hibernating in the corner of the jaw. It went into another bag. ‘I sec from the newspapers you’ve been searching for a small child. “Have you seen Baby Chloc?”’
‘That’s right,’ said Fry.
‘Well, I don’t know the sex of this child. But there’s one thing for sure — it isn’t Baby Chloe. This baby has been dead (or years.’
Fry nodded. She looked at the evidence bags containing the pink bonnet and the knitted white jacket found with the bones.
‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘the clothes it was wearing are brand new.’
By Friday morning, DC Gavin Murfin had still not come up with a match for the Snowman on the missing persons databases and was showing signs of giving up. There were the usual missing husbands and sons on the list. There were the middle-aged men who had succumbed to their midlife crises and walked
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out on the boring wife, and the teenagers who had suffered their midlife crisis early and walked out on the real world. And plenty more besides.
The trouble was that none of them sounded like the owner of the expensive suit and the brogues. Strangest of all, a house to house in Woodland Crescent had established that the man Grace Lukasz described had called at no other addresses except hers.
‘We’re going to get Mrs Lukasz in to make a formal statement/ said Diane Fry when she came back from talking to their senior officers. ‘There must be a clue there somewhere to who this man was, and what he wanted in Woodland Crescent.’
The Snowman enquiry and the hunt for Eddie Kemp’s associates in the double assault were taking up most of the resources that E Division had available. And they still had a missing baby to find, and nothing was more important than that. Meanwhile, undetected crimes and unresolved enquiries were piling up. The Crown Prosecution Service was kicking up a fuss about the delay in producing files for court cases, which they had to postpone.
Ben Cooper had more actions on the Snowmnan enquiry that morning. There were several more visits in Edendale, and a drive out to the Snake Inn to talk to the staff once more.
‘By the way, I think Eddie Kemp is going to find himself called in for questioning again,’ said Fry.
‘Did Forensics get something from his car?’ asked Cooper.
‘Nothing definite yet. But we badly need to be questioning somebody. Who’s going to make the decision, I’m not sure. It might be Mr Tailby, or it might be Mr Kessen. Talk about too manv chiefs and not enough Indians.’
y o
‘Are we going to get any help, or what?’
‘God, I hope so. But as for who’s going to organize that …’
‘I get the picture.’
Fry watched him sifting through the files on his desk. ‘Have you found anywhere to live yet, then, Ben?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes. I went to see a place last night. A flat on Welbcck Street, close to town. It belongs to Lawrence Dalcy’s aunt.’
‘Whose aunt?’
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‘Lawrence Dalev. He owns Eden Valley Books. You remember, where Marie Tennent bought her books?’
‘Oh, yes. So you did some private business while you were there, did you, Ben?’
‘Well, not really.’
‘And you bought some books as well, if I remember rightly.’
‘It didn’t take me two minutes.’
‘Better make up tor it with some interviews. There are plenty to be done.’
‘You know there’s still the Marie Tennent Hie outstanding?’ he said.
‘Mrs Van Doon won’t be getting round to her yet, so the inquest won’t open for a few days. It’s a matter of priorities. We have to move on with the Snowman. We have to get an identification. The woman can wait.’
‘That was a false alarm about the remains, then. Jt wasn’t Baby Chloc?’
‘No, this one was long dead.’
‘Poor beggar. What do you think? An unwanted child? Teenage mum?’
‘Never mind teenage they have them by the time they’re ten.’
The clothes, though …’
‘Forensics will tell us more,’ said Fry. ‘But they were new. It got out on the news bulletins last night, and we’ve been coping with phone calls about missing babies ever since.’
‘Nothing from the person who actually has Baby Chloe, I suppose?
‘No.’
‘If the clothes turn out to belong to Marie’s baby …’
‘OK, we’re still very concerned about Chloc. Officers visited all the neighbours last night, when they got home. No one knows anything about the baby. They’re going to take another look round the Tennent house today, just in case, and Marie’s mother is coming in this morning. She lives in Falkirk and says she hasn’t seen her daughter since not long after Chloc was born. Marie was due to go up to Scotland to visit her in the spring, but in the meantime they only communicated by
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phone, says Mum. We might get some more out of her when she arrives.’
‘Marie did have a baby then?’
