Barry Maitland - No Trace (Brock And Kolla, #8)

Table of Contents

A CHILDS CRY jolted Brock from sleep. He blinked awake, wondering if it had been a dream. He held his breath, listening, then heard the almost human bark of the fox that lived in the railway cutting beyond the lane. Thats all, he realised, only that. He heard the answering mournful horn of an approaching train. There must be fog on the line, autumn arriving in earnest at last.

Now he was aware of other sounds, the clicking of the central heating pipes as they warmed, so it must be after five, which was when the timer switched on. He turned his head to read the illuminated numbers of the bedside clock. Five-fifteen. He would have preferred to lie for a while in the dark, sensing the day approach, taking time to think about one or two things. But there was so much to do, too much. He put on the light, pulled on his dressing gown and slippers, and padded down to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Brock carried the mug of tea through to the living room and lit the gas fire. On the table in front of him were three documents, all urgent. He slipped on his reading glasses and heaved the first, a thick report, onto his lap. Its title was Stage 3 Restructuring of the Metropolitan Police Service: Discussion Paper , and the words Restricted Circulation were stamped across the top. The accompanying memo had urged its importance, while his secretary, Dot, had heard from friends working at 10 Broadway, headquarters of New Scotland Yard, that CommanderSharpe was apoplectic over it. Brock took a sip of tea and opened it reluctantly, scanning the index, then turning to the summary. Not much wiser, he skipped through Chapter 1: Cost and performance criteria for alternative models of decentralisation.

He sighed and his attention strayed to the second item on the table, a letter, neat blue words on cream paper. He set the senior management report aside, picked up the letter and began to read it once again.

Dear David,

I have to put this in writing, because I havent been able to find the words to say aloud

He reached the end and sat lost in thought, feeling the drag of sadness inside him, the weight of time and loss. As if to emphasise this, his eyes moved to a small framed picture on the wall in front of him, a shabby little thing, a gift from a murderer. He remembered his first glimpse of it, long ago, above the mantelpiece of a house in Stepney as he kneeled on the floor with the body of Emily Crab, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood from her throat. Emily had ruined his suit but established his reputation on his first big murder case. Later, interviewing her husband, he had asked about the little picture, saying that it had looked to him like the work of the German artist Kurt Schwitters, whom he greatly admired. Walter Crab had been surprised and gratified by this recognition. He told Brock that during the war his mother had taken in a refugee, a man who had been hunted by the Gestapo from Germany to Norway, before escaping to London. The man was penniless, and Walters mother had accepted the picture in lieu of a months rent and board. When her friends saw itan old bus ticket, a scrap of a newspaper headline and other fragments glued to a piece of cardboardthey laughed and told her shed been had, and Walter had been mortified on his mothers account. Brock was the first person who had ever admired it, and yes, on the back was the signature K. Schwitters, and the title, Merz 598a, London, 1943 . Then Walter confessed to Brock that he had murdered Emily and that the alibi provided by his sister was false. On the day that Crab was sentenced, Brock received a brown-paper parcel in the mail containing the Schwitters and a carefully written note from Walter, gifting him the picture in compensation for Brocks ruined suit. Ever since, Brock had regarded the little collage as an icon, a condensed statement of his own calling, gathering the discarded residue of peoples lives and making out of it some kind of pattern and sense.

Brock folded the letter and tucked it into the management report tomark the place hed reached, then turned his attention to the third document on the table, every page of which hed memorised over the weekend. It was a file marked Metropolitan Police, Case File Summary: Abductions of Aimee Jennifer Prentice and Lee Celine Hammond . He turned to the pictures of the missing girls, although they were already imprinted in his mind; Aimee with a cheeky lopsided grin and Lee, dreamy and pensive, as if she could sense the onset of puberty inside her slight body.

Pinned to the cover of the report was the memo confirming the formation of a Major Enquiry Team, headed by Detective Chief Inspector David Brock, which would take control of the case as from 0800 hours on Monday October 13. Brock checked his watch. Two hours. Time to go.

KATHY DROVE SLOWLY down the clogged artery of Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, part of the stream of sullen Monday morning traffic splashing cold puddles over the legs of huddled bus queues. She could hear the howl of a police siren somewhere up ahead, and on the radio she picked up the first news reports of another missing girl, the third child abducted from her home in east London in recent weeks.

She made a turn into Lazarus Street and found herself hemmed between the dark brick walls of warehouses under conversion to offices, studio flats and uncertain investment opportunities. Two small girls burst out of a side alley, school bags bouncing on their shoulders, black faces bright with glee, and Kathy stopped to let them pass.

She was impatient. The call had come half an hour before, cancelling the first scheduled meeting of the new Major Enquiry Team and diverting personnel to Shoreditch, and she felt the anticipation itching inside her at the beginning of a new case. She checked the mirror to make sure the girls were clear of the back of the car and caught her own reflection. Serious eyes, official eyes. This is how you get to look in your thirties when you take your job too seriously, she thought. Her hair, very pale in the gloom of the dark street, fell almost to her eyes, and she remembered that shed booked for a cut that afternoon. Shed have to cancel.

As she moved on she passed the end of a narrow service lane and saw two uniformed police examining a row of dustbins. Ahead she spotted apulsing blue light at the point where the street opened into a square. The patrol car was parked outside a sandwich shop, Mahmeds Caf, with two cops stooped talking to the driver, leaning against the car roof to ease the weight of their protective vests and loaded belts.

Kathy slowed and called across to them. Hi, DS Kolla, SO1. Northcote Square?

This is it. The man, registering the initials of the Serious Crime Group unit, peered across at her. Better park down here, Sarge. The north ends chocker.

As she rolled forward she saw what he meant, a jam of vehicles blocking the far end of the square. She hadnt been here before, and she had the impression of a rather forbidding place hidden away among the tangle of streets. The square was surrounded by buildings of mixed age and use, mostly in dark red brick, all severe and square-profiled against the grey sky. They overlooked a thickly treed central garden fenced by iron railings. Kathy pulled up beneath a no stopping sign and placed her Metropolitan Police Emergency notice on the dash. One of the uniforms came over to her.

Thats the house, he said, pointing to a building at the other end of the square behind the densest crush of vehicles and people. Originally two storeys high and rather squat and plain, a further two floors of milky white glass had been added. Press have just arrived.