It just makes sense: I might have whatever photographs or documents they seek. From Pippa Langstaffe via my mother, from the past in any event. To lure them we offered that I was away Friday, testing out Fenwick and Whittle. Saying I was in London Saturday night but only to Gadd and Parsons.
To set Sunday’s trap Jerry made two ‘bogus’ phone calls from my lounge to confirm he and I were away this night too. In hope the listeners to the bugs might bite if they controlled the burglars. My electronic diary, which Creel and Odling can easily access, also has me still in London. Jerry leaves for Ister to sleep and be with his Gran as I prepare for work. What is one more night without sleep amongst so many.
***
Murder is most foul. A stabbing the most intimate of killings. Especially when nobody sees or hears. In a busy public place. Outside a school of two thousand inquisitive bored eleven to eighteen-year-olds, some of whom passed within feet of the body, oblivious. When death is rank in look and smell. In the bleak mid-winter. In Ister town’s south side. Where the call brings me. Leaves me short of words.
One male, early thirties, is arranged as though sat resting against the gatepost of the busy main school gate. Blood has gradually seeped through his shirt from the single stab wound to his heart, a pool of black slick growing in the brown yellow slush.
An anonymous tip called it in after a hundred or more children, teenagers, adults passed through the scene, often stepping close to the dead man’s outstretched legs.
Parsons has done her job, taking charge, cordoning off the crime scene, summoning a forensics team, organising a location tent to shield the body, having a doctor declare death, cajoling the pathologist to attend quickly. Now she is orchestrating the half dozen uniform to take statements.
Fenwick details all this as I quickly view the body, adding that the man has no wallet and his expensive brief case is laid empty beside him. No one recognises him, he is not on any missing persons list so far, his fingerprints have not revealed any record.
I spy an imposing man in seedy jeans and boots, roll neck jumper and thick well-used builder’s overcoat who is lurking opposite the gates, unobtrusively listening to the gossip amongst members of the small crowd of adults and teenagers who have gathered, smoking, enjoying the unexpected entertainment with catcalls and swearing galore.
Harry Fletcher tosses one of the foul roll up cigarettes he is known for to the floor, and slides off down the nearest of the many narrow ginnels that run at the back of the Victorian terrace houses that make up this area. The two up and two down dwellings thrown up first for navvies who dug out the port and built the railway, then used by fishermen and dock workers who worked the bustling harbour for a century. I follow as Harry slips into a back alley where discarded bikes, shoes, rubbish sacks torn open by dogs, the debris of a hundred lives, lay all around the crumbling back yard walls that look as though a good push will knock them over. I check no one is watching and follow him. Harry is one of the few senior detectives who still treats me with respect after all. ‘Evidence against ye stinks, would na believe Odling and Creel if they told me black was black.’ We have always got on.
The smell of urine, human or animal, overpowers the crisp snow here. The alley is a tunnel, sucking in the venom of the wind from the nearby estuary shore onto us. We hear the din of televisions from all directions, loud music competing, voices shouting hoarse. Huddling in a backyard doorway, we know nobody will look out, nor hear what is said unless they are stood beside us.
Harry is fifty now, head shaved, a harsh lean face yet gentle smile and soft Geordie accent. Belying the ruthless focussed operator that I know he is as the DCI heading the Drug squad for the county. He should have become Head of C.I.D. ahead of me, ahead of Creel, but the Chief Constable’s golden boy won out.
“You want this case, your squad were allotted before I was asked?” he asks, his voice as ever all deep rasp of a bass.
I shrug, as does he. It is always a close call if drugs are involved, but unusual for the Drugs team not to be given the choice.
“Definitely drugs involved?”
He sighs, “Don’t recognise the guy, wrong sort too, but schools are prime territories for selling pills into – kids and parents, prized spot where the body was found. We pull ‘em but stuff has been palmed off as we swoop.”
“Competition getting at Rankin, somebody finally taking him on?” I ask.
“Sort of thing Rankin would do, big gesture, warns off enemies and punters not to cross him, but don’t think it is him somehow, makes no sense.”
I listen as he ponders out loud to himself, “This is where his mob reputedly did the first killing to seal his power thirty odd years ago. School had just opened, he left two bodies propped up there, the same way, his two main rivals.”
He ends the history lesson, “Long ago, he has retired now. His two senior guys – Pridgeon and Hildred - took over, early autumn, no doubt bought him out, still give him an agreed per cent of income.”
I shake my head even as I ask, “Has he changed his mind, wants back in?”
Harry is adamant, “Nah, my gut says he is out, wants no more to do with it. Why not, could give it up with lot of his money legit, handed over to his two Lieutenants as he always promised them. Mebbe those two are falling out?”
“Already?”
He sighs into the far distance as he nods, kicks over a bag that spills out used condoms and syringes, “Bugger Rankin, I need to retire. This War on Drugs gets nowhere, give these people decent jobs, homes, lives and it would help. A lot.”
He snaps back to reality, “The two new groups have just divided the county, clear boundaries, peaceful so far. They have got good drugs, new sources we have no idea who or how or where from as yet. Mekking lots of loot, selling those drugs, cheap drink and fags all over the place, big push outside schools especially, and taken over Rankin’s prostitution rackets, night clubs, protection, you name it. Not sure about his passing on his influence and contacts – police, legals, local politicos though.”
His laugh is bitter deep as he lights another thin roll up, “An amicable takeover, the City would call it.”
Harry is an Economics graduate from the London School of Economics, destined to be an investment banker before what he laughingly calls ‘the dark side,’ the police, seduced and recruited him. We discussed it once and he could no more explain his career decision than I.
“But that body is no one from the new mobs or Rankin’s old people as far as we know. Too posh for a pusher, a block, street, or area manager, just look at him, smart clothes, soft hands. Ripped, works out, but an executive surely? So why is he here in this shithole, dumped for effect – warning by Pridgeon or Hildred to the other or a new mob coming in?
“Or just one of those things, something else entirely?”
Money has no ethics, especially criminal investment that wants a quick and huge return. If Ister is one of the worst of the worst for crime, unemployment, domestic abuse and the rest, then this area of the North Marsh leads that charge.
Even if in work, people are often part time or zero hours on low wages, a hard seemingly fruitless life. Without hope or prospect save having kids and bringing them up to the same bleak future, they turn to drink, drugs and tobacco as a temporary fix. Crime and violence are their way to finance forgetting reality. Their kids are the ones stepping over the dead legs of the body, buying pills and the rest, desperate to leave school and join their mates in one of the now two crime groups, and avoid the fate of their single mother and present stepdad existing on low wages or benefits, spending their lives on the tired old sofa watching Sky television day and night with empty beer cans and fast food remnants strewn all around.
My voice is soft as we hear footsteps approaching and pull further against a wall, with Harry crouching and cupping his hand to light yet another cigarette.
“The ACC would read it that Rankin wants back in, the other two are going against him and he responds against one of theirs.”
<
br /> Harry’s words are heavy, “No, too late for her to get her prey. Believe me, feel it in my gut, Rankin is out of the game now. He is away for a month at the moment. This body is something else but the new lads will or are falling out. I know Rankin quite well, decades of study, he wants to travel, enjoy opera, galleries, culture can you believe?”
I can believe. After all I have seen the art inside Rankin’s lair, as Harry probably knows. Soon after he came and discussed my impressions of the crime lord. Someone was watching on his behalf.
Two scruffy urchins, no more than eight, twagging school and proud of it, appear beside us, laugh ‘puff’ and continue scavenging amongst the bags for anything to sell.
Harry coughs on his own smoke, “Makes sense though, the next guys are fighting among themselves already – mimicking the master?”
I nod, remembering yet another of those interminable reports I read at Intelligence. Written by Harry I think, warning of a likely mini-war over the drugs trade if Rankin did step down. The PCs for the North Marsh had then written an ‘Impression’ pointing out a sharp rise in beatings of pushers and enforcers in recent months with the victims left in very public places. But never having seen their attacker, never daring to press any charges and leaving the area soon after.
I remind Harry of this and he sighs, “Ai. Something boiling up. Not common knowledge, yet. But Marty Pridgeon, one of the takeover merchants, not been seen for a few days, disappeared without trace, his key people are frantic, trying to keep it quiet from their troops lest they desert. He is probably deep in the mire in Ancaster Fen down the coast, the body to rise up – sometime, never.”
His laugh is cruel, “May be a pre-emptive strike by the Hildreds, all over before any drug war begins. Likely the best thing, business as usual with one king-pin, but not right.”
We return to the main street, staring at the growing knot of people watching the police go about their squalid work, “Lots of folk about here, people will have seen, know who dumped the body but you will not find a single witness. They know what will happen to them if they even hint.”
Harry has had some good results over the decades, cleared out one drugs gang in the south of the county fifteen years ago, though only to allow Rankin to fill the void.
“So how do we crack this at least, murder is murder after all?”
His words are emphatic, ‘We probably don’t. Nobody does.”
I make a suggestion that comes to me only as I speak it, and he whistles in surprise and whispers, “Will the ACC go for it?”
I grimace reassurance, “My responsibility.”
“Nah. Joint case, leadership, credit.
“Shared bollocking if it all goes to hell in a handbasket.”
69
I go through my own procedure with the body. The man is a surprise for this poor predominantly white area. He is early thirties, African, possibly Nigerian from his look, a tall, well nourished, muscular man who exercised seriously. He is well groomed, his suit, shirt and shoes expensive along with a heavy onyx watch of many dials and a beautiful gold chain and crucifix around his neck. He wears no ring. How did his watch and chain survive the local scavengers? Too afraid to go near the body?
His eyes are staring, face showing utter surprise as he felt the knife enter his body to end his life with one quick movement. Fenwick confirms what we already surmised from the lack of blood spatter and the pathologist confirmed. The man died elsewhere, less than an hour before he was dumped here sometime after the caretaker unlocked the gates at eight a.m. and before he secured them again at nine.
Parsons, Whittle and Fenwick talk briefly to various school classes, asking them the same questions: did you see anything, hear anything unusual, do you know a man of this description? A sea of two thousand blank faces. In a special staff meeting after hours, the same response from the hundred odd teachers and staff present. To be fair to all, you cannot actually see the gates through the grime covered windows and it was cold with people hurrying through biting sleet.
Nobody voices the truth; that if they did see, they thought the body that of a pusher and were scared to look too closely. Perhaps we will have some response from Ister’s evening paper publishing the man’s picture tonight.
Two teachers stood twenty yards away inside the gate until eight forty, taking the names of latecomers before leaving to get to their classes. We isolate the thirty students who actually went through the gates, or admit to doing so, in the twenty minutes until nine when the gates closed. We interview these boys and girls individually, with parents not bothering to be present in the main. After eight-fifty some think they saw a drunk laid there. ‘Happens all the time,’ ‘normal’ are common comments. None of the thirty saw a car dumping him. Everyone was blind, deaf and is now dumb.
I sit in on some of all this but after baleful looks and hearing the whispered, ‘Cade, the murderer’ a few times I leave to talk to the Executive Principal, a man dedicated to his own self-importance. He has already been out to brief journalists and do a television interview to stress specialist counselling was being offered to the children according to his Academy group’s protocols.
***
Fenwick and I talk to Forensics. Briefly. They have found fibres on the body, possibly from the persons who killed or delivered his body. The shop keepers opposite the school reveal much. From what they do not say rather than what they do.
At one shop, two Chinese men behind the counter and the cook speaking through a little hole in the wall, resolutely repeat, ‘Saw nothing’ to anything and everything we ask. The men’s rheumy eyes keep flickering to possible watchers outside, wanting us gone so they are not suspected of informing. They live upstairs with big curtainless windows overlooking the gates across the road. They saw, dare not tell. For now, at least, but it is quite a burden to carry over the years - letting a dead body be dumped before your very eyes by the murderers.
It is the same in the Fish and Chip shop next door. They are colder than their food before it is cooked. Battered fish, meat pies, sausages, mushy peas, curry sauce are beginning to smoulder beneath the hot glass. The woman preparing listens but says not a word as her boss stirs the chips ceaselessly, never looking at us, just shaking his head.
DC Fenwick ends his questions with exasperation, “So you were both already working in here, facing the school twenty yards distant, getting stuff ready. With no customers at all. With your big windows clear, yet you saw nothing when someone must have pulled up in a vehicle, manhandled a big guy out and laid him bleeding opposite.”
The two shake their heads, not wanting to meet our accusing eyes.
The third shop is an ‘open all hours’ sweet, newspapers and grocery corner shop, with its counter at the back and no direct view past its shelves to outside. With their little children scurrying around their feet, the Indian couple’s friendly smiles are concreted on their faces as we talk. They had not seen a thing, did not know anything had happened until they heard the sirens, saw the ambulance. They had customers, cannot remember who, in the hour we are specifically looking at. Their CCTV has not worked for months. Again, we leave a card, knowing we will hear not a jot from them. They want to do what is right, but are terrified; for themselves, their children, their parents who I can see hovering in a back storeroom. Who can blame them? The instances of how Rankin’s gang burnt premises and people when they were occasionally crossed are graphic.
A television camera crew arrives, a local radio reporter is already busy, and two local newspaper journalists are doing interviews with the crowd that remains watching the spectacle. This will be a big story. The sheer horror of death being dumped outside a school. And my being on the case.
***
In the lashing wind and hail of late afternoon, my BMW hums with warming power as I head south from its northern delights and through Ister town proper.
Wipers fight the windscreen in a constant battle for clarity. The expanse of the miles wide estuary lies ghostly grey to the left,
the dirty tufts of waves rise, crash down, recede. The outline of ships, hang motionless like small toys edging at snail pace along the grey horizon. To the right of the broad highway comes one after another of the chemical, oil processing or power generating works, glowing red and gold like mammoth domes. Between are silver steel chimneys and football pitch size buildings, interlinking pipes, wires, pods, jutting gantries. All exploding into the darkening sky with their garish glow of burning colours. The odd figure flits through the alien landscape of what is known locally as ‘toxic alley.’ I sense but cannot hear the buzz of industrial activity, nor see the texture of lights jumping out, nor smell the dire stench that assails from these places. I long for the quiet quaintness of Merian’s centuries old streets.
The emergency services regularly drill for dealing with a chemical explosion and its fall out in ‘the alley;’ an event statistically more likely than not apparently. And one catastrophe will no doubt trigger another at the next plant and so on, though the authorities assure this is not the case. But after the Grenfell tower block disaster, who would believe government, local or national? Experts are regularly trotted out to say how safe things are, before scurrying far away from Ister, back to their homes in the safe south.
Into the mean streets of Ister town proper now; harsh yellow light in slashes illuminating hooded shadows on wet corners, hanging out without purpose by boarded up shops, pubs, homes in the rows of derelict terraced houses. A place truly forgotten and neglected by the powers that be; at the end of the county’s, the country’s road and rail links eastward, only the sea comes thereafter.
A rough town, tough people mauled and mangled over decades by the closure first of its lifeblood, the fishing industry, then other key organs of its commercial body decayed and were allowed to die: the nearby steel works, tyre factory, brewery. High tech plants do not supply that many replacement jobs and did not come immediately in any event. Instead call centres, supermarkets and food processing plants sprang up with jobs mainly for women, part time at that. Men who went to work there swallowed all pride, were grateful for low wages. But such casual work offered nothing permanent and no pension or protection then or for the future. Many generations of menfolk were out of work, still are. Their young condemned as ‘chavs’, the literal definition meaning children but now a term of abuse coined by newspapers for people supposedly having no aspirations, no work, claiming benefits to live, a burden to the community. It is all myth. People want a job, a regular income, a future, to lead quiet ordinary lives.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 43
