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

Last night he had gotten as far as loading her Facebook profile before backing out. This time he managed to start a message to her before wilting. He couldn’t go through with it because it felt too much like begging. Lorraine had to want to see Joe, not be convinced or cajoled into it. He drove home.

Usually a quiet house was enjoyable, but not this morning. Usually he kicked off his shoes a second in the door. Not today. He stood in the living room, coat and shoes on, and cracked his fingers. The itchy call to action felt worse now that Joe wasn’t around. A few members of his team had sent updates about Buttery Park tasks they’d completed, but none of the information progressed the investigation or gave him something to do. But he needed some kind of action. Mr Unflappable was getting worked up by simple inactivity. No, impotency. A feeling of uselessness. He hated it. He felt like a hyper kid being forced to sit still.

So he drove to a crime scene.

8

Buttery Park was a place he’d never visited before a teenager got stabbed there. Almost three weeks ago, he’d arrived with his team, and ambulances, and there had been a host of onlookers, and a centimetre of snow, the darkness, and an ambience as chilly as the January air. Now, the place was tranquil, warmer, brighter, and devoid of any indication that a terrible crime had been committed here.

Except for the flowers on a bench on the hill by the lake. The car park offered a view of the water and café and tennis court and children’s play area, but the vital area hid in a blind spot. Bennet had to stroll halfway down the hill before the crime scene revealed itself, a patch of land between two small woods that provided the sides of a makeshift football pitch. Anyone sitting on the bench had a perfect view of the spot where a bad sportsman had pulled a blade. On that fateful evening two weeks ago, nobody had been sitting here.

The backrest had a bronze plaque dedicated to the memory of a ninety-year-old woman who’d died eighteen months ago, but a second had been added. The stabbed boy’s parents had been unable to afford the £1500 it cost to make and apply a plaque, and had written to Barnsley’s District Commander to provide the funds. Bennet could see that their plea had either failed or was ongoing: the current dedication was a computer-printed piece of A5 paper, laminated and stapled to the wood, probably without permission.

He had visited today in order to shift his thoughts from Lorraine and Joe, on to solving a crime. But seeing that plaque only fed his guilt. Hundreds of hours put in by people trained to catch killers, myriad doors knocked and statements taken and CCTV tapes collected, and what did he, as overall leader, have to show for it? Two parents resigned to hearing bad news every day, and one lethal thug taunting his hunters. If Bennet couldn’t help his own son have a chat with his mother, what chance did he have of providing justice for any other family?

9

At seven that evening, their prearranged time, Bennet called Joe. After giddily talking non-stop about his great first day in York, son asked father for a favour. None of his friends believed he still had his first birthday card, and could his dad take and send a photo of it? The card was in his middle desk drawer, under a small blue notepad. But there was a warning:

‘Don’t touch the blue notebook, Dad. You can’t.’

Bennet found the birthday card, which he’d laminated wide open to keep it in prime condition. He hadn’t seen this card for a few years and it brought a smile to his face. At first. A bunch of his then police colleagues had signed the card, some of them long gone from the team and some from the service itself. But Lorraine’s name was absent, like a buzzing neon reminder that she had walked out on him months before the card existed.

He sent the photo. Joe said, ‘Cheers, Dad. I asked Shaun and his granddad was a sergeant. But not a detective like you. Now he’s saying all policemen today are fat because they don’t do anything.’

Bennet would have laughed, but he was still emotional about Joe’s birthday card. ‘Your dad’s not fat, is he?’

‘His granddad says in the old days it was all about good old-fashioned coppering. They had to go out and work hard to catch serial killers. Knocking on doors and talking to people and searching dirty places. He says these days computers and internet do all the work and all the police do is sit on their bums and wait for the villains to come to them, and that’s why they’re all fat. Are detectives better than normal police?’

‘It’s basically all the same, but I’m trained in detection. There’s aspects they do I have no clue about and vice versa. In terms of rank, though, DCI trumps sergeant.’

‘I’ll tell him that. Cheers. Gotta go. Remember, don’t look in the blue notebook.’

After sending the photo and finishing the call, Bennet’s eyes went where he’d promised they wouldn’t. But what father wouldn’t nosey into a notebook he’d been warned away from? It had a padlock, but it was a cheap thing easily popped open by the tip of a pencil.

The pages contained written details of special or memorable events in Joe’s life. But these weren’t diary-like notations for reminiscing. They were letters written to his mum. Together they created a mini-biography, informing her of everything important that had happened in his life. The later letters showed advancement in his English skills, suggesting he’d been keeping this record for a long time. Perhaps a few years.

Bennet was shocked. Joe had mentioned his mother periodically, but this book proved she’d been in his thoughts