Baby Love by Maureen Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

time the guv’s blank look was genuine. So was Bev’s.
    Celia Bissell, a tall forty-something redhead, turned a sheet of her spiral-bound notebook. As if she had to. “Yeah, details have just been released. Monday night, a march following the route of the latest attack, then a candlelit vigil. The WAR
party’s organising it. They’re expecting thousands. Could turn nasty.”
    Nothing to do with Bush or Blair – this was Women Against Rape, formed a few weeks back in response to Operation Street Watch. The news of the demo was a bit of a bombshell. Bev had quite a few contacts among the women but she hadn’t heard
a whisper.
    “We’ll be there in force,” Byford said, gathering his papers. “The West Midlands Force.”
    “I’ve put Mike Powell in charge of Street Watch.” Byford kept his glance straight ahead as he pulled out of the car park at Highgate. Bev’s partially masticated cheese and onion pasty nearly choked her.
    “Watch what you’re doing with the crumbs.” He brushed crust from a knee.
    It was the closest he’d come to fast food since the IBS was diagnosed earlier in the year. He watched his diet like a hungry hawk and drank copious amounts of peppermint tea. Bev ate on the hoof so often she’d almost forgotten how to use
cutlery. She’d grabbed crisps and pasty from the canteen and the latter was still slowing her verbal response. Which was lucky, given what she had in mind.
    She reckoned Powell was slipping already and not just in the dog-doo. She couldn’t say anything to the guv because it’d get Carol Mansfield in the shit as well – tales out of school and all that. But Inspector Clouseau had failed to
bring up a couple of potentially significant points during the interview with Laura Kenyon.
    They were desperate to discover a link between all three girls. Through careful questioning, Bev had elicited that the first victim, Rebecca Fox, had recently had a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. Bev even talked to the guy who put it there. Come to
think of it, it might be worth having another word in a day or two. Mental note: call Luke Mangold. Sod Powell.
    The DI’s scepticism was partly down to the fact that when questioned, the second victim, Kate Quinn, said she’d never set foot inside a parlour, let alone been tattooed. So Powell hadn’t even bothered raising the subject with
Laura.
    According to Carol, he’d pooh-poohed the suggestion. After the women had recovered from another fit of the dog-shit giggles, Carol dropped the DI in it further by telling Bev that he’d neglected to ask Laura whether she was a student and,
if so, where she studied. Carol had gleaned the information from Laura’s mother on the way out. Martha Kemp mentioned a name that had popped up earlier in the inquiry: Queen’s College in Edgbaston. It was an obvious lead, and one Bev so
wanted to pursue.
    Byford broke her train of thought. “I’ll still be very much around. But I want you to head up the baby case.”
    “But, guv...”
    “But nothing. I know you’ve built a rapport with the girls and I know you want to nick the bastard...”
    His profile gave nothing away but the silence was telling. “You think the baby’s dead, don’t you?” Bev asked. And a child murder would take priority over Street Watch.
    If he gripped the wheel any tighter it’d come off in his hands. When he spoke, the voice was unutterably sad, didn’t even sound like the guv’s. “Babies don’t get snatched from their cots at home, Bev. Think of the big
cases over the years. Babies get taken from maternity wards. Women desperate for a baby of their own sneaking into hospitals and stealing someone else’s. Generally speaking, with newborns, it’s all over in a day or two. The baby’s
returned safe and well; woman gets counselling, probation, maybe a suspended slap on the wrist.”
    “Generally speaking...?” She reckoned there was one case not covered by the norm.
    “I only know one instance where a tiny baby was