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  “Where’s the rest of the team? Out drug shopping?”

  Bex wondered if Cole secretly kept tabs on her team because Quinn, Eli and Reuben were indeed finalizing a drug raid at a suburban semi-detached. The fourth member of her team, Detective Sergeant Idris Carson, was on annual leave, due to return to work Monday morning.

  Cole took one large stride forward which propelled him into the center of her office and slouched down on the vinyl covered chair in front of her desk. The metal frame creaked under his weight, but he didn’t seem perturbed. Indeed, she thought crossly, he looked totally relaxed as he rested one leg over his knee.

  “So, what did you learn about Dresden’s plans?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know more about Dresden’s career aspirations than I do since you seem to have your fingers in so many apple pies.”

  Cole responded with mellow laughter. “That’s so true, DCI Wynter. But right now, I’m interested in what you learned from the horse’s mouth herself last night.”

  “First, why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me if any unknown bodies match what I’m looking for.” Since Bex knew she had no concrete bargaining chip, she pressed hard to get her information first.

  “Only one match for your specifics. A young female was fished out of the river last November. Age estimated between fifteen and seventeen. Never ID’d. She was pretty badly decomposed and partially skeletonized so we think she must have been in the water at least a month, maybe two. Timeframe fits for you.”

  “No DNA match?”

  “They tried checking dental records and DNA because there wasn’t much else left, but drew a blank.”

  Since Mikayla’s DNA was on her crime record, that effectively ruled out that the Jane Doe was the missing teenager.

  “Difficult to prove a murder without a body,” Cole said. “Maybe this kid’s father simply collects lost ID cards he finds on the underground platforms? Or maybe he was a pickpocket and they’re leftovers from the wallets he pinches? There could be any number of explanations that don’t involve murder.”

  Bex chewed her lip. Maybe Fairchild had just recounted a nightmare she had experienced? Bex knew firsthand that some dreams seemed all too real.

  “Now, what about Dresden?”

  “Oh, I think it’s safe to say that Dresden intends going onwards and upwards,” Bex answered, recalling Lillian Perry’s words. “What’s your interest in her career?”

  “I like to keep ahead of the game. Chief Superintendent Higgs has announced his retirement by the end of this year, which means there’ll be an opening for one of the current superintendents to step into his shoes. If Dresden gets the position you and I will be looking at a new boss, one more than likely culled from the current crop of DCIs.” Cole’s smooth burr reminded Bex of the contented purring of a cat. No doubt he had big plans for his own future.

  Cole shot to his feet. He gave a slight nod in her direction and then sauntered through the door, leaving Bex stewing over her thoughts.

  If the missing teens were murder victims, where were their bodies? Without bodies, she would be hard pressed to convince anyone they had a case.

  Out of the eleven missing persons, Mikayla had been missing since September and Sahnan since August last year. The next most recent case was over two years ago. The further back in time, the more difficult it would be to find clues.

  Bex pulled out the police report on Mikayla’s disappearance. The last person to see her alive appeared to be her boyfriend, Caeron Meadows. Ditching her laptop, Bex slipped her arms into her jacket. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to run out to Angel Town Estate in Brixton and pay a short visit to see what the boyfriend had to say for himself.

  Chapter 6

  Friday March 2

  Bex parked at the curb in front of a row of dilapidated Victorian mansions, their former glory lost as they were sliced into pieces their landlords called apartments with windows split by dividing walls and closets turned into bathrooms. Inside one of these tiny flats lived nineteen-year-old Caeron Meadows.

  A wailing siren screamed through the cacophony of traffic noise, quickly fading into the distance. Bex checked her surroundings. Through the windshield she noticed tattered blue and white police tape cordoning off one end of the street, leftover from an old crime. She paid particular attention to two dark skinned men, one with a scraggly beard long enough to rest on his chest, loitering by the iron railings separating the dwellings from the street. She pegged them as waiting for a drug deal to go down. An old woman shuffled along the sidewalk. Bex saw newspapers padding her jacket to keep out the harsh wind.

  The stench of exhaust fumes mixed with rotting garbage slammed into her nostrils as she stepped out of the unmarked police car. Trash cartwheeled merrily past her legs. For the first time in weeks, Bex felt vulnerable without her standard issue Glock. Never once during her time with the NYPD had she attended a job without her weapon. Joining the London Met less than a year ago as part of an overseas exchange program had entailed a huge learning curve and, sometimes, uncomfortable adjustments to her policing strategies. She forced herself to move away from the protection of the car body.

  As she passed the men, reggae music blasted out of headphones so loud she could hear it even though she was several feet away. Hooded eyes tracked her every step up towards the faded blue door. She wished she had Reuben with her to break the tension by giving her a running commentary on housing prices in the area.

  The lock on the door was broken, so she pushed it open into a landing where she was met by a staircase leading up several flights. Wind whistled through cracks.

  Caeron Meadows’s address was listed as flat 9A. Warily she scanned the area before heading upstairs, hugging the wall. Noises burst from behind closed doors as she passed them on the landing. Behind Meadows’s door was silence. Bex paused for a moment, listening intently until she heard some shuffling sounds that indicated someone was home.

  She rapped sharply several times before the door split open. Bex held her warrant card up to the one eye peering out.

  “Caeron Meadows? I have a few questions to ask. We can do this nicely in the comfort of your home or I can bring you into the station.”

  “Wassthis about?” came the gruff response.

  He sounded like he was still coming down from a massive bender, she thought. As he hesitated, she wedged her shoulder against the door.

  “Are we doing this nicely, Mr Meadows?”

  The door cracked open just enough to let her through.

  “Hurry up,” he said.

  “Afraid the police standing outside your door will ruin your reputation with your neighbors?” She didn’t try to hide her sarcasm.

  “Hey, I don’t need to take no lip from the scum,” he growled. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  Bex bit back a caustic rejoinder. She hadn’t come to interview him about his crimes, after all. Her soles clung to the tacky flooring and the reek of stale beer met her as she entered his sinkhole of an apartment. Bare walls with holes knocked out of them wrapped into a kitchenette where the stovetop didn’t look like it had ever been used. An unmade bed filled the corner under a window with glass so grimy it had no need of curtains to ensure privacy.

  Meadows slouched down on a sofa that looked as weather-beaten as his face and took a slurp from a bottle he picked up off the floor. He may have been nineteen, but hard-living had left his face with the lined, lived in look of a man in his thirties. The only feature that still proclaimed him a teenager was the rash of acne lining his putty colored cheeks.

  “Wassthis about?” he asked again.

  The beer bottle dangled between his fingers, its constant jiggling a sign of nerves. He didn’t offer her a chair and, looking around at the piles of litter and drug paraphernalia cluttering every horizontal surface, Bex was glad.

  “I want to ask you some questions about Mikayla Parkinson. When did you last see her?”

  He shrugged, the movement dislodging an amber bead do
wn the side of the bottle. Beer was probably the most savory item to hit his floor this year, Bex mused.

  “Shit, man, ain’t seen Miki in forever.”

  “You spoke to the police on September 8 last year and said the last time you’d seen her was three days before that.”

  He grunted. “There you go, then.”

  “Do you have any idea where she could be?”

  A string of profanities erupted from Meadows. It was the most life Bex had seen in him.

  “Do I look like I care?” he finished his rant.

  Bex spied a black bra mingled with the tousled bed sheets and took the question as rhetorical.

  “I didn’t ask if you cared, I asked if you had an idea where she could be,” she stressed patiently.

  “Maybe she went running back to mummy when I told her I didn’t want the baby and if she didn’t get rid of it I’d dump her. So check with her mum. Flo must’ve been dancing a jig when Miki told her she was up the duff. Another mouth to feed and making her a granny to boot. What’s not to love about that news?!” He chortled and took a swig from the bottle.

  Bex tried to imagine how terrified the sixteen year old might have been facing pregnancy and being abandoned by her boyfriend, having to choose between the prospect of an abortion or bringing up a baby on her own.

  She handed Meadows a business card.

  “If anything comes to mind about Mikayla, give me a call.”

  He took the card from her fingers as though it was a poisoned chalice.

  “Why the sudden interest in Miki?” he asked. He shot her a calculating look as though wondering how to turn the situation to his advantage. “The ming’s been gone nigh on six months.”

  “Just trying to tidy up loose ends,” she said. “Don’t bother getting up, I’ll let myself out.”

  Downstairs, Bex keyed Florence Parkinson’s address into her phone. She discovered it was just around the corner, in an identical Victorian terrace house, this one with a black door.

  The entry to the Parkinsons’ apartment was opened by a woman in a threadbare candlewick dressing gown. Mascara was smeared under one eye and smoke spiraled from a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

  Bex smoothed the shock from her face at the sight of a dozen children scampering around the woman.

  “Get back, you lot!” the woman screeched, waving her hands as though shooing flies from a dung heap. “Shayna, get yer lazy arse downstairs and take these kids off me!”

  The sheer volume of her voice made deciphering her words difficult, even though Bex was becoming more adept at interpreting various British accents.

  Ash fell from Florence’s cigarette onto the greasy hair of a child clinging to her leg. Bex flicked it off before it burnt the child.

  “You here from the council?”

  Bex met the older woman’s belligerence with her warrant card.

  “You look like you’re a busy woman, Mrs Parkinson, so I won’t take much of your time,” Bex said.

  “Well, I ain’t asking you inside.”

  A pale wraith of a girl, no more than twelve, materialized amidst the shrieking to cajole the children away from the door. Their shrill shouts barely diminished. Bex raised her voice over the hubbub.

  “That’s fine. I want to ask you a few questions about your daughter, Mikayla. Did she give you any indication of where she went when she left Caeron Meadows’s flat? Did any of her friends say anything that might give you a clue?”

  “Listen I’ve got four kids of me own plus I look after six more for the neighbors, do you honestly think I have the time to have heart-to-hearts with them? How do I know what friends she had or where they live!”

  “Did you know Mikayla could have been pregnant?”

  “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Hanging around with that wazzock all day long instead of going to school. Got herself into trouble with the law because of him. Not very smart that girl.”

  “So, she hasn’t contacted you since she was reported missing back in September?”

  “She never contacted me once she moved in with that wazzock Caeron!” Florence sniffed. “Lazy ingrate! Left me to cope with all these kids on me own. Shayna’s not a patch on Mikayla when it comes to keeping these kids in line. That all?”

  Bex handed over her business card.

  “If anything occurs to you, Mrs Parkinson, or if you hear anything from Mikayla I’d appreciate a call.”

  Florence sniffed again, pocketing the card before slamming the door on Bex.

  Sighing with resignation, Bex headed downstairs. She had almost reached the next landing when a soft voice called out to her.

  “Miss!”

  Bex paused and looked upwards. Hanging over the balustrade was the pale girl, Shayna. Her lank hair fell like a curtain in front of her face. Bex retraced her steps until she was standing in front of the Parkinsons’ apartment. The door was closed and Shayna glanced furtively behind her.

  “What is it, Shayna?”

  “I have to be quick. I’ve stuffed the kids with Hobnobs but that’ll only keep ’em quiet for a few minutes.” Shayna’s eyes were earnest. “I heard you ask about Miki. Have you heard from her?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have no news.”

  As the girl made to move away, Bex put out a hand. Shayna’s eyes shifted towards her.

  “Do you know something about Mikayla’s disappearance?”

  Indecision worried the edges of her mouth into a shriveled line.

  “Miki told me she was pregnant. She was scared because Caeron didn’t want the baby. She said she was gonna see a surgeon and he’d fix her up.”

  “A surgeon? Do you mean she said she was going to see a doctor?”

  Shayna’s face contorted into a frown as she fought to remember Mikayla’s exact words. She shook her head decisively.

  “No, she definitely said a surgeon. It made me think of a hospital. Do you think she went to a hospital, Miss?”

  “I don’t know, Shayna, but I’ll check into it.”

  Chapter 7

  Monday March 5

  The silence of the Youth Crimes Team office was broken by the slamming of a door. Bex raised her head from her computer screen, listening to the sounds of activity outside her cubbyhole, trying to guess which one of her team had arrived. No one ever beat her to the office. She knew that was because the people on her team had a life outside of policing. Since her husband, Zane’s, death just over a year ago, Bex couldn’t muster interest in anything outside of her work.

  She heard the gentle tapping of buttons and smiled to herself. Reuben Richards would as soon cut off his right arm as be without his smart phone.

  “Hello, Reuben!” she called.

  Reuben stuck his head around her office door.

  “Hey, Boss. You weren’t in the office on Friday afternoon, or I would’ve told you then. I had no luck tracing that call. I managed to track it back through three different sections, possibly to a fourth, but then the trail gets really hazy. It seems impossible to find the source of the caller to discover the original number. Without the number I just can’t go any further. Sorry, Bex. Was it important?”

  Bex considered the plight of a young girl trapped living with a homicidal maniac. Or perhaps with her own delusions? What else could Bex do? She had given Fairchild her direct number. Maybe she would call her back.

  “You did your best, Reuben.”

  Sounds of voices and footsteps alerted her to the arrival of other team members. Reuben turned away.

  “Idris, you old dog! Welcome back. Nice tan!”

  She heard Eli and Quinn guffawing at the quip because, being of Jamaican descent, Idris’s skin was already a rich caramel.

  Bex had talked Idris into taking his five weeks’ leave after Christmas when she learned he had feelings for Quinn’s wife. Although Idris swore it made no difference to his performance at work, Bex feared the tinderbox of flaring emotions between the two men on her team would explode sooner rather than later.

&n
bsp; “Pull any good birds while you were away?” Quinn asked, the sound of his voice heightening Bex’s nerves.

  She had learnt enough British slang to know that Quinn was asking about Idris’s love life. Did he suspect that Idris had a crush on his wife, Isla? Idris had sworn to Bex that he wouldn’t act on his feelings, but she knew, from experience, that sometimes emotions controlled people instead of vice versa.

  “I was on safari in South Africa hunting wild game, not wild women, you berk,” Idris retorted, his voice like acid.

  It was all the hint Bex needed to know that Idris wasn’t over Isla. Her heart dropped. She shot to her feet and headed for the door.

  “Idris, welcome back,” she said, giving him a meaningful stare.

  Turning to Quinn, she handed him Mikayla’s details.

  “Task for you, Quinn. Can you check out hospitals around the city to see if they have any record of this girl, possibly pregnant. She might also have checked in under a false name, so make sure the hospitals compare her DNA to see if there’s a match.

  “Idris, let’s go downstairs for a coffee and I’ll fill you in on the cases you need to catch up on.”

  Grabbing her jacket, Bex hustled Idris ahead of her, not even giving him time to take off his own jacket and settle into the office.

  “That’s favoritism!” Reuben protested.

  “Jammy bastard gets coffee while I get work,” Quinn muttered.

  “If you’re going to Dill’s bring me back a pork pie, I haven’t had any breakfast,” Eli called after their departing forms.

  Dill’s Sandwich Bar was quiet this early in the morning and they were able to grab a peaceful table at the back of the small café. With fresh coffee from the espresso machine in hand, Bex seated herself opposite Idris. She couldn’t help a frown tightening the skin on her forehead.

  “If you’re preparing a reprimand, it’s not necessary.” Idris swirled cream through his coffee. “I know I got snarky with Quinn. It’s just that I forgot what an annoying twat he is.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with Isla, does it?” Bex asked.

  “God, no! In fact I met a really nice South African lady. We’ve promised to Skype each other now I’ve returned to London.”