13

Thursday 17 July 2014

Sarah let the hot water rain down on her head. It had been almost three when she got home. She could have slept in the office but had wanted to take the opportunity to sleep in her own bed. She wouldn’t see Daisy for days. The dog probably thought Mrs Edwards was her owner. She did the necessaries – teeth, make-up, quick coffee – and was back on the road within twenty minutes, heading into Hendon by 7.30.

The office was buzzing, full of detectives. Everyone was busy, reviewing and coordinating the search for Skye. If people talked, it was quietly. Most were smartly dressed – murder detectives, the public face of the Met – but there was also a smaller number of back-room boys and covert types, mostly in jeans. Lee had obviously fancied himself as one of those today. Instead of a suit he was wearing a faded Los Pollos Hermanos T-shirt and jeans, a covert harness round his shoulders.

‘You off out?’ she asked.

‘No, just got back actually.’

‘You’ve been interviewing Marley with Steve?’

‘Yes. He’s fucking good!’

‘He is.’ Sarah looked at Lee and did a fake wince. ‘Wear the wrong clothes into work, did you?’

He grinned. ‘I did, yes. Thought it’d be warrants! Do you think the boss will mind?’

‘He’ll be fine, I expect.’ She smiled. ‘So. Marley give us anything?’

‘Nothing. We got a prepared statement – Brannon was at her home but she had no idea he was wanted by police. Then she went no comment. Wouldn’t give us a thing, not even off the record. Boss has bailed her and stuck some surveillance on her. He’s given the phone back – he’s hoping Brannon will call her.’

There was an awkward pause. For all their efforts at friendliness, they had reached the end of work talk. Lee said, ‘You fancy breakfast?’

The offer made Sarah smile. He’d probably got a favourite greasy spoon lined up with the blokes. She was probably the last person he wanted along. It was good of him to invite her and she glimpsed something of what Fedden liked so much about him. He was one of the boys: cocky perhaps but not a bearer of grudges.

‘Thanks, but I can’t. Just got in. Got to catch up.’

She walked along the corridor. She wished she’d been better with Marley last night. Still, if Steve hadn’t been able to get anything out of her either . . . The door to Fedden’s office was shut, but through the glass pane she could see he was talking to Steve right now. She tapped and Fedden nodded.

As she opened the door he said, ‘I’m busy right now, Sarah, but come and find me in about thirty minutes. I’ll give you a dropped call when I’m ready for you. The identification of the body’s scheduled for a couple of hours – can you supervise that?’

‘Of course.’

She walked the few paces back to her office. Brannon was linked to the Young family. Steve handled informants, among other things, and he was probably trying to get people to talk to police. Conversations about that dark art would always be need-to-know only.

Her desk was piled with reports, her inbox full of updates. Some of the team had stayed on and worked the murder through the night. There was already an operation name: Woodhall. Thank God she’d bought that coffee machine.

An email from Elaine, which she scanned quickly, gave an update about the Egremont job. She’d got Stephenson’s old address from the school and located the landlord through the land registry – not a bad bit of work. The landlord remembered Stephenson well, apparently, because he’d been an exceptionally pain-in-the-arse tenant. Always moaning, never happy, always wanting something – new windows, a better kitchen, a reserved space for his car on the road, for goodness’ sake. One thing had just about summed him up: when he’d moved out, the landlord discovered that, without asking permission, he’d removed the carpet throughout the property and had the floorboards polished. It had been an expensive carpet, too – Axminster, pale green with flowers. The landlord had deducted the cost from the deposit. Stephenson hadn’t been happy but he hadn’t had a leg to stand on! Elaine made no further comment, but the suggestion that this might be a bit interesting was implicit, and Sarah agreed. Still, she thought, sending Elaine a quick thanks, by itself it was nothing.

Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about Egremont. She slugged back her coffee and turned her attention to Brannon.

The team had produced an initial CCTV trawl and she glanced through it. Stills from Brannon’s estate showed him leaving with Skye and the dog after the murder. Brannon was caught in profile: a short man with a round shaved head, dressed in dark Converse high-tops, dark jeans, a military-style khaki jacket. On his back a small duffel, at his hip a soft brown shoulder bag. Skye was on his left, her hand gripped tightly: blonde hair in two French plaits, ivory puffa jacket with a fur hood, lime-green pedal pushers, glitter pumps. The dog trotted along beside them, the lead in Brannon’s right hand, a blue plaster cast on its front right leg.

The images were great – the clothing so distinctive, the combination of man, dog and child so specific. But they weren’t fixed. Brannon might not be seen out with the child or the dog again. Remove Skye and the dog and he was much less recognizable. There would be changes of clothing in the bags too. Still, soon his face would be everywhere. Someone would spot him, surely.

She was studying the download of Georgina’s phone when her own phone buzzed with a single ring. She walked back along the corridor to Fedden’s office.

He was concentrating, head down, tie off, glasses on, scanning through papers. He had a pile of paper napkins on his desk and the carpet was littered with discarded balls of them.

‘Yes, come in, shut the door.’

He took his glasses off and placed them on the desk. He wiped his forehead with one of the paper napkins, balled it up and threw it onto the floor. He looked at Sarah, a flicker of exasperation crossing his face.

‘I got a call early this morning from Inspector Kieran Shaw. He wasn’t happy about you sending officers to Georgina’s mother’s address without doing a proper risk assessment. He said you put them in danger.’

There was a pause.

Sarah said, ‘May I sit?’

‘Of course you can. Why do you ask? This isn’t training school!’

Fedden moved his hand across his face and Sarah wondered how much sleep he’d had.

She sat. This wasn’t the time for an explanation as to exactly why Shaw might be so keen to complain about her. Still, she remembered well enough waiting in her car outside his house in Sussex to execute the warrant on his home. His wife had been moving around inside; had stood briefly at the window and looked at her. The wife was willowy, with long dark hair. When Shaw had arrived home in his Land Rover, the daughter had run out to greet him in bare feet. He’d scooped her up in his arms and taken her inside. An idyllic little snapshot undermined only by the fact that Shaw was sleeping with Lizzie Griffiths. A few minutes later, Shaw had come out and taunted her about the pointlessness of searching his house. If I had something, it would be gone by now. He’d given her a cup of coffee and told her to leave the empty cup by the car. But behind the taunting had been real anger. Of course he’d objected to her searching his home, taking the investigation right into his family, risking perhaps his marriage if his relationship with Lizzie Griffiths were to be revealed. He’d be thrilled now at the possibility of turning the tables on her. She didn’t underestimate either what a formidable enemy he could be. She remembered how he’d faced her down on everything she’d asked him.

‘I want the basics,’ Fedden said. ‘Why did you task the borough to inform the next of kin, rather than us?’

‘It was a judgement call. Because of the missing child and the public nature of the scene, I thought the investigation was likely to break very quickly onto social media and into the London press. I didn’t want them getting to the next of kin before we did so I decided to request local CID to deliver the death message.’

Fedden nodded but he still looked irritated. ‘OK, that sounds reasonable.’

‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t over yet, she knew that. She went on, speaking precisely. ‘I tasked the local borough and the intelligence bureau to conduct a risk assessment on the address and its occupants. That’s in my decision log and there’s a radio transmission that will confirm it. I’ll email you the reference.’

He waved his hands as though she were making a fuss about nothing. ‘Not necessary.’ But she wasn’t taken in. She was going to be really clear that there was no substance to Shaw’s complaint.

‘It’s no trouble at all. The reference will be in my notes. I checked it out last night before I went off duty. It turns out the injunction against Brannon attending the property hadn’t been entered onto the Police National Computer. They missed the risk unfortunately, but it’s not down to me.’

The DCI tapped the desk with his pen a couple of times. ‘Good. That’s us out of the shit then.’ He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘There’s no formal complaint anyway.’ He still didn’t look happy. He put his hands flat on the desk. ‘One other thing and then we’ll get down to business. I’m sorry to have to raise this, but there was no opportunity last night . . .’

Sarah felt an involuntary tension creeping into her face. ‘OK.’

‘Why weren’t you back in the office yesterday for the start of your on-call?’

She thought for a moment before answering. Probably best not to back down.

‘I had a lead on Operation Egremont and it took longer than I thought it would. But I drove to the scene direct. I wasn’t any later than the others.’

Fedden tipped his chin upwards and his eyes searched the ceiling for a second. With his wide, sweaty body, his spread legs and his little hands resting flat on the desk, he looked very much like a clever frog. But it was also a bad-tempered frog she was looking at.

‘Sarah . . .’

‘It won’t happen again.’

He smiled, obviously struggling to master his ill-humour.

‘We may be getting somewhere with Egremont. I’m pleased you’ve taken it on. Word on the street is, if anyone can get anywhere with it, it’s you.’

She was getting impatient too. She hadn’t had much sleep either and she wasn’t in primary school any more. It was time for the bollocking to end now, surely. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re like me. You want results.’

Like me. As a compliment, it was revealing. Anyway, she wasn’t like him: that was surely clear to both of them.

‘But I don’t want you to forget what I said about me being the captain of the ship.’

She tried for a smile and for blokey reassurance, but she guessed that her body language was as unconvincing as his. ‘It’s OK, I’m hearing you. Bang out of order. It won’t happen again.’

‘Thank you. I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out.’ He nodded, but there was no warmth. She remembered last night – they had worked well together. But this morning it was as if once again he couldn’t decide whether she was a good thing or not. ‘Good. OK, so: Operation Woodhall. We’ll have a scrum-down after the identification of Georgina’s body – I want to get everyone together in the office, share information. Can you get straight back here?’

‘Of course.’ She moved to stand. ‘Who’s family liaison for Julie?’

‘Oh blast, yes, I knew there was something else I needed to tell you.’