The chirping phone woke Dani from an unusually deep sleep. It took her brain several seconds to calibrate and remember where she was. Not at home. Home? The house in Sutton Coldfield had felt less and less like home every day recently. On the earlier drive back from the bizarre visit to Brigitta Popescu’s house, Dani had firmly decided that there was absolutely no way she was staying anywhere alone tonight. She couldn’t remember ever being so freaked out in all her life, even if it had all seemed like nonsense soon after she’d been away from there.
Regardless, she’d still needed to go back to the house to collect a change of clothes to take to the hospital. There she’d once again struggled to get any real rest on the hard and awkward armchair next to Jason, but apparently at some point tiredness had still got the better of her.
Only to be rudely interrupted by her phone.
Which was still ringing. Had she fallen asleep again, just thinking about answering it?
She shook her head and pulled herself up in the chair and reached out for the phone. Jason was snoring loudly next to her, the drugs he continued to take to hold the pain at bay enough to keep him in a deep sleep.
The call went to voicemail just as Dani grasped the phone. She stared at the screen. Three missed calls, from a withheld number, all within the last two minutes. The time was a little after one a.m.
The phone screen lit up again with another call and the device vibrated in her hand. Dani hit the green button and pulled the phone to her ear.
‘Hello.’
She listened intently to the voice on the other end. Her attention and alertness increased almost exponentially with each word spoken.
‘I’m on my way,’ she said, already halfway across the room for her coat and bag as she ended the call.
Dani travelled alone the few miles towards the town of Brownhills, at the very northern tip of the West Midlands Police boundary with Staffordshire. She’d managed to rouse Easton from sleep at the first attempt, but he was housebound, looking after his sister’s children, while she remained out and about who-knew-where – most likely spending the night with one of the many men she had on some sort of drunken roster.
Back in central Birmingham, and every other large town or city up and down the country, the streets would no doubt be thriving with drinkers and club-goers at this time on a Saturday night – or was it Sunday morning yet? – but in the relatively far-flung, small town of Brownhills, the streets were dead, and as Dani drove on along the high street, where every unit was closed up, shutters down for the night, it was almost like a ghost town.
Until she passed over a roundabout on the nearby A5, where the flashing blue lights up ahead were like a beacon of activity, drawing her in.
She counted six police cars as she approached. One ambulance. Overhead she could see the far-reaching searchlight of a helicopter, sweeping the area all around. As she parked up and shut down her engine, she heard the helicopter for the first time, too, could even feel the vibrations from its whirring rotors.
The dashboard thermometer read minus five. Dani braced herself for the blistering cold as she stepped out of the car.
Even without the blue strobes of light, the road – a major east-to-west route – was well lit, though it was flanked by tall and dense evergreens either side that gave little clue as to what lay beyond. A tall and stocky officer in a bright yellow jacket wandered over to intercept Dani as she approached the cordon that was blocking the road in both directions.
The officer introduced himself as Talbot. He’d been expecting Dani.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
The last she’d heard, the van the police were searching for had been pulled over and the two drivers apprehended, but she could already sense tonight wouldn’t be quite as straightforward as that.
The officer shook his head, disappointment. ‘The traffic officers were waiting for back-up. We heard the rumour about a body inside the van. They couldn’t leave the scene with the perps until help arrived. But…’
He scratched his head like he wasn’t sure exactly how or why whatever had happened had indeed happened.
‘The bastards fought back. Knocked one of our guys clean out, the other one… he’s in a bad way.’
He looked quite disturbed by that fact.
‘The perps are still running?’ Dani asked.
A rub on the back of his neck this time, another nervous, almost apologetic reaction. ‘Chopper lost them about five minutes ago.’
Which perhaps explained why the helicopter was now circling almost randomly, the searchlight sweeping all over rather than honed on one spot.
‘And the van?’ Dani said.
‘Come and take a look. We haven’t opened it up yet. Obviously it’s not been our priority, and it’s locked, and I really wasn’t sure on protocol.’
Which was perhaps understandable, given the ever-changing nature of the scene, though Dani had a flash of worry that perhaps the delay in opening up that van could be a huge mistake. The mystery caller had claimed there was a body in there, but what if the person inside was alive? Or at least had been when the van was first stopped.
Dani headed into the mix of police cars and uniformed officers, warm breath swirling into the air all around. The paintwork and glass of the vehicles glistened with ever-thickening frost. By the open back doors of the ambulance was a copper, face bloodied, holding gauze up to the side of his head.
‘Ahmed’s the one that got off lucky,’ Talbot said. ‘Wyatt’s been rushed off to A&E already.’
Dani nodded. She’d try to catch up with Ahmed soon enough, but he wasn’t the priority for now. Catching the two runners was. And opening that van, even if Dani was massively apprehensive about what they would find.
‘You’ve got dogs out?’ Dani asked as they approached the closed back doors of the van. The front of the vehicle was off the road, sunk into a ditch, a patrol car right alongside it. Dani could imagine the scene as the arresting officers had closed in and forced the van to a stop.
‘Yeah, but they lost the trail already. We’ve got farms dotted all around here, and there’s a lot of water in the fields, pools, streams too. Whether the two perps know a few tricks about how to lose dogs or not, it seems the landscape’s helped them out here.’
‘But fields also means there’s not many places to hide, surely? From the eye in the sky?’
Talbot shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of villages around, though. Honestly, I don’t know. But for now, they’re gone.’
And while Dani wasn’t going to apportion blame for that, at least not yet, it was a bitter pill to swallow. The police had actually done a sterling job to begin with. Only minutes after the 999 call handler had put the alert out, the van had been tracked using ANPR and then traffic officers had quickly picked up the trail just the other side of Brownhills. That initial flurry, up to the point where the van had been stopped, had shown a well-oiled machine in operation.
After that…
‘Any idea who the mystery caller was?’ Talbot said.
‘No idea.’
‘Or why they asked for you specifically?’
Dani did have an inkling, but she didn’t want to say it just yet.
‘I recognise your name,’ Talbot said.
And there was that glance to go along with his words. Dani avoided an eye-roll. Just.
‘Let’s get these doors open,’ Dani said, nodding over to the van.
‘They’re locked,’ he reminded her.
‘Then get a crowbar or whatever.’
Talbot looked unsure for a moment but then nodded and headed away. As he did so he grabbed the radio from his chest, though he was too far away for Dani to hear what was said. He disappeared out of sight for a few moments and Dani looked around the scene, trying to sort out her thoughts which were all the more jumbled given the time of night and the lack of sleep.
Dani looked up to the sky. The helicopter was over in the distance to the north, perhaps a mile or two away. Then the searchlight turned off. The chopper circled around and turned to head back south.
Dani was sure she knew what that meant.
Talbot, another yellow-jacketed officer by his side, was back with Dani just as the helicopter hurtled by overhead.
‘Nothing we could do,’ Talbot said, his face apologetic. ‘They’ll come back out if we get a sniff, but for now…’ He shrugged. A lame gesture.
‘We’ll catch up with them,’ Dani said, trying to remain positive. ‘We’ve got the van, and whatever trace evidence we can find.’
‘We haven’t called Forensics yet,’ Talbot said. ‘We didn’t really know what we were looking at here. But we do know the van reg is bogus. Or at least, it doesn’t belong to this vehicle.’
‘Let’s just get this thing opened up,’ Dani said.
Talbot nodded to his colleague who stepped forwards with the crowbar. He clanked the prongs into the gap between the back doors and grunted as he heaved. The lock snapped and the left-hand door swung open a couple of inches.
Dani reached forward and pulled both doors wide. She stared at the thick roll of black plastic inside. Talbot pulled back the ends of the plastic a few inches. Just enough to reveal strands of light blonde hair, stained with dark smudges. The other officer shone his torch onto the bundle as Talbot tore through the layers to expose the first foot or so of plastic.
They were left staring into the deathly eyes of a young woman.
‘Shit,’ Talbot said.
Dani said nothing.
‘Do you know her?’ Talbot said after a few moments of ghastly silence.
‘No,’ Dani said. ‘But we’ll do everything we can to figure out who she is. Call Forensics in.’
Talbot brought his radio back up as Dani continued to stare. The woman was all of twenty years old, and even judging by the little Dani could see of her, there was no doubt she had suffered a horrible and violent death.
No, Dani had no clue who this woman was, though she had a very clear idea who would.