Hurt (The Hurt Series) (3 page)

‘She’s in good hands. CSI here yet?’

‘On route.’

‘Knowles?’

‘Yep.’

She breathed a sigh of relief. Stepped across the hall and into the kitchen where Carly was leaning against a rumbling washing machine sucking hard on a cigarette between trembling knuckles.

Dressed in a sloppy blue sweatshirt, black leggings and Ugg boots, the blonde mother of two was not as house proud as her friend and neighbour. The kitchen walls were painted a garish bright yellow, while the stained, cream linoleum was cracked and curling up around the feet of all the appliances. Plates, cutlery and pans were jammed into a plastic sink drainer, whilst this morning’s breakfast dishes sat in the sink. Jessop doubted if the distraught girl with the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes was in the process of cleaning up when the fated thump on the door had come earlier.

Stepping over a basket of washing, she asked, ‘How you holding up?’

Carly stubbed out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, reached for a pack of Silk Cut and sparked up another smoke with a throwaway lighter. ‘Still think it’s all a nightmare, you know?’

Jessop nodded. She knew. ‘In her statement, Keisha said you keep a spare key to her flat.’

Carly reached into a cupboard beneath the sink. A cluttering of pans later, and amongst an assortment of high street carrier bags she pulled out a square Tupperware container Jessop suspected had come with a Chinese takeaway. Inside was an assortment of keys, key-rings, screws, nails, and batteries. Carly fished out a set of 3 keys, handed them to Jessop. ‘Good thing, too, because Tanya lost hers a fortnight ago.’

‘Yeah?’ Mason said. ‘Where?’

‘Down Revels. I had to let her in.’

Mason flipped open his notebook, scribbled. ‘What night was that?’

‘Saturday. She went with Sophia Cox as she always does.’

‘You know Sophia’s address?’

Carly cocked her head toward the kitchen window. ‘Number forty-two.’

‘You ever go with them?’ Jessop enquired.

‘Revels aint my scene. Drinks’re too pricey.’

Jessop’s eyes wondered to a scribbled shopping list stuck to the fridge with a red, yellow and green fridge magnet in the shape of Jamaica. Chips, chicken nuggets, beans, bread, coffee, crisps, milk, biscuits, bubble bath, 400 B&H.

‘How long you known Tanya?’ Mason asked.

Crossing her arms over her shallow chest, Carly replied, ‘Since school. Dumb luck we got flats next to each other.’

‘Tanya have any enemies you know of?’

‘Uh-uh. Everyone liked Tanya.’

‘What about Keisha’s father. Where’s he at?’

Carly drew hard on the cigarette. ‘Junior went down for a five stretch last September for kicking one of his crack-head dealers half to death for scratching his Mercedes.’

‘Junior’s surname?’

‘Dennis. You heard of him?’

Mason shook his head, jotted down the name.

Jessop asked, ‘They together when he went down?'

'Nah.'

'
But he kept in contact with Tanya from prison.'

Carly shrugged. ‘He sent letters occasionally.’

‘Anything threatening?’

‘Uh-uh. Just shit about how he's found God and is seeing the error of his ways. A right convert.’

'So no animosity between them?’

Carly shook her head. ‘No. Junior respected Tanya. Couldn’t wish for a better mum for his little angel.’

Jessop asked, ‘So no reason you can think of why Junior would have someone on the outside do this to Tanya?’

‘None I know of.’ Carly's mobile rang. Jessop recognised the ringtone as being One Love by Bob Marley. Carly retrieved the phone, an old Nokia Jessop used to own and thought was obsolete, switched it off and apologised.

‘No problem,’ Jessop said. ‘Why did Tanya and Junior split up?’

Carly shrugged, drew on the cigarette. ‘Same reason all of us here are single, I guess. Too much too young.’

‘Any boyfriends since? Someone down Revels, maybe?’

Carly flicked her cigarette at the ashtray, but missed. She didn’t notice. ‘Uh-uh. Tanya didn’t want Keisha waking up to any strange men in her flat.’

The twisted irony of that statement did not escape Jessop as she blinked away a wisp of smoke and eyed the contents of the ashtray.

‘What about family?’ Mason asked.

‘None local. Dad fled back to Trinidad when she was eight. Mum died of a heroin OD when she was six. No brothers or sisters.’

Just then a small red headed boy with fair skin and dressed in Arsenal’s football strip appeared at the kitchen door. Daley announced that he and Robbie were hungry, and could they have a sandwich? Jessop saw an adorable little boy with curly black hair and beautiful mocha skin toddle into the kitchen wearing just a nappy.

Carly turned to Jessop. ‘You mind if I...’

Forgetting she’d had a rare lay in this morning, and that it was approaching lunchtime, she said, ‘Of course not.’

Mason’s phone rang. Excusing himself, Jessop was left watching the young mother prepare two cheese sandwiches. She informed Carly that the whole block was a crime scene, and to expect some commotion and inconvenience for the next forty-eight hours. Carly understood, her bottom lip quivering as she handed the plate of sandwiches to Daley.

‘You got a fella, Carly?’ Jessop asked.

Carly fingered another cigarette from her pack, offered a weak smile as she sparked up and glanced around the messy kitchen. ‘Why would any bloke want me?’

Bringing her daughter Chloe up alone, Jessop knew all too well the repelling power a kid can have on a potential boyfriend. She offered Carly her most empathic smile, which was lost in a plume of cigarette smoke and grief as the young mother's puffy eyes once again welled with tears.

She thanked Carly for her time, left the flat, and stepped back out onto the landing, where Mason acknowledged her and switched the phone call he was on to loud speaker. ‘It's Tom.’

‘What you got, Tom?’

‘Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding,’ said DC Tom Davies, the newest and youngest member of her team. ‘It’s the beginning of a quote by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese/American poet, artist, and philosopher. The rest of the quote being: It is the
bitter
potion which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore trust your physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity.’

‘What’s Gibran’s story?’

‘Died in 1931, but left a pretty impressive legacy with his book of poetry The Prophet. To date, it’s sold over a hundred million copies worldwide, and after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu, Gibran is considered the third most read poet in history.’

‘Any extreme religious or political beliefs?’

‘Nothing I can see to evoke any violent tendencies in a fan. Gibran was a good Christian who championed peace and love for all. Hell, John Lennon even pinched one of his lines.’

'Great.' She thanked Davies, instructed him to keep digging into Gibran’s works, and nodded to Mason to hang up.

‘Never had Junior Dennis down as a Beatles fan,’ she mused aloud. ‘More a reggae man.’

Mason’s eyes widened. ‘You know Junior?’

‘I busted him for dealing blow a couple of times when I worked vice. Him and his scumbag cousin Lennox Tyler.’

Mason’s eyes narrowed back into their familiar dark slits. ‘Lennox Tyler... Manager of Revels nightclub, right?’

‘Yep. Tanya’s regular Saturday night haunt.’

Chapter
Four

Neil Harris had not liked Lurch from the moment he’d invited himself into their pitiful lives yesterday. All were welcome beneath the bridge, and many like Lurch, loners looking for companionship and shelter for a few days, had come and gone without fuss. But this lanky six and a half footer with his shaggy hair, sunken cheeks, and glazed red eyes had trouble written all over him.

Neil had learned a long time ago anyone
that
quiet had issues best kept to themselves. If not for the bottles of cider he’d brought to share with his new so-called friends, he would have asked the silent stranger to move on. If he’d refused, then Neil would have insisted the he leave.

Lurch may have a good half a foot on him, but when it came to surviving on the streets, Neil had a good ten years on the freak.

Neil took a swig from the Tennants can and passed it to George, who hadn’t spotted the imminent arrival of the newcomer he'd named after the butler from The Addam's Family. George was still preaching to Ricky about the city’s 1974 football squad being able to whip this year’s bunch of fairies. Ricky, who’d just arrived after oversleeping and being kicked out of his favourite doorway, was not yet fully awake and was humouring George with weary nods.

Knowing George was on one of his legendary rants, and that he wouldn’t concede his point until he’d pass out for his noon nap, Neil hadn’t offered an opinion. Just sat on the cold concrete beneath the bridge and watched the dark river tumble and swell from the rain his precious daughter Emily used to love to splash around in so much.

He wondered if Emily still remembered her love for the rain after all these years, or if the memory had been lost in time like the name of her loser father, whose failings in life had found him residing in shelters and drinking high strength lager under bridges.

Lurch offered no greeting as he dumped the cider laden carrier bag down beside George. Tired of even bothering to try and make conversation with the coiled newcomer, Neil just sat back and watched Lurch step towards the river’s edge and stare into the rapid water.

Yeah, he thought, one more step and whatever demons are haunting those glazed eyes of yours will all be exorcised for good. Take the easy way out, weirdo, and leave us the fuck alone.

‘Early today,’ George said, finally acknowledging their newest friend and reaching into the shopping bag. ‘So what’s the news, Lurch?’

Lurch ignored the question, choosing instead to pick at the ridiculously long key chain that hung from his jeans waistband.

Neil glanced at his drinking buddy, who yesterday had made a sport out of trying to goad Lurch into speaking. Yellowed by jaundice, and with a death rattle cough, George had little time left, and so even littler reason to waste it. So if lecturing about the city’s football team’s glory days and teasing Lurch made him happy, who was Neil to deny an old man his last bit of fun?

‘Hey, Lurch,’ George called. ‘What’s with that fucking keychain, anyway? I mean, you got the keys to your mansion and your Ferrari on that thing or something?’

Sitting beside George, Ricky, whose time on the street had earned the twenty-five-year-old a jagged scar over his left eye, let out a laugh. ‘Yeah, Lurch...You gonna pick us up and take us for a spin to your mansion for cocktails some time?’

Neil fidgeted, his honed instinct for trouble alerting him something was different about Lurch today. Sure he was dressed the same, but something about his initial appearance as he’d dropped the bag differed from yesterday.

‘It’s a dog lead, not a keychain.’

Lurch's
hoarse voice sent a chill down Neil’s back. He sat up and frowned his concern at his two buddies.

‘It speaks!’ Ricky announced.

‘So where’s the dog?’ George pushed. ‘In your pocket?’

‘Spartan’s dead.’ Lurch turned from the river bank, pulled a knife from his coat pocket. ‘There is neither happiness or misery in the world: there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.’

And that’s when Neil saw it, the difference between Lurch yesterday and today. A minute detail, sure, but noticing such details was what had kept Neil alive on the streets all this time. Where yesterday Lurch's trainers were scuffed and dirty, now the laces and toes were blotched with crimson, as if someone had bled on them.

Chapter
Five

Six blocks of six flats, all within a fifty meter diameter of one another. All with the same view of the grass roundabout in the centre of the cul-de-sac. All occupied on this dreary, damp Sunday morning. Excluding Tanya and Carly and the residents’ kids, that meant thirty-four potential eyewitnesses.

And yet, not one of the single mothers had seen a damn thing.

Of course, Jessop knew this not to be true. People generally had a survival instinct that kicked in when it came to inviting avoidable trouble into their lives. Gone was any compassion toward their fellow man, replaced with a sudden attack of deaf dumb and blindness. Why admit to seeing the bad man knowing by doing so you could find yourself face to face with him later in court? Or worse still, back on the street after his release? No thanks. I got my own problems and my family to think about without having some psycho lusting for my blood. And anyway, isn’t that why we have the police?

Standing outside Tanya’s cordoned off block, she surveyed the surrounding flats, each window now with a face spying between the curtains, where three hours ago there had been none…allegedly. However, there was one resident for whom she believed: Sophia Cox, Tanya’s clubbing partner and keen collector of African art, whom Jessop had just finished talking to.

The heavy set mother of three took the news of her friend’s death by signifying the cross across her ample bosom and bowing her head in silent prayer. A cup of hot tea was then insisted upon, to which Jessop accepted and received gratefully as she asked about their night out down Revels a fortnight ago when Tanya had lost her keys.

‘Yeah, that happened. Lord knows where they got to.’

When she asked if Sophia and Tanya knew Lennox Tyler, the club’s manager, Sophia’s sad brown eyes hardened into bullets. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Did you see him that night?’

‘He’s always there, sniffing around skirt like one of those truffle pigs or something.’

Thinking how easy it would be for Tyler to get someone to lift Tanya’s keys from her handbag on his jailbird cousin’s request, she asked about Junior Dennis and the letters he’d been sending Tanya.

‘Yeah, Tanya told me about ’em. Junior thinks he’s found salvation in the good book and wants to prove to her he’s changed when he gets out. But let me tell you this. Just because I read a cookery book don’t turn me into Delia. Know what I’m saying?’