Authors: Patricia Hall

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

Death in Dark Waters (5 page)

BOOK: Death in Dark Waters

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“Sir,” Thackeray had said, wondering what sort of a slippery slope Longley was threatening to slide down and determined he was not going to slide down it with him.

“A close friend, is he? Grantley Adams?” he ventured.

“He's not a bloody friend of mine,” Longley said angrily. “Just a bloody acquaintance at the Lodge. But they've invited me to sit on this committee looking at the regeneration of the
Heights, so I don't want to queer our pitch there. It seems like a worthwhile thing for the Force to be doing, wouldn't you say? Opportunities to build in security, consult on policing, community-minded, all that?”

“I'm sure it's all of those things,” Thackeray conceded. “Though there've been more schemes to regenerate that estate than there've been modernisations of the Force. Pulling the whole lot down, like they said they would, might be a better bet.”

“Aye, well, that might be on the agenda, as I understand it. But never mind that. What about the bloody Carib Club? It might have been better to concentrate your efforts there, rather than going for a couple of respectable families who seem to be the victims rather than the villains in this mess, wouldn't you say?”

“Perhaps,” Thackeray said. “Val Ridley and DC Sharif are down there now, as it goes.”

Only slightly deflated, Longley had departed, leaving Thackeray in a foul mood which was not improved by the mountain of paperwork which he tackled for the rest of the afternoon. According to the new management jargon, he was now Bradfield's “crime manager” and it was not a job he thought particularly suited him. By five o'clock, with dusk settling over the square outside, he was sitting in his car deciding to make one last call before going home and it would be as unannounced as he had determined his officers' raids had been earlier in the day.

Unannounced and unofficial.

The boss was in his office at Foreman Security Services when Thackeray arrived. With barely a nod of greeting, Barry Foreman crossed the room to the cocktail cabinet and waved a bottle of Scotch expansively in his visitor's direction with a hand heavy with gold rings.

“You're off duty by now, I take it?”

Thackeray shook his head, certain that the offer was intended to rile. Foreman was as tall as he was himself,
though perhaps without the rugby-player's breadth, but he dressed with a style and at a cost which Thackeray could only marvel at. If proof was needed that Foreman had interests which went far beyond the modest security company which was his only ostensible source of income, his vanity provided it. Those rings, the Italian suit, the hand-made leather loafers on which he padded across his thickly carpeted office, the silk tie that Thackeray knew he should recognise as the signature of some designer or other, all spoke of money and plenty of it. There was a new breed of criminal abroad - and the DCI had no doubt Foreman was a criminal although he had failed so far to prove it - computer literate and intelligent enough to keep well clear of the dirt that supported their lifestyle. While Thackeray assumed that it was the drug trade which funded Foreman's extravagances, he admitted that it could just as easily be people trafficking, or some financial scam which bridged the gap between legitimate and illegitimate business worlds. He had trawled the man's record with inexhaustible patience, wasting his own time as well as the police force's, but Foreman had no criminal record and he could find no evidence apart from the vaguely circumstantial, to implicate him in any illegal activity.

Foreman was waiting for his answer, a faint smile on the thin lips, the eyes offering a chilly challenge, the bottle still poised.

“Not for me,” Thackeray said. Foreman shrugged and poured himself a large one.

“That little gypsy scrote with the shot-gun got sent down, I see,” he said as he dropped a couple of ice cubes into the drink and tasted it. “Didn't even call me as a bloody witness in the end.” The faint note of complaint suggested that he would have enjoyed taking the stand.

“He pleaded guilty, but they don't look kindly on fire-arms offences,” Thackeray said. “How are Karen and the babies?” The two men had not met face-to-face since the day Foreman's girlfriend and her twin girls had been besieged
briefly by the boy with a shot-gun though the security boss had seldom been far from Thackeray's thoughts. Foreman shrugged again and Thackeray wondered if he had imagined the flash of anger in his pale eyes.

“She buggered off, didn't she? Took the kids with her. I can't say I was sorry. How am I ever going to know who's kids they are?”

“You didn't have the tests done then?” The paternity of Foreman's children had been thrown into doubt by the doctor who had helped the couple conceive them.

“She wouldn't have it, would she? Scared of the results, I dare say,” Foreman dropped heavily into his swivel chair behind an extensive desk unsullied by paperwork and waved Thackeray into an armchair. “Stupid cow.”

Thackeray watched as Foreman sipped his drink. The heavy, bland face gave nothing away and as Foreman told it there was nothing to give. But Thackeray had never glimpsed a spark of humanity behind those normally cold blank eyes.

“So what can I do for you, Chief Inspector?” Foreman asked eventually.

“The Carib Club,” Thackeray said. “Do you look after the doors for them?”

“Nope,” Foreman said. “Nowt to do with me that place. They make their own arrangements, as far as I know. Keep themselves to themselves, those black lads, don't they? I heard they had a bit of trouble the other night. Just shows, they might be better off using FSS, mightn't they?”

“You must hear a lot of things in your line of work,” Thackeray said mildly. “What about the supply of Ecstasy? Your lads hear anything about that lately?”

“At the Carib? Or generally?”

“Whatever?”

“There's a lot of it about, I'm told. Kids can't have a night out without it. I'd tan their backsides for them if they were mine. As to where they get it, I can't help you there, Mr. Thackeray. As I think I've said to you before, I know nowt
about the supply of drugs, and if any of my lads give me as much as a whiff that they're dealing they're out. Ecstasy, hash, crack, Charlie, I'll not tolerate it. More than the company's reputation's worth.”

Thackeray smiled with as much sympathy as he could muster for a man who, in his book, had a reputation so fragile that it might shatter if a breath of wind disturbed it. But it had to be the right breath of wind and so far he had not managed to generate even an echo of the hurricane he believed Foreman and all his works deserved.

“You'll keep me informed if you hear anything,” he said. “Anythmg at all.”

“Of course, Mr. Thackeray,” Foreman said, knocking his drink back and getting to his feet. “Anything I can do to help.”

Chapter Four

“You don't have to pretend you're in love with me and all that crap, you know,” Donna Maitland said as Kevin Mower rolled out of her bed and slipped into his jeans.

“Sorry,” Mower said, pulling up his zip viciously. Donna slid from under the duvet, naked, blonde hair straggling down her back and her face, stripped of make-up, revealing fine lines that were usually carefully concealed. She was not quite the woman Mower had first seen belting out âI Will Survive' at a karaoke night at one of the local pubs, but he had learned that in many ways she was much more than that woman throwing musical defiance at the world had appeared to be. Dozens of women from the Heights performed nightly on the pub and club circuit, casting off their bras and squeezing into too revealing dresses to exchange their pain and disappointment for a moment of glamour and whoops of drunken enthusiasm from the audience. He knew now that Donna was different. She saw life on the Heights as a challenge and had learned slowly and painfully that occasionally she could win and he admired her for it. But admiration and sex in the afternoon did not equate to anything more. They both knew that and most of the time accepted it. It was only occasionally Mower caught that look of longing in Donna's eyes before they turned away from each other, he in sudden anger, she in embarrassment.

She pulled a blue silk nightdress over her head to conceal breasts that were beginning to droop and a stomach still flat from fevered dieting but not free of stretch marks, and reached out until Mower sat back down on the bed beside her and put an arm around her waist companionably.

“What is it about you?” she asked. “I've been watching you, you know. This weren't just summat that came up on me today. I've watched you wiât'kids and seen you come alive
wiâthem. And then when you come back to t'bloody adults you switch off, dead as summat that fell off back of a bin lorry. What's that all about?”

“It's a long story,” Mower said uneasily, getting up again to pull a sweatshirt over his head and moving out onto the balcony of the fourth floor flat where an icy blast from the Pennines made him recoil. Donna followed him, pulling a robe around herself and standing beside him shivering as they both gazed down at the littered car-park below. Donna's lips tightened and she looked away so that the sergeant could not see eyes filled with tears which were only partly caused by the wind.

“And a story you're not going to tell some slag you just picked up on a night out slumming on t'Heights?”

Mower reached out and pulled her closer.

“Don't do that to yourself, Donna,” Mower said. “You don't deserve it.”

“So why won't you tell me about her? I know there's someone else. I can see it in your eyes when you get into bed. It's not me you really want. Dumped you, did she?”

Mower shuddered slightly as the wind threw a flurry of needle sharp sleet in their faces.

“It wasn't like that,” he said, turning and urging Donna back inside.

“So you dumped her and now you're regretting it?”

“She â¦” Mower hesitated. “You don't need to worry about her. She died.”

“Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry,” Donna said quickly, her eyes filling with tears again. She dashed them away and began to get dressed, pulling clothes on quickly to cover flesh she did not want Mower to inspect too closely. Mower stood with his back against the balcony door looking at her, wishing he could give her what she so desperately wanted and knowing that he never could. He followed her into the living room where she began a furious tidying away of the previous night's mugs and glasses which covered the coffee table.

“You don't need to be sorry for me. It's over now,” he said.

“Aye, but it's never over, is it?” Donna said. “My sister lost her lad. He were tâfirst to OD on smack. Too pure, they said, as if that made it any easier. She'll not get over it. Not ever. Why d'you think I'm so gutted that the Project's getting trashed by t'minutes. It's to stop kids like our Terry getting hooked. And my Emma, for that matter, though she's little yet.”

Mower glanced at his watch. Emma was Donna's eight year old daughter and as far as he knew she did not know of his existence. It was a situation he preferred to maintain.

“She'll be home soon, won't she? I'd better go.”

Donna glanced out of the window again to where a straggle of school-children could be seen making their way round the corner of the neighbouring block of flats.

“Just let me get my coat on, it's coming down like stair-rods out there,” she said. “I'll walk down with you. I don't like her coming up them stairs on her own. You never know who's about.” Donna went back into the bedroom and within minutes had slipped into a jacket and carefully repaired her make-up and hair.

“Will I do?” she asked with an attempt at coquettishness as she came back into the living room.

“You'll do fine,” Mower said, kissing her gently on the lips and opening the front door of the flat for her. They made their way along the rain-swept walkway to the concrete stairs which led to ground level.

“You wait there,” Mower said. “I'll watch her safely up.”

“I'll be back over t'road at seven,” Donna said, her face determined again. “I've got a babysitter sorted. And Kevin â¦”

Mower glanced back.

“I didn't mean owt,” Donna said. “Just good friends, right?”

“Right,” Mower said, with what he hoped was the right degree of enthusiasm. He set off down the stairs without looking back and by the time he had reached the ground floor a small fair child in school uniform had made her way
into the hallway where the single lift boasted an out-of-order sign.

“Your mum's at the top, Emma,” he said quietly, but the child gave him a frightened look and hurried up the stairs, her school bag banging against her bare legs painfully as she ran. Mower stood at the bottom for a moment looking up until he heard Donna greet her daughter loudly enough for him to hear. It was not until the echo of their footsteps along the walkway above had died away that he groaned and thumped his fist hard against the concrete wall in a vain attempt to assuage the pain which still consumed him. A drink, he thought, would be good. Two would be better. Six better still. The sleet which was now battering against the doors would not deter him but he guessed that the kids who were waiting for him at the Project just might.

Laura Ackroyd stood on the top step of the Carib Club trying to keep out of the rain and watched the group of Asian boys on the other side of the road with some anxiety. They were a perfect example of what the police used to call loitering with intent, she thought, as one of the teenagers kicked a soft drink can across the road in her direction and fell back against the opposite wall laughing hysterically. She knocked for the third time on the club door and was just about to turn away when she heard the sound of movement inside. Eventually with much shooting of bolts and turning of keys in locks, the door inched open a crack and a voice demanded to know who she was and what she wanted.

“I had an appointment to see Darryl Redmond,” Laura said, pushing her Press card into the gap in the door and straggles of damp red hair out of her eyes.

“Safe,” the voice said and eased the door back sufficiently for her to enter before slamming it shut again.

The interior of the club was gloomy, lit only by the emergency lights over the exits and a faint glow which filtered out from an open door on the opposite side of the cavernous room.
Laura had never visited the place before. The Carib was an addition to the Bradfield scene since her own student days at the university when she had gone clubbing with the best. These days an exhausted evening with Michael Thackeray slumped in front of the television and an occasional meal out made up the sum total of her social life. Middle age, she thought, must be creeping up, and she did not much like the prospect.

The young black man holding a broom in one hand who had let her in led her across the dance floor, past the enormous sound system and into the lit room on the other side.

“The reporter woman,” he said to the two black men who were sitting in a cramped office, one light-skinned and short, with a tight, neat haircut, and a small goatee, the other taller, broader and darker and with a shock of dreadlocks down to his shoulders. The bigger man raised a fist in greeting while the other waved her into a chair.

“I'm Darryl Redmond. This is my DJ from last night, Dizzy B. You're Laura, right? You want to write about the club?”

Laura nodded.

“You gonna give us a bad press?” Redmond asked, his eyes unfriendly. “This thing with the boy and the taxi was nowt to do wi'us, you know? We're getting all this hassle and it was nowt to do wi'us.”

“That's why I wanted to talk to you,” Laura said. “I wanted to get your side of the story.” Persuading Ted Grant that the club might even have a side of the story had been a gargantuan struggle that morning, but she had prevailed eventually by suggesting, with a sweet smile, that even a night-club might sue if the Gazette suggested it was a source of illegal drugs without allowing it any right of reply.

“Oh, yeah,” Dizzy B said sceptically. “And how do we know you'll tell it like it really is?”

“You have to trust me,” Laura said. “Believe me, the Gazette could have sent someone a lot nastier than me.” She tried her most trustworthy smile but it did not seem to impress her listeners.

“There's nothing to tell, any road,” Darryl said. “We tell our door people not to let drugs in. You can't ever be sure it works. An' there's nowt you can do with kids who've popped pills before they even got here. That boy didn't get his Es in my club. I can tell you that for a fact. Maybe some ganja slipped in on Saturday but that ain't no big deal. But no Es. And nothing harder either.”

“I had a good view of the dancers,” Dizzy B said flatly, dark eyes amused rather than anxious. “I don' see no dealers in here that night though some of the kids maybe were high. A few brothers smokin'. Nothin' more. An' I had a frien' wit' me who's a copper so I was keepin' a good eye open. A very good eye. I didn' want no trouble that night.”

“Police?” Laura's surprise was obvious.

“You think we can't have friends in the force?” Dizzy B asked, grinning broadly and abandoning his West Indian accent. “You should get out more, lady. I was in the Met myself for a little while. But the music called stronger.”

“There was a policeman inside the club all night?”

“Right,” Dizzy B said.

“And two good men on the doors,” Darryl insisted. “Though I reckon I'm going to have to get different security if I'm going to keep my licence here. Barry Foreman's been on at me for months to give him the doors. Maybe that's the price I'll have to pay.”

“He's reliable, is he?” Laura asked, recalling her brief acquaintance with the security boss and thinking that reliability was not the first word that sprang to mind.

“He has friends in high places,” Darryl said. “That's enough, isn't it?”

Laura was about to explore that interesting avenue when there was a crash from the far side of the club and an outraged shout from the man who had let her in earlier, who was now sweeping up around the DJ's dais.

Darryl and Dizzy jumped to their feet, ran to the main doors and flung them open to find themselves faced with
flames from some sort of fire which had been lit outside. While Darryl turned back for a fire extinguisher, Dizzy stamped on the burning rubbish and succeeded in kicking most of it away from the wooden doors and down the steps before it could do any serious damage. Outside the narrow street was deserted.

“There was a gang of Asian lads out there when I arrived,” Laura said, gazing at the smouldering mess on the pavement in horror.

“Surprise me,” Dizzy B said, standing aside to let Darryl douse the last of the fire in foam. “Darryl was just telling me that the Asians have been trying to get him closed down for months.”

“Why should they want to do that?” Laura asked.

Darryl shrugged.

“There's no love lost between the two communities, you should know that if you live in Bradfield,” he said. “And we're the wrong side of town here. The premises are cheap but we're very close to the mosque. A bad influence, the old men in white pyjamas think. Might give their little girls the wrong idea entirely.”

“Just because we all have dark skin you think we all the same â¦” Dizzy B mocked Laura. “But if this place is anything like London, you've probably got the Asian gangs just as deep into drugs as anyone else - buying and selling.”

“So who's your friend in the police then?” she asked waspishly. “Kevin Mower, I bet. He was in the Met.”

“Yo, you're well informed,” the DJ said.

“He's a friend of mine.”

BOOK: Death in Dark Waters

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