The Order of Things

by Graham Hurley

  ‘What’s this about?’ She was trying to make sense of Suttle’s warrant card.

  ‘Police. Are you Tania Maguire?’ He’d got the surname from DVLA.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We need to talk to you.’ Suttle nodded at the gloom of the narrow hall behind her.

  ‘I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not an option. Unless you want to be arrested.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That’s why we need to talk.’

  Her gaze went from one face to the other. She was scratching herself now and Suttle noticed the redness on her forearms. Finally she shrugged and stepped unsteadily backwards.

  They went through to the tiny kitchen/diner. The house smelled of chip fat with a thin top dressing of dog shit. Takeout containers were piled on the draining board, and the broken swing bin was full of empty bottles of sherry. There was a dog in the yard and it was barking fit to bust. Suttle went to the window for a look. It was a pit bull, squat and angry, chained to a ring in the wall, and the moment it saw a strange face at the window it went berserk. Suttle shot Golding a look. Golding hated dogs.

  ‘We need to talk about your weekend, Ms Maguire.’ Suttle saw no point in trying to establish any rapport. ‘So where were you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘Here, like always.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who was with you?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Fine.’ Suttle glanced at his watch. ‘Five minutes to put some clothes on. Then we take you into Exeter and book you in.’

  ‘Book me in where?’

  ‘The Custody Centre. Don’t tell me you’ve never been there.’

  Suttle had checked her out on the PNC first thing. Among a string of drunk and disorderly offences were two charges of aggravated assault.

  Tania stared at him, slowly beginning to understand. She reached uncertainly for the stool beside the table and sat down. The dog was hurling himself at the door now. Tania yelled at it, telling it to shut the fuck up.

  She turned back to Suttle. ‘What do you guys want? This is totally out of order.’

  Suttle asked her again about the weekend. He needed to know exactly where she’d been and when.

  ‘I just told you. Here. We’re skint. OK, we go out sometimes. Take the dog. But that’s it. Life in the fucking fast lane. Enjoy, eh?’

  There was a spark of life in her eyes. Her head was up. She was fighting back.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yeah. Me and my partner. Lovely fella. Manners too. Unlike you lot.’

  ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘Yeah. Deano. Big guy. Trained killer. Scare the shit out of you.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘Not when I last looked. Don’t fucking believe me, help yourself.’

  Suttle glanced at Golding, who left the room. The dog was going mental. Suttle tried to ignore it.

  ‘So you’re telling me you were here all weekend? Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, Sunday night, you never left the house?’

  ‘Yeah. More or less. Just the dog. There’s grass and stuff at the end of the road.’

  ‘And Deano?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah what?’

  ‘He was here too.’

  ‘Do you ever eat at all, drink, buy food?’

  ‘Of course we do.’

  ‘So you did leave the house?’

  ‘Yeah but not properly.’

  ‘What does “properly” mean?’

  ‘Like for a trip. We can get pissed here as easy as anywhere else.’

  Golding had returned. He beckoned Suttle into the hall. Golding was holding a slip of paper by one corner. It looked like it had been ripped from a pad.

  ‘On the floor by the bed, skip.’

  There were two lines scrawled in biro: Sunrise Cottage, Miller’s Lane. Harriet Reilly’s Lympstone address.

  Suttle stared at it a moment. Then he heard the back door open and a cackle of laughter before the dog was upon them. It lunged at Golding. He tried to fight it off. Suttle kicked it hard in the backside and it turned on him, snarling. Suttle felt the teeth sink into his calf. Golding had retreated briefly, folding the scrap of paper into his pocket. Beside the front door, propped against the wall, was a baseball bat. He grabbed it, circled the dog briefly, waiting for his moment, then brought it crashing down on the pit bull’s skull. The dog yelped, let go of Suttle’s leg, and collapsed on the bare boards. Golding hit it twice more, studied it a moment, then stamped on its head. It twitched briefly, then lay still.

  ‘Cunts.’ The woman had appeared. She knelt beside the dog. ‘You’ve fucking killed it. You fucking have.’

  She looked up. Suttle was bent over his leg, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Golding was on the phone, summoning help. An ambulance. Police back-up. Man down. The woman grabbed at the baseball bat dangling from Golding’s other hand. Taken by surprise, Golding let it go, raising his other arm as she tried to smash it against his face. The force of the blow, taking him on the elbow, sent the mobile skidding across the floor.

  Suttle abandoned his leg, grabbed the woman and pinned her against the wall. Their faces were inches apart. She spat at him and tried to knee him in the groin. He told her to calm down, but when she did it a second time he headbutted her, feeling her nose pulp beneath the blow. She screamed in pain and dropped the baseball bat. Golding’s phone was still live. The voice on the other end wanted an address.

  Suttle picked the mobile up. He was trying to remember the address.

  ‘Number 49, skip.’ Golding was rubbing his arm. ‘Soon would be good.’

  Lizzie watched the ambulance arrive. The door opened to the paramedic’s first knock and he disappeared inside. Minutes later Luke Golding emerged. He was handcuffed to a woman wearing a pink dressing gown. She’d covered her face and appeared to be crying. Then came Jimmy Suttle. He was hopping on one leg. The trouser leg on the other had been scissored at the knee and a crepe bandage, already pinked with blood, was wound around his calf.

  By now a police car had turned up. Two officers, one male, one female. Suttle stopped to talk to the woman before he climbed into the back of the ambulance, nodding towards the open door. The woman checked her watch then began to talk into her radio as she entered the house. Moments later the ambulance was driving away. For a second or two Lizzie debated whether to follow it then decided to stay put. She knew this wasn’t the end of it, and she was right.

  The ambulance and the police car gone, the female uniform was standing guard outside the house. Lizzie knew what Scenes of Crime vans looked like. This one was a white Peugeot. Two guys got out, both carrying holdalls. They paused at the door, exchanged a word or two with the officer, then returned to the van to fetch treading plates. A moment later Lizzie saw a red car turn in at the top of the road. It drove slowly towards the house. Lizzie had memorised the first two letters and first two numbers of the reg plate Frances Bevan had noted down. GV 38. This was Tania’s car, had to be. And the man at the wheel would be Dean.

  He drove past the SOC van. By now the red car filled Lizzie’s rear-view mirror. She reached for the key, started the engine, let Dean get to the top of the street. He was indicating left. She pulled out. This man had never seen her in his life. Lizzie was just a stranger in the street, paying a visit, looking for a parking space, whatever.

  She was behind Dean’s car now. It was a battered Fiat, rusting around the edges. He was on the phone. At the main road he indicated right, heading for the middle of town. Lizzie was still behind him, sensing the importance of the call. Maybe he was passing on the news that the Filth had arrived. Maybe he was setting up some kind of meet, driving over to someone’s house. Maybe.

  Wrong. In the middle of town, behind the main shopping precinct, he found a space in the car park.
To Lizzie’s slight surprise he bought a ticket from the machine. She did the same, using the other machine. Then he headed towards the precinct itself. She followed him, glad of the mid-morning swirl of shoppers. Beyond the Co-op supermarket a short cut took him to the back entrance of a Wetherspoons pub called the Powder Monkey. He disappeared inside.

  Moments later, Lizzie followed him.

  The pub was filling up. Dean had found a cubicle in the corner and was shedding his denim jacket. He was a big man, tall, starting to run to fat. He was wearing jeans and a pair of Adidas trainers and he badly needed a shave.

  She went straight to the bar and ordered herself a coffee. She hadn’t been to a Wetherspoons for years. £2.89 for an English breakfast? No wonder people were mobbing the place.

  She took the coffee to a table from where she could watch Dean. He was at the bar now, ordering a couple of beers. Carrying them back, he spared her a nod and the hint of a smile. He had reddish curly hair lapping the collar of his jacket, and the backs of both hands were heavily tattooed. By no means out of the question, she thought, if you’d arrived at the end of the line and you were looking for remaindered goods.

  Dean was back on the phone. His date arrived minutes later, another man, similar age but smartly turned out: suit, carefully cropped hair, military bearing. He scarcely touched his beer, commanding the conversation with brisk stabs of his finger. Dean listened, nodded a couple of times, then emptied his pint. The other man had a briefcase. He extracted an A4 Manila envelope and emptied the contents onto the table. Dean flicked through the document page by page, pausing from time to time to ask a question. Tired of looking at the document upside down, the other man slipped round the table to join him. Perfect, Lizzie thought.

  She took out her mobile, pretended to read through an incoming text, then carefully composed a reply, the phone held in front of her, the camera lens pointing at the cubicle. The lighting wasn’t great but there was no way she was going to risk the flash. She took three shots, and then finished the text. The text was real. ‘Thinking of you,’ she’d written. ‘And don’t forget we’re still legal. xxx’

  Seventeen

  THURSDAY, 12 JUNE 2014, 10.55

  Suttle was waiting in A & E when he got the text. His leg was throbbing and he felt hopelessly exposed with only half a pair of trousers. Golding had delivered Tania to the Custody Sergeant at Heavitree police station and was now waiting in a spare office for instructions from the MIR. He’d already given DI Houghton a full account of exactly what had happened over the phone. Houghton, in turn, had alerted Nandy. There were signs, she told him, that Buzzard had begun to flap its wings.

  Suttle opened his phone and read the text. By ‘legal’ he assumed that Lizzie meant married. For a split second he toyed with replying but decided against it. Then he deleted the text and pocketed the phone.

  ‘Mr Suttle?’

  A nurse Suttle knew by sight had appeared at the door that led to the treatment bays. Suttle limped across. Her face brightened. She was a good mate of Oona’s.

  ‘You’re Jimmy.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What happened?’ She nodded at his bare leg.

  ‘Dog.’

  ‘Line of duty?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You brave man. This way.’

  She led him to an empty bay and examined the wound. The bite was deep and the pit bull’s teeth marks were clearly visible, but under the circumstances she thought he’d got off lightly. The flesh was only lightly torn. She’d seen far worse.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Pleasure. Shall I get Oona down?’

  ‘God, no.’

  After the Registrar had stopped by and decided against stitches, she cleaned the wound and then dressed it. A couple of injections and Suttle was ready to leave.

  ‘Do you have a spare pair of trousers, by any chance?’

  She found him some orange trackie bottoms and then gave him the top as well. She wanted them back in the end but there was no great hurry. Maybe Oona could oblige.

  Suttle thanked her, stepping out into the fresh air. On foot, Heavitree police station was ten minutes away. He walked as fast as he could, trying to ignore the pain in his calf. At the Custody Centre the Sergeant led him through to the office where Luke Golding was still waiting for word from the MIR. It arrived in the shape of both Houghton and Nandy. Only Houghton asked about the state of Suttle’s leg. Nandy wanted to know the strength of the case against the woman banged up in a cell along the corridor.

  ‘Tania Maguire? Have I got that right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Suttle explained about finding Reilly’s address on the floor beside the bed.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I left it with the CSI at the property. He’s bagged and tagged it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Golding and Suttle exchanged glances.

  Houghton came to the rescue. ‘I’m assuming that’s when the dog appeared.’ She was looking at Suttle. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, boss. We can do her for that, if nothing else.’

  Nandy nodded. The Custody Sergeant had called in the police doctor to attend to her facial wounds. An obligatory photo accompanied the booking-in procedure, and Nandy had paused by the desk to give it a glance.

  ‘So who did her face?’

  ‘Me, sir.’ Suttle tapped his forehead. ‘I’m claiming self-defence.’

  ‘I hope it helps, son.’

  Suttle said nothing. Back in Pompey, officers routinely met violence with violence. Down here in Devon life was a little more sedate. How many more scars was he supposed to collect in the line of duty? Or was he just accident-prone?

  ‘And Dean Russell? The boyfriend?’ Nandy had turned to Golding.

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir. He wasn’t in the property. I checked.’

  ‘Does he have previous? Do we have a photo?’

  ‘Only as a kid, sir.’ Suttle this time. ‘He was in trouble a couple of times. He was fourteen at the time. After that he went to the Marines. They’ll have photos. Bound to.’

  ‘Right.’ Nandy was looking at Houghton. ‘Get on it, Carole. Find the man. Pull him in. There’s no way Suttle and Golding can do the business with the woman, but they should brief the interviewing team and monitor what follows. You’ll make that happen?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Houghton had produced her mobile and was already on her feet. Seconds later only Suttle and Golding remained in the office.

  Suttle’s mobile was signalling an incoming text. He opened the phone. Lizzie again. Attached to the text was a photo of two men in what looked like a bar. He returned to the text.

  ‘The guy on the left is Dean Russell. He’s in the Powder Monkey in Exmouth on his third pint. Table under the TV. All yours … with my compliments. XXX PS The other guy’s gone.’

  Suttle was still sitting down. Golding had circled the office and was reading the text over Suttle’s shoulder.

  ‘Who sent that?’

  Suttle didn’t answer. He was trying to work out how Lizzie could have got a photo like this. Had she been following Dean? Had he been living somewhere else?

  ‘You think it’s kosher, skip?’ Golding asked. ‘Or are we getting dicked around?’

  ‘Good question.’ Suttle was scrolling through his directory. Seconds later he was talking to a mate in the Exmouth CID room.

  ‘Kenny? There’s a guy called Dean in the Powder Monkey. Table by the telly.’

  ‘Would that be Dean Russell?’

  ‘It would. Do us a favour? Nip down and nick him?’

  ‘What for? Just give us a clue.’

  ‘Conspiracy to murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ Kenny was laughing. ‘You’re telling me he’s become a serious criminal?’

  Suttle said nothing. The conversation over, he glanced up to find Golding still gazing at the phone.

  Dean Russell was arrested eighteen minutes later and
driven to Exmouth police station. Suttle relayed the news to Houghton, who was back in the MIR. A surprised if pleased Nandy ordered Russell to be taken to Torquay police station and booked into the Custody Suite. He wanted separate interview teams for Russell and Tania Maguire, and he needed Suttle to brief the detectives dealing with each. The booking-in procedures, plus disclosure sessions with attending solicitors, would push the interviews into the afternoon. He suggested Suttle find himself a suit from somewhere; Buzzard had no room for orange trackie bottoms.

  Eighteen

  THURSDAY, 12 JUNE 2014, 11.53

  Lizzie left the Powder Monkey and retrieved her Audi from the town centre car park. The sight of two uniformed officers escorting an outraged Dean Russell from the pub had seriously impressed her, not least because without her input the arrest would never have happened. As a working journalist she’d often been struck by the similarity between her job and Jimmy’s. Same mindset. Same determination to check out every lead. Same reluctance ever to take life at face value. Do the job properly, she thought, and you might as well be carrying a warrant card.

  She was about to take the road back to Exeter when she had second thoughts. She’d never seen Jimmy’s new home. Maybe now was the time to check it out. She had the address from her mother, who still forwarded Jimmy’s stray mail from time to time.

  The Beacon turned out to be a long terrace of tall Regency houses straddling the bluff overlooking Exmouth seafront. She drove slowly up the hill, looking for a parking space, finding one almost opposite Shelley House. Jimmy’s flat was number 3. She peered up at the white stucco frontage, at the big windows, at the once-grand entrance, trying to imagine the view across the estuary towards the distant smudge of Torbay. No wonder Jimmy preferred this to the gloom of Chantry Cottage. After the living death of Colaton Raleigh, where their marriage had finally collapsed, it must have felt deeply liberating to be suddenly in a working town again: kids, chatter, busy pubs, decent restaurants, proper shops. She got out of the car and gazed up at the third-floor window. I could almost live here myself, she thought.