Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

her Spanish trip with a male colleague. He hadn’t liked it. Now, Liz’s silence suggested she wasn’t impressed by the resurfacing of Bennet’s old flame. Unless he was reading it wrong.

‘Does she want to see Joe?’ Liz asked.

‘So I thought. But it turns out she just wanted my police clout to help her with something.’

Liz didn’t ask what exactly. ‘Does Joe know she got in contact?’

‘Yes. I told him there could be a chance they could meet. I was impatient and it was stupid. And now I’ve got to tell him he means less to his mother than some dusty old crime file in a basement.’

‘Did she say she won’t see him?’

Ah. No. He had to admit he didn’t really give her a chance. ‘I might have told her to get lost and never call again.’

She tutted at him. ‘Mr Unflappable, eh? Call her back and find out for sure.’

‘I can’t. I don’t have her number.’

He wasn’t sure he would have called anyway. He was still annoyed at her. He and Liz spoke for a few more minutes, on subjects not involving family or work, and after the call he didn’t feel as tense. Getting his feelings off his chest, onto that of someone impartial, had eased him a little. But not enough to sleep. He sat on the sofa, surrounded himself with Buttery Park files, and sank himself into the world of a young man whose mother loved him but would never see him again.

He was still there come daylight and a call from his boss. Superintendent David Hunter got straight to the point. ‘A little gift was left for you at the station late last night. It’s a herbal stress remedy. With a little bow on it and a note telling you to take it easy. I sent it for prints.’

Bennet didn’t need to ask who’d sent it. Since the Buttery Park stabbing, Don The Man hadn’t exactly laid low and kept silent: he’d been calling himself Teflon Don, after mafia boss John Gotti, who got the nickname because multiple charges by the law authorities never stuck to him. Don The Man clearly rejoiced in the fact that he’d been arrested and released, thus outwitting the police. His sending of a herbal stress remedy to the man leading the murder hunt was a taunt. It managed to get Bennet’s mind off Lorraine for half a day.

That changed when Joe went for a bath just after a roast lamb dinner. Joe hadn’t mentioned his mother thus far today – surprising because he knew she had planned to call the previous evening – and the question came out of the blue.

‘Mum didn’t call, did she?’

‘No. But she’s busy, and she didn’t say it would definitely be Saturday night. She might call later this evening, or tomorrow.’

Joe nodded, but there was no conviction behind it. If the boy hadn’t last seen her when he was a baby, Bennet might have thought Joe knew what a waste of space his mother was.

7

On Monday Joe’s school class departed on a two-day trip to the cathedral city of York, an hour or so north, where the kids would learn about Vikings, Romans, and the Industrial Revolution, and spend the night camped under the stars. Bennet parked outside the school and checked Joe’s knapsack to make sure everything was there. Joe gawped at the coach outside the school gates as if it was a rocket going to take him to faraway worlds.

Joe opened the door, but didn’t get out. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘Just work, son. Files to read.’

‘But you’ve got another two days off.’

‘A policeman is always on duty, twenty-four-seven.’

‘But they only pay you for forty hours,’ Joe said with a grin. Bennet laughed. But he stopped when Joe quickly changed track. ‘Will Mum call today?’

‘I don’t know, Joe. We’ll see. She’s probably very busy. Perhaps we shouldn’t look forward to it too much. It could even be weeks.’

That put a frown on his boy’s face. ‘Okay. I’ve waited years. Can wait some more.’

Bennet ruffled the boy’s hair, then pressed a twenty-pound note into his hand. ‘Buy me something cheap and tacky from a gift shop and keep the change. Hey, isn’t that your pal Shaun?’

Bennet pointed at a kid by the school gates.

‘Yeah. Did I tell you his granddad’s a policeman as well?’

Bennet’s father was a former detective and Joe was very impressed that the two main male adults in his life had such ‘cool’ jobs, although he had no desire to follow in their footsteps. ‘You might have mentioned it. Why?’

‘Shaun says his granddad says it was harder back then. He says there were hundreds of serial killers because no one knew.’

Bennet laughed. ‘If he’s saying it was harder back then to connect crimes, well, today’s technology makes it easier for sure. It’s possible murders could have been committed by the same person and the police never discovered it. We’re better at catching people who might have gone on to be serial killers. But I’m not sure serial killers is a subject kids your age should be talking about.’

‘Shaun keeps winding me up. He says his granddad was better than you because he didn’t have the fingerprints and phone tapping and DNA and stuff.’

‘True, they didn’t have those things. But the criminals are just as smart as us with the new technology. Shaun’s granddad didn’t have to deal with cybercrime. What rank was his granddad?’

‘Don’t know. I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Anyway, you don’t want the coach to go without you.’

Joe fist-pumped his dad, and was gone a moment later. Sitting alone, watching teachers try to subdue frantic kids and herd them on the coach, Bennet found his mind wandering to Lorraine. Where was she right now? With her new daughter? Did her new family even know about Joe? Had she told them he was living a drive away, or in another country and out of reach, or dead? He felt the itching muscle tautness again. That urge to… do