Hard Time Read Free Page A

Jenny snatched her mobile from her bag. Rich’s was switched off. Great.
    Mrs Wilson was having more joy. After a short hushed conversation, she handed her own phone to Jenny. “Tanya Woodall, my classroom assistant.”
    Tanya described how she’d watched Daniel walk away from the school hand in hand with a woman she’d swear was his mother. As Jenny listened, she felt the first faint chill in her
veins. She passed the phone back without a word. Maybe Richard had been unable to make it. He must’ve arranged for Daniel to be collected by someone from the office.
    But she knew everyone who worked for Richard; none looked remotely like her. And why the hell hadn’t he called?
    Angry now, she speed-dialled his number at the agency, Full Page Ads. No answer. The machine kicked in at home.
    “Would you like to sit down, Mrs Page?” Gallagher offered a seat. “While we gather our thoughts.”
    Her thoughts were beyond gathering and of the countless questions crowding in her head two were uppermost. Who had taken her son? And where the hell was he?
    Byford was in the pulpit. Bev reckoned he was a natural, could just imagine him in a dog collar taking confessions. Great voice too; touch of Anthony Hopkins. Space control
to Beverley: come in, please. She tried concentrating but he was reading that Auden piece about stopped clocks and dogs not barking. Four Weddings and a Funeral had a lot to answer
for.
    Tapping fingers on knee, she glanced round, shuddered. The church was crammed: cops and chrysanthemums. And a coffin.
    As Byford reached the line about traffic police and black cotton gloves, her mobile vibrated against her hipbone. The message was short but sent another tremor – this time down her
spine.
    Dear God. Not again. The most traumatic case of her career had involved an abducted baby. Now it looked as if another child was missing.
    When the guv resumed his pew, she tapped him on the shoulder, showed him the text.
    Five minutes later, Bev and DC Darren New were dodging and weaving through rush-hour traffic on the Bristol Road, heading for Edgbaston.
    She double-checked the school’s address, then stuffed the phone back in her pocket. These days, female cops didn’t always get the kiddie cases: she’d just been the only dummy
not to switch off her mobile.
    “Could’ve been worse,” she said.
    “What?” Daz eyed the Mars bar she was unwrapping. “Getting a call in church?”
    She nodded. “My mate Frankie?” Like any man with a heartbeat, Daz had hit on Frankie Perlagio once or twice. “Coupla weeks back, she’s at some big wheeley-dealey do at
the Buddhist temple in Moseley. They’re all sitting round cross-legged, dead intense, doing that om thing.” She gave him a bite of the Mars. “Her mobile goes off. Full blast. Doctor Who theme tune.”
    “Exterminate her. Exterminate her.”
    Dazza’s Dalek didn’t raise a smile but Frankie’s brass neck did. “It’s across the room in her bag,” Bev wrapped up the story. “No one knows it’s
hers, so she just throws dirty looks like everyone else and bangs on about people showing a bit of respect.” Bev shook her head: typical.
    Daz skirted a skinny pigeon making a meal of the tarmac. “Frankie still at your place?”
    She stiffened. He wasn’t savvy like Oz. There was a touch of the Andrex puppy about Daz: eager, enthusiastic, boundless bounce but not much sense of direction. Otherwise he’d know
he’d crossed a line. “Next left.”
    Quick learner, though. He didn’t go any further. Lucky, given the taut messages her body was sending. She suppressed a sigh: her life had more no-go areas than Baghdad. If she’d kept
personal cards close to her chest before the rape, they were buried there now. Even Frankie couldn’t prise them all out. “Right at the crossroads.”
    Frankie had taken up temporary residence in Baldwin Street after the attack, theoretically until Bev was back on track. Seven months down the line, she was still in the