As if by Magic (2 page)

She gazed up, wide-eyed in surprise after seeing the contents.

Ollie and the other officers in fluorescent jackets had stopped their mix of shouting and warning, while Dave had half-turned away with his shoulder raised, presumably in anticipation of an explosion.

‘You really are a much bigger girl than me,’ Jessica told him disdainfully.

Dave turned around, looking sheepish.

‘What’s in it?’ Ollie asked, although Jessica noticed he didn’t take a further step towards her.

‘First you owe me fifty quid because it’s not anthrax.’

Ollie arched his eyebrows and took his hat off, exposing his shaved head. ‘I never agreed that bet and you’ve just done something very serious. What is it?’

‘Is that your strict Mister Policeman voice?’ she teased and was delighted to see a faint red tinge flash across Ollie’s face. The other officers remained silent, apparently fascinated by the chemistry between them. Passengers were continuing to flow past, their footsteps echoing loudly on the floor, although Jessica could see a few stopping to stare over at the group of officers.

She sat on the floor and put the package on her lap. ‘Want to see what’s inside?’ she asked mischievously.

‘Just tell us now you’ve opened it,’ Ollie replied with a sigh, as if he was speaking to a child.

Jessica lifted the flaps and reached in, placing her fingers around the contents. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ she added, one eyebrow cocked. No-one answered, so she pulled it out and dropped the empty box to the side, putting the new object on her lap.

‘It’s another box,’ Dave said, although he didn’t sound entirely sure.

‘That’s how good we are at Longsight,’ Jessica told Ollie. ‘We know what boxes look like.’

‘Don’t open that one, there could be anything in it,’ Ollie replied.

Jessica lifted it up to her ears and listened but couldn’t hear anything over the clamour of the train station. The second box was slightly taller than it was wider and the cardboard was thick, with one long strip of tape across the top. Before anyone could protest any further, she scratched a fingernail along the edges and opened the flaps at the top, peering in before closing them again.

‘It’s not a bomb, or anthrax,’ she said, nodding towards the men surrounding her. ‘So one of you lot owes me fifty quid.’

‘What is it?’ Ollie asked, clearly not in the mood to play games any longer. Jessica thought about stringing him along for a few minutes more but instead reached in and pulled out a jumbled Rubik’s Cube, holding it up so they all could see.

‘I’ve not seen one of those in years,’ Dave said.

‘Why would someone leave that in an unmarked box here?’ Ollie asked, seemingly to nobody specific.

At the sight of the toy, the other officers quickly lost interest. One muttered something into his radio and then they turned and began to walk away. Jessica thought she heard the words “crazy woman” in a hushed sentence but ignored it.

‘I should get a bravery medal for this,’ Jessica declared, reaching back into the box and pulling out a neatly folded piece of paper. She uncreased it and then turned it around so the two men could see the words “HAVE FUN” written in tidy block capital letters.

Pocketing the note and standing up, she added: ‘You lot would have shut down the entire north west rail network and blown up a Rubik’s Cube, while old muggins here single-handedly saves thousands of people a day of inconvenience – all for no reward.’

Ollie and Dave exchanged a look which Jessica thought looked worryingly knowing. ‘At least you won’t miss your train now,’ Ollie said, nodding at the cube. ‘And you’ve got something to keep you occupied on the journey now. Finders keepers and all that.’

‘Is that procedure too?’ Jessica asked. ‘I should just give it to you and let you do the paperwork.’

Ollie rolled his eyes and held a hand out. ‘You’ve not changed a bit. Let’s have it then.’

Jessica crouched and picked up the boxes, putting everything, including the cube, back inside each other. ‘Sod that, where’s your CCTV room? I’m going to find out whichever clown it was that made me put my life on the line.’

‘Won’t you miss your train?’ Ollie asked.

Jessica turned her head to Dave and gave him a wink and then said sarcastically. ‘Oh no, you’re right. It’s such a shame this has popped up and kept us away from a really important training day.’

Dave looked to Ollie and raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve got to put up with this every day,’ he said with a shake of the head as Ollie turned to lead the way to the security station.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Scrolling through hours of CCTV footage was frequently a boring, unrewarding job but there were cameras covering every inch of Piccadilly Station and, within minutes of the operator scanning backwards through the images, they knew exactly who had left it. Jessica didn’t even need to call the station to know the address of the person and, before their train had left the station, she and Dave were in the multi-storey car park arguing over who was going to pay for the ticket.

‘Just pay the money and put it on expenses,’ Jessica ordered as they stood at the bright yellow parking meter.

‘I can’t put it on expenses because we’re not supposed to be here, we’re supposed to be on the way to Yorkshire.’

‘It’s your car, I got the tram.’

‘Yes but we wouldn’t be leaving now if it wasn’t for you,’ Dave protested.

‘I should be up for a public service award while you cowered in the corner. It’s only one pound fifty, just pay it.’

‘If it’s only one pound fifty, why don’t you pay it?’

‘Because I’m more senior than you – now pay the money or I’ll have you doing freedom of information requests all next week.’

Dave dug into his pocket and pulled out a two-pound coin and then turned to the machine. ‘It doesn’t give change,’ he complained.

‘So what? Stop being so stingy, we’ve got someone to pay a visit.’

With a queue waiting for the lift, Dave spent the entire journey up the stairs back to the car complaining about being swindled.

‘Think of all the fifty pences they’ve stolen over the years,’ he said as they reached the car. ‘This is an organised theft racket we’re not even aware of.’

‘I’ll get on to Serious Crime Division first thing Monday,’ Jessica said, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m sure they’ll quite happily drop everything to launch a full-scale investigation into Manchester’s car parking companies.’

She climbed into the passenger’s side and, as ever when she travelled in his car, found the seats ridiculously low to the floor, falling the final few centimetres and bouncing uncomfortably. Dave started the engine, which roared to life, the exhaust sputtering noisily. Jessica directed him through the back streets until they reached a pub a few minutes away in the Northern Quarter. The area was renowned for its live music, pubs and independent shops, while the characters who frequented the alleys running along the backs of the main streets frequently provided more interesting forms of entertainment than the actual attractions.

Dave parked his car outside the pub which had definitely seen better days and the two officers walked to an adjacent grimy once-white door. Someone had used permanent marker to write the number “43” in thin black type on the plastic.

‘Do you reckon he’s in?’ Dave asked.

‘Judging by the way he scarpered out of the station, he wasn’t catching a train. This place is only ten minutes away on foot, so it’s not a bad place to start.’

Jessica suppressed a shiver as the buzzer sounded an ugly rumble that seemed to shake the entire building. When there was no response after thirty seconds, she braced herself and tried a second time, again without reply.

‘We’re going to have to go find him,’ she said, turning to walk to the end of the road. Dave stayed on her shoulder, mumbling something under his breath. ‘Are you still going on about that 50p?’ Jessica asked, annoyed.

‘No, I was just saying I hope my car’s going to be okay left there.’

‘It’s hardly a Rolls Royce.’

‘Just because no-one would steal your skip on wheels, it doesn’t mean everyone’s car is safe.’

Jessica turned into a small gap between two houses that had been converted into flats. It led to an alley which ran parallel to the road. She looked both ways but couldn’t see anything other than rubbish bags.

‘Right or left?’ she asked.

‘Right.’

Jessica turned left and started walking, looking from side to side. She could hear Dave huffing in annoyance behind her.

‘So who’s Ollie,’ he asked.

Jessica didn’t reply for a moment, stopping at a crossroads and looking from side to side, before continuing in the same direction. ‘Someone who works for transport police,’ she said.

‘He seems to know you – and I saw you taking his card as we left so you had his number.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘We trained together,’ she said as dismissively as she could.

‘You seemed pretty friendly...’

Jessica stopped, pointing ahead of them. ‘Did you see something down there?’

Dave stepped past her, continuing to walk. ‘Only a terrible attempt at changing the subject.’

Stepping quickly to make sure he didn’t get ahead of her, Jessica acted as if she hadn’t been caught out. ‘We were friends. You know what it’s like when you’re all new in uniform. Lots of things and people you don’t know. Long days and so on.’

‘How friendly were you?’ Dave asked, enjoying Jessica’s discomfort.

‘We were just mates. Afterwards, we went our separate ways. I didn’t even know he was still in the force.’

‘But were you friends?’ Dave asked, ‘Or “friends”,’ he added, holding up both hands and using his fingers to indicate speech marks.

‘People who do that are idiots,’ Jessica replied dismissively.

‘You’re very good at evading questions,’ Dave said.

‘I’m very good at delegating work I don’t want to do to annoying constables too.’

Dave didn’t reply but his laugh that echoed around the tight alley said it all.

Aside from ripped rubbish bags, dropped takeaways from the previous evening, and the contents of at least one stomach – possibly from the takeaway – there wasn’t much of note before they reached the main road. Jessica turned around, ignoring Dave’s point that he had said they should go the other way. They reached the original crossroads and she continued straight on, rounding a corner to see a group of three men sitting in a porch way at the rear of a shop. They were a mishmash of ages, with the eldest sporting grey manic hair and an overgrown beard. He was sharing a blanket with a middle-aged man whose eyes were glazed over and didn’t seem entirely aware of where he was. As Jessica approached, he protectively hid a bottle of clear liquid behind him.

On the floor between them was a large brown plastic bottle with some sort of cider in it, while the person she wanted was sitting just off to the side. He was the youngest of the three, only just in his thirties and the only one who seemed to have shaved recently, although there were thin red nicks towards the top of his jaw line. He was wearing a hat with flaps covering his ears and was wrapped in a heavy coat that had a rip along one side with yellow padding squirming out.

‘Nice day for it, Tony,’ Jessica said, sitting next to him on the concrete step, which felt cold through her jeans. The man didn’t respond but the elder pair started to grumble. ‘Oi, you two, go for a walk,’ she ordered, repeating herself more forcefully when they didn’t move quickly enough. Dave had retreated to the other side of the alley and was leaning against the wall as the men shuffled away, leaving them alone.

‘Tony, long time no see,’ Jessica tried again.

The man rocked from side to side before finally acknowledging her. ‘What do you want?’ he mumbled.

‘I’ve just come to check in with my favourite anarchist.’

Tony said something Jessica couldn’t understand under his breath.

‘Oh come on,’ Jessica said. ‘You’re not going to change the world by sitting in an alley muttering to yourself.’

“Toxic” Tony was well-known in the area as a homeless alcoholic. Most people living on the streets had some sort of tragic tale but Tony’s was stranger than most. The way Jessica had heard it, his parents owned a string of properties around the country and their wealth would one day, in theory, be passed down to their only son. Tony had come to Manchester to go to university but dropped out during his first year. Jessica’s first contact with him had been when his parents had registered him missing. It didn’t take long for him to show up; arrested for stealing a bottle of brandy from an off-licence. Instead of returning home, he spent the next decade living on the streets of Manchester, or – more recently – the flat they had first visited. He had a long list of similar low-level theft convictions, almost entirely for taking alcohol, while he was banned from every on or off-licensed premise in the city. Despite short stints in prison, he would pop back up on the police’s radar every few months for breaking the terms of his exclusion or simply for another theft. He also seemed to turn up on every and any cause which protested in the city centre, be it anti-capitalism – for which he had also been arrested for smashing a shop window the previous year – the march against increased council tax – even though he didn’t pay any, and, most bizarrely, breast cancer awareness, where he had been photographed wearing a bright pink T-shirt.

His parents had long-since disowned him and the frequency of his arrests meant he was on first-name terms with large numbers of Greater Manchester police. He looked at Jessica, his eyes widening ever so slightly in recognition, even though she hadn’t seen him in years. ‘You’re all in it together, man,’ he said flapping an arm in the vague direction of the building in front of him.

‘Who’s in what together?’

‘You’re all part of the same corporate machine,’ he said, his voice suddenly clear, although his words slurred into each other.

Jessica thought they should try to fix Tony up with Dave’s pink-haired schoolmate. ‘What were you up to an hour ago?’ Jessica asked. The man didn’t reply. ‘Come on, Tony, I know you were at the train station. I’ve seen the CCTV. You were wearing the same coat you’ve got on now, although the hat is new, I’ll give you that.’