Trust Me. Angela Clarke

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       Nasreen

      Nasreen felt the familiar pull of tension in her stomach as she neared the office. But it looked like only Chips was in. She’d spent the evening poring over all the files she could find. This was not looking good. At some point she must have fallen asleep; she’d missed a call from Freddie, but it was gone 1am by the time she woke up. Too late to call back.

      Chips looked up from the teetering barricade of folders on his desk. ‘You get me one of those, lass?’ A soft puffy finger pointed at the Espress-oh’s bag she was carrying.

      ‘Skinny mocha it is.’

      He beamed. After forty-odd years of drinking black coffee with a dash of milk, Chips had been converted to the sickly drink by Freddie. He was a man of routine, his physical bulk a metaphor of his immovability, and yet within two weeks of working with him Freddie had changed the habit of a lifetime. She had that effect.

      ‘Is DI Saunders in?’ She tried to sound casual.

      ‘He’s in a meeting with the boss.’ Chips sipped from his drink. ‘This really is cracking.’

      Freddie’s voice carried from the corridor. ‘Hey, Milena, it’s me. Just to say cheers for letting me crash last night. I left the key under the bin outside. Hope the night shift wasn’t balls. Catch ya soon.’ The door to the office opened and Freddie appeared, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head. The same cutoffs on as yesterday, but with a shapeless T-shirt. She pointed straight at Nasreen. ‘You and me need to talk. I called you.’

      Nasreen replaced the lid on her own reusable coffee cup. ‘I was working on the case.’ She pulled the files she’d had at home from her bag. ‘The guy calling himself Corey Banks on Amber’s page is better known as Alexander Riley, or Lex Riley as he’s known on the street.’ She passed Freddie the printout of Lex she’d made from the Police National Computer.

      Freddie read it and blew air out through her lips. ‘He’s a known gang member?’ She dropped her own rucksack behind her.

      ‘Yes. The Dogberry Boys.’ Just thinking about it made her feel a bit sick. Amber was fifteen when they were talking online. When she described him as her boyfriend.

      ‘Didn’t Paul Robertson go down for killing one of their members?’ Freddie asked.

      ‘Yes. They’re rivals.’ She watched the colour drain from Freddie’s face. ‘They’ve been in an escalating turf war for the last few years.’ It didn’t bear thinking about. But they had to.

      ‘Why’d he change his name?’

      ‘Presumably because Amber or her father would have recognised it,’ Nasreen said.

      ‘But he was dating the daughter of one of the Rodriguezes’ head guys… Shit.’ Freddie shook her head in disbelief. ‘So, what, he was trying to get into her life undercover?’

      Nasreen nodded. ‘What if we weren’t the first ones to think that Amber was a good way to get to Paul Robertson?’

      Freddie sat down heavily. She was staring at the printout in her hand, her face echoing Nasreen’s yesterday when she’d recognised him. A look of shock. Lex Riley’s sneering mugshot leered from the top corner. ‘He made first contact,’ Freddie said. ‘I’ve seen the message on her Facebook page. He approached her.’ It all fitted. ‘He set her up? Catfished her?’

      Nasreen’s stomach tightened. A fifteen-year-old child. ‘It looks like it.’

      ‘We could have this all wrong: she might not be on the run with her dad. You think Lex Riley could’ve got to her?’ Freddie looked at her imploringly.

      She wished she could dismiss her fears, but sleeping on it hadn’t helped. Lex Riley wouldn’t waste his time stringing Amber Robertson along for a laugh. He was the cousin of Jay Trap, the head of the family that had dominated the Dogberry Boys for the last two decades. He wasn’t some bit-part player. He’d been implicated in a stabbing on the Dogberry estate. The case had collapsed before it made it to court, when the key witness backed out of testifying. Nasreen had read that the witness’s pet dog had been found skinned outside her house. Alive, just. There’d been a note pinned to the poor animal: your children are next. You didn’t mess with these people. Lex could have only been interested in Amber for one reason: because of her father. This was a gender-flipped honey trap. ‘We need to find out everything we can about Lex Riley. Can you look at any intelligence reports we have on him?’

      Freddie nodded. ‘I should get Amber’s telephone records today with a bit of luck – I’ll see if I can trace contact between the two of them.’ Grimacing, she took the papers back to her desk.

      What had happened to Amber? Images of a skinned dog formed in Nasreen’s mind. She picked up a cold half-drunk tea someone had abandoned on her desk. Clear desk, clear mind. She was halfway between the office and the staff room when she heard Saunders’s voice behind her.

      ‘Skiving off already, Cudmore?’