The woman looked up and said, “Who?”
“Jeffery Walker. He’s not long been transferred over here.”
“Hold on.” The woman typed again, squinting at the screen.
Jessica swallowed, and she could feel the sweat patches growing under her arms. Here she was, inside a major police station, officers all around her, and she had to check her resolve, because if this woman didn’t give her a location soon, she was likely to turn right around and walk out again. She drummed her fingers on the counter.
“Ah,” the woman said, “found him. His name is spelt wrong. Anyway, he’s up in the Gods.” She saw Jessica’s confusion. “Not from round here, eh?”
“Bradford,” Jess said with an apology in her voice. She nudged the plain glasses a bit further up her nose, and smiled.
“No worries. Go through those double doors, take your second left and use the stairs or the lift to get to the third floor. When you reach the third-floor landing, it’s the room in the far right corner. Operational Research Facility. Room GD13.”
“That’s brilliant, thank you.”
The woman smiled and went back to her computer.
Relief flooded her. Jess blundered through the double doors and promptly forgot the directions.
* * *
Eddie screeched into the car park, and tried Jeff’s phone one more time. Still no reply. “Bastard.” He rammed the phone back into his pocket just as it rang.
“What’s up, Tom?”
“Michael is missing. And so is his foster mother’s car.”
“You’re joking! What is it?”
“What?”
“What make of car is it?” Eddie stepped out into the rain, scanning the car park.
“Just a minute. I’ll ask.”
“What?” The line cracked and the call died. “Piece of shit!” Eddie screamed at the phone. He ran through the rain towards the foyer lights. Inside, a group of youths were heading for the exit, and Eddie circled them, grabbed his lanyard and hit the entry box with it. He shouldered the door, but nothing happened. The door remained closed.
He pulled back and tried the card again. Nothing. Then he looked at the card holder fastened to the lanyard. It was empty. No card.
What the fuck?
And then he remembered how Jessica had fallen into him at her flat. She must have taken the card when they all hit the floor.
“Hey,” he looked through the hatch into the front counter, and shouted, “get the door for me, love.”
One of the counter staff approached, arms folded.
“I lost my card.” He showed her the empty card holder on his lanyard.
“Do you work here?”
“MCU, over in Morley.”
“Sorry, love: no card, no entry.”
“Come on! Someone’s in danger. Please – I need to get to him.”
“What’s your name?”
“Eddie Collins.”
She returned to her computer, tapped on the keyboard.
Eddie closed his eyes, trying to stifle his anger, trying to resist kicking the shit out of the locked door, and wondering how far he’d get if he just followed someone through the next time it opened.
“What’s your management number, Eddie?”
“287656.”
The woman leaned close to her colleague and they engaged in a bout of whispering.
The fire was growing. “Look,” he said, “what if I can get someone to come and vouch for me? Would that be okay?”
“Who?”
“Jeffery Walker. He’s my old boss.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Wow, he’s popular today!”
Eddie almost leapt over the counter. “What do you mean?”
“Someone was just here asking for him a minute ago.”
“Fuck. Please, you’ve got to let me in; he’s in danger.”
“My colleague’s ringing him now.”
“He won’t be able to answer if he’s fucking dead, will he? Let me in!”
“Problem?”
Eddie turned and there stood a bedraggled-looking Crawford. Eddie knew he was going no further. “Jeffery Walker is in danger.”
“Someone’s just gone up to see him,” said the woman.
“She’s the one he needs protecting against! Please!” Eddie screamed, then continued more calmly. “Send someone up to his office. Please. Get him some fucking help even if you won’t let me in.”
Crawford dropped his briefcase and stared right into Eddie’s eyes.
“You’re wasting time. You’re wasting his time.” Eddie knew that Crawford wasn’t listening, he knew Crawford was picturing what it would be like to pulverise Eddie’s face. Again. “Crawford,” Eddie shouted, “this isn’t about us, it’s not about you and me! Christ’s sake, it’s about Jeff! Come on!”
Crawford looked like shit. Not only did it look like he hadn’t slept in a year; it looked as though he’d attacked his eyes with sandpaper and spray-painted his skin grey. He wasn’t sharp any more; no more catalogue advert for funky men’s fashion. Today he barely qualified as blunt, appeared to have recently stepped out of a tumble dryer. For the life of him, Eddie couldn’t understand why he was here – one day after Nicki’s death. “Calm down, sir,” Crawford said, his red eyes blazing. “The lady is doing all she can. No need for that kind of language in here.”
“What? Look,” Eddie said, stepping closer. “Let’s make sure Jeff is okay first, eh? And then you got me, right? You take me somewhere quiet and you get to punch me till you break your knuckles, okay?”
Crawford leaned in close. “Amazing. You can read my daydreams. Don’t worry, I will break my knuckles on you one day. But it won’t bring back Nicki, will it?”
“I’m sorry.” Eddie padded him away. “I’m desperately sorry about Nicki; I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen. But right now, this isn’t about me or you, or Nicki. It’s about stopping someone else dying…” He looked around; people stared, but remained inactive. “Fuck’s sake! What do I have to do? He’s in danger! Go and fucking check on him! If he dies, this is on you, Crawford!”
“Know all about killing people, don’t you, Eddie?”
“Sir,” one of the staff said to Crawford. “So you do know him?”
Crawford raised a finger to silence her and took a step closer to Eddie – just as the door opened and an officer came out. Eddie pushed him aside and thundered into the corridor.
“Oi! Stop him!”
Eddie took to the stairs.
* * *
Out in the car park, a black Astra missing a spoiler slowly came to a halt.
Chapter Eighty-Eight
The door sign said GD13; it looked like someone had tried to change it to GOD, but failed. Jessica touched the door with her fingertips, listened, and heard someone typing. She stepped inside, and was surprised to find only one person in there. He stopped typing and turned around to see who the visitor was.
Jeffery’s mouth dropped open.
“Hello, Jeffery.”
His eyes were wide and he raised his hands. “I’m not Jeffery,” he said. “He’s gone home.”
“Why do you have your hands up?”
Jeffery licked his lips.
She walked to him, took hold of the ID card that hung around his neck. She looked at the picture, read the name, and let go. “Again. Hello, Jeffery.”
“Jessica, I tried to help you. Honestly. They wouldn’t allow my testimony. Marchant blocked it.”
She was nodding. “I believe you,” she said, “and I thank you for trying to help.” She shrugged and took out her last steak knife. “But I need a clean slate. You understand.”
* * *
Eddie’s lungs screamed. Alarms sounded throughout the building, Crawford was chasing him up the stairs, and it sounded as though there might be more officers following. To Eddie’s dismay, and despite appearances, Crawford was a lot fitter than he was. But he could see the third-floor landing coming up, and summoned the
energy to get to GD13 first.
He pushed through the door just as Crawford grabbed the collar of his jacket and drove a punch into his kidney – the one he’d damaged years ago. Eddie went down with his face screwed up, unable even to scream, and looked up towards Jeffery’s desk.
“Fuck me,” Crawford whispered through panting breath as two officers crammed into the doorway behind him.
“Now do you fucking believe me?” Eddie clawed his way to his feet and edged towards Jeffery. “Jeffery?”
Jeffery stared at him. His eyes flicked to Crawford, and then back to Eddie.
“I’ll get you an ambulance. Just… Just hold on, mate.” Tears bubbled in Eddie’s eyes as Crawford backed towards the door with his hand over his mouth. “You’re going to be just fine, Jeffery, just stay with me, mate. Stay with me.” Eddie looked around, searching for Crawford. He saw him cowering by the door, and was going to shout that he did this, that this was his fault. But Crawford was in tears. An officer reached across to him. Crawford batted his hand away.
The knife sticking out of Jeffery’s neck throbbed slowly, and from the exposed length of its handle a stream of hot blood spewed in pulses that mirrored the knife’s movement.
Eddie saw Jeffery swallow, saw him open his mouth. And then Jeffery blinked again before his eyes went wide. His blood pressure had dropped; he was entering cardiac arrest. And all Eddie could do was offer an open hand and some words that meant nothing. He stepped even closer, leaned down and brought his hand up to Jeffery’s whitening face and drooping eyes. “I’m so sorry,” Eddie whispered, embracing him. “Please forgive me.”
Jeffery’s eyes slid closed. The pulsing stopped. Blood still flowed, matched now by Eddie’s tears.
“Eddie…”
Eddie watched as Crawford took to his feet.
“I’m going to crucify you for all this. I won’t rest until—”
“Shut up, you arrogant knob.” Eddie stood. “If you want to make yourself useful, find the woman who did this!” Eddie barged past him, and through the door. One of the two officers who’d followed them up here accompanied him back down the stairs.
“Sir.” The remaining officer put his hand on Crawford’s shoulder, and Crawford yelled at him to get the hell away. As the officer’s boots went down the stairs, their echoing sound thinning into the distant alarm, Crawford looked up again at Jeffery, and he blinked away the tears.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
She took the lift. On the ride down, she took off the spectacles, shook out her hair so it flowed down her back just as Jeffery’s blood had flowed down his chest. She took off the coat, turned it inside out, and put it back on again, now bright yellow.
She could hear an alarm coming from somewhere.
The shiny stainless-steel panel containing the button assembly showed her how she looked – completely different. Confident. She smiled. Job done. And already, though she was still inside a police station, with dozens of officers probably looking for her, she felt relaxed. No matter how it ended now, she’d done what she set out to do, and it felt good.
She had rebuilt herself increment by increment. And although she’d never be whole again, this was as close as it was possible to come. Even though each of those increments was theft, and so damaged in some way, there was no better way of getting back into one piece. Except, perhaps, by forgiving those who had wronged her. But Jessica Ripley wasn’t the forgiving kind.
There was a buzz running through her as the lift hit ground and the doors opened.
She stepped out into the corridor and stopped. She was in the middle of a corridor that she didn’t recognise – this wasn’t the ground floor. Her heart thwacked in her chest and she forced herself to turn left in order to be doing something rather than attract attention by doing nothing.
She turned left and left again, and found herself in the courtyard she’d seen on the monitors earlier. Now she knew where she was. Down two flights of concrete steps, past a building that blew hot air at her through a vent, and there was the car park she’d waited in.
All she had to do now was walk over the road and sit in Burger King until Michael arrived. He might even be there already. He would be a punctual kid, she just knew it. She’d told him seven o’clock.
Her heart swelled with pride, with bliss. It was hard to describe such an unfamiliar emotion. She’d dreamed of feeling it before, often – a hundred times, a thousand – but now that it was here, it was of a magnitude even her dreams couldn’t accommodate.
She felt like crying, but she insisted upon maintaining a certain control until this was all over and she and Michael were a long way away from here. And despite his earlier reluctance to join her in this new life, she knew that he’d accept it soon.
Threats were wonderful things.
Of course coercion wasn’t the ideal way to begin life over again – she knew that. But eventually he would grow to know her, and he would grow to love her. How could he not? They were mother and son.
Jessica reached the kerb, heart hammering in her chest. Over the road was Burger King. Fifty yards away. She looked right and stepped out into the path of a silver car. It was on the wrong side of the road, and hit her dead centre. Glass smashed, the car bucked, and Jess pinwheeled into the centre of the road. In a swirl of tyre smoke and steam, the car slid to a halt.
She lay on her back, struggling to breathe; sipping smoke-laden air as ribs crunched. Her head buzzed, and confusion ran rampant in her swelling brain, but she brought the driver into focus as he bent to her. “Michael.” She tried to hold out a hand to him, but her arm wouldn’t work. The tears shimmered his image.
Traffic swerved around them, horns sounded as cars stopped; and on each kerb, a small crowd popped into being. Windows at Burger King darkened with onlookers.
He knelt at her side. “I’m fourteen years old. I’m old enough to steal cars, remember? And I’m old enough to hate you.” He cleared his throat. “And just so we’re clear, I know that Stanley is my real dad. He told me all that. We’re a family: him, Valentine, and me. You’re not wanted. Fuck off and die.”
He stood to leave, a smirk on his face, when someone grabbed him around the throat and pushed him back down to the wet pavement, only yards from his mother’s face as she sobbed.
Eddie made sure the lad couldn’t move despite his bucking and despite his screaming. He looked at Jessica and panted, “Jeffery was a good guy. Not like the others. He tried to help you.” He cleared his vision with a jacket still slick with Jeff’s blood and left a red trail across his face that slowly washed away in the rain. “I hope you survive your injuries and spend the rest of your days inside.”
Only a minute or so passed before a single voice cut through the screams and the sirens. “Eddie?”
Eddie turned and saw Weismann. He closed his eyes and just nodded. “I know,” he said.
“We need to talk.”
Chapter Ninety
In the back car park at Killingbeck police station was what appeared to be a big metal box – just a bit smaller than a shipping container – with ventilation slits up one side and a smoke stack sticking out of the top. Inside this big metal box was a massive diesel engine that acted as an emergency electrical generator. It was kept at a steady temperature with a fan either blowing out through the vents or sucking in through them, depending whether it was getting too hot or too cold.
The metal box rested on a concrete pad and was surrounded by a low brick wall. And the whole ensemble was roughly below the corridor running from room GD13.
He was found almost an hour after the alarms had been shut off and the RTC on the road outside had been dealt with. He was found, half on and half off the big metal box, by a police officer. The fans had been running inside, blowing warm air out; Crawford’s blood had trickled down the side of the metal box and into the ventilation slits where, according to his statement, the fan ‘blew something wet’ into the officer’s face as he walked past.
North Yorkshire CSI w
ould conduct a forensic examination of the body, the container, and the wide-open window on the corridor outside GD13, and would conclude that it was suicide.
No one had taken any notice of a black Astra leaving the car park, and no one had seen Troy and Crawford’s verbal and violent exchange along the corridor from where Jeffery’s body was cooling.
Chapter Ninety-One
Two days later, just as Jessica Ripley was heading back to ICU after her third operation in the Leeds General Infirmary, Eddie smiled across at Troy. “I’m glad you came over. If you want your job back… we could use an extra set of hands. Busy as hell these days.”
“No one’s looking for me?”
Eddie was confused. “Looking for you? Why would anyone be looking for you?”
“Nicki.”
Eddie shook his head. “You weren’t there, Troy. Fuck’s sake – she jumped.”
“Is that what they think?”
Eddie’s confusion deepened. “Do you know differently?”
He was quiet a moment; chewed his gum.
“Do you want to come back or not? I have things to do—”
“I’m listening.”
“Hey, don’t do me any fucking favours. If you don’t want the job, you know where the door is.”
“Like I said. I’m listening.”
“Tell me about it. The drugs thing.”
Troy was shaking his head, chewing.
“So get out then. I haven’t got time to dick about with you. I need to know you’re off them. This is your second chance, you idiot, the one I promised you.”
“Who says I want it?”
“Course you do. You reckon you’re the best. And the best always want more.”
Troy looked at the veneer on the lounge door, the one that was a foot too short and had an extra bit tacked on. “You getting along with your dad again now?”
Eddie smirked. “Kind of. He’s a stubborn bastard. But then, so am I. We’ll work it out, I suppose.”
“I hate my dad. He drove mum to suicide. She was never good enough for him. Could never hope to keep him happy. He’s an elitist bastard and he took great pleasure in bringing me up to be just like him.
The Death of Jessica Ripley Page 35
