‘Yo, Lucy?’ the voice on the hands-free said. It was the next morning, and Lucy was driving in to work. The caller was PC Nina Pettigrew, the family liaison who’d been assigned to Alex Calderwell. ‘Can you talk?’
‘It’s fine,’ Lucy replied. ‘What’ve you got?’
‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to report. First chance I’ve had.’
‘It’s okay.’ Lucy felt secretly guilty that, with everything else in her head, she’d actually forgotten that she was waiting on this. ‘Shoot.’
‘This boyfriend of Lorna Cunningham’s … he seems genuinely upset.’
‘Does he seem worried?’
‘Oh, yeah … jumps every time the phone rings. Pacing the house like a cat.’
‘You’ve been with him a couple of days now, Nina, and you’ve had a chance to get a proper look at him. No fresh injuries that he might have been able to conceal during his interview with Judy Stryker? No marks on his knuckles, no facial scratches …?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Okay, thanks, love. Stick with it for the time being, yeah?’
They cut the call and Lucy drove on sourly, furious with herself that even in the midst of what was turning into a major criminal enquiry, her thoughts were still ranging over domestic issues. But they had to. The fact that she’d been brooding on it all night, barely sleeping, was hardly a surprise, because what was going on at home was not routine stuff; it had the potential to plunge her life and career into a crisis from which there might be no escape.
And then there was the emotional context.
On the few occasions she’d met with her father previously, he’d been a mischievous, patronising presence, comfy in the knowledge that he could toy with her while she couldn’t ever risk calling his bluff because she shouldn’t have been conferring with him in the first place. Doubtless, that was always the way of it when coppers and underworld bigwigs were involved in shady dealing. But with Frank McCracken, it was aggravated by the father and daughter thing, McCracken often assuming a teacherly role, as if she needed to know how things were really done in this business and he was the ideal man for it. It was also true that he’d helped her out when she’d been in over her head. Lucy repeatedly told herself that this had mainly been to help himself, because, a couple of times at least, their aims had been the same. But it was hard to deny that there’d been something else there too.
McCracken had never been a dad to her. She’d met him just two years ago and before then had known him only as a gangster. And even though he’d known about her, he’d made no effort to get acquainted until it had become unavoidable. But now that they did know each other, he’d related to her increasingly differently, expressing guarded interest in her career, showing admiration at the things she’d got right, even offering advice when it came to the things he thought she was getting wrong.
She couldn’t bloody believe it, to be honest.
The closer she felt he was to her, the more frightened she was that the whole thing was suddenly going to go pear-shaped. Because it was impossible to overstate just how high in the criminal hierarchy Frank McCracken was, and, for all his civilised airs, just how dangerous. She couldn’t even guess how many people he’d killed or beaten, or ordered to be killed or beaten. And just because they were his fellow villains, that didn’t make it okay.
And now there was this.
It was a subtle change in his demeanour, but it was a change nevertheless, his connection to the Clayburn family suddenly taking a turn for the personal, as if they were no longer just a fact of life for him, but something he was starting to care about.
As Lucy drove along Tarwood Lane, everything her mother had said, even though it had been said heatedly and in a wishful way rather than a thoughtful one, seemed to be coming true. Perhaps he was getting tired in his middle age, perhaps the pleasures of the glamorous but high-risk world he inhabited were palling. Perhaps he did miss the everyday affection he’d draw from a genuine, caring wife. And it wasn’t as if he and Cora hadn’t been close once. He’d only stayed out of Lucy’s early life because Cora had asked him to, not because he’d sought that.
Strange behaviour for a brute who’d supposedly never cared.
‘God almighty!’ she said, proceeding past Robber’s Row, bound for Penrose Mill, because she still had to get a statement from Sister Cassie (in truth, the last thing she needed now was to have to go searching for the ex-nun among the backstreets and fleapits again).
But no. Most likely, he was rekindling his interest in Cora because he wanted someone to look after him in his dotage. Where Carlotta Powell was concerned, once a high-class hooker, always a high-class hooker. But Cora would clean for him, cook for him, toast his slippers on the fire on cold winter nights, all that ridiculous, old-fashioned Northern bullshit.
‘He’ll still go and see Carlotta whenever he feels like it,’ she said aloud, not for the first time in the last few hours.
It was a simple equation. Bad people were bad people because they were bad. It was part of their DNA, it was hardwired into them. You couldn’t change it just by wishing they were different.
At which point, Lucy hit her brakes, going into a screeching skid.
Halfway down Adolphus Road, a figure had hurried across it ahead of her. But it wasn’t that she’d nearly hit him – he was still a good forty yards in front – it was because she’d recognised him. He was a young, thin guy with long, greasy red hair, wearing grey drainpipe jeans, black cowboy boots and a black leather jacket with biker tassels. The only difference since the last time she’d seen him was that he hadn’t bothered today with his stylish leather trilby. As he hit the pavement, he continued walking in the same direction she was driving, but when he realised she was following him, she expected him to bolt. So she stayed behind the wheel, slowing to walking pace and powering down her front passenger window as she drew up at his shoulder. At first, he didn’t react, and she soon saw that this was because he was wearing earbuds.
Lucy’s Suzuki Jimny was her own car but, since she’d been cleared to drive it on police duty, she’d had blue flashers incorporated into her standard external light system, and a discreet siren fitted. She hit the button for both, giving them a fleeting whirl. The guy with the tassels jumped and spun to look at her. It was definitely the same young bloke she’d seen last Saturday night, the one with the shark tattoo on his neck and the rampant acne, the little bastard who’d been selling drugs to the homeless occupants of Penrose Mill.
‘Hold up, mate,’ she shouted. ‘I need to speak to you.’
As expected, he darted away, dashing along the pavement in long, lanky strides, the heels of his cowboy boots clopping like hooves.
Lucy accelerated slowly as she pursued, glancing into her rear-view mirror in case he suddenly turned around and she needed to make a U-turn. After a few dozen yards, he veered left, vaulted a chain-link fence and ran over a grassy forecourt towards the first of several blocks of medium-rise flats, vanishing around the first corner. Lucy didn’t activate the lights and siren again but took the first left she came to, which was about fifty yards further on, and found herself on a slip-road leading into the very heart of the project.
This was the King’s Hill estate. It wasn’t a particularly bad area, most of the units having been refurbished and privately sold, so she didn’t anticipate trouble. The apartment blocks had been constructed in two parallel lines and stood facing each other across a succession of interconnected car parks. There was nobody in sight, save for a couple of builders just ahead of her on the left, who sipped tea as they leaned on the barrier of a balcony.
Then the idiot came into view again, his loping, lanky figure emerging from a ground-floor passage and cutting diagonally across the car park in front of her. He wasn’t moving quickly – in a leather jacket, tight jeans and heeled boots, he was hardly dressed for sprinting – and she caught up to him without needing to speed. He diverted left as she swerved the Jimny around and in front, hit the brake and jumped out.
‘Hey!’ Lucy shouted, racing after him. ‘Just wait up! You’re not in trouble …’
He ignored her, making for the foot of a staircase, but he hadn’t even got to it when a burly, dusty figure came heavily down. It was one of the two builders, a tall but overweight guy, clad in the usual dirty jeans and ragged jumper, steel toecaps glinting through the rotted ends of his wizened leather boots. The runner slowed to a halt as the builder stood there immovably, arms folded across his barrel chest, a stern look on his bristling face.
‘Where you going, lad?’ the builder demanded.
The runner, who looked as if he couldn’t believe that someone had had the audacity to bar his path, was too breathless and reddened in his sweaty, pock-marked features to answer. In fact, all he could do now was lean over and cough up a load of phlegm. The builder, whom Lucy recognised as Jimmy Ogden, a native of the next street to theirs in Saltbridge, and a bloke who’d been sweet on her mother for many years, shook his head and pointed back across the car park.
‘You’re going nowhere, pal, but back there. The officer wants to speak to you. I heard her, so I’m damn sure you did. Now you be a good law-abiding citizen, like what you’re supposed to. Then I won’t have to rip your neck out.’
The lad didn’t need to wait long. Lucy was there in less than a second, grabbing him by the collar of his leather jacket. She mouthed a ‘thanks’ at Ogden.
He winked in return and gave her a thumbs-up.
It wasn’t always the case that Lucy could physically overpower a male suspect, despite her athletic physique, and most of the time she didn’t even try. But it soon became clear that this guy was all skin and bone. She considered the possibility that he might have a concealed weapon, but at present he was too busy struggling for breath after his brief exertion to do anything other than turn limp in her grasp as she marched him down a narrow passage and, when she found space between two wheelie-bins, slam him back against the wall.
‘Okay … who are you?’
‘You, you …?’ The guy was still sweaty and pink, but now he looked surprised as well. ‘You don’t know who I am, and you chased me?’
‘I didn’t chase you … you ran. And anyway, I might not know who you are, but I do know what you are.’
‘I’ve not done nothing.’
‘Maybe not today. Not yet. What about last Saturday night? Hang around the homeless crowd for their company, do you?’
He shook his head, rank sweat dripping off his unwashed mane. ‘I’ve not done nothing.’
‘You realise I’m fully entitled to search you?’ Lucy said. ‘That’s because I suspect you to be carrying illegal drugs. That why you were heading back to St Clement’s … to make a bit more money out of people who’ve got nothing as it is?’
He was recovering now, breathing heavily rather than panting. ‘You’ve got to show me your ID, you have to tell me who you are, what nick you come from.’
‘So, you’ve been stopped and searched before?’
‘I know my rights, that’s all.’
‘Well … I do have to do all that, you’re correct.’ She released his collar. ‘If I decide to proceed with the search.’
He didn’t reply to that but looked bewildered.
‘Thing is, I’m busy,’ she said. ‘Especially … if you’re willing to share a bit of info.’
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked warily.
‘Tell me where I can find Sister Cassie?’
‘Sister Cassie?’
‘Fine, you want to do this the hard way …’ Lucy pulled a wallet out and flashed her warrant card. ‘I’m DC Clayburn from Robber’s Row CID, and I’m officially requiring—’
‘Okay … wait.’ He raised his hands. ‘Sister Cassie? All this just for her?’
‘Like I say, you’re the one who ran.’
‘She’s just a numb-nut. A mental case.’
‘A mental case you’re happy to sell heroin to … along with all the other lost souls. Bit of a captive market you’ve got, isn’t it?’
‘Does ’em more good than you lot do.’
‘You cheeky bastard!’
‘Hey, at least I leave ’em happy.’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘They call me Newt.’
She appraised him; his greasy, spotty face, his lank hair. ‘Let me guess … because you’re always getting pissed on the profits?’
‘Because that’s my name. Kyle Newton.’
‘Okay, Kyle Newton … I’ll ask you one more time. Where can I find Sister Cassie? And I mean, where can I find her now? I don’t want to spend hours looking through that rabbit warren of misery again.’
‘I’ve not seen her today. Not yet. If she’s shooting up, she’ll be in the women’s toilets on that row of boarded-up shops. On the other side of Penrose Mill.’
Lucy nodded. ‘I know it.’
‘But I don’t think she’ll be there. Yesterday, she was saying something about going to services.’
‘Services?’
‘I don’t know exactly what it means, but … she said it once before when she was going to someone’s funeral.’
‘A funeral?’
‘I think so.’ He tried to remember more. ‘She said she wouldn’t be around till this evening because this afternoon she was attending services out on Fairview.’
‘Fairview?’ Lucy was bemused. ‘A funeral … on a landfill site?’
Newton shrugged again. ‘That’s all I can tell you. I didn’t ask, did I? Told you, she’s a nutcase. Christ knows what she gets up to most of the time.’
‘This is all I bloody need,’ Lucy said, thinking about Fairview, that hideous, decayed wilderness, with its foul stenches and its drifting toxic smoke and its gangs of weirdo scavengers scrambling across it like beetles. ‘If this is a wind-up, Newt, I’ll make your life a misery from here on. It’ll be stops-and-searches every time I see you. I’ve got good contacts in the Drug Squad, and I’ll make sure you go right to the top of their list.’
‘On my honour,’ he protested. ‘She’s taking a few others to attend services on Fairview.’
‘On your honour?’ Lucy shook her head. ‘Your honour. Are you serious?’ She grabbed him by the collar, lugged him from the wall and threw him along the corridor with such force that he staggered and almost fell. ‘Get out of my sight, soft lad!’
He hurried off, walking stiffly without looking back.
‘I ever see you again,’ she shouted, ‘I’ll pop those zits with the dirtiest needle I can find!’
She was halfway back across the car park when her phone rang.
‘Lucy, it’s Malcolm’ came Peabody’s voice.
‘What’ve you got?’ she asked.
‘Naff all. I’ve door-to-doored all along Latham Street, Burton Avenue and Tulip Drive.’
Lucy was so distracted by events that, fleetingly, she had trouble placing those addresses.
‘Housing estate alongside the canal … remember?’ It would have been more helpful had he not sounded irritated with her. ‘Near the garages where Lorna Cunningham got nabbed.’
‘Okay, yeah.’
‘It’s the same as on the Hollinbrook. No one saw or heard anything.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’
‘Yes, good. Because now I’ve got another job for you. You got wheels?’
‘I’m in my car, obviously.’
‘Meet me at the entrance to the Fairview landfill site.’
‘The landfill?’ She heard both surprise and disgust in his voice.
‘Yes.’ She climbed into her Jimny.
‘That’s half an hour from here. When do you want me?’
‘Now.’