Make Believe by Cath Staincliffe Page B

but it meant he hadn’t had to stay up late waiting for Janine to get home and as it was his day off today he could take Eleanor and Tom to school , which they always liked.  She rang and got his voicemail and left a message asking him to drop her laptop off at the station once he’d done the school run.
    Lisa and Butchers hadn’t arrived as she began the briefing on the murder.  Not like either of them.  Butchers had never been late in all the years she’d worked with him, and Lisa keen and energetic, wouldn’t dare be late, too eager to make the grade. 
    ‘ News has come through from Interpol,’ she told the team,  ‘Dutch police have completed the comparison on the DNA profiles of missing Tomas Rink and our unknown victim.  No match.’  Janine knew it had been a long shot, though she’d held out a sliver of hope because if the child had come in from another country, it would account for why no-one here had reported him missing.
    ‘ Those we know with easy access to the crime scene are the Palfreys, the Staffords and the builders McEvoy and Breeley.  We now have detailed statements from them and we also have house-to-house for the whole of Kendal Avenue plus testimony from Royal Mail staff, window cleaners, meter readers, Avon lady, the works.  That little lot needs correlating and mapping out.’  The run of bad weather hadn’t done them any favours.  Fewer people had been out and about, and when they were they didn’t linger.  They were concerned with keeping dry, getting from A to B as quickly as possible.  The heavy rain made it harder to see too, especially if you were driving. They’d got absolutely nowhere finding a primary crime scene.  And without the identity of the child they had no idea where to look. ‘Someone put that child there.  They weren’t observed, so when did they get the chance?’ 
    ‘Paedos, boss.’ Shap began.
    ‘Sex offenders,’ she corrected him.
    ‘Them and all,’ he grinned.  ‘Known individuals on the sex offenders register in the neighbourhood have been visited and interviewed.  No-one’s done a bunk or raised any alarm bells with their probation workers, apart from this one perv who admitted breaching his licence by being within a hundred yards of a school.’
    ‘He admitted it?’ Richard asked.  ‘Perhaps he owned up to that hoping to hide what he’d really been doing.’  
    Had this been the bearded weirdo by the gate? 
    ‘His story checked out,’ Shap said.  ‘He’d travelled across town to Altrincham and spent the days indulging his fetid little fantasies outside a high school there.  On the Saturday in question he did the same, loitering near the playing fields.  His record’s for raping twelve and thirteen-year-old girls.’
    ‘ A different profile from our victim,’ Janine said.  She was distracted by Lisa’s arrival.  ‘Late night, Lisa?’
    ‘I’ve been out with Sergeant Butchers, boss.  He’s brought in Luke Stafford and Phoebe Wray.’
    What on earth!   ‘Has he now?’  She felt a surge of irritation.  She couldn’t blame Lisa, Butchers was her senior in rank so if he said jump, Lisa or any other DC would have to, unquestioningly.
    ‘ Continue building a timeline for the crime scene and identify periods when the place was apparently deserted,’ Janine told the team, ‘there may have been opportunities for the killer to leave the body.  Anyone need further guidance on tasks in hand see Sergeant Shap,’ she wound up briskly.  She set off to see just what the hell Butchers was playing at.
     
    Butchers looked shocking, unshaven with a gash under his eye where presumably the fiancée had left her feedback. 
    ‘ Why are they here?’ Janine demanded, ‘ I expressly told you yesterday that you were to do nothing without some solid grounds.’
    ‘ They were at Luke Stafford’s together on the Saturday afternoon,’ Butchers said quickly.  ‘I’ve just asked her.  That’s where she went after the