To Catch a Rabbit Page 2

  ‘Sean Denton, I’m the…’

  ‘PCSO, yes I know. Well, it must be nice to do a bit of proper policing for a change.’

  She smiled a tight smile and he was reminded of the girls in the top set at his secondary school, who dated older boys and played in the orchestra, unattainable middle-class girls who ignored boys like Sean or, worse still, pitied them.

  Burger was sitting in the passenger seat of the unmarked police car with one hand, holding a cigarette, hanging out of the open door. Lizzie’s car was parked further along the lay-by. Sean looked for a way to get round Burger without disturbing him, but the detective had parked right in front of the gap to the field. Sean found another section of hedge low enough to climb over. A bramble caught his trousers and nearly had him down for a second time, but not before he heard a snatch of Burger’s conversation.

  ‘Looks a lot like her. That’s all I’m saying. No. I’ll keep you out of it. Just thought you might want to know.’

  On the loose tarmac of the lay-by, Sean’s footsteps gave him away.

  ‘Hang on.’ Burger said to his caller.

  Sean kept walking towards Lizzie’s car and if there was any more to the conversation, he didn’t hear it. He stowed the evidence bag in the boot and took out the yellow plastic sharps box. When he turned back, Burger was out of the car, watching him.

  ‘If you pick up fag ends, you’ll burn your fingers,’ the detective growled.

  ‘Sir?’ Sean eyed the gap in the fence and the ragged section of hedge he’d just crossed. He opted for the gap, even though it meant squeezing past Burger, who showed no sign of moving.

  ‘You weren’t earwigging, were you?’ the DCI said.

  ‘No, sir.’ He was close now, breathing in the cigarette smoke that hung around them both.

  ‘Good.’ Burger suddenly grabbed Sean’s ear and twisted it tightly. ‘Because you’ve got to learn to mind your own fucking business in this job.’

  Then he let go, lowered himself back into the car and slammed the door. Sean heard the civilian radio come on, a talent-show singer belting out a ballad. His ear was burning.

  When Lizzie Morrison had retrieved everything she thought relevant, she told Sean to tape off the snack-bar trailer with blue and white incident tape. He stood back and looked at it. It was like a huge gift-wrapped present. Christ. He tried to shake the thought away. He wasn’t a sicko. He silently promised himself that he would never be that disrespectful or cynical, however many bodies he saw, and he made another promise, that he would never forget this dark-haired dead girl; his first.

  Bonfire Night: 6am

  ‘Now then, Phil, mate.’ On the other end of the phone, Johnny Mackenzie sounded like he’d been wide awake for hours. ‘I knew you’d be up.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘I’ve got a job on today,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Need a driver.’

  Philip Holroyd took his phone out to the landing and sat at the top of the stairs. Stacey was working late last night and he wanted to let her sleep. The glass above the front door framed a perfect, shiny rectangle of night sky and the cold air made the hairs on his legs stand up like a tiny forest.

  ‘Be up at the farm in fifteen minutes,’ Johnny was saying. ‘I’ll see you right on this one. Stacey said you could do with a bob or two.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ He shivered and flipped the phone shut.

  Stacey’s eyes flickered under a crust of yesterday’s mascara as Phil crossed the bedroom and scooped his clothes up from the floor. She half-smiled in her sleep and the little worry-line between her eyebrows almost disappeared. He went to get dressed in the bathroom. He was buttoning up his shirt, when Holly appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Getting ready for work sweetheart. Daddy’s got a job today.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No, ’fraid not. I’ll bring you something back.’

  ‘A rabbit,’ Holly said decisively and turned and went back to her bedroom.

  Phil cleaned his teeth and hoped he’d be back home in time to take Holly to the fireworks at the pub. His daughter was five and fearless. She’d been talking about it for days. As he dragged Stacey’s hairbrush back through his thick hair, he fancied he was receding a bit at the temples and around his widow’s peak, but at thirty-two there was still no sign of any grey. Picking up a purple hair elastic, he pulled his ponytail up and through. He sat on the edge of the bath, rolled a cigarette, licked it, sealed it and tucked it behind his ear. Tiptoeing down the stairs so he didn’t wake the dog, he stepped into his trainers and let himself out of the front door.

  Up at the farm, puddles filled the cracked concrete of the farmyard, lit only by the neon light from the office window. He dropped the butt of his cigarette and heard it hiss in the silence. He leaned his bike up against the pre-fab wall, opened the office door and stepped into Mackenzie’s world.

  Chapter Two

  In the office of The Refugee and Migrants Advice Centre in York (known as RAMA), Karen Friedman flicked the kettle on. It ticked and rumbled gently as the element fought with a build-up of limescale. Like most of the office fittings, it had seen better days. She went back to her desk while the water boiled and opened up a black box-file marked Asylum Refusal 3rd Quarter. The box was almost full. Her fingers thumbed through its contents until she pulled out a clear plastic wallet stuffed with documents. There was a sticker on the front in Jaz Kumar’s spidery writing:

  Rudo and Florence Moyo, Zimbabwe, Claim refused 18/10/07

  She’d tried to show him how to do the labels on the computer, but her boss was a Luddite at heart. Karen pulled the papers out of their cover and spread them out in front of her. There was a letter from a St. Jude’s Church, with a cheerful rainbow-coloured logo, offering to sponsor Mr and Mrs Moyo and their daughter, Elizabeth. The Reverend Wheatley was big on warmth, but short on details. She opened a photocopy of the Moyos’ asylum application form, meticulously filled out in black ink.

  ...and then I was hit many times across my back until I was bleeding...

  ...all this time I didn’t know where I was...

  ...that was when they took my daughter to be questioned. She was fourteen years old...

  The bubbling roar of the kettle reached its peak. Karen got up and crossed the uneven floor to where a box of peppermint tea and three mugs were lined up on the windowsill. She wondered if she would ever get used to the details of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. Nearly a year into the job, her caseload still gave her nightmares. Her face frowned back at her in the window. It was already dark outside. She’d give it another half hour and then she’d have to go home.

  The night sky over York was peppered with coloured fireworks. Karen got off the bus and hurried up the path that cut through to the school playing field. As she emerged opposite an embankment full of spectators, a rocket whistled up and burst into a shower of stars, bathing the faces of the crowd in green fluorescence. She spotted her own children, Sophie and Ben, open-mouthed, staring upwards. Behind them, one hand on Ben’s shoulder was Max. Her husband’s bald head reflected the light from the sky, turning from green to pink. Even in the chill of a November evening he didn’t wear a hat and if he felt the cold, he certainly didn’t admit it.

  The first time she saw him, he was on the dance floor at a wedding, wearing a tight 1950s suit that was somehow beyond fashion. She’d liked his smile and the way he flung his legs out when he danced. Sometimes she wondered how long they would have stayed together if she hadn’t found herself pregnant within just a few months, but it had worked out all right, for the most part. He’d done well, bought them a Victorian house on a good road, got the children into a good school. His word: good. She had to believe it was; it was costing them enough. Looking at him now, stiff, upright, under an immaculate black overc
oat, she understood why people often misjudged his age. Still in his early thirties, and four years her junior, he looked ten years older. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had begun, but along the way he’d morphed from an idealistic young architect into a middle-aged company man. Karen wasn’t stupid, she’d changed too, aged certainly, but after twelve years of marriage and three pregnancies, going back to work had made her feel younger.

  A huge explosion was followed by a burst of silver. The crowd let out ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, as stars fell like a waterfall. Karen looked up too and when she looked back towards the embankment, she could no longer see Ben. Max and their daughter Sophie were still watching the sky, but beside them was a gap. A taller boy pushed forward to get a better view. Karen scanned the crowd, but she still couldn’t see her son. She hurried round the side of the field, avoiding the launching area of used tubes and a taper-wielding teacher. She stumbled on unseen tussocks of long grass, glancing towards the embankment. There were parents and children she recognised: her next-door neighbour and his new wife, a group of mothers whom Karen knew by sight. There was still no sign of Ben. She had almost reached the crowd when everyone began clapping. The display was over. People began to move, the stillness of the watchers undone as they broke ranks. People surrounded her, saying goodnight to one another, catching up on gossip. Dry-mouthed, she pushed on.

  ‘Max!’ she called.

  Her husband turned. He nodded, gave her a wave.

  ‘Have you got Ben? Where’s Ben?’ She was at Max’s side.

  ‘He’s here somewhere.’ Max shrugged, he went to kiss her on the cheek, but she was already turning away.

  ‘Sophie? Where did Ben go?’

  Her daughter was looking down at her phone, thumbs dancing over the screen. ‘Oh, hi Mum. Dunno. He was here a minute ago.’

  Karen pushed between clusters of families, swallowing the urge to shout. The lights of the school building only reached the top of the embankment. Here, on the field, the dark deepened towards the river. She spotted a small boy in her son’s class.

  ‘Do you know where Ben is?’

  ‘Yes,’ the boy pointed behind her. At the same moment she felt a tug at her sleeve.

  ‘Mummy, you came!’ It was Ben, his eyes wide in the darkness. ‘You missed it.’

  ‘There you are!’ She pulled him close and stroked his hair.

  ‘You missed the Roman candle, it was awesome.’

  She tried to calm her breathing, hide her fear from him. ‘How come there’s no bonfire?’

  ‘Don’t know. Daddy said it was the healthy safety Nazis took it away.’

  ‘Health and Safety, and not Nazis, not real ones.’

  Karen took his hand and they wove through the other families, back to their own.

  The next morning, in the boardroom at RAMA, Florence Moyo sat with her elbows on the table and her head resting on her hands, as if it was too heavy to be held by her neck alone. She was a large woman, her eyes heavily lidded and circled by shadows. Karen stole glances at her in between taking notes. Mrs Moyo was five months pregnant and Mr Moyo was explaining to Jaz that they had reached the end of their patience and their hope. The refusal of their claim meant he had lost his right to work and soon they would lose their accommodation too. They had a teenage daughter, settled in a local school. They couldn’t go back to Zimbabwe, even if they wanted to. There were things that were hard to say out loud. A silence grew in the room.

  ‘Shall I...?’ Karen stood up.

  Jaz finished her sentence. ‘Get the leaflet, yes.’

  They had a leaflet to help people through the appeal process, step by step. As Karen left the room to get a copy from the shelf, Rudo turned to Jaz Kumar and began to lift his sweater.

  ‘You see what they did to me in my own country? How can I go back?’

  She pulled a chair up in front of the tall bookshelf in the office. As she put one foot on it to test it wasn’t going to wobble, a breath, no more than that, made her turn.

  ‘Can I help you perhaps?’ Florence Moyo’s voice was low, each consonant clearly enunciated. ‘Maybe I should steady that chair. It doesn’t look very safe.’

  ‘No. No, it’s fine, really.’ It came out more snappily than she’d intended.

  ‘You have children?’

  Karen nodded.

  ‘So you understand. It’s a habit. You will do anything to make sure they are safe. You find yourself mothering everyone. I’m sorry.’

  Yes, of course, Karen thought, of course you would do anything to keep your children safe. But you can’t always. She pushed the thought away.

  ‘My daughter is only fifteen,’ Mrs Moyo continued, her hands resting on the chair back, ‘but she has the look of someone twice her age. She has seen too much. Here she can be normal again.’

  Karen stood on the chair and reached for a magazine box on the top shelf. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘She works hard in school. Goes to the Girl Guides. She helps out.’

  ‘Nice. That’s nice.’ Karen took a copy of the leaflet. She hesitated about getting the whole box down and putting it somewhere more convenient, but the office was so tiny, there wasn’t a spare inch. ‘Thank you.’ She stepped down. ‘I wish my daughter would do something like that, but my husband, I mean, we don’t go to church or anything and they seem, mainly to…excuse me.’

  Mrs Moyo’s body filled the doorway, as if she wanted to hold Karen there, to forge some connection between them. Later Karen realised that it was to protect her from hearing what the men were talking about in the boardroom. Little did Mrs Moyo know that Karen would be writing it all up for Jaz as soon as they had left and she would soon know every painful detail.

  Chapter Three

  At nine in the morning, there was only one other occupant of the staff canteen and Sean Denton thought it would be rude to ignore her. But he wasn’t at all sure whether she would acknowledge him. Crime scene manager Lizzie Morrison might just think it was beneath her to share a table with a PCSO.

  ‘All right?’

  He hovered, ready to go on to the next table, depending on the response. She was probably too well brought up to tell him to get lost, but she might still freeze him out. He wouldn’t mind having a chat with her. In fact, if he was honest, he’d been looking for an opportunity for the last three days. If he could just talk to her about that dead girl, then maybe he wouldn’t feel so bloody haunted. The girl’s face was there in front of him when he closed his eyes at night. When he woke, there was a second or two when everything felt the same as it always had, until it dawned on him that everything had changed. He’d seen a body. He needed to know whether Lizzie still saw her too.

  She was reading the paper and flashed him an automatic smile before returning to the page in front of her. He sat down.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he ventured, ‘about that girl.’

  ‘Have you? There’s a SOCO going down this afternoon to dust for prints. We’ll see if he finds anything, but it’s down as an overdose, nothing suspicious, so don’t hold your breath.’ She met his gaze. ‘There was DNA from over fifteen different subjects on the bed sheet. Semen.’

  He swore under his breath and saw her smile. She’d meant to shock him and she’d succeeded.

  ‘The prints on the needle were hers.’

  ‘So.’ He blew on his coffee, squinting through the steam. ‘We’re looking at an accidental overdose by a woman who was, what, on the game?’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘What are they dusting for?’

  ‘Rule out foul play,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I had to push to get Burger to agree.’

  ‘Why was she outside?’

  ‘There’s another question you need to ask first.’

  ‘How long had she been dead?’ he offered.

&nb
sp; ‘Good question. Twelve to eighteen hours. It’s not easy to be exact, especially at this time of year. One day can be sunny and the next freezing; decomposition can be slowed or accelerated, depending.’

  He thought back to the weather on the day before they found her.

  ‘It was sunny.’ He’d helped his nan peg out the washing in the back garden; a good drying day, she’d called it. ‘Maybe the girl sat on the step to shoot up and enjoy the last of the afternoon sun.’

  ‘You’d make a great detective.’ Lizzie’s smile seemed genuine.

  Sean took a sip of coffee and occupied himself with the little plastic stirrer. He wasn’t going to tell her that he didn’t think he could pass all the tests. It wouldn’t have crossed her university-educated mind.

  ‘I never thought…I don’t know, that I’d be doing that sort of work, as a support officer I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It looks like our friend Burger doesn’t exactly follow procedure.’ Lizzie folded her paper and stood up.

  ‘Who was she?’

  Lizzie shrugged. ‘We don’t know. She had no ID. Burger says she’s not known to the police. She was in her mid-twenties, Chinese, and her clothes were all from British shops.’

  ‘I wonder if anyone will come for her?’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath. Unless someone in Vice can ID her. A drug-addicted prostitute from the Chinese community isn’t likely to have stayed close to her family.’

  He shook his head. Chasebridge wasn’t just his beat; it was where he grew up. He’d played all over the estate, crossed the potato field behind the lay-by with his mates, and gone off exploring in the woods. Who would have thought there’d be a brothel in a snack bar trailer, right under his nose?