Page 11 of Child's Play
‘Okay, Miss Evans, thank you for your help. If I can just ask about something that’s puzzling us?’
‘Of course,’ she answered, smoothing her hands over her skirt.
Kim glanced around. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of your sister here. Just a lot of empty drawers and cupboards.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, officer. I assumed you already knew. My sister also owns the house next door. If you want to know more about her, you really should go there.’
Six
Penn arrived at the entrance to Birmingham Crown Court at three minutes to nine. He would have made the run from the train station quicker if the boss had let him keep the trainers on.
‘Bloody hell, Penn,’ Lynne said, smiling. ‘Talk about cutting it fine.’
‘Bloody trains,’ he said, unsure how to greet her.
A hug seemed inappropriate but no contact felt cold. He held out his hand.
Lynne gave him a strange look but shook his hand anyway.
‘Hey, mate,’ Doug said, dropping his cigarette and thrusting out his hand.
Penn shook it and quickly appraised them both.
In the four months since he’d left West Mercia, Lynne appeared to have lost a few pounds and Doug appeared to have found them. He’d swear that the sergeant had done something different with her light brown hair, maybe grown it a couple of inches. Her normal inch-high boots had been replaced with expensive-looking high heels that disappeared beneath her navy trouser suit. He was pretty sure she was wearing make-up, too. Her court outfit had taken way more money, time and consideration than his.
Detective Constable Doug Johnson was wearing the exact same thing he wore for work every day. A slab of black suit and a light blue shirt. The whole team had ribbed him about having a wardrobe full of black suits and blue shirts. He had retorted that this way no one ever knew when he was wearing dirty clothes.
‘Good to see you both,’ Penn said, as they headed up the steps. And he meant it. He’d worked alongside these officers for more than four years and he’d wondered how he would feel seeing them again. A comfortable familiarity washed over him as he followed them into the building.
He was struck by the cold functionality of the Elizabeth II Law Courts that housed Birmingham Crown Court. He always found himself wishing he was at the other place. When the new Crown Court opened in 1987 it had taken major cases away from the Victoria Law Courts on Corporation Street. The older court house, now a Magistrate’s Court, was a Grade I redbrick and terracotta building drenched in history ever since Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1887.
Nowthatplace felt like a law court, Penn thought, with its great hall and chandeliers made to resemble Queen Victoria’s coronation crown. The place demanded reverence and respect.
The newer building resembled a collection of square, efficient boxes. Here they used recording machines instead of a stenographer and laptops had replaced case files.
He underwent the normal security measures as he remembered his reason for being here. It was to see Gregor Nuryef finally face the justice he deserved.
Gregor Nuryef had brutally stabbed a man to death for refusing to hand over the night’s takings from the family petrol station business.
Penn had been forced to admit he’d been wrong in his first assessment of the crime.
Initially he’d suspected a local gang headed by two brothers, Alan and Alec Reed, of being behind the crime. Having moved into the area in the mid-Eighties after a few close shaves with the Met, the brothers had eventually taken over organised crime in the city of Worcester and surrounding areas.
Their empire had been founded on identifying small businesses with limited or no CCTV and carrying out violent armed robberies, but despite diversifying into prostitution, drugs, racketeering and snack vans, armed robbery remained a mainstay of their business model.
The challenge to identify vulnerable businesses had become harder for the brothers over the years as small businesses had learned the benefits of a security system, but there were still struggling traders who thought a dummy camera would suffice and others who had broken systems they never bothered to get repaired.
Two years earlier West Mercia had introduced an initiative of visiting vulnerable premises and offering advice on basic safety measures proprietors could implement inexpensively. Sometimes they’d listened and sometimes not.
Mr Kapoor senior had largely listened but due to finances had not acted and had lost his twenty-three-year-old son as a consequence.
Penn shuddered at the memory of what he’d found when he’d attended the scene.
Of course, DI Travis had been the officer in charge of the case, but as the first responder Penn had always felt it was his case. Not least because young Devlin Kapoor had occupied his dreams for weeks.
He hoped the trial would finally allow him to put this case to bed. It was one that still kept him up at night as he waited for his mind to release it completely, for his brain to accept that it was over, the way a funeral offered closure to the relatives. This case was like a sentence written and erased but the indent of the letters remained.
He followed his colleagues into one of the sixteen courtrooms as an uneasy sensation stole over him.
