12

‘This tea,’ Wilson said, ‘is piss. Must be the soft water.’

Cox looked at him, bemused. ‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a connoisseur,’ she said acidly.

Wilson shrugged. ‘Given up the booze, haven’t I? Three months and counting.’

‘Give yourself a medal,’ said Cox.

A young PC had just dropped a bulging cardboard box on to the table and stepped back, brushing the dust from his hands. That made four: four full crates of files.

The PC blew out a breath.

‘That’s the lot, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Thanks, constable.’

‘Everything from back then is on paper.’ He made an apologetic face. ‘They’ve been talking about digitizing it, but we’ve just not got the manpower. Sorry, ma’am.’

She looked up at him wryly.

‘That’s all right, constable. Some of us, believe it or not, can remember a time before Microsoft and the iCloud.’

‘We should be thankful it’s not on floppy disk,’ put in Wilson, setting down his plastic coffee cup, ‘and we don’t have to fire up the Amstrad.’

Cox smiled. The constable looked blank. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. She thanked him again for his help and dismissed him.

She sat back, looked at the boxes. Didn’t know quite what to expect. She’d asked for everything they had, every file on every case relating to domestic violence and the abuse of children, from Walsall, Wolverhampton, Sutton Coldfield, between 1980 and 1990 – and they’d brought her the lot.

It was an occupational hazard for a cold-case investigator, she knew. It was easy to get paranoid, to feel that the data-onslaught was strategic, that it was being done on purpose – that someone in a smoke-filled room somewhere was darkly muttering bury her in paperwork …

But the fact was, police work meant paperwork. What could you expect?

Wilson was looking grimly at the boxes, hands in pockets.

‘This doesn’t look like fun,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go down the council offices, speak to someone in social services? They’ll be able to fill us in.’

‘If you think you can find a council office that’s open for business on a Saturday afternoon, be my guest.’ Cox stood, prised open the nearest box. ‘You’re an investigative journalist, for Christ’s sake, Greg. I thought digging through dusty archives was what you people lived for.’

Wilson muttered something offensive. Pulled off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves.

It was Cox that struck gold first. The files had been mixed up a lot down the years, it was clear – documents put back in the wrong places, alphabetical order lazily ignored – but the system hadn’t broken down entirely; sure, the index cards were nothing more than vague hints, pointers in the right direction, but when Cox dug her way down to ‘Ha–Ho’, sure enough …

‘Bingo.’

Hampton Hall, Sutton Coldfield. The folder was labelled ‘1985’.

Before Wilson – looking up from his own box – could say anything, the constable poked his head around the door.

‘Another tea, guv?’

She shook her head.

‘Not for me, thanks, constable. But I’m sure my colleague here would love another cup.’

The PC gave a brief thumbs-up, and disappeared.

‘Thanks, guv,’ Wilson said sourly. ‘Come on, then. What’ve you found?’

Cox’s heart was already sinking as she thumbed open the thin manila folder.

‘Not,’ she said, ‘what I was hoping for.’

It was empty.

Alarm bells began ringing in her head.

Wilson reached over, took the folder from her. It was obvious that he, too, had the sense that this was no filing error.

‘Nothing at all? That seriously doesn’t add up.’

‘But look.’ She pointed. ‘Look at the creases, here, in the cardboard.’ Fine creases, running parallel to the folder’s spine. ‘This folder was full, bulging, at one point. So full the fucking folder got bent out of shape. And now nothing?’

Wilson was nodding.

‘Someone’s been here. Beaten us to it.’

‘Jesus.’ She snatched the folder back, slapped it down on the table.

‘Plan B?’

‘Radley.’ She was already tearing open the second cardboard box. ‘Anything on Radley. Everything on Radley.’

Wilson nodded grimly. He could play the part of the cynical hack as much as he liked, Cox thought; when it came down to it, Wilson cared about getting to the truth.

And he really, really hated being fucked with. They were as bad as each other.

After forty-five minutes they had a pile of papers a foot high. Wilson leaned wearily on the tabletop.

‘Shall we see what we’ve got?’

Cox let the folder she was leafing through fall back into the box. Shrugged.

‘Might as well.’ This was a fishing expedition, she knew, and nothing more; a sweep through an armful of files pulled at random from a ten-year archive was unlikely to blow the case wide open.

But everything new they found out about William Radley let in a little more light.

‘Crime report,’ Wilson muttered, flipping through the top file in the pile. ‘Domestic abuse, looks like. Signed off by one Sergeant Radley.’

‘Same here. Child neglect, this one.’ The file had been diligently filled out, neatly typed, thoroughly referenced; the work, as far as she could tell, of a conscientious young officer. But that wasn’t news. They already knew Radley had been a good copper.

‘Aaand another.’ Wilson made a mock-yawn as he leafed through another folder. ‘Stabbing. Ten-year-old boy, knifed his foster-dad! Christ. Must’ve been a little charmer, this young Colin Carter.’

Cox looked up sharply. Another link clicking into place? She didn’t dare hope.

‘Colin Carter?’

‘Uh-huh. Name ring a bell?’

‘Might do. Radley wrote up the case?’

‘Yep. Attended at the scene, too – got a light knife-wound in the arm for his trouble. The kid was bad news, obviously.’ Wilson turned the page. Stopped dead.

‘What?’

Wilson gave her a look. Then he read from the report: ‘The youth was subsequently transferred into the care of Hampton Hall for Underprivileged Children.’ Shook his head. ‘There it is. There’s your link.’

He tossed the report to Cox. She grabbed at it, flipped back to the first page. A child’s face, angular, dark-eyed, mistrustful, stared out at her in bleak grey and white.

A face she knew.

Colin Carter was a repeat sex-offender, pretty well known across the Met. Cox had interviewed him herself a year or two earlier – something to do with distributing child pornography, but they hadn’t been able to make it stick. Last she’d heard he was on parole in south London somewhere.

The boy in the police report – it was him. Carter was almost bald now, marked by teenage acne, overweight, wore glasses, was missing a tooth in his upper jaw – but the flat cheekbones were the same, the bulbous lower lip was the same, the look in the dark eyes was the same.

Swiftly she scanned the text of the report. The stabbing – non-fatal, though Radley reckoned the kid had been aiming to kill – took place at the foster parents’ home in the suburbs of Walsall. A scuffle, a kitchen-knife to the neck. Then, when Sergeant Radley comes in the door, he gets the same treatment: a medical officer’s photo in the file showed a curving wound up the inside of Radley’s right biceps.

Then off to HHUC with the little swine.

But that wasn’t the end of the report; there was an addendum, a typed statement appended to the file, presumably by Radley. It had been taken from a woman named Moira Yates – Colin Carter’s foster mum.

Colin was a difficult boy, Mrs Yates admitted. There was no denying that. He was withdrawn – always disappearing into himself, she said. But with the right care, with love and a nurturing home, she was sure he could get better – she was sure, she said, that Colin was a good lad, underneath.

It was a moving statement, human and empathetic, given the circumstances.

Then Cox reached the final paragraph. It chilled her to the bone.

We want to look after Colin, Mrs Yates had written. He is better off with us.

The typed black-ink characters lent the statement a strange formality, but in this passage Cox could hear, loud and clear, the voice of a deeply concerned woman – no, not just a woman, but a mother.

It is not right to send him back. Please, Mrs Yates had written, do not send him back to that place.

On the drive home – a long haul south through damp gloom and holiday traffic – Wilson seemed to feel the need to make small-talk. His way of restoring normality, Cox guessed. Hampton Hall had spooked him. Spooked her, too.

‘So – any plans for New Year’s? You and Aidan doing anything nice?’

She laughed humourlessly. Too knackered, after the day she’d had, to keep up the pretence.

‘We’re not as close as I might have made out, me and him,’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘We’re not really together, Greg. To be honest, I doubt we ever will be. Matthew lives with Aidan, except for every other weekend, when I get to be a mum again.’ She looked across at Wilson with a self-deprecating smile. ‘So New Year’s? Half a bottle of cornershop plonk and an early night for me, I imagine.’

Wilson looked uncomfortable.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘It’s okay. It’ll get better, one way or another.’

‘I’m sorry if –’ He broke off, sniffed awkwardly, fidgeted with a button on his jacket. ‘I mean, I’m sorry, Kerry, if I, if we –’

She smiled. She had to smile.

‘Let it go, Greg,’ she said. ‘What happened between us had nothing to do with it. Believe it or not, you’re not quite the worst mistake I’ve ever made.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ Wilson grinned.