‘I’ll start tonight, if you want to be there.’ Sutherland snapped shut his bag.
‘I do.’ He didn’t.
Martin Cashman, Terry’s young DC, opened the tent flap. Heftily built with stubble that defied a morning shave, the bloke had much to learn, but all the same, Terry trusted him with his life. Cashman stood aside for Sutherland to leave then gingerly entered. Cool as a cucumber with a high-rise suicide or bicycle fatality involving a lorry, he fumbled to shut the tent. No copper took a dead child in their stride.
‘I’ve got the names and addresses for those kids.’ Cashman took refuge in his notebook. ‘Lee Marshall says he can’t find his sister. We’ve had to stop him barging over here. He says she’s hiding in the playground. Won’t take no.’ He let himself look at Sarah Ferris. Her lifeless eyes were fixed on the canvas roof as if for a dare. Cashman puffed out a sigh. I’ll blow your house down. ‘Looks like we’ve found her, sir.’
‘What is his sister’s name?’ Terry wanted Lee Marshall’s sister to be alive and hiding in bushes. Stupid, since Sarah belonged somewhere and in the next hour several lives would be shattered for ever.
Cashman read from his notes. ‘Lee’s ten. Lives with a sister aged six, his mum and a man he called Alan. In a flat on Braybrook Street.’
‘And his sister’s name?’
‘I didn’t ask.’ Cashman frowned.
‘What’s the bet Lee’s stepfather is Alan Ferris?’ Terry contemplated Sarah as infinite sadness threatened to overwhelm. If Stella died, he’d kill himself, no question.
While they’d been talking, life had truly become extinct. Sarah’s body was shrunken and waxy, bruised shadows shaded hollows in the cheekbones.
‘A girl called Danielle Hindle claims they were chased by, listen to this boss, “The man from Abba.”’ Cashman tapped his pencil on the paper. ‘A proper little attention-seeker… kept doing handstands while I was talking to her.’
‘Kids seek attention for a reason. Did you ask Hindle what she meant?’
‘I thought it was a lie…’ Cashman blustered.
‘I’ll talk to them.’ Terry gave the lad a break. This was tough even for seasoned blokes like himself. Cashman had the makings of an excellent detective.
‘This Danielle said that Lee went off with a girl called Nicola. Actually Nicola was there, but she didn’t confirm or deny. Like she was struck dumb. Hindle said it was Nicola’s brother Robert Walsh who died in that accident on the slide there, remember?’
Terry nodded.
‘…so this Danielle reckons Sarah got upset because she’d lost a bracelet. A present from this Alan. Danielle said Alan would kill Lee for not minding her. Danielle’s words.’ Cashman stopped.
‘It’s a turn of phrase. Keep it in mind. Stepfathers have a lot to answer for.’ Terry lived in fear that Suzie would meet someone else who would become a dad to Stella.
‘Lee thinks Sarah stayed looking for it and we’ve scared her.’ Cashman pulled a face. ‘They weren’t keen on the police.’
‘We live in hope of winning the hearts of babes.’ Terry was wry. Musing, he added, ‘Likely she’s a relation of Eddie Hindle. Career burglar. He’s due out of the Scrubs any time soon so lock your doors.’
The photographer’s flash caused a glint on the child’s wrist. Peeping out from the cuff of the cardigan was a silver dog. Terry said, ‘Sarah found her charm bracelet.’
Cashman’s radio crackled. After an interchange with the station, he said, ‘Sarah Ferris has the same address as Lee Marshall.’
‘Let’s go.’
At the park gate, Terry heard his name called.
‘A girl’s been murdered, DI Darnell, care to confirm?’ Lucie was always first on a scene. The intrepid reporter’s MO was to fish for facts by uttering falsities to be affirmed or denied. Regardless of either, she’d file a story.
‘Throw this cordon wider! Get this lot backed up to the bridge,’ Terry hissed at Cashman. He was thankful that the rain had stopped. Forensics needed the weather on their side. A full-blown thunderstorm wouldn’t have deterred Lucie May.
‘Give me a statement, Inspector Terence!’ Lucie beseeched as if harmless.
‘I have to get my sister.’ The boy in the baseball cap.
‘Lee, is it?’ Terry turned his back on Lucie.
‘Can I go in the playground? She’ll think she’s in trouble. I won’t go near there.’ The boy jerked a thumb at the tent. The other children crowded around him.
‘Not right now, Lee.’ Terry took in the little gang. ‘Have you been playing here this afternoon?’
‘Only after school.’ The gum-chewer who, Terry guessed, was Danielle Hindle, hung on Lee’s arm. With her other hand she yanked on the gum between her teeth, pulled it to a string, spun it around her finger and biting it off resumed chewing. A seamless exercise. He met penetrating green eyes.
‘Danielle Hindle?’
The girl offered a ‘what’s it to you?’ shrug.
‘I’m not interested in whether you lot were bunking off. Where were you this afternoon?’ Terry smiled. He was surprised when Danielle smiled back.
‘We were at school. We come after,’ Danielle asserted.
‘Can I get my sister?’ Lee pleaded.
‘What’s your sister’s name, son?’ Terry loathed the tightrope between truth and concealment.
‘Sarah.’
‘Sarah…?’
‘Sarah Ferris.’
‘She isn’t called the same as Lee cos his Mum had a baby with another man.’ Danielle made this sound rude.
‘Janet’s got the car, guv.’ Despite the Arctic temperature, there was a sheen of perspiration on Cashman’s forehead. Lucie had given him a hard time.
‘Sir, I need to—’ Lee started.
Danielle yanked his arm. ‘You can’t, Lee, all right? Sarah is fine, the policeman said!’
The policeman hadn’t said, but Terry wasn’t about to contradict her.
‘What about the man?’ One of the small boys, his crew cut and crumpled shirt untucked, hung upside down from the railings. Danielle dragged him off. Terry saw a family likeness, ski-jump nose, freckles, but the brother hadn’t been blessed with eyes like a tiger.
A stillness descended on the group.
‘The man from Abba that you told the constable about?’ Terry prompted.
‘Jase, tell him!’ Taking her hand off Lee Marshall’s arm Danielle gave her brother a shove. ‘Don’t lie!’
‘He was in the playground.’ The boy reached for the railing. Danielle slapped him off.
‘Can you describe him to me, Jason?’ They needed a photofit and fast. Terry didn’t agree with Cashman that Danielle had lied about the man. In his experience kids rarely lied about important stuff. Attention seekers were a copper’s friend.
‘He’s got long slimy hair and a beard with bits,’ Danielle said. ‘Like Benny in Abba. Like him.’ She fixed on Cashman.
Cashman’s face was a picture, at another time it would have been funny that he’d been compared to the Swedish pop star on a very bad day. Tonight nothing was funny.
‘He’s got on a dirty blue duffel coat and jeans.’ Danielle was disapproving.
‘You saw him here this afternoon?’ Cashman coaxed.
‘Jason did. He’s my brother,’ Danielle said. ‘We ran.’
‘He killed Robbie!’ Jason said.
‘Shut up, Jason!’ Danielle punched the boy.
‘Robbie?’ Terry knew who Robbie was, but he wanted to hear it from them.
‘Robbie is Nicky’s brother. Last week we had a funeral in the playground.’ Danielle was a gift.
‘And blood!’ Jason was suspended from the railings.
‘Blood?’ Cashman homed in.
‘He’s lying. My dad’s the only one who listens to him.’ Danielle pulled Jason off the railings again and held him in a police officer’s disarming grip. Terry resisted stopping her, he wanted Danielle Hindle on his side.
‘Danielle says he�
�s lonely.’ This from the other girl.
‘That’s Nicola.’ Danielle was at his elbow.
Sister of the dead boy. Terry was struck by the girl’s detached air as if she didn’t care, as if life was incidental. ‘He’s a child molester.’
‘How do you know that, Nicola?’ Terry was sharp. The investigation was gaining traction.
‘Danielle says he murdered my brother.’ Nicola reacted with surprise at her own words.
‘Because it’s true.’ Danielle was wrapping her gum in silver paper. She was no litterbug.
‘Has he mol— hurt any of you?’ Terry was looking at Nicola, but she’d resumed her silence.
‘Not yet, but he will.’ Danielle slipped the gum in her pocket. ‘Where’s Sarah? If she’s hiding, she’d be here by now.’
‘I want you all to work with me, OK? That means going home now. We’ve got your addresses, I’ll be visiting each of you.’ Danielle had the same intense expression as Stella when – if Suzie was nowhere near – Terry used to tell her case stories. When Stella had wanted to be a detective like him.
‘Is it true that a little girl has been murdered?’
Shit.
Silently Terry cursed Martin Cashman for not cuffing Lucie and bundling her into a van.
‘There’ll be a briefing later!’ he informed the reporters. He didn’t need the likes of Lucie fire-breathing down his neck. Ex-Beatle John Lennon had been murdered in New York the night before. In the UK it was today’s news and Terry hoped Lennon’s death might draw the heat from this case.
‘I’m not going nowhere without my sister!’ A proper little bovver boy, Lee looked ready to punch Terry.
‘Have you lost your sister?’ Lucie thrust forward her Dictaphone. ‘What’s her name, what’s your name, darling?’
‘Sarah…’ Lee told her.
‘Leave!’ Terry instructed Lucie, who in turn fixed on his flies. ‘Lee, the best thing you can do is leave Sarah to us. Come on, lad, I’ll give you a lift home. You did your best. We’ll handle it from here.’ He had a brainwave. ‘Danielle, please would you get your friends to go home? Be my assistant?’
‘Right, go or I’ll arrest you all,’ Danielle Hindle told her crew. Even Lucie baulked. Linking arms with Nicola Walsh, Danielle tugged at the sleeve of Lee’s Harrington jacket. ‘Come on, Lee, I’ll take you home.’
‘Lee’s going to show me where he lives,’ Terry said.
In the car, Terry switched off the police radio in case anything about Sarah came over. Staring at his lap, Lee looked too blitzed to take in anything.
*
Every police officer dreaded informing people of the fatality of a loved one. Top of that list was breaking the news to parents that their child was dead. Robert Walsh’s death had been an accident so Terry wasn’t involved. But murder put him at ground zero. As senior investigating officer, Terry could delegate the task, but he knew that a victim’s family was key to an investigation. He needed to meet those who had mattered to Sarah. He wanted to see her home and learn about her everyday life. He must discover what and who she’d liked. Who hadn’t liked her. Few murders are committed by a stranger. While they discovered if the man from Abba stalked the minds of kids or was a flesh-and-blood suspect, Terry was on the alert for the slightest sign that someone in Sarah Ferris’s family already knew that she was dead.
Braybrook Street was a row of houses by Wormwood Scrubs Common. By day the Scrubs was a place to kick a ball and walk the dog. At night it was a yawning void wrought with dread possibility.
Fourteen years ago, on the day that Stella was born, three police officers were murdered by an armed gang near where Cashman parked up. Terry had been going to Hammersmith Hospital to see baby Stella when he was recalled to duty. He had joined a fingertip search on the common. His mum had kept a newspaper photo of a line of shirt-sleeved constables, Terry nearest the lens, crawling over summer-parched grass. Sick at heart – as he was now – Terry had known that he’d find nothing to bring the dead officers – dads like himself – back to life. Suzie never forgave him for not seeing their child. Terry reckoned that along with the three officers, his marriage died on 12 August 1966.
‘We live upstairs.’ Lee let them into a pebble-dashed house with a trim front garden. A man’s racing bike, the front wheel removed, was chained to a drainpipe by the door.
The hallway, lined with creased woodchip wallpaper, reeked of congealed fat. In Terry’s childhood house around the corner, the equivalent door had led into the lounge with a kitchen beyond. Lee’s family lived in the upstairs flat which, Terry supposed, must be a squeeze for four. No longer four. They waited while Lee unlocked a door on the landing.
Terry sniffed. Shepherd’s pie. His favourite when his mum had cooked it. Nowadays he made do with shop-bought. No one in this flat would be eating supper tonight. He imagined whisking the boy down the stairs, across the park to the playground where they’d find Sarah Ferris perched on a swing wearing her charm bracelet. Safe and sound. So much for lucky charms.
‘Take us to your mum and dad, Lee,’ he said.
‘Alan’s not my dad. My dad’s dead,’ Lee retorted.
Inside, Terry heard the theme tune for Dallas from a television.
‘Say I didn’t mean to do it.’ Lee barred their way.
‘Do what, Lee?’ Terry kept his eyes on the boy. ‘What didn’t you mean to do?’
‘Nothing. Say I did nothing!’
‘Did you do nothing?’ Kids killed their siblings. Had the girl got on her big brother’s nerves? The unwanted half sister. Had Lee Marshall been anxious to get into the playground to find his sister as a ruse to look innocent? Terry’s gut told him no.
‘Nicky was scared so…’ Eyes brimming. Lee clenched his lip between his teeth. ‘It’s my fault.’
Terry let himself breathe. ‘Lee, why don’t you go up to your bedroom while we have a word with your mum and… and Alan.’
‘He’ll kill me.’ Lee was factual.
‘We’re the police, lad. Your stepfather can’t hurt you.’ Terry hoped that was true. Lee refused to move.
In the kitchen there was barely room for a table and chairs. Blinking in the strip light, Terry kicked something. He’d upset a cat’s dish of milk. The liquid absorbed into the sheet of newspaper beneath. When he lifted his shoe, the paper stuck to it. The Sun. Page three. He ripped it away and, scrunching it up, saw nowhere to throw it. He placed it on the table.
Lee had a cloth and was wiping up the milk. Terry wondered what else the boy was used to mopping up.
‘You’re late, Lee, love.’ In spray-on jeans and a pink cotton shirt knotted at the waist, Farrah Fawcett-Majors banged a plate of shepherd’s pie and cauliflower onto the table. She whipped away the tea towel, sending the plate to the edge. Lee caught it. Terry glimpsed a packet of Yeoman’s instant mash on the counter. His mum had used real potatoes.
‘Who are you?’ Lee’s mother whisked the tea towel.
‘Jesus, Cathy, d’you have to ask! They’re police.’ A pouty Elvis, a black cowlick over his forehead, wandered in from an adjoining room where Terry could now hear Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. ‘What’s Laughing Boy done now?’
Terry’s mum had been Scottish. Since her death it meant that he warmed to anyone with the accent. Not this time.
‘Is there somewhere we could go, Cathy, Alan?’ Terry would rather not talk in a room in which there were knives.
‘What’s he done?’ Elvis went serious.
‘This way.’ As she passed, Terry caught Cathy Ferris’s perfume. Avon’s Sweet Honesty. When he’d been shopping for Stella’s thirteenth birthday last summer, the woman in Boots had suggested it. Perfect for the new teenager. Stella had seemed pleased, but Suzie called it ‘fuddy-duddy’. Thinking of Suzie, Terry realized that it wasn’t Farrah Fawcett-Majors who Cathy Ferris reminded him of, it was his ex-wife.
‘Lee, go up to your room,’ Terry murmured to the boy.
‘He can stay and hear it for himself!’ Ala
n Ferris frogmarched his stepson to a black leather couch (Alan’s dowry, Terry guessed) and, prodding Lee’s chest, propelled him backwards. Lee clasped at the arm as if anchoring himself on a stormy sea. Alan took the matching armchair and topped up a tankard from a bottle of Double Diamond, taking a slug.
The television was showing the assassinated Beatle’s distraught fans at a candle-lit vigil outside his apartment block. Terry was more of an early Beatles man, he’d danced to ‘Twist and Shout’ down the Hammersmith Palais. Right now, it wasn’t easy to imagine anything at all.
Cashman found the remote and muted the bit about imagining there was no heaven.
‘If he’s been shoplifting, throw the book at him.’ Alan Ferris caught his wife’s expression. ‘He has to learn. You spoil him.’
‘If anyone spoils anyone, it’s you giving Sarah expensive jewellery.’ Cathy Ferris sounded weary of a well-worn interchange.
At the mention of Sarah there was a beat.
‘Where is Sarah?’ Alan tipped the bottle at Lee.
‘Actually, I’m really sorry to—’ Terry spoke to Cathy Ferris.
‘Where is she?’ Alan lunged at his stepson. Cashman manoeuvred Ferris back into his chair. So far, apart from Benny in Abba, Terry’s money was on the loving father.
‘I’m sorry to tell you that the body of a little girl fitting Sarah’s description has been found in Little Wormwood Scrubs Park. The child is wearing a skirt. A label with the name “Sarah Ferris” is sewn into the child’s cardigan…’
Ferris was up out of his chair. He swung a fist at the wall, punching so hard that his knuckles split. His hand ran with blood.
Cashman and Terry wrestled him back into his chair. There was an animal sound, long and high. Cathy Ferris bent double as if in agony.
Lee fluttered about her. ‘Don’t, Mum. Don’t. It’s all right. It’s OK.’
The Playground Murders Page 5