The Hanged Man (Bone Field 2)

by Simon Kernick

  ‘I’m offended someone even might think that,’ growled Tone, clenching and unclenching his huge fists.

  ‘We already did ask him,’ said Ugo, his voice cold.

  On the floor, Jeeks was shaking. Stegs felt sorry for him. The poor guy was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Admit the truth and he’d be beaten, or even killed. But you can only stick to a story for so long under torture, and he may well already have given them up.

  Stegs wasn’t unduly panicked. If Ugo and Ralvin really thought they were police they’d have dropped this whole meet like a stone. There was clearly some doubt as to their identities but not enough for these guys to pull the deal just yet. And that, of course, was the Achilles heel of all drug dealers. They were greedy.

  ‘Look, I served time with Donny in Brixton,’ said Stegs, ‘so he knows I’m no Fed. Isn’t that right, Donny?’

  Donny nodded, and started to speak, but Ralvin backhanded him hard across the face and told him to shut his mouth. ‘You don’t say nuttin’ widout permission,’ he snarled.

  Ralvin then got to his feet, sizing up Stegs and Tone. He was taller than Stegs had been expecting – probably about six two. His face was pitted with acne scars, and he had narrow, cold eyes the colour of coal. Stegs hadn’t seen that many stone-cold killers in his time, but Ralvin was definitely one of them.

  He glared at Stegs. ‘What were you in prison for, mon?’

  Stegs faced up to him. ‘I said all this before to Ugo.’

  Ralvin came forward, until he was only inches away. ‘Say it to me.’

  ‘Possession, with intent to supply. I served two years. A year of it with him.’

  Stegs waited for another question about his prison time. He knew his story would stand up under scrutiny. He knew everything you needed to know about the workings of Brixton prison from the Christmas menu to the number of running machines in the gym, and if anyone with an inside track looked up the name Mark Philpotts on the PND they’d see a photo of Stegs alongside a list of his various imaginary crimes, including details of his stint in Brixton.

  But no further question was forthcoming. Instead Ralvin wandered casually back to the chair before leaning down and coming back up with a long-barrelled pistol in his hand.

  Stegs’s stomach did a somersault when he saw the gun. This changed everything.

  Ralvin shoved it in Jeeks’s face. ‘Is dey Babylon?’ he demanded, pointing a finger at Stegs and Tone. ‘Tell me da truth and you walk. You lie, you die, mon. Right now!’

  Stegs turned to Ugo, forcing himself to stay calm, pleased at least that it didn’t seem that Jeeks had given them up as police yet. ‘Ugo, what the fuck is this? I came here to do a deal.’

  ‘We can’t take chances, Mark.’

  ‘Jesus. I’ve been dealing with you for a month now.’

  ‘Shut yuh mouth!’ Ralvin yelled at Stegs. Then, quieter, to Jeeks: ‘Is dey Babylon?’

  There was a silence that seemed to last a long time, and Stegs could tell that Jeeks was wavering. He wondered if the handler, hearing all this, had called for back-up. He and Tone had a code phrase. The moment either of them uttered it, reinforcements would be sent immediately. So far neither of them had, and he hoped the handler was hanging fire as well. This might be a dangerous situation, but Stegs knew as well as anyone that if the police stormed this place blind, it could well turn into a hostage situation. And with a man as violent and unpredictable as Ralvin, Stegs wasn’t at all sure that they’d get out in one piece.

  The silence continued.

  Ralvin hit Jeeks round the head with the gun barrel. ‘Speak!’

  Jeeks spoke. ‘No. They’re not, I swear it.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Ralvin shoved the gun harder in his face.

  ‘I’m not! I’m not. They’re not Feds.’

  Ralvin’s finger tightened on the trigger. He was going to shoot.

  ‘He’s not lying, for fuck’s sake,’ yelled Stegs. ‘Let him go.’

  Jeeks started whimpering and shaking. Time seemed to slow right down, as it always did when Stegs was in this kind of situation, where things could go either way. He knew he had to take back control. And fast.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he said, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Come on, Tone, let’s go. I came up here to buy some gear, not get insulted. You don’t want my money? That’s fine. I’ll find someone who does. We’re out of here.’

  He and Tone turned away together. It was a calculated risk, that Ralvin’s greed would overcome his aggression.

  And it did. ‘OK mon, I believe you,’ he said, taking the gun away from Jeeks’s head. ‘You ain’t no Babylon.’

  And just like that, all the tension in the room faded, as Ralvin and Ugo’s switches shot from full-throttle psychotic back to reasonable.

  ‘Sorry, Mark,’ added Ugo with a rueful grin, as if they’d just been playing a joke, not threatening to blow a man’s head off. ‘We just got to be careful, you know?’

  ‘So have we,’ said Stegs. ‘For all I know you don’t even have any dope.’

  ‘We got it, mon,’ said Ralvin, looking worried now at the prospect of losing a big deal.

  The balance of power had clearly changed, and Stegs immediately took advantage of the fact. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘Come on, let’s not ruin this deal,’ said Ugo. ‘You’re still getting gear at a rock-bottom price.’

  ‘What gear?’ said Stegs. ‘I don’t even see any gear. I just see a lunatic with a gun.’

  ‘The gear’s here, mon,’ said Ralvin, removing a picture on the wall to reveal a safe underneath. He turned his back to them and punched in a code, before pulling out a kilo bag of white powder. ‘Here’s a key, mon. Pure stuff. Check it if you want. Dere’s another nine where dat came from. We do dis deal tonight, mon. Two hundred tousand for da lot.’

  Stegs thought it was a pity that they didn’t have the whole ten keys in the safe. If so they could have walked out of there and called in the bust and not have to go through with the actual deal. He was feeling a little sick having watched this drama unfold, and he found it hard to look at Jeeks, who was still kneeling on the hard stone floor, shaking with fear.

  ‘All right, but let him go,’ he said, motioning towards Jeeks.

  ‘What do you care about him?’ said Ralvin.

  ‘He’s a friend of mine, and he’s not an informer. If he was, he’d have put me away years ago.’

  Ralvin seemed to think about this, then nodded. ‘OK mon,’ he said, unchaining Jeeks and giving him a kick. ‘Get your clothes and get da fuck outta here,’ he snarled.

  Jeeks didn’t need asking twice. He was on his feet like a shot, grabbing his clothes and racing past Stegs and Tone without even looking at them. Stegs had a feeling he wouldn’t be seeing him again for a while, not if he had any sense.

  ‘So,’ said Ralvin, giving them a gold-toothed grin, ‘we do the deal tonight den?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Stegs, looking forward to removing this piece of shit from the streets. ‘Tonight it is.’

  Fifteen

  ‘You were a natural in there with that kid,’ I said to Dan as we sat outside a back-street café eating lunch.

  ‘I’m a father, I’ve done that sort of thing enough times before,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I just hope she stays away from a man like him. He’s poison.’

  ‘He’s a coward, that’s what he is.’

  He looked at me carefully. ‘Is that how you got him to talk? You’ve got to be careful, Ray. What did you do to Moffatt in there?’

  There was no way I could admit what I’d done. Not to Dan. Not to anyone. ‘I just asked him some questions.’

  ‘He looked terrified, and his hair was soaking wet. You can’t manhandle suspects. It’ll wreck the whole inquiry, and you’ll be off the case. Permanently. You heard what Sheryl said. And I need you on this right now.’

  ‘I won’t do anything that’ll get back to me.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ He
sighed. ‘I’ve got to be honest, Ray. Sometimes I worry about you.’

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘When Moffatt was first talking back to you, you looked like you wanted to kill him. You need to keep a lid on your emotions. That’s the only way you’ll survive as a copper these days. You know that.’

  I nodded slowly. He was right. About it all. I had felt like killing Moffatt. The black rage that’s always simmering deep down inside me had come rushing to the surface when I’d been speaking to him. I could have torn him apart limb from limb in that bathroom, and I’d enjoyed flushing his head down the toilet. I’d tell you my actions worried me, except they didn’t. I knew when to keep control when it mattered. But I didn’t say any of this to Dan, because I could see that sometimes he had a problem staying calm too.

  ‘Sure, I understand, Dan. But at least I got some answers.’

  Dan gave a resigned shrug. ‘So what do you think happened with Tracey?’

  I’d been thinking about this ever since we’d left Moffatt’s place half an hour before. ‘The theory that fits the facts most is that someone she cleaned for encouraged her to leave Moffatt, and also put her in touch with someone else who ran a shelter outside London, because by the sound of things Tracey wasn’t the kind of woman to have gone out and found the shelter herself. And it could have a perfectly innocent explanation. Except for two things.’

  ‘The men who came to see Moffatt afterwards?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s one. Moffatt was warned off looking for her. Who by? It has to be people working for her killers making sure she’d not be reported missing. And the thing is, how did they know Moffatt had threatened to find her when he’d talked to her on the phone? Tracey must have told someone who then told the killers. The killers targeted Tracey deliberately, and they even made sure she called her half sister so that she didn’t report her missing either.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘The killers found her somehow. My guess is they had a connection to the shelter, which means they also had a connection to someone Tracey cleaned for.’

  ‘Moffatt didn’t give you a name?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. But then it was a long time ago. I wonder if one of Tracey’s clients might have been Lola Sheridan. We know where Lola lives now, but we don’t know where she was based back around the time Tracey went missing.’

  Of our three suspected Bone Field killers, Lola Sheridan was the most enigmatic, a woman who over the years had kept herself to herself. But three months earlier an informant of Dan’s had given his tracking device to the young woman we knew only as Nicole who’d ended up at the Wales farmhouse, and who en route had spent time at Lola’s isolated country house in Buckinghamshire. Nicole was now dead, having been murdered in front of me as I tried to rescue her, and we’d never been able to charge Lola with anything, since Dan’s informant had been acting unofficially.

  ‘It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?’ said Dan. ‘Thinking it might be Lola?’

  ‘It’s easy enough to find out,’ I said.

  I finished off my sandwich then put in a call to Michelle, the most able of our two admin staff, but she wasn’t answering. I left a message asking her to find out Lola Sheridan’s home address between October 2004 and July 2005, and get back to me with it as soon as possible.

  As I put down my phone, Dan’s rang.

  ‘Sheryl,’ he said, excusing himself from the table.

  I sat back in the chair and drank my coffee as Dan wandered off up the road with the phone to his ear, wondering how long Paul Moffatt’s latest girlfriend would last before she was back at his flat with her baby, and wondering too whether I would ever carry out my threat and give him a fatal overdose.

  Dan came back, looking pleased. ‘A couple of things,’ he said, without sitting down. ‘One, the investigation into Ugo Amelu is an undercover job, and we’ve got a meeting with the handler in half an hour.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘And two?’

  He grinned. ‘We’ve had two confirmed sightings of Hugh Manning. Both in the same town in Scotland.’

  Sixteen

  Hugh Manning was sitting in Harry Pheasant’s conservatory basking in the bright light of the afternoon sun and watching the river in the distance as it ran down towards the small town of Newton Stewart when he saw the police car coming down the road that ran along the front of the house.

  Immediately he dived to the floor so he was out of sight, praying that the occupants of the car hadn’t seen him. The double-glazed windows prevented him hearing whether they’d stopped or not so he lay sprawled out on the rug, not daring to move.

  What the hell was a police car doing down here in the middle of nowhere? When he’d been up here with Harry and the others for the shooting weekend, Harry had made a point of saying that only about one car an hour ever passed this way, and that there were never any police about, which was why he never worried about driving drunk. It could have been a coincidence of course but Manning was understandably paranoid, and it didn’t feel much like a coincidence to him. It felt like a net closing in on him.

  Time passed. Two minutes, three, five. There was no knock on the door, so eventually he lifted his head up and looked down the front garden that sloped towards the road twenty yards away.

  It was empty.

  He got to his feet. The Volvo he’d been driving was parked up by the log shelter at the side of the house, well out of sight of the road. He knew the police would be looking for it by now, but thanks to the fact that he’d obscured the number plates with dirt, they wouldn’t be able to trace it here.

  He sighed. The police car had shaken him. He’d actually been in quite a good mood before then, having spent most of the day so far reading a book, and even managing a walk in the woodland behind the house. It was peaceful up here and he was planning on staying a week or two at least while he pondered his next move.

  He realized almost with surprise that he hadn’t actually checked the news since the night before. Harry didn’t have a TV up here or a PC, so he was relying on his phone, but unfortunately it didn’t have a signal in the house, and the wifi was proving intermittent at best, which he’d actually found quite endearing until now.

  Standing in the middle of the living room he logged on to Sky News, waiting for what seemed like an age until the page opened with the headlines.

  And there, staring back at him beneath the headline of the lead story, like something out of a nightmare, was his own face – a crystal-clear, near-perfect likeness. It was the publicity shot from his law firm, taken barely a month ago. It might not have shown all the lines on his face but anyone seeing it would recognize him. Manning had always prided himself on the fact he was a good-looking man, with a thick head of naturally dark hair, deep brown eyes and a permatan that actually looked real. In other words, even at the grand old age of forty-eight he still got noticed.

  Late the previous evening he’d gone to the Sainsbury’s in Newton Stewart to buy supplies (paying in cash of course), confident that no one up here would know his real identity. He’d even smiled and had a few words with the pretty assistant at the checkout in his English accent.

  He cursed himself for his stupidity. The people in Sainsbury’s might not have known who he was last night, but as soon as any of them had seen the news reports that morning they’d have been on the phone to the police like a shot – which they’d almost certainly done, hence the passing police car.

  As the news report loaded, he read through it with mounting horror. It said he was wanted for questioning in connection with the murder not only of his wife Diana but also a man named as fifty-two-year-old Max Bradshaw. Mr Bradshaw’s dog, Monty, featured in the article too. Manning knew that would clinch it. The British hated cruelty to animals. They weren’t so fussed about human beings, but do anything to a dog and you were public enemy number one.

  The cunning bastards had really got him this time. He had no doubt the police knew he
hadn’t killed anyone, but this was the perfect way to flush him out. The report said he was believed to be currently driving the late Mr Bradshaw’s car (helpfully giving its make and registration number), and just to put the icing on the cake they were describing him as armed and dangerous.

  He shook his head angrily. Dangerous? He couldn’t believe the cheek of it. He was the one in danger.

  He pocketed the phone and paced the room, trying to work out what to do. If it had been someone from Newton Stewart who’d reported him, the whole area would be crawling with police. There were only a handful of roads running off the peninsula and it wouldn’t take that much manpower to set up roadblocks, so they’d catch him in no time. He was going to have to stay put.

  There was also the issue of his erstwhile employers. They too would be doing everything in their power to catch him, and so far at least they’d been quicker than the police.

  Manning felt the panic building in him again as the knowledge that he was trapped took hold. He picked up the Remington from where it was propped up against the sofa. It felt good in his hands. He’d fired shotguns before at clay pigeon shoots, and knew how to use pump-actions. If someone came for him, would he pull the trigger on them? Or would he instead turn the weapon on himself? Jesus, this wasn’t how he’d envisaged retirement. He should have been on a gorgeous Panamanian beach sunning himself with Diana. Not out here in the Scottish wilderness contemplating suicide as the least bad option available to him.

  But maybe that was, indeed, the best move. It would be quick. It would be relatively painless. And it meant that at last he could stop running.

  But he didn’t do it. Instead, he lay down on the bed with the shotgun beside him, and closed his eyes. In the months before he’d gone on the run he’d started doing one-to-one meditation sessions with a yoga instructor with the distinctly unyogic name of Trevor, and now he used what he’d learned to bring his breathing back under control and steadily empty his mind of all negative thoughts.

  Something must have worked because ten minutes later he was asleep.