Little Darlings. Melanie Golding
isn’t available, if authorisation is needed urgently, sir.’
‘How urgent is it?’
‘How can I put this. It’s kind of . . . retrospective.’
The bollocking she’d got was immense. At first, he’d outright refused to help her, was prepared to let both the case and Harper’s career suffer the consequences. But eventually she’d talked him round. Hetherington would certainly have given the go-ahead, she’d said, only there hadn’t been time to contact him. There were literally one or two seconds between discovering the crime and her decision to act. The authorisation issue was only a case of delayed admin, if he could just see it that way. If she’d left it any longer, the shipment would have been shipped, they’d have lost the ringleader for another six months, and maybe never have caught the other guy at all.
So, through gritted teeth, Thrupp had logged a written authorisation for the surveillance, citing that Hetherington had been temporarily uncontactable. He had tweaked the timecode in the report to make it look legit so it could be used as evidence in the court case, where both of the suspects received custodials. Harper was sure that the DI would be pleased after that. But no. He could barely look her in the eye. During the process for submitting evidence, the super had questioned the report, but had signed it off because it was Thrupp, his old pal and golf buddy. It was embarrassing, though, for both men, and Thrupp was still angry about having to ask a favour in a way that made him look unprofessional. She reckoned he planned to stay angry until the end of time. Once everyone had stopped congratulating Harper, she’d been punished, restricted to desk duties for eleven weeks, and only escaped a disciplinary by a whisker.
She wasn’t sorry, though. Even after all of that, she knew she’d been right to do what she did, and what’s more she knew she’d do it again, or something similar, if her intuition was strong enough.
The babies, though. The babies muddied the waters, and she knew it. So much so, that she wasn’t certain she could read the signals properly. She couldn’t tell if she felt so strongly about this case because a criminal needed to be apprehended, or because there were babies in potential danger.
‘Jo, get your stuff.’ It was Thrupp.
‘What’s up, sir?’
‘There’s an incident down at Kelham Island. Uniform have been dealing with it but they need our input. You can drive.’
‘What’s going on?’ It was unusual for a DI to be summoned to an incident. It only happened when there was something high level, like a hostage situation, or something to do with organised crime, where strategic leads were required on the ground.
‘Some kiddie on the roof of one of the disused factories. Reported initially as a suicide attempt. Apparently it’s escalated.’
‘Escalated how?’ said Harper.
‘It’s not enough to kill yourself, is it? Not when you can take out a building and a whole load of members of the public, too. Couple of police officers, maybe, for extra points. He says he’s got a bomb, and he wants a bloody helicopter.’
‘What’s the helicopter for, sir?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Sounds to me like he wants to blow one up. Jesus. I don’t have time for this.’
Harper pocketed her notebook and swung her bag over a shoulder before jumping up and heading for the door.
‘Wait,’ said Thrupp.
‘What is it?’
‘Change those ridiculous bloody shoes. Now.’
‘Sorry, guv.’
‘Did you go out in those this morning?’
‘Um,’ said Harper, slipping the rubbery five-toes trainers off and her sensible shoes on. ‘No?’
Thrupp shook his head almost all the way to the lift. She started to jog to keep up with him, his enormously long legs giving him an advantage when it came to striding.
As Harper and Thrupp buzzed across town, down into the valley to quell disaster and keep the peace, the computer in Harper’s office blinked and went to sleep. The email from Records containing Lauren’s 999 call shuffled unnoticed into the ‘read’ section of her inbox, pressed down by the weight of the unread, soon to be consigned to the oblivion of Page Two.
The man lay half on the pavement, limbs twisted, head smashed. Blood pooled darkly, forming tendrils that crawled towards a drain. Harper started walking towards the body but was stopped by a uniformed officer.
‘Sorry, Jo. We need to wait for bomb disposal to finish.’
The jacket the dead man wore was made of black nylon, and clung to what was left of him like a second skin. However, procedures were important. It was a further fifteen minutes before the bomb squad could safely confirm what could be plainly seen: there was no explosive device in the man’s jacket. There never had been. At the all-clear she stepped forward to close the staring eyes, then helped to cover the body before it was bagged and transported to the morgue.
The first journalist on the scene was also a friend, Amy Larsen, veteran of a great many of Harper’s crime scenes over the last three years and chief reporter for the big local weekly, the Sheffield Mail. Amy, who as usual was fully made up, chic and elegant in a pencil skirt and heels, held her recording device in front of Harper’s mouth. The sergeant frowned at it and tried to move away but Amy followed her.
‘Tell me about the kid. What brought him to this?’
Harper said, ‘We don’t know much about him at the moment. He’s young, probably in his early twenties. That’s all we’ve got.’
‘A tragic suicide? Nothing more ominous than that?’ Her ironic tone implied she didn’t believe that line for a second.
‘We’re investigating the circumstances, the identity of the victim and so on. But at this moment we don’t think there’s anyone else involved.’
‘So why did the police decide to bring in the armed response team?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’
Amy rolled her eyes and huffed. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘Only that we are treating the death as unexplained, but not suspicious.’
Harper would have said more, but she was trained to minimise potentially inflammatory lines of questioning when dealing with the press. She was supposed only to release the very blandest of information. Amy knew this. It was a game they played: a gentle volley of questions and responses, the journalist trying for the topspin, the police officer stoically returning straight lobs.
‘Come on, Harper. This wasn’t just a suicide, was it? The police don’t behave like that, shutting the roads, evacuating buildings – not for a jumper. I’m sure I saw a bomb-disposal unit. Did you think he had a bomb?’
Harper put her hand over the top of the recording device. ‘I can’t tell you anything more about the incident. We don’t even know his name yet. I’m sorry.’
Amy rolled her eyes, turned off the recorder and put it in her handbag. She placed her fists on her hips.
A car drove past, the passenger staring, fishlike, at Harper and Amy. The fire service had cleared off an hour ago, and most of the patrol cars had gone too. Once the ambulances had driven away, there wasn’t much to look at. Of course, the fact that there was nothing to see didn’t stop people’s natural curiosity; they wanted the full story, with details, the juicier the better. That was where Amy came in, to dig out the facts and relay them to the public via the Mail. Unfortunately for her, this time Harper wouldn’t be the one to tell. That alone wouldn’t stop her, though: Amy was resourceful. Harper had learned that much, since the journalist had first appeared,