Make Believe (11 page)

‘
We should interview both Phoebe and Luke,’ Butchers said.

Janine considered it for a moment, she didn
’t agree.  ‘I know I’m desperate but I’m not that desperate.  I’m not pulling juveniles in on the basis of a freaky DVD collection and the fact that they’re in spitting distance.  Can you put Luke at the park, or Phoebe?’ she asked him.

Lisa
’s phone rang and she answered it.

‘
Not yet, but I can try,’ Butchers glanced at his watch.

‘
Thought you were otherwise engaged this evening,’ Janine said.

Butchers shrug
ged.  Didn’t seem particularly buoyant about it.

‘
Giving her a preview,’ Janine said, ‘life with a cop?’

Butchers d
idn’t respond, just got a sick look on his face, embarrassed.

‘You need a whole lot more than what you’re
giving me to question either of them,’ Janine said.

‘
Boss,’ Lisa held up her phone, she looked fed up.  She sighed before she spoke, ‘None of the witnesses picked Felicity Wray out of the line-up.’

‘
Shit,’ Janine said succinctly. 

They were getting nowhere fast. 
Nothing at the house, barring Butchers’ booty, and now no eyewitness testimony.  Janine raised her eyes heavenward and sighed, turned to Lisa and caught sight of Louise Hogg watching from her office.  Her old boss Hackett used to do that: snoop and hover, it drove Janine mad.  She hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit of Hogg’s too.

‘
Release her,’ Janine told Lisa.  She felt a wave of frustration, almost wanted to weep.  The low point of a bloody lousy day.  It felt like they were lurching from one false lead to another.  First thinking the child was Sammy and now hitting a brick wall with their most likely suspect.  When would their luck change?  Would it change?  Was this going to be one of those cases that ran aground, the sort of case that broke careers, broke people? 

She went back to
her office and slammed the door, not caring who heard.

On her way home Janine called to see Claire and Clive Wray.  Claire looked empty, her greeting dulled, indifferent.  And Clive’s reaction on seeing Janine was almost a snarl.  The man hummed with suppressed anger.  Janine couldn’t blame him, even though his duplicity had caused the team problems.  She simply could not imagine what it must be like to have believed your child dead and then be informed there’d been a cockup and he was still missing.

‘
As Sue has told you we’ve reinstated the missing persons investigation,’ Janine said.  ‘I also wanted to let you know that we have questioned Felicity and released her—’

‘
You’ve let her go,’ he said quickly.

‘
We are satisfied that there is no evidence to show she had any involvement.’

‘
You see,’ Clive turned to Claire, ‘I told you.’

Claire
stared at her husband and gave a short, derisive laugh.

‘
The reconstruction is timed for one o’clock tomorrow,’ Janine said.

‘
That’s it?’ Clive Wray demanded, his eyes hot with rage. ‘We go through it all for the cameras, so they can plaster it across the news—’

Janine cut him off,
‘Yes, that’s exactly what we want.’  They needed to keep the couple on side, to try and redeem the trust in the police that had been compromised by the mistaken assumptions that Janine and her team had made.  The same went for the wider community.  If the Wrays made any official complaints or criticised the police to the media the damage would spread.

Momentarily
Janine wondered if she should step down, sacrifice herself  to try and contain any backlash.  Career suicide.  But she was not a quitter.  She’d be better trying to make things good instead of giving up.  ‘The right sort of publicity brings us vital information,’ she said.  ‘There are still people we haven’t managed to talk to.  I’m hoping they’ll come forward.  But we don’t need you to be there, we don’t want to make this any harder—’

‘
Oh, we’ll be there,’ Clive Wray vowed, ‘you can count on that.’

Claire
Wray began to speak, not looking at Janine but staring unseeing at the window opposite.  ‘When you told us that you’d found him, when we believed he was dead, it was so … raw and dark.  I couldn’t breathe,’ her voice shook, ‘but this – hour after hour wondering – this is worse.’

‘
I am so sorry,’ Janine said.  She knew from other cases that the hardest thing for families was often the not knowing, the limbo they were thrust into when people disappeared or when foul play was suspected but no body recovered.  Even not knowing how someone had died could haunt those left behind.

‘
I don’t know what’s happening to him,’ Claire Wray said.  ‘I watch the clock move, I count his hours.  But I’m not there, I should be there.’ She began to cry, the tears falling down her cheeks, arms folded across her stomach as she rocked forwards and backwards.

It was Sue who went to comfort her as
Clive Wray stood, his fists balled and his face set and Janine forced herself to wait until Claire had stopped weeping to take her leave.

The newspaper headline that greeted Janine when she got home did not help. 
Dead Boy Not Sammy.  Wray Family Agony
.  She threw it across the room then retrieved it.  She had to read what they were saying about her, about the investigation, swallow it all, every acidic line and barbed reference.

Tom had been playing up, trying to provoke Eleanor into a fight by calling her names,
‘bum face’ and ‘snot features’ among them, snatching more than his share of the apple pie and then refusing to do his homework.  Exasperated, Janine had first warned him then banned him from any video games that evening.  When he carried on being disruptive she sent him upstairs to cool down for half an hour.

S
he was on her own in the living room, the telly on, working, when he came back down.  She closed her laptop as he wandered into the room. 

‘Come here,’ she said and patted the sofa next to her. 

He slumped down and grabbed one of Eleanor’s toys, the rag doll which, with a flick of the material, could be changed from Little Red Hiding Hood to Granny to the Wolf.

‘You
OK?’ she asked him.

He swung the doll between his hands.  ‘I don’t want Dad to have a stupid baby,’ he said.

Me neither.
 

‘
Dad will still love you, just the same,’ she said, ‘like when we had Charlotte.  Love doesn’t run out – it just stretches.’

‘Like an elastic band?’
Tom said.  He flipped the doll over, bared his teeth at the wolf face.

‘Sort of,’
Janine said.

‘
Not for grown–ups, it doesn’t,’ Tom said, ‘like if you get a new wife or a new husband.’

‘
Ah, no – not then, really.  Dad might need a bigger car, though.  That won’t stretch.’

‘
Whoa!’ Tom said, excited at the prospect.

‘And you might like the baby when you get to know it.’

‘I won’t,’ he said solemnly, ‘I know I won’t.’  He yawned.

‘Bedtime,’ she told him.

It was after ten when she admitted to herself that she wasn
’t going to get any more done tonight.  She’d been staring at the pictures on her laptop for long enough.  Claire Wray and Sammy.  But she was too tense to go to bed.  She was fed up with Pete and strung out about the investigation.  And life, even with four kids to cope with, was very lonely sometimes.  What she needed was some distraction.  A bit of R and R.  Then she had an idea.  She rang Pete and asked him to come over: something had come up at work. 

S
he went to get changed.

His face when he set eyes on her
, in her party gear, was a picture.

‘
I thought you said work,’ he objected.

‘
Work related,’ Janine smiled.  ‘Tina OK?’ she said, giving him a chance to tell her about the baby.

‘
What?  Yeah … fine.’

Coward.
  Why couldn’t he just have the guts to be straight with her?

The taxi pulled up then and sounded its horn and she could make a smooth exit without saying something nasty that she
’d regret.  And without giving him chance to argue the toss about her going out and leaving him to babysit under false pretences.

Good.
  Be good for the troops as well, she thought
en route
.  A bit of solidarity when all eyes are upon us and people are muttering about competence and leadership and judgement.

How had it come to this? Butchers thought.  It was a nightmare.  The function room was half empty, a disco blaring out.  His mates from the job clustered around the bar, even the Detective Super was here and the boss had just made her appearance.  Kim and her gang were ensconced in a corner already totally canned and cackling like demons. 

‘
Next round’s on me,’ the boss said to them all, then told the bar tender, ‘I’ll have a double G & T.  See what this lot want – and your own.’

Shap nudged
Butchers and nodded towards Kim, ‘You want to get her name down for
Wife Swap
, mate,’ he said, ‘she’d be perfect.’ 

‘
Piss off,’ Butchers told him though he had to admit Kim looked bigger, brassier than he remembered.  But their brief courtship had been conducted through a haze of booze, tequila slammers and jagerbombs.  The details were hazy.

‘
So point her out then,’ the boss said. 

‘
The one in pink,’ Butchers could feel a blush spread through his face.

‘
Nice,’ the boss said.  Though it wasn’t a word Butchers would have picked.

Detective
Superintendent Hogg raised her glass to him.  ‘Congratulations, Ian.’

‘
You not speaking then, you and your betrothed?’ Shap back on his case, ‘Had a tiff already?’

‘
No,’ Butchers said.  And then of course he had to go over there and say hello to prove it.  What was he meant to do anyway, at a do like this?  Sit with Kim or stay with his own guests?  Crossing the dance floor as,
I Don’t Feel Like Dancing
, by the Scissor Sisters rang out, the phrase
dead man walking
came to mind.

The
lasses were gossiping away as he drew closer, people leaning in to catch the dirt and then throwing their heads back in peals of laughter. 

‘
All right?’  Butchers nodded to Kim, to the group, as he reached the table and they all cracked up, howling as though he’d delivered a punch line.  Feeling a complete twat Butchers wandered back to the bar, a sickly grin on his face and a feeling of dread heavy on his shoulders.

Janine had got very merry, very quickly and was trying to talk to Richard and Millie above the noise of the bride-to-be and mates belting out a karaoke version of
I Will Survive
.  ‘Millie,’ Janine said, ‘we had a tortoise called Millie when I was a kid.  Is it short for something?  Millicent?’

‘
Emily, actually,’ Millie said and there was a cool tone in her voice. 

Just being sociable, Janine thought, no need to take umbrage. 
‘You don’t use Emily for work.  Don’t you think it’d be a bit more—’

Richard
broke in, ‘Same again?  You do the honours,’ he said to Millie.

‘
Thanks,’ Janine passed her glass over.

‘
I think you’ve had enough,’ Richard said in her ear.
Bloody cheek.

‘
Piss off,’ Janine told him.

‘
More what?’ Millie said to Janine.

What had they been talking about? 
Janine had lost track, ‘Sorry?’

Millie rolled her eyes.

‘So, how long have you two been an item?’ Janine tried again.  ‘He acts like it’s a trade secret,’ she said to Millie, ‘not a married woman, are you?’

‘
God, no,’ Millie said rudely.  ‘Are you?’  Before Janine could respond she’d waltzed off to the bar. 

Richard
glared at Janine. 

‘
What?’ she said. 

‘
Stop stirring it,’ he said.

‘
I’m not,’ Janine said.

‘
Maybe you should call it a night, before you make a fool of yourself,’ he said.  And he left her there and went after Millie.  Janine’s cheeks burned, she felt hurt and then angry and then decided to have another drink and sod the lot of them.