by Val McDermid
Carol joined him. ‘I do appreciate you helping us with this,’ she said. ‘As soon as you’ve identified the site, I’ll have someone take you back to Bradfield.’
He nodded. ‘I don’t know how you deal with this stuff day in, day out,’ he confessed. ‘Just thinking about it makes me shiver.’
‘Keeping faith with the dead. That’s what Tony calls it.’ Carol looked around her. The team was gathering, scenes of crime officers in their familiar white suits, designed to avoid any contamination of evidence. Kevin and Sam were struggling into their suits, both muttering complaints about the general level of discomfort. ‘We should suit up too,’ Carol said. She retrieved a couple of suits from the SOCO van and took the opportunity to have a word with Kevin and Sam. ‘I didn’t plan on being here,’ she said. ‘But Dr France had cold feet. It’s your operation, I’m only here to observe. I won’t stay long.’
Kevin gave her a tight smile. Thanks, guv.’
When everyone was ready, they set off along what had been the railway track. Now it was a public footpath, the rough stone chippings making for awkward going. It must have been a breathtaking journey back when the steam trains plied this route, Carol thought. Even on a miserable winter’s morning, the light poor and the visibility worse, the drama of the landscape was obvious. Striated limestone cliffs and reefs loomed above them, occasional hardy patches of vegetation sprouting from the cracks. Mottled with more shades of grey than she could count, the huge bluffs stretched skywards, seeming to move towards closure above her head. She tried not to think how threatening it must have seemed to Tim Golding.
After a short distance, they left the track and cut down a steep slope towards a meadow. A handful of sodden sheep munched miserably at the pale grass while others huddled beneath the bare branches of a clump of trees. The ground was heavy underfoot and Carol could feel her walking boots add weight as the mud began to stick to them. It was a long and tiring forty minutes to the mouth of Swindale. They gathered at what looked like a cleft in the rock, no more than four feet across. Carol was sweating inside her protective suit, but her feet were freezing. Not even good quality boots could keep the water out when you had to walk through the river overflow. She turned to Jonathan. ‘The scenes of crime officers will go in first. They’ll tape off a narrow route as they go. That will be the route that we use in and out from now on. So if you go just behind them and direct them to the place you think we’re looking for…?’
He nodded. He unzipped his suit and took out the blown-up photo of the rock formation. He’d laminated it, a sensible precaution against the weather. Carol stayed close on his heels as he followed the SOCOs through the narrow neck of the dale. To her astonishment, a few yards in, the walls of rock spread open dramatically, becoming a valley about fifty feet across. The rough vegetation on the valley floor thinned out in places, offering a faint path forwards. They carried on in, Jonathan occasionally steering them with a few words. ‘Just there on the right,’ he said eventually. Carol looked at her watch. Eight minutes from the mouth of the dale. She stepped up beside Jonathan and compared the picture in his hand to the rock in front of her. Even to her untutored eye, there seemed little room for doubt. But Jonathan took her through the common features, indicating the points of identity. ‘I can’t imagine there are two sets of stromatactis formations with those identical configurations,’ he concluded.
Carol asked the photographer to start on a set of pictures, then she collared one of the uniformed officers she’d requisitioned for the search. ‘Bryant? I want you to drive Dr France back to Bradfield. And then I want you to come back for me. I’ll meet you in the station car park at one.’ She turned to Jonathan. ‘I’ll keep you informed,’ she said, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t brood on it.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘I’ll try not to.’
She turned back and watched Kevin go to his task. ‘Right,’ he said to the waiting team. ‘Let’s fan out from here. Three metres apart. Any sign of disturbed ground, uprooted plants…You know what we’re looking for. Let’s do it.’
Carol hung back, trying to find some shelter in the lee of the bluff a few yards from the site of the photograph. The officers were making slow progress, hampered by the brambles that twined through the dense undergrowth. While she waited, she took out her phone and started making the calls to reshape the undercover operation for that night. She’d just finished talking to Paula when a shout went up from one of the officers towards the right-hand end of the line. ‘Over here,’ he called.
At once, everyone froze. Two of the SOCOs who had remained behind headed for the man who had called out, spooling crime-scene tape behind them to make another narrow corridor of access. It took them a few minutes to reach the man, then another couple of nail-biting minutes while they looked at what had stopped him in his tracks. Then one of them turned back towards Carol and gave her the thumbs-up sign.
She reached the spot at almost the same moment as Kevin. They crouched down, the better to see what was being pointed out. Below the brambles, dead bracken had been piled in a vain bid to disguise the unmistakable hump of a shallow grave. To one side, the earth had been disturbed, presumably by a fox or badger. At first glance, it looked as if someone had strewn a handful of short grey-white sticks on the soil. But Carol knew different, knew what a scatter of finger bones looked like.
She stood up, head bowed, rain streaking her face. It looked as if they’d finally found Tim Golding. Or Guy Lefevre.
Or both.
Midnight. Carol rubbed eyes made tired by hours of peering at CCTV screens and sighed. They’d done everything Tony had suggested. But they were no further forward than they had been when Brandon had first insisted that they try the undercover. Carol wondered how long he would continue to sanction this level of expenditure and staff on such a labour-intensive operation. Following the discovery in the dale, they had two major murder inquiries on their hands. If the press got a whiff of how many officers were involved in the prostitute killings, there would be an outcry. Hysterical demands that more officers be allocated to the paedophile murders, that saving children was more important than saving hookers. It was logical to devote more attention to the Temple Fields murders at this point, because the killer was clearly active now, whereas the paedophile murderer seemed to be dormant for the time being. But logic was always the first victim when the press got their teeth into a campaign. They needed a quick result, both for morale and so that they could be seen to be throwing every resource at finding Tim Golding’s killer. If they couldn’t manage that, it would be Carol who would carry the stigma of failure in the eyes of her colleagues and junior officers. It wasn’t the sort of start a supposedly elite unit needed, though she suspected there would be plenty who would savour her lack of success.
She pressed the transmission button on her radio and said, ‘All units, stand down. Tango Charlie two three, pick up DC McIntyre. Full briefing tomorrow afternoon at four.’ A man emerged from the café bar behind the van and climbed in, driving them back to base. Nobody spoke. They were all too tired and disheartened. When they arrived at the police station, the others filed out, leaving Carol and Merrick slumped in their seats.
Merrick glanced across at her. ‘We’re not going anywhere with this, are we?’
Carol shrugged. ‘At least it stopped raining. What else is there to try?’
‘We should be concentrating on finding Tim’s killer. We both know he’s going to kill again if we don’t find him. And I don’t want another kid’s blood on my hands.’
‘The man who killed Sandie Foster and Jackie Mayall is also going to kill again, Don. And he’s got a much shorter killing cycle. The women on the streets deserve our protection as much as the kids do. We don’t have the right to create a hierarchy of deserving victims. We leave that to the press. We treat them all the same, and we devote our resources where they’re most likely to get a result.’
From the look on his face, Carol could tell Merrick didn’t agree with
her assessment. ‘We can’t keep this up indefinitely,’ he said.
‘And if Tony’s right, we won’t have to. Once our man accepts Paula as a fixture, he’ll bite.’ Carol sounded more confident than she felt.
Merrick pursed his lips. ‘And until then, we keep putting Paula on the line?’
Carol reached for her jacket and stood up. ‘It’s her call. If she wants out, she only has to say.’
‘But she’s not going to say, is she?’ Merrick challenged her. ‘She’s ambitious, she wants to do well. She wants you to think well of her. She sees backing down as bottling it.’
‘You seem to be very clued up on Paula’s thoughts,’ Carol said. ‘Has she told you she wants out?’
Merrick seemed embarrassed. ‘Not in so many words, no. But I can see it for myself.’
Carol sighed. Sometimes she couldn’t resist the feeling that Merrick had been shoved one rung up the ladder too far. He’d been a terrific sergeant, but he wasn’t cutting it as a DI. ‘Don, you’re probably not wrong. But we haven’t got the right to pull this rug out from under Paula. She’s been asked to do something–asked, not ordered–and until she says she’s reached her limit, she deserves not to have her courage undermined by us second-guessing her. So unless you think she’s either a danger to herself or to anyone else, she keeps on keeping on.’
Merrick’s dark eyes took on a sulky look. ‘If you say so, ma’am.’
‘I do, Don. And now I’m going home to bed. It’s been a bitch of a day, and I’ve got to brief the Tim Golding team first thing in the morning.’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Carol cursed herself.
‘I was going to ask you about that,’ Merrick said. ‘I want you to put me on that inquiry.’
Carol shook her head. ‘No, Don. I need you working this case. There has to be an inspector in charge of the statement readers and the action assignments. Somebody has to have an overview.’
‘So get someone else,’ he said impatiently. ‘Tim Golding was my case. I worked on Guy Lefevre’s disappearance too. Nobody’s put more into finding those lads than me. I lost sleep over them, I worked my arse off for them. I know those cases inside out. I know the families. And they know me. Anybody else would be starting from scratch. And it would be just another case to them.’
Carol considered diplomacy and rejected it. She was too tired to go round the houses. And besides, it would probably be wasted on Merrick. ‘That’s a large part of the reason why I’m not transferring you. We’ve got a fresh scenario and I want someone running the shop who isn’t bringing any preconceptions to it.’ Merrick recoiled as if she’d slapped him. But Carol ploughed on. ‘The other reason is that the Foster and Mayall cases are live and ongoing. Bringing someone else in to replace you would mean they’d have the impossible task of reviewing all that’s already been done while still trying to keep on top of fresh statements and actions.’ Belatedly, she tried to soften her response. ‘Don, I know you took these disappearances very personally. And that’s not a bad thing. It means you went the extra mile for Tim and Guy. But now it’s time to step back. Sandie and Jackie had families too. They deserve answers as much as the Goldings and the Lefevres. And I need you by my side on this one.’
Merrick looked momentarily as if he wanted to argue. Instead his shoulders slumped and he stood up, bending over so he wouldn’t crack his head on the roof of the van. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, ma’am,’ he said bitterly. Then he was gone, leaving her to contemplate another piece of botched staff management.
‘What a fucking day,’ she said under her breath as she climbed out of the van and made for her car. She’d stood over a child’s grave, then driven to the Goldings’ home to tell them that in all probability it belonged to their son. Next she’d had to break the news to Jonathan before he heard it on the radio or the TV. Then four hours stuck in a van in an atmosphere pregnant with expectation. And now she’d pissed off her number two. Her nerves were shot. She needed a large drink, and she needed it soon.
The last thing she expected when she pulled up outside the house was to see Jonathan huddled over his motorbike. She glanced up at Tony’s windows and was reassured to see they were all dark. She stifled a groan and got out. As she approached, he dismounted stiffly, stretching his long limbs and straightening his spine. She couldn’t help admiring the sight. ‘This is a surprise,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize you’d be working this late. But once I’d waited an hour…’ He shrugged and spread his hands.
‘There’s nothing more I can tell you, Jonathan. We don’t have a positive ID yet, never mind a cause of death…’
‘I didn’t come because I wanted more information,’ he said. ‘I came because…well, I just couldn’t settle. The whole thing kept going round in my head, and I thought how much worse it must be for you, and I thought it might help both of us…’ He saw the look on her face and began to turn away. Obviously I was wrong.’
‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘I was just taken aback, that’s all. I’m not used to…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘People regarding you as human?’
She sighed. ‘Something like that. Now you’re here, would you like to come in for a drink?’
He looked uncertain. ‘It’s late, you probably want to get some sleep.’
‘Both of those statements are true, but the first thing I was planning to do was to pour myself a very large glass of wine. You’re welcome to join me.’
‘If you’re sure?’
Carol shook her head in mock exasperation. ‘Can we not waste good drinking time standing here talking about it?’
She’d thought the ceilings in her flat were relatively high, but Jonathan had barely a few inches of clearance. He sat down hastily, looked around her living room and smiled. ‘You’ve not been here long, have you?’
Carol pulled a face. ‘Does it feel so unlived in?’
‘It’s not that, it’s just that there’s no clutter. Me, I can make a place look like the wreck of the Hesperus in three days.’
‘I’m not greatly given to clutter,’ Carol said. ‘But what there is of it is in my London flat.’ She spoke over her shoulder as she headed for the fridge. ‘White wine or beer?’
‘Wine, please. So are you planning on selling your London flat?’ he called after her.
Carol came back with the bottle and two glasses. ‘Not sure yet. Right now it feels like too much of a commitment.’ She handed Jonathan a glass and poured the wine. She turned on the CD player and slotted in Arvo Pärt’s Alina, then sat down next to him. There was enough distance between them for the decision not to seem weighty. The lambent notes of the piano and violin eased the way into conversation.
‘How do you get through this stuff?’ he asked.
‘I just open my mouth and swallow,’ Carol joked. ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’
‘You know that’s not what I meant. OK, we’ll talk about something else.’
‘I’m sorry. I get so used to flippancy and graveyard humour I sometimes find it hard to shake off. You waited for hours in the cold, you deserve an answer. Except that I don’t really have one. Some cops drink too much. Some focus so hard on catching the person who did it that they deliberately lose sight of the victim. Some go home and hug their kids. Some go home and beat their wives. And some crack up.’
‘And you? What do you do?’
Carol stared into her glass. ‘I try to turn the anger into positive energy. I try to feed off it, use it to drive myself to the edge of exhaustion and beyond.’
‘Does that work?’
Carol could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes. ‘I don’t know any more. I don’t know a lot of things any more. Things I thought were bred in the bone. Now they sometimes feel like fairy tales I used to tell myself to stop me being afraid of the dark.’
He reached out and curled his arm round her shoulders. Without hesitation, she moved against his side. ‘You haven’t lost it, you know. You�
�re still a good person. And a good cop.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I saw you out there today. I saw how you managed the scene without anybody realizing you were doing it. And with all that going on, you still found the time to be kind to me. And here you are, being kind to me again.’
Carol sighed, an exhalation that seemed to come from the very core of herself. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that the person I’m being kind to is myself? Jonathan, I don’t want to be alone tonight.’
She felt his muscles tense. ‘You mean…?’
Another deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Yes, that’s what I mean. But, Jonathan…’ She pulled away so that she could see his face. ‘Only if you’re absolutely sure you’re not in love with me.’
Just after five, Tony abandoned the unequal fight against wakefulness. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep for a while, troubled by thoughts of Tim Golding. And Guy Lefevre, the child almost forgotten in all the excitement. The message Carol had left telling him about the discovery in Swindale hadn’t specifically asked him for help, but he had promised her he would look at the scene and he felt Bradfield police were still in credit on that case. He’d been asked for a profile in the early stages by Don Merrick, and he was painfully aware that he’d only been able to provide a very limited outline. That hadn’t been his fault; he’d said right from the start that he needed more data before he could be of much use. But now he had more information, and a visit to Derbyshire would offer even more. It should be possible to come up with something a little more detailed.
He lay on his back, arms folded behind his head. The room was dark, but that was fine. He didn’t have to see to think. He ran through what he thought he knew about the man who had taken Tim Golding and killed him. And probably done the same previously to Guy Lefevre. It would have been a man. There was an infinitesimal degree of doubt on that point. It was always about probabilities. But you had to keep an open mind at the same time, because the nature of sexual homicide was also very particular; it was about appetites that didn’t occur often enough to form a proper statistical base.