Deity

‘Not. .’ Poole tightened his lips around the rest of the sentence.

‘Not yet.’ Brook took a long pull on his cigarette. ‘Let me speak plainly, Len. Sergeant Grey is no friend of mine. He’s a time-serving dinosaur and has no place in a modern Force. However, this job does something to people and he may once have been a decent officer. So, if he’s a friend of yours, can I suggest, for the sake of his pension, that you never mention even the promise of money changing hands again?’

Poole nodded and stood to leave.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’ve said my piece.’

‘Then it’s our turn. Tell me about Russell.’

Poole reluctantly sat back down. ‘I hardly know him and that’s the truth, Inspector. When he was two or three I saw him quite often when Yvette moved to Chester. He was a cheerful little chap if a bit shy. When he got to five or six and started school, I barely ever saw him.’

‘Because that’s the time you met your wife.’

‘I’d already moved to Uttoxeter, met Eileen and we got married.’

‘But Yvette still followed.’

‘Yes. But I hardly ever saw her unless I ran into her in the town by accident. I was working in Derby, see. In 2003 we moved back to North Wales. Yvette followed and I’d give her help getting set up, but they couldn’t settle in one place because of Russell’s problems.’

‘The bullying?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And when you moved back here six months ago, you set Yvette up again.’

‘I didn’t even know she was here, believe me. Do you think I would have put her in a house so close to Alice, and let Russell attend the same college as my future stepson? I had no idea, until three months ago when she turned up on my doorstep asking for money — that’s the truth.’

‘Which doorstep?’

‘Not Alice’s, thank God. The house I’m renting in Station Road.’

‘So she found you and started blackmailing you again.’

Poole stiffened. ‘I told you. I’m not Russell’s father. It wasn’t blackmail, I — ’

‘- felt sorry for her,’ finished Brook sarcastically. ‘Tell me, did you get Russell’s DNA from his toothbrush? It was missing when we processed Yvette’s house.’

Poole smiled. His smugness had returned. ‘I didn’t steal Russell’s toothbrush. The lad must have taken it with him.’

Brook gazed at Poole, choosing his words. ‘What have you got on Yvette?’

Poole sneered at Brook. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Yes, you do. Your relationship with Yvette is tawdry and exploitative. And whether Russell is your son or not, Yvette has every reason to shout about you from the rooftops, especially if you’ve stopped paying for her silence. But has she done that? No. Has she spoken to Alice? No. She didn’t even admit to us that you’d told her about the body in the river. But that’s not the worst of it. The fact she’s prepared to sleep with you without being paid. .’

‘How dare you!’

‘Don’t bother. You say she’s unstable but I say she knows exactly what she has to do to survive. That’s why you’re worried, isn’t it? You know something about her that’s keeping her in line but that knowledge also makes you a target. What is it?’

‘Inspector, you’re barking up the wrong tree,’ Poole told him.

‘Is it something to do with Yvette having no photographs of her son?’

Poole bristled, unable to look at Brook. ‘I wouldn’t know about that. She said they got lost in the move.’

‘So you asked her about that as well?’

Poole glared back at Brook and stood to leave. ‘Goodbye, Inspector.’

‘What do you think?’ asked Noble, back in the Incident Room.

‘I think Len is a very easy read,’ replied Brook, firing up his computer.

‘Think he’s lying about when he started having sex with Yvette?’

‘Wouldn’t you, if you exploited a fourteenor fifteen-yearold girl in your care?’

‘If only we could get a DNA comparison between Len and Russell.’

‘That’s what worries me, John. He was too confident on that score. I think he was telling the truth.’

‘About not being Russell’s father?’

‘About believing he’s not Russell’s father.’

‘Then why support Yvette financially all these years?’

Brook shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Guilt maybe. Can you cue up the last broadcast for me? There’s something I want to see.’

DC Cooper came in at that moment and dropped a large envelope on Brook’s desk. ‘One enlarged photograph of Russell Thomson in his bedroom.’

Brook thanked him and absentmindedly pulled it from the envelope. It showed Russell’s face in close-up but in no greater detail, but Brook wasn’t interested in that. He took out a magnifying glass and looked again, holding the lens against the background by Russell’s left ear.

‘What is it?’

‘This picture. Behind Russell’s head there’s a piece of a film poster. I think it’s the missing one. Can you read that?’

‘A-N-D something, something R-A-O-H-S,’ read Noble.

Brook wrote it out. ‘I need one of those crossword solvers.’

‘What about Google? Type the first word and see what it suggests.’

‘But what if AND is also the end of a word?’

‘Then guess. Hand, sand, land, band.’

Brook tried HAND and various permutations of smaller words like ‘in the’ and ‘of the’ but was offered nothing that created a match with the end word. He tried again with SAND but came up blank again.

Noble started the recording of that afternoon’s Deity broadcast. ‘Sir.’

Brook closed his laptop and looked up at the screen as the first newspaper flashed up its sombre headline — bullied girl takes overdose. A moment later, Brook pointed at the screen.

‘There. Pause it.’

‘UNKNOWN BOY HANGS HIMSELF,’ read Noble.

‘Right. The Denbigh Examiner,’ said Brook, making a note. He skimmed what he could read of the story but it was just an expanded version of the headline.

‘Unknown,’ said Noble. ‘That’s pretty unusual in this day and age.’

‘For a teenager anyway,’ added Cooper. ‘No parents? No dental?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘An orphan then,’ said Noble. He looked up excitedly at Brook. ‘St Asaph’s.’

Brook smiled. ‘Just a few miles away. Okay, move it on. Stop.’

Noble halted the film at the picture of the youngster hanging, neck snapped.

‘Pretty gruesome for a local paper,’ said Cooper.

Brook nodded. ‘That’s what struck me. They normally show them alive and well.’

Noble chewed the inside of his lip. ‘To be fair, it’s not actually in the local rag. It’s just a random photograph on its own. I don’t see a caption, or any text.’

‘Good spot,’ said Brook. ‘It’s not from the Denbigh Examiner. But it’s been placed next to it so we unconsciously accept it as part of the package. It doesn’t belong.’

‘You think someone from Deity has shuffled this picture into the pack,’ said Cooper.

‘I do.’

‘Why?’

‘To tell us this boy’s death means something, maybe,’ said Noble.

‘I think so,’ said Brook. ‘I think we need to speak to the local police in Denbigh. This looks like a Scene of Crime photograph to me.’