TR01 - Trial And Retribution Read online

  He was puzzled. He concentrated on what she was saying.

  "Don't hurt her. If you know where she is, or can help in any way, please telephone. All we want is for her to come home."

  Jason rolled on to his side and curled up so he could see Helen. He thought for a moment. What was Mum talking about? And that was another thing. He hadn't seen Julie today but no one had said where she was.

  "Where's Julie gone, Gran?" he asked.

  At the very beginning of the day the decision had been taken to search the ground all over again, inch by inch, this time with the help of local volunteers and council workers. Men from the various construction sites had also been given leave to join the hunt.

  Children had taken the day off school. It was an impressive turn-out.

  Patiently, and largely in silence, they moved line abreast across the ground, prodding and peering in and under everything in their way.

  There was little laughter, few smiles. Everyone knew that it could be a body they were looking for now, or clues as to a body's whereabouts.

  Inspector North had given them a mass briefing before leaving for the press conference, describing every single item of julie clothing. It had a sobering effect.

  Barridge had hardly slept. After his ducking in the flooded cellar he'd gone home but, as soon as he'd changed, he walked out of his flat and returned to the station. While that little girl was still out there somewhere the idea of sleep was repulsive to him.

  Now still unshaven and buzzing with physical exhaustion he was with a group of locals, trying desperately to concentrate on the task underfoot. Suddenly he stopped. A desire for all this to be over washed through him like a wave: he wanted done with it, but he could not be until they found the kid.

  He scanned the ground ahead. In his path were sewage pipes, surrounded by a litter of wooden pallets and building supplies, which Barridge remembered had been taped off by Marik and Henshaw the previous night.

  He trudged forward, bending to pass under the yellow control tape.

  Then, with his first step inside the taped area, the sole of his booted foot felt something beneath it.

  "Hold it!" he called, raising his arm to the others.

  Barridge got down on his haunches and, using a gloved finger, hooked a little of the mud away from whatever he had sensed in the ground. Part of a black, shiny object appeared with the edge of some metal attachment also visible. Carefully, he removed another small bit of mud. It clung to his finger and he shook it off. The metal was stainless steel: a buckle. And next to it was the unmistakable rim of the upper of a small shoe. A child's shoe.

  Barridge's heart lurched. Reflexively he reached for the shoe but, just in time, remembered not to pick it up. Instead he called out.

  "What shoes was she wearing?"

  Someone said, "Black and shiny, wasn't it?"

  Another added, "With a T-strap."

  Barridge carefully gouged out some more mud until he could see the shoe clearly. He shut his eyes and opened them again.

  "Well, I've just found one. A black patent leather-type shoe with a T-strap. Looks like a little girl's."

  The volunteers began to cluster round. One or two of them yelled and waved, bringing some officers over at the double. Barridge sat back on his heels and looked around. The shoe was about six yards from the sewage pipes, he

  tonly nearby place of concealment. But they'd been checked ..

  Then he saw what Marik and Henshaw had missed in the night. These pipes were laid horizontally but two did not lie flush and, in the gap between, recessed so that it would not easily be noticed, lay another pipe of smaller diameter.

  He strode over, bending to take a closer look. Some thing was blocking the smaller pipe. He thought he saw something in there, or was he imagining it? A couple of officers who had followed him to the pipes came nearer.

  "I'll do it. I can squeeze through!" shouted Barridge.

  Barridge stripped off his Gortex jacket. You couldn't get through by standing upright so, on hands and knees, he began crawling between the pipes, a space no more than two feet wide. Barridge was not a fat man, but he was solidly built and a thinner individual would have done the job better, no doubt. But Barridge was not going to cede this job to anybody. Grunting with effort he forced his body into the dark tunnel, gripping his torch with his right hand, making progress by levering his weight for ward with his arms. The points of his elbows glanced off broken bricks and lumps of jagged rubble but he didn't notice.

  He reached the small, concealed pipe and shone his torch.

  "Jesus!"

  "Barridge. See anything? Anything there?"

  "Move the pipe, the big pipe. I'll need to get round to the other end."

  The pipe to his right began to roll away so that he could crawl past it. As he did so the face of a TSG sergeant appeared in his line of sight.

  "Anything in there, son?"

  Barridge paused and looked at the older man. He blinked, then nodded his head. So far he had not seen much pink skin and a scrap of white cotton. But it was enough.

  It was not until he had reached the far end of the pipe and looked inside that it suddenly became real for him. He saw a foot with a white sock, another wearing a black, shiny shoe. Between them rested two hands reaching in front of her. Beyond these in the gloom he could see a tangle of golden hair round about where the knees must be. He froze. He looked but couldn't move. The child was bent double inside a pipe little more than a foot in diameter. One of her hands was stretched out and Barridge could have sworn he saw it twitch.

  "Oh, God ..." he whispered. It was not an exclamation but a prayer.

  He tore off his gloves and leaned into the pipe as far as he could to grasp the hands. They were icy cold. Barridge pulled but she was wedged too tight. Afraid to tug hard on the frail wrists, he grasped an ankle, pulling harder. The blood rose to his neck and face with the effort which, as much as anything, came from trying not to pull too hard in his desperation to get her out of there.

  She moved at first by fractions of an inch and then, as he continued the steady pressure, by inches. She had been three feet into the pipe and he had already dragged her a foot nearer to the open air when some hindrance was suddenly released and she slid forward smoothly, easily and alarmingly. Barridge fell back as the small body, naked but for a pair of cotton pants, fell out of the pipe and flopped on top of him.

  Other officers leapt to help, to take the body. But Barridge was already struggling to his feet, holding on grimly.

  "It's all righto he was shouting, cradling the child.

  "I've got her. And she's all right. She's alive. She's alive." The other officers knew otherwise. The child's head dangled from her shoulders like a broken flower. They made a close ring around Barridge, which is instinctive behaviour by police officers. It comes not just from a desire to shield members of the public from the sight of death, but from an almost unconscious sense that this moment the pivotal moment in any police inquiry, the discovery of a body was one that belonged to them all. And a body so tiny affected every man deeply. It was something they would never forget.

  Barridge had taken one of the hands and was rubbing the back of it against his cheek. He was staring into space, seeing again in his mind the image of that hand as it had reached towards him from the depth of the pipe. He saw that slight pudginess which is in all children's hands. The fingers were slightly bent and the nails were rimmed with dirt. The ink of a faded Biro drawing was clearly visible on the back of it, like blue veins arranged to make a smiling face.

  "Put her down, son," said the TSG skipper softly.

  "Just put her down, won't you?"

  Barridge reacted badly to the suggestion. He took a step backwards, his eyes staring.

  "No!" he yelled.

  "No. I just need an ambulance. An ambulance, right?

  She's OK and I've got her . I found her .. I She's alive! "

  He hardly seemed to have noticed the blue and red plastic washing lin
e that was wound around the little girl's neck.

  chapter 6

  FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER

  How do you tell someone their child is dead? North had been called upon to do it only three times before, and each time she had used the same formula the usual formula. She made sure the parents were both present, if she could, and made them sit down. Then she said she was sorry, awfully sorry, but she had some bad news to tell them. Some very, very bad news.

  That was enough, usually only the most dense could fail to grasp that a death was involved. It merely remained to establish whose death. Sometimes a short guessing game took place. My mother? My brother, sister? My child? The child was the least thinkable option.

  It always came up last.

  Unless, as in this case, that child was already missing.

  Meg Richards was standing at the window when the DI and her sergeant arrived below the tower block on the Howarth Estate. North saw her Family Liaison Officer's face on the third floor, looking out.

  Richards would deduce why they had come. She would know it couldn't be good news, because that can be conveyed on the telephone.

  No word had been spoken in the flat but, by the time

  the officers reached the Harris front door and were let in by Helen, everybody present shared Richards's knowledge. The atmosphere was one of accumulated tension. Knowing and realizing are not always the same thing, and in these situations reality is suspended until something gets said. Only with the release of words into the air, does the unthinkable become a solid, shared fact.

  North walked into the sitting room. All those present were already sitting, except Richards. Anita had an album of family snaps open on her knee. Peter was smoking. A plate of untouched sandwiches lay on the low table between them. Everyone was looking at her, waiting. She glanced at each of them first, a nicking glance.

  "It's very bad news, I'm afraid." Anita's pale face registered nothing, not at first. For a few seconds it remained oddly at rest, tilted to one side and looking nowhere in particular. Then slowly it crumpled and darkened, like cellophane on the fire. The album slipped to the floor.

  "No."

  She was hugging herself now, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth. The surrounds of her eyes tightened and creased.

  "No."

  She took a long, sighing breath and gave out a hoarse, unearthly howl.

  "Nor

  In a technical sense, with the finding of a dead body, a missing person case is solved and goes away. But, in reality, it simply grows a new identity. Growing and

  mutating like a monster in a horror-film, it efficiently metamorphoses into a murder inquiry.

  To a police officer, murder is the ultimate. It is Hamlet, Wembley, Mount Everest: the point at which your professional life peaks and every tough question you've ever been trained to answer will be asked.

  Murder is the most demanding and a child murder the least forgiving of all a police officer's enemies, an adversary who will take away your sleep if possible or, failing that, creep into your dreams; an enemy who is always there to spring another surprise, to knock you back, find you out. If, with murder, you get it right you can have the Commissioner's pat on the back and some brief media glory. Screw it up and screw you straight back to car-pound duties.

  From the moment that North called in to report PC Barridge's discovery, the Murder Squad AMIP - waiting in the wings since late last night, started making their dispositions.

  "Team'll be deploying into this station within two hours," said the Station Superintendent to North.

  "Of course they'll want an incident room. We can make some suitable space available, I take it?"

  "Yes, sir. Conference Suite. No problem."

  "They're assigning Detective Superintendent Mike Walker to the case.

  You know him? "

  "No, sir."

  "He's a good officer. And he wants to co-opt someone local who's familiar with the inquiry so far. I told him you."

  North must have looked alarmed because the Super leaned forward in his most reassuring manner.

  "Your first murder?"

  North shook her head.

  "Oh no, sir!"

  Not that she'd been on very many.

  "Well," the Super continued, 'your first child murder anyway, the worst kind. But you'll be fine. I wouldn't give you to Walker if I thought you couldn't cope. "

  "Thanks, sir. I'll go up and see how they're getting on with clearing the Incident Room."

  The Super detained her with a gesture of his hand.

  "Before you go, I ought to tell you that they're starting the post-mortem in half an hour. Walker may go straight down to the mortuary from wherever he is now. I expect you to attend. All right?"

  "I've been to them before, sir."

  "Good. Off you go, then."

  On the first floor, Donaldson was supervising the removal of files from the local Incident Room to the ground floor. Officers Brown, Phelps, Marik and Hen- shaw were all on shift but these were far from the usual wisecracking men that North knew. The finding of the body had changed and sobered each of them.

  She asked the Skipper what Walker was like.

  "Used to work here, in Division."

  He plumped another plastic files' bin on top of the stack near the door. Then he scratched his head.

  "I wouldn't call him the absolutely top drawer, if you know what I mean."

  North had the impression that the Skipper had more to impart but, just then. Brown appeared at her elbow proffering a file.

  "Ma'am, we've traced a Mrs. Wald - she's meals on wheels."

  North remembered that several of the old folk on the estate had mentioned meals on wheels being brought into the Howarth about the time of the child's disappearance. She took the file.

  "That's good. Anything else?"

  "Well, we've also traced Kenneth Poole - the ice-cream seller on the Howarth Estate."

  Opening the file to scan the details, she saw in the corner of her eye a slim male figure entering the room.

  "Mr. Poole's got a sheet!" she said to the Skipper.

  "He's another one of the dirty mac brigade. It says here he was " concerned in the management of a disorderly house"."

  Donaldson shook his head.

  "So how, in God's name, does he get a job selling ice-cream to kids?"

  North was watching the new arrival, who was looking around uncertainly. He wore a suit and his arms were clasped behind his back.

  She said, "Beats me. Is this him? Must have left his mac at home."

  Donaldson swung round to look. He suddenly coughed and cleared his throat.

  "Oh, er. Detective Superintendent Walker right?"

  "That's right! And you are ...?"

  "Sergeant Donaldson, sir."

  Suddenly Walker produced a raincoat from behind his back, brandished it and said in a soft Glaswegian accent, "So where do I put this?"

  As Donaldson took the Superintendent's coat, North let out a snort of laughter, covering it with her closed fist. She straightened her face as best she could under Walker's suspicious glance. To have confused him with the dirty mac brigade was a major error of judgement, but she couldn't help but find it funny. He was a lean man of less than medium height but with the most vital grey-blue eyes she had ever seen in an officer of his rank. They darted restlessly about, she thought, like target-finders.

  "I've been told I've got one of the best from here to join my team.

  Any idea where?

  North stepped forward and held out her hand.

  "Er - it's me, sir."

  Walker shook North's hand slowly, looking her hard in the face. Before he could speak again, she said, "Did you know they're due to begin the post-mortem in fifteen minutes?"

  Walker glanced at his watch and took the coat back from Donaldson.

  "You can brief me on the way," he said.

  June was the assistant in the path lab and she had had her car broken into the previous night. Now, preparing the
post-mortem area for the examination of the little child's body, she just wanted to vent her frustration on somebody, and who better than a police officer Detective Sergeant Polk, the area lab liaison officer, who was waiting for the officers on the case.

  "I said to them, I am insured, I've been insured with this company for ten years. Never made a single claim ..."

  She was rattling surgical instruments as she placed them on the tray scalpels, clamps. Not for the first time Polk reflected on how the situation would look to anyone unused to it. Lying between them, under a sheet, was the body of a child about four feet long and probably weighing no more than three stone. And here was this woman, with her carefully groomed blonde hair and scarlet nail polish clearly visible through the surgical gloves, going on about insurance.

  After a few moments the pathologist breezed in, already gowned and booted. This was John Foster, in his fifties, with hollow cheeks, prominent cheekbones and long bony fingers. He had a Walkman-size tape recorder and a mini-microphone clipped to his blue plastic gown. He looked around.

  "Who've I got with me today? Ah, the lovely June. Your boy pass his exam?"

  "Don't speak to me about that little sod."

  Walker and North were on their way. Gloving up, Foster chatted amiably across the body of Julie Harris. Her extinguished life seemed to mean little more to them than a switched-off light. Soon they would be cutting the body open and delving inside.

  A fat, moustached man in a green gown looked in.

  "Oh, Foster, Detective Superintendent Walker and that other officer are gowning up. Mind if I look over your shoulder on this one?"

  Foster shrugged. Arnold Mallory was not a man you said no to unless you wanted a right.

  "All right by me." He gestured to him for the benefit of June and Polk.

  "This is Arnold Mallory of the forensic service. Apparently--' He grinned theatrically at Mallory.

  "Apparently our friends over there are uptight about the police removing her from the site."

  Mallory approached the table where Julie lay. He looked at the sheeted shape, shaking his head.

  "Too bloody right we are."

  "Well, I'm glad you're here, Arnold. You can take the stomach contents away with you. Save a bit of time."