“And in the meantime, I sit on my backside while you decide how much energy to put into finding the toe-rag who killed Donna? Whatever the drug squad thinks, she was a
good woman. She didn't deserve what was happening to her. Ask anyone on the Heights.”
Thackeray suppressed the sudden spurt of anger which threatened to overwhelm him too.
“You know we'll put in exactly the same amount of effort into clearing up Donna's death as anyone else's.” His voice crackled like ice and Mower knew he had overstepped the mark.
“I didn't mean ⦔ He shrugged. “Sorry.”
“In the meantime, there is some good news,” Thackeray said, changing the subject abruptly. “It looks as if we may be able to pin something on that bastard Barry Foreman at last, with what you and Laura unearthed about his business dealings with the council, and some unexplained payments Val Ridley turned up on Stanley Wilson's bank records. Bonuses, in theory, but I reckon it's much more likely that Foreman's been bankrolling Wilson's porno empire. I think Foreman has access to far more cash than his legitimate activities could possibly support and he's been syphoning it off into other activities, legal and illegal. It may take months to track his dealings down, but at least we've got a lead now.”
“Still no sign of our unexpected company director Karen Bailey, though?”
“No sign of Karen, no sign of her twins.”
“It might be an idea to keep an eye on Foreman,” Mower said carefully. “In my spare time, guv.”
“What you do in your spare time, Kevin, is entirely up to you,” Thackeray said, equally non-committal. “You're on leave, after all.”
It was not until the sergeant had closed the door behind him that Thackeray relaxed and smiled quietly to himself, a small satisfied smile which broadened when he answered his phone a few seconds later to be told that Mrs. Althea Adams was in reception, anxious to make a statement about her husband's business affairs. But foremost in his mind was another question he wanted to ask her: just how long was it since
Mrs. Adams and her fellow directors of City Ventures had seen Karen Bailey. In spite of his gnawing anxieties about Laura, this was turning out to be a good day after all, he decided. And not before time.
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The hair on the back of Dizzy B's neck prickled and his throat tightened. He was sitting in his car, parked on the main approach to the Heights, watching through a rainstreaked windscreen as a group of hooded boys and young men congregated under the shelter of the walkways close to the entrance to Priestley house. It was only seven-thirty in the evening but pitch dark as squalls of wind threw icy rain against the doors and the whole vehicle shuddered under the impact. The few streetlights which still worked lit the roadway and the grassy approach to the flats, but dimly. The car's lights were off and he was pretty sure that the gang would not see him. But only pretty sure. As they milled around and some appeared to look in his direction he slid down in his seat, making himself as invisible as possible. It would be ironic, he thought, if one of the sudden surges of destructive energy such groups were prone to fixed on an unwisely parked car and he found himself the focus of a random attack on his wheels. Unwary drivers on Wuthering regularly found their tyres slashed, windows shattered or their vehicles reduced to a heap of twisted and burnt metal if the mood took some of the local kids. But he suspected that the group he was watching had other things on their mind. They looked as if they were waiting for something or someone. He fingered his mobile phone, knowing he might need back-up and very aware that the little he could call on might not save him if things turned ugly.
Sanderson had driven up to the Heights in response to Lorraine Maddison's frantic appeal to him to help her find Stevie. He guessed that if anyone knew where the boy was hiding it had to be one or other of his friends in the neighbourhood. But he knew from bitter experience that tackling large
groups of youths on an out-of-control estate was a risky enterprise even with a warrant card to back you up. Out of the Force, out on a limb, far from his own turf, it was not a risk he was prepared to take. Only if a single youth passed by would he take a chance and ask a few questions. In the meantime he was content to watch what was going on at Priestley House, just so long as he did not attract any attention.
He did not see the unlit car which passed him until it swooped into the pool of light from the single lamp outside the doors of Priestley. Slightly unnerved, he slid even further down in his seat and watched obliquely out of the side window as the youths outside the flats approached the new arrival with a caution that surprised him. A single figure got out of the parked vehicle and the youths gathered round at what appeared to be a respectful distance, providing a bizarre guard of honour for a tall slim figure who made his way quickly towards the entrance and went inside. After a few cautious glances around the now deserted and rainswept estate, the rest of the group followed him and the doors swung shut behind them.
Sanderson remained where he was for a moment and then started his own engine, letting the car roll quietly down the hill and slowing almost to a stop opposite the doors. With some difficulty, he deciphered the registration number of the dark-coloured BMW which had been left unattended outside the flats and wrote it in ball-point on his hand. Either the owner was very confident that no one would touch his wheels, or did not care whether they did or not â which seemed less likely. Respect, Sanderson muttered to himself as he let in the clutch and moved off down the hill. And there was generally only one way of gaining that on an estate like Wuthering.
He pulled up again outside the old people's bungalows which gave him an unrestricted view of the parked car and the entrance to Priestley House through his rear view mirror and called Kevin Mower on his mobile.
“I think I've got one of the main men up here as we speak,” he said softly. “D'you want to come up and take a look?”
“Give me ten minutes,” Mower said. “Where are you exactly?” Sanderson told him where he had parked, but before he could slide down in his seat again he noticed that the nearest bungalow, the one which he guessed from its boarded up windows belonged to Laura Ackroyd's grandmother, was showing just the faintest sliver of light beneath its door. Cautiously he slid across to the passenger door and out of the car, ducking low so that he could not be seen from the flats and dodging quickly into the deep shadow at the side of the small house. Further down the row he could hear the sound of television sets turned up high by residents too hard of hearing to be able to pick up any sound other than
Coronation Street.
Cautiously he worked his way round to the back of Joyce Ackroyd's house, narrowly missing the dustbin, which was lying on its side, its contents scattered and sodden across the paving. He pushed gently at the kitchen door and to his surprise it swung open at his touch. He hesitated for a moment but the decision whether to step inside or not was taken for him when a hard object was thrust into his back and a hefty shove propelled him over the threshold onto his knees in the dimly lit kitchen.
“Jesus,” Dizzy B gasped, knowing his luck had run out and expecting with heart-stopping certainly that he was about to die. But instead of the shot or crushing blow he anticipated, there came only a whistling expulsion of breath and a surprisingly breathless shrill voice.
“Dizzy B, man. What you doing here? I fuckin' nearly shot you.”
Dizzy turned slowly towards his attacker and sat back against the cool metal of Joyce's fridge and expelled a long breath himself. He could feel his heart fluttering like a bird against his ribs as he struggled to control his breathing enough to speak.
“Stevie, man,” he said at last, his voice thick. “What the
fuck are you doing with a gun?” The boy was still pointing the weapon in Sanderson's general direction and Sanderson worried about the steadiness of his trigger finger.
“Put it down, man,” Sanderson said quietly. “I'm not going to hurt you. Your mother's worried sick about you and asked me to come looking.”
“I'm OK,” Stevie said, letting the weapon fall slowly to his side.
“You don't look OK,” Dizzy said, getting slowly to his feet so as not to startle the boy. “You'd better give me that or you'll be in a whole lot of trouble.”
“No way,” Stevie said, holding the gun behind his back. “It's insurance, isn't it? I'm looking for the bastard that killed Donna. I reckon it was Ounce. An'if it wasn't Ounce then he'll know who did it.”
“Who's Ounce, for God's sake?”
“The main man, is Ounce. No one does owt up here without Ounce says so. I saw Ounce tânight Derek fell, an'all. He were one onâem on t'roof. He'll know about Donna, and if I've got the gun, he'll tell me, won't he?”
“That makes no sense. You'll be the one who ends up banged up. Or dead.”
“It don't matter,” the boy said. “I've been jabbing needles in misen so long I've probably got Aids any road.”
Dizzy opened his mouth to offer comfort but the look in the boy's eyes was so bleak that he knew he would be wasting his time. He guessed that Stevie knew more about his own condition than he had admitted to his mother. Just as he seemed to know far more about the violence and death which had overwhelmed the estate. He let his breath out in a long sigh.
“Where did you get the gun, Stevie?” he asked.
“They're not hard to get,” the boy said.
“Tell me about it,” Dizzy said. “But who did you get this one from?”
“No one you know.” Even as Sanderson saw Stevie's grip tighten again on the weapon which he had been holding
loosely at his side, they both heard the sound of a car approaching outside, and then an engine cut out.
“Did you call tâfuckin' pigs?” Stevie asked, his voice becoming hysterical as he raised the gun and pointing it directly at Dizzy B again. “You're a shite, Dizzy, man.” But as Dizzy tried to speak, his mouth as dry as ashes, Stevie turned and dodged out of the back door into the darkness of the night.
“Damnation,” Dizzy muttered to himself knowing that he had no chance of catching the boy across the back gardens and alleyways of his home territory. Wearily he turned towards the front door where someone was tapping urgently on the single pane of unbroken glass.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sanderson said. He peered out into the darkness. “Kevin, is that you?”
He opened the door to let a soaking wet Mower into the bungalow and made them both instant black coffee in what was left of Joyce's kitchen with hands which were still shaking slightly.
“Jesus wept,” Mower said when Sanderson had filled him in on Stevie Maddison's near murderous arrival and equally precipitate departure. “We can't mess about with this one, mate. We need the cavalry if the kid's running around with a loaded weapon. I need to get my guv'nor out of bed at the very least. We can't handle this on our own.”
“I don't think he'll use the gun,” Sanderson said. “I don't even know if it was loaded. He's looking for someone called Ounce. That mean anything to you?”
“Yes,” Mower said. “We need backup.”
Sanderson groaned.
“I thought you didn't care about the job any more,” he said. “You know what those trigger happy bastards from firearms are like. It's the kid who'll end up blown away.”
“And it's me who'll end up out of a job if I cover for him,” Mower said. “We can't take the risk, Dizzy. You know that, for God's sake.”
“OK. Call your boss and summon up the armed response vehicles,” Dizzy said wearily, rolling a spliff as he watched Mower pull out his mobile phone. “What's another dead kid on the Heights?”
“Let's get out of here,” Mower said when he had finished his call. “You don't want to be around when they start searching for Stevie, and I don't think I do either.”
As they walked back to their cars Sanderson glanced back up the hill towards the entrance to Priestley House, which now lay silent and deserted.
“Did you see the BMW?”
“I saw the driver too,” Mower said. “He was just leaving as I came past. He's one of ours, Dizzy. I recognised him. He's the drug squad undercover man, best left strictly alone.”
“Tall black dude, driving a Beamer? Very nice.”
“If he's got himself in with the suppliers he could be driving a Roller.”
“Check it out, Kevin,” Dizzy said. “You know it stinks.” Mower shrugged and made another call on his mobile, dictating the registration number Sanderson had written on his hand to someone at the other end.
“Right, thanks,” he said eventually when he had evidently acquired the information he wanted. He glanced at his friend who was leaning against his own car still smoking.
“It's registered to Barry Foreman,” Mower said. “And if I don't tell my guv'nor that, I'm as good as dead.”
“I don't think my business affairs are anything to do with you or the Bradfield Gazette, Ms Ackroyd.” Annie Costello, general manager of the Three Ridings Housing Association tapped an immaculately manicured scarlet fingernail insistently on her crescent shaped desk and glanced slightly impatiently at the screen saver on her computer which was twirling languidly in front of her. “But I can assure you that if I were to be appointed as a director of a company it would be on my own merits, not as the nominee of anybody else. I'm not married, not even divorced, and I can assure you that any career decisions I make are entirely my own. I should imagine you'd say the same.”
Annie Costello raised a faintly amused eyebrow, disturbing for a moment the perfect symmetry of her near professionally made-up ivory and gold features. She was, Laura thought, a unnervingly attractive woman, dark-haired and blue eyed and with an elegance, impeccably set off by black suit, cream shirt and heels, which made Laura, in cords, boots and a heavy waterproof jacket suitable for flood watch, her damp hair clinging in copper strands to her forehead, feel terminally scruffy.
“So the fact that you're a director of a firm bidding for a contract which your partner is involved in awarding is entirely coincidental?” Laura said, rather more truculently than she intended.
“If you know that City Ventures has a bid in you know more than I do,” Annie Costello said, her voice frigid with dislike. “As far as I am aware tenders haven't even been asked for yet. There's a long way to go.”
“Councillor Spencer would keep you up to date on that, would he?”
“Dave Spencer and I are busy people pursuing careers that
are parallel but not linked. We don't waste the little time we spend together discussing the day's work, I can assure you. We've better things to do.” Annie Costello's expression implied that she doubted very much whether Laura could be so blessed.
“Even when it might be to your financial advantage?” Laura pressed sweetly though she recognised a blank wall when she hit one, especially as it was not the first she had crashed her head against today. In the very short time she had persuaded Ted Grant to give her to investigate what she was convinced was a major case of corruption, Annie Costello had turned out to be her only hope of adding anything to what Althea Adams had told her the previous day. When she had called Barry Foreman inquiring after the whereabouts of Karen Bailey, she had been met with a spitting, obscene fury, all urbanity thrown aside, which frightened her. She would not, she had decided, tell Michael Thackeray just how offensive the security boss had been about her personally and her partner indirectly. The fact that he seemed to know far more than he should about their relationship terrified her and she knew it would infuriate Thackeray.
And to add to her woes, she had discovered quite easily that Jane Peace, the fourth member of the quartet of women directors at City Ventures and daughter of another of Bradfield's major wheelers and dealers, now lived in Southport and was in any case on holiday in the Bahamas. Annie Costello, cool, high-powered and contemptuously dismissive, remained her only hope.
“Isn't there a conflict of interest anyway, if you run a major housing association and play a major role in running a local construction company as well?” Laura asked. “Do City Ventures build houses for this company too?”
Just for a second Annie Costello's response was not immediate and she glanced away. Laura knew she had scored a hit, but the respite was brief and Costello came back, all guns blazing.
“You do realise that if you put any of these lurid fantasies into the Gazette the next place we'll meet will be the libel court?” she asked. “And believe me, the damages would not be small. Quite enough, I should think, to see your career washed down the plug-hole. I'm really quite surprised that Ted Grant lets you out on a so-called assignment like this without a nanny. You really do seem to be out of your depth. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment in fifteen minutes at the Town Hall. If I see Dave, I'll certainly tell him you were asking after him, shall I?”
Annie Costello rose to her not inconsiderable height and pressed a buzzer on her desk. When her assistant poked her head around the office door, she waved at Laura, her eyes flashing with suppressed anger.
“Ms Ackroyd is just leaving,” she said. “Please see her out.” The last thing Laura noticed out of the corner of her eye as she was escorted ignominiously out of the office was Ms Costello reaching for her phone and punching in a number with enough force to splinter the enamel on her nails.
Outside the Three Ridings building, Laura found the rain lashing down with its now customary fury. She glanced at her watch. What she really wanted to do was to talk to Michael Thackeray to discover if he had made any progress with his inquiries into City Ventures and its unexpectedly connected female directors, but she knew she was already overdue at the Gazette office, where Ted Grant was preparing for a campaign of World War Two proportions as the council finally issued evacuation plans for the areas of the town now imminently threatened with inundation. In any case, she thought as she pulled up the hood on her waterproof jacket and yanked the toggles tight under her chin, Michael would not appreciate her inquiries any more than Annie Costello had done. And she had, she thought, suffered enough humiliation for one morning.
Cautiously she negotiated her way across the town centre where the gutters had turned into torrents on the hilly
shopping streets and water was beginning to form lakes across the town hall square. It was only the middle of the morning but the street lights flickered in indecision unsure how to respond to the dark clouds which hid the hills above the town and pressed down onto the gilded top of the town hall's Italianate tower. A bus lurched past sending a wave of dirty water over pedestrians who had strayed too close to the carriageway. The whole town, Laura thought, with its unexpected lakes and streams and inhabitants scurrying to find shelter from the relentless downpour, was beginning to take on an atmosphere of crisis. She had no doubt at all that Ted was bashing out his latest Churchillian editorial at that very moment.
She turned down Chapel Street, which offered a short cut back to the office, and glanced briefly at the blackened ruin of the Carib Club, propped up now by scaffolding, as she stepped into the roadway to avoid the hoarding which protected the ground floor of the building from intruders. There were no Asian youths loitering now and she had glanced behind her to check for approaching traffic but saw none. Nor, muffled up in her waterproof hood, did she hear anything behind her before she was struck a crushing blow across the head and shoulders and fell face down on the puddled roadway. Her last thought as blackness engulfed her was that the Carib was collapsing on top of her and that this was a supremely pointless way to die.
Â
Michael Thackeray raced into the accident and emergency department at the Bradfield Infirmary as if pursued by all the hounds of hell. He had not bothered with a coat, and his hair and the shoulders of his jacket were sodden and his eyes wild. The sights and sounds and smells of the busy waiting area choked the breath out of his body as he hesitated close to reception and tried to steady himself on palsied arms against the desk. But before the harassed reception clerk could turn her attention to him, he caught a glimpse of a police uniform
across the room, changed his mind and spun away through the crush in that direction, grabbing the startled officer's arm in a fierce grip.
“Did you come in with Laura Ackroyd? An accident in Chapel Street?”
“Sorry, sir. You are â¦? The young constable unwittingly put his career on the line as Thackeray's face suffused with fury.
“DCI Thackeray,” he spat. “Where is she, for Christ's sake? She's my wife.” It was not until he had followed the now redfaced officer along the row of emergency cubicles that Thackeray realised what he had said and groaned.
A young Asian doctor Thackeray recognised vaguely was coming out of the end cubicle as the two policemen approached. The constable nodded and turned on his heel without speaking.
“How is she?” Thackeray asked, his voice almost failing him now.
“She's fine,” the doctor said brusquely. “Badly bruised but conscious now. No fractures, fortunately. But we'll keep her in overnight. Concussion, you know ⦔ But Thackeray was no longer listening. He pushed past the doctor and pulled back the flimsy curtains round the cubicle to find Laura lying on a high bed, her red hair scraped back and partly confined under bandages, her face pale where it was not disfigured with multi-coloured bruises already darkening from red to black, and her eyes dull. He stood still for a moment, hardly able to breathe before walking the few steps to the bed and kissing her cheek and taking her hand in a grip so fierce that she thought he would crush her fingers.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I thought you were dead.”
“They'll have to try harder than that,” Laura croaked, her eyes full of tears, as she gently extricated her hand from Thackeray's. Every bone in her body seemed to be complaining at once and the painkillers the doctor had prescribed had either not begun to kick in yet or were too mild to help.
“They? They told me it was a car â¦?” Thackeray said. Laura tried to shrug and winced instead, dosing her eyes for a second or two until the pain subsided.
“I don't think cars kick you in the ribs,” she said. “I've apparently got a nice clear boot print on my back. A pretty effective way of telling me to mind my own business, I suppose.”
“Foreman?” Thackeray asked.
“I talked to him,” Laura admitted faintly. “He wasn't very happy.”
“I asked you ⦔ Thackeray began and then shook his head helplessly, knowing that this was not the place and that in any case he was wasting his time.
“I'll have him,” he said instead, as a nurse pulled back the curtains and came into the cubicle. “I'll have that bastard if it's the last thing I do.” The nurse looked startled and glanced behind her as if seeking help.
“There's a bed for Laura in the ward now,” she said. “The porters will be here in a minute to take her up.”
“And the other thing,” Laura said quickly, grabbing Thackeray's hand. “Take a look at Three Ridings Housing. I think City Ventures has been doing their building too. Annie Costello's effectively been commissioning herself.”
“You never give up, do you? Forget all that for now,” Thackeray said as a porter began to push a wheelchair alongside the bed. He leaned over Laura and took her bruised face in his hands, gentle now, as he kissed her cheek.
“Don't do this to me,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Please, Laura. It was like â¦Well, never mind.”
“I'm sorry,” Laura whispered back, but Thackeray had already turned on his heel and marched back into the reception are where the uniformed constable was chatting to the young woman on the desk. When he saw Thackeray approaching he flushed again and stood to attention.
“Sir?” he said.
“Stay at her bedside till I tell you otherwise,” Thackeray
said. “I'll clear it for you back at the nick. I'm treating this as a case of attempted murder.”
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Dusk came early that evening, like a wet grey blanket over the town, so dense that the streetlights, which had flickered into life in mid-afternoon, could barely penetrate the gloom. Kevin Mower, with Dizzy B beside him, parked unobtrusively in a small car park almost opposite the offices of Foreman Security Services and watched as the rain drummed on the car roof and poured down the windscreen, and the water level in the roadway swirled across the tarmac and began to lap over the kerbstones. Water company vans were parked at the far end of the street and through traffic had been diverted as officials worked their way from one tall stone Victorian building to the next, issuing evacuation notices to the businesses in each block. Gradually most of the employees had picked their way through the flood to higher ground while lorries arrived outside some of the offices and people began moving out filing cabinets and boxes of documents, computers â even furniture. Mower had been listening to the local radio station, which was providing regular updates on the floods, and he knew that this particular street in the lower-lying part of the town, had been built directly over the subterranean channel of the Beck soon after it had been enclosed. Some of the cellars even had inspection manholes which the water company now feared would give way under the pressure of the water beneath, allowing water to gush upwards and in all likelihood weaken the foundations of the buildings above. If that happened all bets were off and Mower was not surprised that the threatened firms were making every effort to salvage what they could.
Barry Foreman's headquarters lay at the furthest end of the street and, by four o'clock, regular visits by the firms' own vehicles had taken away quantities of electronic equipment
and paperwork. But some of the lights remained on inside the building and Mower knew that Foreman himself had not left the premises.
“Do we know where all that stuff's gone?” Dizzy B asked.