Hush Little Baby (DC Beth Chamberlain) Read online

  By Jane Isaac

  The DC Beth Chamberlain series

  The Other Woman

  For Better, For Worse

  Hush Little Baby

  HUSH LITTLE BABY

  Jane Isaac

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Jane Isaac, 2020

  The moral right of Jane Isaac to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781838934736

  Cover design © Charlotte Abrams-Simpson

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  Contents

  Welcome page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  To the late DC John Thorogood, who was full of knowledge and good humour and taken far too early.

  1

  The heels of Jordan’s shoes scraped the pavement as she stepped off the bus.

  She was already late; she didn’t care.

  It was a clear winter’s day, the sky a cornflower-blue, but the wind was cruel, nipping at every inch of bare skin. She zipped her coat up to her chin, dawdled down the street.

  A car passed, and another, followed by a lorry; a woman battled with a pushchair against the wind, her free hand dragging a toddler behind. Jordan didn’t hear them, the sounds smothered by the baseline beat of Ariana Grande blasting through her earphones. Jordan’s head rocked gently to the music as she searched the ground, widening her gait to avoid the gaps between the paving slabs, a game she’d played since she was a kid. Although she wasn’t a kid anymore. In a less than a week, she’d be sixteen. Old enough to make her own decisions. Old enough to stop playing children’s games.

  The traffic thinned. She stretched her stride, defiantly planting a foot squarely on the next crack.

  School started ten minutes ago. Her phone buzzed in her pocket with messages from her friends, wondering where she was. She pictured Lucy and Georgia sitting in form, listening to the crisp timbre of Mr Gosforth’s Welsh accent as he took the register while texting her from beneath their desks. There was no point in hurrying, she’d have missed registration by the time she reached the school gates, she’d have to sign in at the main office.

  She continued down the road and paused beside the school entrance where a hairline crack forked through the middle of a slab, a legacy of years of boots and shoes turning to traipse through the gates. The school loomed in front of her, the car park heaving. She stared at it a moment, then moved on, past the entrance and out of town.

  Further down the road, banners advertising New executive homes for modern families blocked off a construction site. The enlarged photo of a man and a woman with perfect teeth, grinning, arms folded around the shoulders of two children, repeated again and again across the barrier. Jordan checked over her shoulder and turned off the main road, taking a narrow pathway between the building site and the old shoe factory beside. She stopped twenty yards down to search for a gap, the place where the railings met, and found it at the edge of the mother’s smile, slipping in behind. A few puffs were what she needed right now, a little calmness to get her through the day.

  She had to be careful. Chunks of broken rubble mingled with the upturned soil, making the ground uneven. But apart from concrete and debris she was alone in this desolate corner. A smell she couldn’t place curled her nose.

  Jordan found her footing, pulled a packet of Lambert and Butler from her pocket and lit up, taking a long drag. She exhaled slowly, watching the smoke swirl around her and trying to ignore the smell. A crow cawed overhead. It was warmer in this spot, the covered railings providing a welcome barrier to the cutting wind. She unzipped the top of her coat and was idly kicking at the loose stones and lumps of concrete beneath her feet when something caught her eye. She pulled the plugs from her ears and bent forward. Tiny fingers curled into the stone. Still, unmoving. She peered closer, pointed a toe and hesitantly scraped back the nearby rubble with her boot – to reveal a bluish hand, a bony wrist laced with a bangle.

  Her jaw dropped. The cigarette slipped to the ground as she scrambled back and lost her footing. Fell. Needles of pain spiked her lower back. Was it real? Edges of brick dug into her skin, snagging at her trousers as she wriggled back further.

  A voice in the distance, muffled as if underwater. Her eyes didn’t leave the tiny hand. The call grew louder. A pair of Rigger boots entered her line of vision. She looked up to see a builder, barely ten yards away, his ruddy face contorted beneath a yellow hard hat.

  Jordan cast one last gaze at the tiny hand, hitched a breath, jumped to her feet and scarpered.

  2

  The water caressed her body as she glided along, legs propelling her forward, revelling in the endorphins that slowly slipped into her system.

  Another lap. And another. The smell of the chlorine sharpened her senses, cleansing her mind.

  On the next turn, she felt a nudge from behind. A hand tugged at her foot. She quickened her pace. Another grab, this time momentarily pulling her below the surface. She gasped a quick breath before the water engulfed her face. She kicked the hand away and worked h
er arms faster, quickening to a sprint.

  Her vision blurred through her goggles. She whipped out a hand for the end rail, and missed. Fingers grasped her foot again, taking a hold this time. She was pulled down, underwater. Another kick, resisting the tension. The hand released its grip and she shot to the surface.

  Water droplets trickled down Beth’s face as she grabbed the rail, lifted her goggles and laughed at her niece, Lily, who was now beside her. ‘You almost got me there!’ she said. ‘You’re getting so fast.’

  The child wiped her eyes and beamed at her aunt. ‘Can we go again?’

  Beth glanced at the clock. ‘Maybe next time.’ The child grimaced. ‘We’ve almost had our hour. Don’t want to miss out on your ice cream.’

  The words performed their magic and the seven-year-old hauled herself out of the pool. It was rare that a day off for Lily – the village school had closed to be used as a polling station for the national elections – coincided with Beth’s rest day and she wanted to make the most of their time together. They entered the changing room, skirted around a line of women gathering for an aqua-aerobics class, and made a play of opening lockers and getting themselves changed.

  Minutes later, rivulets of water trickled between Beth’s shoulder blades as she tied back her curls into a loose ponytail on the way to the cafe. She spotted the familiar sporty stance of DS Nick Geary leaning over a table, flicking through a newspaper an earlier customer had left. The sharp contours of his back were visible beneath his fitted white shirt. He looked strong, vital and as attractive as hell.

  Beth allowed herself a wry smile. Six weeks had passed since they’d got back together and he’d moved into her home – to lodge until he found a flat closer to Force Headquarters. The move would be temporary, ‘a couple of weeks at best,’ he’d said. But he showed no sign of leaving anytime soon. While there was something uncomfortable about having a relationship with her sergeant, she couldn’t deny he was good company. She enjoyed having him around, even if, after careful consideration, she still resisted his pleas to share their relationship with colleagues. A lodger was one thing, a lover quite another and since they were both deployed on the Homicide and Serious Crime Squad and she’d recently applied for promotion, she didn’t want colleagues to think she was sleeping her way to the top. No. For now, they were lovers in secret, friends and work colleagues to the rest of the world.

  Nick had whiled away his time in the gym while they swam, his dark hair still slick from his shower. Lily rushed towards him and encased him in a hug from behind. She certainly relished having him around more, friend or not. He teased her by gasping, feigning surprise. ‘Good swim?’ he said, his Northern Irish accent filling the area.

  ‘Fab!’ Beth said. ‘Lily almost beat me at the crawl.’ She widened her eyes at the child. ‘Until she cheated.’

  ‘I did not!’ Lily’s mock indignance melted into a musical chuckle.

  ‘It’s all about the winning,’ Nick said. He winked at Lily and tilted his head towards the nearby freezer. ‘Ready to choose?’

  Beth watched her scamper across the room, marvelling at the child’s enthusiasm for ice cream, despite the fact that Christmas was only two weeks away and outdoor temperatures struggled to rise above single figures.

  ‘DC Beth Chamberlain,’ Nick said, raising a brow. ‘I was going to send for you.’

  Beth’s stomach dropped. The mention of her job title on her day off meant work. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve just taken a call from the DCI. A body part has been discovered, looks like that of a small child, on a building site in Northampton.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Boughton Green Road. On the edge of Kingsthorpe.’

  Beth knew the area well. She’d been raised in Kingsthorpe. Boughton Green Road was a long winding road that ran from the heart of the suburb’s main shopping area through a plethora of housing estates and out to open countryside. She’d read somewhere that some of the farmers’ fields at the bottom had recently been purchased to make way for much-needed residential housing, a controversial move many locals had petitioned against. ‘The site at the end, near the shoe factory?’ she checked.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  3

  An hour later, Beth stood beside Nick at the front of the conference room in Northamptonshire’s Homicide and Major Incident suite and sipped her coffee. After a bright start, clouds had drifted in and conjoined, blocking out the sun, and the murkiness seeping in from the windows combined with the fluorescent lighting inside the room made it feel more like evening than late morning.

  ‘A child’s arm was discovered on the building site at the end of Boughton Green Road at 8.43 a.m. this morning.’ DCI Lee Freeman stepped forward and tapped the board twice, drawing their attention to an abundance of photographs of the crime scene. ‘Given the size, it’s believed the limb belonged to an infant, possibly a young baby.’ By the time they’d dropped Lily off and made their way across town, Freeman had already carried out the emergency staff briefing and deployed the rest of the team on initial enquiries and the room felt oddly quiet with just the three of them present.

  Beth moved down the line, scrutinising the pictures of the greying limb, taken at a variety of angles. Only the top surface of an arm and hand were visible; palm down, fingers curled, the rest looked like it was set in stone. Railings in the background indicated it was found close to the edge of the site. She leaned in close. The skin was taut and mottled.

  ‘I take it the arm is still attached to a body?’

  ‘We think so. Dr Hunter was already there when I arrived at the scene this morning.’

  Beth gave a short sigh of relief. Out of the two pathologists that covered their area, Susan Hunter was the most enthusiastic and, with a wealth of experience behind her, she also prioritised cases, bumping them up the post-mortem list if the police needed quick results. A small mercy to be grateful for.

  Nick’s face twisted. ‘Looks like it’s been dead a while, poor little mite.’

  Freeman lifted a folder from the side table. ‘They’ve been working on it under a tent in situ this morning. Hunter emailed these across.’ He opened the folder, pulled out two sheets of A4, and passed them around. More photos, taken at various stages as they uncovered the area around the limb. In the first picture, the hand and arm were all that were exposed, the rest of the baby’s body covered by what appeared to be a sheet of concrete. Beth passed it to Nick and examined the second. A trench of rubble and soil had been removed around the edges of the sheet, showing the clear lines of a concrete rectangle.

  ‘From initial analysis, Hunter thinks the child might have been set into some kind of concrete block and buried underground,’ Freeman said. ‘The block’s plenty large enough to house a young baby. It was probably unearthed and broken by the recent construction work.’

  Beth recoiled. She’d seen many bodies over the years: stab victims, tortured remains, suicide train casualties that were virtually unrecognisable. Every one left its mark, but the idea of a tiny baby buried in concrete plucked a heartstring. So young. Innocent and defenceless.

  ‘Who would kill a young child and entomb them in concrete?’ Nick said.

  ‘Someone that didn’t want the remains to be found,’ Beth said. ‘If the concrete hadn’t been disturbed, it might never have been discovered.’ The action implied planning and the thought that somebody had gone to such meticulous lengths to dispose of a child’s body was gut-wrenching. She switched from one photo to another, her gaze resting on a tarnished bracelet on its wrist.

  ‘Who owned the land before it was sold?’ she asked.

  ‘It was part of Moreton’s farm. Pete’s gone straight out to see the farmer this morning.’

  Beth nodded approvingly. DC Pete Winston was the youngest officer on the team and what he lacked in experience, he made up for with abundant enthusiasm. He’d ask the right questions.

  ‘Hunter’s called in a specialist forensic anthropologist/archaeologist to be
sure,’ Freeman said, ‘but the concrete isn’t pitted or weathered which we might expect if it had been exposed to the elements. She believes the body could have buried for some time.’

  ‘So, we’re looking at an historical case,’ Nick said.

  ‘It’s possible. Hunter reckons it could have been there a number of years.’

  Beth stared at the remains. ‘Surely it would be dust and bones by now.’

  ‘Without further tests it’s difficult to say how long the child’s been there or how it died. Hunter dealt with a case when she worked in the Met – a man’s head found in concrete. It was discovered at the bottom of a reservoir, eight years after he was reported missing, and preserved. The water hadn’t penetrated the concrete. Given the state of the limbs on show and the smell emitting from the body – I’m told rapid decomposition starts as soon as it’s exposed to the air – Hunter thinks this body may have been preserved in a similar way.’

  ‘Babies and young infants don’t disappear,’ Nick said. ‘Not without a fuss.’

  Freeman passed him a knowing look. ‘We’ve only got one outstanding case listed in our area.’ He pointed at the bangle. ‘And this does give me cause for concern.’

  He pulled out another photo. ‘We’ve enlarged the bangle to show the detail.’

  Beth peered in closer at the tarnished silver, noting a tiny rabbit symbol on the edge.

  ‘You’re not suggesting it’s Alicia Owen?’ Nick said, incredulous.

  Shocked faces looked back at the board. Three-month-old Alicia Owen disappeared from her pram outside a supermarket, fifteen years earlier. She was believed to have been abducted, although no ransom note was ever forthcoming, and she was never found. The story rocked the residents of Northamptonshire to the core and when the days after her disappearance stretched into weeks and months, panicky parents set up a ‘Keep our children safe’ poster campaign urging people to be extra vigilant around infants. Beth had only been sixteen at the time, but she still remembered the black and white photos of Alicia’s discarded pram plastered across the newspapers.