If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (2 page)

Unsurprisingly, suspect descriptions varied, but they overlapped enough to lead the local officers’ suspicions to a particular group of nasty young thugs. A gang, led by one Kyle Gibbs and his girlfriend Nikki Cockcroft. The word ‘gang’ was often misused. Greenwich might endure its share of drug-gang turf disputes but this was just the common teenage tribal affiliation, another ASBO-generation epicentre. Gibbs and his coterie sprang from the Ferrier Estate – which, Dixon informed Stark, was the borough’s least desirable postcode – a loose aggregation known as the Rats. From what Stark knew so far, the name was too good for them.

Dixon invited Stark to lunch with him and the two passed the time in polite conversation. He seemed a decent enough bloke, of similar age to Stark though ahead in career. Hadn’t wasted time playing in the sand. Maybe that was why he seemed unsure of himself with Stark – people often reacted strangely when they knew you were a veteran. Being a veteran of two unpopular and misunderstood wars was worse. It wouldn’t be long before someone here got hold of that ridiculous
Gosport Herald
article, if they hadn’t already. Stark asked him about DS Millhaven but he wouldn’t be drawn, saying only that she was all right once she got used to you.

Towards the end of the day she reappeared and offered to drive Stark home via the Ferrier Estate. It was a couple of miles as the crow flew and she used the time to quiz Stark on what he’d read earlier, as if trying to emphasize his inexperience.

If anything, the estate was worse than Dixon had described, a late-sixties carbuncle bisected by a main road, each half a series of large courtyards that were all but enclosed on four sides by six-storey blocks of flats and ramped walkways with the occasional twelve-storey tower thrown in for extra misery, all in cheap brutalist concrete panelling; the culmination of decades of ever-cheaper bastardizations of the thirties’ modernist ideal.

Tucked in one corner, Telemann Square had once held a series of inward-facing shops. Most were boarded up now, including the once-notorious Wat Tyler pub and a community centre that had never looked its best. All that clung to life were a pharmacy, a doctor’s surgery, a dentist, a tiny library and the Holy Spirit Church Centre, surely
the C of E’s most desperate outpost, and an off-licence/convenience store so covered with security grilles that it had to display a ‘WE ARE OPEN’ sign behind the glass.

Almost everywhere you looked there was graffiti. Not Banksy-esque satire or hip-hop street art, just the usual anatomical diagrams, four-letter words and throwaway tags – stylized nicknames sprayed, gouged or etched, like a tomcat pissing on a post.

With its war-zone chic the ‘shops’ area was the hangout of choice to the ‘local scumbags with little better to do’. Looking around, Stark saw there
was
little better to do. The embattled offy probably ran a fine line, peddling two-litre bottles of cheap white cider to all ages more out of self-preservation than greed.

The few people he saw hurried along in a manner Stark recognized all too well but had not seen outside Basra and Helmand. Fear, in broad daylight, in London. Stark felt bile rise in his throat and swallowed hard. Looking down, he found his fists were clenched.

As they drove out of the estate Fran pulled over and pointed out a lean, pale, shifty-eyed teenager leaning against a wall, smoking. ‘That’s him, Kyle Gibbs, local hero, several convictions for burglary and shoplifting as a minor, served three months’ youth custody. Suspected of dealing wraps and pills at the cockroach level. Cautioned for possession of cannabis, but usually has the nous to drop his stash if a stop-and-search looks likely. Cocky little shit.
De facto
leader of the rudderless scrotes because he’s older and marginally more vicious.’ Gibbs glanced their way and, sitting in the unmarked car, Stark was acutely aware of his uniform. Gibbs smirked, stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it in their direction, spat on the pavement and walked off round the corner with the bow-legged, bent-arm swagger of the wannabe hard-nut, the ape trying to look big. ‘He and his girlfriend Nikki Cockcroft rule the roost and, for sure, they and their hangers-on are behind the happy-slappings.’

‘Always on the homeless?’ asked Stark.

‘So far. They’re not above jumping some poor sod outside a pub and there’s no shortage of muggings on the estate, but I guess the homeless are less likely to fight back. One of the attacks even turned up briefly on YouTube. The spiteful little shits like filming their
exploits on their phones. Nice to know who you were fighting for, I’m sure,’ she huffed. ‘No offence,’ she added, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

Stark didn’t bite. ‘You pulled him in?’

‘And her, and half a dozen others. Waste of a perfectly good Sunday. Cocky little shits just clam up, laugh at us.’

‘Forensics?’

Fran laughed. ‘Perhaps if they beat someone who mattered.’

She dropped him at home. ‘Demob suit tomorrow,’ she said, by way of farewell. ‘Moustache optional.’

The bad dreams when they came could be bright, hot and painful, but the degree varied. If there were some way to predict or control them, going to sleep might involve less trepidation. They’d begun a few weeks after he was evacuated, when body and mind began to accept his survival. They’d escalated fast but he’d had help, medicinal, cognitive and peer-oriented. It was understood, expected, manageable. That night they wandered erratically from warm surreal twists on recollection to darker, hotter places but without the searing hyper-real intensity of the bad ones. He awoke more with relief than terror, tired but not exhausted. He did his exercises, like a good boy, ate like a horse, then shaved and showered in swift order, acutely aware of the military conditioning grinning through.

Reaching into the wardrobe, his hand hovered between green and blue, then slowly withdrew charcoal grey. Mufti to work. Stark stared at his reflection and tutted at the odd insecurity he felt without uniform to define his role. He reflected on his first day in the Metropolitan Police Service. Everyone had been nice enough, though DS Millhaven wasn’t a barrel of laughs. If she warmed up, great; if not, he’d known worse. Right now he had bigger worries.

It wasn’t until Stark was halfway through breakfast that he noticed the answerphone blinking a red number two. He jumped up and lifted the receiver. A clear tone greeted his ear. Finally.

The first message was his mum, predictably – the usual mixture of worry and accusation. She also said his CO was trying to get hold of him. I’ll bet he is, thought Stark, glancing at the offending MoD letter. The second was from Colonel Mattherson himself. ‘Sorry to do this with a message but I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Felt you should hear it from me, not some ministry oik. I think you’d better sit down …’ Mattherson had that senior-officer quality of delivering all information, welcome or otherwise, without the slightest modification
in tone. He had junior officers to do the shouting. If anything, that made it worse. Stark hit delete.

When he arrived Fran was perched on the end of Dixon’s desk, halfway through a warm pastry. ‘MoD spared no expense, then,’ she said, looking Stark up and down. The sarcasm was implied rather than expressed, and he ignored it. It was a decent enough suit, smart enough to pass muster, cheap enough to chase a suspect over a wall if required. And he was close enough to NATO Standard to make off-the-peg look made-to-measure. ‘Good morning, Sarge.’ He smiled.

‘If you say so.’ She glanced at his gleaming shoes. ‘Right, get the coffees. There’s a team meeting in ten and I’ll be buggered if I’m going in there without another caffeine hit.’

The meeting was as dull as Fran’s tone had suggested it would be, not least because Stark knew nothing of the cases discussed. He wasn’t about to drag it out for everyone else with questions, so pieced together as much as he could. He was introduced to several more new faces, and surreptitiously began jotting down names.

Afterwards there seemed little for him to do. DS Harper had been leading the happy-slapping case but he was still off sick and his DC, Bryden, was out. Rather than just get in the way Stark suggested he went out in one of the patrol cars for the day to start getting a feel for his new patch. Fran agreed with an uninterested shrug. Maggie helped find him a ride, calling him ‘sweetie’ again, and soon he was being driven around by Sergeant Ptolemy and WPC Peters, two decent uniforms, no apparent axe to grind with his CID aspirations. He bought them lunch from a local sandwich bar and they gave him an overview of their manor, warts and all. They seemed quite fond of the place, proud almost, in that learnt-rather-than-felt cynical tone used by coppers before the shine had worn off. You saw the same thing in the army.

The first thing Stark did after they’d dropped him home was call the base. It had been on his mind all day and he needed it off. The adjutant put him straight through.

‘Corporal Stark! About bloody time!’ Colonel Mattherson’s rapid-fire delivery.

‘Constable Stark now, sir.’

‘Ah, yes. Thought you’d dropped off the bloody world!’

‘Comms were down, sir, logistical misunderstanding.’

‘Situation normal et cetera. Now, you got my message?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the letter?’

‘Sir.’

‘Well, then, what have you got to say for yourself?’

The next day DS Harper had failed to recover so Stark re-read the file before sitting down with DC Bryden to talk it through. In essence the investigation was at a halt awaiting new leads, meaning fresh assaults, so Stark tidied his desk and ordered a cab. Though University Hospital Lewisham was only two miles away across Deptford Creek, it was outside the borough. Greenwich’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital was four miles over in Woolwich, and Stark had no idea how to get there by public transport.

‘Going somewhere?’ frowned Fran, noticing him pull on his jacket.

‘Hospital appointment, Sarge.’

‘This was in the schedule you submitted?’

‘Yes. I’ll be back after lunch.’

She pursed her lips. Maybe she wasn’t a fan of people getting special treatment but there was little he could do about that. The force had made it clear he was free to work around his recovery needs. Maybe resentment would build up in others if it went on too long. He also got the impression she was fishing. The schedule he’d submitted didn’t say what each appointment was for, though Superintendent Cox had full details, and Stark wondered if she’d got wind that Wednesdays were psychotherapy.

He found the right department with little difficulty but they kept him waiting. He’d never been in one of these sessions that was allowed to overrun by a millisecond yet they still contrived to keep him waiting every time. It was some kind of institutional fourth-dimensional phenomenon. It shouldn’t make him angry or anxious but it did.

He wasn’t looking forward to it, he never had, and the thought of starting with a new therapist, someone with no military affiliation or experience, made him feel sick. At least the military ones had got
straight to the point. Nevertheless Stark had never balanced the pain with any alleged gain. There was a joke they used at Headley Court –
PTSD: it’s all in your head
. Post-traumatic stress disorder; symptoms manifest in various ways and severity. Stark’s were mild at most, so mild he felt fraudulent accepting treatment. But until the dreams left him alone he’d never persuade the shrinks to do the same. In theory this new one should have reviewed his notes in detail, prepared, planned. In theory he shouldn’t have to cover too much old ground. In theory.

So much for theory, he thought an hour later. Few people leave you with a true impression of imbecility, but Dr Hazel McDonald made his head throb. It was like wading through treacle or, worse, like talking to a wall – every statement echoed back at you with a question mark on the end, every fact queried, every frustration seized upon. Nothing went in, nothing. He had a dreadful feeling the next session would start where this had and get no further.

And it was past lunchtime. If they were just honest about appointment times he’d have been able to eat beforehand. He didn’t like being hungry. Army life was regular except when it wasn’t, teaching you to associate regular meals with safety and rest. Selly Oak and Headley Court had reinforced the point by associating mealtimes with respite from torture and, despite what people might say, food in the army and in hospital was plentiful and nutritious. It didn’t matter if you liked it, you ate it: fuel, fuel, fuel, for fighting or healing, shovel it in. All was well when the food came like clockwork. Right now his stomach told him all was not well. The thought of speaking to that woman again made him feel all the more sick.

He found what passed for a sandwich in the hospital canteen and spent the cab ride back dispelling the unpleasant thoughts rattling around in his head. Talking of which, he ought to phone Margaret Collins. He couldn’t keep his head in the sand for ever. There didn’t seem much way he could hope to avoid what was coming and she deserved to hear it from him first.

Fran made a point of peering at the wall clock when Stark reappeared well after lunchtime, but said nothing. He didn’t apologize; if this was how long his appointments were going to take, better she got used to it now. It wasn’t as if she’d given him anything else to do.
Ptolemy and Peters had offered to show him more that afternoon and evening and, with apparently no plan for him, Fran waved her consent wordlessly as she took a call.

This tour covered more of the borough, all the way out to Abbey Wood and Thamesmead, with its iconic riverside Flat Block Marina, immortalized by the film
A Clockwork Orange
, returning to Greenwich town by the evening. Around pub closing a call came over the radio requesting response to trouble brewing at the Meridian pub.

Ptolemy picked up the handset. ‘Control. Car Eleven responding, ETA two minutes.’

The Meridian turned out to be one of those chain McPubs popping up in every town like aggressive weeds, strangling traditional pubs. Trouble had already brewed, boiled and spilt over. Outside, two groups were posturing and yelling abuse at each other.

Both sides fell back at the arrival of the blue lights. Ptolemy and Peters leapt out and strode into the gap. The shouting and posturing barely diminished as they tried to make themselves heard and establish coherence if not order. Out of uniform Stark hung back by the car, ready to assist if required.

Perhaps it was situation normal at this establishment. A big doorman peeped out to observe the blue lights and ducked back inside, content to have pushed his mess out for someone else to clear up.

The more aggressive group was led by a gobby chavette, hair scraped back in a council face-lift, big hooped gold earrings, mauve velour tracksuit and the latest must-have accessory: a gold clown on a gold chain. She was incensed about something. Her eyes were wild and there was saliva on her lips as she spat startling vitriol. It was only when she paused for breath that he recognized her. The infamous Nikki Cockcroft from the assault files. Others too. Stark couldn’t recall names but this was them, including Kyle Gibbs, hovering near the back. Stark’s eyes rested on Gibbs. It took a second to work out why but then he had it – Gibbs had one hand in a pocket.

There was only one reason someone on the brink of a fight would keep one hand in his or her pocket. Gibbs watched the police nervously, backing away slightly. Stark began moving cautiously to flank him. Suddenly, among all the commotion, Gibbs glanced his way.
That was just how it went some days, the army taught you – be as sneaky as you like, but sometimes the enemy just looked your way.

There was a slow-motion dawning of realization. The hand withdrew from the pocket but it was too late, too obvious, and Kyle knew it. They stared at each other for a moment. Anger flared in the boy’s eyes. Stark took a step towards him but he turned and fled, like a scalded cat, across the main road into a narrow lane. Stark gave chase but the boy had ten years and one good leg on him. The lane turned almost immediately right but Stark arrived at the corner only in time to see the boy leap up a metal gate and disappear into darkness beyond. The gate was six feet high and spiked but Stark made the attempt. He pulled himself up but couldn’t gain any purchase with his bad leg and dropped down with a curse, kicking the gate in frustration. The darkness inside looked like a small park, suggesting other exits, one of which Kyle was surely scaling at that moment. Stark cursed his weakness for the thousandth time and returned to the fracas.

Improbable order was emerging. Ptolemy had Nikki and her side corralled into the narrow pedestrianized passage, dampened down, perhaps, by the unexpected disappearance of their leader. Peters had the quieter ones lined up meekly around the corner. It was amusing to hear both officers trotting out the same tried-and-tested phrases, the same deadpan measured tone dripping with unspoken sarcasm. More cars arrived. Names and addresses were taken and the opposing sides sent packing in opposite directions under orders to calm down, piss off home and sleep it off.

‘What was it about?’ asked Stark.

‘Sweet little Nikki decided a girl from another table had looked at her,’ replied Ptolemy. ‘What was that all about?’ He nodded in the direction Kyle had fled.

Stark told him.

‘Kyle Gibbs? Knife probably. Not sure any of the Rats have moved up to guns yet. I’ll see if Control can put someone outside his block for a stop ’n’ search. Anyway, it’s not him you should worry about,’ Ptolemy added. He pointed after Nikki Cockcroft. ‘That’s the source of the vile, right there. Been pulling her claws out of people since she was thirteen.’

‘You’re limping.’ Fran frowned, the following morning.

‘I’m fine, thanks, Sarge,’ replied Stark, though there’d been no concern in her statement.

He explained his antics the previous evening, and Fran made a mental note not to rely on his assistance in any kind of chase. ‘Did uniform pick Gibbs up?’

‘No. They put a car in the estate but …’

‘It’s a Rat warren.’ She nodded. ‘Well, never mind that. Here …’ She scooped up the stack of paperwork she had ready on her desk and slapped it into his hands. ‘You’ll need to keep a log of your daily activities, so read this lot and fill in the PDP forms for signature. Don’t let it build up. I won’t sign anything half-arsed or fictitious. No one likes having their time wasted.’

‘Sarge.’

Fran studied him a moment, trying to discern sarcasm in the flat monosyllable. It was her job to supervise him and she meant to do it, but he was hard to read. ‘Okay then, get a good feel for the dull end. Nothing much happening up the sharp end anyway.’

At the end of that week Fran bumped into Superintendent Cox on the stairs. ‘Good afternoon, Fran!’ He’d greeted her in his usual effusive manner. DCI Groombridge seemed to have a lot of time for the man but he grated on Fran. ‘How’s our new boy getting on? Living up to all our expectations, I trust?’

‘Too early to tell yet, sir,’ she replied.

‘Ah … uncompromising as ever, eh? Fair enough. But you might want to grant him a little grace, special circumstance and all that. The lad’s done his bit, after all.’