Cleaning Up (34 page)

Monday at the station and there was a message waiting, given to him by the new desk sergeant, the newly promoted and uniformly respected Tina Clough - he was to call DS Young as soon as possible, please.

He did, before he did anything else in fact. Young was revved up all right, breathy and animated, struggling to maintain his standard Teflon composure.

‘Big news Darrin, big news.’

‘Yeah?’

No fucking around with him this time, straight to it.

‘Yeah Dalton - he’s gone, disappeared!’

‘Disappeared! Fuck. You’re kidding, when?’

‘Never came back after Friday night. They found his car up at Stanedge, it had been there all day Saturday. It was called in by the guy with the food van, early on Sunday morning.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Yeah - and he’s not in it either, the mobiles off - he’s gone into fucking thin air.’

‘The tapes, Sarge, the tapes. Are there any indication of what may have happened on them?’

‘Yeah - well you heard his last conversation Darrin, he sounds a little strained, maybe even a bit agitated, but there’s not much there, is there? Usual shit, no names, no concrete information, sweet fuck-all – bloody hell.’

‘Come on in tomorrow,’ Young told him. ‘I’ve already cleared it with your gaffers and we’ll get everybody together - brainstorm it a bit.’

Fucking hell, Darrin thought, for all of his permutations and musings he hadn’t seen this one coming. The next day
they commandeered the detectives’ room and played the tape back and forth for nearly a tension filled frustrating hour, trying to pull something, anything, out of the ether that would help them make sense of it.

But, the playing back and forth repeatedly served to tell them exactly fuck all, apart from what they already knew. In reality, their brainstorming meant nothing apart from a fair bit of staring into space, muttered expletives and synchronized head scratching.

‘Another gang?’ Lumb had theorized.

‘More likely the Saltt boys themselves, I reckon,’ said Mac. That sounded better to Darrin and to most of the others too, judging by the echoing group nods and mutterings.

‘Back to the South of France, said Mozzer, ‘missing the warm weather.’

That one hit the ground like a lead balloon and got Mozzer nothing but a few seconds of silence and a rake of looks that confirmed he was now the office plank.

Darrin asked for the tape to be played one more time and listened to it, again, intently, even calling for shush when Lumb and Young started yapping over the top of it.

Darrin circled his hand when the taped hissed to a halt. ‘Again’, he said, but the others were over it. Darrin stepped up from his perch and hit the play button.

He wasn’t sure, but, maybe, maybe there was something in the rhythm of Dalton’s sentences, a name in there maybe. ‘Gee man’ was not an expression he had ever heard Dalton use before. Perhaps it was G-Man, he thought, the fuckers loved their initials. Fucking hell, G-Man - he was sure of it.

Darrin looked around the room - Bowden, Young, Lumb, Mac, Moz, June, Walsh and the new guy Kingston and he bit
down, literally tasting blood in the inside of his mouth on the revelation of his insight

Mac brought it to a close with a heavy shrug of his shoulders.

‘Ah well, if he has fucking gone, no great loss eh? It’s one for the good guys far as I’m concerned.’

Nobody demurred on that one. Bowden looked at his watch, ‘OK then gents and good lady once more unto the breach - let’s wrap it up for today.’

They stayed on the flat for a few more days. Nearly a week after the disappearance Niall O’Brien turned up and spent an hour or so in the joint, they could hear some cupboards and drawers being opened and closed but he came out of the flat apparently empty handed. That was followed by a few days of nothing and Young told the team one more week and that was it, the Quays side of it would be finished.

Friday and he was planning for the weekend, up to Glasgow this time, for a bit of tartan salsa with Jolika and Stuart. He hadn’t danced much since he’d done his shoulder. With the injury it had been much too painful to do the lead and he was looking forward to getting back into it.

Darrin went into the canteen at the end of the shift and the large room was surprisingly full and rowdy. Keegan and a couple of his buddies appeared to be at the focal point of the tumult. There was an empty table in the corner of the room a couple of strides away from the till and when he grabbed his tea and a pie he made his way straight to it. Trish came over to see him after a couple of minutes of his ‘Darrin no mates’ solitude and she gave him a little thrust of the hip and an arched eyebrow.

‘Not joining us then Dazzler?’

He waved at his plate, ‘in and out Trish.’

‘Hmmm, that doesn’t sound like you.’ She gave him a smile that he could feel in his pant’s pocket.

He nodded over at the noise, ‘what’s happening then?’ Mozzer was over there now, his arm draped around Keegan’s beefy shoulder, comrades in arms enjoying a hearty laugh together.

‘You not heard then?’

Fuck, she was getting as bad as Young.

He intimated a give it to me.

‘DS Keegan - he’s retiring, taking his pension, over thirty years in, the lucky sod.’

He kept his face neutral and looked at the back of Keegan’s big head.

Mozzer had broken off from the jollies for a moment or two and he caught Darrin’s glance and motioned for him to come over and join them.

Darrin leaned back in his chair, he looked straight at Mozzer dead-eyed and didn’t respond.

Mozzer gave him a shrug and Trish stepped to his right to block his view of Keegan’s table.

‘Well?’ she asked.

He shook his head, ‘things to do and places to go me, Trish.’

She tutted, exasperated with him, ‘fair enough misery guts - later, maybe.’

Darrin finished what was left of his tea, returned his tray to the counter and walked out of there. He thought about turning around to give Keegan the eye but he didn’t. Out into the corridor and on past Sergeant Clough who gave him a cheery wave, his stomach churning with sour distaste and
frustration. The following Tuesday, he was running late for the midday shift and had to jog from his car into the building. Sarge Thomas made a show of pointedly looking at his watch then tapped it as Darrin moved quickly past the charge desk. He went with haste down to the lift’s doors, which opened just as he arrived there. Keegan stepped out into the corridor, his frame filling up two thirds of the lift’s entrance. There was less than a metre between them but he didn’t step back to give Keegan any space and if Keegan had done so he would have been back in the lift.

Darrin leaned in towards him. He could smell the mints, the tobacco and the clear vodka spirit. He noted the broken capillaries that leeched from the big man’s nose on across his broad cheeks.

Keegan gave him a ‘how do’ and made to go past - Darrin touched him lightly on the arm and plastered a smile across his face.

‘Off I heard then Sarge, congrats, end of the month eh?’

Keegan rocked a little on his heels, stifled something and smiled back at him. ‘That’s right Constable, more than thirty years of ball ache given to this lot, more than enough I reckon.’

Darrin didn’t allow any gap in the conversation to develop.

‘Where are you off to then Sarge? Somewhere nice I hope.’

Keegan nodded along at that, he was a little bit more engaged now - back in balance, back in control. The fucking big man.

‘Yeah, missus has persuaded me to open a B and B down in Bournemouth, I’ll be on fried egg duty,’ he chuckled.

Darrin clapped him hard on the shoulder, ‘ah well, best of luck with that, G Man. Hope it all works out well for you.’

Keegan absorbed it with a slight widening of his eyes and a pulling back, by at least an inch, of the big heavy head, his smile slipping from his face like a landslide.

Sarge Thomas called out from the desk, ‘move your arse PC May - now like!’

Keegan stood to one side to give him access the lift - Darrin stepped in and hit the button for the top floor.

Keegan turned and looked at him. The mask was gone now, all those years of corruption and the accumulation of barely hidden contempt in plain sight on that big hard face. Darrin held the look, his own mouth pulling back into a carnivorous smile.

Keegan leaned back slightly and hooked his thumbs in his pant’s pockets.

‘You be careful out there son - it’s a dangerous world we live in.’

Darrin winked mockingly at him. ‘Good advice that and back at yer Keegan, you too. Unfinished business.’ He took his finger off the open button and the lift doors came noisily together.

Bournemouth eh! Darrin thought, as the lift started to climb. Maybe the prick wasn’t out of reach yet. After all, time was on his fucking side.

Sonny had called him with confirmation of an end of January kick off date for a local version of the gangs’ initiative. Tommy had been silently grateful that Sonny had decided not to let what had happened with Donna and Pasquale fuck that up for him. Boy did he owe him one.

The rear of the building had been rebuilt at the Centre and business would be back to normal by the end of the month. He’d reduce his hours and that would go a little way to give Pauline and her strained finances some breathing space.

Tommy had taken time out in order to stuff Mick’s clothes into half a dozen or so plastic bags and had taken the drive over to couple of charity shops. He donated Mick’s last lot of winnings to Mick’s favourite charity, Save the Children. He’d picked up the clog and the encyclopaedias and a bag of photos which showed Mick as a boy with his mum, dad and brothers. All of them having fun at a family holiday on the beach at Filey - the photos, old and slightly faded, had been taken just a couple of years before the start of the Second World War.

He’d wait to put the house on the market, maybe do it early in the New Year, there was no rush. In the early evening that he’d picked up Mick’s gear he’d stood in the back yard for a while. The yard was a suntrap, south-west facing and away from the noise of the traffic. In the warm afternoons and evenings Mick used to love to sit out there with his paper, his brew and a fag chewing over politics and the current affairs, lightening up the experience with the sports and his
picks for the next day’s racing.

He had heard a rustle in the big tree that loomed over Linda’s backyard wall. He’d looked up and saw a big white barn owl sitting up there in the bald branches. It was looking down towards him, occasionally turning its head to the left and to the right. Tommy stood there for at least twenty minutes and watched the silent bird, thinking of Mick as he did so. He had the realisation that Mick was now a gap in his life that would never be filled.

Finally the owl took off, on over his head and flying east towards the low moor. He immediately went back inside the kitchen, locked the house up and drove back home.

On his return Tommy fired up the computer and had a look at this dating website that he’d joined just a couple of weeks ago. He’d taken a gander at the gals down in Brighton and had added as one of his new ‘friends’ an attractive African woman who was living down there, somewhere in Hove. He’d had a strange instant moment of recognition when he’d seen one of her additional photos, he was certain that they’d crossed paths, although, despite racking his memory, he couldn’t remember when. Anyway, she’d reciprocated his interest and added him as a ‘friend’ too, which meant that they could now correspond directly with each other. He looked again at the oddly affecting picture. He still had no memory of where they might have met - strange.

Ah well, Tommy thought, ‘friends!’ Maybe that was something he could build upon.

Paul Connor-Kearns was born in Oldham and spent his formative years travelling and working in Europe and the Middle East. He has lived in Australia for twenty years and for ten of those lived with Aboriginal people. Paul returned to the UK in 2005 and it was this ‘coming home’ that led to
Cleaning Up,
his first novel.