Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,106
things in town.’
‘Thanks.’ Though the prospect of spending money Helen did not have to replace her lost items was galling.
‘Darren’s letting the plumber in today,’ he added, ‘so by the time we get home you’ll have hot water.’
‘Great,’ she said, though his use of the words we and home in the same sentence panicked her a little.
He must have read her mind. ‘I’ll clear the junk out of the spare room tomorrow and get a bed put in it.’
‘Oh, please don’t go to all that trouble.’
‘I have to do it anyway. I was planning on getting a lodger to help with the mortgage. I figured you probably wouldn’t want to carry on sharing my bed for too long.’ Tom could also think of someone else who wouldn’t be keen on that idea.
‘I meant I shouldn’t impose on you by staying any longer.’ Perhaps she was also thinking of her boyfriend now.
‘Where else are you going to go?’
He was right. There was nowhere else. Staying in a hotel for even a few days was prohibitively expensive on a local journalist’s salary and Helen didn’t know anyone else well enough to stay with them.
Tom seemed to think that was the end of the discussion. ‘I am going to park where Annie parked, then I’ll walk every yard she walked to see if her alibi really stacks up.’
‘According to Ian’s colleagues it does.’ Annie Bell’s alibi was a little too good to be true, but if she really had proof she was elsewhere when Rebecca Holt was murdered, then how could she be in two places at once?
‘There are some good detectives working this patch,’ Tom admitted, ‘but they’re not all as diligent as Ian, and you have to remember they weren’t looking too closely.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The assumption has always been this killing was the work of a man,’ he reminded her. ‘From day one it was Richard Bell or Freddie Holt, even a psychopathic stranger – but never a woman.’
‘That’s because most violence against women is committed by men,’ she reminded him.
‘True, but that initial assumption was backed up early on by an expert’s report, which said the attack could not have been carried out by a woman – and we now know that had no basis in fact.’
‘But if virtually every moment of Annie’s day is accounted for, what are you actually looking for?’
‘A window,’ he told her.
The social worker looked weary, harassed and overworked, but she was at least helpful. Ian Bradshaw told her he was concerned about residents of some of the care homes in the area being targeted and used by a gang of professional shoplifters and she seemed to take this at face value. He didn’t mention Meadowlands at first because he didn’t want anyone to know he was particularly interested in the home. Instead they had a general conversation about the types of young people who end up in care and the merits or defects of the various places that housed them all.
‘I’m afraid the stories are often pretty harrowing.’ And she proceeded to tell some of them, leaving out names in the interests of confidentiality. She painted a bleak picture of neglect and abuse, and her sympathies very clearly lay with the children she was tasked to protect, no matter what they had done.
Her tone altered slightly when he asked her, ‘And what about the Meadowlands home?’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that place? A bit of a last-chance saloon if I’m honest. Meadowlands houses quite damaged young girls who have already been in a lot of trouble. I’m not saying we’ve given up on them exactly …’ But it sounded to Bradshaw as if she and her colleagues probably had.
‘What exactly is the problem with the Meadowlands girls?’
‘They are too difficult to manage elsewhere, so they’ve been corralled together in one place to prevent them from influencing girls who might still have a chance of avoiding trouble. Unfortunately they tend to egg each other on, so the reoffending rates are highest there. Meadowlands houses teenagers who run away a lot, girls who are violent and are frequently picked up by the local police.’
‘What for?’ he asked though he obviously had an inkling from the night he watched the place.
‘Well, a number of things, but prostitution basically,’ she said, ‘though I would be loath to call it that.’
‘They are selling sex?’
‘Sort of,’ she said.
‘How can you “sort of” sell sex?’
She answered his question with another. ‘What kind of women turn to prostitution, in your experience?’