Little Darlings

‘Did you go out in those this morning?’

‘Um,’ said Harper, slipping the rubbery five-toes trainers off and her sensible shoes on. ‘No?’

Thrupp shook his head almost all the way to the lift. She started to jog to keep up with him, his enormously long legs giving him an advantage when it came to striding.

As Harper and Thrupp buzzed across town, down into the valley to quell disaster and keep the peace, the computer in Harper’s office blinked and went to sleep. The email from Records containing Lauren’s 999 call shuffled unnoticed into the ‘read’ section of her inbox, pressed down by the weight of the unread, soon to be consigned to the oblivion of Page Two.

Chapter 9 (#ulink_442393b3-97e9-5aae-b470-4e826ba7bc36)

The man lay half on the pavement, limbs twisted, head smashed. Blood pooled darkly, forming tendrils that crawled towards a drain. Harper started walking towards the body but was stopped by a uniformed officer.

‘Sorry, Jo. We need to wait for bomb disposal to finish.’

The jacket the dead man wore was made of black nylon, and clung to what was left of him like a second skin. However, procedures were important. It was a further fifteen minutes before the bomb squad could safely confirm what could be plainly seen: there was no explosive device in the man’s jacket. There never had been. At the all-clear she stepped forward to close the staring eyes, then helped to cover the body before it was bagged and transported to the morgue.

The first journalist on the scene was also a friend, Amy Larsen, veteran of a great many of Harper’s crime scenes over the last three years and chief reporter for the big local weekly, the Sheffield Mail. Amy, who as usual was fully made up, chic and elegant in a pencil skirt and heels, held her recording device in front of Harper’s mouth. The sergeant frowned at it and tried to move away but Amy followed her.

‘Tell me about the kid. What brought him to this?’

Harper said, ‘We don’t know much about him at the moment. He’s young, probably in his early twenties. That’s all we’ve got.’

‘A tragic suicide? Nothing more ominous than that?’ Her ironic tone implied she didn’t believe that line for a second.

‘We’re investigating the circumstances, the identity of the victim and so on. But at this moment we don’t think there’s anyone else involved.’

‘So why did the police decide to bring in the armed response team?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

Amy rolled her eyes and huffed. ‘What can you tell me?’

‘Only that we are treating the death as unexplained, but not suspicious.’

Harper would have said more, but she was trained to minimise potentially inflammatory lines of questioning when dealing with the press. She was supposed only to release the very blandest of information. Amy knew this. It was a game they played: a gentle volley of questions and responses, the journalist trying for the topspin, the police officer stoically returning straight lobs.

‘Come on, Harper. This wasn’t just a suicide, was it? The police don’t behave like that, shutting the roads, evacuating buildings – not for a jumper. I’m sure I saw a bomb-disposal unit. Did you think he had a bomb?’

Harper put her hand over the top of the recording device. ‘I can’t tell you anything more about the incident. We don’t even know his name yet. I’m sorry.’

Amy rolled her eyes, turned off the recorder and put it in her handbag. She placed her fists on her hips.

A car drove past, the passenger staring, fishlike, at Harper and Amy. The fire service had cleared off an hour ago, and most of the patrol cars had gone too. Once the ambulances had driven away, there wasn’t much to look at. Of course, the fact that there was nothing to see didn’t stop people’s natural curiosity; they wanted the full story, with details, the juicier the better. That was where Amy came in, to dig out the facts and relay them to the public via the Mail. Unfortunately for her, this time Harper wouldn’t be the one to tell. That alone wouldn’t stop her, though: Amy was resourceful. Harper had learned that much, since the journalist had first appeared, notebook in hand, at the scene of a suspected murder up in Attercliffe, brandishing her Mail ID and picking through the debris-strewn back alley in a pair of unsuitable shoes. The dead woman in that case, a heroin user, turned out to have taken an accidental overdose, but the police couldn’t identify her. All they found on the body was a silver heart necklace, probably left behind by whoever took her wallet and phone because of its unusual engraving, which would have made it tricky to shift on the black market. On the back of the heart was a date, and the name Holly-May.

The name didn’t match any missing person’s report. Accidental death, not being a crime, didn’t come under police budgets for investigation, and the DI reassigned Harper the moment the coroner’s verdict was reached. The dead woman might never have been identified if the frustration of being pulled from the case hadn’t still been on Harper’s mind the next week, when she’d bumped into Amy at a crime scene.

‘They won’t let me investigate, because of budgets. Ridiculous. The body will just stay in the morgue indefinitely.’

‘Can I see the necklace?’

Harper didn’t see why not.

She’d almost forgotten about it by the time the journalist came swinging into the office in her heels, handing over the address of the dead woman’s parents with a flourish.

‘How did you get this?’

‘Persistence,’ said Amy, shrugging. Then she told Harper how every day, for twenty minutes, she’d sat down with a list of jewellers and called them, one after another until she found the one who had engraved the necklace. It had taken four months. ‘You owe me a drink,’ she’d said, smiling in a way that made Harper wonder about what she meant by ‘drink’. A drink between friends? Colleagues? Or something else? There’d been a pause, a moment, when the two women had locked eyes and something had passed between them. Harper had felt it, a low, melting sensation in her belly. She could have reached across, touched the other woman’s hand, said, Sure, let’s meet up later, and that would have been that, one way or the other. But something stopped Harper from following her usual script.

Every time they’d met since, Harper had thought about making the date. But she hadn’t done it, and it hung between them, an unspoken thing that Harper thought about more often than she felt she ought to. She thought about it now. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. She only knew that she liked Amy. Probably too much. It felt dangerous, that feeling, something she couldn’t control, that got bigger even as she tried to banish it, to tell herself that these were the feelings that hurt you eventually, that destroyed lives, that needed to be ignored. She’d followed her heart once, when she was too young to know how completely a heart could be shattered. She wasn’t going to do it again. Besides, they had something good going, professionally, and it would be a shame to spoil it.

Amy glanced towards the uniforms loading the van, and Harper could tell she was already checking them out, trying to discern who might be likely to fall for those charms and spill the beans.

Then Amy looked back at Harper and frowned. She stepped up closer, close enough that Harper could smell her perfume. Her eyes sharpened as she examined Harper’s face. ‘What is it?’

‘What’s what?’ said Harper.

‘There’s something the matter. Tell me.’

‘I’ve just had a bit of a shitty day, I suppose.’

‘Oh? You mean, apart from this?’ She gestured over her shoulder at the two council workers hosing the road.

Harper nodded. She pondered how much she ought to tell Amy about the Lauren Tranter case; she didn’t want her thinking it was a story she could report in the newspaper. ‘Can we speak as friends?’ said Harper.

Amy said, ‘Of course.’

‘First thing this morning, there was this attempted abduction at the maternity ward. Identical twins.’

Amy scrabbled in her bag for the recording device. ‘Now, this is news. Tell me everything.’

Harper grabbed hold of Amy’s arm. ‘No. I can’t. I mean, it was a false alarm. There’s nothing to report.’

‘So why are you telling me about it?’

She had a point. ‘I don’t know.’

Amy looked down at where Harper held her by the wrist. She gave a half smile, raised her eyebrows. Harper let go, her cheeks flushing. Amy’s skin was warm and soft, and Harper’s grip had left a small pink mark that she wanted to stroke. Maybe even to kiss it better. Harper said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and searched Amy’s face, wondering what was happening, if anything was happening. But the moment, seemingly, had passed.

‘Come on, Joanna. You’re usually so pragmatic about the job. Just now, you went right up to that poor dead guy and closed his eyes. With your bare hands. I couldn’t have done that.’

‘I guess we all have our soft spots. Suicides, I can just about handle. But anything to do with babies being abducted, well. It gets to me.’

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and Harper thought, this is it. She’s going to ask me the question, right now. And I’ll spill it, every bit. She’ll say, why does it get to you, Joanna? You don’t have any children, do you? And I’ll say, I did once, but I lost her. I was too young to know what it would mean, or that I even had a choice. I let them take her, and it was like part of me had been taken: a limb, or half of my heart. After that I stopped thinking about it, because I had to, in order to survive. But sometimes I forget to not think about it, and it’s like it happened yesterday. It’s like I have to get her back, and the feeling won’t go away until I do. Even though it’s twenty-six years too late to change anything.

Behind them the van doors slammed shut. Only a couple of officers remained, and they were heading towards their vehicles, speaking into radios, off to the next thing.

Amy said, ‘Look, I just need to have a quick chat with one of these guys before they disappear. How about we meet up for a coffee? Tomorrow? Next week? I’ll be in touch.’

‘Great,’ said Harper, watching as Amy scooted across the road after one of Harper’s colleagues, already clutching the recorder. ‘Text me?’ said Harper, but Amy was too far away to hear.