‘That whole family is insane.’
‘She’s claiming you attacked her, for no reason, as she was walking past the station. Her son, Daren, is telling the same story. The attending officers backed up your statement, till it was pointed out that because they were on the other side of the van, there’s no way they could’ve actually seen what happened. At which point they realized fibbing to Professional Standards probably wasn’t the wisest move.’ Gilmore huffed out a breath. ‘But we’ve got no doubts that Sarah Black is lying. As such, I’m not going to recommend you be suspended pending investigations.’
That was something at least.
‘Thank you.’
‘I imagine we’ll be putting out a statement about the incident, and the Black family will scream “cover-up” and “conspiracy” and “crisis actors” and “false flag” and “corruption”, like they always do; then people will get bored and it’ll all fade away till next time. So, maybe, given everything else that’s going on, it might be better if you made yourself scarce for a while. Before the media descend on us like a rain of frogs?’
Lucy sat back in her chair. Stared up at the ceiling tiles. ‘Urgh...’
‘I know it’s not your fault, Lucy, but it’s for the best.’
‘Fine.’ Lurching to her feet. There were a couple of things she’d been meaning to chase up anyway. One of which was nowhere near DHQ, the media, or Sarah Bloody Black.
She stood, back straight, and marched out of the office. Closed the door behind her. Slouched against it, eyes closed, head doing a decent rendition of the finale to Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’.
Sarah Sodding Black.
The whole family needed locking up. Or shot. Either was good.
Lucy fumbled a crumpled packet of paracetamol from her pocket — only two tablets left. She popped both out of their blisters, swished a bit of saliva around her mouth, then swallowed them dry. Shuddering as they tried to stick halfway.
A man’s voice: ‘Detective Sergeant McVeigh?’
Great.
She forced the pills down, then turned.
He was youngish — maybe mid-twenties? — with short dirty-blond hair that was a bit too spiky on top, high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a square jaw. Dark-grey suit, crisp shirt, neat tie, manila folder under one arm. Brown eyes narrowed in concern.
She waved him away. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last couple of days. I left messages?’
‘Good for you.’ She marched towards the stairs.
He strode along beside her, not a hair out of place. ‘Professional Standards aren’t your enemy, DS McVeigh. We’re not the scary Rubber Heelers of myth and legend, we’re here to support and guide officers through—’
‘Twenty seconds ago, your boss’s “guidance” was to make myself scarce, so that’s what I’m doing.’ Barging through the stairwell doors. ‘Bye.’
‘DS McVeigh, maybe we could stop and have a chat about Neil Black’s family and some management strategies to avoid further—’
‘I’ve just been assaulted and I’m busy with actual policework, so I’m going to say no.’ Lucy’s bootheels clattered back from the echoing walls.
He didn’t follow her this time.
When she took the turn at the landing he was still standing there, staring down at her, folder under his arm, the concerned expression swapped for one of disappointment. ‘I can make an appointment?’
Good luck with that.
12
PC Manson peered at Lucy over the top of his big square spectacles. ‘The rest of it?’ His skin had an unhealthy spoiled-milk tint, and the whites of his eyes were more of a yellowy-pink. Everything else was pinched and angular. As if he’d been supplied flat-packed and not assembled properly.
‘The file, Constable. Where’s the rest of it?’
Manson’s lair, AKA: the Records-and-Productions Stores, was a gloomy warehouse with narrow frosted windows up at roof height, letting in a thin whispering light that only seemed to make everything look darker. Everything clarted in dust and misery.
The racks and racks of storage space were divided into two — one laden with boxes full of files, the other groaning under the weight of physical evidence. A special cage sat at the far end for contraband items like seized drugs, and weapons, and counterfeit cash, segregated from the rest of the warehouse by twelve-foot-high barriers of chain link, topped with dusty razor wire. Another chain-link barrier sat between her and PC Manson. Two small desks, one on either side of the wire, formed an almost-shared surface between their worlds, with a little hatch marking the boundary. Lit by a single harsh white spotlight.
Manson puffed out his narrow cheeks, opened the hatch and reached for the faded orange folder with ‘BENEDICT STRACHAN’ written in wobbly biro letters on the flap. ‘He was the kid killer, right? Well, the kid who killed someone, not someone who killed kids. What’s wrong with the file?’ Opening it up to peer inside.
‘Most of it’s missing. Where’s the interview transcripts, the door-to-doors, the actions, his sodding confession?’
‘They’re not here.’ Whoever it was that assembled PC Manson, they seemed to have left him a few Allen keys short of a bedside cabinet.
Lucy made a big show of examining the chain-link barricade. ‘Is this here to stop people hitting you?’
‘Let me check.’ He turned on his heel and stalked away into the gloom. Footsteps echoing on the concrete floor, fading into the distance... Then silence.
And more silence.
And a bit more, after that.
Should’ve got the Dunk to do this. Maybe he could’ve bored PC Manson into submission with a monologue on structural capitalism, political corruption, and the class system.
Speaking of which.
She pulled out her mobile, but before she’d got as far as scrolling through her contacts the phone whirrrr-binged in her hand.
Email.
And for once it wasn’t spam, or some idiot memo from the top brass, it was a web link from one Gail McCarthy, with no message — just the subject line ‘DI TUDOR SAID YOU NEEDED TO SEE THESE’.
That would be the crime-scene photos, then.
Lucy followed the link through to a secure server, where a single folder was waiting. ‘FOR DS MCVEIGH’.
Deep breath.
Somehow, the pictures were worse than the real thing. All in blistering full colour, pin-sharp, and, to be honest, a bit too arty for what they were meant to be.
Gail had found a scar on their victim’s right hip. Another line of scar tissue reaching almost the whole length of the left shin. But the kicker was a shot of his back.
Hairy Harry, AKA: Dr Harrison Jenkins, must’ve asked for the body to be rolled over before they bagged and tagged it, exposing a ragged hole in the grey-green skin. Something black and sticky clearly visible inside. The gash was nearly five centimetres wide by seven tall, according to the black-and-white scale held alongside it for comparison. Looked as if something had been driven in through his stomach and out through... well, the back.
But the interesting thing was what surrounded it.
Little twisted scraps of skin ran around the edge of the hole — an old tattoo, its colours faded to blues and oranges. Whatever the Bloodsmith had impaled his victim with, it had torn through the tattoo on the way out, fragmenting it.
Wonder if that was fixable...?
Lucy parked her bum on the small desk and called up an image-editing app. Nothing as swish as Photoshop, but it would do. Hopefully. She loaded the last photo, zoomed in, and snipped out every bit of the tattoo that was still visible. Saved it to a new layer. Then played with the distorting tools — stretching and twisting the scraps until they were more or less back where they should’ve been.