Death in Dark Waters

Read Death in Dark Waters Online

Authors: Patricia Hall

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural

The crowd of young people spilled out of the entrance to the Carib club into Chapel Street, where the red and green lights which shook in the strong wind scattered dancing patches of colour onto the rain-soaked tarmac. The kids were high on chemically induced adrenaline and the music which had just come to an explosive end inside, where the sweat-soaked, dreadlocked DJ had sunk into a seat close to his turntables utterly exhausted. In the narrow street outside, lined on each side by tall warehouses most of which had been recently converted into offices and shops, the dilapidated building which housed the Carib was squeezed between a mini-cab office and an indie record shop. The street was narrow here, pot-holed and puddled, although it was used as a day-time rat-run between Aysgarth Lane, the main road out of Bradfield to the north, and the university quarter half a mile away on another of the town's seven hills.
At four in the morning, it was apparently deserted until the jubilant clubbers spilled off the narrow pavement and across the road to avoid the showers of fizzy water being sprayed about by a couple of girls in mini-skirts and tops that were more strap than substance and unlikely to protect them from the wintry, rain-spattering gusts from the west. It was their shrieks of laughter which almost drowned the squeal of brakes as a taxi came fast around the bend in the road from the Aysgarth direction. Jeremy Adams never knew what hit him as the cab swerved wildly, skidding on the wet surface, missing three or four revellers by inches before it caught him from behind and tossed him like a rag-doll head-first onto the kerb.
“Man, what the hell is you doin'?” a tall black youth in combat gear cried out angrily as the vehicle slid to a halt. He pulled open the door and dragged out the driver, an Asian
man little older than he was himself. From the passenger compartment shocked faces, dark eyes staring from beneath white headscarves, gazed out at the now silent crowd.
“Get an ambulance,” a girl's voice cried, shrill and shaking in the silence, and half a dozen mobile phones were instantly pressed into use. A skinny blonde girl in a short black skirt and silver top knelt beside the boy who was lying absolutely still in the gutter with a pool of blood around his head. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the rain, which had been relentless for days, had resumed, soaking her hair and thin clothes within minutes. Someone passed her a coat which she tucked around the boy's body.
“Jez, Jez, come on Jez, it's all right, you're gonna be all right.” Behind her, the taxi driver edged his way through the crowd and looked down for a moment at his victim before turning away, shaking, to vomit in the gutter. The tall youth who had pulled him from the cab followed him.
“You was driving too fast, man,” he said loudly, his words echoed by other youngsters, black and white, who gazed in horror at the victim.
“He was right in the middle of the road,” the driver muttered, wiping his face with his hand. “I got to get these women home. I drove from Manchester airport. It's late. It's very late. There's snow on the motorway. They wanted to get home quick.”
Suddenly the mood of the crowd changed, like embers fanned into life by the sharp wind which funnelled down the street. Exhilaration slid perceptibly into a mutter of anger, sullen at first but menacing enough for the young driver, his face grey with shock and his dark eyes beginning to take on a hunted look, to begin to edge his way back to his cab. By now the numbers packed into the narrow defile outside the club had swelled as more sweating dancers emerged from the double doors. Murmured explanations passed on a version of events which cranked up the tension quickly amongst the teenagers who began to
clog the street and hem in the taxi and its occupants in spite of the downpour.
“I'll get the police,” the taxi driver said, his voice high with anxiety. “Let me use my radio to get the police.”
“We did 999,” someone called out. “They're on their way.”
“Don't let him drive off,” came another shout and the crowd surged to surround the cab, pressing the driver backwards against the bonnet and rocking the vehicle until sounds of protest could be heard from the women inside.
Standing above the crowd on the steps of the club a tall dreadlocked man in a sleeveless vest under his unbuttoned Armani shirt, evidently as impervious to the chill Pennine wind as the scantily clad girls, put up a golf umbrella and glanced at his companion, standing almost as tall and as dark in the shadows except where the dim street-lights caught sallower skin and lighter eyes.
“Feel like sorting this little lot, sergeant?” the black man asked, making sure they were not overheard, and if there was a hint of irony in the courtesy his companion ignored it.
“No way'” Kevin Mower said. He glanced up the street to where blue emergency lights could already be seen in the distance. “Not only am I not on duty, I'm actually on the sick. Let the plods deal. It's only an RTA.”
“If one of those hyped-up little bastards hits the driver it'll be a lot more than that,” his companion said. “I've seen it happen in a flash. I get the feeling that the brothers here don't like the Asians much.”
Mower watched as the black man raised his voice and slipped easily into the broad accent in which he performed.
“Is you all goin' to block the street so's no ambulance can get through?” He spoke from the steps behind the crowd from under his blue and gold striped umbrella but was authoritative enough to cause many of those jammed into the narrow space to turn around. “I say they as didn't see what happened get off home now, and let the Old Bill through to sort it,” went on the dreadlocked DJ, still a good head above the milling mob even
as he stepped down to street level. The now urgent sound of a siren indicated that either an ambulance or the police or both were about to arrive. A collective shrug of sullen acceptance seemed to go through the assembled clubbers
most of them now thoroughly drenched and cooled down by the rain, and gradually those on the edge of the crowd, who had arrived last and seen least, began to drift away down Chapel Street in the direction of the brighter lights of Aysgarth Lane and the taxi ranks where they would find transport home.
Almost casually the DJ stepped down from his vantage point beside Mower and shouldered his way through those who remained as far as the taxi and pulled open the driver's door.
“If I was you, man, I'd sit quiet there till the police come down,” he said, ushering the driver back into his seat and taking the keys out of the ignition in one easy movement. “You is safe now.”
He moved on to where the injured boy lay, the dark pool around his head bigger now and beginning to trickle away towards the gutter, the mini-skirted girl more distraught. He held his umbrella protectively over them for a moment while he looked down at the boy. He shook his head almost imperceptibly before helping the girl to her feet.
“Here's the ambulance now, honey,” he said. “You come inside and get dry and then I'll take you down the Infirmary to see how he's doing.”
“I'm all right,” the girl said, pulling away from the DJ's arm as the ambulance and a police car inched their way through the stragglers and halted beside the victim. “I'm with some friends.” But when she scanned the crowd for her friends she could not find them. Suddenly most of the clubbers had melted away.
“Can you tell us who he is,” asked one of the paramedics minutes later, crouching beside the injured boy, his feet in the pool of blood and rainwater which now surrounded the victim.
“His name's Jez, Jeremy, Jeremy Adams,” the girl said, her voice high with panic. “I'm not sure of his address, but he goes to the grammar school, we're in the sixth form. His dad owns that big warehouse place on Canal Road. And he's going to be absolutely livid that we came clubbing down here.”
Back on the steps the DJ took Kevin Mower's arm, let down his umbrella and shook it fastidiously before pulling the policeman back inside.
“Racist little bitch,” he said without a smile. “You see her jump when I touched her? My car's out back. We can get through the fire doors.”
“Cool,” Mower said, turning his back on the incident with a sense of profound relief.
 
At much the same time that the ambulance pulled away from Chapel Street, siren blaring in anticipation of heroic efforts to save Jeremy Adams' life, a younger boy was crouching under the shelter of the overhead walkways of Holtby House, one of the blocks of crumbling flats which dominated Bradfield's skyline to the west. Stevie Maddison felt sick and he shivered as the chilly rain soaked through his thin jacket and t-shirt. He pulled nervously on his cigarette, shielding the glowing tip with his hand, anxious not to be seen. Unable to sleep, he had called his best friend on his mobile and arranged to meet him, hoping to blag some skunk from the lad he had gone around with at school, in the days when he bothered to go to school. These days he clung to Derek with the frantic clutch of a drowning man, because Derek had been where he was now, stick thin, light-headed and nauseous in turn, desperate for a fix and yet desperate not to have one. Derek had been a heroin user but now Derek was clean. But tonight Derek, who usually answered his urgent phone calls promptly, did not show and his mobile remained on voice-mail, the cool cultured woman's voice seeking messages that Stevie was in no state to give.
He pinched out the end of his roll-up between finger and thumb and was about to turn back towards his home three floors above to resume his elusive search for sleep when he caught a flicker of movement a hundred yards away at the entrance to Priestley House, the most westerly of the three surviving blocks on the Heights. At last, he thought, expecting Derek to emerge from the swing doors but before he could shout a greeting he realised that what he had seen was not someone coming out but three figures in hooded jackets going in, one tall, the others smaller and, he thought, younger. Stevie shrank back into the shadows. He knew most of the drug dealers on the estate only too well, but this group was too far away in the swirling rain for recognition. His heart thumped hard against his skinny ribcage as he watched and waited close to the doors of Holtby
ready to bolt into his burrow like a terrified rabbit at any threat closer to hand. For long minutes he heard only the relentless lashing of the rain against concrete and, far away
the whine of a car being driven until its engine screamed and tyres squealed. Some kids somewhere on the other side of town getting their kicks, he guessed. But then a shout snapped his eyes upwards to the roof of Priestley where, in spite of the rain, he could just make out a figure silhouetted against the reddish glow of the night sky, then another and another, until three or four shapes merged into one and then one became detached, apparently swimming through the downpour, arms and legs flailing, as he fell to earth like a wounded bird.

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