Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 (19 page)

 

Chapter Forty-­Six

DS T
ARA
G
ALLAGHER
was sitting in the incident room when they came out of Burns's office. She glanced up at Lucy as she emerged onto the corridor, then returned her attention to the screen in front of her.

“I'll be a minute, sir,” Lucy said to Fleming, handing him her keys.

She crossed the room to the desk where Tara sat. “Hey, you,” Lucy said, nudging her gently on the arm.

“Hey,” Tara said without humor.

“Look, I'm sorry,” Lucy said. “I should have said something earlier. I've never told anyone about her, about my mother, because, well, because, I never really thought of her
as
my mother.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We were . . . we are, I hope,” Lucy said. “But because I didn't tell anyone when I first started here, the longer it went on, the harder it was to see a natural way of doing it.”

“You could have told me during any of the times I was bitching about her to you,” Tara hissed. “At any point, you could have stopped me and said, ‘She's my mother.' ”

“I know,” Lucy said. “I didn't want to embarrass you.”

“Like I'm not embarrassed now?” Tara snapped.

“Listen,” Lucy said, squatting next to her seat, to keep her voice low. “I really don't care what you say about her. None of it will be worse than what I've thought, believe me. I'm sorry I didn't say to you. But it wasn't that I didn't trust you. I just don't admit it to anyone.”

Tara nodded lightly, as if accepting the point. “Forget about it.”

“Are we friends?” Lucy asked, laying her hand on Tara's arm.

Tara took her hand in hers, holding Lucy's fingers in her own. “I suppose,” she said.

O
N THE WAY
downstairs, Lucy stopped at one of the free desks to use the phone. She knew that calls from the station would show up as “Blocked” on a caller ID. She pulled out the Beaumont list and dialed the number she'd written for Bernadette Thompson, the owner of the black Audi that Grace had photographed on her phone before the man driving it had assaulted her.

She began to think that the woman wasn't home until, just as she was starting to reconsider the wisdom in making it, she heard the click as the call was answered. She panicked as she realized she might be best not using her own name either and tried to think of a suitable alternative.

“Mrs. Bernadette Thompson? I'm PSNI Officer Jane Wilson,” she said, using her mother's name, though not her rank. “I'm calling regarding an assault on a young girl in Foyle Street last night.”

“Yes?”

“Your car was seen near where the girl was assaulted.”

She heard a flutter of nervous laughter. “You've got the wrong number. My husband had the car with him last night.”

“Where would he have been?”

“He was out at a work do. One of the teachers in his school retired before the summer and they had a leaving party last night.”

“Your husband's a teacher?” Lucy asked.

“That's right.”

Lucy considered carefully how best to continue. “The girl who was assaulted was a teenage prostitute. A man who had just used her ser­vices beat her. That man was driving your car. You might wish to discuss the finer details of all that with your husband,” she said, then hung up the phone.

F
LEMING WAS SITTING
in the car waiting for her.

“Everything okay?”

Lucy nodded. “Yeah, I'm . . . just pouring oil on troubled water with Tara, over the whole thing about my mum. She was a little pissed that I hadn't told her.” She saw no reason in telling Fleming about Thompson. Grace had made it clear that she wouldn't press charges and, Lucy suspected, would refuse even to acknowledge that the assault had happened if she pushed her too hard on it. The best she could expect was that Thompson might suffer more at the hands of his wife than he would at the hands of the law. Certainly, he'd have some awkward questions to answer.

“Understandable,” Fleming said. “The amazing thing is that it's taken this long for word to get out.”

“What about?”

“Your mother,” Fleming said, looking at her quizzically. “Is that not what we were talking about?”

“Yes. Sorry. My mind was somewhere else,” Lucy said, starting the car and pulling out of the parking bay.

“Burns apologized for what he said, about Terry Haynes,” she said, looking across at Fleming. “He felt bad.”

“He should,” Fleming said.

“Are you okay?”

Fleming shrugged. “I'd guessed that the body in the coffin was either Terry or Aaron Moore, simply because they're connected in some way in all this and both are missing, so seeing Terry's name on the list from the hospital wasn't a shock. But I still feel gutted.”

Lucy nodded. She knew there was little she could say.

“The first night I stayed with him, I was in a horrendous state. I was drinking water constantly and brining it back up. I could see things coming through the walls at me; I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest.”

He went silent and Lucy glanced across again to see that he was staring out the window now, his eyes glazed.

“Sorry. I shouldn't have told you that,” he said, turning to her. “And I appreciated you having my back in there with Burns.”

“It's okay,” Lucy said. “I'm glad you trust me enough.”

Fleming smiled mildly. “It takes a special kind of person to clean up your vomit and still be your friend, you know? That was Terry Haynes.”

“You're lucky,” Lucy said. “To have had a friend like that.” As she said it, she reflected on who would do the same for her if she needed it. Robbie, presumably. But that thought simply made her feel even more guilty. Tara? Maybe not now that she knew Lucy hadn't been honest with her.

“I called Niall Toner in the Foyle Hostel while I was waiting for you,” Fleming said, filling the silence in the car. “Sammy went back on Wednesday after we met him and stayed that night. He got his first insulin shot on Thursday before leaving. Toner gave him a handful to take with him in case he stayed away for a few nights again. He's not been back since.”

“How many shots did he have with him?” Lucy asked.

“Five,” Fleming said. “His last one will cover him tonight. If he doesn't voluntarily come back himself, or we don't find him soon, he's going to start having very serious problems.”

Just as they waited for the steel entrance doors to slowly draw open, Fleming's phone began ringing. Absurdly, Lucy thought it might be Toner, calling to say Sammy had returned.

“Inspector Fleming,” he said. He listened to the call. In such close proximity, Lucy could hear the tinny sound of the man's voice on the phone, but could not quite distinguish what he was saying.

“We're on our way,” Fleming said. “Thanks for letting us know.” He ended the call then began dialing.

“That was the soup kitchen guy,” he said. “Head back up there now. The blue van has just returned.”

 

Chapter Forty-­Seven

T
HE TRAFFIC WAS
heavier than they had been expecting, not helped by the fact that, as they crossed the Clarendon Street junction, two men dressed as sailors stepped out in front of the car, as if to offer an advertising leaflet from the bunch they held. Lucy swerved around them, the sheets the one nearest her dropped fluttering in the wind in her wake.

“Is there a Village ­People convention on?” Fleming asked. “They've lost the Indian, Cop, and Builder.”

“You know a worrying amount about the Village ­People,” Lucy said, turning down Patrick Street. “So, who's here? The young slim guy or the heavy red-­headed guy?”

Fleming shook his head. “He only said that the blue van had pulled up.”

“Great,” Lucy said.

Ahead, to the left, they saw a blue Transit van parked along the pavement.

“Is that it?” Lucy said.

“Looks like the only one here,” Fleming said. “I'll call in the registration number.”

There were no free parking spaces along the road until, just before the junction with the Strand Road, Lucy spotted the bus bay, which was clear.

“We'll only be a few minutes,” she reasoned, pulling in.

They parked up and, after locking the car, crossed the road and entered into the waste ground, rounding the corner of the bar against whose rear the soup kitchen had been set.

Lucy was struck by the crowd of ­people using the kitchen as she scanned the area, looking for someone matching either of the descriptions they had been given for the van drivers, but no one stood out. Many of those clutching slices of bread as they sipped from polystyrene cups had come outside and were standing, facing toward the sun as they ate. A group of half a dozen stood at the entrance to the prefab itself, blocking the way so that Fleming had to push his way through, offering excuses and suffering curses as he tried to speak to Stephen or Ellie and ask them to point out the driver of the blue van.

“Oi! Inspector!” someone shouted.

Lucy looked across and there, standing with two others, was the woman to whom she had given her card the day she had first met Grace. The one who had laughed at the suggestion she might have a phone.

“Inspector!” the woman shouted again, waving exaggeratedly to Lucy in a manner that suggested she had already started drinking for the day.

Lucy scanned the others in the waste ground now, looking to see if anyone else had reacted to the public announcement of her profession. One man, near the pavement on Great James Street, talking earnestly to a man so unsteady on his feet that he had to support him with one hand, looked across at her quickly, then averted his gaze. Lucy noticed that he didn't have a cup in his hand, so was clearly not availing of the ser­vices of the kitchen.

He turned again to the man, but a moment later, glanced quickly in her direction again, as if checking whether she was continuing to look at him. As Lucy began moving toward him, the man shifted suddenly, sprinting across Great James Street, making for the alleyway in which Kamil Krawiec's body had been dumped while the older man whom he had been supporting tumbled to the ground.

Lucy took off after him. She reached the curb and had to stop while the traffic, already moving through the traffic lights at the lower end, passed. The old man was being helped to his feet by a few of the others gathered near him. Lucy stepped down onto the road, judging the distance of each oncoming car, gauging when best to make a run for it. Ahead, the man had made it through the alley and out onto Sackville Street, turning left toward the Strand Road. Lucy cut down toward the traffic lights instead, rounding the corner onto the Strand.

Ahead of her, Waterloo Place was heaving with Saturday shoppers, the street lined with ice-­cream vans and stalls selling inflatable hammers and green, white, and orange hats. Lucy could see the slim figure of the man weaving his way through the crowds, pushing his way up toward Waterloo Place itself. Across the street, two uniformed Neighborhood Policing officers were standing, chatting with one of the vendors as they bought ice creams.

“I'm in pursuit of a suspect,” Lucy called, breathlessly, as she ran across toward them. “I could do with some help,” she managed. One of the men dropped his ice cream as he moved with her; the other, she noticed, held on to his. Lucy sprinted up toward the pedestrianized area, the two uniforms coming behind. To her left, a boy and girl, dressed as sailors, were dancing a hornpipe, while an appreciative crowd of spectators had moved back to create a semicircle of space around the ­couple in which to dance.

Lucy pushed through the mass, spilling into the dance area, upsetting the rhythm of the boy, earning, in so doing, complaints from some of those who had been watching. The uniforms behind her edged their way around the circle of spectators, excusing themselves as they pushed by. There was, she reflected, a clear reason why they were community officers.

As she turned the corner into Waterloo Place proper, she realized that the whole area, right up into Guildhall Square, was filled with marquees and tents. The air was heavy with the smell of cooking fish. The shoppers had increased in number now, their space limited by the tents spotted around the square, in such a way that her progress was slowed. As she passed, someone dressed in a bright pink T-­shirt handed her a flyer, bearing the legend “Flavors of the Foyle Seafood Festival.”

The two uniforms had reached her now.

“Who are we looking for?” one asked.

“A young lad. Late teens, early twenties at most,” Lucy said. “He's wearing jeans and a pale yellow T-­shirt. Short-­haired, strawberry blond.”

“Where did you lose him?” the other asked, standing on tiptoe to see above the heads of those milling in the space before them. As he did so, he licked the melted ice cream from around the cone, which he still held.

“I didn't lose him,” Lucy said. “He's in here somewhere. And he's wanted in connection with a murder inquiry,” she added, lest the men thought he was a shoplifter or something. It had the desired effect for the second uniform binned his ice cream. “Right,” he said. “Which way?”

They began moving through the square, glancing into the tents on each side, looking for the man. Eventually, they realized, as they stood in front of the old bank building where Kamil Krawiec had been murdered, they would have to split up, for Waterloo Place fed out onto Guildhall Square to the left and Waterloo Street and William Street respectively to the right.

Lucy directed them, one heading toward Guildhall Square, the other to Waterloo Street on the right. She was about to go left herself, toward where the greater crowds had gathered and where, presumably, the young man could best disappear, when something fluttering just ahead of her caught her eye.

The crime scene tape which had been used to seal off the main door of the bank building had been ripped, the boarding over the doorway pulled back to reveal a two-­foot gap. If the young man was part of the construction team with whom Kamil had been working, he'd know his way through the bank building. She realized that he hadn't gone left or right: he'd gone into the old bank building itself.

Lucy glanced from right to left, but neither of the uniformed officers could be seen. She pushed through the shoppers ahead of her and approached the newly exposed doorway.