granary in the toaster and checked the answer-phone. Frankie. Shit. Bev had forgotten to call that morning to put off their fun for another day. Seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Thanks a bunch, sister.” Not a trace of Frankie’s Italian accent. Not good, then. Bev closed her eyes. Her mate, Frankie Perlagio, was closer than a sister. And she’d let her down. Again. It was too late to call now.
Her mum’s voice was next: Emmy. “Can you make lunch tomorrow, love? Roast beef and Worcesters. I’ll even do you a treacle pud.” The pause was deliberate. And the lowered voice. “Sadie misses you, Bev. She’d love to
see you.”
Bev clenched her fists. Another stick to beat herself with. Sadie, her gran, was scared of her own shadow since a vicious battering nine months back. An intruder connected to a case Bev was working had broken into the family home. The bastard smacked
Sadie round the face before hacking off her lovely long hair. Bev doubted her gran would ever fully recover.
She sighed. The chances of making lunch – even Emmy’s signature Worcester puds – were as good as Bin Laden doing Big Brother. The bread popped up, burned to a crisp. She slung it in the swing bin and headed for bed. Ten minutes later
she was sprawled fully dressed on top of the duvet, snoring for Europe.
The Baby Fay case files lay open across the pillow next to her.
It was twenty-two hours since Baby Zoë had last been seen alive.
Bill Byford was gazing at the sprawl of city lights glittering like diamonds and ice in the indigo distance. Sleep was a long way off too. He’d got up, made tea, brought it back to the bedroom. He’d been looking out for
twenty minutes, looking back nearly twenty years.
The superintendent didn’t need the case files to remember Baby Fay. He’d been a uniformed sergeant when she’d been snatched in ’88. He and another officer had found the body. Byford had come close to a career change. Only the
thought of watching a sick pervert go down for the rest of his life had kept him going. And the loving support of his wife. Margaret had died six years ago. Byford still missed her like a limb.
An anonymous letter had told the police to search a building site over in Chelmsley Wood where the foundations for a new school were being laid. Without the tip-off they’d probably never have found the baby. The tiny body had been stuffed into
filthy sacking; covered in concrete dust, she’d resembled a miniature mummy. The pathologist recorded twenty-three broken bones, eleven cigarette burns and indications of sexual abuse. Fay lived in Byford’s head now. Always would.
The baby had been snatched from her cot in the middle of the night from a white, middle-class family in Northfield. Fay was six months old and the parents’ only child. Within a year of burying her, they’d separated. The father took off to
America, if Byford remembered right. The mother took an overdose. She died three weeks later without regaining consciousness.
He pressed his head against the window, welcoming the cool on his clammy skin. It took three long weeks to find Fay. After eighteen years, they still hadn’t caught the evil monster who’d killed her.
10
“Brought you a stick of rock.”
Bev looked up from a desk that was in imminent danger of collapse from paper-fatigue. Oz’s smiling face was the last thing she expected to see poking round the incident-room door. She hoped, very much, that the rest of DC Khan was present in the
corridor. It was. He strolled in, looking considerably tastier than the proffered stick of sugar and E-numbers. Man in black, today: fitted linen trousers, torso-hugging t-shirt. Lucky t-shirt. It was easy to forget how staggeringly fit Oz was in the
flesh: classic bone structure, big brown eyes and first-degree brain. What more could a girl want? A peck on the cheek would be good. No one else was around. Not this early on a Sunday.
Bev had been in since 6am. Apart from a quick no-can-do-lunch
“Thanks a bunch, sister.” Not a trace of Frankie’s Italian accent. Not good, then. Bev closed her eyes. Her mate, Frankie Perlagio, was closer than a sister. And she’d let her down. Again. It was too late to call now.
Her mum’s voice was next: Emmy. “Can you make lunch tomorrow, love? Roast beef and Worcesters. I’ll even do you a treacle pud.” The pause was deliberate. And the lowered voice. “Sadie misses you, Bev. She’d love to
see you.”
Bev clenched her fists. Another stick to beat herself with. Sadie, her gran, was scared of her own shadow since a vicious battering nine months back. An intruder connected to a case Bev was working had broken into the family home. The bastard smacked
Sadie round the face before hacking off her lovely long hair. Bev doubted her gran would ever fully recover.
She sighed. The chances of making lunch – even Emmy’s signature Worcester puds – were as good as Bin Laden doing Big Brother. The bread popped up, burned to a crisp. She slung it in the swing bin and headed for bed. Ten minutes later
she was sprawled fully dressed on top of the duvet, snoring for Europe.
The Baby Fay case files lay open across the pillow next to her.
It was twenty-two hours since Baby Zoë had last been seen alive.
Bill Byford was gazing at the sprawl of city lights glittering like diamonds and ice in the indigo distance. Sleep was a long way off too. He’d got up, made tea, brought it back to the bedroom. He’d been looking out for
twenty minutes, looking back nearly twenty years.
The superintendent didn’t need the case files to remember Baby Fay. He’d been a uniformed sergeant when she’d been snatched in ’88. He and another officer had found the body. Byford had come close to a career change. Only the
thought of watching a sick pervert go down for the rest of his life had kept him going. And the loving support of his wife. Margaret had died six years ago. Byford still missed her like a limb.
An anonymous letter had told the police to search a building site over in Chelmsley Wood where the foundations for a new school were being laid. Without the tip-off they’d probably never have found the baby. The tiny body had been stuffed into
filthy sacking; covered in concrete dust, she’d resembled a miniature mummy. The pathologist recorded twenty-three broken bones, eleven cigarette burns and indications of sexual abuse. Fay lived in Byford’s head now. Always would.
The baby had been snatched from her cot in the middle of the night from a white, middle-class family in Northfield. Fay was six months old and the parents’ only child. Within a year of burying her, they’d separated. The father took off to
America, if Byford remembered right. The mother took an overdose. She died three weeks later without regaining consciousness.
He pressed his head against the window, welcoming the cool on his clammy skin. It took three long weeks to find Fay. After eighteen years, they still hadn’t caught the evil monster who’d killed her.
10
“Brought you a stick of rock.”
Bev looked up from a desk that was in imminent danger of collapse from paper-fatigue. Oz’s smiling face was the last thing she expected to see poking round the incident-room door. She hoped, very much, that the rest of DC Khan was present in the
corridor. It was. He strolled in, looking considerably tastier than the proffered stick of sugar and E-numbers. Man in black, today: fitted linen trousers, torso-hugging t-shirt. Lucky t-shirt. It was easy to forget how staggeringly fit Oz was in the
flesh: classic bone structure, big brown eyes and first-degree brain. What more could a girl want? A peck on the cheek would be good. No one else was around. Not this early on a Sunday.
Bev had been in since 6am. Apart from a quick no-can-do-lunch
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