by D Attrill
“I’ll be off then.” Leyton took up another nagging text from Garstone. “Sorry the coffee was wasted.”
As Leyton hid her handpiece away and made to the door, Becky and Fiona were left looking at each other, bemused by her swift departure.
“I was thinking.” Fiona began, as she finally ran the kettle. “You no' doing anything important later?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“The thing is, I have tae take Calton for a walk with ma fella right soon. You fancy stopping about a wee hour - a trial run?”
“I suppose.”
“What’s all this ‘suppose’ business about? Last night, you wis dying to lay intae it.”
Becky contrived a smile that showed she took it with both hands.
“See, it’s that grin.” Fiona pointed “I bet you just didnae want to admit it yet, hee, hee.”
Becky said nothing. She just made sure to apply her undivided interest, as she was being acquainted with duties.
“Okay.” Fiona began as she opened the fridge door wide. “Down there’s the milk, bottom of the door. Fill his little bottle again, if ever you find it’s over half empty. He doesn’t take long to neck down the rest, believe me.”
Becky laughed as Fiona moved on to the next. She was lifting out a large jar of Chicken & Ham Harricotts to show her.
“That’s his all-time favourite. If he starts cryin’ loads whilst sat at the table, it’s rare it’s cause he’s clammied up his k...”
A car hooter outside disturbed them.
“Ah crivs, he’s already here.” she appeared to recognise the repeated treble-parp “An’ I wis just about to show you the piece de resistance. Listen, there’s his spares on top of the loo - stick those on him if the worse dis happen. You gonna be a‘right, then?”
Fiona was looking at her directly.
“Yes, fine.” Becky fobbed her off, finding the hastiest possible reply. “I’ll be fine. You get yourself off - don’t keep your other half waiting.”
“Gonnae be back in about an hour.”
Fiona had grabbed her jacket and was gone, almost as lightning-fast as Leyton had before.
Becky had to take stock now that she was left to her own devices. It was a newly alien world after all these months of unemployment. Coming back to it should have been a breath of air yet it felt different, taking up the reins two hundred miles away from where she’d left off last.
She’d known this girl not even an entire day, yet she now found herself trusted with her child’s life. It was familiar but at the same time frighteningly hard to adapt back to.
Grabbing the milk out of the fridge, it paid to make an instant beginning with the basics.
The sight of her own mobile on the table, made the temptation to ring a certain friend irresistible.
(iii)
That friend, Joanne Leyton, was diverted to her priorities again, as she and Garstone headed up through Hillsborough on the way to find Horbury Road Refuge Centre, if such a place existed.
Turning into the car park at their projected destination, there stood a grimy, lifeless single-floor building to greet them. It was a wonder this was still a running establishment.
There was just one ill-fitting placard, pinned across a former school sign, to welcome them in.
Neither she nor Garstone knew how they would find Lorna Millthorpe, amongst the other animals in this potential quagmire.
Rotting bricks had spat loosened gum pieces onto the ground. Drains and weeds seemed dissolved into the same one thing. Some stinging nettles, straight outside the door, swayed in the whirling winter wind.
The dark blue doors were boarded up, offering the least warm of welcomes. It appeared this was the main way - it seemed more respected than most other entrances and was strangely low on graffiti.
Leyton showed Garstone in first. She ended up fastening up her jacket and folding her arms tightly, as the cold followed them in behind.
Distant trance music could be made out as they took along one dilapidated corridor after another. The signs on the walls seemed no more cheerful than the average police reception area used to do.
“What do you two want?” A man’s unwelcoming voice stopped them.
“A reception desk would be nice.” She showed her card to the large security hulk standing in front.
“You got the wrong door for that love.” this Neanderthal figure nudged his head, neither really shaking it nor nodding. “Call me ‘reception’ if you want - saves you walking about, dunnit.”
“Do you know where we might find a Lorna Millthorpe? I believe she’s a resident here.”
“That little slag?” gruffed the dog-like East London voice. “If she ain’t outside hooting herself to hell and back, fuck knows.”
Setting off along the building with Garstone in front, Leyton tried every door. One just led into a scruffy old kitchen, with a gruesomely outdated looking gas hob and sink but little else of merit. Bedrooms seemed hidden behind the many dark red and green doors, deprived largely of their numbers.
Another two doors they came across were plain white. Garstone had already nudged one open, revealing only a lavatory inside. The old sky blue toilet pan was stuffed with cigarette butts and sported a sickly limescale ring.
“Guessing it’s not just her that’s gonna face arrest.” Garstone laughed.
Telling him to close the door, she shunted along into a small, carpeted TV room that was mercifully preserved by plug-in fresheners at every corner. A wall-mounted TV screen was blaring out ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’ to a couple of unoccupied sofas. Smelling one of the abandoned mugs on the table, she screwed up her face at the stale milk rotting inside it.
“Gosh, they must go out for their refreshments in this place.” she turned every mug on end.
The door creaked.
“D’you want summat?” the intruder asked.
A girl in her late twenties was standing in the doorway. She had shortish blond hair, brushed from the parting and a rubber lipped face, with the type of complexion that looked as if someone had mistaken her for a dartboard on more than one occasion.
The baggy shell suit jacket and skintight indigo leggings seemed to tell them different things about her bodily physique. Garstone looked convinced they had their woman, nudging Leyton into her question.
“Miss Lorna Millthorpe?” Leyton politely asked.
“Aye.” the girl grudgingly nodded “Who’s wanting?”
“Acting DCS Leyton, Midelson Rd Police. This is DC Garstone.”
“Seen one of you before ain’t I?” Lorna was looking at Garstone, not quite as standoffish as expected.
“Somehow I don’t think this is going to be such an unfriendly one.” Leyton whispered to him.
With that in mind, they continued their conversation in the hostel canteen, rather than the comfort of a Midelson Rd interrogation room. However, within four minutes, Lorna Jade Millthorpe was proving to be every part the obnoxious little bint that DC Armitage had warned them about.
Leyton was now lapping up her first taste as well.
“What the fuck are you two cunts staring at?” She seemed to be aiming the accusation at Garstone. “It’s not as if I’m your mate or o’.”
“No problem...” Garstone said, getting out his pen “only it’s not as easy to talk to our suspects without looking straight at them.”
“Fuckin' hurry up wi’ it, then you won’t have to.” Her squawky tone of voice sounded like she’d just switched her habits from heroin to helium.
“You appear to have been a busy bee, Lorna.” Leyton looked down a sheet of her last misdeeds “Serious assault, GBH, shoplifting, possession of controlled 'Class A’s with intent to supply. A good two or three laps round the circuit, there, eh? The chequered flag’s never shown though has it?”
Millthorpe was screwing her face, in a feral ‘fuck you’ type grimace. She sat there, looking through one eye at the cops.
“We know quite a bit about what you’ve been up
to in the past.” Garstone was now persuading her as well. “Looks like it’s gonna be a lousy idea, to give us the run-around, pet.”
“Do you remember encountering a Miss Paula Radcombe on Fargate, two years ago?” Leyton translated.
“Who?”
“Let’s try this version instead. Do you remember assaulting said victim and stealing her pedal cycle? Whether it was to aid drug-funding or in revenge; we’ll call that irrelevant for the moment.”
“Don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Do it the long way, shall we?”
Garstone got out the greater details of her evils from the folder. He proceeded to recite, without Leyton’s consent.
“’The defendant intercepted a random passer-by, whilst at the time loitering outside a shop doorway on the corner of Fargate. She then asked said member of the general public if he carried any spare money on his person and if so, if he would be willing to provide her with some. Upon her request being declined she shouted, what was understood by people stood around as ‘Ignore me then, dickhead!’ . Miss Radcombe, a City Centre Ambassador on duty in the area, was present and intervened, asking Miss Millthorpe to leave. Following heated argument, the accused did finally oblige. She subsequently returned to the same spot, approximately thirteen minutes later, accompanied this time by her partner, Shaun David Pollack. Both Millthorpe and Pollack proceeded without hesitation to physically assault Miss Radcombe; a sustained attack that involved the application of a large bladed weapon.
Miss Millthorpe in turn summoned her accomplice to steal the victim’s pedal cycle...’ and lived happily ever after....regretfully no longer true in Miss Radcombe’s case.”
“Don’t you grebbers ever speak English or summat?”
“Ok then.” Leyton spoke it out word by word to her. “Miss... Radcombe... Has... Been... Murdered.”
“Her you was just on about?”
“No, the tooth fairy.” Garstone was becoming too cocky. “Yes, her we was just on about.”
“Who did it?”
“We’d hate to simply go ‘you’, but so far, some things sort of fit the holes. She was murdered for doing her job. The one person we’re already looking at has both the same dress sense and also likely motive as... “
“Swear I ain’t touched no one.”
“She’s got a way with words, ma’am, hasn’t she?” Garstone remarked off tape.
“Your partner could have always done your dirty work for you,” Leyton carried on, “I understand this happened last time.”
“Partner? What partner?”
“That being one Mr Pollack, apparently.”
“Shaun? Fuck that cunt. Dumped him ages, while.”
She rolled up her sleeve to show an arm that was gratuitously scratched, some of the marks extending from elbow to wrist. Turning her head to the left, she raised her hair to reveal a brownish, purpling mark.
“Did that to me, the day I come out. Bastard.”
“Dear me.” Garstone was looking, less than sympathetically. “You give but can’t take, eh?”
“DC Garstone does accept that domestic violence is a crime.” Leyton felt she’d better set Lorna at mind “Notwithstanding the circumstantial history of the victim.”
She sat to absorb the sudden shock details. Her suspicions towards Lorna had now eased a little, so she tried to make their agenda sound more tactful.
“I understand you’ve had a child with Mr Pollack.” she decided to smile, as if congratulating her.
“He took her wi’ him, back to Dublin.” Lorna snorted resentfully. “Only let me see her when it were the christening.”
“Did one thing right then, didn’t he?” Garstone commented, as if on instinct.
“She’s fuckin’ mine, you bastards!” Lorna screamed, turning towards tears. “She’s fuck all to do wi’ you or anyone!”
“That’s it, you two.” the security man had stepped in, sounding like he was listening outside.
“Just here to stir her up. I had you clocked.”
He pointed both Leyton and Garstone towards the door.
They packed their files and left, decidedly reluctant to risk probing further for now.
“We’ll be back, Lorna.” Leyton informed her. “Take care.”
“I won’t bother, not unless you’ve a warrant.” the security lump punted them out and shoved the doors shut, locking them both outside.
“We did what we could, ma’am.” Garstone seemed understanding as he let Leyton into the Vectra.
“Not my best way of approaching her, Greg. Then I have been letting far too much fall on top just recently.”
“Your mate from Cambridge, for one.” He sounded like he knew everything, as he started up the engine and set off back. “Lovely lass like, but she’s also a grown-up. Can’t she try sort herself out for a job?”
“I only wish.” shrugged Leyton, flicking eyelids. “She took a whole year to unpack when we first moved in at Uni. By the time she finally bothered, she’d already bought the equivalent amount from British Heart Foundation.”
“You know the saying ma’am, charity begins at home... and it bloody ends up there, going on the look of her.”
An SMS tone took Leyton by surprise. So did the message, on reading.
“HELLO FROM CRICKLOW’S CAR SURGEONS, SHEFFIELD. Your vehicle is repaired and available for collection from 0900 hrs today.”
As she looked in the mirror, a very similar VW Passat to her own was tailing closely behind. Twitching its lights, a smiling bespectacled face was waving them across.
“Leroy you little tinker.” she greeted her other DC and a disastrously gift-bowed VW Passat as they got out at a layby.
“Someone down the garage said he er….liked you. He were wanting to make sure you got it back on time.” Armitage said, grinning.
“What do you want us to be doing if you’re off out testing?” Garstone asked, sounding assumptive.
“There’s that list - all those magical Corsas, secretly cooped away around Sheffield.”
“Don’t think I got that mail.”
“Check your blackberry, Lazy. All registered 1998 or earlier.”
“Aye, I get ya.” he was checking already, probably pretending to forget.
“Try knocking on all possible doors.” she commanded as he transferred Armitage to the Vectra.
“And… try to be realistic about who you bring in.”
(iv)
“Well that certainly fell on deaf ears.”
Leyton grunted as she strode into suite A221, where Armitage and his guest were awaiting her. The client was a youngish male, probably in his mid-thirties. He was wearing neatly brushed brown hair and a heavily ironed blue suit and was smiling at her as she took a seat.
“We leave Lethal Lorna right where we found her… yet you have to drag in this dapper-looking gent, whose workplace is almost right on Leroy’s doorstep?”
She turned from ticking her DC off, to honouring their visitor.
“It turns out we may owe you an apology, sir.”
“It’s quite ok,” the man intervened. “I didn’t think it that good an idea for these guys to stop around - the area I work in’s had a bit of a rough reputation with plain-clothes police lately.”
“Leroy, is this something else I don’t know about?” Leyton was not in the mood for lame excuses. She pulled her seat up close beside Armitage and tried to shield her disapproval. “Let’s get on with it, anyway shall we. We obviously owe Mr Graham for his cooperation.”
“Once again for the record, Acting Detective Superintendent, I’m a manager, so whenever I leave the office is my own affair.”
“No problem at all. Have you been in this sort of business long, sir?”
“Seventeen years tomorrow,” Mr Graham smiled. “I began as a Saturday job, back in my year-eleven days. Stayed with them ever since.”
“So you’ve worked your way up the ladder? Impressive, given that you’re still in your early thirties.”
“It seems I’m capable of shifting a house or two.” Mr Graham grinned, picking up his coffee.
“Do you regularly go out during the working day?”
“Only when Yvonne can’t. That’s my assistant branch manager by the way.”
“It appears you’re well looked after by your own.”
“Phone, ma’am,” Stannings called through the door. “It’s that Miss Grayson again.”
“God, what now?” Leyton shook her head. “I said to text unless urgent.” She tucked her pen away and instructed Armitage to finish as soon as possible. “Ask Greg to take over, seeing as it’s his stupid mistake. In the meantime, you can drive Mr Graham back to his workplace, as soon as you are finished.”
Glad that opportunity had arisen, she marched down the corridor and took the call from her desk.
“Hello…again,” she wondered what her best friend-turning-pain-in-the-backside wanted this time.”
“Guess what.” Becky’s voice came up, excitedly squealing, “Got a taster session.”
“Great....yes great stuff, well done.”
“Something wrong? I thought you’d have been more excited.”
“Well nothing, only I was just gearing up to tell you off for phoning me at the office, but...yes, that’s fantastic news.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know I got on.”
“As I just said, love I can’t take this sort of call every ten minutes, whilst on the grind. I’ll give you a bell at around five or so. Good luck.”
She placed the receiver away, feeling much more the guiltier for this reprimand. She only wanted the best for her friend but the stress was starting to have her on tenterhooks. She sat on the desk corner, rocking the top of her chair with a foot while she pondered the debacles that had been driving at her brain from both sides. While she often bathed in the belief that Derek Hargreaves deserved all he had coming, there lingered a lurid taste in her mouth - one that only those barely edible pears inside his desk could rival.
“Lummin’ heck, ma’am.” Armitage showed up in the doorway. “Tha looks like you’ve found a caterpillar in yer coffee.”
