Beneath the Bleeding

bonds. Recently, he’d found out just how strong.

Friday

The dirty grey city sky was starting to pale on the far side of town when Carol pulled up in the shadow of the Grayson Street stand. Before she had even turned off her engine, a uniformed officer, rendered squat by the weight of equipment on her belt, was heading in her direction. Carol got out, fully expecting what she heard. ‘I’m sorry, you can’t park here,’ the officer said, weary tolerance in her voice.

Carol produced her warrant card from the pocket of her leather jacket and said, ‘I’m not going to be long.’

The young female officer was blotchy with embarrassment. ‘Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t recognize you…’

‘No reason why you should,’ Carol said. ‘I’m out of uniform.’ She gestured to her jeans and construction boots. ‘I didn’t want to look like a cop.’

The uniform gave an uncertain smile. ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be parked there?’ she said, clearly knowing she was chancing her arm.

Carol laughed. ‘Good point. And if my time wasn’t so tight, I’d move it.’ She walked on towards the railings where the flowers, cards and soft toys swamped the pavement, so deep in places there was barely enough room for one person to pass without stepping into the road.

There was no doubt that it provoked a complicated emotional response. Her work had conditioned Carol against knee-jerk sentiment. You couldn’t indulge in that and do her sort of job. Cops, firefighters, ambulance crews–they all had to learn early on not to be sucked into the genuine, personal grief of those they came into contact with. They had a level of inoculation against the seas of public emotion that greeted events like the death of Diana and the Soham murders. Theoretically she knew that each life snuffed out prematurely was equally valuable. But when it came to the murder of someone like Robbie Bishop–someone young, someone talented, someone who gave pleasure to millions–it was hard not to feel more anger, more sorrow, more determination to put things as right as she could.

She’d seen glimpses of sections of it behind TV reporters, but Carol had had no idea of the scale of the display outside the football ground. It moved her, but not because of its sentimental appropriation of grief. It moved her because of its pathos. The soft toys and cards were spattered with specks of dirty water sprayed by the tyres of passing cars, sodden with the overnight rain. Strewn with wilted flowers, the pavement had started to resemble a fly-tipping site.

This early in the morning, she was the only worshipper at the shrine. A few cars dawdled by, their drivers paying little attention to the road. Slowly, she walked the length of the railings. At the far end she stopped and pulled out her phone. She was about to press the ‘call’ button when she thought better of it. Given he was in an NHS hospital, Tony was probably already awake. But if he was asleep, she didn’t want to wake him. That was how she rationalized it, shoving her phone back in her pocket impatiently.

The truth was, she didn’t want to have to get into it with him again about the slender connections between Robbie Bishop and Danny Wade. Being stuck in hospital was boring him so much that he was inventing phantoms to stimulate his brain. He wanted something to occupy him, and so he’d allowed himself to be carried away with a level of coincidence he’d have laughed at in other circumstances. Instead of dismissing it, he was seeing serial killers where none existed. It was, she supposed, only to be expected. It was what he did best and probably what he missed most. Carol wondered how long it would be before he could get back to work, even if it was only part time. At least the insane of Bradfield Moor might keep his own demons at bay.

She could live in hope. And in the meantime, she could trust her own instincts. Instincts, she reminded herself, that had been honed by the experience of working as closely with Tony as she had. She didn’t always have to run her ideas past him for validation. She pulled the phone out again and dialled. ‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘Sorry to bother you at home. On your way in, I want you swing by uniform and organize some bodies to come down to Victoria Park and take photos of the stuff here. I want every card and letter and drawing photographed and anything that seems at all dodgy collected and brought back for our team to take a look at. See you later.’ She closed her phone and walked back to the car. Time to go home and change into the plain-clothes uniform. Time to prove to herself that she could still work the hard ones without Tony when she had to.

Stacey Chen was invariably first into the office. She liked to commune with her machines in peace and quiet. When she walked into the office that Friday to find Sam Evans already there, the kettle boiled and an Earl Grey teabag ready in her mug, she was instantly on her guard. It was true that it didn’t happen often on this team, but everywhere else she had been assigned, colleagues were always lining up to ask favours. Everybody needed what the electronics could do for them, but none of them could be bothered to figure out how to make the computers really work for them. They just used her as a short cut. And it pissed her off more than she ever showed.

She accepted the cup of tea with chilly gratitude, then set up in hiding behind her twin monitors, pausing only to hang the jacket of her severe Prada suit on a hanger. Sam seemed to be working quite happily in front of his own machine, so Stacey let her guard drop and instead focused on her deep analysis of the inner secrets of Robbie Bishop’s hard drive. There were some photographs he’d recently deleted, and she was determined to make sense of the fragments remaining. Probably nothing, but Stacey never liked admitting defeat.

So absorbed was she that she didn’t even notice Sam get up and come over to her workstation until he was right next to her, leaning over her, smelling of citrus and spice and maleness. Stacey felt her muscles tensing, as if she was steeling herself against a blow. Don’t be stupid, she told herself. It’s Sam, for God’s sake. It’s not like he’s going to ask you out or anything. Much as she would have liked that, if she could have got past the idea that he was after something in virtuality rather than reality. ‘What is it?’ she said, nothing welcoming in her tone.

‘I just wondered if you wanted a hand, sifting through all Robbie’s emails and stuff.’

Stacey’s eyebrows shot up. She couldn’t remember Sam ever offering to do any sort of electronic scut work. ‘I know what I’m doing, thanks,’ she said, stiff as a clerical collar.

Sam held his hands up in what she took to be a placatory gesture. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘All I meant was I could help with actually reading stuff. I totally defer to you when it comes to anything complicated. But I thought maybe you could use some help with the bits that any old plod could access.’

‘I’m fine, thanks. Everything’s under control. It’s not like Robbie Bishop was a master of his machine,’ Stacey said, not hiding her contempt for those less computer-literate. Maybe if telling him directly she didn’t need or want his help didn’t work, she’d have more luck with the indirect insults.

Sam shrugged. ‘Please yourself. It’s just that I can’t get any further with what I’m working on till somebody gets back to me with more info. And let’s face it…’ He did have a good smile, she thought. Very beguiling, if you