No Good Reason (28 page)

“I need a name,” she said.

“Terry Thorpe,” he blurted, before she could go any further.

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that your name? I don’t need your name, you pillock, but thanks anyway.” She took her pad from her back pocket and made a note. “I’m looking for someone, possibly local, who’s dealing in illegal, hardcore pornography—DVDs, magazines, still images. I’m not talking about a ‘bit of kink,’ Terry. Most likely they’re imported, and there are quality sleeves on the discs, so it’s not an amateur operation.”

Terry toyed with the edge of his newspaper. “I don’t know nobody doing that.”

“No?” She sighed. “You know I’ve got enough cause to search your house, Terry. Confiscate all your gear, your computers and discs. Bang you up for a few months. Slap you with a huge fine and a criminal record. What would your missus say?”

The hand sporting his wedding ring vanished beneath the counter, and his bottom lip began to tremble. “Mal Atley,” he muttered. “Malcolm Atley. He lives on Lower Ulverston. I don’t know what number. He brings stuff to the pub. Sells it out of his car. Proper dodgy shit—rape, kiddies. Says he gets it from Poland and Romania. I’ve heard he does drugs as well. He can get his hands on all sorts of crap.”

“Which pub?” Sanne asked, frantically scribbling notes. The drugs connection was an unexpected bonus. If Atley had supplied Ned Moseley’s pornography, who knew what else he might have sold him?

“Coach and Horses, but he also does the Working Men’s and the Crown.” Terry gripped her arm. She saw Meg take a step toward them and held up her free hand to stop her from intervening. “You won’t tell him I snitched, will you?” he asked.

“No. I strongly suggest you don’t either.”

Her forearm stung as he released it. She didn’t recognise Mal’s name, but Terry was obviously petrified of him.

“I think I’ll close early today,” he said, his eyes flitting from side to side as he tried to gauge who might have witnessed the exchange.

The shutter on his stall was clattering into place as Sanne met back up with Meg in the market’s main aisle. Meg grinned and linked her arm through Sanne’s.

“What are you smiling at?” Sanne asked. She felt Meg’s grip tighten and Meg lean into her.

“You are such a badass,” Meg whispered.

Sanne laughed. “Don’t be a twerp.”

“I can’t help it. You gave me chills. Look.” Meg displayed arms covered in goose pimples.

“You must’ve been standing in a draught.”

“Did you get your name?”

“A name, most of an address, and three pubs.” Sanne took a deep breath. “All I have to do now is tell Eleanor what I’ve been up to.”

The mood in the office was subdued when Sanne walked in. Fred and George were at their desks, and Jay Egerton was over at the copier, but no one spoke beyond a perfunctory greeting, and they all looked dog-tired.

“The boss around?” Sanne asked.

Fred nodded toward Eleanor’s office.

Sanne knocked on the office door and waited for a response before she entered. During the drive over, she had given herself a pep talk, reassuring herself that she had investigated the lead in her own time. In any case, EDSOP had never identified the source of the drugs used to subdue Josie. If Atley confirmed he had dealt to Ned Moseley, they might have their first concrete piece of evidence linking Ned to the abductions. This additional possibility gave Sanne the assurance to stand in front of Eleanor’s desk and explain where she had spent the afternoon, although she didn’t disclose that it was nagging doubts about Ned that had led her to the market in the first place.

Eleanor listened, jotting the occasional note, but it wasn’t until Atley’s name came up that she showed any reaction.

“Mal Atley,” she repeated. Her lips twisted as if at something foul. “Vile individual. Did time for GBH, but it’s difficult to make anything stick to him. Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be. Thorpe was scared to death of him. I don’t think he’d have given me the name lightly.”

“Definitely not.” Eleanor pushed her glasses onto her head and folded her arms. “I should let you out on your own more often.”

Sanne shrugged, but the praise buoyed her immeasurably. “I have connections in low places, that’s all.”

That brought a smile to Eleanor’s face. “We’re stretched too thin as a unit to set up a stakeout, so I’ll push this up the chain and let them decide who brings Atley in. Have you ever met him?”

“No, boss.”

Eleanor’s smile broadened. “You’re in for a treat.”

*

The previous night’s vigil had been the first night shift Sanne had worked in months, and she had forgotten the hung-over, disorientated feeling of having her body clock completely disrupted. Slouched on her sofa in her pyjamas after a late supper, she scrolled through the case reports, repeatedly adjusting the glare of the laptop, and absorbing little of the information. She opened a medical file that listed Josie’s injuries in stark, emotionless terminology—“
base of skull fracture, large subdural haematoma, multiple superficial lacerations (most likely inflicted with a razorblade or small knife), contusions consistent with being kicked or punched, fractured left femur
”—and a forensics report with next to nothing of any import. Nine days into the investigation, EDSOP had an entirely circumstantial suspect; a young woman missing, presumed dead; and a trail that was growing colder by the minute.

The buzz of Sanne’s mobile stopped her from taking her frustration out on the computer. Expecting Meg to be the only other idiot awake at such an hour, she frowned when she saw Eleanor’s number instead.

“Hey, boss, you’re up late.” She heard Eleanor sigh and guessed she was still in her office, heels off, blouse untucked and unbuttoned at the neck. The bottle of Scotch she kept for dire emergencies or the successful closure of cases had probably taken a battering.

“I could say the same about you.” There was a rustling noise as Eleanor shifted the phone, and seconds later, a fanfare signalled the shutdown of her computer. “I’m just about to leave, but I thought you’d want to know that Mal Atley was arrested a couple of hours ago.”

Sanne dropped her legs off the sofa and sat upright, as if a teacher had rapped her knuckles. “Bloody hell, that was fast.”

“I know. Either Sex Offences have too much time on their hands, or they didn’t want to risk Thorpe cracking and warning him. I would suspect the latter. They set up surveillance at each of the pubs Thorpe had mentioned, and they arrested Atley in the car park of the Coach and Horses. He was too busy flogging a bag of DVDs to a local school governor to notice the officers approaching him.”

“Is he talking?”

“Not tonight. I think they want him to stew a while in holding first. Plus, they have a warrant for his house, so they’ll wait and see what they find there before interviewing him.”

“That makes sense.” Even so, Sanne couldn’t resist looking at the clock on her mantelpiece. The arrest had happened far sooner than she could have hoped, yet nothing seemed to be moving quickly enough.

“I spoke to DI Anderson,” Eleanor said. “He agreed to let you speak to Atley once he was done with him.”

Sanne almost lost her grip on the phone. “Boss, I’m only Tier Two.”

Eleanor didn’t miss a beat. “And perfectly capable of dealing with a toe-rag like Atley. It’ll be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, which means you’ll have the morning to warn Nelson and prep.”

“Right. Okay.” Sanne started pacing across her living room. “I’ll let Nelson know.”

“Sanne?” Eleanor sounded amused.

“What, boss?”

“Get some sleep.”

“Yep. Will do.”

Eleanor hung up and left her listening to silence. Peering out into the pitch-blackness, Sanne wondered whether she’d break her neck if she went for a jog. She dropped her mobile on the sofa and headed into the kitchen to make a brew. If she couldn’t run, tea was her only fallback.

*

Sanne glanced at the file on the table in front of her and then looked across at Malcolm Atley. He pursed his lips to blow her a kiss, filling the space between them with the pungent odour of cigarettes and aftershave. If he was at all concerned about the eight charges filed against him that morning, he was hiding it well.

“Aren’t you two just the poster children for Affirmative Action?” he said pleasantly.

Dressed in a smart suit, he was clean-shaven and handsome in a bland, boy-band way. Living on Halshaw for the past ten years had knocked the edges from his well-bred Cheshire accent, but it was still audible beneath the flattened vowels and hint of Yorkshire. The thirty-one-year-old son of a self-made millionaire, Atley had had a privileged public school education and had apparently inherited his father’s business acumen. An unfortunate cocaine and amphetamine habit had eaten into his earnings, however, and since arriving in the area he had moved from petty offences to more organised, serious crime. A small stash of ecstasy, cocaine, and ketamine, bagged and ready to sell, had been recovered from the water tank on his toilet, and his pornography distribution racket had turned out to be far more extensive than Terry Thorpe had thought. The Sexual Offences squad had found a schedule in Atley’s bedroom listing a dozen people recently employed to trade the DVDs and magazines, suggesting Atley himself now focused on product acquisition and reproduction. The only reason he had been caught red-handed the previous night was that the school governor had insisted on dealing with him in person. Sanne doubted Ned Moseley would have commanded the same respect, though there was no harm in asking. Atley might even have been a viable suspect in the abduction case, had airline tickets and a travel itinerary not placed him in Bucharest for fifteen days out of the past three weeks.

“Mr. Atley, I’d like you to tell me if you recognise this man.” She slid Ned Moseley’s mugshot toward Atley, studying his face for any twitch of reaction, but he remained utterly impassive, even as he picked up the photograph to make a show of giving it close attention.

“Nope.” He set the image down again. “Never seen him before.”

Sanne tried to catch him in a lie. “You don’t watch the news? Read the papers? He’s had a real rise in his profile of late.”

“Got better things to watch and read, Detective.” He played his tongue lewdly over his lower lip. She fought the urge to shudder.

“His name is Ned Moseley. Still not ringing any bells?”

“Not a one.”

“That’s funny, because we found a stash of your special brand of porn in Mr. Moseley’s house, and someone’s been supplying him with ketamine, among other substances.”

Atley relaxed back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “No comment.”

Turning to Nelson, Sanne sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to cross-check Mr. Atley’s client list, then.”

“Good luck with that.” Atley smirked at her.

She met his cocky expression head-on. “Oh, what, you mean because it’s encrypted?” For a second his smile faltered, and she seized on this hint of uncertainty. “Our techs have had less than twelve hours to work on it, and we already know it’s a set of initials and phone numbers. I’m thinking a lot of people are going to be very unhappy with you, Malcolm. Never write this shit down, isn’t that what they say?” She looked to Nelson for confirmation.

“Schoolboy error,” he said, nodding gravely.

She slotted Ned’s photo back into the file. “I thought you might be able to save us a little time, Malcolm. Judges and juries like that kind of crap, especially if you’re looking at a long sentence. And, believe me, you’re looking at a long sentence.” She stood up to leave.

Atley lowered his hands. “Don’t know him,” he muttered.

“Excuse me, I didn’t catch that,” she said, even though her pulse had fluttered in response.

“I. Don’t. Know. Ned. Moseley.” He enunciated each word with precision. “But then”—he opened his palms in mock innocence, as if thousands of pounds’ worth of computer equipment, explicit material, and drugs hadn’t just been found in his home—“whatever makes you think that I might?”

Sanne smiled at him, privately wishing him the sort of hell reserved for prisoners who dealt in child pornography. “Thank you, Mr. Atley. That’s cleared everything up beautifully.”

Nelson held the door open for her. Atley slammed his fists on the table, his expensive public school manners forgotten as he called after her.

“Yo, you fucking bitch faggot, when do I get to go for a cigarette?”

*

Cold sweat poured off the elderly man’s forehead as he repeatedly yanked the oxygen mask from his face.

“I can’t breathe,” he said, his eyes wide with fear. “I can’t breathe.”

Bert was breathing, but Meg could hear the fluid filling his lungs even before she put her stethoscope to his chest.

“The paramedics get a line in?” she asked Liz.

“Yeah, left wrist. His wife called their doctor yesterday, but the doc couldn’t be bothered coming out, and just prescribed antibiotics for a chest infection over the phone.”

“Because everyone knows antibiotics work wonders for heart failure.” Meg didn’t bother to disguise her sarcasm, but her voice was gentle when she turned back to Bert. “Your heart’s a bit tired, Bert. That’s why you feel as if you’re drowning. I’m giving you some medicine to get rid of all that fluid on your chest, but it’ll also make you piss like a racehorse, so you’ll need a catheter. Is that okay?”

Her candour surprised a smile out of him. He nodded and stopped grappling with the mask.

“Good man,” she said. “I promise I’ll warm my hands first. What’s your missus called?”

“Doris.”

“I’ll get her in as soon as we’ve finished up the business with your plumbing.”

“Righto.”

His oxygen level began to climb steadily once the diuretic was administered. He still looked poorly, and his breathing sounded like bubbles blown through a milkshake, but the terror had started to fade from his eyes.

“Dr. Fielding? Meg?” The voice was quiet, but it came with an unexpected tap on Meg’s back, sending her pen scrawling across Bert’s chart. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” Emily managed to look simultaneously embarrassed and worried. “Could I have a word with you about a patient?”