Neil White - Beyond Evil

Sheldon shook his head. ‘No, she was more than that. She’d have no reason to lie to us if she was his girlfriend, and she wouldn’t have disappeared.’

‘You’ve still got your identification,’ Ted said. ‘There is a police station just up the road. Can’t you find out something about her?’

Sheldon thought about that, and then remembered his moment on the church tower earlier that day, and the promise he had made to himself that he would find out the truth.

He started the engine and drove the short distance to the police station, a one-storey L-shaped block on the verge of being closed down as it waited for a buyer. There was no public reception and so no frosty civilian officer to get past.

‘Wait in the car,’ Sheldon said, and then swiped his pass card along the reader. It worked for all the Lancashire stations, and so he found himself at the meeting point of two corridors, the floors tiled, the walls painted in cold light blue. Fire doors intersected the corridors at intervals. It was Sheldon’s first time in the Penwortham station, and so all he could was walk and look for a computer terminal.

He turned left and when he got to the room at the end, there were three rows of desks filled with computer screens. There were no cells at Penwortham, and so Sheldon realised that it was a hideaway, somewhere for the officers to get their files together without getting landed with an urgent custody investigation, the only risk being a call-out to chase some kids on the Kingsfold estate, the main source of aggravation for the Penwortham force.

There was only one other person in the room, a young female officer in uniform. She looked up once, curious at first, but didn’t investigate further, satisfied by the identification swinging from Sheldon’s neck.

Sheldon jiggled the mouse to clear the screensaver and sat down. Once he had logged in, he brought up the intelligence system and typed in Lucy’s name. The pale screen of grids and boxes threw up three people, but the dates of birth narrowed it down pretty quickly. When he clicked on her details, he leaned forward to get a better view.

Christina was really Lucy Crane, he saw that straight away, except that some of her flirt was missing. It was a picture taken after she was arrested, with rings under her eyes and her hair dishevelled. There was no smile, just a tired and sullen glare at the camera, another kid caught doing something bad.

When Sheldon clicked on her personal details, her address was still listed as the children’s home they had just visited. It looked like she had kept out of trouble since she left.

He scrolled down to the intelligence file, and saw that it ended a couple of years earlier, when she turned seventeen. The entries before then were just as Marian described. Calls to the police from the home to report her missing, and then an entry to report that she had been found. A few men had been issued with Child Abduction Notices, where it was noted officially that the care home did not approve of her being with them, and one more time would mean a court appearance and a reputation as a paedophile. Apart from that, it was quiet.

Sheldon frowned and clicked on her antecedents, the list of her convictions and cautions. Lucy was only nineteen, and it was as Sheldon expected, filled with her route to a court appearance. A youth reprimand for theft, and then a final warning for criminal damage, followed by her climb up the ladder of youth sentences. A referral order for an assault, then an action plan order, followed by a supervision order. It was the usual trail of one more last chance, another failed attempt to reform a troubled youth. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t, and often it was the child who decided that there were better things to do.

It seemed like Lucy had got into scrapes when she was at the home, and then she stopped. The Youth Offending Team would call her a success. Or perhaps she had just learned that it was more fun to get other people into trouble. Leering men maybe, an outlet for her new-found power, tinged by anger from her earlier life experiences.

Sheldon was about to click off and admit defeat when he scrolled through to the non-conviction disposals , the list that was made up of acquittals or fixed penalty notices, sometimes cases that were investigated but never got as far as a charge. For Lucy, there was just one entry.

Six months earlier, Lucy had been arrested for shoplifting some booze from a late night grocery shop in Oulton. At least that put her in the right area. Penwortham was more than twenty miles away. The case was dropped before she got to court though.

Sheldon clicked on the related case file, which would consist of an incident log and a crime report, along with a record of the outcome. The witness statements would be held over in Oulton.

It was nothing remarkable. Lucy had been caught trying to leave the shop with a bottle of whisky hidden in her coat. Sheldon scrolled through the crime report, and as he got to the bottom, he saw an entry that said RNC, no public interest.

Released No Charge? Why was that?

He made a note of the custody number and searched the database for it. It wasn’t a long record. She was brought in and booked in, but she didn’t even get as far as an interview. There was an entry forty minutes after her arrival. A visit from CI Dixon, who spoke to Lucy in her cell.

Why was a chief inspector talking to a shoplifter in her cell?

The custody sergeant had done his job well. He had noted when Dixon went in and when she came out. He was looking after himself, making sure that if anything went wrong, it wasn’t going to come back to him. Dixon was in there for thirty minutes. Five minutes after that, Lucy was released, no charge.

Sheldon sat back and stared at the screen. Sometimes senior officers did interfere with suspects, particularly for minor things. It might be a deal, an exchange for information, or because the suspect was being looked at for something bigger. A sergeant would be used to that, but why Dixon? She didn’t work on a team dealing with informants or undercover work. Her job was to run the Oulton station, to argue her case for a bigger budget at headquarters and to allocate resources.

But it was the timing that bothered Sheldon, and he remembered how Dixon had been earlier. The way she had almost dropped her cigarettes when she saw Christina in the corridor. Or Lucy Crane, as Sheldon now knew her. There was something else going on. Something more personal.

He clicked off the computer and headed for the door. When he got to the car, he asked Ted, ‘How long ago was it that you were caught in the car with Lucy?’

Ted did some quick calculations in his head. ‘Just over five months ago.’

Not long after Lucy was released by Dixon, Sheldon thought.

He climbed into the driver seat. ‘We need to get back to Oulton.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Charlie turned around in the hallway. There were sounds behind him, people in the living room, everyone suddenly aware that he was there. The way out was blocked by the shadow of a man, large and threatening. It wasn’t just his size that told Charlie that he was in trouble. It was his readiness. Charlie hadn’t had a fight since he was at school, and the spread of the man’s arms and the gleam of his teeth as he grinned told Charlie that he would enjoy whatever came next.

There was movement from the living room. Charlie looked round and saw the man he had spoken to the day before, with the wild black hair surrounded by teenagers.

‘Charlie Barker,’ he said, laughter in his voice.

‘Who are you?’ Charlie said, trying to watch the man in the hallway at the same time.

The man with the wild hair stepped closer. ‘I thought you’d lost interest in us?’