Strangers (19 page)

‘So it’s not just thieving,’ Jayne said, ‘it’s thieving from your employers?’

Lucy inclined her head.

‘I don’t need to tell you what’ll happen if that occurs when you’re on
our
payroll.’ Jayne’s green eyes now bored into Lucy like laser beams. ‘I must stress this, Hayley. A lot of the people who work for us have a shady past … and in some cases a shady present. It goes with the territory, and we are hugely understanding in that regard. But we’d take a very dim view indeed if that generosity of spirit was not repaid in full.’

‘I understand that, Miss McIvar.’

‘Let’s just say this, love. It wouldn’t be
me
you’d be answering to.’

Lucy nodded again; it wasn’t difficult looking suitably unnerved.

Jayne closed her ledger and slotted it into a large handbag. ‘Not that you’ll be stricken with temptation. There’s a security camera on the coat-check area. But that’ll work in your favour too. Someone claims his wallet’s suddenly lighter than it should be … we can soon find out whether you’ve been up to your old tricks again or he’s just a lying bastard. When can you start?’

‘Tomorrow night?’ Lucy suggested.

‘Okay. Do you know where we are?’

‘No.’ This wasn’t untrue. Lucy had familiarised herself with the area where SugaBabes was located but had learned that, as an establishment with no legal status, it was concealed among ordinary, nondescript buildings. It wouldn’t be easy pinpointing it on a map.

‘That’s okay,’ Jayne said. ‘I’ll meet you right here. Three o’clock sharp.’

‘What do you want me to wear, Miss McIvar?’

Jayne stood up, ready to leave. ‘You’ll be issued with a uniform when you get to the club.’

‘Do
I
get anything?’ Tammy asked.

Jayne strode to the door, but glanced round. ‘You?’

‘You always used to say that if I brought something good to the Talent Team there might be a reward in it for me.’

‘That was for the Talent Team, Tamara?’

‘You might persuade Hayley yet. She didn’t half turn over the customers on the East Lancs. Her very first trick was a van-load of navvies, and they drove off hooting.’

Jayne eyed Lucy again, but only briefly. ‘Yeah, you’ll get something, Tamara.’ She raised her voice. ‘Marco!’

The young Italian guy reappeared.

‘Give ’em both another coffee.’ Jayne indicated Tammy. ‘Make sure this one gets a couple of extra sugar lumps.’

Chapter 14

Where are you?

The text was signed:
Priya
.

Lucy marvelled. Was she finally on first-name terms with the DSU? But then she remembered that she’d been undercover today, and just in case, if for any reason at all her mobile phone had finished up in the wrong hands, it wouldn’t have looked good if it was found to be carrying messages bearing police insignia.

She keyed in a quick reply:

Metrolink. Heading back to city centre.

Available?

Yes.

Pick you up at Victoria end of Deansgate. 15 mins.

Lucy made it to the rendezvous point on time without difficulty, though it was now five o’clock in the afternoon and central Manchester was embroiled in its daily rush-hour chaos. The pavements thronged with fast-moving pedestrians; the roads were log-jammed with cars, each one of which, thanks to the rapidly falling temperature, belched thick swirls of exhaust into the headlight glare from the vehicle behind. It was dark already of course, and the occasional staccato flashes in the sky, usually followed by distant, booming detonations, reminded her that November 5
^th
was only three days away.

Once she was there, Priya Nehwal pulled up alongside her in a metallic-beige Lexus RX.

Lucy clambered into the front passenger seat, halting only as Nehwal threw an old parka coat into the back. They quickly pulled away from the kerb.

The Lexus was luxuriously warm inside, though as usual, DSU Nehwal was well wrapped in jeans and a tatty, baggy sweatshirt that looked way too large for her.

‘At least you’re in one piece,’ she remarked, not glancing at Lucy as she drove.

‘Certainly am, ma’am,’ Lucy replied. ‘Relatively painless, to be honest.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Pretty well. I start tomorrow … on the coat-check desk.’

Now Nehwal did look round, arching a single eyebrow.

‘I’d imagine Jayne McIvar’s testing my credentials first,’ Lucy added. ‘If she finds anything she doesn’t like tonight … well, I suppose tomorrow’ll be a
very
interesting day.’

Nehwal drove on. ‘What do you make of her? McIvar?’

‘She’s no pushover, that’s for sure.’

‘You got that right …’ Fleetingly, Nehwal almost sounded impressed. ‘She’s her own woman, and always has been. Typical of a certain type of criminal, though. I mean she’s got the intellect and the drive to turn her hand to anything she wants and make a success of it, but somehow or other she’s stuck in this life.’

‘I don’t get the impression she tolerates fools lightly,’ Lucy said.

‘No. But to be fair, she’s not alone in that.’

There was a brief heavy silence as they headed out of the centre, following Great Ducie Street until it became Bury New Road, and then driving north through Higher Broughton.

‘Thanks for picking me up, by the way,’ Lucy said.

Nehwal shrugged. ‘No big deal. I happened to be in town. Listen …’ Her tone changed slightly; softening, though not by a great deal. ‘It’s been intimated to me by a certain party that I was perhaps a little abrupt with you when you first brought this new information to us. A little on the dubious side, perhaps.’

Her tone might have softened, but her words implied that she herself wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘And would that certain party be DI Slater?’ Lucy wondered.

Nehwal ignored the question. ‘I don’t want you to think it’s anything personal, PC Clayburn. I value any colleague who generates good work. So far, we don’t know whether this lead will pan out, but it’s interesting and it feels like progress in some shape or form. It was also … well, it was also intimated to me that I should be more grateful than I have been for your volunteering to go into the lions’ den, so to speak, to see this thing through.’

Lucy was amused, but didn’t let it show.

Priya Nehwal had earned her reputation by doing the hard yards; she was certainly the toughest, most hard-bitten policewoman Lucy had ever met. All this soft-soaping – if that was what it was supposed to be – must have been quite a wrench for her.

‘I imagine
you’ve
done plenty of covert enquiries during your own service, ma’am.’

‘I have indeed,’ Nehwal admitted. ‘And it’s rarely a cakewalk. I’m not going to go over it all again about how risky this could potentially be for you, PC Clayburn, because that stuff’s getting boring now, and it’s the last thing you need to hear the night before it all kicks off … but don’t think I’m dismissive of this work you’re doing for us just because I don’t slap you on the back now and then.’

‘Not a problem, ma’am.’

‘Good. So … you ready to go home now? I can drop you off.’

Lucy was additionally amused. It sounded as if her boss had actually stage-managed this meeting just to apologise. Either that or to give her a pep talk, though there hadn’t been much of that so far. Priya Nehwal might be the ace thief-taker, but she was a bit of a numbskull when it came to close-in man management.

‘I should probably go back to the nick,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve barely put in a full shift today.’

‘You will tomorrow,’ Nehwal replied. ‘It’s going to be quite a learning curve for you. I’ll take you home, and sign you off myself later.’

They were now in Prestwich, and the quickest route from here to Saltbridge lay along the M62 motorway and then down the M60, both of which were still chocka with early-evening traffic. It was almost six o’clock when they finally reached the Crowley West turn-off.

‘What about Tammy Nethercot?’ Nehwal wondered as they headed into Saltbridge through its outlying housing estates. The traffic here was much thinner. ‘Is she a total crackpot, or can we trust her to keep her mouth shut from this point?’

‘Well, like I say, she doesn’t really know anything. I’m just a mate she did a favour for.’

Nehwal pondered that. ‘You know, if this covert op goes west … our mate Tammy could end up in a spot of bother.’

‘I know that, ma’am.’ Lucy was discomforted by the thought of this. ‘Whatever happens at SugaBabes, I’m going to have to do my best to emerge at the other side of it with my cover intact. Though I don’t suppose there’s any guarantee that’ll happen.’

‘There are no guarantees in this line of work.’

‘I took Tammy to a bar afterwards and bought her a drink to thank her. Well, several drinks in her case.’

Nehwal glanced at her again, as if genuinely bemused by such generosity. ‘You sure she believes you’re a tom? There’s no doubt you’re a good actor. You’ve made it this far. But …’ She appraised Lucy’s hair, her flawless make-up, her shapely legs in dark nylon. ‘You don’t look the part today.’

Lucy shrugged. ‘Gone out on a limb today to look good, ma’am. She commented on it, but positively. Overall, I think I’m fulfilling some kind of wish she’s got. She’s only young, but she’s been through the mill, I can tell that. Sounds like her mum was a right old cow, and she never talks about any siblings. Maybe I’m just the big sister she wishes she’s always had.’

‘Is she a bit dim then?’

It sounded like an unkind question, but Lucy knew it wasn’t intended that way. Priya Nehwal was a straight-to-the-point kind of copper, and it was perfectly reasonable for her to enquire into the dependability of a potentially damaged source.

‘I think so, yes. But I trust her on
this
…’

At which point a figure darted out in front of the car, seemingly from nowhere.

Nehwal shouted a warning as she threw the wheel right, veering the Lexus sharply and dangerously into the opposite carriageway, where it slid to the far kerb, slamming it with its tyres and coming abruptly to a halt. They hadn’t struck the figure, but it tottered and fell as they screeched past, falling onto its face in the middle of the tarmac.

Lucy and Nehwal glanced at each other, stunned – and then clambered hurriedly out.

As they did, the figure struggled back to its feet.

It was a bloke, youngish and well built.

‘You alright, mate?’ Lucy called, rounding the Lexus, but as she encroached on him she saw that he was younger than she’d first thought, no more than nineteen. He was wearing standard outdoor clothing for the time of year: dark canvas trousers, a dark zip-up anorak over a hoodie-top, and black woollen gloves, all set off by an incongruous pair of bright-orange trainers. His hair was a mop of sweaty rat-tails, his face wet, pale and slug-like, though the eyes in the centre of it bulged like duck eggs.

He said nothing, merely backed away towards the opposite pavement.

‘We’re police officers, sir,’ Nehwal called, showing her warrant card. ‘You hurt?’

He shook his head; a slight, tight movement.

‘What’s happened?’ Lucy asked him.

He mouthed something inaudible, and then pointed past them, his finger quivering.

They turned to look. Nothing especially stood out. This was Tubbs Road, one of Saltbridge’s lesser-used outer thoroughfares. Along this stretch of it there was a row of dingy shops: bicycle repairs, a tanning salon, a pawnbroker’s, second-hand odds and sods, all currently closed; and a disused industrial unit, a towering façade of grotty red brick and heavy corrugated iron, scraps of wastepaper dangling from the rusted grille over its front door. No one was there, but between the shops and the factory, a narrow cobbled street led off into icy blackness, and it was towards this that the young bloke had pointed.

Lucy turned back to face him. ‘What’s going on, mate …?’

But he was running again. He reached a corner some thirty yards off, and without a backwards glance, hared around it and was gone.

‘Incidents like this happen in Crowley all the time?’ Nehwal wondered, perplexed.

‘Perhaps a bit more regularly than they did before Jill the Ripper, ma’am.’ Lucy’s unease grew as she assessed the entrance to the narrow street. ‘That’s Dedman Lane. It leads down to Dedman Delph … which is well known round here as a dogging spot.’

‘Dogging? This early in the evening?’

‘It’s already dark, ma’am. What else do they need?’

Nehwal ruminated on this as she trudged back to the Lexus, moving ever more quickly until they were both of them rushing.

‘Can we get a car down there?’ Nehwal asked, switching the engine on.

‘Yes, ma’am. They don’t just go there on foot, they park up.’

‘This can’t be,’ the DSU muttered, as she swung the heavy vehicle into the narrow street. ‘It just cannot … not two miles from the fucking Incident Room!’

The narrow lane dipped quickly downhill, its uneven cobbles providing a bumpy ride, their headlights initially picking out nothing along either verge except fallen leaves and scattered rubbish.

Dedman Delph wasn’t a real valley, but man-made. Like everything else on the outskirts of Manchester, it had served industrial purposes sometime in the past. Lucy didn’t have a clue what, though the empty, boarded-up ruin at the valley’s far end had once been a pump-house of some sort. Most of the Delph’s sides, which were steep and crumbly, were clad with weeds and scraggy thorn bushes, while its floor was made from impacted red clay and in some sections flat concrete. Much of that had rotted and split, but it was still excellent for parking.

And for dogging of course. Primarily because at night, as now, it lay in pitch darkness.

They wallowed down onto level ground again, leaving the cobblestones behind, the Lexus tyres sliding on a broken, gluey surface. Nehwal hit ‘full-beam’, the twin lights spearing out through a black void, finding nothing but rolling, arid emptiness.

‘Not much activity tonight,’ she commented, driving slowly forward.

‘It’s not a particularly welcoming place even when there isn’t a killer on the prowl,’ Lucy responded. ‘Wait, ma’am …
there!
’