Baby Love Read Free Page A

these days. Learning to button it – which she had by no means mastered –
never helped when she had one on her, so to speak. And she’d had several during the spat with Martha Kemp.
    Byford rubbed his eyes as he recalled the radio presenter’s threat to have a word with her mate, Ronnie: Big Chief Constable Ronald Birt. Thank God she wasn’t pally with the Queen’s Constable as well. Kemp had taken exception to
Bev’s slack attitude and sloppy appearance. There’d been no percentage in pointing out the sergeant’s early shout on a day off; that only explained the denims and trainers. Anyway, when Kemp was in full flow, on or off the air, The
Mouth was unstoppable. Only an apparently reluctant agreement that a more senior officer would be assigned to her daughter’s interview had halted the diatribe.
    Ms Kemp had looked suitably gratified, not to say smug, at what she perceived as a victory. In reality there’d been no agreement, reluctant or otherwise. Byford had already made the decision to take Bev off the interview. His wayward sergeant
could and did ruffle feathers; she could also soothe entire flocks of birds. If a baby were missing, he could think of no better officer to deal with the family.
    Especially the Becks. He was surprised Bev hadn’t picked up on the address. Still, it would register soon enough.
    Right now she was alongside the Morriss-mobile, an ageing MG Midget that she loved even though its erratic performance occasionally drove her to distraction. Byford watched her waggle her fingers and mouth a greeting to someone out of his field of
vision. Glossy curtains of chin-length Guinness-coloured hair drew back to reveal a warm smile that lit her entire face and widened the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. It had never occurred to him before but when Bev looked like that, she was almost
beautiful.
    The senior detective who’d shortly be questioning Laura Kenyon was currently trying to answer a few being put to him. DI Mike Powell was perched precariously on the muddy slope of a disused railway embankment off the main road
into Moseley. Gnarled oaks provided a dense overhang of twisted branches glistening with slimy moss. Natural light struggled to penetrate the gloom, which explained the battery of police lights and a tableau that at first sight resembled a film set. The
inspector had been carefully positioned camera-left. The scene of Laura Kenyon’s rape – almost certainly the latest in a series – provided a damp and dismal backdrop.
    In the distance two white-suited figures were on their knees, steel cases full of fine-tooth combs, a steadily growing pile of small see-through bags on the ground beside them. It looked like a CSI shoot or something out of Doctor Who .
As for the plastic bags, they could contain evidence or detritus; people had been dumping rubbish in the cutting for years. A few litter louts were probably among the motley crew of extras that had congregated at street level and were now lining a
wire-mesh security fence, agog at the activity below. Clutching the fence and faces pressed against the wire, they could have been spectators at a zoo. Powell half-expected to be tossed a banana. A notice exhorting trespassers to keep out had earlier
been ignored. Or maybe the rapist couldn’t read.
    It was wet under the inspector’s expensive Italian loafers and fat raindrops were flattening his recently coiffed locks. The pose was both uncomfortable and fairly ungainly but Nick Lockwood, the BBC’s safest pair of hands in the Midlands,
had been extremely persuasive. It helped that Mike Powell was as keen to get his face on the box as the old TV pro firing the questions was to put it there. Though at this precise moment Lockwood was itching to tighten his fingers round the
inspector’s neck.
    Powell wasn’t being deliberately obtuse; it came naturally. But on this occasion, he either didn’t have the information Lockwood was after or he couldn’t or wouldn’t give it. He’d