by J. E. Mayhew
Cavanagh raised his hands and his eyebrows, displaying a disturbing lack of knowledge or care. “Who knows, Blakey? We can’t just go barging into people’s houses asking them why they’re rich, can we?”
“Not unless they’re massively wealthy and can’t account for it, no but…”
“And Quinlan hasn’t been down to Harrods on a shopping spree for handbags and shoes, recently. So we’re stuffed at the moment. But we’re watching him.”
Blake rubbed his chin. “Ross Armitage’s house,” he muttered. “Jeez. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would we tell you, Blakey?” Cavanagh said, leaning forward. “Have you heard something?”
Blake nodded. “Laura is back, according to Gambles…”
“According to Gambles? Has that nutter been pulling your little brother’s strings again, mate? You wanna have a word about that. Listen, you’ve got to stay away from Kyle Quinlan.”
Blake looked up. “What? Did you know? About Laura?”
“I can’t tell you anything, mate,” Cavanagh said, red spots appearing on his cheeks.
“You’re a crap liar, Matty. What’s going on? Where’s Laura? Is she safe?”
Cavanagh rubbed his forehead. “’Kin’ ‘ell,” he muttered. “She’s fine, Will. More than fine. Thriving, okay?”
“What are you on about?” Blake said, planting his fists on Cavanagh’s desk. “What do you mean she’s thriving?”
“I didn’t want to be the one to break the news, mate. She’s living with Quinlan. We’ve seen her coming and going freely from the house, sometimes with Quinlan sometimes without…”
“Jeez,” Blake threw his arms up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why do you think? Look at yourself. Nobody likes news like that. This is a delicate operation. We’re just at the information gathering stage and…”
“He must have some kind of hold over her,” Blake said. “We’ve got to get her away from there…”
“Will, she’s fine. There’s nothing we can do. You know that. Just stay away. I told you. Quinlan came back from the States and, from what we’ve gleaned, he was working for a pretty heavy outfit over there: drugs, extortion, protection and gambling rackets. Our theory is that he’s setting up on the Wirral. We’re watching him. If you go wading in, then he’ll cotton on right away.”
“But if Laura could be in danger. I need to…”
“You don’t need to do anything,” Cavanagh said, “apart from keep the fuck away from Caldy and that house. I’m warning you, mate, if I have to go to the Super about this, I won’t hesitate. This could be big.”
“You thinking about your career again, Matty?”
“I’m thinking about the tidal wave of drug-related crime and misery that we might stop if we catch Quinlan before he gets going. If you don’t like that, then go and have a word with Martin yourself. He’ll give you a flea in your ear, too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got more thinking to do.”
Blake stalked out of Cavanagh’s office. If he couldn’t get any information here, then he knew somewhere he could.
*****
Despite being told to go home, PC Mark Robertson had insisted on accompanying DC Alex Manikas to Harley Vickers’ home address. The boy had information that might explain why PC Robertson had ended the day with a black eye and a headache. Harley was running for a reason.
Harley lived across the A41 from Port Sunlight. These houses were clearly once Lever’s property too but hadn’t been protected in the same way as those in the main village. These houses had been pebble-dashed, double-glazed and extended over the years. Some had small front gardens and others had carports. The Vickers’ house was a small semidetached on a curiously-named road called The Anzacs.
“Australian and New Zealand Army Corps,” Mark Robertson said to Manikas who was frowning at the road sign. “First World War. Must have been named in their honour.”
“Were they the guys who fought at Gallipoli?” Manikas said. “I think I saw the film. God, what a mess, eh?”
“Indeed,” Robertson said. “We don’t know we’re born, do we? You know, part of me hopes these kids weren’t involved in Travis’ murder. I still like to have some faith in future generations.”
A large privet hedge screened the Vickers’ house from the road. Alex and Mark climbed the steps into a small garden with an immaculate lawn and a little Wendy house on one side of the path. It was a semi-detached property with a modern extension to the side that would never have been permitted had the house been built a few hundred yards across the road. It looked well-maintained and tidy. Alex rang the doorbell and glanced at Mark as Greensleeves echoed inside the hall.
“Classy,” Mark said.
A petite woman in her thirties with dark hair opened the door. “DC Alex Manikas, Ma’am,” he said, flashing his warrant card. “This is PC Mark Robertson. Would we be able to talk to Harley Vickers by any chance?”
She looked harassed before they had asked her about Harley but the mention of his name seemed to make the blood drain from her face. “What’s he been up to now?”
“Sorry, Ma’am, your name is?”
“I’m Jane Vickers, his mum,” she said, scowling. “Some days, I wish I wasn’t. What’s he done, then?”
“He ran out of school today and we think he may be able to help us with our investigation,” Alex said. “As far as we know, he isn’t in any trouble. He may have witnessed something, that’s all.”
The woman turned and bellowed up the stairs. “Harley! Get down here now!”
A slight, blond-haired boy appeared at the top of the stairs. When he saw Mark’s uniform, his eyes widened and he vanished out of sight. “Harley! Back here, now!”
“With your permission, Mrs Vickers, could we come in and talk to him?” PC Robertson said. “It might be more fruitful.”
“Fruitful?” Mrs Vickers said, looking confused.
“I mean, better than us standing here while you shout up the stairs,” Mark said, as he glanced up and down the road for effect. “It’ll stop the curtains twitching, too.”
“Come on in,” Mrs Vickers sighed.
Alex and Mark nodded, wiping their feet and squeezing into the tiny hallway. Mark climbed the stairs. Harley’s room was obvious by the huge ‘Keep Out’ sign on the door and the fact that his name was emblazoned all over it. He tapped gently. “Harley, my name’s PC Mark Robertson. I wonder if we could speak with you for a minute. You aren’t in any trouble. We just want a quick word about Bobby Price.” Silence. Mark gave the bedroom door a gentle push and it swung open.
A cool breeze greeted him, wafting a pungent combination of body odour, spray to cover the body odour, and cigarette smoke in Mark’s direction. The room lay empty and the window open. Mark hurried across a floor littered with dirty clothes and poked his head out of the window. Harley was down in the street limping away as fast as he could, his mum screeching at him from the front door.
*****
The Seraph was an old street corner pub in the North End area of Birkenhead trapped between the park and the docks. The area was a strange mixture of Sixties infill buildings, old Edwardian terraces and more modern remodelling. It was an area that had experienced great hardship through the Eighties but was quiet nowadays. These were the old houses of dock workers and the shipbuilders, ravaged in the Blitz and rebuilt. It was a tightknit, friendly community that looked after its own. Many of the corner pubs had gone to the wall in recent years as people took to drinking at home or preloading before going over to Liverpool on a night out.
Shunned even by locals, The Seraph managed to keep going because it had an underworld clientele of its very own. Reviews for it online made it clear it wasn’t the kind of pub you dropped in on unexpectedly and outsiders weren’t to expect a warm welcome. Coppers were even less welcome. And yet, the pub was always quiet. It was a place where criminals came to talk and no crime was tolerated on the premises.
Blake took a breath and pushed on the b
rass doorhandle, inhaling the heady alcohol-infused atmosphere. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dingy interior of the pub and in that time, the small number of drinkers had clocked him and were heading out of the other door. It was a tiny pub, no bigger than an average living room. Anyone sitting in here, had to squash onto a stool over a copper-topped table. Years of polish had blackened the wooden beams and the flock wallpaper could easily be from the early days of the pub. The landlord, Boredom McClague, stood crammed behind a short bar that housed three pumps and several lager taps. The bottles and optics on the wall flanked a hatch through to what seemed like an even smaller back room.
“Will Blake,” McClague said, flatly. “What a pleasant surprise.” The man’s face looked as though it was about to lose its fight with gravity entirely. The bags under his eyes, his jowls and even his ears seemed to sag, hence the nickname, Boredom. Looking so uninterested in the world was something that Boredom played to his full advantage. But to fall for that was to underestimate the wily landlord. Behind that mask of tired indifference glittered a pair of razor-sharp eyes.
“Evening Boredom,” Blake said. “Sorry to scare off your customers.”
Boredom shrugged. “They’ll be back. Anyway, I’ve been expecting you for some time now.”
“You sound like a Bond villain. Should I be worried?”
“Dunno, Blakey. Depends if you’ve come in here looking for a certain young lady…”
“Laura Vexley?”
“Aye. She was in here a month or so ago.”
“In here? But that’s like…”
“Sticking your head in the lion’s mouth? That’s what I thought. Then she pulled its bloody tail, just for laughs.”
“What d’you mean?”
Boredom leaned over his bar, bringing his face close to Blake’s. “I’m telling you this because it’s common knowledge, right? She came in here and told me to spread the word that she was sitting in the corner of the pub, sipping a cider like she was on holiday.”
“She wanted Kyle Quinlan to know she was here?”
Boredom gave another shrug. “I couldn’t say whose attention she was trying to grab but I know it wouldn’t be healthy…”
“Did Quinlan come for her?”
“Nope. A big guy called Nick picked her up. He’s not a regular, Blakey. Okay, last wee bit of information for free and then I’m going to have to kick you out. She came in here as bold as you like. If you ask me, she looked like a woman who had a plan. Rumour has it she’s fine, living in a big house…”
“In Caldy?”
“I wouldn’t know. Okay DCI Blake. Your time’s up. I want my customers back and they don’t like your company.”
Blake nodded. “Thanks, Boredom. Listen, Quinlan, what’s he up to?”
Boredom McClague gave Blake a look of appalled disgust at the very idea he’d answer such a question. His glass cloth squeaked on the pint pot he dried slowly and steadily, whilst gazing at the door. Blake needed more answers but he wasn’t going to get them here.
Chapter 17
It was late and Blake sat at his desk back in the Major Incident Room chewing on a stale digestive that he’d taken from a plate on Kinnear’s desk. He’d picked it up hoping it would go some way to easing his hunger, but it just made him want a steak pie and chips. He vowed to himself that he’d keep that particular promise on the way home, if he could. Kinnear and Cryer sat opposite him. They looked exhausted.
“I thought I’d let you know as soon as I could, sir. It looks like Owens met his dealer outside Green Lane regular as clockwork,” Cryer said. “A bit of coke and some dope. He didn’t want to bring the charity into disrepute.” She rolled her eyes.
Blake chewed slowly. Cryer always loved to draw out the tension. “The dealer, anyone we know?”
“We’re checking now. Probably. I think he’s telling the truth. He says he uses it to calm his nerves. Apparently he suffers from anxiety.”
“I’ve a good mind to turn his house upside down and charge him if we find anything,” Blake said, spraying crumbs everywhere. “Jeez. What a waste of time.”
“D’you think there might be some kind of drug link, sir?”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” Blake said. “He could still be telling porkies.”
“We should have more information by the morning, sir,” Kath said. “CCTV from the station will help. I’ve let Owens go for now.”
“Okay, Kath. We’ll have the DNA results too, hopefully and that will tell us something.”
“Says something about Owens, don’t you think?” Kinnear said, through a mouthful of custard cream. “To be so self-absorbed that you’d think about your dealer and your reputation before your murdered best friend.”
“Yeah,” Blake muttered. “Do you think he’s hiding anything else?”
“What like, sir?” Kath Cryer said.
“I dunno,” Blake sighed. “I can’t get away from the idea that Travis’s death has something to do with Pro-Vets. Money is always a stronger motive than revenge in my experience. The idea that those teenagers waited at the War memorial seems farfetched to me. They might give him a good hiding, fair enough but to slit his throat? That’s cold and calculating. He lay there unconscious, and someone took a knife to him. They weren’t frenzied stab wounds from a street brawl. Just one neat cut. The killer knew what they were doing. Owens was a trained soldier.”
“Bobby Price was publicly humiliated by Travis” Cryer pointed out. “From what his old teachers told uniform, Price had a liking for thuggery and an eggshell-thin ego. He could have stewed on it for a bit and then lain in wait…”
Blake shook his head. “They also said he wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the box. Would he have the capacity for watching Travis and coldly calculating when was the best time to kill him?”
“Maybe Bobby just wanted to rough Travis up and got carried away,” Kinnear said.
“The knife wound on Travis doesn’t look like the work of someone who is carried away,” Blake said. “That takes some knowledge and skill, Kath. While we’re chasing these teenagers all over the place, we’re not considering other options. I mean, how much money is going through that charity? Travis’ death might indeed turn out to be an act of mindless violence, but doesn’t it feel like more to you?”
“We could get a warrant to look at the books, sir,” Kinnear said, with a grin. “Set Ian Ollerthwaite on the trail…”
Blake shuddered. DC Ian Ollerthwaite specialised in forensic accounting. The man was narcolepsy in human form and the moment he opened his mouth, Blake felt overwhelmed by drowsiness. But with his pedantic attention to detail and gift for numbers, Ollerthwaite was perfectly suited to the role. “Great,” Blake said, rubbing his face. “Can I leave that with you to organise, Andrew?”
“Leave it with me, sir. I haven’t caught up with Ian’s latest acquisitions from the Chester Model Railway Mart,” Kinnear said. “It’ll be a blast.”
“He’s taking one for the team, there, boss,” Kath said.
“Do it tomorrow, Andrew,” Blake said, sipping the last of his tea. “No need to pop by his house and discuss it over his layout…”
“You’re all heart, sir,” Kinnear said, grimacing. “Isn’t that tea cold?”
Blake looked into the mug as if the temperature of the drink hadn’t occurred to him. “I suppose it was,” he said, smacking his lips. “No waste with me. Right. Get off home you two. Hopefully tomorrow, we’ll get some more intel on Bobby Price and bring him in. A lad like that can’t stay hidden for long, surely.”
Cryer lingered at the door as Kinnear left, then she muttered something to him, waved and returned to Blake’s desk. “You not going home, sir?”
“Yeah, in a minute, Kath. Just a lot on my mind, right now.”
“Is it Laura, sir?” Kath said, tentatively. “Only I heard a whisper today…”
“Yeah, she’s back, apparently. It’s all over the office, I suppose.”
“Just gossip
, sir, you know. So it’s true then? Have you spoken to her?”
“I haven’t Kath, no,” Blake sighed. “The gospel according to Boredom McClague is that she came back and went straight to Kyle Quinlan, who was out for her blood last I heard. I don’t know what she’s up to. To top it off, Cavanagh is watching Quinlan and knew about her weeks ago. He’s threatened me with the Super if I go anywhere near her.”
Kath paused a second. “Can I speak candidly, sir?” she said.
“You don’t normally ask for permission, Kath,” Blake said with a tired smile. “Fire away, you generally talk sense, anyway.”
“I don’t know Laura Vexley as well as you, sir, but you know she had quite a chequered past. She was a criminal and was happy to associate with lawless and violent men for many years of her life. In my experience, sir, a leopard can’t change her spots…”
“You’re mixing spots and chequers there, Kath,” Blake said, pinching the bridge of his nose. A killer headache was on the horizon, he could just feel it. “You think I should forget her and move on?”
“I dunno, sir. Not for me to say. But whatever life she’s chosen for herself, you don’t want to be part of it. Y-you’re better than that. Smarter too.”
The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. “But I love her Kath. She showed me how to move on. She brought me to life again after my mum disappeared…”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve over-stepped the mark,” Kath said, blushing.
“No, Kath. Thanks. Really, I needed to talk to someone. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should start over. After all, that’s what Laura’s done…”
Kath looked pained. “She hasn’t, sir. She’s reverted to type. I’m sorry, sir. Look, I’m going home, and you should too. Things always look better after a good night’s sleep.”
“Good night, Kath,” Blake said, “and don’t worry. I know what I’m going to do…”
“Sir?” Kath said, a concerned frown puckering her brow.
“Get some kip. Tomorrow’s another day.”
