Hope Road (27 page)

D
etective Superintendent Shirley Kirk is five years older than John, and it shows. Sitting at a large desk, with light from the window exaggerating the narrowness of her shoulders and the blackness of her short, meticulous hair, her appearance is of a woman whose good looks have been slowly sucked from her by the pressures of work. Opposite her is John Ray, who looks as if he’s never done a day’s work in his life. They chat about secondhand cars and the
Motor Trader
award. It’s as if they knew each other slightly and have just bumped into each other at the golf club bar.

There’s something about him, she thinks as they speak, something welcoming in the way he listens to others, a relaxed confidence, even here in the upper echelons of Millgarth. He talks without calculation, putting you at ease. Tony Ray’s son? Perhaps he’s got used to making friends quickly, a way of counterbalancing the prejudice.

Baron and Steele arrive and take seats at the end of the desk. The line-up of personnel makes John feel like he’s being interviewed for a job at a building society.

“Okay, let’s start,” the Superintendant says.

On her desk is a small digital recorder. She switches it on.

“No objection to us recording this, I take it? What you say is admissible. You understand that?”

“Yes,” John says.

“And do you want a solicitor?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She goes through the names of the four people present, and states that John requested the meeting.

“You said that there was something you wanted to tell us in relation to the murder of Donna Macken.”

That’s it. She sits back, the golf club easiness gone, replaced by a look of deep and unwavering concentration.

“Konstyantyn Bilyk and Fedir Boyko,” John says, getting the pronunciation good and clear. “Tractor salesmen by day, distributors of counterfeit currency by night.”

He expects a few raised eyebrows, but gets nothing.

“They’ve been using the
Eurolodge Hotel
as a base, bringing the fakes notes in through Immingham docks, each shipment enough for a single flood in a single city, like the one here in Leeds over the weekend.”

Again, no response. It’s Monday morning, the banks are open, and news must have started filtering through. The city has been hit. But the three police officers in the room do not acknowledge it.

“Why the
Eurolodge
?” Baron asks.

“No idea. Because it’s usually empty?”

Let’s keep Lanny Bride out of this…

“They get their shipments on a Thursday evening and distribute from the fire exit at the side of the hotel on the Friday morning. Changers have to come up here to Leeds to collect, then they go home and start doing their work after the banks close for the weekend. Standard pattern. Different city each time.”

“How much?” the Super asks.

“Don’t know, but enough not to risk storing the notes too long. Pass your stuff off as quickly as possible, preferably through a banker. First rule.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” she says.

“With my family background? Yes, I know how it works. Also, I had a chat with Mr Bilyk yesterday. He called round for breakfast. Like everybody else in this world, he refuses to believe that I am not a crook, so he opened up his cold, criminal heart to me.”

“Why wait til today to tell us?” she asks.

“I had to be sure. Talk to a few people, ask around a bit.”

“Anyone we know?” Steele says.

“Your dear Aunt Mildred.”

The Super shifts in her chair, stifling a smile.

“Have you been in contact with him since?” she asks. “Back at the hotel, for example?”

“I’d’ve been seen if I’d gone back there.”

“Phoned him?” Steele asks.

“Check my calls,” John says, setting his iPhone calmly down on the desk in front of Steele.

“You can delete calls.”

“So get my call log from Vodafone. I haven’t phoned him, all right?”

Steele leans back in his seat, happy with the progress he’s making as the interview’s designated bulldog.

The Superintendent gestures for John to carry on.

“Freddy took the car on Thursday as well as Friday.”

“We know,” Baron says, crossing his legs.

“Only on his say-so. Here’s the proof.”

John takes a video cassette from his jacket pocket and places it on the desk.

“I thought you didn’t have any more videos,” says Baron. “Your assistant said so on Saturday.”

“I thought so too. We use the same tape most of the time, day after day. But we have a few cassettes lying around. I mean, we’re not very organised. I found this down behind the video recorder. It shows Freddy taking the Mondeo at eight in the evening on Thursday, bringing it back three hours later.”

He pauses, makes sure Baron’s concentrating.

“When Freddy took the car there was eighty-seven thousand two-hundred odd on the clock. I remember from when I bought it. On Friday, the motor probably didn’t go very far. Whatever mileage you find on it over eighty-seven two,” he says, looking directly at Baron, “is what he did on Thursday in three hours. My information is that he went to Immingham docks and back.”

“Let’s talk about what was in the car,” Baron says.

“I don’t know anything else.”

“Fifty grand in the boot,” Steele butts in. “’Course,
you
keep that kind of cash in the bread bin, don’t you John?”

“Sometimes I have to.”

“Yeah, like when you mysteriously
don’t
buy a Porsche you’ve gone over two hundred miles to see.”

“I thought I was here to give you information about the murder of a young woman.”

“All the same story, my friend,” Steele says. “All the same… She’s found dead in your car. There’s fifty grand of fakes in the boot. Now you’re telling us she was knocking around with counterfeiters? One story, Mr Ray. And it all centres on your car, although technically it’s your dad’s car, isn’t it?”

“Freddy took the car, I think we’ve…”

“Fifty grand you were carrying that night. The very same amount we found in the boot of your dad’s car in fakes.”

“I didn’t buy the Porsche because…”

“And an officer from Millgarth CID was your alibi the whole night, the night your employee and best friend Owen ‘Freddy’ Metcalfe was involved in a counterfeit conspiracy and murder using your car but you don’t know a fucking thing about that do you John, not a
thing
? Excuse the language, Ma’am.”

But the Super hardly hears him. She’s thinking, and a strange silence invades the room.

Den
, she tells herself.
Den is his alibi. I should’ve pulled Baron off the case as soon as I heard…

Two years ago, Police Constable Denise Danson was in a very well-concealed relationship with Steve Baron. Superintendant Kirk knew about it only because Baron had confided in her, more out of guilt than professionalism, she reckoned. No one else had the slightest suspicion, a small miracle at Millgarth.

Then Joe Ray was killed, and Den met John Ray. That was not concealed at all. Den immediately requested an integrity interview about the relationship which had developed between her and John Ray. The Super did the interview herself. Soon afterward Den moved over to CID, by which time Baron’s marriage was over. But so too was his affair with Den.

Shirley Kirk studies John Ray’s features, strong nose, high forehead, thick black hair. A heavy-set man with faded good looks. Attractive? Up to a point, but there’s something else. A frisson of excitement with him, the fact that he comes from serious criminal stock, old school crims,
love their mothers
, all that shit. It’s not his fault, but it’s not as if he does anything to hide it. We’re all playing somebody, she tells herself, and this is how Mr Ray has chosen to play it. But he’ll find today’s audience a tricky one. He’s in a room with at least two people who hate his guts. Especially Steve Baron.

“Why did Donna Macken die?” she asks, breaking the silence.

John exhales, wishes he could see an ashtray in the large, neat office, but knows there won’t be one.

“On Friday night Donna went ballistic,” he says. “Something about fake money she’d been given. The Ukrainians must have
paid
her in fakes. She goes back to the hotel, raises hell, and somewhere down the line she gets killed. Perhaps she was threatening to come to the police. I just don’t know.”

“Freddy was there in the hotel room with the Ukrainians,” Baron says. “Why not Freddy?”

“I don’t think Freddy killed Donna. But I do know what he was doing there.”

He pauses.

“They wanted to make it look like my dad and I were involved. Give the police an obvious lead. The Rays? Family of counterfeiters. Freddy works for us. It’s an easy connection.”

He glances at Steele, who grins.

“And he’s making collections for them for what reason?” Baron asks.

“He’s gonna have to explain that one himself. But my information is that he was in love with Donna.”

“They’ve been seen together,” Steele says. “We already know.”

Mike Pearce
.
Of course. The half-pissed loser.

“My guess,” says John, “Freddy was trying to keep her safe. Young girl in a secluded hotel room with two unknown thugs? He was worried about her. I dunno, perhaps there’s a macho thing going on as well. Freddy the big shot, mixing it with the underworld. I’ve seen enough of that shit to know it’s true. Young lads, they get drawn in. He’ll have to answer for himself on that. Donna was important to him, though. From what I’ve been told he’s a bloody nervous wreck.”

“Murder can do that to a person,” Steele says, a little too cheerfully.

John holds up his hands.

“My feeling is if you get him to admit to the pick-ups, he’ll tell you what the Ukrainians were doing. He was involved, I accept that. It’s his first time. Got no record. Could I please stress that?”

“Trying to tell us our job?” Steele says.

“I’ve been bloody
doing
yours for you the last few days.”

Steele laughs right at him. “You just keep thinking that, my friend!”

“Have you informed Freddy’s solicitor that you are telling us this?” the Super asks.

“Yes. I just phoned him.”

Baron, meanwhile, is shaking his head.

“I don’t see it. The boy’s told us a hundred times. When he leaves the room she’s still alive. Drunk, high, roughed up and raped by Fedir. But still alive. When they get called back to the hotel she’s dead.” He stands, turning to his boss. “Whatever. We go on this, right?”

She nods, fingers pressed together, thinking.

“Presumably you think these Ukrainians are behind the fakes that have turned up in other cities?” she asks John, as Baron and Steele prepare to go.

“Bilyk told me as much.”

“And what about the notes in the car? Was that part of the latest shipment, got left behind? Simple as that?”

Baron stops, and for a split second his eyes betray him. But Steele? He doesn’t react.

That’s it. Steele doesn’t know
.

The notes in the car were different from the ones currently flooding the city’s streets. Baron knows it, and his boss must know it too.
But they’re not making it common knowledge.

Then Baron’s gone, giving orders as he walks, calling for cars and men, ready to steam up the York Road, where he’ll discover that Mr Bilyk has just left town.

The office is suddenly quiet.

She smiles.

“Got five minutes?”

John nods.

“Tell me what you know about importing counterfeit money.”

H
e picks Connie up from her apartment and they drive up the York Road. They see two patrol cars and several unmarked cars outside the
Eurolodge
. Sending Baron on a wild goose chase was not the way John would have chosen to play it, but there hadn’t been much choice.

Andriy Danyluk, aka Bilyk, will be gone by now. New identity, new city. He’s come out of this pretty well. His last shipment of fakes was sold-on and he’s free to set-up again somewhere else. Meanwhile, Fuller will have got his rake-off, and all the changers, a whole string of them. Everyone got paid. A young woman lies in the morgue, and who give a toss? Lanny Bride does.

They reach Harehills Lane and turn left. His stomach is churning.

You’ve got no choice, John. Like Dad in 1958, arrives in England, no education to speak of, no family, no easy way into work. What choice did he have?

Up a side street. Lines of old red-brick terraces, the kind that Joe used to buy and stuff full of illegal immigrants. What choices did Joe have, growing up with Lanny Bride and a bunch of thugs? Not a lot, when you think about it.

No, the choices were all mine. Kept away from the family business. They allowed me to have a normal life…

Was it a plan? Did his parents deliberately protect him from crime, from the blood-rush of the illicit, the thrill of taking whatever you fancied? If so, they did a pretty good job. But he got the taste for it anyway. Dad never knew, but it was Joe who supplied him with those fake tenners when he was a kid. One brother’s gift to another.

They park a few doors down and sit in the Saab.

“There it is,” he says.

He dials Craig Bairstow’s number.

No answer.

“You ready?” he says, grabbing his laptop from the back seat, his nerves fizzing, his breathing heavy but irregular.

She nods.

“Plastic,” she says as they get to the front door, pulling a small crow bar from inside her leather jacket. “Good.”

They ring the bell for the upstairs flat and wait.

Nothing.

“Right.”

She gets her shoulder against the door and leans on it, working the tip of the crow bar into the gap between the door and the frame, just below the lock. One gentle shoulder-push, another, and the door springs open.

“It’s that simple?” John says as they walk inside.

“uPVC. Shit.”

The lobby is cramped and smells of damp cardboard, just like Joe’s rented houses used to.