Equipped with a clipboard and a bright smile, Kate would have passed muster as a market researcher. The only problem would be if anyone wanted to see her ID. From her Met days she’d kept a quite spurious card guaranteeing her to be something or other official in the market research field. The bottom line was, of course, her police ID.
She asked a few friendly questions – about dustbin collection, as it happened – at several houses. She always managed to bring the conversation round to the neighbours – she’d gesture convincingly with her Biro. But there were no useful anecdotes, no whispered half-accusations. Despite the drawn curtains at their windows, two houses remained firmly incommunicado. Only one – number six – had a furry draught-excluder covering the letterbox flap; the other – number twenty two – both a draught excluder and a piece of heavy felt. Imagine being a poor postie, trying to get your fingers through that lot.
She’d done that before, too – pretended even to herself she was thinking about something else when all she wanted to do was leap up and down in triumph. She checked. Yes, the drive was used – there were a couple of oil spots. There was also a double garage, at right angles to the rest of the house but with a connecting passage – what looked like a utility room – to the house itself. The garage was angled so comings and goings would be private. And a Leylandii hedge was doing its bit, too. The windows were so heavily curtained that it was impossible to tell whether anyone was inside or not – not so much as a crack of light escaped.
Number twenty-two. She wrote it down, just in case. In case of what? A sudden and complete attack of amnesia?
Head and heart dancing, she made herself walk slowly down the drive.
She’d give herself another half hour. She’d sit in the car and listen to the radio and pray that someone would come. It was beyond hoping for that anyone would go to twenty-two. It was just possible that someone might go to the last house. The woman on the bus. Please! Anyone, but let it be the woman on the bus.
She waited an hour. OK, so there was a good programme about diet in the Third World and another about a woman who’d discovered she was a lesbian after twenty years of marriage and two children. She offered it up briefly as an explanation of Mrs Harvey’s behaviour but wasn’t convinced. Odd that she didn’t even know the woman’s Christian name: ‘my wife’ or ‘Mrs Harvey’ were the norm. Weird.
She was getting very cold, and was in desperate need of a loo. Right. Give up. That’d be the logical thing.
Five more minutes. She’d give it five more minutes. Well, ten. An arts programme, now, with people being pretentious about a violent film. Funny how people could be so casual about what actually hurt a good deal. Catharsis be blowed: bet that critic’d be in casualty if he so much as shut his finger in the door.
A car. There’d been plenty of car movement – none to do with number twenty-two, of course – but this was the car she wanted. Yes, she’d be a Golf GTI woman, that expensive woman on the bus. And yes, she’d park at number six, and fish out the sort of bag that she’d take to aerobics. Yes!
She gave her a couple of minutes to go in. She could trace her movements through the house. Switch off the burglar alarm. A light in what must be the downstairs cloakroom. Hurry up – I need a pee, too! And at last that light went off and the living-room lights brightened.
Kate recognised her as soon as she opened her front door and couldn’t stop herself smiling as broadly as if they’d been friends for years. The woman was taken aback, but smiled too.
Kate had decided that she wouldn’t lie to her. She seemed the sort of person who would like to do her public duty.
‘Good evening,’ she began – she nearly called her Pam. ‘I’m a police officer and I believe you may be able to help me.’ She allowed the dimples to show on her smile – no, this wasn’t going to be a threatening talk.
It was a very pleasant one, complete with first-class coffee and expensive biscuits, after a visit to a well-appointed loo. The living room was a bit heavily fringed and floral for Kate’s taste, but it was beautifully lit by some very elegant floor-level lamps: another idea Kate would have liked to borrow but for the smallness of her house.
Pam Corby was emphatic. She still harboured suspicions of the house. ‘Fancy your overhearing me! I must be more careful what I say in future! I suppose I mustn’t ask what case you’re investigating?’
‘’Fraid not. In any case, it isn’t a proper case as such. Not yet. Just my nosiness. You made it so intriguing the way you described it to your friend.’
‘Hazel. Yes, well, if you never see anyone and know someone’s there … I reckon they’ve got a new trick now. They drive this van straight into the garage. Goodness knows what they’re unloading. Oh, d’you think it’s drugs, Ms Power? Or one of those immigration rackets?’
‘Immigration racket?’
‘Bringing these coloureds in.’
‘Have you ever seen any Black or Asian people around?’
‘No. But then, I’ve never seen anyone around. Now, my friend Joyce from Colesbrook Road – it backs on to here, Ms Power. Some of the houses are a bit too close for my liking. I like my privacy. The last house we had, the gardens were fifty yards long, so there was no need for net curtains. Like being in the country, almost. Do you know Harborne at all?’
‘Not yet. I’ve only just moved to Birmingham. It’s nicer here than where I’m living. But you’re overlooked by these Colesbrook Road houses, are you?’
‘Some of us. Not at this end. But the house we’re talking about is. A bit. And Joyce swears she’s seen – Look, why don’t I take you round to Joyce’s? Then you can see through her windows. Make up your own mind.’
Yes! ‘D’you suppose we should phone first? Make sure it’s convenient?’
Pam slapped her head. ‘Tuesday’s her class too. She goes to creative writing, I do keep fit. She’ll be in any moment. I’ll leave a message on her machine – ask her to phone me back the second she gets here. Now, will you have another coffee while you wait? No? Would you mind if I put News at Ten on? I like to keep up to date. Can’t read on the bus, you see – makes me ill.’
‘Please – go ahead.’
They pretended to watch in silence. But Kate at least was listening for the phone.
‘There’s not much to see at this time of night,’ Joyce explained, peering round her thickly lined curtains. ‘As you can see.’
Kate peered. Nothing. Suspiciously nothing. Not a glimmer from a light.
‘I do wish you could tell us what’s going on,’ Joyce said, as she led the way downstairs. Her house was much smaller than Pam’s: probably the floor area was less than Kate’s, although the available space was much more compact. The kitchen was much smaller, Kate noted with a hint of self-congratulation, as if she’d chosen the house rather than had it thrust upon her. But it was the sort of units she’d chosen, and the women settled down with a glass of white wine for a conversation about kitchens. Pam was a widow: her husband had bought an extremely profitable insurance policy before he died in a hit-and-run accident. At least she had no difficulties maintaining her house, though she said she rattled round it. Joyce was bitter after a divorce, having come down in the property world. The wine went round again. This time Kate covered her glass.
‘Driving,’ she said.
‘You look quite tired,’ Pam said. ‘Have you been on duty all day?’
Kate nodded. ‘To be fair, this is something I want to do for myself. Following a hunch. But if anything comes of my hunch, your bus conversation could be crucial to our investigations. And I’ll tell you what they’re into the moment I can.’ She drained her glass and set it regretfully on the new working surface.
Although she’d helped herself to some of the Manse cocoa, she was too busy fizzing with success to sleep. If she were honest, however, she had to admit that all she’d done was locate a house that was causing suspicion. Honest detective work, she told herself But what good would it do? There was a matter of tying it in with a crime. Any crime, not necessarily the paedophile business.
The women had been nice. They’d talked of her going out to a show with them, or sharing a meal. And though they were so much older than she, she’d take them up on the offer as soon as this business was over.
Cope rapped his knuckles against her forehead. ‘Is there anyone at home? Half the path. labs in Brum swamped with E.coli specimens from the squad and you want me to set up surveillance for a house that a set of nosy women thinks is being used for some unspecified crime? Are you off your head? God, some of them maggots must have got your brain. Piss off, now. I’ve got work to do.’
What else had she expected? She left his office, closing the door with meticulous precision. The office seemed empty, however, and she slammed her hands on the desk. ‘Fuck it!’
‘Hang on, my wench, that’s not the sort of language I expect from you. What’s up?’
‘Sorry, Reg. Didn’t realise you were there. Just –’
But Cope was in the doorway. ‘God knows how we’re going to allocate work loads today. Selby’s in: he’s in the Incident Room working away. Seems he’s not very happy with something you said, Power. You need to be a bit more tactful the way you talk to people, you know. Can’t go putting people’s backs up all the time. Colin reckons he’ll be in tomorrow. Sally’s in hospital.’
‘Hospital?’
‘Hospital’s what I said. Now, Reg, what I’d like you to do is this …’
Lunch-time. Kate would have been happy to work through, but Reg appeared at the office door. ‘Come on, my wench: they’ll have run out of booze. No, we’re going to a little bar a bit out of the way. It’s one thing working with policemen all day, it’s another sharing you beer with a load of flat-feet pretending to be something else.’
They found a small bar full of lawyers instead. The champagne seemed to be flowing. ‘Hey up, there’s a table over there. Shove your way through, Kate. I’ll get – what d’you want?’
‘Half of bitter, please!’ she called as she pushed through some very expensive suits.
‘Chose the wrong job, didn’t we, my wench?’ Reg dropped a packet of crisps on the table. ‘I ordered a couple of ploughman’s platters – OK?’
‘Great.’ She pushed a tenner across. ‘My shout. Only fair.’
‘Fair enough. Hey, I got my son’s wedding photos here. Last set arrived today. Fancy a shufti?’
‘Try and stop me. I’m a sucker for weddings.’ Not that she was. But Reg didn’t want to hear that.
‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? That’s the plane we went out in.’
It was to be a frame by careful frame examination – none of your quick shuffles through for Reg. He’d got a new camera, he said. Did everything bar playing ‘God Save the Queen’. Kate took each one and looked at it carefully, trying to find some perceptive comment to make about each. At last, her powers of invention failing her, she pointed to the figures in the bottom of each print.
‘Oh yes, the time and date of each one. Saves no end of time when you put them in the album,’ he said.
The procession continued.
The ploughman’s platters arrived. The photographs continued unabated. The last photos were dated early September, two days before she’d come to Birmingham. Kate was just about to ask why he’d taken none for the last three weeks of his visit when a loud lawyer stepped backwards, knocking their table. Kate swooped, lifting the prints before they were engulfed in a tide of beer.
By the time apologies had been made and accepted – rather grudgingly on Reg’s side – it was time to go.
‘Hey, you were going to tell me all about this row you had with Cope,’ Reg said as they shrugged into their jackets.
‘Not worth the breath it would take,’ Kate temporised. ‘You know what he’s like.’
‘Ah. But you mustn’t let it get to you, see.’
They set off, Kate setting a brisk pace.
‘Hang on, love. Your legs must be longer than mine. Younger, any road.’
As they climbed the stairs, Reg’s breathing notably heavier than Kate’s, he turned to her. ‘You never told me about this job for young Graham. Anything special?’
‘Just a long shot. To do with this –’
‘That you, Power?’ It was Cope, yelling from the office door. ‘Get a move on, woman, there’s someone hanging on the phone for you.’
Kate sped.
But it was only Maureen, from Kings Heath police station. ‘We may have made a bit of progress on your rape case,’ she said. ‘Since you lot in the city centre never do a stroke, why don’t you drop round here for a balti and a bit of a natter? You could meet my new fiancé,’ she said.
Fiancé. It was almost a term from another era. People moved in, didn’t they? Got married if kids came along. But there was something touching about Maureen’s tone, as if meeting the man concerned was an honour.
Kate smiled. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘What time? Only I’ve got my football training till about eight-thirty.’
More small boys seemed to have appeared from the woodwork: news of comparative success had travelled fast. Alec and Derek were there, stretching and bending with the best of them. They backed out when it came to shooting practice, on the grounds that it was the boys who really needed to polish that particular set of skills. But they stayed with Kate.
‘Not that our presence is necessary any more. Your references shone from the page, Kate.’
‘We could have read them in the dark, they were so glowing,’ Alec added. ‘But I shall continue coming anyway – oh, don’t get me wrong! The exercise is so good. And at my age that’s a consideration.’ He seemed about to say something else, but dropped to one knee to fiddle with his trainer laces.
Derek coughed. He was clearly embarrassed – had no doubt relied on his father to do the necessary. ‘Kate – there’s something I – we – wanted to mention to you. You being in the police, you’ll be used to the seedier side of life. Or we wouldn’t have raised it.’
‘That’s right.’ Alec straightened. ‘We’d have mentioned it to Paul or Giles. But the lads seem to get on well with you, and you might be – I don’t know, it might be easier for them to talk to you than to one of their officers.’
‘I’ll certainly do whatever I can,’ Kate prompted him.
‘It’s – this is really embarrassing.’
All three laughed. Kate waited.
‘It’s just that there seem to be some – well, I don’t know whether they’re photos or postcards going round. You know,’ Alec screwed his face up quite unexpectedly and added, ‘feelthy pictures,’ in a supposedly Middle-Eastern accent.
‘What sort?’
‘I haven’t seen them. But there was some giggling after Church Parade the other day. And a lot of furtive shoving into pockets. Reminded me of when I was ten, with Titbits or Picture Post, or something. Probably just a bit of silliness.’
Derek shook his head. ‘Photos, I’m afraid. Of boys. Naked, mostly. Some … with, with men …’
Kate hoped she looked calm and capable. But inside her head all sorts of alarm bells were ringing. ‘Perhaps we should talk about it indoors.’ Then she remembered. ‘Look, I’ve got a dinner appointment – work! – so I’ll have to call a halt to practice – with that carpark light broken they can hardly see anyway. Could one of you hang on out here until the last boy’s been collected? And then I can talk with whoever prefers …’
The men exchanged glances. Alec said, ‘I’ll hang on, shall I? While you talk, son?’
She shut the door of the little room they used as an office and flicked the catch. She perched on the corner of the desk. He leaned against the filing cabinet.
‘It is something serious, isn’t it?’
He fidgeted with a torn drawer label. ‘Yes and no. I mean nothing ever happened. I mean, it was before Giles’ time – the last minister was a crusty old bastard none of us would have dared approach. Not like Giles: I’m sure the kids could talk to him.’
She waited.
‘It was when I was a boy. There was a rash of this dirty photo business. Photos, not cards. Mostly harmless. Just naked boys. But if you pretended to giggle over them, you got shown some more. I think there was a sort of progression. I know some of those I saw eventually were – well, pretty obscene. With men. You know. I must have looked pretty furtive – Dad wormed it out of me in the end.’
It could be serious. It was one of the ways paedophiles started to groom little boys, according to Gail, the social worker. ‘Have you any idea who was circulating them?’
He shook his head. ‘One of the older boys, according to rumour. Maybe even an officer.’
‘An officer?’
He nodded. ‘It all stopped quite suddenly. Perhaps someone warned whoever it was.’
‘Or perhaps he left?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure who the officers were then.’
‘Do you remember precisely what year this was, Derek?’ Damn it, she sounded just like a policewoman. Another part of her brain was racing – could this be why young Royston wasn’t happy at this chapel? Why his family had started to go to the one on the High Street? ‘This could be important.’
He shook his head. ‘I was a kid.’
‘Roughly?’
‘I must have been about twelve or thirteen. I can’t remember.’
‘Would there be records of the Brigade going back then – what, ten years?’
‘Should be. I suppose. You’ll have to ask Giles: as Minister, he’s in overall control, remember.’
She nodded.
‘What’ll you do?’ Derek asked. ‘You see, there was another rumour. That whoever it was did more than pass round photos. One camp. With one of the lads … Ah, that’ll be Dad.’ He turned to slip the catch.
‘There! That’s the last one off our hands. All the parents collected them in person.’
‘It’s getting as bad as the school run. You can’t move in my road at school starting and finishing time. When are the poor little buggers ever going to learn to walk?’ She pulled a face. ‘When we’ve cleaned this child molester off the streets, I suppose.’
Alec looked at her: ‘You don’t suppose he and this business are connected?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I promise you this, I shall treat what you’ve told me as seriously as if they are.’
Maureen’s fiancé was a handsome man in his early forties, a CID Superintendent, as it turned out. Maureen introduced him with evident pride: although they’d worked in the same station for months, they’d met socially on an OU Psychology course.
‘There was this woman saying how civilised Philip was. As if police officers weren’t! I didn’t dare say I was a sergeant. Anyway, I thought he was civilised too.’
‘And Maureen is, despite being a sergeant,’ Philip added.
The developments in the rape case included another attempted rape and another small stab wound, not unlike Kate’s. This time the victim was an African-Caribbean who had a family prepared to support her whatever had happened. Whether as a consequence or not, she was much more forthcoming, and had furiously alleged her attackers were African-Caribbean too. She was equally furious that none of them were on police files.
‘She swears she’ll know them again,’ Philip added. ‘And has promised to yell blue murder if she sees them.’
‘Trouble is, I wouldn’t put it past her to have a go at them,’ Maureen said. ‘I did warn her. “Don’t even think of acting on your own,” I said.’
Kate grimaced. ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been doing,’ she said. And found herself pouring out the story of her travels round Kings Heath and its environs and the official reaction. ‘No names, no pack-drill,’ she added, pouring lager all round.
‘No need for names. There’s a certain CID inspector whose charm and wit are renowned throughout the whole West Midlands,’ Maureen said.
‘But when it comes down to it, he’s a good copper,’ Philip amended.
‘Usually. But this same anonymous inspector only sent me down to Devon. Well, it’s a nice place, Devon. Except the case he said I was providing information on was nothing like ours. And the information was curiously incomplete.’
‘Talk to him about it,’ Philip said. ‘Maybe someone told him to amend it.’
‘Bloody hell! You’d have me talk to the next fifty bus when it’s at full tilt down the High Street, would you?’
‘Since full tilt down the High Street is usually one mile an hour, you might be all right. But I take your point. Trouble is, if no one says anything, nothing gets done. Have you thought about talking to your DCI? Or a senior woman colleague?’
‘’Course I have. But there’s a fine line between talking things over and grassing someone up.’
They nodded.
‘Trouble is, he’s now absolutely vetoed any sort of surveillance of this house, and even if the DCI weren’t off sick, I don’t see how I could go over his head.’
‘If it’s on our patch, Philip could do something. Couldn’t you?’
He grimaced. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. But we’re not laid low with food poisoning. And our CID like to keep abreast of what’s happening round here. Tell you what, Kate, have some more naan, no more talking shop, and, I’ll think about it. I can’t say fairer than that.’
Kate smiled. ‘Indeed you can’t. No, no more naan, thanks. And now, just to improve life, I’ve got this problem with the Boys’ Brigade. I suppose you’ve never heard any rumours about Braysfield Road Baptists, have you?’
Graham. She had to talk to Graham. She couldn’t let Philip do anything without Graham’s approval. All he’d authorised was finding the house. Setting up a surveillance operation after Cope had specifically vetoed it was quite another matter. And then there was the business at the chapel. She had to phone, and this time, whatever the consequences, she had to leave a message.
Deciding was easy, of course. Doing it another matter. It was a good job she’d got into the habit of rehearsing difficult conversations in a loo beforehand. And a good job the Manse loo was away from the bedrooms. All the same, she wasn’t entirely satisfied with the cool, business-like tone of her voice as she left messages on both his home and his mobile numbers.
She’d have liked to start talking to Giles, but he and Maz were already in bed when she’d got back. She half thought about tapping on their door to see if they were awake. But it was late, and they got little enough time together. The morning would have to do.