Black by Rose

by Andrew Barrett

  He peered up the stairs and was not surprised to see no body hanging from a length of blue nylon rope from the attic hatch. Of course not.

  “Shouldn’t we be putting scene suits on?”

  Eddie jumped, and growled. “Just a mask and gloves will do; we haven’t time to fanny around.” He swallowed and climbed the stairs. He switched on the light in Tony Lambert’s old bedroom. All curtains were drawn, and the daylight that managed to seep through was weak, pasty, diluted by cloud and incessant rain. It was summer time, after all.

  Cooper pulled the mask over his face and drew the nitrile gloves on. “Well, where is it then?”

  “You think I swabbed it and left a marker just in case some bitch decided to screw with my evidence and I had to come back?”

  “Okay, okay, stop being so snappy!”

  “Snappy?”

  “Get on with it, Collins!”

  Gingerly, Eddie pulled the mask on, wincing at his stinging lip and swollen eyelid. Armed with his Maglite, Eddie crossed the patterned carpet to an area that offered the same kind of vantage point of the far side of the bed, as the last time he was here. It wasn’t as though the original blood spot stood out – if it had, James would have seen it; if it had, Eddie would have spotted it far more easily. But no, it had hidden in the pattern of green and red swirls, the golden flecks confused the eye and Eddie ended up on his knees searching the carpet inch by inch.

  “I wish I’d brought my scene photos,” he said. “I could’ve narrowed it down a bit.”

  And then Cooper’s phone rang. He took it out and spoke through the mask, “Hello.”

  “She’s gone. Jeffery said she left not long after the lab results came in. In a hurry too, he said.”

  “Bollocks. Get to her house, Tom. And get some back-up there too.”

  “There won’t be any back-up; there’s no one left. Domino sapped it all.”

  “So be careful then!”

  Eddie shouted, “Did you tell Ros?”

  Cooper listened to Benson’s reply. Shook his head at Eddie, “She’s gone home, sick.” Cooper hung up, and said to Eddie, “Find me some blood, and quick; this thing is beginning to sink – if that bitch gets away, I’ll… I’ll…”

  “Kill her?”

  “Not fucking funny!”

  More valuable minutes escaped as Eddie searched with the Maglite, using a folding magnifying glass on the pieces of carpet that he thought looked most familiar. “Gotcha!” He could see it, a tiny smear of red against one of the green swirls. He pinpointed it with the torch, never took his eyes off it as he said to Cooper, “Get me four adhesive arrows out of the camera kit.”

  “Good lad!”

  Eddie stuck all the arrows so they pointed at a section of carpet no more than 5 mm across. Then he stood back and photographed it, closing in with each new shot until in the final frame, he could see individual strands in the carpet fibre, and the smear of redness clinging to a slender bunch of them.

  Once swabbed, Cooper snatched it from him and was making his way down the stairs when Eddie called, “You okay with the paperwork?”

  “Fuck the paperwork.” And then he was gone out of the front door, and moments later he was wheel-spinning his way out of the cul-de-sac.

  Eddie left the arrows in situ for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, then he hurriedly assembled all his gear and marched down the stairs for the last time. He had somewhere very important to go next.

  — Three —

  Lisa parked on the drive, wrenched the handbrake on and stepped out of the car, fumbling with her house keys so much that she dropped them and privately screamed. Once inside, she closed and locked the door, left the bag of cash on the hall table and sprinted up the stairs.

  When she came back down again, in clothes more comfortable for travelling, with a soft leather briefcase, and her passport clutched in her hand, the money had gone.

  She stood and stared at the table. Her heart thundered and her hands sweated again. She’d left it there, she knew she had. She didn’t need to go check in the car, and she didn’t need to go and check upstairs – she left the fucking thing right there!

  Lisa swallowed and walked slowly into the lounge.

  “What’s this?”

  Lisa’s bottom lip trembled slightly. No point asking how Sophie managed to get in; besides feeling the draught from the back door, it didn’t really matter. “I assumed you were going to contact me with a date and a place.”

  “The money thing… it was a joke. You pathetic cow. I don’t want your fucking money. I said back then that I didn’t.” Sophie looked at her through the corner of her eye, and lifted the bag. “This isn’t for me anyway, is it?”

  What could she say?

  Sophie looked up from the bag, dropped it between her feet, and smiled. “You look like you need a glass of wine. Stressful day?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “Planning a weekend away?” Sophie nodded at the passport. “Or a lifetime maybe?”

  “Sophie, please—”

  “You remembered my name! And you’re being polite to me.”

  “I have to go. Right now.”

  “Bad misters after you?” Sophie grinned, “But you work for the police! Detective Chief Inspector, no less!” And then she laughed. “Why would you of all people be running from the bad misters?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Sophie reclined in the chair, her leather coat creaking, and crossed her legs. “I have time, Lisa. Looks like you don’t though, huh?”

  And then, as if someone had thrown a switch inside her head, Lisa blinked; Sophie was a threat to her. Ever since their last encounter, whenever she had thought of Sophie, which was often, she’d thought of the word threat.

  But the switch flipped again, and the threat vanished. It didn’t matter if Sophie reported her as being responsible for killing Chloe all those years ago now did it? The police were after her now anyway.

  Lisa blinked again. And she smiled.

  Clearly this unsettled Sophie; she was the one in charge, she had the upper hand, she was the one who smiled as though belittling a minion. The minion obviously should not smile back; the minion was under the thumb. Something had happened to change it all around. Sophie licked her lips, “How come you didn’t go to Tony Lambert’s funeral?”

  Lisa sat down on the sofa opposite her, crossed her legs and leaned back. “It would have been a little two-faced considering I had him killed.” She stared as Sophie’s mouth fell open. Smiled again.

  “You what?”

  “Because of you as it turned out.”

  “Me?” She barked a laugh, “What the hell did I have to do with it?”

  “It was all because of you. You showed up and I damaged your ego by not leaping on you and sticking my tongue down your neck after you’d been away for ten years. And because you felt sorry for yourself, you decided to blackmail me—”

  “I wanted—”

  “You wanted me to suffer!”

  “Like I suffered!”

  “And now everyone has suffered because poor little Sophie is back on the scene. I couldn’t afford fifty grand and I couldn’t afford the risk of you waltzing into some fucking police station and opening old wounds.”

  “They’re not old to me!”

  “So you left me no choice.”

  “What the hell did you do, Lisa?”

  “I turned to someone for help.”

  “You were gonna have me executed, weren’t you?”

  “Moved along, I think they term it.”

  “You went to a gang then, eh? And…” the realisation dawned on Sophie’s face. “Tony was there, wasn’t he, working undercover? And he saw you.”

  Lisa looked at the floor. She whispered, “See what you did now, Sophie? See what you started?”

  Sophie didn’t move or speak. She let it sink in, and then suddenly she looked up. “This is quite surreal,” she whispered. “I didn’t want anything from you. Especially not mon
ey. But you know what I did want? I wanted you to acknowledge me, and maybe even just shake hands, to thank me for sparing you ten years inside. I think I deserved that. Don’t you?” Lisa made no reply. “I went shopping.”

  “Look, I really have to—”

  “One minute. That’s all this will take. Promise.” She stood up and walked around the sofa to the stereo. Sophie opened the CD player. “I still can’t believe you had one of your old colleagues killed. I mean that’s, that’s incredible; it’s the kind of shit you see in films. It doesn’t happen in reality.” She wiped the CD against her black leggings, dropped it on the tray. She pressed buttons and the CD tray closed. “You must be some weird kind of bitch to do that to someone you worked with.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Ssshhh, just one sec.”

  And then the music started playing.

  “Oh please!”

  “Listen.”

  Sophie turned around and knelt down behind the sofa that Lisa sat on. And the bass erupted across the room, all four speakers singing the Sugababes’ A Freak Like Me, and memories of that night a decade ago thrashed back to life, of them dancing, of them embracing, kissing, fondling.

  Killing.

  Sophie reached an arm up and around Lisa’s neck and pulled. Lisa’s throat was in the crook of her arm and Sophie tightened the grip and pulled backwards against the sofa.

  Sophie maintained a determined and persistent grip. Through clenched teeth, she said, “I hate you for making me do this, you murdering bitch. But you’re not running away from what you’ve done again, Lisa. Gonna make sure of it. Remember,” she grunted, “I said I wanted you to face up to your past? Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. And you can tell them I blackmailed you if you want, but do you think they’ll believe you? I already confessed to ‘killing’ Chloe. And now you’re going to have to confess to killing poor Tony.”

  Lisa’s arms flailed, whacking the sofa, pulling at Sophie’s arm, scratching the leather of the jacket she wore, nails like claws reaching back for her face, trying to gouge her eyes. Tears squeezed from bulging eyes that were wide with terror, and her feet thrashed about wildly, her chest heaving.

  “Nearly there,” Sophie whispered into her ear. “Tony’s gonna get the decent burial he deserves, and all this shit between you and some gang is coming out in the press. I promise you. Everything.”

  It went on forever.

  The thrashing had stopped now. Sophie watched the back of her pretty head. Noticed her hair, could see individual hairs, saw the tops of her ears, the fine downy hairs on her cheeks. And as she released the pressure on Lisa’s throat, she could see the side of her face, the closed eye, the curl of her eyelashes, and the beautiful curve of her nose. And she could see her throat, a good strong pulse in the side of her neck. “Perfect,” she said.

  Still the music played but Sophie didn’t hear it any more. Her thoughts were so immersed in her actions, her eyes so occupied with feeding on Lisa that there was no room for audio. But now it thundered rudely back into her spectrum, and it wasn’t music anymore, it was just noise, too loud, too much. She hit stop, and knelt on the floor breathing hard and sobbing.

  Slowly she got to her feet, and looked down at her handiwork. Lisa’s white hands rested on the sofa, her head cocked to the side, dry lips pulled slightly back over her teeth. If it wasn’t for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, you could easily mistake her for dead. But did this make her happy? Did it make up for Tony’s death? Was it a punishment for, as Lisa had put it, not sticking her tongue down her throat and carrying on where they’d left off? Was it payback for not writing or visiting anymore?

  Was it justified?

  “No,” she whispered.

  Sophie heard a car pull up very quickly out front and then she snapped awake, and stared the bag of cash. Then she left through the back door and hopped over the fence at the foot of the garden.

  * * *

  Benson hauled the handbrake on and was out of the car before it had stopped, engine still running as he sprinted up the drive alongside Lisa’s car with the broken off wing mirror and tried the front door. It was locked and he ran around the back. When he saw the broken glass, he stopped.

  “No, no, no, this isn’t good,” he panted.

  He nudged the door inwards and stepped over the glass and into the kitchen, listening all the time. But it was silent. He wondered if she was upstairs, but the broken glass kept telling him something was badly wrong. He peered around the door into the lounge; saw her slouching lopsided on the sofa. “Lisa?” He entered the lounge. “Lisa?”

  A wheezing breath came from Lisa’s mouth, and her throat was cherry red.

  “Just fucking super,” he said.

  Chapter Forty

  Slade had got through another five cigarettes before he heard the sound of tyres approaching on gravel. It was Jagger in the silver Mercedes. Slade turned and hobbled to the passenger side, and climbed in, throwing his stick into the back.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  He nodded at the BMW. “You just leaving that there?”

  “No, I thought you could drive them both at once. Prick. Course I’m leaving it there; we’ll have a couple of the lads come by and pick it up later.” He looked across at Jagger, and despite having just ended his last son’s life, he felt like smiling at the slimy bastard. He knew now that Jagger was a copper and he knew Jagger was pretending; everything he’d done over the few months he’d worked for Slade was a fucking lie. But he was good; yep, he blended in nicely, did his work without any grumbles and worked the hours too. He was fucking good.

  But not good enough.

  And that’s why Slade turned to the front. “Drive,” he said. “Hunslet.” Because he was going to smile and that would give it away. Didn’t want that to happen. Not yet anyway.

  “What’s happening in Hunslet?”

  “Just drive!”

  There were a lot of things spinning around in Slade’s mind as the journey progressed. How he’d lost his wife to a stupid drunken road accident more years ago than he cared to think about; how he’d lost his daughter when she grew old enough to realise how Slade paid for the fancy cars, and the house extensions, and the jewellery. But worse, she’d seen how Slade behaved with people who weren’t on his team. How he’d come home with bleeding knuckles and always seemed to smell of cordite, vomit or shit, or cheap perfume.

  And then he’d lost Blake who couldn’t control himself around women who didn’t work for the firm. He had big problems fitting into a society that didn’t revolve around the Crosbys – he was spoilt, thought Slade bitterly; couldn’t handle the word no. Ever. And one day it bit him in the arse.

  And the arse biter, so to speak, was his other son, Tyler. Tyler fitted in very well with society – to the extent that he hated the way Blake treated the world as his personal playground, that he smudged consideration and consequence until neither meant anything to him. Of course, out of the two boys, Slade had always thought Blake was the insecure one, the one that needed most guidance. But he’d been wrong there, big fucking time. Turned out Tyler was the insecure one; couldn’t handle his brother’s blasé attitude and the possibility that he’d inherit the family firm. Or maybe Tyler just couldn’t abide a rapist, even if it was his own brother.

  Suddenly Slade felt like crying. Indeed, if he’d been an employee, he would have resigned. Today would have been the day Slade Crosby walked away from it all. He’d had enough. And for this lifestyle, he’d given enough – in fact, he’d given far too much.

  And as the gates to Woodhead’s Scrapyard approached, he thought only of this one last task of killing Jagger and the other coppers, and then… who knew. Maybe he’d hand the keys over to Shack or even Shylock. And then just leave town. Leave England maybe.

  Jagger drove the car into the yard. The gates closed behind them.

  “What are we doing here, boss?” he said.

  Slade
detected a bit of nervousness in the man’s voice, and he liked it. “Got a surprise for you.”

  From a breeze-block cabin, Monty walked out into the grey light of another shitty day. He didn’t smile though, which Slade found surprising; he was sure he’d be happy at bagging all three of the slimy bastards. Jagger opened the door and stepped out while Slade grabbed his stick and went to meet Monty.

  Behind Monty strode the new leader of Tymo’s mob: Shack. Slade recognised several of Shack’s men, but there was a new guy. They all stopped, facing each other in a rough circle.

  “Slade,” Shack nodded.

  “Who’s that?” Slade looked at the new man.

  “I’m Phil.”

  “Phil who?”

  “Mind your own fucking business.”

  Slade stared at him. “Cocky bastard, eh?”

  “I took over in Harehills when Shylock passed away.” Phil made the sign of the cross, and smiled widely.

  “Shylock’s dead?”

  “He tripped,” Phil said. “Fell on a gun.”

  Slade looked at Phil, didn’t much like him. To Monty, he said, “You have a present for me?”

  And as though it was some kind of password worked out in advance, Shack and his crew, and this new guy, Phil, drew weapons and pointed them at Jagger.

  “Whoa,” Jagger raised his hands and stepped back, “what’s going on?”

  Slade laughed and walked over to him. Jagger eyed him, looked at the weapons pointing at him, took another timid step back. Slade slapped his face. “You fucker. I sussed you out, you twat. And we sussed out your two buddies as well. Didn’t we, Monty?”

  Monty stayed silent.

  “I’m so going to enjoy ripping you into tiny pieces. I always wondered how much pain one man could take before his heart packed in. I always meant to find that out but never really had the time. I’m going to spend some time on you, boy.”

  “You’re gonna have more time on your hands than you’ll know what to do with.” Shack laughed hard and Slade looked his way as the weapons swivelled to point directly at Slade.

  “The fuck’s going on?” Slade shouted.