17

‘So you want local dossers tracked down and questioned?’ Mac scratched the side of his cheek.

‘Problem with that?’ Bev sniffed. Other than sounding like she’d asked for the location of a rainbow’s end. The one with the colony of leprechauns that dished out pots of gold.

‘It don’t make sense, boss. Why’d a wino nick a length of hair just to sling it in a bed of nettles?’

Think it through, man. Besides: ‘Makes a damn sight more sense than letting that supercilious little shit give you the slip.’ Bev tapped a foot waiting for him to catch on, and up. They were heading over to knock doors on the estate that butt-joined the school grounds. Mac hadn’t long returned from his failed fact-finding mission. He’d been puffing like a dragon on sixty-a-day and had his tail firmly wedged between his legs. The bloke with ice-cool eyes had done a runner, apparently. Mac had given chase, natch, but with his bulk stood little chance of catching up, especially after getting a foot jammed in the top of the railings. Knowing Tyler, she reckoned he’d have omitted to tell her the last bit, had he not come back with a limp.

‘Thanks a bunch, boss. As it happens –’

‘La-la-la. Listen up, Mac. Baxter says dossers, winos, call ’em what you will, have been using the school like a bloody hotel.’ She’d phoned the forensics boss to pin him down about what had been found to indicate rough sleepers. Usual stuff: makeshift beds fashioned from cardboard and newspapers, empty tins, drinks cans, fish and chip wrappers. She’d felt a right dork for not picking up on it when he first mentioned it. ‘I haven’t a clue what they might have done with the hair. I’m not that interested what goes on in dossers’ heads. It’s what might have passed in front of their eyes.’ As in witnessing something.

Keeping pace along the pavement, they exchanged glances. Mac nodded. ‘Got it.’

‘Has to be a possibility,’ Bev said. Why else vacate a cosy gratis berth? Unless the poor buggers were scared shitless of the perp returning, spotting signs of human habitation and realizing he might have had an unseen audience that night? She’d bet the non-paying guests couldn’t check out fast enough. Course it was an assumption on her part that it was dossers, plural. Could just be a lone wolf.

‘There was a wino propping up the railings earlier with the other ghouls,’ Mac said. ‘Did you spot him?’

She nodded. ‘Stacey Hardy had a word with him, apparently.’

‘She getting back to you?’

‘Soon as.’

Hopefully the detective wannabe would point them in the direction of the dosser’s current hangout. It sure wouldn’t do her chances of joining the squad any harm.

‘About time we got a result.’ Mac raised crossed fingers. Bev rolled her eyes. The case had set off more crossed digits than a compulsive liars’ convention. If she never saw the gesture again it would be too soon.

Bev checked her watch. ‘Come on, Mac. We’re running late.’ If they didn’t get back to the station pretty rapido, never mind a result – they’d be in for a rollicking.

‘What time do you call this?’ Powell dashed along the corridor, tie askew, file tucked under elbow. Glancing over his shoulder, he snapped: ‘Come on, woman, keep up.’ Sounded like a sergeant-major on surly pills. Eyes crossed, tongue poked out, Bev lengthened her stride. Yes sir, no sir, three –

‘You’ll stick like that, Morriss.’ Since when had the blond had eyes in the back of his head?

‘I was recalling the traffic, gaffer. Like I say, if it hadn’t been for the jam on –’

‘Yadda, yadda, blah. It boils down to time-management skills.’ Pausing with his hand on the door, he turned to face her. ‘You’re fresh out.’

Cheeky toad. He knew that was a porkie. She’d even maximized Mac’s timetable: persuaded him instead of stopping for lunch he should go check out an address Stacey had come up with for the dosser’s possible new whereabouts. Hinting he could do with dropping the weight might have swung it. Or maybe not. As for Bev, she was rarely late and definitely no time-waster. So what was Powell’s beef?

She spotted beads of sweat oozing above his top lip, the tic near the jaw. Right, so that was it. All the busy-busy rush-rush had been a bluff and this current little charade was a delaying tactic. For some reason, the DI had the wind up him and since push had come to shove, as in opening the door, she reckoned he was trying to put off the inevitable.

‘Best not keep those hungry hacks waiting any longer then, eh?’ Smiling broadly, she made to barge past.

‘Hold it, hold it. Look, can you take the conference?’ She raised a querying eyebrow. ‘I need to be somewhere else’ – dropped voice, lowered gaze – ‘it’s sort of … personal. I’d really appreciate it … Bev.’

She toyed with forcing a grovel. Nah. ‘No sweat, gaffer.’ Scrub that. There was a clammy print where his palm had rested on the wood. ‘Don’t forget, though. You owe me.’

‘Big …’ He gave a sheepish grin, stopped himself just in …

Time? Okay, the smirk was childish. So was the two-fingered fluttery wave, but probably not as much as the upbeat, ‘Laters.’

Perched on the edge of a shiny black table in an overheated windowless room, Bev cast a glance over the assembled hacks. As large gatherings go – it didn’t. Even the press officer had left her to it. Still quality, quantity. She’d just have to hope the maxim held good, because in this instance less would have to be more as far as getting coverage of Operation Twilight in the papers went. Radio and telly hadn’t even bothered turning out.

All four news-pups looked as if they were on work experience. And not making the most of it. Didn’t they know they were supposed to lob in killer questions? Be thoroughly objectionable and so full of themselves they made Donald Trump look like a bloke who’d inherit the earth?

Suppressing a shudder, Bev clocked the hacks’ smooth complexions and bland expressions, wondered idly whether cops knew they were cracking on in years when reporters started looking younger. Nah. They’d prefer using crims as a benchmark. Bev would, anyway …

‘I’m happy to take questions,’ she said, forcing a smile to show she meant it. Anything to liven proceedings up a bit. The cub reporters had barely scribbled a note yet. But there’d not been a lot she could tell them, and even then it had been in police-speak. Anxious to trace … Keen to talk … Appealing to anyone …

It had all been included in yesterday’s news release, apart from the line about the victim having long blonde hair which was sometimes worn in a plait.

‘So,’ a finger went up on the front row, ‘is there a picture?’

Bev resisted an eye-roll. Felt like saying, ‘Of? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? The Sistine Chapel?’ She settled for: ‘Afraid not. Not at the moment anyway.’

A visual of a bloated stiff wouldn’t do much for their papers’ circulation, or their readers’.

The finger went up again. It was attached to a loose-limbed guy with a blond afro and horn-rimmed glasses that his face might just grow into, given time. ‘So.’ Save me from sodding so and sos. God knew where the verbal tic originated but it drove Bev demented. Enough already.

‘So,’ he said. Like she hadn’t heard the first time. ‘With no pic and no name, it’s not much of a story, is it?’

‘That is the story.’ Plonker. ‘How can a girl go missing and no one appear to notice? Start a campaign. Get your readers on board: “Who is this girl? Where did she live? Why did she go missing?”’

‘So.’ Help me. ‘How come the information about her hair’s only just come to light?’

Bev’s ankle stopped twirling. Yeah, well. She’d wanted a killer question. Not that she could give him a straight answer. See, it’s like this, son: some nut job hacked it off and we only found it this morning.

Talk about cleft stick in a quandary. Cracking cases often relied on informants coming forward, mostly after media appeals, but cops couldn’t reveal the gritty detail editors would go for because nine times out of ten it’d scare half the population shitless. And ten times out of ten it revealed too much information to the perp. Not to mention feeding bright ideas to every fantasist and fuckwit in town.

‘Good point.’ She lied. ‘We should’ve released it earlier.’

‘Anything else you’re not releasing?’

Bev glanced up in the direction of the voice. Well, well, a late arrival at the policeman’s secrets’ ball. Summer Raynes had slipped in at the back and now took up wall space. Cheeky sod turning up at all. Bev folded her arms, holding the reporter’s insouciant gaze. Last thing she wanted was the bloody woman dishing the dirt on the razor blade to a wider audience.

‘Why’d you ask?’

‘Well, I guess now would be a good time to come clean, wouldn’t it?’ The slow smile showcased pointy white teeth.

‘You tell me. I’ve nothing to add.’ Bev said, but continued the staring contest. She was banking on the reporter being more than reluctant to reveal an exclusive to the competition, such as it was. Mind, Raynes was no Pulitzer-prize contender. According to Powell she worked as a stringer for The Sun.

Breaking eye contact, the reporter peeled herself off the wall and stepped in further to take a perch. ‘Fair enough.’

Phew. ‘I shouldn’t bother. We’re about done here, aren’t we?’ Glancing round, Bev interpreted the nods and closing notebooks as agreement. She watched the hacks file out, then stood and turned to check her phone. Not so much as a spam email. Course, it rang the minute she shoved it back in her pocket.

‘Mac, watcha.’

‘I’ve found the dosser.’

‘Top man. Where –?’

‘Dead.’

Shit. ‘Suspicious?’

‘As it gets.’

‘Where are you?’ Squat. 14 Foundry Row, Stirchley.

‘I’ll be there in ten.’ She stowed the phone in a pocket, grabbed her bag. ‘Shit, shit and treble –’

‘Are you in a rush?’ Raynes?

Bev spun on her heel. ‘Are you still here?’

‘I’d like a word.’

‘I think you’ve said enough, love.’ She made to brush past but Raynes placed a hand on her arm. Bad move. No one, but no one, touched Bev without written permission and at least a month’s notice. She didn’t have to say a word, the Morriss glare said it all.

Raynes stepped back sharpish. ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. I’m sorry.’

Wrong foot? She couldn’t even get that right. ‘We?’

‘I didn’t say anything, did I? About the razor?’

‘I’ve got work to do.’ Bev strode past, but Raynes tagged along. Should’ve tied her bloody ankles to a chair.

‘And I didn’t mention the hair.’

The hair? Apart from a deepening frown approaching mammoth proportions, Bev froze. Surely she’d misheard?

‘Come again?’