The Amen Cadence by J. J. Salkeld

reached out and hugged her, and felt the power of the pain in her sobs. ‘They just sent me a picture of her hands. I recognised the rings.’
     
    Henry had never been so relieved to see Copeland walk into the office, and after Pepper had been to the loo and Copeland had made another round of teas they reconvened in Pepper’s office. She talked about Linda, and Copeland and Armstrong listened. ‘She wanted to be a dancer, did you know that? Aye, she did. We both used to go to classes in town, when we were kids. Her mum paid for us both, like, and Linda was so sure that she was going to make it professionally. She wanted to be a dancer in one of those musicals in the West End, you know. But the closest she ever got was Kendal town hall.’
     
    There was a long silence. Rex hoped that Henry would say something, and in turn Henry hoped, in vain, for Rex to speak first.
    ‘Don’t worry, Pepper, they’ll catch the bastard’, said Henry, eventually. ‘It sounds like a right amateur job.’
    ‘Because she was beaten to death with a bit of fucking scaffold pole? A random attack by a nutter? No, DCS Wallace isn’t buying that, and neither am I. Our man picked the weapon up from a building site just down the road from the flat where Linda was staying, and he was waiting for her when she got back from the school drop off. No wits, no CCTV, no forensics. He dropped the murder weapon next to the body, and they’re not optimistic about recovering any DNA, except Linda’s. Substitute a blade or a hand gun for that length of pipe and what have you got? A professional hit.’
    ‘So why make it so, you know, messy?’
    ‘To send a message, I expect. He hit her half a dozen times, but the first blow killed her.’
    ‘That’s something, I suppose.’
    ‘No, it fucking isn’t, is it, Henry? That’s just what people say. It’s all total bollocks, just like everything else.’
     
    Henry glanced across at Rex, who got the message. His turn.
    ‘Can we help at all, Pepper? This DCS must want everything we’ve got on Young, in case the bastard who did this travelled down from our patch. I can talk to the intelligence unit, and get whatever we’ve got sent down to West Midlands.’
    ‘Already done,’ said Pepper, ‘not that it’ll be any help. The file on Dai Young is pathetic, honestly. Like they’re not even bothering. I don’t know how many times I’ve emailed and phoned them with info, but almost none of it seems to be on the file.’
    ‘So send this DCS everything you’ve got. Copy the Super on it all and you’ll be golden, yeah?’
    ‘Already done, mate. But I didn’t copy her nibs. I’ll do that now, though.’
    ‘Nice one. So can we do anything?’
    ‘Don’t think so. I didn’t have much of real value to send them, to be honest. The names of Dai’s enforcers, plus a few of his other KAs. Linda told me on the phone that she’d seen Vince Boyle hanging about, so he’ll be mixed up in it somewhere, that’s for bloody certain. He’s no killer though, isn’t Vince. Plus, I’ve got one extra bit of intel.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Just a few registration numbers, of vehicles that I spotted at one of Dai’s favourite haunts.’
    ‘Shit, Pepper, you could get the sack for unauthorised observations, let alone PNC checks.’
    ‘Relax, Rex, I followed up on that burglary at that industrial unit, remember? And I never even ran the numbers.’
    ‘Oh, yeah, I do remember. I wondered why you took that one. So it just happened to be next door to a place where Young hangs out, does it?’
    ‘Same street, aye. Total co-incidence, like, it was. So I logged the numbers of the cars in all the adjacent units, and four of them were outside Dai’s place, including his Merc. Like I say, there was nothing deliberate about it.’
    ‘We’ll believe you, though thousands wouldn’t. So are you going down to Brum yourself?’
    ‘I want to, aye, of course, but it’s up to the Super, is that. And I never have a