She smiled. ‘People do.’ She sat with them, sipping thoughtfully at her coffee for a few moments. ‘But for Mark to do this . . .’
‘We don’t know that he did,’ Foster said, still feeling an obligation to defend his former charge.
‘He’s got the baby, hasn’t he?’ she said, glancing at the empty high chair next to the kitchen table. She looked quickly away, as if thinking about her own child in association with the awful events of the day might jinx her.
‘You think Mark’s capable of murder?’ Foster asked, wondering if he had missed some grotesque deformation of Mark’s character.
She grimaced. ‘You knew him. He was gormless, soft . . .’ She took another sip from her cup, and he felt that she wanted to say more.
‘But?’ He had thought about this till the twists and turns of ‘did he, didn’t he?’ made him dizzy: Kate was right — the boy Foster had known was inoffensive — even ineffectual. But Mark on drugs was another thing altogether. He had seen what drugs did to people — the way it brought the buried ugliness of their nature to the surface.
‘There was a side to him,’ Kate said. ‘You know what we called him?’
Foster tilted his head in question.
‘Dark Mavis.’ Foster frowned and she added, ‘Mark Davis — Dark Mavis. ’Cos of his black moods.’ She nibbled her biscuit. ‘Childish stuff.’ She gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Not much help to you.’
Foster smiled encouragement. ‘It all helps to build a clearer picture,’ he said.
‘He caught a bird once,’ she went on, so caught up in her reverie it seemed she didn’t hear him. ‘Must’ve fallen out of its nest, just a little chick it was. He prodded and poked it with a stick till it just died of fright.’
Foster felt a chill. How had he missed this?
She shrugged again. ‘At the time, I thought he was a nasty little sod who needed a good slap. But I think maybe it was payback, you know?’
Foster thought he did, but he left a silence for her to fill.
‘For all the times he’d had to put up with what people did to him,’ she explained. ‘Mark hated being pushed around — by his stepdad, by the bigger lads, by the system. Back then, he just wasn’t strong enough or brave enough to do anything about it.’
* * *
Foster caught Hart’s look as they headed back to the car. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘Say what?’ Hart flicked the key fob and the car alarm chirruped.
‘“I told you so.”’
‘I wasn’t about to.’
‘Come off it, Naomi. You think Jasmine’s murder was payback because she kicked Mark out.’ Foster slid into the passenger seat, beside her.
Hart turned to him, her hand poised to slot the key in the steering lock. ‘I’m not trying to score points, Sarge,’ she said, a look of mild surprise on her face. ‘I just think we should keep an open mind.’
Foster rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I know, Naomi, I know.’
But if Mark was a killer, he couldn’t help feeling responsible for not seeing it in the boy’s character when he mentored the lad — and for not staying around to support him after he left care.
Hart frowned. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘Jasmine’s death had nothing to do with what you did or didn’t do four years ago.’
She always had been able to see through him — but Foster wasn’t about to admit to that. ‘You’ve got a lot of talents, Naomi, but mind reading isn’t one of them,’ he said. ‘I was actually wondering whether you were gonna start the car — we’ve got people to interview.’
Her frown deepened and she withdrew her gaze, started the engine and pulled away without another word.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. God, you’re a tithead, Foster. She’s just trying to be a friend. But this was too close to home for him. Too raw. He had always as fought insecurity with banter, covered emotional frailty with aggression — he didn’t know another way.
Chapter 13
Mark Davis drives to an out-of-town retail development near John Lennon Airport. He parks next to an empty unit, away from the furniture outlets and clothing stores, beyond the interest of security guards and too far for average shoppers to park and walk.
He can’t stop shivering. He turns the car heater to max, but the cold, his wet clothing and blind, gut-churning fear has set his body jerking and his teeth a-chatter. He hugs himself, rubbing at the gooseflesh on his arms till it raises in welts, but the craving has him by the throat and refuses to let go. He succumbs. Just a fingernail of serenity — hardly what you’d call a fix — heated on a square of foil.
Cocooned by the heroin, the baby’s cries seem distant, the threat of danger remote. He feels no pain. Every nerve ending feels caressed and soothed and he feels so warm . . .
‘Okay, let’s do it.’ His words are slurred by the opiate fumes. It takes fifty minutes more before he rouses himself to attend to his baby’s needs.
He changes her, dumping the wipes and the dirty nappy out of sight under the car. Now she’s content, cradled in the crook of his arm, sucking on the teat of the bottle he bought from the chemist. With each strong pull on the teat, he feels a tug of response in his chest.
Bryony stares at him with her mother’s eyes and makes soft sounds, like a gentle throat-clearing. Sounds of quiet contentment. He realises, not as a blinding revelation, but in the seconds and minutes that pass, in the wordless trust in his baby’s eyes, that this is what his whole life has been about. This one perfect moment.
Jasmine had never let him hold Bryony. He’d gone to the hospital to try and reason with her. Had gazed for an hour at the two of them — jealous, almost, of the bond between them. But also in awe of it. Now he understands why Jasmine wouldn’t trust something so precious to anyone else. She had sent him away, told him, ‘Get yourself straight, then we’ll see.’
We’ll see, like she was talking to a kid. He had been forced instead to snatch glimpses of them going to or from clinic, to watch through the window of her house, seeing only momentary flashes of Bryony when Jasmine walked past a window with the baby in her arms.
The baby senses his tension and squirms, forcing her tongue against the teat and spitting it out. She makes a few experimental cries, and the moment of crystal perfection is shattered.
Chapter 14
To a casual observer, Rob Maitland looked every inch the businessman he aspired to be. Clothes hung well on him, and he went for top of the range: Gucci for day-to-day, Paul Smith if he thought he might run into photographers. Today, he was in a dark grey, three-button Paul Smith.
He gathered the tattered remnants of his army in the conference room of his offices in Old Hall Street. A glass wall looked out over the docks. A passing shower had left a spattering of rain on the window wall, but the sky was now clear, an electric blue that dazzled off the glinting water of the River Mersey.
‘What happened?’ he asked. The small gathering looked at each other anxiously. Maitland doubted that half of them even ate their meals at a table — his insistence that the meeting take place around the twenty-foot cherrywood boardroom table was calculated to unnerve. It had the desired effect.
A casual observer might be fooled by Maitland’s surface gleam of respectability: the suits, the careful — if heavily Liverpudlian-accented — enunciation of his words, his courteous manner, particularly with women. But when you got closer to the man, spent some time in his company, you learned that the air around him crackled with menace.
In childhood, he had watched others, and made the discovery that smiles and charm were the way to make adults do what he wanted them to. He hadn’t resented it: they held the power, and Maitland had always respected power. His peers were another matter. Mostly, it was enough just to let his eyes go dead and the kid whose sweets he coveted, or football he wanted, or who occupied the seat he favoured, would give them up like the capitulation was a privilege, like it was something they’d had in mind all along. While other bullies had threatene
d and blustered, Maitland made an unequivocal statement of intent. While the kids who’d used their fists to beat back their own fear and humiliation flailed and wrestled and gouged, Rob — he was never Robbie — had meted out punishment with a cool head and no mercy. For Maitland, fighting wasn’t about fear or anger. It was about power — its acquisition and the exercise of it.
There were no gaps, no empty places around the table, despite the arrests of the previous night, because Maitland always had men in reserve, and the whole gene pool of Liverpool’s underworld aspired to work for Big Rob Maitland. He settled his gaze on each of his men and, without speaking a word, let them know that they were replaceable, like the scores of hired thugs who had served, protected, collected, sold, beaten and murdered on his orders.
Graham was the exception. Graham he trusted.
He kept his eyes on the rest until the sweat popped out on their foreheads. ‘I’ll tell you what happened.’ His voice was low and dangerously calm. ‘Someone grassed.’
Three of them paled, a couple flushed with anger. Maitland didn’t trust anger — anger was a good cover for guilt. But he didn’t trust fear either. Fear brought out the survival instinct, even in foot soldiers like this ragbag. It would take more than an accusation to get at the truth. That would come later. For now, what he needed was a show of strength.
He turned to Graham. Graham had been with him since before their first armed robbery — for so long, that even Maitland couldn’t remember if Graham was his given name or his surname. He was an inch or two taller than Maitland, built like a bouncer. Solid, in both appearance and personality. He was loyal, not so bright that he might consider himself a contender, but with enough street smarts to find a way around a problem when strength and firepower weren’t an option. It was Graham who had got him out of that awful bloody mess the previous night.
‘What’s the word on the Dutch?’ Maitland asked.
‘Bakker is dead,’ Graham said.
The Dutch boss. ‘Takes the sting out of his threat to kill me, doesn’t it?’ Maitland said.
Graham responded with a smile.
‘What about the rest?’
‘They’re being fast-tracked for extradition.’
‘So who’s responsible for the machete attack on the crack house in Lytham Street?’
‘Birkenhead scals, boss. Must’ve heard you got arrested, thought they could grab a bit of territory this side of the river.’
‘Send them a message,’ Maitland said. ‘Liverpool is my territory.’
Tommy Eames winced. Tommy the Tank liked to think of himself as legit. A businessman in the true sense of the word. He ran Maitland’s coffee shops, but they owed far more to coca leaf than coffee beans. Maitland let Tommy live his fantasy, fronting the respectable face of his empire — Maitland understood the lies people told themselves to get through the day. So long as Tommy kept the machinery oiled and his business interests successful, he would have indulged the Tank in a belief in Father Christmas. Today, though, was about Maitland’s reality, where scumbags grassed to the police and ran off with his money and stole his drugs, where no-marks from Birkenhead thought they were in with a chance to steal his turf.
‘Hit them hard,’ he said. ‘Break some bones. Make sure they know who gave the order.’
‘We’ll need to recruit more men,’ Graham said.
‘Do whatever it takes.’
Graham nodded and Maitland raised a finger in caution. ‘No Chinese. No Serbians, no Russians.’ Maitland knew better than to put himself in hock to the Chinese: where he ran a family firm, they had entire dynasties. As for the Eastern Europeans — he’d learned from bitter experience that you just can’t control the Serbian or Russian mafia.
The phone rang and Maitland answered. Anyone watching would not have discerned a change in his facial expression, even though his voice altered, conveying a warmth he was incapable of feeling.
‘Mr Hartley,’ he said. ‘Good to hear from you.’
Hartley cleared his throat. ‘Mr Maitland. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to, um, reach you.’
So, it isn’t only the Birkenhead mob who’ve heard about my arrest.
‘Always available to you, Mr Hartley,’ Maitland said, smoothly. He wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t at all embarrassed by his prospective business partner’s knowledge of his criminal background. Hartley must have known about it before he entered into negotiations — he’d be a fool not to.
‘I know this is a . . . troubling time for you,’ Hartley said. ‘But my company will need your audited accounts by Monday at the latest.’
Maitland felt a twinge of something — he found emotions harder to identify in himself than in others. ‘No problem.’ Just get off the frigging line so I can get on with what needs to be done.
Hartley gave another strangulated cough, and Maitland thought, You’re so lucky you aren’t in the room.
‘If you could convey our concerns to your accountant . . .’
‘He’s right here.’ Maitland scanned the faces around the table. Bernie Carter stood out by virtue of his very ordinariness. Carter was suited, like the rest, but unlike the rest, he didn’t look strangled by his tie, and his face was soft, his expression benign and intelligent behind his rimless spectacles.
‘Mr Hartley’s worried about the accounts,’ Maitland said.
‘All in hand, Rob.’ Carter was one of a select few allowed to address Maitland by his first name. It was an acknowledgement from Maitland of his respect. Out of earshot, Maitland’s men were apt to torment Bernie, and the occasional reinforcement of his position prevented disrespect from sliding into an unproductive contempt for the man who kept Maitland’s books straight.
Carter had been sweating over the accounts for a month — bringing them up to date, balancing the numbers, getting creative as only he could. Mark Davis had fucked up his careful calculations, but still Carter was sanguine.
‘You go to your business meetings, Rob,’ he had said. ‘Do the networking, impress the investors — it’s what you’re good at. Let me take care of the money. I’ll massage a few figures, reassess the value of your property assets — I think I can come up with a couple of million more.’
Maitland had laughed. He remembered seeing the hurt on Carter’s face, the dark flush of humiliation. There were others present, and they’d exchanged looks, gauging if it was safe to laugh along with the boss. Carter was sensitive to that.
‘Don’t take it badly, Bernie,’ Maitland had said. ‘I was just thinking what a bloody miracle-worker you are. If I could make real money as easy as you make the virtual stuff appear and disappear, I’d ditch the criminal lifestyle, become an accountant myself.’
Carter had smiled, gratified, and the men, confused, had settled back. The boss had apologised to Bernie the Books. Carter, for reasons they would never fully comprehend, was protected.
Maitland spoke into the phone. ‘You’ll have your report in plenty of time, Mr Hartley.’
He broke the connection and for a few seconds he concentrated on breathing. ‘I want Davis. I want him hurt — and I want him here.’
Chapter 15
A soft murmur of voices filled the murder inquiry Incident Room. Civilian staff wearing head mikes fielded calls, took details from possible witnesses and passed on information about possible sightings of Mark Davis.
The only one they’d had confirmed had been within half a mile of Jasmine’s house: a red Ford Focus had almost run a woman down at a crossing on Picton Road.
Foster and Hart sat at adjacent desks, sifting through message slips, searching for something that looked better than wishful thinking, over-excitement or plain hysteria.
‘Anything?’ Hart asked.
‘How’m I supposed to tell? Look at this,’ Foster said, slapping another pink slip onto a growing pile. ‘Everyone wants to be the hero.’
Hart shrugged. ‘When a child goes missing, everyone feels it. You must remember one instance as a child when you turned around and
found you were all alone.’ She realised the tactlessness of her remark and looked quickly into Foster’s face. But it seemed he did not make the connection between this and his abandonment as a child.
‘Well, I don’t see why they have to relive their childhood traumas at our expense,’ he muttered.
‘They want to bring Bryony home safe,’ Hart said, with gentle reproof. This was getting to him more than he cared to admit. She thought about broaching the subject again, but after his earlier rebuff, decided against it.
Foster seemed to sense her hesitation and turned to look at her. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘If you’ve got something to say, Naomi, just say it.’
She raised one shoulder and let it drop. ‘I just . . .’ This is a really bad idea. ‘I understand why it would bug you,’ she said.
He turned to the papers on his desk. ‘I never said it was bugging me.’
‘You didn’t need to.’
Foster didn’t reply. She felt his suppressed anger like the silence before a thunderclap.
A Calls and Response operator came over with another bundle of slips, and Foster smiled — an automatic response to an attractive woman. Hart saw him do a double take and turn the wattage up a notch. This one was very attractive.
‘Thanks . . .’ The slight raise of the eyebrows was an invitation, and a question.
‘Sally,’ she said, with a slow smile.
‘Youse lot are doing a hell of a job,’ he said, taking the papers from her. ‘Do they give you time off for good behaviour?’
‘We get time off,’ she said. ‘How we behave is up to us.’
‘Fancy misbehavin’ with me?’
And that was it — armour-plate reinstated, Jack-the-lad Foster was back to his usual form.
Hart sighed inwardly and was about to return to work, when Rickman rounded the corner in a hurry, shrugging on his jacket, mobile phone in hand.
Foster switched from flirt to work mode. ‘Everything okay, boss?’
‘I’m late for the post-mortem.’ Rickman’s hair was tousled and his left lapel turned inside out. Hart had to quell an impulse to straighten it. ‘Anything doing?’ he asked.
DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 10
