pint. If he leaves now he has a feeling she might stay and after four pints, Delilah makes bad decisions.
Not for the first time, he wonders if bad decisions run in the family. Arguably, he’s made a few himself of late. And then he wonders if the reason he is so on edge this evening is because it’s almost exactly a year since he met the woman he still can’t bear to think about.
He isn’t cold, but he pulls on his sweater all the same.
‘You know these homeless types,’ his mother says, brushing crisp crumbs from her blouse. Unlike Joe, Delilah never loses her appetite when she drinks. She’ll be heading for the kebab van when they leave, rowing with the taxi driver who won’t allow food in his cab. She’ll threaten him with a parking violation or some such bollocks and he’ll make a complaint against her, which will probably be upheld.
‘I know people without homes,’ he replies. At the far end of the pub garden, sitting beneath an arch of yellow roses, is a tall young woman with blonde hair that reaches her shoulder blades. He thinks – Felicity – and doesn’t know whether he hopes it is her, or that it is not. ‘I also know a number of rough sleepers. Is that what you mean?’
He has a sudden flashback to how her face lit up, completely losing its haunted look, when she talked about ice.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Delilah crumples the crisp packet. ‘Ever hear of anyone called Shane?’
It isn’t Felicity. The woman by the rose arch is younger, not unattractive, but with a long face and hooked nose.
He shakes his head. Shane? No. For the most part, the rough sleepers come and go and rarely confide their real names. Many of them are running from something, real or imaginary, and dread being traced. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell but I have been out of circulation for a while. Why?’
‘He’s a person of interest.’
‘You’ll have to give me more than that. Is this about the Bella Barnes murder?’
Delilah sighs and it’s as good as an answer. ‘We’ve got nothing, Joe. No suspects, no witnesses, bugger-all physical evidence.’
She has already told him this. Twice.
‘It was the car park by the Grand Arcade, wasn’t it?’ Joe thinks about the huge, central car park. Security around it is normally pretty tight, but Bella had been small and good at hiding.
‘And she decided to kip down in a corner where CCTV doesn’t reach,’ Delilah grumbles.
‘They do that for a reason,’ Joe says. ‘So where does Shane fit in?’
‘There’s CCTV over the vehicular entrance to the car park and the cameras picked up the figure of a male leaving it around the time we think young Bella was killed. The sweatshirt he’s wearing is distinctive and one or two of the other street people we’ve spoken to think it could be someone called Shane. Trouble is, no one knows anything about him. He appears from time to time, acts a bit creepy. No one likes him. And then he vanishes.’
‘Got a picture?’
His mother reaches into her bag and pulls out a slim cardboard file. She opens it to show a poor-quality still shot from CCTV footage. Joe recognises the car park, the entrance lane, and the few yards of street. Walking towards the camera, but with his face down, his hood up and shoulders hunched is the tall, slim figure of an adolescent male. His sweatshirt is dark but there is a white logo and lettering that Joe can’t quite make out.
‘Estimated height is five ten,’ Delilah says, ‘and we’ve had gait experts look at the footage. You know the theory that everyone’s way of walking is as distinctive as their fingerprint? Load of bollocks if you ask me, but this guy talked about length of stride, movement of the pelvis, the way the shoulders are carried. The speed of his movement suggests someone young or at least someone very fit.’
‘It’s not much to go on,’ Joe agrees.
‘Bella had no enemies,’ Delilah says. ‘You knew her, you don’t need me to tell you she was a nice kid. No one had a bad word to say about her. It wasn’t about Bella, it was about the man who killed her. It could happen again, Joe. I really need to find this Shane.’
23
Shane
There is an hour, after the nightclubs have closed and before the first dawn deliveries arrive, when Cambridge falls silent. The clocks chime two thirty and, as if by general agreement, a hush