Jaded

by Rob Ashman

  ‘Nearly showtime,’ he said.

  Fifteen minutes later the driver buzzed down his window and spoke to the security guard who handed him a visitor’s badge. He hung it from the rear-view mirror and, when the barrier went up, drove through and pulled over to wait for the van.

  Both vehicles trundled across the tarmac into the yard. A vast expanse of shipping containers stretched out in front of them, looking more like a small city rather than a storage facility. They turned this way and that, threading their way between the metal skyscrapers. Then came to a halt. Fifty yards away, two stationary vehicles were facing them with their lights on.

  Marshall’s car reached there first, closely followed by the van. Before long, five men were standing shoulder to shoulder in the glare of the headlights. An Asian man in a sharp suit stepped from his car and walked towards them, at his side was a brute of a guy wearing a boiler suit. Marshall and his driver met them halfway. It was like a Mexican standoff in no man’s land.

  Marshall extended his hand, the Asian man shook it.

  ‘I trust everything is in order, Mr Zhang?’ Marshall said.

  ‘Of course, would you like to inspect the merchandise?’

  ‘Would you like to see the money?’

  The men separated; Marshall went with Zhang, while the boiler-suited brute accompanied the driver back to the car. The boot lid opened and both heads disappeared inside.

  Marshall arrived at a rusty container and Zhang opened one of the doors. They both stepped inside.

  ‘As you can see, the delivery matches the shipping manifest.’

  Marshall flicked the torch on his phone and inspected the goods. ‘It does, you will find our money is in order, too.’

  They walked back to no man’s land to find the brute in the boiler suit holding a briefcase. He nodded to Zhang. Marshall gave a signal and the van backed up to the container. The back doors flew open and the men began to load the cargo.

  ‘Good doing business with you, Mr Marshall,’ said Zhang, holding out his hand.

  ‘We will be in touch.’

  They shook hands and Zhang got into his car and drove away, leaving Marshall and his crew to finish up.

  Ten minutes later they had returned their tags to security and were driving towards the M58. The phone rang.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marshall.

  ‘Boss, I found Tommy.’

  ‘Good, have you taken the fucker back to the club?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  ‘I told you–’

  ‘Boss, he’s dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone stuck him with a knife and took the money.’

  ‘Shit!’ Marshall slapped his hands against the dashboard. ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in Spencer Street about thirty yards from the alleyway where Tommy’s lying.’

  ‘Okay, now listen to me carefully, Josh. There are things you need to do. Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes, boss, I’m listening.’

  ‘I want you to go back to Tommy and take his car keys, phone and wallet. Be careful not to step in the blood. You got that?’

  ‘Yes – get the keys, phone and wallet.’

  ‘The next thing is to go to the counting house and tell the counter he’s going to get a visit from the police. They’ll conduct house-to-house enquiries, so he’s going to have a copper turn up at his door at some time. He needs to be prepared for that. Then remove any money from the premises. Counted or not counted, it doesn’t matter. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, boss – tell the counter he’s gonna get a visit and clear the place of cash.’

  ‘And finally, I want you to drive Tommy’s car back to the club. Stay off the main roads and only use the back streets. We will be back in about an hour, wait for us there and we will sort out your car later. Have you got that?’

  ‘Why can’t I use the car I came in? Why do I have to drive Tommy’s car back to the club?’

  ‘Because, dummy, it isn’t Tommy’s car. It’s a pool car and registered to the club. Now stop thinking and get it sorted. Call me if anything else happens.’

  Marshall disconnected the call. It’s fifty-eight miles from Liverpool to Blackpool. He swore at the top of his voice for fifty-five of them.

  Chapter 11

  Kray opened her front door and had never been so pleased to see the inside of her house. It was late and she was shattered.

  The trip to Manchester had been a waste of time. Miriam Ellwood made them as welcome as a cactus in a nudist camp and refused to accompany them to the garage. She simply threw them the keys and said, ‘Knock yourselves out. Post them back through the letter box when you’re done. Oh, and don’t bother knocking.’

  The premises were precisely what you would expect. Ramps, lifts and maintenance pits combined with an Aladdin’s cave of motor parts and tools. The place smelled of engine oil and grease which turned Kray’s stomach. She managed to hide her nausea from Tavener but she was sure she had turned an ugly shade of grey.

  The office was located on a mezzanine floor set in the corner. Kray opened the door and her OCD went into overdrive. It was a mess of paperwork, manuals and boxes of parts. You couldn’t see the surface of the desk for the debris. This, coupled with the turmoil in her guts, forced her to hit the eject button and leave.

  The team seized a desktop computer and a few ledgers to examine back at the station, but that was it. Kray’s closing thought as she burst into the fresh air was, Drugs connection, my arse.

  The warmth of her home wrapped around her as she threw her bags down and kicked off her shoes. She was on autopilot and headed straight for the fridge. Two bottles of wine screamed out to her. She cursed under her breath.

  I’m going to have to put those somewhere else.

  She shook her head. This pregnancy was getting in the way of her indulgences. The bar of chocolate would have to suffice. She closed the fridge and went upstairs to run a deep, foamy bath.

  Kray undressed and stood sideways on in the mirror. She examined the profile of her belly. It was flat. Her eyes wandered onto the red scars, criss-crossing her body like a London tube map. Scars made by the vicious knife attack which left her lying in a warm pool of her own blood and her husband dead, Carl Rampton’s Stanley knife embedded in his neck. She drew her fingers across the puckered skin, it tingled beneath her touch.

  What the hell am I going to do?

  She had been in a relationship with Dr Chris Millican for a while now. He was the Home Office pathologist, with a penchant for wearing a waistcoat and tight trousers, who first caught her eye when she was on her way to the mortuary. Well, parts of him caught her eye. Who says romance is dead?

  She had not visited her husband’s grave since she’d buried her wedding ring at the base of his headstone when deciding it was time to move on. After all, sharing her life with a dead person was not a healthy thing to do. Sharing it with someone who was alive had to be the way forward – and that’s where Chris Millican came into the picture.

  Kray traced her finger along the scar that started to the left of her navel, traversed her stomach, and ran up her chest to bisect her nipple. Her summation was: she was borderline anorexic, had galloping OCD, drank way too much and had a boss that she would gladly kill. Being pregnant was the last thing she needed right now and laying off the drink was definitely not helping. She padded into the bathroom to sink beneath the blanket of foam.

  When the blue lines informed her she was pregnant, Kray had gone into free fall. An unplanned baby is what happened to other people, not her. After peeing on two more test kits she had spent the next three days ghosting through the day job while avoiding Millican. Every advert on the TV seemed to be about babies, and when she left the house the outside world was awash with mums pushing prams, and even bus stop posters declared the benefits of one type of nappy over another.

  On the morning of day four, the fog cleared, and she decided to get a grip. She announced to Millican that she was embarking on a health ki
ck, which meant cutting down on the wine and stopping smoking. Looking back on it now, that announcement probably came as more of a shock to him than saying, ‘Hey, Chris, you’re going to be a dad.’

  Kray had pretended to drink the occasional glass of wine to maintain the charade but tipped it down the sink when he wasn’t looking. Taking a sip only made matters worse, it made her want to tear the bottle from his hand and neck it in one go. Giving up altogether was a daunting prospect – but it was the only way.

  She had ripped up her last packet of fags and dumped them in the kitchen bin. Forty-five minutes later she had been sorely tempted to pull them back out and puff away on the pieces that were left. But she resisted.

  Her emotions were all over the place. Crushing feelings of guilt threatened to swamp her very existence. When married to Joe she couldn’t conceive and now it was wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am – why not have a baby?

  Millican had swallowed the line about the health kick and suggested she joined a gym.

  Why don’t you go and slam your bollocks in the car door?

  Fortunately, she resisted the temptation to give her thoughts airtime, choosing instead to utter the words, ‘Mmm, I’ll think about it.’

  It was then she came up with her genius idea of having a water infection. A course of antibiotics would buy her a week to sort herself out and would provide her with a legitimate reason to give up the booze while feeling like shit. She was now on her second course of fictional medication and was running out of options. The deceit of not telling him was burning a hole in her. Her eyes began to close when she heard the front door open.

  ‘It’s only me,’ the voice drifted up the stairs.

  ‘I’m in the bath,’ she called down. She had agonised over whether it was too soon in their relationship to give Millican a key, and while she was churning the matter over in her head, she – one day – just handed one over to him. The key to his flat was in her bag. She heard a clunking noise coming from the kitchen, then footsteps coming up the stairs. Millican entered the bathroom carrying a pizza, a wine bottle and two glasses.

  ‘Hey, pizza boy has arrived.’ He placed them onto the floor, bent over and kissed her on the mouth. His lips were cold. Millican had healed well following the injuries he had sustained at the hands of Alex Jarrod, the vigilante ex-soldier who Kray had sought to bring to justice in her last case. His right eye drooped a little at the corner where they had to reconstruct his cheekbone, but other than that he was as good as new – almost.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked, not getting up.

  ‘Oh, you know. I cut up a few dead people, weighed their internal organs, and then came home. How about you?’ He unboxed the pizza, tore off a slice and handed it to her.

  ‘Well, let’s see. I got an interesting lead on a case, wanted to punch Bagley in the throat, met Captain Birdseye, drove to Manchester and then came home.’

  ‘Pretty good all round then?’ He munched on the pizza and poured the wine, offering her a glass.

  ‘None for me. I’m still on these bloody antibiotics. This infection will not clear up.’

  ‘Maybe you’re having too much sex, DI Kray.’ He leaned over and kissed her again.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You okay? You look a little green around the gills.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve not been feeling so good today. Maybe I’m hungry. Thanks for the pizza.’ She hauled herself out of the foam by leaning her forearm on the bath top. It was her turn to kiss him.

  ‘Okay if I stop over?’

  ‘If I wasn’t in this bath you’d already be in the bedroom.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’

  Kray munched on the pizza and began to feel better. The aches and pains of the day soothed away into the hot water and her body relaxed. Besides, Dr Ding Dong was here, and everything seemed better when he was around.

  They talked for the best part of an hour before Kray announced, ‘The water’s cold. Help me out, I need to go to bed.’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ Millican held her hand as she stepped from the bath and he folded a towel around her. She melted into him. ‘Come on, Detective Inspector, you’ve had a busy day.’ Kray allowed herself to be led into the bedroom and into bed. Sleeping naked next to him felt right. She no longer felt the need to cover her scars in layers of nightwear. The best thing about Millican was he had never tried to fix her. With all Kray’s obvious hang-ups, he wanted her – wreckage included.

  Kray lay with her head on his chest. ‘Chris, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, what–’

  Kray’s phone buzzed angrily at the side of the bed.

  ‘Ignore it,’ he said.

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’ She rolled off him and picked it up. ‘Kray.’

  The voice on the other end was slow and deliberate.

  ‘Okay, where is this? …I’ll be there in half an hour.’ She hung up and rolled back into Millican, planting a kiss on his lips. ‘I gotta go.’

  ‘You were about to say–’

  ‘Sorry, I gotta dash. They’ve found a guy with his throat slashed in an alleyway. You can stay, I’ll wake you when I get back.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’

  Kray pulled up at the blue and white tape drawn across the entrance to Spencer Street. She got out and signed the clipboard held for her by the uniformed PC and then looked up to see a handful of residents peering from their front room windows. She cast her eyes to the sky, letting out a sigh of relief that it had stopped raining, and pulled on the white coverall and overshoes.

  ‘Who’s the crime scene manager?’

  ‘That’s Sergeant Cullum – he’s the guy talking to the two people next to the patrol car.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Kray ducked under the cordon and made her way over to where he was standing. He saw her coming and met her halfway.

  ‘Sergeant Cullum? DI Roz Kray.’

  ‘Evening, ma’am.’

  ‘What do we have? And please call me Roz.’

  ‘A white male, mid to late twenties, severe laceration to the neck. The coroner’s office has dispatched a doctor. No witnesses.’

  ‘Who called it in?’

  Cullum nodded in the direction of the couple chatting to an officer by the car. ‘They were walking home when the man gets taken short and needs a pee. He disappears down the alleyway to relieve himself and finds the victim lying dead against the wall. He calls three nines, and they were both still on the scene when the officers arrive. The couple are giving their statement now.’

  Kray looked over to the alleyway which was lit up with powerful LED lamps. A white glowing tent could be seen close to the entrance.

  ‘I’ve taken the precaution of covering the scene, ma’am, in case the weather turns against us.’

  ‘Do we have a name?’

  ‘Not yet, we’ve not moved the body to see if he is carrying any form of ID.’

  ‘Shall we take a look?’ Kray marched over to the alleyway, stepping on the metal checker plates covering the floor. Cullum followed suit.

  ‘That’s where he took a piss.’ Cullum pointed to a pool of urine on the floor that had drained across the concrete.

  ‘Lovely.’ Kray wrinkled her nose.

  She then reached the tent. Inside was a man sitting with his back against the wall and his legs outstretched; his arms hung by his side. His head was tilted forward and his chest and legs were awash with blood. The paving slabs were stained dark brown.

  Kray bent down. ‘The blade entered his neck on the left-hand side. There are signs of arterial spatter on this side of the victim.’

  ‘I agree, Roz, I’ve put in a request for a forensic biologist to examine the blood pattern.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Kray stared at the body, then at the blood spatter and back again. The scar on her left cheek began to tingle. She leaned forward with a gloved hand and tapped the dead man’s pockets. ‘I don’t think he’s got anything on him.’

  ‘A mugging, perhap
s?’

  ‘Maybe – the killer wiped the blade clean on his shoulder.’ Kray pointed to the red smears on the jacket. ‘Okay, let the CSI team go to work.’

  They both retraced their steps back into the street. Kray chewed on her bottom lip, something bothering her. She walked over to the couple who were finishing their statements.

  ‘I’m DI Kray, did you find the body?’ she asked the man.

  ‘I did. I went into the alley for a wazz and there he was, sitting in a pool of blood.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I ran back out to Kelly and called the police.’ The woman next to him nodded in agreement.

  ‘Did you touch the body at all?’ asked Kray.

  ‘Shit no! It was obvious from the amount of blood he was dead, so I legged it.’

  ‘But it must have been dark in there, how could you see?’

  ‘My eyes got used to the dark, cos I was in there a while, I was proper bustin’, wasn’t I, Kell?’

  ‘Proper bustin’ he was.’

  ‘And I could see this bloke sitting on the floor. I called over to see if he was all right and he didn’t answer, so I got out my mobile and turned the torch on and there he was… dead.’

  ‘Okay, thank you.’

  Kray walked back to Cullum.

  ‘Did you get what you wanted from them?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I did. Can you direct the CSI team to focus on the position of the victim?’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I reckon someone moved the body.’

  Chapter 12

  At the time I had always assumed Rolo got his nickname from his body shape. He was, after all, like an egg on legs. It was only much later when I discovered his name was Roland. He never looked like a Roland, he looked like an egg on legs.

  I remember sitting in that kitchen at the club with a towel pressed to my face when Rolo crooked his finger. ‘Come with me,’ he said, walking out of the room and down the corridor. He unlocked a door and disappeared inside. I followed, still clutching the tea towel to my nose.