Make Believe Read online

  She was on her own in the living room, the telly on, working, when he came back down. She closed her laptop as he wandered into the room.

  ‘Come here,’ she said and patted the sofa next to her.

  He slumped down and grabbed one of Eleanor’s toys, the rag doll which, with a flick of the material, could be changed from Little Red Hiding Hood to Granny to the Wolf.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked him.

  He swung the doll between his hands. ‘I don’t want Dad to have a stupid baby,’ he said.

  Me neither.

  ‘Dad will still love you, just the same,’ she said, ‘like when we had Charlotte. Love doesn’t run out – it just stretches.’

  ‘Like an elastic band?’ Tom said. He flipped the doll over, bared his teeth at the wolf face.

  ‘Sort of,’ Janine said.

  ‘Not for grown–ups, it doesn’t,’ Tom said, ‘like if you get a new wife or a new husband.’

  ‘Ah, no – not then, really. Dad might need a bigger car, though. That won’t stretch.’

  ‘Whoa!’ Tom said, excited at the prospect.

  ‘And you might like the baby when you get to know it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said solemnly, ‘I know I won’t.’ He yawned.

  ‘Bedtime,’ she told him.

  It was after ten when she admitted to herself that she wasn’t going to get any more done tonight. She’d been staring at the pictures on her laptop for long enough. Claire Wray and Sammy. But she was too tense to go to bed. She was fed up with Pete and strung out about the investigation. And life, even with four kids to cope with, was very lonely sometimes. What she needed was some distraction. A bit of R and R. Then she had an idea. She rang Pete and asked him to come over: something had come up at work.

  She went to get changed.

  His face when he set eyes on her, in her party gear, was a picture.

  ‘I thought you said work,’ he objected.

  ‘Work related,’ Janine smiled. ‘Tina OK?’ she said, giving him a chance to tell her about the baby.

  ‘What? Yeah … fine.’

  Coward. Why couldn’t he just have the guts to be straight with her?

  The taxi pulled up then and sounded its horn and she could make a smooth exit without saying something nasty that she’d regret. And without giving him chance to argue the toss about her going out and leaving him to babysit under false pretences.

  Good. Be good for the troops as well, she thought en route. A bit of solidarity when all eyes are upon us and people are muttering about competence and leadership and judgement.

  How had it come to this? Butchers thought. It was a nightmare. The function room was half empty, a disco blaring out. His mates from the job clustered around the bar, even the Detective Super was here and the boss had just made her appearance. Kim and her gang were ensconced in a corner already totally canned and cackling like demons.

  ‘Next round’s on me,’ the boss said to them all, then told the bar tender, ‘I’ll have a double G & T. See what this lot want – and your own.’

  Shap nudged Butchers and nodded towards Kim, ‘You want to get her name down for Wife Swap, mate,’ he said, ‘she’d be perfect.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Butchers told him though he had to admit Kim looked bigger, brassier than he remembered. But their brief courtship had been conducted through a haze of booze, tequila slammers and jagerbombs. The details were hazy.

  ‘So point her out then,’ the boss said.

  ‘The one in pink,’ Butchers could feel a blush spread through his face.

  ‘Nice,’ the boss said. Though it wasn’t a word Butchers would have picked.

  Detective Superintendent Hogg raised her glass to him. ‘Congratulations, Ian.’

  ‘You not speaking then, you and your betrothed?’ Shap back on his case, ‘Had a tiff already?’

  ‘No,’ Butchers said. And then of course he had to go over there and say hello to prove it. What was he meant to do anyway, at a do like this? Sit with Kim or stay with his own guests? Crossing the dance floor as, I Don’t Feel Like Dancing, by the Scissor Sisters rang out, the phrase dead man walking came to mind.

  The lasses were gossiping away as he drew closer, people leaning in to catch the dirt and then throwing their heads back in peals of laughter.

  ‘All right?’ Butchers nodded to Kim, to the group, as he reached the table and they all cracked up, howling as though he’d delivered a punch line. Feeling a complete twat Butchers wandered back to the bar, a sickly grin on his face and a feeling of dread heavy on his shoulders.

  Janine had got very merry, very quickly and was trying to talk to Richard and Millie above the noise of the bride-to-be and mates belting out a karaoke version of I Will Survive. ‘Millie,’ Janine said, ‘we had a tortoise called Millie when I was a kid. Is it short for something? Millicent?’

  ‘Emily, actually,’ Millie said and there was a cool tone in her voice.

  Just being sociable, Janine thought, no need to take umbrage. ‘You don’t use Emily for work. Don’t you think it’d be a bit more—’

  Richard broke in, ‘Same again? You do the honours,’ he said to Millie.

  ‘Thanks,’ Janine passed her glass over.

  ‘I think you’ve had enough,’ Richard said in her ear. Bloody cheek.

  ‘Piss off,’ Janine told him.

  ‘More what?’ Millie said to Janine.

  What had they been talking about? Janine had lost track, ‘Sorry?’

  Millie rolled her eyes.

  ‘So, how long have you two been an item?’ Janine tried again. ‘He acts like it’s a trade secret,’ she said to Millie, ‘not a married woman, are you?’

  ‘God, no,’ Millie said rudely. ‘Are you?’ Before Janine could respond she’d waltzed off to the bar.

  Richard glared at Janine.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Stop stirring it,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Janine said.

  ‘Maybe you should call it a night, before you make a fool of yourself,’ he said. And he left her there and went after Millie. Janine’s cheeks burned, she felt hurt and then angry and then decided to have another drink and sod the lot of them.

  Butchers looked pigsick, Shap noticed. His intended was strutting her stuff with her pals and some lads from uniform, Kim’s cleavage on full show.

  ‘You want to nip that in the bud, sharpish,’ Shap said nodding at the woman.

  Butchers shrugged, ‘ Not bothered.’

  ‘Not bothered? Her flashing her heirlooms at all comers.’

  Another shrug.

  ‘So why did you pop the question?’ Shap said, ‘Were you pissed?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It were news to me. Bad news,’ Butchers said.

  ‘You went ahead and stumped up for the ring, though,’ Shap said.

  Butchers grimaced.

  ‘You tight git,’ Shap said. ‘You made her buy her own ring? You are kidding me.’

  ‘Just till my salary comes through,’ Butchers said, then he added, ‘What’m I gonna do?’ He reddened, looked ever more awkward, scratched at the back of his neck.

  ‘Leave it to me, mate. I’ll have a word,’ Shap said.

  ‘Tony,’ Butchers protested but it was half-hearted.

  ‘It’s sorted. Trust me,’ Shap said.

  Kim’s transformation was instantaneous. From gaudy good-time girl to mouthy harridan as soon as she cottoned on to what Shap was saying, ‘Butchers – Ian – he’s made a bit of a mistake. When he proposed, it was a bit of a joke, yeah, joke that got out of hand. He wants out. No point in ruining both your lives, eh?’

  Eyes glinting, mouth set, Kim cursed like a sailor and scanned the room. Soon as she found Butchers she launched herself in his direction. Her friends, confused but sensing some excitement, followed in her wake.

  Shap watched as Kim laid into Butchers with her handbag, smacking him about the head and damning him to hell and back. Assaulting a police officer was an offence under any other
circumstances but given the situation who could blame her? Shap didn’t reckon anyone was about to slap her in handcuffs.

  Over by the bar the boss looked like she was still on a roll. She had been flashing the cash and buying them all drinks and packing a fair few away herself. Now she was flinging her arms around and Detective Superintendent Hogg was concentrating on her rather than the Butchers bust up. Then at that precise moment Hogg looked over to the dance floor and an expression of disgust and resignation rolled across her face. Lady Muck. That’s how Shap thought of her and here she was seeing the plebs at play and not enjoying it one little bit. Shap hadn’t liked the way Hogg dealt with the boss about the confusion in the identity of the dead child. A genuine mistake that, they’d all expected it to be Sammy Wray, yet Lady Muck behaved as though the boss had done something really brainless. Had given her a right bollocking. Never raised her voice but you could tell from the body language.

  Kim had drawn blood, a cut visible on Butchers’ face and her friends were getting nowhere fast trying to pull her off, so Shap reckoned he’d better lend a hand before anyone else got hurt.

  ‘I never took you for a party animal,’ Louise Hogg said.

  ‘Live it large, Louise, that’s what I say. Show ‘em we’re human,’ Janine said.

  ‘The team respect you. That’s hard to win but easily lost. You’re never really off duty.’ She got hold of Janine’s glass, edged it away.

  ‘That’s right,’ Janine said, ‘you can be all mates together, nice and chummy and next morning you’re in the office giving someone a bollocking.’ Like someone not a million miles away. Janine reached over for her drink and took a swig. She’d just finish this one, wouldn’t do any harm.

  ‘You have to set the tone, lead by example,’ Louise Hogg said carefully, ‘it can be tricky, knowing where to draw the line. And a case like this – it’s hard for everyone involved.’

  ‘You can say that again. We’re all working our balls off and getting nowhere. I’m telling the parents of a missing three-year-old that I’ve still no news and it makes me wonder if maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I can’t hack it anymore. Am I just in the job because it’s all I’ve ever done? And if I feel like this how am I going to keep up morale for that lot?’

  Janine looked across to see the big lass in pink flouncing off, Butchers mopping at his face with a handkerchief. Didn’t look like a match made in heaven. Her thoughts lit on Clive and Claire then Clive and Felicity, the way their marriage had soured and died, then on Pete. No, she admonished herself, I’m here for a good time and a good time is damn well what I’m going to have.

  Day Four

  Thursday May 1st

  Chapter 17

  Janine woke with a crushing headache, roiling guts and an uncomfortable sense of unease. She was too old, her liver too tired to cope with nights like that.

  Charlotte was burbling in her cot. It was six am. Janine left her to burble and went to shower. Her mortification grew as snatches from the evening came back to haunt her, her ill-fated attempts to tease Richard and Millie that had quickly unravelled. And Louise! Oh, Lord. Louise warning Janine and Janine playing dumb. And then to crown it all she had confided in Louise, blurted out her doubts. ‘Kids, promotion, a case like this. Usually, usually,’ Janine had found it hard to pronounce the word right, ‘I can hack it, wing and a prayer, yeah? Having it all, they call it having it all. Well … it’s too bloody much, sometimes …’

  ‘Do you need time off? It can be arranged.’

  ‘Nah! Just having a moan, Louise, honestly, I can cope. I will cope. I want to get the bastard. Bastards. Plural.’

  Shit! Had she offered to resign? Janine tested the notion but could not recall actually saying that.

  Did she tell Louise about Pete and Tina and the baby? God, please, no. There were some parts of her life she’d rather keep private. Louise was OK but she didn’t have kids, didn’t have that extra load, day in and day out. Janine didn’t know if that had been a conscious choice or whether it had just never happened or even whether it was something Louise had longed for that never came to pass. They weren’t close enough for that sort of conversation.

  Janine’s toes curled and she felt heat on the nape of her neck as she imagined what she might have shared, blithely overstepping the boundaries under the influence.

  There’d been some bother with Butchers too, not that she needed to feel any responsibility for Butchers’ behaviour. She had enough on her own plate. Butchers and the fiancée had left the party early on and never returned. Maybe he’d gone after her to make up.

  Janine wasn’t sure she was right for him. Butchers had been married once before, had a child as well, but that had all gone wrong and he didn’t see the child. It hadn’t looked like there was much love lost last night. Kim seemed to treat him as a joke. Not a good way to start a marriage – no respect. Butchers could be an idiot but he wasn’t a stupid man. Nor was he malicious. He played the clown at times, his size and demeanour made him an easy target for people’s jokes but he was a diligent detective.

  She thought of her own marriage. Did she still respect Pete? Not really. Certainly not the way he was dealing with the whole baby situation. She rinsed the shampoo from her hair wincing as the movement of her head backwards made the pounding behind her eyes even more violent.

  She wouldn’t have been so peevish with Millie if she and Richard hadn’t been so condescending, as if suddenly instead of being Richard’s old mate, pals and colleagues, Janine had turned into some embarrassing maiden aunt or alcoholic neighbour to be tolerated and evaded as quickly as possible, passed on to someone else to deal with.

  As she turned off the shower, Charlotte cried for attention, a noise that pierced Janine’s skull and made her grit her teeth. She needed coffee and painkillers. Janine put on a bathrobe and went to pick her daughter up and wondered how soon she could rouse the nanny.

  She wasn’t the only one suffering judging by the state of the rest of them. Apart from Detective Superintendent Hogg, of course, fresh as a daisy and looking critically at Janine as Janine got herself some water. Janine smiled hello, determined to keep up a front of normality even while her mind was scrabbling around wondering what else she might have said or done in her drunken stupor. Lesson one – do not get pissed in front of the boss.

  Janine realized that she had left her laptop in the hall. Pete had stayed the night, bunking in the spare room, not something he did regularly but it meant he hadn’t had to stay up late waiting for Janine to get home and as it was his day off today he could take Eleanor and Tom to school, which they always liked. She rang and got his voicemail and left a message asking him to drop her laptop off at the station once he’d done the school run.

  Lisa and Butchers hadn’t arrived as she began the briefing on the murder. Not like either of them. Butchers had never been late in all the years she’d worked with him, and Lisa keen and energetic, wouldn’t dare be late, too eager to make the grade.

  ‘News has come through from Interpol,’ she told the team, ‘Dutch police have completed the comparison on the DNA profiles of missing Tomas Rink and our unknown victim. No match.’ Janine knew it had been a long shot, though she’d held out a sliver of hope because if the child had come in from another country, it would account for why no-one here had reported him missing.

  ‘Those we know with easy access to the crime scene are the Palfreys, the Staffords and the builders McEvoy and Breeley. We now have detailed statements from them and we also have house-to-house for the whole of Kendal Avenue plus testimony from Royal Mail staff, window cleaners, meter readers, Avon lady, the works. That little lot needs correlating and mapping out.’ The run of bad weather hadn’t done them any favours. Fewer people had been out and about, and when they were they didn’t linger. They were concerned with keeping dry, getting from A to B as quickly as possible. The heavy rain made it harder to see too, especially if you were driving. They’d got absolutely nowhere finding a primary crime scene.
And without the identity of the child they had no idea where to look. ‘Someone put that child there. They weren’t observed, so when did they get the chance?’

  ‘Paedos, boss.’ Shap began.

  ‘Sex offenders,’ she corrected him.

  ‘Them and all,’ he grinned. ‘Known individuals on the sex offenders register in the neighbourhood have been visited and interviewed. No-one’s done a bunk or raised any alarm bells with their probation workers, apart from this one perv who admitted breaching his licence by being within a hundred yards of a school.’

  ‘He admitted it?’ Richard asked. ‘Perhaps he owned up to that hoping to hide what he’d really been doing.’

  Had this been the bearded weirdo by the gate?

  ‘His story checked out,’ Shap said. ‘He’d travelled across town to Altrincham and spent the days indulging his fetid little fantasies outside a high school there. On the Saturday in question he did the same, loitering near the playing fields. His record’s for raping twelve and thirteen-year-old girls.’

  ‘A different profile from our victim,’ Janine said. She was distracted by Lisa’s arrival. ‘Late night, Lisa?’

  ‘I’ve been out with Sergeant Butchers, boss. He’s brought in Luke Stafford and Phoebe Wray.’

  What on earth! ‘Has he now?’ She felt a surge of irritation. She couldn’t blame Lisa, Butchers was her senior in rank so if he said jump, Lisa or any other DC would have to, unquestioningly.

  ‘Continue building a timeline for the crime scene and identify periods when the place was apparently deserted,’ Janine told the team, ‘there may have been opportunities for the killer to leave the body. Anyone need further guidance on tasks in hand see Sergeant Shap,’ she wound up briskly. She set off to see just what the hell Butchers was playing at.