Free Death Line by Maureen Carter Page B

back in the chair, hands behind her head. It was a brief respite before heading out to the Quarry Bank estate.
    Mac examined his bacon bap. “You can say that again.” She’d rather not.
    Either the Balsall Heath informant had lied, made a genuine mistake, didn’t exist – or Haines had a double. While allegedly offloading the boy’s body, Haines had been caught on
film dead to the world in a rented room in Hogarth Row just off the Hagley Road. If there’d been a rent book, the name on it would be Carrie Spinks. But it was cash – among other things
– in hand. Known on the street as Cash and Carrie, Ms Spinks was a working girl.
    She also happened to be Haines’s step-sister.
    “Darren did good finding her.” Mac’s bap was history; he made inroads on the sausage roll while Bev swigged Red Bull. Daz, she mused, had had a damn sight more joy than the
two-strong team tasked with tracing the mystery caller.
    Modesty unbounded, Daz had chalked the success down to his Tom Cruise looks. Another sex worker had tipped him the wink and the address. He’d knocked several times last night but the place
had been empty. Turned out Spinks had been playing away. Daz had given it another whirl en route to work. Leery at first, he’d told Bev, Carrie nearly wet herself when he asked if Haines was
a regular john. She’d soon put Daz straight about the relationship. Course they’d not been doing the bizz, she said.
    Bev curled a lip. Yuck. The very thought...
    “Bet I know what you’re thinking, boss.” Lechy waggle of bushy eyebrows.
    She nodded at his diet coke. “Get that down your neck, mate. Some of us have got work to do.” Sooner they were done, sooner they could hit the road. First preference for Bev
would’ve been the follow-up interview with Haines, but that wasn’t to be. Knight was in there now. He’d just sent word via a uniform, wanted more checks on Haines’s
movements on the afternoon Josh disappeared. The creep had added detail to the earlier version.
    Pensive, she wandered to the window, looking for loopholes in Carrie’s story, knowing there weren’t any. She turned her mouth down. Plenty of press guys out there though,
wouldn’t be long before they sniffed out the latest twist.
    As Daz had reported it to the squad: Carrie had let her half-brother bed down after he’d turned up at the place three sheets to the wind around midnight on Wednesday. That he came bearing
a few lines of Charlie in his back pocket helped his case. But nowhere near as much as the street camera that had clocked Haines’s arrival and subsequent departure six hours later. Even if
Carrie had been tight with the truth, the closed circuit footage was timed and dated, proof irrefutable. Unless Haines was a member of the magic circle he’d not been in two places at
once.
    As for Carrie filming him in the buff? A laff, wannit?
    Cracked Bev up. Sighing, she shook her head. It was dead funny except it loosened their grip on a collar for a little boy’s murder. Knight had reconvened the brief, assigned catch-up tasks
to the squad like there was no tomorrow. In a sense, there wasn’t. The Haines cock-up didn’t just mean Operation Swift was back to square one: a day could’ve been lost.
    “Why are we waiting, why-eye are we waiting...?” The crooning was crap. She turned to find Mac tongue through cheek, doing a Benny Hill salute and holding the door. “Chop,
chop, some of us have got work to.”
    She grabbed her bag, keys, shades. “Lippie git.”
    “Takes one to...”
    “Enough already.” She raised a palm as she passed. Her lip twitched though. Go mad in this job without a bit of joshing.
    And looking on the bright side, they still had a child’s Mickey Mouse sock in with the forensics guys. Assuming the creep couldn’t wriggle out of that one.
    “Ask one of your fit-up merchants, Mr Knight.” Roland Haines wasn’t having a laugh, the face was deadpan, the tone dripped conviction. Like a sink estate