The Wire in the Blood (46 page)

‘Where is he?’ Carol demanded.

The two detectives flicked their eyes towards each other, mutual understanding and decisions passing instantly between them. The one at the keyboard spoke, keeping his eyes on his work. ‘DS Taylor, ma’am?’

‘Who else? Where is he? I know he was here earlier, but I want to know where he is now.’

‘He went out just after the news came through about Di,’ the other man said.

‘And where will he be?’ Carol wasn’t giving an inch. She couldn’t afford to. Not for the sake of her future authority, but for her own self-respect. The buck stopped with her, and she had no wish to evade that responsibility. But she needed to understand how her operation had gone so disastrously wrong. Only one man might be able to tell her, and she was determined to find him. ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘Where?’

The two detectives exchanged another look. This time resignation was the key component. ‘Harbourmaster’s Club,’ the typist said.

‘He’s in a drinking den at this time of the morning?’ she demanded angrily.

‘It’s not just a bar, it’s a club, ma’am. Originally for officers on merchant ships. You can get meals there, or just go in and read the papers and have a cup of coffee.’ Carol turned to leave, but the typist continued. ‘Ma’am, you can’t go there,’ he said, his voice urgent.

The look she gave him had induced rapists to confess. ‘It’s men only,’ the young detective stammered. ‘They won’t let you in.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Carol exploded. ‘God forbid we should disturb the native customs. All right, Beckham, stop what you’re doing and get down the Harbourmaster’s Club. I want you and DS Taylor back here within half an hour, or I’ll have your warrant card as well as his. Do I make myself clear?’

The file folder closed and Beckham jumped to his feet, brushing past her with an apology as he hurried out. ‘I’ll be in my office,’ Carol growled at the remaining detective. She tried to slam the door behind her, but the hinges were too stiff.

Carol flopped into her chair, not even taking off her mac. Bleak self-reproach settled oppressively, immobilizing her. She stared emptily at the back wall where Di Earnshaw had stood during their briefing, remembering the dead fish stare, the badly fitting suit, the pug-nosed face. They’d never have been friends, Carol knew that instinctively, and in a way that made what had happened worse. Coupled with the guilt of Di Earnshaw’s death in her own botched operation, Carol had the guilt of knowing she hadn’t liked the woman very much, that if she’d been forced under duress to choose a victim from her command, Di wouldn’t have been last on the list.

Carol ran through the case history again, wondering what she could have, should have done differently. Which was the decision that got Di Earnshaw killed? However she cut it, she came back to the same thing every time. She’d not kept a tight enough grip on the investigation, or a close enough eye on junior officers who weren’t worried about discrediting her with their sloppy policing. She’d been too busy playing knight-in-shining-armour games with Tony Hill. Not for the first time, she’d let her emotional response to him interfere with her judgement. This time, the consequences had been fatal.

The peal of her phone cut across her self-flagellation and she grabbed it in the middle of the second ring. Not even a major guilt-trip could stifle her instincts to the point where she could ignore a ringing phone on her office desk. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said, her voice dull.

‘Guv, it’s Lee.’ His voice sounded brighter than it had any right to be. Even as negative a personality as Di Earnshaw had the right to a little more sorrow from her immediate colleagues.

‘What have you got?’ Carol asked brusquely, swivelling round in her chair to stare out of the window at the deserted windswept quay.

‘I found her car. Tucked away down the side of one of the other warehouses, well out of sight. Guv, she had this little tape recorder. It was lying on the passenger seat, so I got one of the traffic lads to get me into the car. It’s all there, name, time, route, destination, the lot. There’s more than enough there to nail Brinkley!’

‘Good work,’ she said dully. Better than nothing, it still wasn’t enough to assuage the guilt. Somehow, she knew that when she told Tony that, after all, he’d been right, he wouldn’t consider it an acceptable trade-off either. ‘Bring it in, Lee.’

She turned to replace the handset to find John Brandon standing in the doorway. Wearily, she started to get up, but he motioned her to stay seated, folding his long limbs into one of the comfortless visitor’s chairs. ‘A bad business,’ he said.

‘No one to blame but me,’ Carol said. ‘I took my eye off the ball. I left my officers to their own devices on an operation they all thought was a waste of time. They weren’t taking it seriously, and now Di Earnshaw’s dead. I should have stayed on their tails.’

‘I’m surprised she was out there without back-up,’ Brandon said. The words were censure enough without the look of reproach on his face.

‘That wasn’t the intention,’ Carol said flatly.

‘For both our sakes, I hope you can substantiate that.’ It wasn’t a threat, Carol realized, seeing the warmth of regret in his eyes.

Carol stared unseeing at the scarred wood of her desk top. ‘Somehow, I can’t get worked up about that now, sir.’

Brandon’s voice hardened. ‘Well, I suggest you do, Chief Inspector. Di Earnshaw doesn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for herself. All we can do for her now is take her killer off the streets. When can I expect an arrest?’

Stung, Carol jerked her head up and glared at Brandon. ‘Just as soon as DC Whitbread gets back here with the evidence, sir.’

‘Good.’ Brandon got to his feet. ‘Once you have a clearer idea what happened out there last night, we’ll talk.’ The ghost of a smile crossed his eyes. ‘You’re not to blame, Carol. You can’t be on duty twenty-four hours a day.’

Carol stared at the empty doorway after he’d gone, wondering how many years it had taken John Brandon to learn how to let go. Then, weighing up what she knew of the man, she wondered if he ever had, or if he’d simply learned to hide it better.

Leon looked around, bemused. ‘I thought Newcastle was supposed to be the last place on earth where men were men and sheep ran scared?’

‘You got a problem with a vegetarian pub?’ Chris Devine asked mildly.

Simon grinned. ‘He only pretends he likes his meat raw.’ He sipped his pint experimentally. ‘Nothing wrong with the bevvy, though. How did you find out about this place?’

‘Don’t ask and you won’t be embarrassed, babe. Just trust your senior officer, especially when she’s a woman. So, how are we doing?’ Chris asked. ‘I got nowhere showing her picture round the station. Nobody in the buffet or the ticket office or the bookstall remembered seeing her.’

‘The bus station was the same,’ Simon reported. ‘Not a sausage. Except that one of the drivers said, was it not that lass that went missing in Sunderland a couple of years back?’ They contemplated the irony glumly.

‘I got a sniff,’ Leon said. ‘I talked to one of the train guards, and he put me on to a café where all the drivers and guards go for a brew and a bacon butty on their breaks. I sat down with the guys and flashed the photos. One of them reckoned he was pretty sure he’d seen her on the Carlisle train. He remembered because she double-checked with him what time the train got into Five Walls Halt and that they were running on time.’

‘When was this?’ Chris asked, offering him an encouraging cigarette.

‘He couldn’t be sure. But he reckoned it was the week before last.’ Leon didn’t have to remind them that timetable would fit perfectly with Donna Doyle’s disappearance.

‘Where’s Five Walls Halt?’ Simon asked.

‘It’s somewhere in the middle of nowhere this side of Hexham,’ Chris informed him. ‘Near Hadrian’s Wall. And presumably another four. And don’t ask how I know that either, right?’

‘So what’s at Five Walls Halt that she’d want to get off there?’

Leon looked at Chris. She shrugged. ‘I’m only guessing, but I’d say it might be somewhere near Jacko Vance’s place in the country. Which, I don’t have to tell you, we’re not supposed to be going anywhere near.’

‘We could go to Five Walls Halt, though,’ Leon said.

‘Not until you finish that pint, we can’t,’ Simon prompted.

‘Leave the pint,’ Chris instructed him. ‘She can’t have been the only one who got off the train there. If we’re going knocking on doors, we don’t want to smell like a brewery.’ She got to her feet. ‘Let’s go and discover the beauties of the Northumberland countryside. Did you bring your wellies?’

Leon and Simon exchanged a look of panic. ‘Thanks, Chris,’ Leon muttered sarcastically as they trailed after her into the soft rain.

Alan Brinkley stood under the shower, the cascade of water almost scalding. The man who made the decisions had finally decreed that the officers who had fought the fierce fire at the paint factory could be stood down and replaced by a smaller crew who would damp down the hot spots and keep their fresh eyes peeled for anything significant among the wreckage. No one in authority was taking any chances now the body had been found.

At the thought of the body, a shudder convulsed Brinkley from head to foot. In spite of the steaming heat, his teeth chattered involuntarily. He wasn’t going to think about the body. Normal, he had to be normal. But what was normal? How did he usually behave when there had been a fatal fire? What did he say to Maureen? How many beers did he drink the night after? What did his mates see in his face?

He slumped against the streaming tiles of the shower cubicle, tears falling invisibly from his eyes. Thank God for the privacy of the new fire station, not like the old communal showers they’d had when he’d learned his trade. In the shower now, no one could see him weep.

He couldn’t get the smell out of his nostrils, the taste out of his mouth. He knew it was imagination; the chemicals in the paint factory overlaid any hint of incinerated flesh. But it was as real as it had ever been. He didn’t even know her name, but he knew what she smelled like, what she tasted like now.

His mouth opened in a silent scream and he pounded with the sides of his fists against the solid wall, making no sound. Behind him, the shower curtain rattled back on its metal hoops. He turned slowly, pressing himself into the corner of the cubicle. He’d seen the man and the woman before, inside the scene-of-crime tapes at the fires. He watched the woman’s lips move, heard her voice, but could not process what she was saying.

It didn’t matter. He suddenly knew this was the only relief. He slid down the wall into a foetal crouch. He found his voice and started to sob like a damaged child.

Chris Devine was only a few miles out of Newcastle when her mobile rang. ‘It’s me, Tony. Any joy?’

She filled him in on the limited success of their morning, and in turn he told her about his failure to convince Wharton and McCormick to take him seriously. ‘It’s a nightmare,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to hang around indefinitely on this. If Donna Doyle is still alive, every hour could count. Chris, I think the only thing to do is for me to confront him with the evidence and hope we can panic him into a confession or an incriminating move.’

‘That’s what killed Shaz,’ Chris said. Mentioning her name brought the grief back like a physical blow. If she could ignore the bright presence Shaz had been in her life and the darkness of her absence, she could get through this in a fair simulacrum of the normal breezy Chris Devine. But every time Shaz was mentioned by name, it knocked the breath from her. She suspected she wasn’t the only one who suffered a reaction; it would explain why Shaz was seldom spoken of directly.

‘I wasn’t planning on going it alone. I need backup.’

‘What about Carol?’

There was a long silence. ‘Carol lost an officer in the night.’

‘Ah, shit. Her arsonist?’

‘Her arsonist. She’s beating herself up because she thinks her involvement in this made her derelict in her duty. She’s wrong, as it happens, but there’s no way she can walk a way from her responsibilities in Seaford today.’

‘Sounds like she’s got more shit on her plate right now than anyone should ever have to eat. Yeah, forget Carol.’

‘I’m going to need you down there, Chris. Can you bear to pull out and go back to London? Now?’

She didn’t have to hesitate for a moment. When it came to catching the man who brutalized Shaz Bowman’s beautiful face before destroying her soul, there wasn’t much Chris would have refused. ‘No problem. I’ll flag the lads down and tell them.’

‘You can tell them Kay’s on her way, too. She was waiting for me when I got back from Leeds HQ this morning. I’ll call her and tell her to head for Five Walls Halt station. She can meet Simon and Leon there.’

‘Thank God there’ll be one person there with a bit of common sense,’ she said ironically. ‘She can keep the lid on Die Hard one and two.’

‘Getting a bit gung-ho, are they?’

‘There’s nothing they’d love more than kicking Jacko Vance’s head in. Failing that, they’d settle for his front door.’ She spotted a lay-by on the fast dual carriageway and indicated she was going to pull over, checking in her mirror that Simon and Leon were following.

‘I was thinking of reserving that pleasure for myself.’

Chris gave a grunt of sardonic laughter. ‘Join the queue, babe. I’ll call you when I hit the M25.’

The officers in the canteen broke into a ragged round of applause as Carol and Lee Whitbread walked in. Carol nodded a distant acknowledgement, Lee doing better with a wan smile. Two coffees, two doughnuts, her treat, then they were out of there and heading back to the CID room. It would be at least an hour before Alan Brinkley’s solicitor could get there, and till then, he was off limits.

Halfway up the stairs, she turned and blocked Lee’s way. ‘Where was he?’

Lee looked shifty. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Must have been in a radio black spot.’

‘Bollocks,’ Carol said. ‘Come on, Lee. This isn’t the time for false loyalty. Di Earnshaw would probably still be alive if Taylor had been watching her back like he was supposed to. It could have been you. Next time it could be. So where was he? Over the side?’