Fever of the Bone

CHAPTER 5

Daniel Morrison had been indulged from well before the moment he’d been born. It would have been hard to imagine a child more wanted than he had been and neither expense nor consideration had been spared in the effort to make his life the very best it could be. During her pregnancy, his mother Jessica had forsworn not only alcohol and saturated fat but also hairspray, dry cleaning, deodorant and insect repellent. Everything that had ever been accused of being potentially carcinogenic had been banned from Jessica’s environment. If Mike came home from the pub smelling of cigarette smoke, he had to strip off in the utility room then shower before he could come near his pregnant wife.

When Daniel emerged from his elective caesarian section with a perfect Apgar score, Jessica felt justified in every preventative step she’d taken. She didn’t hesitate to share that belief with anyone who would listen and quite a few who wouldn’t.

The drive to perfection didn’t end there. Daniel’s every stage of development was accompanied by the age-appropriate educational toys and other forms of stimulus. By four, he was enrolled in the best private prep school in Bradfield, encased in grey flannel shorts, shirt and tie, maroon blazer and a cap that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1950s.

And so it continued. Designer clothes and fashionable hair-cuts; Chamonix in the winter, Chiantishire in the summer; cricket whites and rugby jerseys; Cirque du Soleil, classical concerts and theatre. Whatever Jessica thought Daniel needed, Daniel had. Another man might have put the brakes on. But Mike loved his wife - his son too, obviously, but not the way he adored Jessica - and so he chose the route that made her happiest. As she indulged Daniel, so he indulged her. He’d been lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of the mobile phone business back in the early nineties. There had been times when it had felt like the legendary licence to print money. That Jessica knew how to spend it had therefore never been an issue.

What was slowly beginning to dawn on Mike Morrison was that his fourteen-year-old son was not a very nice person. In recent months, it had become clear that Daniel was no longer happy to accept whatever Jessica decided was best for him. He was developing his own ideas about what he wanted, and the sense of entitlement that Jessica had bred into him meant he wasn’t happy to settle for anything less than the prompt and total fulfilment of his desires. There had been some spectacular arguments, most of which had ended with Jessica in tears and Daniel in voluntary exile in his suite of rooms, sometimes refusing to emerge for days at a time.

It wasn’t the arguments that bothered Mike, in spite of Jessica’s frustration and anger. He recalled similar rows in his own teens as he’d tried to assert himself in the teeth of parental opposition. What made him anxious was a suspicion that was hardening to a certainty that he didn’t have a clue what was going on in his son’s head.

He remembered being fourteen. His concerns had been pretty simple. Football, both watching and playing; girls, both real and imagined; the relative merits of Cream and Blind Faith; and how long it would be before he could wangle himself into a party where there was alcohol and dope. He hadn’t been a goody two-shoes and he’d been convinced that his own drift away from his parents’ expectations would help forge a connection when Daniel hit adolescence.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Daniel’s response to Mike’s attempts at bonding by sharing had been a shrug, a sneer and a complete refusal to engage. After one too many rebuffs, Mike had reluctantly accepted that he had no idea what was going on inside his son’s head or his life. Daniel’s dreams and desires, his fears and his fantasies, his passions and his proclivities were unfathomable to his father.

Mike could only guess at what occupied his son during the long hours they were out of each other’s presence. And because he didn’t like what his imagination conjured for him, he’d chosen to try not to think about it at all. He guessed that was entirely fine by Daniel.

He couldn’t have guessed that it was also just fine by his killer.

Some meetings were better held outside the workplace. Carol had always known it by instinct; Tony had provided her with a rational explanation. ‘Take people off their territory and it blurs hierarchies. They’re slightly off-balance but they’re also trying to show off, to make their mark. It makes them more creative, more innovative. And that’s essential in any unit where you want to keep ahead of the game. Keeping things fresh and inventive is one of the hardest things to achieve, especially in hierarchical organisations like the police.’

In a team like theirs, staying ahead of the curve was even more crucial. As James Blake had so pointedly reminded her, elite units were invariably under closer scrutiny than routine departments. Developing new initiatives that proved effective was one straightforward way to disarm their critics. Now the pressure was heavier than ever, but Carol trusted her crew to fight for their roles as hard as she would herself. Which was why she was taking orders for drinks in the private karaoke room of her favourite Thai restaurant.

More than that, she was practising something else she’d learned from Tony: choices and the way they’re made have the potential for revelation, even in the smallest degree. So this was a chance for her to check perceptions against knowledge, to see whether the things she thought she knew about her team were corroborated by what they chose and how they chose it.

Stacey Chen had been a no brainer. In the three years they’d been working together, Carol had never known their ICT wizard to drink anything other than Earl Grey tea. She carried individual sealed sachets in her stylish leather backpack. In bars and clubs whose drinks menu didn’t stretch to tea, she demanded boiling water and added her own bag. She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and, once she’d figured out what that was, she was utterly uncompromising about getting it. Her consistency also made it difficult to gauge her state of mind. When someone never wavered in their preferences, it was impossible to figure out whether they were stressed or elated, especially when they were as good at keeping things hidden as Stacey. It felt uncomfortably like racial stereotyping, but there was no denying that Stacey managed inscrutable better than anyone Carol had ever known.

After all this time she still had almost nothing to add to the bare facts of Stacey’s CV. Her parents were Hong Kong Chinese, successful entrepreneurs in the wholesale and retail food business. Rumour was that Stacey herself had made millions from selling off software she’d developed in her own time. She certainly dressed like a millionaire, with tailoring that looked made to measure, and there was an occasional flash of arrogance in her demeanour that showed another facet to her quiet diligence. If it hadn’t been for her brilliance with technology, Carol had to acknowledge she would not have chosen to work at close quarters with someone like Stacey. But somehow mutual respect had developed and turned their connection fruitful. Carol couldn’t imagine her team now without Stacey’s flair.

DC Paula McIntyre was clearly weighing up her options, probably wondering if she had the chutzpah to order a proper drink. Carol reckoned Paula would reject the thought, needing her boss’s good opinion more than she craved alcohol. Right again. Paula opted for a Coke. There was an unspoken bond between Paula and her boss; the job had inflicted damage on them both that went far beyond the normal experience of front-line police officers. In Carol’s case, the injury had been compounded by the treachery of the very people she should have been able to count on. It had left her bitter and angry, close to quitting. Paula too had considered leaving the job, but in her case the issue had not been betrayal but unreasonable guilt. What they had in common was that their route back to comfort in their chosen profession had been mapped out with Tony Hill’s help. In Carol’s case, as a friend; in Paula’s, as an unofficial therapist. Carol was grateful on both counts, not least because nobody was better at extracting information from an interview than Paula. But if she was honest, there had been a niggle of jealousy in there too. Pathetic, she chided herself.

And then there was Kevin. It occurred to Carol that, now John Brandon had retired, DS Kevin Matthews represented her longest professional relationship. They’d both worked the first serial killer investigation Bradfield Police had run. Carol’s career had skyrocketed as a result; Kevin’s had imploded. When she’d returned to Bradfield to set up the MIT, she’d been the one to give him a second chance. He’s never entirely forgiven me for that.

All those years and still she couldn’t buy him a drink without checking what his fancy was. One month it would be Diet Coke, the next black coffee, then hot chocolate. Or, in the pub, it would be cask-brewed real ale, or ice-cold German lager or a white-wine spritzer. She still wasn’t sure if he was easily bored or easily swayed.

Two members of the team were absent. Sergeant Chris Devine was lying on some Caribbean beach with her partner. Carol hoped her thoughts were a million miles from murder, but knew that if Chris had an inkling of what was going on here she’d jump on the first flight home. Like all of them, Chris loved what she did.

The final member of the team, DC Sam Evans, was unaccountably missing. Carol had either told or texted them all about the meeting, but none of the others seemed to know where Sam was. Or what he was pursuing. ‘He took a call first thing then he grabbed his coat and left,’ Stacey had said. Carol was surprised she’d even noticed.

Kevin grinned. ‘He can’t help himself, can he? The boy could take Olympic gold in paddling your own canoe.’

And this isn’t the time for demonstrating that the MIT isn’t so much a team as a collection of bloody-minded individuals who sometimes end up looking like a line-dancing set by accident. Carol sighed. ‘I’ll go and order the drinks. Hopefully he’ll be here soon.’

‘Get him a mineral water,’ Kevin said. ‘Punishment.’

As he spoke, the door opened and Sam hurried in, a computer CPU under one arm and a self-satisfied look on his face. ‘Sorry I’m late, guv.’ He swung the bulky grey box out and brandished it in front of his chest like the Wimbledon Men’s Singles plate. ‘Ta-da!’

Carol rolled her eyes. ‘What is it, Sam?’

‘Looks like a generic PC box, probably early to mid-nineties, given it’s got a slot for a five-inch floppy as well as a three-and-a-half-inch one,’ Stacey said. ‘Tiny memory by today’s standards, but enough for basic functions.’

Paula groaned. ‘That’s not what the chief means, Stacey. What’s it all about, that’s what she’s on about.’

‘Thank you, Paula, but I’ve not quite been rendered speechless by Sam’s arrival.’ Carol touched Paula’s shoulder and smiled, taking the sting out of her words. ‘As Paula says, Sam, what’s it all about?’

Sam plonked the CPU down on a table and patted it. ‘This little baby is the machine that Nigel Barnes swore didn’t exist.’ He pointed a finger at Stacey. ‘And this is your chance to put him away for his wife’s murder.’ He folded his arms across his broad chest and grinned.

‘I still have no idea what this is about,’ Carol said, knowing this was what she was meant to say and already halfway to forgiving Sam for his late arrival. She knew Sam’s tendency to go out on a limb was dangerous and bad for solidarity, but she found uncomplicated anger hard to sustain. Too many of his divisive characteristics were precisely the ones that had driven Carol so hard at the start of her own career. She just wished he’d get past the naked ambition stage and realise you didn’t always travel fastest when you were alone.

Sam tossed his jacket over a chair and perched on the table beside the computer. ‘Cold case, guv. Danuta Barnes and her five-month-old daughter went missing in 1995. Disappeared without a single validated sighting. The feeling at the time was that her husband Nigel had done away with them.’

‘I remember it first time around,’ Kevin said. ‘Her family were adamant that he’d killed her and the baby.’

‘Spot on, Kevin. He didn’t want the kid, they’d been fighting constantly about money. CID searched the house top to bottom, but they didn’t turn up a single bloodstain. No bodies. And enough gaps in the wardrobe to back up his story that she’d just done a runner with the baby.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Can’t blame them, they covered all the bases.’

‘Not quite all of them, by the looks of it,’ Carol said, a wry twist to her lips. ‘Come on, Sam, you know you’re dying to tell us.’

‘It came across my desk six months ago, just a routine review. I went round to see Nigel Barnes, but it turned out the file wasn’t up to date. He sold the house just over a year ago. So I asked the new owners if they’d come across anything unusual when they’d been doing the place up.’

‘Did you know what you were looking for?’ Kevin asked.

Sam tipped his head to him. ‘I did, as it happens. Back in ‘97, some eagle-eyed SOCO noticed that the computer monitor and keyboard didn’t match the CPU. Different make, different colour. Nigel Barnes swore blind that’s how he’d bought it, but the Stacey wannabe knew he was lying because the monitor and keyboard came from a mail-order brand that only sold complete packages. So at some point, there had to have been another CPU. I wondered whether the hard drive was still knocking around somewhere. But the new owners said no, the house had been stripped bare. Tight bastard even took the lightbulbs and the batteries out of the smoke alarms.’ He pulled a clown’s face of sadness. ‘So I thought that was that.’

‘Until your phone rang this morning,’ Paula chipped in. By now, they all knew how and when to prompt each other through their war stories.

‘Correct. Turns out the new owners decided to tank the cellar, which meant ripping off all the old plasterwork. And guess what was hiding behind the plasterboard?’

‘Not the old computer!’ Paula threw up her hands in mock amazement.

‘The old computer.’ Sam caught Stacey’s eye and winked. ‘And if it’s got any secrets to reveal, we all know who’s the woman to find them.’

‘I can’t believe he didn’t destroy it,’ Kevin said, his carrot-red curls catching the light as he shook his head.

‘He probably thought he’d wiped the hard disk clean,’ Stacey said. ‘Back then, people didn’t understand how much data gets left behind when you reformat the drive.’

‘Even so, you’d think he would take it with him. Or dump it in a skip. Or give it to one of those charities that recycles old computers to Africa.’

‘Laziness or arrogance. Take your pick. Thank God for them both, they’re our best friends.’ Carol stood up. ‘Nice job, Sam. And we’re going to need as many of those as we can muster over the next three months.’ Their expressions ranged from bewilderment to resignation. ‘Our new Chief Constable thinks MIT is too much of a luxury. That we don’t earn our keep because anybody can deliver results in the cold cases we work on when we’re not totally occupied with live jobs. That our talents should be at the service of the whole CID across the piece.’

The immediate response was a tangle of exclamations, none of them offering Blake’s position a shred of support. Their voices died away, leaving Sam’s, ‘Twat,’ to bring up the tail.

Carol shook her head. ‘Not helpful, Sam. I don’t want to go back to being part of a routine CID squad any more than any of you do. I like working with you all, and I like the way we structure our investigations. I like that we can be creative and innovative. But not everybody appreciates that.’

‘That’s the trouble with working for an organisation that rewards respect for the pecking order. They don’t like legitimised individualism,’ Paula said. ‘Misfit outfits like us, we’re always going to be in the firing line.’

‘You’d think they’d appreciate our clear-up rate,’ Kevin complained.

‘Not when it makes them look less efficient,’ Carol said. ‘OK. We have three months to demonstrate that MIT is the most effective vehicle to achieve the things we do best. I know you all give a hundred per cent on every inquiry we take on, but I need you to find something extra to help me justify our existence.’

They exchanged looks. Kevin stood up, pushing his chair back. ‘Never mind the drinks, guv. Better get cracking, hadn’t we?’