[Lambert and Hook 22] - Darkness Visible

by J M Gregson

  There would be others by the exit from the car park, the rear exit from the pub, he was sure. He turned away from the police car, hugged the shadow of the wall as long as he could, a fox concealing himself from the hounds who had the odds on their side. He had to skirt that rear exit to get to his bike, but that was better than trying to pass the police car with its watchful occupants.

  He crossed the road, feeling as if a searchlight had been turned upon him when he left the concealing shadow. He paused at the dimmest point between two lamps, by a terraced house with no lights. The pigs were there all right, standing silent as sentinels by the pillars at each side of the car park exit. People came out of the door of the pub as he watched; he counted four, five, six against the light from the bar behind them before the door shut. As they moved towards their cars, one at least of the police officers moved forward to challenge them and Darren saw his chance.

  He did not run, but moved in a rapid half-walk, half-shuffle, hugging the front elevation of the old terraced houses, feeling the sleeve of his anorak actually catch the grime of the bricks as he fought for obscurity. He moved fifty, sixty yards, passed the car park, left the pub behind, felt the safety of the next comer and salvation almost within his reach.

  It was then that a car moved out of the car park and on to the street behind him, its headlights picking him out like a fugitive in a spy film. That was only for a couple of seconds, and he thought at first that he had got away with it. Then a challenge came through the darkness, a harsh police voice commanding him to stop. Whistles, he thought he heard, among a confusion of noise. He saw curious civilian faces turning to focus upon him as the car passed him, then disappeared around the comer.

  He was running now. Running as he had not done for years, his arms flailing in search of a rhythm he felt he had lost and could never regain. He rounded the corner, moved into the street which should have been his refuge. But there was pursuit now; younger and fitter legs than his were behind him. And he was panting, regretting the way he had let his fitness go, realizing just how much his present lifestyle had cost him.

  His brain was still working. He knew this area well, probably better than his pursuers did. There was a labyrinth of alleys and narrow streets between here and the cathedral. He turned into the first of these, running between houses which seemed almost to meet over his head, then turned right again, away for the moment from the direction he wanted to take. The police voices behind him were alarmingly close, but there was confusion in them now. Questions were flung from one to the other about the whereabouts of their quarry.

  He turned right again, into an alleyway too narrow for traffic, avoiding the streets and the lights which were so pitilessly exposing. He slowed to a swift trot, pacing himself to reach the spot he was aiming for, his thin face crafty as a tiring fox’s, his pricked ears listening as he ran for the sounds of the hounds behind him.

  Anxiety stretched the seconds, so that it seemed to take him a long time to reach the high, concealing walls of the cathedral close. People had claimed sanctuary here at one time, fled into the vast concealing cave of the cathedral itself. He didn’t think that ploy would work now, and in any case all the stout doors had long since been locked for the night against intruders. But he stood for two long minutes in the alcove beside his bicycle, willing his breathing to slow, listening to the sounds of the police search diminishing into the darkness as it moved away towards the centre of the town.

  He smiled as he turned on the lights on his bike. He was making himself strictly legal, a model citizen who would leave no carbon footprint behind him. He told himself sternly that he wasn’t out of the wood yet, that the price of freedom was eternal vigilance. Some old Greek bloke had said that; Chivers bet he hadn’t thought that a drug-pusher would be quoting him thousands of years later. He also bet those pigs in blue who thought they were so clever wouldn’t know about the Greek bloke.

  It took him another minute and a considerable effort of will to mount the bike and ride out on to the open streets. It felt as bright as noon as he turned on to the main road and the harsh orange neon blazed above him. But it was as he had promised himself it would be. Behind him, the police were stopping cars and moving into the noisy crowds of pedestrians who were leaving the city centre hostelries. But they hardly noticed the unthreatening progress of the cyclist who made his quiet, unhurried way along this more open thoroughfare. As he pedalled the two miles towards home and safety, he was more endangered by cars that passed too close to him when overtaking than by any police interference.

  He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until he slumped into the armchair, too tired even to fill the kettle. He lay with his eyes shut for a full ten minutes, congratulating himself upon his escape. The old fox had outwitted the hunt, but it had been a damned close-run thing. The Duke of Wellington had said that about Waterloo. There wasn’t one in ten of those frustrated coppers who would have known that. A slow, superior smile edged on to Darren’s face. Relief pulsed round his veins.

  The clever fox surely deserved some reward. He walked across to the kitchen drawer, moved the towel which was so carefully folded on top of the needles. He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, ignored the existing scars, and found the vein with practised ease. Moments later, the heroin surged through his body, lifting his spirits and his energy. Darren Chivers had been too clever for the pigs again. Too clever by a long chalk.

  It was a good two hours before he went to bed, still on a high of elation. Old Darren wasn’t stupid, he told himself. Old Darren knew when it was time to lie low for a while, steer clear of the spots the pigs would be watching. Old Darren knew a thing or two too many for those stupid sods to catch him. This would be a time to play down his drug dealing. A time to keep a low profile, to do just enough to keep the bosses happy and the supply lines intact.

  It was a good thing he was developing another line of business.

  Two

  Friday morning, and the June sun was already pleasantly high and warm over the centre of the old city.

  Michelle de Vries thought that Gloucester was at its best on mornings like this, when people poured into the streets and were ready to spend. She enjoyed strolling through these busy streets to her shop, which was in a cul-de-sac just outside the busy town centre. She had no need to hurry; her assistant would have been there for at least half an hour. There was rarely anything as vulgar as a crowd around her shop - designer clothes didn’t deal in crowds. Many studied the carefully arranged window displays at Boutique Chantelle, but few were both bold and affluent enough to venture within. That was how it should be. Michelle had never aimed at the popular market and wouldn’t have been sure how to handle it if it had been available to her.

  There was no one studying her display at this early hour. She paused for a moment to weigh its effectiveness. The silk jersey top with its floaty lace trimmings oozed class. She nodded her approval. The more conventional two-piece suit at the other side of the window made up for its orthodox design by its cut and its striking sapphire-blue colour.

  Michelle still wasn’t quite sure about the effect upon her display of the two hats, which had ample space to themselves in the centre of the window. She had invited the milliner, whose business in the adjoining street had failed, to display her wares here for a trial period. The woman had grasped eagerly at this unexpected straw and agreed to pay a handsome percentage on all hat sales. As some of her models were priced at over a hundred pounds, this was a substantial windfall profit for Michelle.

  She was not a hat person herself and didn’t pretend to be an expert, but there had been other unexpected spin-offs from the millinery experiment. Not many women regularly wore hats nowadays, but they came in to buy them for special occasions. By far the commonest of these were weddings, and Michelle found that, once they had ventured into the shop to buy a hat, women with money could be induced to look at other clothes. Three times during the spring she had sold complete wedding ensembles to mothers of brides who ‘did no
t want to let things down on the day’.

  Rather to her surprise at this early hour, there was a customer talking to her assistant when she entered the shop. A middle- aged lady, like most of her clients; even that adjective was a little flattering, since most were over sixty and many would need to live to a hundred and thirty or forty to be genuinely ‘middle-aged’ now. One of the ironies of clothes of this class was that the young women who would have looked stunning in them could generally not afford them. It was the women with widening hips and sagging busts who could afford the best.

  Still, Mrs de Vries didn’t waste sympathy on the young. Youth was its own compensation; you didn't need clever tailoring and expensive hairstyling when you were under thirty. The converse was also true; however much you spent on skin creams and outfits and coiffures, you couldn’t keep the wrinkles and the thickening waists at bay. Fortunately, most women refused to recognize that, or there would be scant trade for shops like hers.

  Michelle looked at the flustered face of her assistant, at the sour expression of the woman she was serving, and assessed the situation without hearing a word. ‘I’ll take over, Jean,’ she said quietly.

  ‘This is too tight!’ said the woman petulantly, gazing into the full-length mirror, as if the garment and not her own lumpish body was to blame for that.

  ‘You’re right. That dress just isn’t you, Mrs Armathwaite,’ said Michelle de Vries decisively. ‘I think it’s a little too severe, if you want it for everyday wear.’

  Never be afraid to disparage your wares. She’d found long ago that people with money rarely bought the first thing they tried on. If you disparaged it a little yourself, you got a reputation for honesty, so that they trusted you when you approved of the third or fourth thing they tried. There was no place for the hard sell at this elevated level of the trade. But you always blamed your clothes for the shortcomings, rather than make any mention of the imperfect contours beneath them.

  Mrs Armathwaite had more money than she would ever be able to spend and if you expended a little time and diplomacy on her she would usually purchase something. She was looking for summer dresses. Michelle discouraged her from the striking large-flowered patterns which she seemed to favour. It was surprising how often the women who shopped here attempted clothes which they might have struggled to carry off thirty years ago. She spent a lot of her time encouraging hemlines to creep down over substantial knees and raising necklines to mask the wrinkles women refused to see. Everyone liked clothes which would flatter them, but ‘flattering’ was a word she had long since learned not to use.

  It was a full twenty-five minutes later that Michelle said with enthusiasm, ‘Now that really is you, don’t you think?’ Five minutes later, the sale was clinched, and Mrs Armathwaite left with a heart uplifted and a bank balance six hundred pounds lighter. Everyone needed little spending treats, Mrs de Vries reflected. There was no reason why you should be deprived of pleasure merely because you were affluent. If it cost the moneyed classes a little more to get their pleasures, that all helped to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

  ‘You handle ladies like that so well,’ said Jean admiringly when the door was safely shut upon Mrs Armathwaite. At thirty, she was fourteen years younger than her employer, and after two months still in awe of her.

  ‘And you will, too. You can’t hurry ladies like that. Be tactful and be patient and never expect them to buy the first thing you show them. Indeed, if you have something in mind you think will suit them, it often pays you to produce it after they’ve rejected a couple of their own choices. Skill comes with experience.’ And if it doesn’t, thought Michelle, you’ll be looking for another job. I can’t afford to employ anyone who lets trade slip through her fingers.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock. ‘The accountant’s pressing me for the documents he needs for our tax return. I’d better put them into some sort of order,’ she said. She went into the storeroom behind the shop and shut the door firmly behind her.

  Ten minutes later, the call she had been waiting for came. Michelle snatched at the receiver, trying to control her breathing as the caller announced his identity. Don’t appear too eager, she told herself. For a successful businesswoman with a wealth of life experience behind her, she felt ridiculously like a teenager. She had a tremulous smile on her face, which turned into a frown of disappointment as she listened.

  ‘No, I can’t. Not tonight,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘I'm sure you could if you really tried. You’re an ingenious woman, you know.’

  The smile was back, twitching her lips despite her efforts at control. ‘And you’re a persuasive old lecher, aren’t you? All right, leave it with me. I’ll be there.’

  The man who had been arrested for buying drugs from Darren Chivers spent an uncomfortable night under lock and key.

  There is nothing inhumane about conditions in the modern police cell, but he got very little sleep. The thin mattress on the narrow ledge of a bed gave him a lie which was much harder than his bed at home. The stainless-steel toilet bowl, three feet beyond the bed, was perfectly clean, but the stink of strong disinfectant reminded him of where he was whenever he awoke from an uneasy doze. His eyes opened on the crude graffiti some previous occupant had managed to inscribe upon the wall beside him. He wondered why the men who insisted on the most obscene drawings were always the worst artists. A drunk in an adjoining cell made raucous scatological protests throughout the night, whilst an anonymous voice of authority warned him equally stridently to shut up. By the time the early dawn thrust in through the small high, curtainless window at the end of his cell, Luke Hetherington was feeling very sorry for himself.

  An officer in shirt sleeves brought him thick white toast and a mug of tea which was so strong and sweet that he struggled to drink it. The man stood over him for a moment, watching him drink, studying with apparent interest the ball- pen drawings beside the bed. ‘You do these?’ he asked.

  ‘No. They were there when I got here.’ Luke couldn’t convey the artistic outrage he felt at the accusation.

  ‘Bugger shouldn’t have been left with a pen. They smuggle them in, you know.’ He gathered up the crust of the toast and the half-empty mug of tea. ‘They’ll want to interview you presently, I expect.’

  Luke wondered who the anonymous ‘they’ would turn out to be. The sergeant at the desk had taken his watch away with his other valuables and his belt and shoelaces before they had locked him up, so he had no idea of the time as the hours dragged by. He began to think they had forgotten him. A little more experience of these things would have told him that the CID were softening him up a little, leaving him to reflect upon his situation as the sun climbed higher in the summer sky and people outside moved freely around the city.

  At ten o’clock, he was led upstairs to an interview room and told that he would be interviewed in two minutes. The sage green walls of this small cube of a room, the single fluorescent light high above his head, the three upright chairs and the small scratched table which were the only furniture, made this airless place seem even more claustrophobic than the cell where he had spent the night.

  By the time Detective Inspector Rushton set the cassette recorder going and announced that he and Detective Sergeant Hook were conducting an interview beginning at 10.03, Luke Hetherington was sweating.

  Rushton was thirty-two. He looked much older to Luke. The man beside him was in his early forties, but he looked to Luke as if he should be retired. He felt at a huge disadvantage in the presence of these two men, as if anything he said would be immediately overwhelmed by the sheer weight of their experience.

  Rushton said formally, almost wearily, ‘Do you want a brief, Mr Hetherington?’

  ‘A lawyer? Do I need one?’

  The DI shrugged his shoulders, allowing himself a small smile. ‘Up to you. Open and shut case as far as we’re concerned, but you’re entitled to legal advice, if you want it.’

  ‘I shan’t bother then. I’ve
not done anything too awful, have I?’

  This time DI Rushton’s smile was broader and more genuine. Such naivety made a welcome change from the streetwise thugs who called this a pigsty and dealt only in blasphemies and scatology. ‘You’re in trouble, Mr Hetherington. I wouldn’t like you to have any illusions about that.’

  Luke licked his lips and tried to sound far more confident than he felt. ‘A little coke, for recreational use. It’s not going to make the national press, is it?’

  ‘A class A drug. Maximum sentence for possession is seven years. Maximum sentence for supplying to others, life. Were you intending to supply others, Mr Hetherington?’

  Luke’s mind reeled. Surely he couldn’t be facing prison for this? ‘No, I wasn’t. Millions of people use coke. One in five at my age.’

  Rushton nodded. ‘Probably more than that, by now. That statistic is four years old, Mr Hetherington. Illegal drugs are now a ten billion pound industry in this country. Almost out of control. Almost, but not quite. Arrests aren’t easy. That’s why when we catch someone red-handed, we find magistrates and judges usually want to make an example of him.’ He sat back a little on the upright chair and allowed himself a complacent smile.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go to prison, just for possession.’ Luke tried hard to sound as if he believed himself. He wondered if it would be losing face to change his mind about that lawyer.

  ‘Rohypnol will interest the magistrates. They don’t like that drug at all. Lots of rape charges are connected with the use of Rohypnol.’

  Hetherington said, ‘I didn’t intend to rape anyone. I just thought. . .’ He stopped, unsure what he had thought, unsure of any words which would not make the situation worse as he saw the amusement in the inspector’s eyes.

  Bert Hook leaned forward. He looked concerned, avuncular, almost friendly. ‘It’s possible you might not get a custodial sentence, Luke, if this interview goes well. Have you a previous criminal record?’