Fever of the Bone

respect had developed and turned their connection fruitful. Carol couldn’t imagine her team now without Stacey’s flair.

DC Paula McIntyre was clearly weighing up her options, probably wondering if she had the chutzpah to order a proper drink. Carol reckoned Paula would reject the thought, needing her boss’s good opinion more than she craved alcohol. Right again. Paula opted for a Coke. There was an unspoken bond between Paula and her boss; the job had inflicted damage on them both that went far beyond the normal experience of front-line police officers. In Carol’s case, the injury had been compounded by the treachery of the very people she should have been able to count on. It had left her bitter and angry, close to quitting. Paula too had considered leaving the job, but in her case the issue had not been betrayal but unreasonable guilt. What they had in common was that their route back to comfort in their chosen profession had been mapped out with Tony Hill’s help. In Carol’s case, as a friend; in Paula’s, as an unofficial therapist. Carol was grateful on both counts, not least because nobody was better at extracting information from an interview than Paula. But if she was honest, there had been a niggle of jealousy in there too. Pathetic, she chided herself.

And then there was Kevin. It occurred to Carol that, now John Brandon had retired, DS Kevin Matthews represented her longest professional relationship. They’d both worked the first serial killer investigation Bradfield Police had run. Carol’s career had skyrocketed as a result; Kevin’s had imploded. When she’d returned to Bradfield to set up the MIT, she’d been the one to give him a second chance. He’s never entirely forgiven me for that.

All those years and still she couldn’t buy him a drink without checking what his fancy was. One month it would be Diet Coke, the next black coffee, then hot chocolate. Or, in the pub, it would be cask-brewed real ale, or ice-cold German lager or a white-wine spritzer. She still wasn’t sure if he was easily bored or easily swayed.

Two members of the team were absent. Sergeant Chris Devine was lying on some Caribbean beach with her partner. Carol hoped her thoughts were a million miles from murder, but knew that if Chris had an inkling of what was going on here she’d jump on the first flight home. Like all of them, Chris loved what she did.

The final member of the team, DC Sam Evans, was unaccountably missing. Carol had either told or texted them all about the meeting, but none of the others seemed to know where Sam was. Or what he was pursuing. ‘He took a call first thing then he grabbed his coat and left,’ Stacey had said. Carol was surprised she’d even noticed.

Kevin grinned. ‘He can’t help himself, can he? The boy could take Olympic gold in paddling your own canoe.’

And this isn’t the time for demonstrating that the MIT isn’t so much a team as a collection of bloody-minded individuals who sometimes end up looking like a line-dancing set by accident. Carol sighed. ‘I’ll go and order the drinks. Hopefully he’ll be here soon.’

‘Get him a mineral water,’ Kevin said. ‘Punishment.’

As he spoke, the door opened and Sam hurried in, a computer CPU under one arm and a self-satisfied look on his face. ‘Sorry I’m late, guv.’ He swung the bulky grey box out and brandished it in front of his chest like the Wimbledon Men’s Singles plate. ‘Ta-da!’

Carol rolled her eyes. ‘What is it, Sam?’

‘Looks like a generic PC box, probably early to mid-nineties, given it’s got a slot for a five-inch floppy as well as a three-and-a-half-inch one,’ Stacey said. ‘Tiny memory by today’s standards, but enough for basic functions.’

Paula groaned. ‘That’s not what the chief means, Stacey. What’s it all about, that’s what she’s on about.’

‘Thank you, Paula, but I’ve not quite been rendered speechless by Sam’s arrival.’ Carol touched Paula’s shoulder and smiled, taking the sting out of her words. ‘As Paula says, Sam, what’s it all about?’

Sam plonked the CPU down on a table and patted it. ‘This little baby is the machine that Nigel Barnes swore didn’t exist.’ He pointed a finger at Stacey. ‘And this is your chance to put him away for his wife’s murder.’ He folded his arms across his broad chest and grinned.

‘I still have no idea what this is about,’ Carol said, knowing this was what she was meant to say and already halfway to forgiving Sam for his late arrival. She knew Sam’s tendency to go out on a limb was dangerous and bad for solidarity, but she found uncomplicated anger hard to sustain. Too many of his divisive characteristics were precisely the ones that had driven Carol so hard at the start of her own career. She just wished he’d get past the naked ambition stage and realise you didn’t always travel fastest when you were alone.

Sam tossed his jacket over a chair and perched on the table beside the computer. ‘Cold case, guv. Danuta Barnes and her five-month-old daughter went missing in 1995. Disappeared without a single validated sighting. The feeling at the time was that her husband Nigel had done away with them.’

‘I remember it first time around,’ Kevin said. ‘Her family were adamant that he’d killed her and the baby.’

‘Spot on, Kevin. He didn’t want the kid, they’d been fighting constantly about money. CID searched the house top to bottom, but they didn’t turn up a single bloodstain. No bodies. And enough gaps in the wardrobe to back up his story that she’d just done a runner with the baby.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Can’t blame them, they covered all the bases.’

‘Not quite all of them, by the looks of it,’ Carol said, a wry twist to her lips. ‘Come on, Sam, you know you’re dying to tell us.’

‘It came across my desk six months ago, just a routine review. I went round to see Nigel Barnes, but it turned out the file wasn’t up to date. He sold the house just over a year ago. So I asked the new owners if they’d come across anything unusual when they’d been doing the place up.’

‘Did you know what you were looking for?’ Kevin asked.

Sam tipped his head to him. ‘I did, as it happens. Back in ‘97, some eagle-eyed SOCO noticed that the computer monitor and keyboard didn’t match the CPU. Different make, different colour. Nigel Barnes swore blind that’s how he’d bought it, but the Stacey wannabe knew he was lying because the monitor and keyboard came from a mail-order brand that only sold complete packages. So at some point, there had to have been another CPU. I wondered whether the hard drive was still knocking around somewhere. But the new owners said no, the house had been stripped bare. Tight bastard even took the lightbulbs and the batteries out of the smoke alarms.’ He pulled a clown’s face of sadness. ‘So I thought that was that.’

‘Until your phone rang this morning,’ Paula chipped in. By now, they all knew how and when to prompt each other through their war stories.

‘Correct. Turns out the new owners decided to tank the cellar, which meant ripping off all the old plasterwork. And guess what was hiding behind the plasterboard?’