‘Have you picked something up from the family? Is that why you’re here?’
She shook her head hastily. ‘No. I wish . . . It’s just . . .’ She wriggled in her chair. ‘My bloke, he’s a DC with West Midlands. Jonty Singh.’
It was a short sentence but Ambrose immediately constructed the story behind Shami Patel’s apparently perplexing move to Worcester. A nice Hindu girl with traditional, devout parents who had her lined up for some nice Hindu boy. And she goes and falls for a Sikh. Either they’d found out and there had been a family bust-up or else she’d moved down here before the wrong person spotted her and Jonty in the back row of the pictures. By moving to Worcester, she could have a life where she wasn’t constantly looking over her shoulder. ‘OK,’ Ambrose said cautiously, wondering where this was going.
‘You remember that business in Bradfield last year? The footballer that got murdered, and the bomb at the match?’
Like anybody was going to forget that in a hurry. Thirty-seven dead, hundreds injured when a bomb ripped through the corporate hospitality booths during a Premier League match at Bradfield Victoria. ‘I remember.’
‘Jonty was involved on the periphery. Before the bombing. One of the initial suspects in the murder was an old collar of his. He stayed in touch with his contact on the investigation, a guy called Sam Evans. He’s on Bradfield’s MIT. Anyway, I was telling Jonty how frustrated we all were at the lack of progress with Jennifer. I know I shouldn’t have, but he’s in the job, he knows not to talk—’
‘Never mind that,’ Ambrose said. He trusted this woman’s judgement. ‘What did he have to say, your DC Singh?’
‘He told me the Bradfield MIT work with a profiler who’s been a key factor in their success rate.’
Ambrose tried to keep his scepticism from his face, but Patel picked it up anyway. Her words accelerated, bumping into each other. ‘This guy, he sounds exceptional. Sam Evans told Jonty he’s saved lives, solved cases that nobody else could get a handle on. He’s the business, Sarge.’
‘The boss thinks it’s mumbo jumbo, profiling.’ Ambrose’s voice was a deep rumble.
‘And you? What do you think?’
Ambrose smiled. ‘When I’m running the shop, I’ll have an opinion. Right now, there’s no point.’
Patel looked disappointed. ‘You could at least talk to Sam Evans at Bradfield. See what he has to say?’
Ambrose stared at the cluttered surface of the desk, his big hands curled like empty shells on the stacks of paper. He didn’t like creeping around behind Patterson. But sometimes you had to take the back alley. He sighed and reached for a pen. ‘What’s this profiler’s name, then?’
Carol walked into her squad room, feelings mixed when she saw her team already settled round the conference table, ready for the morning meeting. She was proud that they were pulling out all the stops in their bid to assure their future, but bitter because she felt it was futile. ‘What’s going on here?’ she said, detouring to the coffee machine. ‘Did the clocks go forward without me noticing?’
‘You know we like to keep you on your toes, chief,’ Paula said, passing a box of pastries round the table.
Carol sat down, blowing gently on the steaming coffee. ‘Just what I need.’ It wasn’t clear whether she was referring to the drink or to being kept on her toes. ‘So, anything in the overnights?’
‘Yes,’ and ‘No,’ said Kevin and Sam simultaneously.
‘Well, which is it?’
Sam snorted. ‘You know that if this kid was black and from a council estate with a single mum this wouldn’t even have made the overnights.’
‘But he’s not and it did,’ Kevin said.
‘We’re just capitulating to white middle-class anxieties,’ Sam said scornfully. ‘The kid’s with some girl or else he’s had it up to here with Mummy and Daddy and taken off for the bright lights.’
Carol looked at Sam with surprise. The most nakedly ambitious of her team, he was generally first out of the starting blocks on anything that had the potential to raise his profile and improve his standing. To hear him spout a position that appeared to have its roots in class politics was akin to tuning in to the Big Brother house to hear them discussing Einstein’s theory of special relativity. ‘Any chance of anyone explaining what you guys are talking about?’ she said mildly.
Kevin consulted a couple of sheets of paper in front of her. ‘This came in from Northern Division. Daniel Morrison. Fourteen years old. Reported missing by his parents yesterday morning. He’d been out all night, they were worried stiff but assumed he was making some point about being a big boy now. They rang round his friends and drew a blank, but they reckoned he must be with somebody they didn’t know about. Maybe a girlfriend he’d kept quiet about.’
‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ Carol said. ‘From what we know of teenage boys.’
‘Right. They thought they’d re-establish contact with him when he turned up at school yesterday. But he didn’t show. That’s when his parents decided they should talk to us.’
‘I take it there’s been nothing since? And that’s why Northern are punting it our way?’ Carol held her hand out and Kevin handed over the print-out.
‘Nothing. He’s not answering his mobile, not responding to emails, not activated his RigMarole account. According to his mother, the only way he’d let himself be that cut off is if he’s dead or kidnapped.’
‘Or else he doesn’t want Mummy and Daddy to find him shacked up with some cutie,’ Sam said, clamping his mouth shut in a mutinous scowl.
‘I don’t know,’ Kevin said slowly. ‘Teenage boys want to boast about their conquests. It’s hard to believe he’d resist letting his mates know what he was up to. And these days, that means RigMarole.’
‘My thoughts precisely,’ Carol said. ‘I think Stacey should check out whether his phone’s switched on and, if it is, whether we can triangulate his position.’
Sam half-turned away from the table and crossed his legs. ‘Unbelievable. Some over-privileged white boy goes out on the razz and we’re falling over ourselves to track him down. Are we that desperate to make ourselves look
