Free Hard Time by Maureen Carter Page A

hers, shifted uneasily in his seat. Poor Daz. He protected his macho image like the crown jewels. She gave him a break, put a call
through to the guv, brought him up to speed.
    Byford wasn’t surprised reporters were doorstepping properties round the school. The media were as desperate for a lead as the cops. He’d already deployed plain-clothes teams down
the same path, all canvassing potential witnesses. Christ, they’d be falling over each other in the rush. Her query as to whether they were chasing CCTV footage was met with a what do you
think ?
    She ended the call, ripped the wrapping off a Lion bar and swatted Daz’s open palm; guy could buy his own this time. He gave an easy-come-easy-go shrug and pulled out to pass a 2CV with
go-faster stripes. “I thought you showed amazing restraint back there,” Daz said.
    Dog. Bone. God, he was still on that. Mind, she had bitten her tongue a few times. The concept that Cross could’ve thwarted the kidnap if he’d intervened was a tough one. Part of her
empathised: the papers were full of horror stories about attacks on innocent passers-by, a man or woman in the wrong place at the wrong time making inadvertent eye contact with the wrong yob. But
Cross was well fit and he’d not so much walked by as run past a young woman struggling with a little boy. Still, easy to be wise after the event and nobody liked a smart-arse.
    “Sir this, sir that,” Daz mocked. “Talk about three bags full.”
    “It’s the new me.”
    He shot her an old-fashioned look. “Turning over a new tree?”
    She ignored the quip. “I need the practice for when I interview Jenny Page.”
    “How long’ve you got?”

13
    The only genuine Georgian real estate left in Birmingham, Saint Paul’s Square was an attractive mish-mash of red brick and white stucco, garnished with pinks and purples
spilling from window boxes and hanging baskets. Neat properties of three or four storeys surrounded a well-kept green. Brass-topped railings, a grade-one listed church and the occasional Doric
column completed the eighteenth-century ambience. Close your eyes and smell the horseshit. Gleaming horsepower lined the kerbs now. Daz spotted a gap between a Jag and a Porsche.
    Bev scanned the square, taking in the trendy restaurants and chic wine bars dotted among classy commercial premises. Discreet brass plaques were the only clue to what went on behind highly
polished doors. Mostly it was media-connected. Like Page’s ad agency.
    The reception area was all bamboo, water features and koi carp. Those glassy eyes gave Bev the creeps; she shuddered as she crossed the expensive carpet. She and Daz had already decided to split
the interviews: saved time, made sense. Bev would take Page’s second-in-command.
    Laura Foster didn’t need a badge to indicate she was in charge during the boss’s absence. Not with her presence and posture. Bev almost searched for the wires. A couple of inches
taller than Bev and a couple of dress sizes thinner, Ms Foster’s combination of glossy elfin-cut black hair and pale blue eyes was knockout. Even the glasses were sexy. The scarlet silk shift
dress would look tarty on most women. Not on Bev; she’d look like a post box.
    There were three other staff members, all female. Frighteningly well-groomed, if not actually starched, Maggie Searle and Imogen Boateng were clearly older than the twenty-something Foster.
Auburn-haired teenage Chelsea, face mapped in freckles, made up the numbers. She was the office junior, had worked there less than a month. Laura asked her to look after the coffee.
    Leaving Daz to make a start with the others, Bev trailed Ms Foster’s subtle sashay through a glass-panelled door. One side of the huge space was kitted out like a control deck from Star
Trek : banks of monitors, levers, knobs, dials. The name of the agency said more about the size of Page’s ego than the area in which it operated: this was visual media, not newsprint. Bev
hoped to