Authors: Lindsay Ashford
‘Well, I might be wrong, but…’ Megan dived into her briefcase, pulling out the copy of Kelly’s file and lining it up on the table alongside Patrick Ryan’s. ‘These are the conviction details of the guy who died at Balsall Gate. Look,’ she said, jabbing her finger at the paper. ‘Same court. Same offence. Same date.’
It was difficult to talk above the hubbub of the tapas bar in Deansgate. It was only when they got back to Ronnie’s house that Megan was able to properly explain about Carl Kelly’s death; about the discovery of strychnine in his body and the almost simultaneous discovery of a long-dead baby in his victim’s grave.
‘I was convinced it was some kind of revenge killing,’ Megan said, cradling the glass of whisky Ronnie’s husband had poured her before tactfully retiring to bed. ‘Then when I heard about what had happened here, my first thought was that the police were right: that it
was
a batch of contaminated drugs and my theory was way off beam. But now I’ve seen the file…’ She gazed at the face of Patrick Ryan as it had looked on the day he entered Strangeways. Then her eyes ranged over the photographs spread out on the coffee table; photographs that Ronnie had been unable to show her in public. They had been taken in the mortuary where Ryan’s body now lay. The close-up of the face was truly grotesque. Megan pitied whoever had had the grim task of identifying him. ‘Who was it that found him?’ she asked.
‘One of his cell mates,’ Ronnie replied. ‘They were all on association, but he’d stayed behind. He’d told them he didn’t feel well and wanted a lie down. They came back an hour later and found him dead on the bed with the syringe on the floor beside him. So they knew straight away it was drugs and they assumed it was an overdose.’
‘That’s pretty much what happened with Carl Kelly,
except he still had the syringe in his leg.’
Ronnie’s mouth turned down at the edges as she pictured the scene. ‘So if our guy was poisoned as well, it could be some kind of vendetta, couldn’t it? Maybe some drug baron that Patrick Ryan and Carl Kelly rubbed up the wrong way?’
‘Well, it certainly looks as if they could have been members of the same gang,’ Megan agreed. ‘I’ll need to check the court records; find out if they were both involved in the same case. It could be that they happened to be in court on the same day for completely unrelated offences.’
‘Unlikely, though, isn’t it?’
Megan nodded. ‘There is another possibility, although there’s no hard evidence to back it up so far.’ She told Ronnie about the sliver of newspaper stuck to the body of the baby in the mortuary; about Delva’s idea of a link between Carl Kelly’s victim and the Birmingham Six .
‘Well, Patrick Ryan’s an Irish-sounding name,’ Ronnie said, ‘but he was in here for a drugs offence, so that seems to back up what your contact at Balsall Gate said, doesn’t it? We don’t know if Patrick Ryan was in on that murder, do we? All we know is that he and Carl Kelly got banged up on the same day more than a decade later. If someone’s killed them both, the Moses Smith thing could be completely coincidental. Their deaths could be revenge killings, but for something else; something related to drug trafficking, I mean.’
‘But what about the baby?’ Megan asked. ‘How do you explain that happening within a matter of weeks of Carl Kelly’s death? It’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Ronnie shook her head. ‘Poor little thing – it makes me shudder to think about it. It must have been a horrible thing to find.’
Megan nodded. She didn’t want to dwell on how it had
made her feel, especially with Ronnie being pregnant. ‘I think what I really need to see is the list of visitors Ryan had over the past month or so,’ she said briskly. ‘Any chance of nipping into the prison tomorrow?’
‘Yes, of course we can. The office won’t be open but I’ve got keys’
‘And we need to get that toxicology report as soon as possible – make certain that it actually
was
strychnine. When do you think you’ll get it?’
‘Well,’ Ronnie said, taking a sip from her steaming mug of cocoa, ‘he said Monday, but I could try phoning him in the morning – he’s often in the lab at the weekend.’ She began to yawn and clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry Meg – I’m totally knackered. I didn’t realise you could get this tired so early on in a pregnancy.’
‘It’s okay. Don’t apologise. I’m a bit wiped out myself.’ She didn’t feel like explaining why: that she’d been up till God knows what time having sex with the man she’d just told Ronnie she was finished with. She shooed her friend up the stairs with her cocoa and sat for a while on the sofa, finishing her whisky. When the noises from the bathroom had ceased, she tiptoed up to the spare room.
She stood looking at the bed for a few moments before getting under the covers. Although she was glad to be away for the night, it felt strange, climbing into a bed she had shared so many times with Tony during the years they were married. Tony had got on well with Ronnie’s husband; one of those rare situations when the partners of friends become really good friends themselves. Part of the reason she hadn’t been to visit Ronnie for so long was that she felt such a gooseberry without Tony there as well. And now there was a baby on the way… Megan sighed as she switched off the light. It would probably feel even weirder next time she paid them a visit. But she was just going to have to come to terms
with that. If she started crossing people off her Christmas list just because they’d sprogged, she’d end up with no friends left at all. Funny how she’d never felt like that with Ceri, though: when her sister had had the first baby she’d accepted it quite calmly, because at that point she’d just been promoted to head of department. It seemed fair. Ceri was having children and giving up full-time work while she was powering up the career ladder. But in the past couple of years it hadn’t felt quite the same. Somehow the career was no longer enough.
‘Stop being such a bloody misery,’ she whispered to herself in the dark. Closing her eyes, she searched her mind for something to distract her from the subject of babies; what was it the TV shrinks said? Oh yes: “Focus on something exciting; something you would really like to have. This will release endorphins, giving you an instant lift.” The only thing she could think of was Dom Wilde.
Megan was woken at just after six o’clock the next morning by the sound of Ronnie throwing up in the bathroom. She got out of bed and pulled on her jeans. They were newly washed and she had to lie back down to do them up, they were so tight. She glared at herself in the mirror, pinching the roll of fat that bulged over the top of the waistband. It seemed cruelly ironic that Ronnie was stick thin and three months’ gone while she didn’t even have the excuse of being pregnant. She was going to have to do something: snacking on prunes was obviously not enough – she needed to go on a proper diet and do some pretty serious exercise.
With a sigh she went downstairs to make a cup of tea. There was a packet of Vanilla Cream Hobnobs in the cupboard beside the teabags and she ate two to cheer herself up. No point starting the new regime while she was away,
and by the sound of things, Ronnie wasn’t going to want them.
A few minutes later Ronnie appeared round the kitchen door looking like a ghost. ‘I’m sorry, Meg. Did I wake you up?’
‘It’s okay. I was awake anyway,’ she lied. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea.’
Ronnie held up her hands as if fending off anything related to food or drink. ‘No thanks,’ she mumbled. Clapping her hands over her mouth she rushed back upstairs.
It was after nine when Ronnie came down again. She had dressed and put on make-up, but the bronzer on her cheeks couldn’t disguise her pallor.
‘Are you sure you should be up?’ Megan studied her friend’s face, concerned at how drawn she looked. ‘I feel awful, hijacking your weekend like this.’
‘No, honestly, I’d rather be doing something,’ Ronnie said. ‘I’ve been getting it every morning for about a week now, but it usually goes by mid-morning.’ She reached for the phone. ‘If I sat in bed thinking about it I’d feel even worse.’ She punched out a number. ‘The toxicologist,’ she mouthed at Megan as she waited for it to answer. ‘He should be in by now… Hello – Chris? It’s Ronnie. Any news?’
Megan listened intently to Ronnie’s conversation. It sounded as if the results hadn’t come through yet. After a couple of minutes Ronnie put her hand over the receiver and said: ‘They’ve ruled out tetanus but they can’t say for sure yet that it’s strychnine. He hopes to know by this afternoon. Would you like a word with him?’
Megan took the phone. There was plenty she wanted to ask this man, even without the results. She explained what had happened at Balsall Gate. ‘Do you mind if I pick your brains?’ she asked. ‘Only I need to know a bit more about the cutting of strychnine with heroin. I know it’s unusual but
could someone have done this by accident? And if so, how could they make such a mistake?’
‘I doubt very much if it would be a mistake,’ he replied in broad Mancunian. ‘It’s bloody hard to get hold of and anyone who did would know that you could kill someone with a very small dose.’
‘So you think it was probably deliberate, then? Not a dodgy batch?’
‘Yes, I do. A batch like that would have the mortuaries in Brum bursting at the seams. The heroin trade these days is production line stuff. The dealers that supply prisons are doing it all across the country.
‘That’s what I suspected,’ she said, ‘but when I first heard about the Strangeways case I thought I’d somehow got it wrong.’
There was a look of triumph on her face when she put down the phone. ‘He agrees with me,’ she said, in answer to Ronnie’s questioning look. ‘So assuming it
is
strychnine – and I don’t really see how it could be anything else now the tetanus angle’s been ruled out – we’ve got two guys from Birmingham, probably members of the same drugs gang, who died in the same manner in separate jails within a few days of each other.’
‘It’s all starting to stack up, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Can we go and take a look at those visitor lists?’
Megan had been to Strangeways several times before. Its architecture was very different to that of Balsall Gate: imposing, impressive, even. But if she’d closed her eyes it could have been the same place. It was the smell: that distinctive mix of sweat, cigarettes and institutional food that assaulted the nostrils the minute you got through the
gates. It was a very male smell, quite intimidating to the uninitiated. Like a simmering cauldron of testosterone. Women’s prisons were different. The greasy cooking and the fags were still there, but overlaid with a suffocating mix of deodorants, perfumes and body sprays.
Ronnie led the way to the main office. It didn’t take long to locate the visitors’ record for the week leading up to Patrick Ryan’s death. Megan scanned the list, looking for names with his prison number recorded alongside them.
‘That’s his solicitor,’ Ronnie, said, pointing at one of the entries. ‘And his probation officer came later the same day.’
‘Hmm.’ Megan noted that the solicitor had a different name from the one who had been visiting Carl Kelly. She didn’t recognise the name of the probation officer, either, although she knew plenty of people from the Birmingham team. ‘Who’s this?’ she asked, pointing to a name further down the list.
‘Rebecca Jordan.’ Ronnie read it out loud. ‘Girlfriend, I think.’
‘Would she be from Birmingham, then?’
‘Probably. Hang on a second, I’ll find the form she filled in when she applied for the visiting order.’ Ronnie went across to the other side of the office and unlocked a filing cabinet. After a short search she pulled out a piece of paper with Rebecca Jordan’s details on it. ‘Yes. She is from Birmingham.’ She handed the form over. The address was near the top of the sheet of paper. Megan gasped as she read the first line.
‘What is it?’ Ronnie frowned.
‘Linden House.’ Megan scanned the rest of the address to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. ‘It’s a student hall of residence at Heartland,’ she said, blinking in disbelief. ‘The
same
hall of residence that Carl Kelly’s girlfriend lives in.’
‘Why would a student be in a relationship with a man who’s been inside for three years?’ Ronnie was incredulous. ‘These girls would be first years, probably, wouldn’t they, if they’re in a hall of residence? So they’d be… what… about fifteen years old when these guys were sent down.’
‘I know,’ Megan said, ‘But Carl’s girlfriend only started seeing him a few weeks back. One of the other inmates told me they met through a lonely hearts column in the local paper.’
‘A lonely hearts column?’ Ronnie’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her fringe.
‘That’s what he said. He reckoned it was a prank by someone who’d just got out and thought he’d set Carl up. When he told me, it didn’t strike me as being anything malicious. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘What if these girls are acting as mules? They could be bringing the drugs in for someone else.’ Ronnie’s eyes narrowed. ‘They might not even know that it’s something deadly.’
‘That would make sense,’ Megan nodded. ‘It’s the kind of thing you could imagine a student doing for money, if they were desperate. Whoever’s behind it probably placed the lonely hearts ad as well.’
‘What, you mean they used the ad as way of getting to Carl Kelly without him realising it?’
‘It’s possible, isn’t it? Bloody clever way of hoodwinking a guy in prison: make him think some good-looking girl on
the outside fancies him; a couple of visits and he’s hooked. She offers to bring him drugs as well and he thinks he’s really landed on his feet.’
‘Well, that’s one hell of a scam, if it’s true.’
‘There’s a number here,’ Megan pointed at the form Rebecca Jordan had filled out. ‘It’s a mobile.’ She looked at Ronnie. ‘Would this girl have been informed of Patrick Ryan’s death, or is it just the next of kin that know?’
‘Just next of kin,’ Ronnie nodded. ‘There’s only the brother, the one in Balsall Gate. We don’t have the names of his parents or any other relative. You get that a lot with the men in this place – you know, disjointed families; people whose relatives have either disowned them or just disappeared.’
‘It’d be interesting to find out how she’d react to the news, then, wouldn’t it?’ Megan said. ‘If it was her who brought the drugs in, and she knew what was in them, it would be no surprise. But then I’d be very surprised if that phone number was genuine, wouldn’t you? Why would she give it if she knew she was likely to be traced?’
‘You’re right.’ Ronnie frowned, thinking it through. ‘Even if she thought she was just acting as a mule you wouldn’t expect her to give her real number, would you? It’d probably be some stolen mobile she used for as long as she needed it, then chucked it away.’
‘Hmm. If that’s the case, she’d only answer this number if she was innocent: if she really
was
Patrick’s girlfriend and had nothing to do with the drugs.’ Megan took her phone out and stared at it, wondering what to do.
‘What will you say if she answers?’
Megan shook her head, shoving the phone back into her pocket. ‘I’m not going to risk it,’ she said. ‘I need to find her: talk to her face-to-face. I haven’t been able to contact Carl Kelly’s girlfriend – her last letter to him said she was going
on holiday – but I’m worried now.’
‘Worried? Why?’
‘I’m wondering whether whoever’s behind this might have got to her; decided she was dispensable once she’d done her job in Balsall Gate.’
‘And you think the same thing might happen to this Rebecca Jordan?’ Ronnie frowned.
‘It’s possible, isn’t it? What if she’s still got the phone? Hasn’t got rid of it because she doesn’t expect to be rumbled for what she thinks was a routine drugs run? She might do this sort of thing all the time and get away with it – I don’t mean murdering people; I mean smuggling heroin into prisons. So if she gets a phone call from me she might tell her boss, who would realise someone was onto him.’ With a shrug, she spread her hands in front of her. ‘She’s the weakest link, so it’s goodbye Rebecca.’
Ronnie considered this. ‘You could leave a message. Something that won’t arouse her suspicions.’
‘I could, but I think it’d be best just to go to the hall of residence. Catch her by surprise.’
‘You’ll still have to come up with something pretty convincing to say, won’t you?’
Megan nodded. ‘I’ll have to pretend to be a welfare officer or something. Say I’ve been told she’s having financial problems and I’ve come to offer some advice.’
‘Yes, that could work – but what happens after that?’
‘I’ll have to play it by ear, I think,’ Megan replied. ‘Once I know what she looks like I might have to do some tailing; see if she’ll lead me to the person who’s masterminding this – if there is such a person.’
‘Okay, but I hope you’re not thinking of doing this on your own? You
are
going to get the police involved, aren’t you? I mean, the kind of people you’re likely to run up against wouldn’t think twice about disposing of you if they thought
you posed a threat. You can get a hit man around here for five hundred quid. Life is cheap. Don’t risk it.’
‘I know what you’re saying and I promise I haven’t got a death wish but, so far, the police haven’t shown the slightest interest. I will be careful though.’
‘You make sure that you are.’
The Saturday afternoon train was much quieter than the one she’d caught yesterday. A few minutes into the journey she dipped into her bag for the packet of prunes. There was only one left so she decided to visit the buffet car. It was a relief to be able to wander along the carriages without fear of losing her seat. Before she reached it the smell of grilling bacon wafted towards her. Saliva trickled under her tongue. Her stomach felt empty – all she had eaten since the Hobnobs first thing that morning were two pieces of dry toast: one hers, and one that Ronnie had been unable to eat more than a corner of. If she’d been eating toast at home she would have smothered it with a thick layer of easy-spread butter and a dollop of Manuka honey (the pricey honey was her token attempt at eating something with health benefits). But seeing poor Ronnie’s face when she opened the fridge had made it next to impossible to eat a proper breakfast. Despite her friend’s protests, she’d decided that a bit of sisterly solidarity was called for. So dry toast it was – and that had been six hours ago.
There was only one other person in the buffet car, a
ruddy-faced
, pot-bellied man in a suit, and the bacon was for him. She watched him smother it in brown sauce as he waited for the woman behind the counter to whizz up a cappuccino topped with squirty cream. She wasn’t sure if it was the sight of the sauce oozing from the corners of his mouth or the smell of his armpits as he raised the sandwich from the plate,
but suddenly she felt quite nauseous. By the time the woman glanced round to take her order, all she could face was a cup of black coffee.
She took it back to her seat, taking deep breaths as she put a good distance between herself and the sauce-dribbler. As soon as she took a sip of coffee her stomach began to rumble. Damn, she thought, I can’t go back there now: I should have at least bought a packet of crisps or a biscuit. The gurgling from her insides was getting so loud she was sure the other people in the carriage must be able to hear. So for once it was a relief when the shrill notes of her mobile drowned her out.
‘Megan, can you talk?’ It was Delva. ‘I’ve got some news about the Serious Crime Squad.’
‘Oh, what?’ Megan grabbed her coffee and walked as fast as she could down the carriage. She propped herself against a wall outside the toilet. With the sliding doors to the carriages on either side shut, she was confident no one would overhear her conversation. ‘Have you found Moses Smith’s father?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ Delva said. ‘His name’s not among the list of the men who were prosecuted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, only a few men were ever punished for what they did,’ Delva replied. ‘A lot were accused, but in the end just seven men were convicted – for fairly minor offences. What we’ve found out, though, is that the names of all the officers involved first came to light around the time that Moses Smith was murdered: it was between 1989 and 1991 that the information was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.’
‘Right,’ Megan nodded as she took this in. ‘So anyone with links to the CPS could have found out the names of all the men who’d been accused?’
‘Exactly. It brought the whole thing into the public domain
for the first time.’
‘So you think Smith senior could have been one of the ones who got away with it?’
‘It’s possible, yes, but we still haven’t got any firm evidence that Ron Smith was a copper at all. Tim tried to do some more digging yesterday. He asked the CPS for the list of names to see if Ron’s was on it but they blew him out. Said the records were only accessible to authorised personnel.’
‘Hmm. Hardly surprising, I suppose.’
‘I know. He tried stinging them with a Freedom of Information request but you can imagine how that went down. I think the official line was that any approach for information would be turned down in the interests of the security and safety of the people on the list.’
‘Well, yes, that’s understandable.’
‘To his credit, he didn’t give up, though. He tried sounding out a few of his mates in the force to see if he could get them to go to the CPS on his behalf. No one was keen – they were all worried about jeopardising their careers – but one of them did tell him about a letter the force received at the time the Serious Crime Squad scandal broke.’
‘What kind of letter?’
‘The sort that threatened severe retribution. Tim managed to get his hands on a copy. It was addressed to “The Bastards of West Midlands Police, Torturers of Free Irishmen”.’
‘Not pulling any punches, then.’ Megan’s tongue clicked against the back of her teeth. ‘Any clues as to who sent it?’
‘No, it was anonymous. Tim reckons, though, that the higher echelons of the IRA made it clear at the time that they would hold individuals accountable for the actions of the Squad’.
‘So the crucial thing now is to find out if Ron Smith’s name is on that list. Has Tim got any more ideas?’
‘He’s supposed to be phoning me later on this afternoon,’
Delva replied. ‘He said there was one possibility but he didn’t want to say any more until he was sure it was a “goer”, as he so quaintly puts it.’
There was a rush of sound as another train hurtled past the window. Delva was saying something but Megan couldn’t make out what it was.
‘I said you haven’t told me what’s been happening at your end,’ Delva repeated. ‘Where are you, anyway? Sounds bloody noisy.’
‘I’m on the train – should be back into New Street in about forty minutes.’ Megan gave her a shorthand account of what had unfolded in Manchester.
‘So you’re going there tonight? To Linden House?’
‘Yes. I want to catch Rebecca Jordan when she’s likely to be up and about. No point waiting till tomorrow – most of the students I know don’t surface before mid-afternoon on a Sunday.’
‘Can I come along?’
‘Well, yes…’ Megan hesitated. She hadn’t planned to take anyone with her. But she thought about what Ronnie had said to her before she’d left Manchester: it probably wasn’t sensible to go alone. ‘Are you sure you want to, though? I’d have thought you’d have far better things to do on a Saturday night.’
‘Well if I get a better offer I’ll let you know,’ Delva chuckled, ‘but otherwise it’s a takeaway on my lap in front of
Strictly Come Dancing
. Anyway, what about you? I thought the red hot lover was on his way back from Oz for the weekend.’
‘Sore point,’ Megan replied, grimacing at her reflection in the train window. ‘He’s blown me out for a younger model. More than twenty years younger, actually.’
‘His daughter, huh?’
‘You got it in one. It’s brought things to a bit of a head,
as it happens. I’ll tell you later.’ Keen to change the subject, Megan asked Delva if she knew where Linden House was. She didn’t, so Megan offered to pick her up. They lived just a few streets away from each other in almost identical Victorian houses. Like her place, Delva’s was a nightmare as far as parking was concerned. ‘I’ll be there at seven and I’ll pip my horn,’ she said. ‘Make sure you’re ready, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll probably get lynched by that neighbour who told me off for blocking his drive.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s on holiday,’ Delva replied. ‘But I will be ready. I’m looking forward to it.’
‘God, you’re even sadder than me!’ Megan laughed. ‘Okay, see you later. Oh, and by the way, you’d better wear sunglasses and something frumpy – we don’t want anyone recognising you.’
‘Cheeky cow! I don’t own anything frumpy! But I’ll do my best…’
The phone beeped as Megan pressed the ‘end call’ button. A few minutes later it beeped again as a text message came through. It was Ronnie this time, with the news that the toxicology report had come through. So it
was
strychnine. No real surprise, but seeing the word spelt out suddenly brought home how potentially dangerous the situation was becoming. She was glad that she wasn’t going to be venturing out alone tonight.
As the train rumbled through the green fields of north Staffordshire Megan’s mind turned to the murder of Moses Smith. The IRA thing was something they were going to have to keep an open mind about until Tim could make some headway with those records. Perhaps the story Carl Kelly had told Dom was just that: a fictionalised version of the real reason behind the attack. If Kelly had had sympathies with the IRA there was no reason why he couldn’t have been recruited by someone hellbent on revenge. That didn’t mean
he wasn’t a drug dealer back then, nor would it have stopped him carrying on being a drug dealer. He and his mates could possibly have been offered a lot of money by someone who knew that Moses Smith trusted them and would let them into his home.
The face of Patrick Ryan lying on the mortuary slab in Manchester flashed in front of her. If Ryan was a second member of the gang that had killed Moses – and at the moment it was still a very big ‘if’ – who was the third? If revenge for Moses’ death was the motive for the poisoning of Kelly and Ryan, that third man could be in mortal danger. She needed access to the court records of the case Kelly and Ryan were sent down for: there was just a chance that all three had remained part of the same gang and if that was the case, that third man could have appeared in court alongside them.