by Nicky Black
Lee realised he would have to come clean. He slid his hand into his back pocket to retrieve his badge. But as he brought it out, they were joined by an impressively heavy man with a shaved head, black suit and white shirt. He was a bruiser, the folds of fat on his thick neck pouring over his shirt collar. Everybody stared at him like he was Christ or something.
‘Put your fucking toy away,’ Micky ordered Mark.
Mark hesitated for a moment, but didn’t move. Micky walked up to him and held his hand out, nodding towards Nicola. Mark looked at Nicola’s streaked, petrified face, gave Gerry once last glare and stepped back, handing the knife to Micky. Micky squared up to Gerry, his face an inch away from his. Lee’s fingers hovered around his badge.
‘Fuck off, you Fenian piece of shit.’ Micky looked down his nose into Gerry’s face.
Gerry curled his lip, spat on the floor at Micky’s feet, and looked around him for a moment before walking towards the exit, picking Tyrone up off the floor on his way. Micky watched them leave through pinpoint eyes, then he turned and marched up to Lee.
‘No, Micky.’ Nicola held his arm. ‘He was helping.’
‘We don’t need your help,’ he said, ripping the baseball bat out of Lee’s hand. He motioned to Nicola and the others to follow him out. They all responded without question, quickly gathering bags and coats, Margy helping the wasted Kim to her feet. Micky put his arm around Nicola and she leant into him. Lee watched, trying to put his coat on with Scotty’s help.
‘Why did no one call the police?’ Lee asked him.
The landlord scoffed and shuffled away.
Outside, Nicola eased her arm from Micky’s grip.
‘My phone,’ she said. ‘I must’ve left it on the seat.’
‘If you’ve got your phone, why didn’t you fucking answer it?’ asked Micky sharply.
‘Jesus, Micky, calm down, I don’t even know how to switch the bloody thing on.’
‘I’ll get it,’ said Micky, irritated.
‘No,’ she said with an authority that Micky didn’t like one bit. ‘Don’t leave them out here on their own. I know where it is.’
Micky’s eye twitched, but as Mark fell to his knees again, he sighed, looked away and nudged his head towards the pub door before leaning down to pick Mark up.
Nicola hurried back into the pub and walked up to a bleeding Lee who finally had his coat on. She stood in front of him, her swollen, blackened eyes locked onto his. He looked down and noticed her wedding ring as she subtly took hold of his little finger. His eyes darted to the exit door, beyond it to the bouncer with the attitude. He looked back into her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she said. And she was gone.
TWO
At 8.45 on Monday morning Lee emerged from his hire car outside a towering, Victorian red-brick building, incongruous amidst the surrounding grey concrete flats and metal-shuttered shops. Hundred-year-old police lamps stood at the top of a broad staircase, standing to attention on either side of the double glass doors. Lee imagined an old Dickensian gentleman in a battered top hat lighting them with a burning torch. He walked up the steps and through the doors into a silent, bleak station, green plastic chairs lined up on either side of the fortified-glass reception. Posters adorned every inch of the walls, advertising helplines for drug users, victims of domestic violence and the homeless. It could have been any police station in any city from the inside. Lee shivered despite the warmth of the sun outside, and approached reception. He was keen to get started. The job was in the east of the city, a place he was unfamiliar with, its sprawling estates and flat landscape a world away from the West End’s steep streets and protracted views of the industrial landscape of Gateshead. He was invited by a laminated sign to ‘Press the buzzer ONLY ONCE and WAIT’. He was about to press it a second time when a short, slim young woman in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, brown hair in a ponytail, appeared at reception carrying a cup of coffee. She smiled at him. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or three.
Lee bid her good morning and she replied likewise, jumping slightly to sit on the high swivel chair behind the glass. She blew on her coffee and took three quick slurps, looking up at him with wide eyes.
‘DS Lee Jamieson,’ he said, ‘I’m starting here.’ She looked at him over her mug, expressionless. ‘Today,’ he added, ‘to work?’ She blew on her coffee and took another sip. Lee fished his ID from his inside pocket and pressed it to the glass. The young woman turned her head to one side slightly to read it.
‘Through that door,’ she said.
Lee heard a click and a buzz to his right. He headed through to the back of the reception and the officer held out her hand, ‘DC Thompson,’ she said. He shook her hand and she pointed to a door sporting a ‘Staff Only’ sign. ‘The boss is waiting for you. Turn right, second door on your left.’ Her eyes followed him through the reception area to the door at the back of the room, a private smile on her face. About time there was some eye candy around here.
Lee walked into an open-plan office. Pairs of eyes looked up at him without acknowledgement, but he nodded anyway. Paper stood in leaning towers across the room, and there was a thick smell of disinfectant. He looked around for an office and, spotting a line of three doors, headed towards them. He knocked on the second door just beneath a sign reading ‘Detective Inspector Carole Meadows’. On her Come in, he entered the office and his gaze fell on the gently lined face of woman in her late forties wearing a grey trouser suit and white, open-necked shirt, standard uniform for women DIs, it seemed. She stood as he entered. She was the shape that countless women complain of, flat-chested and wide-hipped. Her blonde/grey hair had the severe shortness of a woman who just didn’t have time in the morning, and her spectacles were a little too wide, giving her a slightly cross-eyed look. She walked around her desk and greeted him warmly, offering a handshake.
‘Welcome home,’ she said, ‘Sit, sit.’ She indicated one of the two black leather chairs on the other side of her desk. Lee sat and saw her eyes scan the bruised cheekbone and cut over one of his eyes. He touched his face. ‘Coffee?’ she asked, walking to a percolator full of treacle-coloured liquid.
He declined and she poured herself a large mug. Her desk was completely in order, the out-tray empty and a few pieces of white and pink paper in the in-tray. Her computer was devoid of Post-it notes, a box of tissues to one side, and a single pen, pencil and ruler stood perfectly straight in the shiny blue desk tidy.
‘So, no need to tell you what a great city this is,’ she said. He tried to place the accent. West country? He nodded his head in agreement, clasping his hands together on his lap, wondering what exactly the greatness was he’d left behind sixteen years ago. ‘We’ve got big plans for this city,’ she said earnestly, ‘but some places are out of control. That’s why you’re here.’
‘Looks amazing – the quayside, the city centre...’
‘...Completely transformed,’ she finished his sentence for him. ‘But there are problem areas, like I said, real problems that we need help with.’ Lee knew it – Byker, Walker... ‘And there’s none worse than Valley Park.’
Lee crossed his legs and shifted in his seat. Surely not.
‘Here are the crime figures.’ She pushed a bound document towards him. ‘They’re a shocking read.’
Lee took the document but didn’t open it.
‘We want the estate turned around, big regeneration plans.’
Lee wondered who ‘we’ was. ‘But Valley Park is West, the job was an East End.....’ He tapered off as she regarded him as if he’d just told her the most obvious thing in the world. Her eyes flashed with annoyance. This was a woman who did not like to be challenged.
‘So why now?’ asked Lee. ‘Why not just bulldoze the place, start again?’
‘Ooof, too expensive!’ she waved her hand as if swatting a fly. ‘The Council have just got their hands on millions to tart the place up, but they need to show they’ve got the support of the residents before the cash flow
starts, and the crime rate’s got to come down so they can mix it up a bit, you know, tenure-wise – bring in the private sector, build some nice flats, a few young professionals, maybe a Pizza Hut or something. But at the minute, no young city dweller with any sense is going to buy a flat anywhere near the place.’
Lee turned the ends of his mouth downwards and nodded. Damn right.
‘We’re all working in partnership these days,’ she said. ‘Pain in the neck, but it’s the only way to get any money out of anyone. It’s partnership money that’s paying for you, so they’ll want their money’s worth.’
‘They’ now, not ‘we’, Lee noticed.
‘So.’ She opened a drawer to her right and brought out a thick glossy document, considered it for a moment and passed it to Lee. ‘A socio-economic study. Read it.’ She reached into the drawer again and brought out another, smaller but equally glossy document. ‘Residents and Stakeholder Survey,’ she said, passing it to him. It was quickly followed by a Regeneration Delivery Framework, Strategic Health Needs Assessment, SWOT Analysis, Housing Forecasts, Spatial Plan, and a Crime Reduction Strategy. Lee held them all on his knee knowing what they would say without even looking at them. Valley Park was poor, sick, neglected and forgotten. It was in crisis, and no one could afford more riots.
‘There’s a meeting tonight at the community centre on the estate,’ she said, supping the coffee and wincing at its coldness. ‘I’d like you to go. No one will know who the hell you are so for God’s sake, don’t let on you’re one of us. Not yet, anyway. And try to cover those up before you come in next.’
Lee touched his face again and was about to offer some feeble explanation, but DI Meadows was picking up her phone.
‘Let’s meet the team,’ she said, ‘and please: help yourself to coffee.’ It was an order rather than an offer.
A few minutes later, Lee was holding a cup of treacle, surrounded by what appeared to be the Addams Family.
‘Everyone, this is DS Jamieson who is taking over the team, from today.’ DI Meadows was standing next to Lee in front of the desk. ‘Lee, this is DC Clark, recently moved over from the drugs squad.’ A ginger drip in his mid-thirties, Clark smiled crookedly, his teeth all over the place, his eye contact nonexistent.
‘And this is DC Gallagher. Paul.’ Lee was approached by a beer-bellied man of about forty. He wore a red-checkered shirt bursting at the waist and a blue-striped tie, both of which had seen better days. There was a smell of stale tobacco and alcohol about him.
‘Welcome to Little Beirut,’ said Gallagher offering his hand. Lee shook it, trying not to feel like he was in an episode of The Bill. Next to be introduced was Jane Thompson whom he’d met at reception, a reasonably attractive rookie with clear skin and hazel eyes.
‘DC Gallagher’s been acting up, until we filled the post,’ DI Meadows informed Lee.
‘Always the bridesmaid,’ mocked Gallagher. ‘A bit like you, eh, Thompson?’
DI Meadows stepped in. ‘Jane, why don’t you show DS Jamieson around the patch,’ she said, seating herself back behind her desk, ready for the next task at hand.
‘My pleasure,’ replied Thompson, giving Gallagher a derisive smile.
‘I can manage,’ said Lee.
‘Best have the guided tour,’ replied Meadows, adjusting her glasses and not looking up from the papers in front of her.
Lee wasn’t going to argue and Thompson indicated with her head, ‘this way.’
DC Thompson waited impatiently at traffic lights on the West Road.
‘So, how long is it since you’ve lived here?’ she asked.
‘About sixteen years.’
‘You might be in for a shock.’
They drove in silence for a few minutes. At the cemetery they turned right down a steep hill, a narrow road of terraced Tyneside flats. Despite brand new front yard walls and railings, windows and roofs, every fifth one was boarded up. The view was stunning, looking down the hill to the river and Gateshead beyond. Anywhere else and people would be snapping these up and making a small fortune. Halfway down the hill, Thompson turned right and Lee felt the recognition like a slap in the face.
‘Hang on, pull over here,’ he demanded, leaning forward to see more clearly through the windscreen. Thompson screeched to a halt. A group of young lads of about fourteen or fifteen, playing football on some spare ground, turned and cheered at Thompson’s bad parking. She tried to straighten up, grinding the gears, and the lads cheered and laughed even louder. Lee got out of the car, drawn to a burnt-out house nearby. He surveyed the street, recognised the corner shop and headed to it. He frowned at the cock and ball graffiti on the wall, next to it the words Fucking Fuck Off Paki in red.
In the shop Lee waited, holding a can of Tango behind a couple of spotty girls with toddlers in buggies buying lottery tickets.
‘I want my hair like that for me wedding,’ said one pointing to a Hello! magazine on the counter.
‘You gonna sell your photos for a million, eh?’ asked the shopkeeper cheerily.
‘Aye, friggin’ gorgeous, me!’ The girls laughed, turning their buggies, banging the wheels painfully into Lee’s leg. He let them past graciously.
‘Divvy cunt,’ one of them said.
‘Divvy cunt!’ one of the toddlers repeated, and the girls laughed louder.
‘Divvy cunt! Divvy cunt!’ the kid repeated, loving the attention. The door closed and Lee passed a pound coin to the shopkeeper who was shaking his head, half-smiling, half-disgusted.
‘Have you reported that graffiti?’ asked Lee. ‘They’ll come and remove it.’
‘Ach, no point, it would just be there again the next day,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t care, but I’m from Bangladesh me, I ain’t no fucking Paki!’
He thrust the change at Lee, who took it with a raised eyebrow. He left the shop to find Thompson waiting outside, watching the young lads closely. He stood next to her, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Didn’t you play out on the streets when you were young?’ he asked.
‘This lot don’t play, they do business,’ replied Thompson, eyeing them suspiciously. ‘You know this street?’
‘See that burnt-out house?’
Thompson looked up the road to a gaping hole in the terrace.
‘My granddad lived there,’ said Lee, ‘with five of the deadliest cats you’ve ever had the pleasure of smelling.’
Lee had been sitting in his car outside the house in High Heaton for half an hour before the black couple emerged, laughing, off out to the pictures or to meet friends for dinner. They got into their shiny, silver Golf and drove off. He switched on the internal light and looked at his list. This was the second house he’d stalked this evening. He’d spent the afternoon looking up all the Deborah Turners he could. Being an officer of the law had its perks, access to information being one of them. Of course, it was likely she was married, living somewhere else even, but Lee believed in starting at the beginning. If this didn’t work, then he’d check the marriage records, births, deaths, whatever it took.
There were seven Deborah Turners of the right age living in Newcastle. The first house he’d sat outside was a West End dive, a student house with dirty windows and holes in the roof. The one he looked at now wasn’t right either. Wrong ethnicity. He checked his A to Z and set off with a determined sigh.
Ten minutes later, he sat outside a standard semi-detached house near the Freeman Hospital with wide bay windows and a trimmed garden to the front, a green Renault Clio in the drive. A woman’s car. Lee looked at his watch, it was 6.36 p.m. It was a squally evening, the sky dim and moody almost like night. The front of the house was in darkness. This was the sort of house his mother had yearned for: forever going through the Homemaker section of the Saturday Journal, she’d ring houses with a pen, commenting on the prices, how long it would take to save up for the deposit, and how much they needed to earn to pay the mortgage. She was dead some fourteen years now – ravaged by drink, but it was the cancer that got her in the
end. He hadn’t found out until six months after she’d gone, his father choosing to cremate her alone without Lee or her smashed friends hanging around, reminding him of his failures. Frank had gone a year later, a letter from a solicitor giving Lee the details of his fatal pneumonia and the two thousand pounds he’d left to the British Legion. At the age of nineteen, he’d felt utterly alone.
A light came on in the front room and he turned to peer into the window. Inside, a slim woman in her thirties with a straight, blonde bob wearing a red tracksuit walked to the side of the room and stopped, messing with something on a shelf. A young girl joined her and started leaping about, fifteen or sixteen, short, spiky, dyed red hair in a tieless school uniform. The woman joined in and they both danced around the lounge to the silent music.
After a minute or two, she came to the window and he saw her clearly. She took a curtain in each hand and snapped them closed, shutting him out. Lee turned to face forward.
Debbie.
Looking at the dashboard he noticed the time. 6.55 p.m. Shit. The damned public meeting.
The rain was falling in sheets when Lee arrived at the community centre. He expected to see a hall full of buzzing residents, as was his experience in London – tell anyone you’re going to be knocking down a few houses and they would be out in force, arguing for a brand spanking new youth club as compensation. He entered a large, dank room brightened by the orange and purple drawings of toddlers. There were about two hundred chairs set out, but only around twenty people dotted around the room. A line of white men of various sizes and ages sat at a trestle table at the front of the hall.
He took a seat at the back and picked up a glossy green leaflet from his chair entitled Valley Park: Your Lives, Your Future. He yawned and sat back while a lanky Council worker in his fifties, an identity badge hanging from his neck, stood up and addressed the room over the top of his glasses. Lee lost him at Director of Regeneration. His voice was monotone with an annoying flat ‘r’. Lee surveyed the room. His eyes fell on the back of two heads about three rows from the front. He sat up a little straighter in his chair – it was her, with her matronly friend.
