Scarred for Life (11 page)

She reached the end of the alleyway at the back of the row of shops and looked both ways. Aside from a short man shuffling along with a bin bag, there was no sign of anyone.

‘There’s no one out here.’ Dave puffed back from the other end of the alley, trying not to sound out of breath.

‘All right, keep looking; call Iz.’

Jessica hung up. This would’ve been a lot simpler if they’d had their radios with them; easier still if Jessica had noticed the signs around Bones a couple of minutes earlier. She continued out of the alley into the street, heading towards the man with the bin bag. ‘Did you see a bloke with his head tattooed come this way?’ she asked.

It was hard to tell if the man was homeless or simply taking his rubbish out because his glazed stare gave him the look of someone who had spent more than a bit of cash at the hydroponics shop. ‘What’s the tattoo of?’ he asked, gazing through Jessica.

‘I don’t know; it’s all sort of squiggles, suns and moons. You’d know it if you saw it.’

The man dropped his bag and scratched his head. ‘Why would you tattoo your head?’

Not bothering to answer, Jessica spun in a circle, hoping for any sign of Bones, just as her phone rang: Izzy hadn’t seen him either – and with that, their chief suspect for the shop robberies was gone.

With a name like ‘Dougie Harrison’, it was perhaps no surprise that the tattooist chose to call himself Bones. Rose told them where he lived and Jessica, Dave, Izzy and her piled into the pool car and barrelled across the city. Izzy requested a tactical entry team, uniformed officers and anything else she thought she might be able to get her hands on. For a moment, Jessica thought she was going to ask for a helicopter.

While that was going on, Rose told them that Bones owned the shop, but with the abundance of competition nearby, he’d been complaining about money for a while. The previous week he had laid off the third person who worked in the shop, with Rose claiming the only reason he’d kept her on was because ‘he liked looking at my tits’.

Whoever Izzy had threatened at the station had got their act together because, as they pulled up outside a grungy-looking semi-detached around the corner from the Belle Vue speedway stadium, a van full of suited and booted tactical entry officers screeched to a halt too. Some went around the back, the others around the front; one, two, three – go, go, go. Bang, slam, crunch.

When it was clear their man wasn’t home, Jessica left Rowlands with Rose in the car, giving him the raised eyebrow treatment about not chatting up a witness – even though she’d probably eat him for breakfast – and then headed into the house with Izzy. The first sign that Bones’ house was going to be a shrine to motorbikes should have been the rusting engine in the garden. If that wasn’t enough of a clue, then the bus-stop-sized Harley Davidson logo pinned to the back of the first door on the right as the officers poured in definitely gave it away.

In the living room, there was an impressive airbrushed mural of a biker riding into a sunset along a road so straight that it could only be in America. It certainly wasn’t Manchester – for one thing the sun was out, secondly you’d be lucky to drive a few hundred metres in the city without having multiple sets of red traffic lights.

Officers hauled away electrical equipment to be checked over as Jessica and Izzy picked through anything that looked remotely interesting.

‘At least you know who your robber is,’ Jessica said, trying to sound optimistic.

‘Not much good if we can’t find him, is it?’

‘His head looks like someone’s been trying to fill in a crossword with a crayon – there can’t be too many places he’ll be able to hide without being spotted.’

‘If it gets out we’d already visited him once, then we’ll be a laughing stock. That’s before the fact that we were confused by a fake tattoo.’

‘Anyone could’ve been taken in by that. I’ve never heard of ballpoint tattoos. Besides, I wouldn’t worry too much – there are too many pregnant soap stars out there for anyone to pay attention.’

Aside from the motorcycling keepsakes there wasn’t much else to see downstairs, so Jessica and Izzy headed upstairs. Inside the first door, they were greeted by a black carpet, deep red walls and thick dark curtains they had to open in order to see anything.

Bones’ bed had a pair of handlebars in place of a headboard, with an impressive, if rather creepy, skull that Jessica hoped wasn’t human in the centre that stared into the room.

‘Imagine coming back here after a first date,’ Izzy said.

‘Do you often go back to blokes’ houses after a first date?’

‘Only the ones who don’t have their entire heads tattooed.’

‘No wonder he needed a few quid – between running the shop and collecting all this stuff, you’re talking thousands.’

As Izzy headed for the bedside table, Jessica opened up the wardrobe. Underneath a set of outfits more suited to a night out on Canal Street, she spotted a battered white shoebox. As she crouched to remove the lid, all Jessica could think was: ‘Surely it’s not . . .’ Except that it was: bundles of ten- and twenty-pound notes had been neatly stacked into thousand-pound bundles. For someone who had cleverly planned the tattoo side of the scam, Bones really was as stupid a criminal as so many others. Now they just had to find him.

Back at the station the investigation into Cassie’s murder was ticking along as well as could be expected considering the lack of evidence at the crime scene. Rose gave them a statement about Bones and his apparent financial problems, while Dave hadn’t taken the news that his tattoo definitely didn’t say what he thought it did particularly well.

All of that by midday – not bad for a morning’s work – which is why Jessica phoned Archie to start annoying him.

‘I’m busy,’ he said by way of answering his phone.

‘Good, what have you got?’

‘Some local lad, a good ol’ Urmston boy – worked his balls off to make the Salford team for the national rowing finals, then it all went to cock when he got dropped for some Yank. I had a word this morning. He has nothing to do with any of them now. He didn’t want to say anything at first but we got chatting about United and he invited me over.’

‘When are you going?’

‘Soon.’

‘Want some company?’

Archie laughed. ‘Haven’t you got other things to be doing?’

‘I was thinking he might want a sympathetic female ear.’

It was nonsense and they both knew it – Jessica had a stack of things to be signing off but she wanted to be doing something. In the old days, she might have been narrowing down the list of people who had a history of violence against women for the Cassie case, or handling the interview with Rose for the tattoo robbery one. Now she was supposed to take an overview of it all. If she ended up sitting around the station for much longer, she’d end up being called into a meeting before she knew it.

Perhaps picking up on the hint of desperation in her voice, or maybe because he didn’t want to annoy her, Archie replied with a not entirely convincing: ‘Aye, perhaps he might appreciate a woman being there; don’t want too much of a testosterone overload.’

After initial apprehension, Liam Withe turned out to be the exact kind of person they were looking for. Archie turned on the Manc charm, spending ten minutes talking Manchester United and how they were going to win the league that year – or, at the absolute least, finish above the ‘bitters’ and ‘bin-dippers’ – then he gradually brought him around to the topic of being a student and part of the rowing club.

Liam told them that when it came to the elite races, culminating in the national championships in which they raced against other universities, the teams were almost always dominated by post-graduate students. He’d studied for three years doing a finance undergraduate degree, before staying on for an extra year for the post-grad course specifically because he wanted to take part in those races. After working his way through the fourth-, third- and second-string teams, over the course of three years, he’d been eagerly awaiting his chance with the elite squad. He had rowed in some of the preliminary races but was then dropped for an American third-year student who was only going to be there for nine months.

‘And he was called fooking Corey,’ Liam fumed. Despite the fact he was an apparently successful sole trader working from home, it still enraged him.

After Archie had brought Liam’s annoyance to the fore, it was Jessica’s turn to steer the conversation. Given the conspiracy of silence from the rest of the club members, this might be their only chance for an insight into what really went on when the clubhouse doors were closed.

‘I suppose you read about the death of Damon Potter,’ Jessica said.

Liam was tall and lean with short dark hair, dressed casually in loose jeans and a shirt. On the arm of his chair was perched a laptop that he kept checking, saying it was for his trading job.

He nodded without looking up.

‘We’ve been having increasing problems with the club in the past few years: rape allegations, public disorder complaints, someone ended up in hospital with hypothermia . . .’

A hint of a knowing smile crept across Liam’s face but he still didn’t look up. ‘Training accident, was it?’

‘So we were told. I realise almost all of this comes after your time, but I couldn’t help but notice that when you were in your final year with the university, the person who is now student president was in his first year.’

‘Holden Wyatt?’

Jessica made a show of checking her notes to ensure she didn’t seem quite so keen on him as she was. ‘Do you know him?’

‘There were always one or two a year – first years who already knew people. Sometimes their parents had been to the university, or perhaps they were keen sportsmen. For some, the social side of university and joining the club is far more important than what you study.’

‘Was it like that for you?’

Liam finally looked up from his laptop, fixing Jessica with his bright blue eyes. ‘I just liked being fit and it seemed fun. I’d never even been on the water before university.’

‘But Holden was different?’

A knowing laugh: ‘He’d been doing it since he was a kid but wasn’t good enough to get into Oxford or Cambridge, either for rowing or academically. I think his dad knew a few of the Salford alumni and they come from somewhere around here. From day one, he was in with the post-grad students and the elite team. Usually when that happened, they’d get slapped down – but he had something about him.’

‘Did you ever talk to him?’

‘Not really. As soon as you drop off the team, suddenly the younger lads aren’t interested in you any longer.’

‘When I brought up the hypothermia, you seemed to indicate that perhaps it wasn’t an accident . . .’

Liam glanced down at his laptop and tapped on the tracker pad but the atmosphere had changed. ‘I suppose what happened to that Damon kid was only going to be a matter of time . . .’

‘How do you mean?’

At first, Liam didn’t reply, tapping away at his computer before sighing and finally closing the lid. When he looked at Jessica again, his eyes had lost some of their blue. ‘Obviously I don’t know for certain, but . . .’

Jessica said nothing, hoping Archie wouldn’t fill the silence either. He didn’t, and Liam was left to do so himself. ‘The big November party they have is more of a congratulations to the students left standing who still want to be members after “hell week”.’

‘Hell week?’

Liam took a deep breath, perhaps wondering if he’d said too much but there was no going back now: ‘It happens in the final week of October leading up to Halloween. If you’re a first year and want to become a full member, then you have to have a series of tests. It’s usually only the elite lads involved after-dark in the clubhouse. At first it’s something simple, like drink a few pints in a row, but the tasks get more intense as the week goes on.’

He shivered slightly and Jessica felt it catching as a chill rippled along her spine. ‘It can move on to things like taking a beating from the team. They’ll hit you with paddles but every time you take it, the next day it’s worse.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘When I was a first year, it wasn’t too bad. I think it comes down to who the student president is. I had to do some drinking, late-night swimming in the water – I’ll bet that’s how your other lad got hypothermia – and this game where you had to do a lap of the park, then drink, then more laps, more drinking. I was sick a few times and took my beating on the final day but that’s as bad as it got.’

‘What might’ve gone wrong with Damon?’

Liam now seemed resigned to spilling everything. ‘I don’t know for sure – I don’t talk to anyone there – but things were beginning to get out of hand when it was my final year. We had this real sicko student president. Night one was swimming a width of the river, doing shots and pints, then going again over and over. People were collapsing and everyone else was uneasy. I mean I was there but . . .’

He didn’t need to finish the sentence – he hadn’t spoken up because he didn’t want to be kicked off the team.

‘The week got worse. On night two it was beatings, night three they had these eating challenges.’

‘Who could eat the most?’ Archie asked.

Liam shook his head. ‘Not how much,
what
could they eat. At first it was these awful meat products: offal, I don’t even know what that is. Then they’d have to drink milk really quickly, so people were vomiting. But because they were being sick, the president was saying that was cheating as they weren’t keeping it down, so he made them . . . well, you can guess . . .’

Ugh.

‘By day four, some people hadn’t come back and it kept getting worse. You might be surprised – but all the first years knew what hell week was, so they didn’t even bother starting it unless they thought they could do it. There’s a code of silence about it, too. What happens in the club stays in the club – that sort of thing. It was pretty grim but everyone from my year got through. I never heard of anyone pulling out until that year.’

‘And that was the year Holden was a first year?’ Jessica asked.