Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (2 page)

‘She’d
have had to pack,’ Charlotte Clarke said. ‘Her suitcase is still up there. All
that’s gone is her tote bag, and she took that with her when she went to
collect Robin.’

‘Mrs
Benton’s little boy?’

Charlotte
Clarke nodded. Kim expected her to ask after the Bentons, but instead she said,
‘She has that instead of a handbag, like a lot of girls her age. Asking for
trouble really: they’re a pickpocket’s dream, nice and loose. But she will
insist.’

‘Pretty
roomy, those bags,’ Marie said. ‘Sure she couldn’t’ve stuffed some things in?’

‘Not
her toothbrush,’ Andrew Clarke grumbled. ‘I checked.’

‘I
saw her pick the bag up,’ his wife said. ‘I’d have noticed if it had been
fuller than usual.’

‘What
did she normally carry?’

‘Not
much. Her purse, her mobile, a jumper. That’s about it.’

‘Leaves
a bit of scope, though, doesn’t it?’ Marie said. ‘By your account the bag’d
normally have been
very
light, so a couple of extra bits wouldn’t’ve noticed.’

‘You’ve
got a bit of a bee in your bonnet about this bag, Miss Kirkwood,’ Andrew Clarke
interrupted again.

Marie
ignored the
Miss
and the mangling of her name. ‘Let me explain, sir. This was almost certainly
arson - well, you know that from the officer who came before. It’s looking as
if fires were set inside the house, but there’s no sign of a break-in.’

‘Are
you accusing my daughter - ?’

‘Nobody’s
accusing anybody,’ Marie said firmly. ‘But the fact remains Debbie left the
house a few minutes before the fire and may have been the last person to see
the Bentons. It goes without saying she may be - ’

‘A
vital witness, yes, so we keep being told.’

‘Now,’
Marie resumed, having waited for him to vent, ‘is there anywhere she might’ve
gone? A friend’s, possibly?’

‘Tch,’
Andrew Clarke said.

‘Boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Any
brothers or sisters living away from home? Other relatives?’

‘She’s
our only child. I’ve rung round everywhere,’ Mrs Clarke said. ‘No-one’s seen
her.’

‘The
friends you
know
of,’ her husband put in. ‘She has so many. Chopping and changing all the time.
We gave up trying to keep track long ago.’ He shrugged and said, as if it
explained everything, ‘She’s at that age. What can you do?’

‘Well,
you could tell me if she kept an address book or diary.’

Andrew
Clarke waved a dismissive hand, as if the sheer effort required to conceive of
such a thing were beyond human capability.

‘Teenage
girls generally do,’ Marie prompted.

Charlotte
Clarke thought for a moment. ‘I think I’ve seen something,’ she said. ‘In her
room somewhere.’

‘Could
we try and find it, please?’ Marie requested, with solemn sweetness.

They
accompanied Mrs Clarke upstairs to Debbie’s bedroom: a private territory her
mother seemed reluctant to violate. A brief search produced a black leather
bag, and from it a small navy blue diary. Kim leafed through it. ‘Crumbs. You
were right about her friends, Mrs Clarke.’ The addresses section was full:
Debbie seemed to have scribbled things both on the diary pages themselves and
on scraps of paper and Post-its stuck in between them.

‘My
wife and I can enquire round these friends if you like,’ Andrew Clarke said
from the doorway.

‘Thanks
for the offer, sir,’ Kim replied, abstaining from grinding her teeth, ‘but this
is an official police investigation, OK, so really we’ve got to do it.
Providing you’re prepared to let us have the diary, of course.’

The
Clarkes looked at one another, then at their visitors. Andrew Clarke said, ‘If
you think you can find her any quicker, why not?’

‘Thank
you,’ Kim said.

‘Anything
else you think might come in handy, just feel free.’

She
suppressed a smile at his sarcasm. He wasn’t about to say so, but what he
wanted was to get a look at this diary of his daughter’s he hadn’t known about.
Kim said, ‘Anyway, based on my own past experience as a sixteen year old girl,
I doubt many of the names’d mean that much to you.’

Andrew
Clarke at once took exception to what he saw as the inference in her remark,
but the detectives, aided by his wife, calmed him down. Back in the sitting
room, they were able to confirm Debbie’s description, what she was wearing and
anything about her that might help to trace or identify her. On request, Mrs
Clarke gave them a recent portrait photograph, taken on her sixteenth birthday.
She was wearing an off-the-shoulder sky blue party dress, and was carefully
made up with neat blonde hair pinned back to frame her oval face and show off a
pair of gold stud earrings. She looked very pretty; she would, Kim thought, be
recognised and remembered. That, at any rate, was something going for them.
They noted the resemblance to her father in the blue eyes, the nose, the
jawline.

Kim
put the photo in her bag and frowned at Marie. It had always seemed cynical to
her, using people’s help and goodwill before turning on them like this. But
there were still unpleasant questions to be asked, and if they’d come straight
out with them earlier, certainly they would not now be in possession of Debbie
Clarke’s portrait and diary.

Marie
said, ‘Just a few more things.’

‘Fire
away.’ Andrew Clarke waved a petulant hand.

‘We
need to know where you both were between three and half four.’

Charlotte
Clarke closed her eyes, and appeared to be praying, but an outraged smirk was
spreading across her husband’s face. ‘Oh, so that’s it? You think we’re in on
it?’

‘That’s
not what we said, sir.’

‘That’s
not what she said, Andrew,’ Charlotte Clarke muttered, almost inaudibly.

‘You
think I’m the Croydon chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, do you? Or Charlotte,
perhaps?’

Kim
looked up.

‘She
didn’t
say
that.’

‘Then
why do you want to know?’ Andrew Clarke scowled, as if it had been them, not
his wife, who’d made the denial.

‘Standard
procedure, sir,’ Marie said. ‘We have to account for everyone’s whereabouts so
we can eliminate them.’

‘Or
accuse them of bloody arson. I’m phoning my solicitor right now.’

‘Andrew,
really!’

‘That’s
your prerogative, sir,’ Marie said.

‘It
is, isn’t it?’

Kim
said boldly, ‘Are you afraid of what we might ask?’

‘No.
I’d just rather my legal interests were represented in a more tangible manner.
In fact I don’t see why I should tolerate your continued presence in my house.’

‘If
you’d like us to leave,’ Kim said, standing, ‘we’d be glad to continue this
later on at the station.’

‘With
your solicitor if you prefer,’ Marie added.

‘You
can’t order me - ’

‘For
God’s
sake
!’

He
broke off in mid-rant, his mouth agape. He looked at his wife. She was sitting
bolt upright and staring, white-faced, ahead of her.

‘They’re
just doing their
job
!’ Charlotte Clarke shrieked. ‘Do you think you’re helping anyone,
yourself, me, least of all Debbie? Will you stop wasting valuable time and just
tell them what they want to know instead of pumping up your ego with this
stupid bluster.’

Recovering
from his shock, he rounded on her. ‘No-one speaks to me like that in my own - ’

‘Well,
maybe they bloody should once in a while! If you don’t want to tell them, I
will.’

‘Charlotte!’

Ignoring
him, she turned to Marie and Kim. ‘He was at work. That’s all.’ She laughed,
skirting hysteria. ‘That’s where this criminal mastermind of a husband of mine
has been all afternoon: hard at work behind his desk at Nationwide, with about
twenty staff to vouch for him.’

‘Is
that right, Mr Clarke?’ Marie asked him.

He
hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘Which
branch?’

‘No,
not at a branch - head office.’ He recited a City address. ‘I, er... I left
soon after Charlotte rang. At about... five past five.’

‘And
you say there are people who can confirm that?’ With prompting, he was able to
supply ten names, which Marie wrote down. ‘What about you, Mrs Clarke?
Whereabouts were you?’

‘I
was here,’ Charlotte Clarke said. ‘At home all afternoon.’

‘Anybody
else can corroborate that?’

‘I’m
- I’m afraid not.’ She frowned. ‘Debbie was here until just before three, but
obviously then she went off to get Robin, and I haven’t seen her...’ Realising
what she was saying, she tailed off and gulped down a deep breath. She said,
‘After that, apart from the policewoman, I’ve been on my own until Andrew got
in.’

‘Which
was when?’

She
looked at her husband. ‘When was that, dear?’

Andrew
Clarke glared at his visitors. ‘I drove like a mad thing... Must’ve been about
quarter to six. I didn’t stop to look at my watch,’ he couldn’t resist adding
caustically.

‘I
see,’ Marie said.

Kim
said, ‘And nobody rang you, Mrs Clarke - I mean before we called? Nobody like
that what could confirm you were in?’

Charlotte
Clarke shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

There
was a pause.

‘So,’
Andrew Clarke said, ‘are you going to put the cuffs on her?’

‘No,
sir,’ Kim said. She waited a moment, then added, ‘That’s about it, I think. We
won’t disturb you any more for now.’

‘What
happens next?’ Andrew Clarke said, as they prepared to leave. He held his hands
by his sides, clenched into worried fists.

‘We’ll
keep you posted, of course, sir,’ Kim said.

‘Is
that
all
?’

‘Feel
free,’ Kim took a business card from her purse and wrote Marie’s name and
extension on it, ‘to call one of us any time.’ She handed it to him.

‘One
more thing, Mr and Mrs Clarke,’ Marie said. ‘Once the machinery’s in place,
sooner or later the officer in charge of the enquiry’ll likely be paying you a
visit. I thought I’d better warn you.’ She paused. ‘It’s possible she’ll want
to get you on radio and TV, do an appeal. Er - make it worth Debbie’s while by
not threatening to skin her alive if she does come back. That sort of thing.
Can you do that?’

‘Yes,’
 
Charlotte Clarke said.

‘You
bet your life,’ Andrew Clarke said.

Kim
took a perverse glee in saying, ‘I really wouldn’t come the heavy father bit,
Mr Clarke. If she’s in hiding, a bollocking in front of five million viewers
isn’t gonna bring her running.’

‘Thanks
for the advice, officer,’ Andrew Clarke said, through gritted teeth.

‘What’d you think?’
Marie said outside, noticing Kim looking smug. ‘They in the frame?’

‘The
mother ain’t.’

‘How
d’you figure?’

‘She
didn’t say a word about the Bentons, like ask how they were, not once,’ Kim
said. ‘Even when I fed her a line. She just doesn’t give a shit. Take it from
me, if she’d been in on this she’d’ve been falling over herself to express
concern, throw up a smokescreen. Seen it before, million times.’

‘Point,’
Marie nodded. ‘Him?’

‘Him
I dunno,’ Kim said. ‘If he is, he’s a bloody good actor with his all piss and
wind bit. On the other hand...’

‘What?’

‘Might
be nothing. I know that cross must’ve been on the news and all,’ Kim said, ‘but
he
was the
one what brought up the Ku Klux Klan. We never did.’

‘Fuck,’
Marie said, mulling this over for a moment. ‘What d’you want to do?’

Inside
the trailer, Sophia Beadle listened to their account and the impressions they’d
gathered, then asked to see the diary. She took one look at it and made her
pronouncement on their next actions. It didn’t surprise them.

Wednesday

On her first day on
the beat, Larissa Stephenson had discovered the mouldering body of a tramp
under a pile of dry leaves and newspaper at the back of a garage. Three weeks
later a nervous caretaker, hearing her footsteps inside the vacant office
premises she’d entered to investigate an open door, had drawn the obvious
conclusion, locked her in and dialled 999. It was not her fault she’d been
issued with a dud radio that night, and so had to remain there until the area
car arrived a few minutes later. With her track record established, it was
inevitable that the relief should bestow upon Larissa the handle ‘Lucky’, by
which she’d been known ever since.

It
was a fair reflection, she had to admit. She was one of those people who
attract disaster to themselves like piranhas to a ripple. If there was a virus
to catch, a bone to break, a fragile object to drop, a wrong turning to take, a
date to be late for, a practical joke to be the brunt of, it seemed Lucky
seized the opportunity with both hands - smashing it to smithereens in the
process.

But
such incidents were speed bumps along the generally smooth and happy road of
her life. At twenty-two she was a well-adjusted, intelligent woman, popular and
outgoing. She was strikingly beautiful, a quality for which she believed she
had her mixed lineage to thank. Five feet six inches tall, slim, shapely, her
long, black, silky hair, cinnamon complexion and luminous brown eyes complemented
startling Indic features that somehow arranged themselves to give her the look,
almost, of a young Audrey Hepburn. She’d achieved straight As in three A Level
subjects, but had deferred going to university and joined the Met straight from
sixth form. Four years on, despite the occasional mishap, she’d developed into
an outstanding bobby.

This
had not gone unnoticed by her superiors, by whose grace she was now embarking
on a new phase of her career. Yet even this seemed to have come about by virtue
of her luck. Last Christmas, she’d been first on the scene when a call had come
in about a jumper at the NTL transmission tower on Norwood Hill. Lucky had
climbed out onto the girder to which the man was clinging, and persuaded him
that plunging to his death from a height of four hundred feet was not a good
idea. She’d received the expected mix of praise and reproof, some local media
attention, then a commendation, and thought nothing further of it until,
several months later, there came a summons from Chief Superintendent Linighan,
her station commander. No less a body than the Royal Humane Society had got
wind of her actions on the tower, and were proposing to award her their Silver
Medal. As if this were not enough to put her off her stride, she’d then found
herself on one side of an unnerving interview. What, Linighan had asked,
pretending neither of them were aware that her personnel file was open on the
desk in front of him, were her career goals? Was she aware that the opportunity
was open to her to obtain detective experience in a plain clothes unit? What
would she say to a secondment to Special Crime at Croydon, of whom she had no
doubt heard great things?

Lucky
said that she would be very interested.

A
few weeks afterwards, she was interviewed by DCI Beadle, the creator and
current commanding officer of the Special Crime Unit. And here she was, about
to set out on her first day in plain clothes, as what had once been known as a
CID aide but now, in keeping with the Met’s sleek new 21
^st
century
image, was called a trainee investigator.

She’d
thought a lot about what to wear. PCs on crime squads tended to be given free
rein to dress as they pleased; but Special Crime was CID, and CID had the
reputation of being rather smarter. She opted for a light grey trouser suit,
ribbed white top, sturdy black beat-pounding shoes. Underneath, why the hell
not, a matching cream silk bra and panties set she’d just bought herself at
House of Fraser on a shopping trip with her friend Juliet. This was a day to
feel good, from skin outwards. Breakfasted, dressed, she took a last look at
herself in the hall mirror, sighed and opened the front door on a bright New
Addington morning.

There
was a tall, pale young man hovering on the pavement by the hedge, watching her.
Lucky flicked a polite smile in his direction as she marched down the path.
‘’Scuse me,’ he said, hurrying over as she closed the gate, ‘didn’t you used to
go to Edenham?’

She
stopped rummaging for her car keys and looked up at him, puzzled. ‘Edenham?
Yeah, that’s right.’

‘I
remember you. You was really brainy.’

Lucky shook her head, uneasy. ‘Sorry, I don’t - ’

‘Don’t
remember me, yeah? No reason to, really. Prosser. Micky Prosser.’

Light
dawned, dimly. ‘Oh.’

‘Remember
now?’ He grinned, pleased with his success. ‘Your name’s Melissa or summink,
innit?’

‘
La
rissa,’ she corrected him. Not
knowing why, she added, ‘My mum’s Bulgarian.’

‘Really?’

Vague
memories were crystallising about the name and face. Michael Prosser. He’d been
in her year at school. Streamed at fourteen with the ablest pupils like
Larissa, he’d blossomed - if that was the word - into an underachiever; not a
major troublemaker, just the sort who sat sniggering at the back with his
mates, aggravating teachers and generally being thick. He seemed about as
interested in the ethnic origin of her name as he had been in his schoolwork.

Conversation
stopped, stalled by the acute embarrassment of meeting someone you haven’t seen
in years and didn’t particularly know or like in the first place. Lucky, never
at a loss for long, said, ‘So what you doing nowadays?’

‘I’m
a machinist at Carter’s, over on the Purley Way.’

‘Yeah?’
She was mildly mystified. Purley Way was several miles away on the other side
of the borough. New Addington was hardly
en route
, unless he lived up here, and
she’d never seen him around before. She asked, ‘Making what?’

‘Car
components. Wing mirror motors, seatbelt housings, stuff like that.’

‘Right.’

Prosser
said, ‘So what do
you
do?’

Lucky
dreaded this question. Coming out as a copper tended to have the same social
effect as loudly announcing that you had the clap. It was bad enough close
friends knowing; it was the last thing she wanted to tell a total stranger. She
gave him her stock response. ‘Civil servant.’

It
sounded so boring it worked nine times out of ten. Prosser said, ‘Home Office,
yeah?’

‘Sort
of.’

An
awkward silence fell again. Lucky jangled her car keys.

‘Well,’
she said, ‘better get going or I’ll be late.’

‘Me
and all,’ Michael Prosser said. ‘See you around.’

‘Yeah,
right,’ Lucky said, having no intention of seeing him around and praying that
he wouldn’t ask for a lift. ‘Nice running into you.’

He
raised his hand in a perfunctory wave and went back to the bus stop. Lucky
drove away and didn’t think about him again.

As a coherent picture
emerged from the confusion of the firefighting, Sophia Beadle was able to act.
It was established that Doreen Benton, a widow of forty-four and a
first-generation Guyanese immigrant, had died in the fire and that her six year
old younger son Robin was gravely ill at Croydon University Hospital, suffering
from up to ninety per cent burns, many of them full thickness. So disfigured
were both of them that it had been far from certain they
were
Mrs Benton and her son; in the
end it had taken dental x-rays to confirm it. Sophia had given to Sandra Jones
the task of contacting Robin’s elder brother Luke, an archaeology student on a
field trip in Greece.

Forensic
were of the opinion that there had been no forced entry. The fire
investigators’ initial report stated that the fire had been set using four
home-made chemical devices, probably with delayed action triggers,
unsophisticated but effective, the sort of thing a five-minute web search would
tell you how to build. Meanwhile the cross had been identified as fashioned
from two lengths of two by four pine, almost certainly cut to order at any of
several dozen timber merchants and DIY warehouses in the Croydon area. The
crosspiece (three feet long) had been fastened to the upright (six feet) with
five six-inch nails. A hole had been dug in a flowerbed, and the cross planted
in it before being doused in white spirit and set alight.

As
to who had done all this, the search for witnesses was continuing. But as the
count of shaken heads on doorsteps increased, so hope diminished. It was as if
the fire, the blazing cross, had come from nowhere.

The
Clarkes had confirmed that Debbie had her own bank account and debit card, but
although Kim had asked Nationwide to flag it, so far it hadn’t been used. She
had an email account, which they’d managed to access, but other than spam it
had seen very little traffic in several months; as practically everyone under
the age of twenty communicated through Facebook, Instagram and text message
nowadays, this was no surprise. Debbie hadn’t backed up her phone contacts to
the cloud; Kim and Marie had therefore spent yesterday evening tracing the
names in her diary, comparing numbers with the call records, stopping only when
it became too late to ring people. The call records themselves showed no
activity after the time of the fire. Kim had left several voicemails but the
phone was still either off or out of range of a cell tower. Today one of them
would have to see the borough archivist and obtain back copies of the registers
for Riddlesdown High School, which Debbie had left last summer, on the grounds
that many of her former classmates would remember her and might still be in
touch. But a pattern had already developed. They’d spoken to several school
friends whose names were in the diary, who remembered her as a bright girl and
expressed surprise that she hadn’t continued to A Levels; but she had not, to
their knowledge, kept in touch with anyone much after leaving. Those who had
heard from her reported that she had said little about what she was doing now.
No-one knew of a boyfriend or other secret ally. All that had come out of the
exercise was yet more names to chase. It was beginning to look as if Debbie had
achieved that state most sought after by fugitives, and disappeared off the face
of the earth.

They’d
both felt the need to escape. Even at this early hour the urgency and buzz of a
major enquiry pervaded the office. Sophia had been in since six, delegating
actions to the uniformed PCs she’d borrowed from early turn. A couple of hours
later the rest of the team started to appear; many of them were instantly
summoned, actioned and shooed out again. On the DCI’s desk was a mountain of
reports and printouts, through which she was ploughing doggedly, casting
impatient glances at the two technicians who were inputting data to the HOLMES
computer as fast as she could throw it their way. Exhausted though they were,
Kim and Marie had felt guilty, and made their getaway to the canteen. Their
work was now spread out across a table there. This was a constant source of
antagonism between coppers and canteen staff, who tended to respond to the
former’s complaints about egg yolk on witness statements with remarks along the
lines that if they didn’t like it then they shouldn’t bring paperwork in with
them.

‘These
new names,’ Marie said, a last, desperate attempt to get their unwilling brains
working again.

‘Oh,
give it a rest, Marie,’ Kim sighed. ‘Casual encounters at parties and clubs.
First names is all we’ve got for most of ‘em, dead vague descriptions for about
two. I mean where do we
start
?’

‘Morning,
fellow members of the finest crimefighting force this side of the Thames.’ They
looked up. Detective Sergeant Gary Harper, the extrovert, handsome and
tragically married blue-eyed boy of the local Major Investigation Team, breezed
in and marched past their table on the way to the food. Gary was bagman to
Detective Superintendent Noel Heighway, Sophia’s boss; he acted as his driver,
collator, organiser, PA and general gofor. Kim and Marie felt wary.

‘Morning,’
they said, faking brightness.

‘Could
have another go at the inventory from her room,’ Marie said, after he’d gone
by.

Kim
exhaled through pursed lips. ‘Yeah, s’pose. Summink we’ve missed.’ She reached
for the list. Marie brought her chair round and looked over Kim’s shoulder.
They read in silence for a few minutes.

‘Fuck
all,’ Marie said eventually. ‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect in any kid’s room her
age.’

‘Hang
on a minute.’ Kim was flicking backwards and forwards through the stapled
sheets. ‘Here. Don’t you think this is weird?’

She
pointed. Marie squinted at her own appalling handwriting. ‘“Newspapers”,’ she
read. ‘“Pile of old
Daily Telegraph
s”. Is that weird? Tory household if ever I was in
one.’

‘Did
you see the room?’ Kim said. ‘Not a great reader, our Debs. Hardly a book in
sight, apart from one or two school textbooks she must’ve never gave back. So
what’s she want with old newspapers?’

‘Maybe
she did some redecorating.’