Dead Bad Things (21 page)

  "This is Sergeant Reynolds." Benson nodded at the other man. "He's the one who called me."

  Sarah looked at the man. He was tall – well over six feet – and extraordinarily handsome. She'd never seen him before: she was sure that she would have remembered such a striking individual. "Thanks, sir," she said. "I mean, for letting us know about this."

  Reynolds nodded. "Benson and I go way back. I owe him more favours than I can ever repay." The two men exchanged a glance containing levels of meaning that Sarah could not even approach let alone penetrate. It was an odd moment, and one that lasted just about long enough for her to be certain she hadn't imagined it.

  "All the same… thanks. We really want to be kept in the loop on this one. Is there anything more you can tell us?"

  Reynolds sighed heavily, as if he was already tired of talking about the case. "At five o'clock this morning a local solicitor was out taking his usual daily run and he found them like that, laid out like slabs of meat on the grass. We estimate that they couldn't have been there long. All kinds of people wander round here at night, so if the bodies had been left earlier someone would have found them and we'd have been informed. The sight of a dead kid melts the hardest of hearts." He smiled, and suddenly looked ugly.

  Sarah glanced at the shapes on the ground. She felt a dizzying wave of sadness wash over her and through her. "So what does it mean? Is this some kind of display?"

  Reynolds put his hands in his pockets and bunched up his shoulders. "I think so. It's like he's showing off… maybe even taunting us. He's set these boys out like trophies, showing us what he's capable of. Whoever he is, he's getting more confident. The first one – the one you found – was hidden away. These two are out in plain sight, like a gift."

  They fell into an uneasy silence. Benson scanned the top of the rise, looking for someone. Reynolds watched Sarah, and she held his gaze.

  "We have a mutual friend, by the way," said Reynolds, buttoning his overcoat against the chill. His breath was a faint white phantom in the air before his face, dispersing as quickly as it appeared. "DI Tebbit. I used to work under him, before I was transferred to the murder squad."

  Sarah nodded. "How is he, sir? I haven't heard anything for a while."

  Reynolds looked down, and then raised his eyes slowly back to Sarah's face. He blinked; a strange, almost mechanical movement. "He's bad. He slipped into a coma late last night. They don't expect him to come out of it, either."

  The news hit Sarah hard. She'd known DI Tebbit for a couple of years and liked him a lot. More than a lot. He had looked after her since their first meeting, when she was a fresh face on the force. Tebbit had known her father, and disliked him with a passion, but he had been taken with Sarah for reasons she still could not define. She'd always suspected that the man had a crush on her, but the notion had never offended her.

  "He's a good man." Reynolds was staring her down, almost like an obscure challenge.

  "One of the best," she replied, narrowing her eyes and setting the muscles in her jaw. Was he testing her? If he was, she failed to see why and for what purpose. They were all on the same side here.

  "I knew your father, too…" Ah, there it was: the kicker to this subtle confrontation. The silence after his words was filled with questions, but ones he was clearly unable – or unwilling – to ask.

  "Yes? Well, a lot of people knew my father. Most of them knew him better than I did. Or at least they liked him better." She set her stance, legs held slightly apart. This was getting weird, like some kind of mental warfare.

  "He was a great copper. He trained me… showed me what's what." Reynolds glanced over at Benson, and her boyfriend (that word – it still made her feel uncomfortable, like trying on a hat which she knew didn't suit her and never would) gave a slight shake of the head. When he realised that Sarah had seen the gesture, he tried to cover it by raising his hand and coughing into his fist.

  The old boys' club was at work again. It never failed to disappoint her.

  Sarah felt suddenly trapped between the two men. They flanked her, their limbs forming the boundary of a human cage. She entertained the eerie thought that if she suddenly decided to run they might chase her, and if they caught her away from prying eyes they might do something unimaginable.

  Now where had that thought come from? She was growing paranoid; things were getting to her.

  The Scene of Crime Officers finally arrived, breaking the strange spell. Several figures in crumpled Hazmat suits drifted down the sides of the incline, drawing in on the locus of the crime. Like mystics, they carried themselves with a grace and confidence that seemed otherworldly. Sarah envied them for a moment: their role in an investigation was defined by rigid scientific parameters, simple scales and rules. Tests could be carried out to discern the truth of a situation, and all emotion could be cast aside. Ambiguity had no place in their lives.

  Sarah and the two men watched as the silent SOCOs did their thing. They erected a tent around the bodies and lifted the sheets, carefully combing the area and the corpses for evidence. Their padded white feet moved softly over the hard packed ground; their white-hooded heads nodded, twitched, and occasionally bent towards clipboards to examine raw data.

  After a while it became apparent that Sarah and Benson were no longer quite as welcome on the scene. They walked away in silence, each wrapped up in their own storm of thoughts. Sarah was beginning to feel that Benson might be hiding something from her about his relationship with Sergeant Reynolds – or was it something to do with Tebbit? She didn't know what secrets he was holding within, or what they had to do with her, but she sensed his discomfort.

  "We need to talk later," she said. "When the shift's over." They walked towards her car, a measurable distance growing between them in terms of both physical space and spiritual empathy.

  "OK. If you like."

  "Come back to mine? Make it late, though – after eleven. I have a few things to do first. But I think it's time we talked about my father."

  Benson stopped walking. He was staring at the ground, at the short grass and the patches of exposed earth between his feet. "Why now?" Finally he turned to face her. His scars seemed to writhe like snakes across his cheeks.

  "I've found… something. I'm not quite sure what it is, but you might be able to help me sort through things and get it straight in my head. I need another brain on this, and, well, there's nobody else I can trust."

  Benson's lips curled into a slow, cruel smile. "Are you saying that you trust me now? Is this a breakthrough in our relationship?"

  Sarah couldn't help but smile back at him. "What I'm saying is that I can't trust anyone else. Not with this, anyway. You're all I have, and that's not much but it'll have to do."

  "Oh, such flattery. I feel blessed." He started walking again, long and even strides she could barely keep up with. Sarah seemed to sense an air of relief about him now, as if he had narrowly escaped a situation that he didn't want to face until he was fully prepared.

  She slapped him on the arm. "Take it where you can get it, lover. I won't say it again."

  They reached the car and Sarah climbed behind the wheel, her hands gripping the cold plastic. She did not open the door for Benson. He could manage fine all by himself, and she didn't want him thinking she'd gone soft on him, like some frail little girly. She would only go so far to meet Benson, not even half way; the rest was up to him.

  A show of weakness: that simply wouldn't do. No, that wouldn't do at all. Despite everything she constantly fought so hard against, and all the personality traits she denied had ever belonged to her, Sarah Doherty was still undoubtedly her father's daughter.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Sarah had been given foot patrol that day. A lot of coppers thought it was the short straw, the shitty shift, and preferred to pull a vehicle patrol, but Sarah liked to walk the beat. It made her feel closer to real police work – the old-fashioned kind, where you spoke to people and interacted with the community rather than spending your time filling out computer forms and logging notes onto a central database.

  She had struck lucky and landed the city centre beat. It was an easy shift during the day; Leeds United weren't playing at home and there was no sign of the stag-and-hen crowd who packed out the pubs and clubs every weekend, even during daylight hours. No, all she had to contend with was the odd shoplifter, some pissed-up old geezer stumbling across the Headrow and shouting at the traffic, or a minor RTA – a collision at a set of red lights, a harried taxi driver losing concentration at the wheel, a bus mounting the pavement and clipping a parked car.

  She was patrolling alone, with an arrangement to meet up with another constable later that morning. They were shorthanded, as usual, and Benson – who was usually her partner on foot patrol – had been seconded to the murder squad. His friend, Sergeant Reynolds, had specifically requested Benson's help on the case. He had not asked for Sarah – and again she felt as if she'd failed whatever obscure test he had put her through that morning.

  It was just after 10am. She had arranged to meet Eddie Knowles, her father's old informant, at half-past. She knew where the meet was supposed to be – she had guessed immediately, as soon as he'd mentioned that he had in mind the same place he always met up with her father.

  As its name suggested, The Vault was located in the old warren of vaulted cellars beneath a decommissioned Church on Clarendon Road. The Vault had been a registered charity since the early nineteen seventies, but had acted as an unofficial homeless shelter since about 1952. These days it served as one of only two recognised care centres for the city's homeless population, and had developed a good reputation and working relationship with the authorities along the way. So successful was the venture that several old residents of the Vault now worked there as volunteers – wardens, advisors, even part-time counsellors.

  Sarah's father had contributed a lot of money to the charity. Ostensibly they were police funds raised by charity events but in reality Sarah knew that these legitimate monies had also been mixed up with a substantial portion of winnings from his illicit gambling parties. He had never been that interested in the money – only in the risk involved in winning it.

  There was also the religious aspect.

  Sarah's father might have been a Grade A bastard, but he claimed to have believed in God. In her opinion it made him even more of a monster – during her relatively short time on the police force she'd already encountered a lot of people who used the cloak of organised religion to cover their tracks and justify their terrible acts, and as far as Sarah was concerned her father was no different to any other self-serving scumbag.

  In fact, he was worse than the lot of them. She was only now discovering how much worse that might be.

  She walked along the busy Headrow, taking in the late morning sights. Pedestrians dodged traffic as they crossed the road, most of them heading for The Light shopping centre and its multifarious consumer delights. A group of teenagers moved slowly on skateboards along the footpath and onto the paved area outside the art gallery. Sarah paused to make sure that they were not causing any damage, and then moved on towards the edge of the Ring Road, satisfied that she could leave them alone.

  Eddie Knowles was waiting for her outside The Vault. She had not seen him since her early teens, but he hadn't changed a bit. He had the same scrawny build, greasy nightclub-Elvis pompadour hairstyle and shady demeanour she remembered from all those years ago. She watched him as she slowly approached, and at first she thought that he had failed to spot her. Then, smiling, she realised that he was spying on her – pretending that he was looking the other way, but scrutinising her every move.

  "Hello, Erik." She stood before him, matching his height and easily a couple of inches broader than his narrow frame.

  "The name's Eddie these days, and I'll thank you to use it." His grin betrayed the fact that he wasn't really offended, just playing a role for her benefit and no doubt for his own amusement.

  "Good to see you again, Eddie."

  He raised a stubby hand-rolled cigarette to his lips, sucked on it, and exhaled the thin grey smoke. "Likewise, pet. I hardly recognised you, apart from the fact that you inherited your dad's cocksure swagger." He grinned again, flashing yellow teeth and a small, questing tongue. "Let's hope you don't have the cock, eh?"

  "Fuck off, Eddie. Let's go inside and get a cup of tea."

  "Aye. Good idea. I'm parched." He moved away from the wall and nodded at the small, chubby woman sitting at the reception desk behind the strengthened glass security doors. She moved a hand across the counter and buzzed them in. Eddie pushed through the doors – no outmoded display of chivalry here – and walked across the short reception area. "Mornin', Sheila. How goes it?"

  The woman smiled. She looked bashful, as if she was flattered by the attention of this shabby little Lothario. "Oh, get on with you." She nodded at Sarah, her face now rigid. "Good morning, Constable."

  Sarah smiled, took off her checkerboard hat and held it loosely by her side. "Don't worry; I'm not here on business. Just calling in for a little chat with my old friend, Eddie." She cocked her head to the side, indicating the subject of her explanation.

  The receptionist looked relieved. The last thing she probably wanted was trouble on her shift. "I'm afraid I'll still have to ask you to sign in – that means both of you, Eddie."