you doing on Monday?'

  'I was at home most of the day. I took the day off. Did some shopping'

  Foster raised an eyebrow.

  'Online,' he explained. A few add-ons for my computer.'

  Sure you did, Foster thought. 'Receipts for those would be nice,' he said, though he knew they would confirm little.

  You do anything else? Go anywhere? Speak to anyone?'

  Vickers went silent for a few seconds, then his face lit up. 'I returned a library book in the afternoon. Shepherd's Bush library. About three thirty.'

  The time Naomi Buckingham probably went missing.

  'The book?'

  Vickers's face reddened slightly. 'Is that necessary?' he asked.

  'Well, you don't think we're going to take your word for it, do you? They have records. We want to check it out.

  Prove that you were there and you're eliminated from the investigation.'

  He looked down at his feet. 'Escaping Obsession!

  'Thriller?'

  'No. A self-help manual.'

  'Come again?'

  Vickers looked up, face scarlet but jaw held defiantly firm. 'The full title is Escaping Obsession: Dealing With the One You Want Who Doesn't Want to Know!

  Foster nodded, bit his lip, made a note. 'Were you obsessed with Katie Drake?'

  'You don't have to answer that,' his lawyer mumbled.

  Vickers waved an impatient hand in response.

  'It's all right,' he said. His eyes had become moist. 'I loved her. I never told her that because I knew there wasn't a cat in hell's chance she'd be interested in me. I took a few steps to deal with my unrequited love. But I had nothing to do with her death. Now my life's just.. .fucking ruined.' He emphasized the profanity with absolute conviction and anger.

  'We'll corroborate the library thing, Trevor. We'll let the press know you're no longer part of our investigation. Can I just ask a few questions, about Katie?'

  He'd composed himself. Nodded slowly.

  Was she seeing anyone else, to your knowledge?'

  'No.'

  'Did you notice anyone in the shop hanging around when she worked?'

  'No.'

  'She have a disagreement with anyone in the shop?'

  'No.'

  This is going nowhere, he thought. Time to leave the bloke to the tender mercies of the press pack outside -- and the attempt to rebuild his life. Just another bit of collateral damage in the media frenzy that engulfs some cases.

  Last question. 'Did you notice anything different about Katie recently, anything strange, or odd in her behaviour?'

  There was a pause instead of an instant negative. He looked at Foster directly, but the detective could see he was lost in thought. Eventually he spoke.

  'There was one thing,' he said. 'It struck me as a bit odd.

  Last Monday, not the one just gone, the one before that, a woman came in with a great pile of stuff belonging to someone who died. She was from an old people's home round the corner. Apparently the dead woman had lost contact with all her family and they'd been unable to track down any relatives so they were giving away all her things.

  Very sad, but not uncommon. Which is why I was surprised that Katie got so upset. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't in hysterics or anything like that, but she was definitely moved. She said to me how sad it was that you could die and no one would know or care.'

  'Did you respond?'

  He nodded his head. 'I agreed with her. It is sad.' His voice was low, as if considering what Foster was at that moment thinking: how that desolate observation was applicable to him. 'Then she said, "But I don't have to worry about that any more.'"

  'What did she mean by that?'

  'I don't know. Naomi presumably'

  'But she said "any more". As if dying and no one caring had been the case before.'

  'I know. Someone came in and interrupted us. I'd forgotten about it. Until now.'

  Foster stared intently at the list Heather handed him, as if the answer to the whole case lay buried in those names. It was late in the evening and yet another day had crawled by without an event of significance. Trevor Vickers's alibi checked out, as he knew it would. There had been two reported sightings of girls matching Naomi's description but neither turned out to be correct. Instead of sloping off home at five, he'd hung on until Heather returned with the names, the lights off and the door shut to make it appear he was out. When she arrived, he asked her to keep the door shut and her voice down.

  'I expected more names than this,' he snapped, breaking his own rule.

  'Nigel could only trace the maternal line forward from 1890 or so. Before that is a mystery. This is probably only about half the names we could've found.'

  Foster rubbed his hand up the back of his shaven head, then tapped the space bar of his desktop PC. It crackled into life from its slumber. 'I suppose it makes our job easier.

  Let's feed these into the national computer first, and see if anything comes up,' he said to Heather. 'Then we'll seek out those we can.'

  He started with the males. He entered each name, cross referencing with their date of birth when more than one person appeared on the database under that moniker. He received three hits, all from the same branch of the family.

  Martin Stamey and his brother David, the former convicted of drink-driving and aggravated assault, the latter of handling stolen goods, driving without insurance and grievous bodily harm, for which he was currently spending three years at Her Majesty's pleasure.

  'Nice family,' murmured Heather behind his shoulder, making a note of Martin Stanley's address. 'Should be worth having a chat with him.'

  The third hit was Christopher Stamey, who'd served two sentences for serious drug offences and was found murdered three and a half years ago. No one was arrested for the crime.

  'Coincidence? Heather said. 'This lot certainly sound like the black sheep of the family'

  'There're a few dark woolly creatures who might sue you for that,' Foster replied. 'They sound like scumbags.'

  Logic told Foster it was all unrelated. But experience told him not to always trust logic. 'It's worth checking out.'

  For the sake of completeness, Foster punched in the names of the seven women. The first six provided no matches.

  'Here's the last one,' Foster said, typing in the name of Leonie Stamey, niece of the brothers grim. 'She'll be only seventeen, and even allowing for the criminality in her family that should --'

  He stopped abruptly.

  Heather was on her way out of his office to find out more about the Stamey clan. 'What is it?' she said.

  'Fucking hell.'

  'What is it?' she repeated.

  'Leonie Stamey is missing' He swivelled on his chair to face her. 'She di
sappeared on her fourteenth birthday.' He stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

  'I don't think that's coincidence.'

  2

  Martin Stamey's home was a new build on an upmarket housing estate for the aspiring criminal classes on the outskirts of Purfleet in Essex. Each house appeared identical, surrounded by large well-manicured lawns and adorned with more mock Tudor fixings than a medieval banquet. As they tried to find the right house in a warren of homogeneous streets, Foster couldn't resist a sneer. It was the sort of place where the residents put up so many lights at Christmas you could probably see them from space.

  The silhouette of a flag, presumably a Union Jack, flapped in the wind on top of the house. The earlier rain had stopped but the air was still damp. Heather knocked on the door, inducing some manic barking from a dog inside the house.

  'Shut the fack up!' a gruff voice barked back. The light in the hall went on and through the frosted glass a large figure in a white T-shirt approached, unlocked several bolts and opened the door on a safety chain. The face that peered through was unshaven, handsome and sullen, the features carved and lean. There was no pretence at friendliness.

  He knew them instantly as police.

  'What?' The voice oozed contempt.

  'Martin Stamey?'

  'Who wants to know?'

  Foster flashed his ID, then introduced himself and Heather. The dog barked riotously as if on cue. A female voice told it to shut up and a door slammed, muffling the dog's excitement.

  'The Met? What you doing out here?' Stamey said.

  Harris would ask the same, Foster thought. Sod the action plan. 'It's in relation to a current investigation,' he replied. 'We'd like a word. Any chance we can come in?'

  The man smiled bitterly. 'Yeah, cos I'm always inviting police into my house, aren't I? Tell me what it's all about and then we'll talk about whether you can come inside.'

  'It's about Leonie,' Heather said.

  The man's face froze. 'You found her, have you?' He sounded eager, expectant.

  'No, but we have a case that shares some similarities with hers,' Foster explained. He felt a few spots of rain.

  'Look, we've told you what it's about. Can we come in?'

  Stamey looked at them for a few seconds impassively, then drew back and unhooked the chain. 'Come on,' he said, walking off in front of them. He was wearing blue jeans and an incongruous pair of navy-blue carpet slippers.

  Foster and Heather followed him down a long hall.

  'Nice place,' he lied.

  'Yeah, well, it's home,' Stamey said, failing to conceal his pride.

  'What's your game again?' Foster asked as they arrived at a large sitting room. Everything in it was cream - the leather sofas, the walls, the thick shagpile carpet and the rug by the cream fireplace, even the lampshade. With the overhead light, the cumulative effect was so bright Foster almost felt his retinas detach.

  The only colour emanated from a huge wall-mounted plasma TV screen showing a loud action film. A boy and a girl, who Foster guessed to be around ten or eleven years old, sat entranced.

  'Fuck off upstairs and watch this shit in your rooms,'

  Stamey said to them, picking up a remote control from the coffee table and turning it off.

  The two kids trudged away.

  'What was your question again?' he said to Foster, irritably.

  Foster could see the contempt wasn't reserved for him. It was a default setting. 'I asked what you did for a living.'

  'Carpenter,' Stamey answered, and sniffed. 'Some other stuff, too.'

  I bet, Foster thought. Houses as big as this weren't bought on the wages of your average chippy.

  A slim, attractive woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair appeared in the doorway, waiting for the children to sidle past her before she spoke.

  'Who are these two, Mart?' she asked, saving her most unsavoury look for Heather.

  'Detectives,' he said, sitting on one of the sofas and spreading his legs and arms wide. 'They say they're here about Leonie.'

  'Have they found her?' she asked, contempt giving way to agitation.

  Heather shook her head. 'I'm afraid not.'

  Foster sat down on the other sofa, trying to suppress a wince. More than an hour in his car had seized him up, and his leg and collarbone were beginning to ache, as they always did at the end of the day. He was a long way from his red wine and painkillers.

  'Can I get you a tea or a coffee?' the woman asked.

  Both Foster and Heather shook their heads.

  'A glass of water would be nice, though,' Heather said.

  Foster marvelled at how much water she drank. Apart from wine, it was the only thing he saw her drink.

  'Grab me a can of lager, sweetheart,' Stamey said, and the woman Foster presumed to be the mother of his children padded away. Stamey turned his saturnine face on them but said nothing. Foster had taken an instant dislike to him but reined it in. He sat forward.

  'I'll be up front with you, Mr Stamey. We have nothing new about Leonie's whereabouts. But in the course of our investigation into the recent disappearance of a fourteenyear-old girl in London we noticed a few similarities.'

  'Is this the one that's been in the news and plastered all over the papers?'

  Foster nodded. 'It is, yes.'

  A look of bewilderment spread across Stamey's face.

  'Her mother was offed, wasn't she? Nasty bit of business.

  Some fucking nonce, I expect. You lot are too lenient on them. Let them out in the community and all that shit.

  Best thing to do is put them down like dogs. If you're gonna let 'em go, then you wanna cut the balls off 'em first.' He sniffed once more.

  Foster didn't like being harangued on law and order by someone he suspected to be a small-time crook but he let it slide.

  'I don't see the connection with Leonie,' Stamey added.

  'Hang on, are you saying that Leonie's mum was murdered?'

  'I

  was wondering if we could go through the details of your niece's disappearance one more time?' Foster asked.

  'Details? I don't know what you mean. As far as we knew, her mother OD'd on smack. Stupid bitch. She'd had all sorts of problems with it. The place was a fucking dump. She was opening her legs to anything with a cock.

  She took a hit one night and that was it. Leonie saw the writing on the wall. Her and Gary were going to be taken into care. I was . . . away at the time, so I couldn't take her in. My brother Davey was working away and he don't have a clue anyway, so he'd have been no good. My other brother, Christopher, passed away a few years back so there was nowhere for the poor little mite to go. So she had it away on her toes and I don't blame her. Gary's gone into care and he's up to no good all the fucking time from what little we hear.'

  'How old is Gary now?' Heather asked.

  'He'd be about eleven. The same number of foster families he's been through probably.'

  'You're sure Leonie ran away?'

  'Well, I was until you showed up. And so were your colleagues when they looked into it. Which wasn't very much.'

  'No one's heard anything from her?'

  'Not a peep.'

  'Any idea where she might've gone?'

  'London, I presume. She was a bright girl - brighter than her dozy fucking muppet of a mother, at least. But I can't imagine what she's got herself involved with on the streets of London. Actually, I can, but I don't wanna.'

  'There's no family there she could have gone to?'

  'There's no real family beyond us, to be honest. You probably know that my brother's doing time, and I've told you the other one's dead. His wife has shacked up with a new feller. That's about it really. We're hardly the fucking Waltons.'

  His wife came in with the beer. He leaned forward and sprung it open slowly before taking a hearty swig. 'These two are here because they reckon that Leonie's disappearance might've something to do with that girl who's gone missing, the one who's been all over the
news.'

  'The girl whose mum was done in?' his wife replied.

  'Yeah. Can't see why. Gilly was a smack addict and she smacked herself up too much and died. Don't think someone topped her. Can't see who would want to, for a start.'

  'We're looking for a girl who went missing on her fourteenth birthday, like Leonie,' Foster interrupted. 'Of course it might be, and probably is, just a coincidence, but we felt it was worth seeing if there were any more similarities.

  All we have on file are the bare facts of Leonie's case and we want to know more. Didn't she have a father?'

  Stamey snorted derisively. 'Take your pick from half of Essex. Let's just say my sister was not exactly stingy with her favours.'

  'Didn't Leonie and Gary share the same father?' Heather asked.

  The snort turned to a whooping laugh. His wife joined in. 'Did you hear that, love?' he said, shaking his head.

  'She asked if Gary and Leonie had the same dad?' The mirth continued for some time.

  Foster looked at Heather, who was wearing a fixed grin.

  Finally Stamey calmed down. He looked at Heather and raised a hand. 'Sorry, sweetheart. Really sorry. But you'll realize why that tickled me so much when I tell you that Gary is a half-caste. His dad's a nigger.'

  Foster felt Heather stiffen at his side at the mention of the word. He decided to step in before she arrested him for discrimination.

  'Martin,' he said, looking Stamey in the eye. 'We'd appreciate it if you watched what you said in front of us, please.'

  'Whatever,' Stamey said. He took another slug from the can, watching Heather with amusement.

  She was still rigid beside Foster. Time to start wrapping this up, he thought.

  'Were Leonie and her mum close?'

  'Beats me,' Stamey said.

  'Not really,' his wife added. 'Like Mart said, Gillian had a lot of problems with the drugs and everything. She was off her brain half the time. Leonie was one of them girls who had to grow up quick. She had an old head on her, that girl. She basically brought Gary up herself. He was a little bit wild, even back then. Weren't his fault. He had no dad and his mum was a junkie. What chance did the poor little kid have? It always amazed me that Leonie turned out quite so well. And I don't blame her for running away, even if meant leaving Gary. Imagine finding your mum dead and thinking you might have to go into care.'