by Paul Finch
‘More likely to have a laugh,’ he replied.
‘I thought Operation Clearway was strictly for grown-ups.’
‘Tell that to the guy who christened you “the Ripper Chicks”. I know plenty fellas in this job who’ve never grown up, and so do you.’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘Bag that letter along with the other one, take them both back and log them into evidence. If it is someone fucking about, let them shit themselves, wondering whether forensics’ll turn up their dabs.’
‘Can I make an alternative suggestion?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Go on.’
‘That we proceed to the Subways, check out this one last lead, and if that’s a load of cobblers too, we do exactly what you’ve just said. Des … suspicious though this is, we can’t not try to see what’s going on here? How would we sleep tonight?’
The light changed and they proceeded side-by-side to the next intersection, where another red brought them to a temporary halt. Lucy wasn’t actually convinced that this was cover enough. If someone was watching, he’d see that she was interacting with the car next to her. But in all honesty, if this guy was for real and a genuine witness, it shouldn’t really matter to him if more than one police officer showed up. Okay, he might be a nervous sort who’d gone to inordinate lengths to avoid a complex police entanglement, but ultimately he couldn’t seriously have expected an officer to fly solo on this given the potential risks.
‘How do you want to play this?’ Des asked. ‘There’s a lot of subway space under the precinct and he didn’t give you a specific spot … which is another thing I don’t like about it.’
‘Been thinking about that,’ she said. ‘I can leave my bike anywhere, but I’m gonna park at the south end, near the bus station, and walk through from that side.’
‘And what about me?’
‘Perhaps you can park on the taxi rank at the north end and walk through from that side? Meet me in the middle. That way, if he realises I’m not alone and legs it, you’ll be in a good position to head him off. And if he attacks me … well, you’ll be there in a minute or two, won’t you?’
They drove on together through the intersection, Des still far from happy.
Chapter 26
Crowley shopping precinct had been improved significantly in modern times.
Formerly a concrete Stalinist monstrosity, which had appeared overnight circa 1970 like a carbuncle on the already grim industrial landscape, it had now been completely rebuilt and re-named ‘the Crowley Emporia’. Whereas in its former incarnation the precinct had mainly occupied ground-level, with living space overhead – tiers of dismal grey flats rising above a labyrinth of bleak passages off which cubbyhole shops mostly sold cigarettes, booze, girlie mags or second-hand junk – it was now an art-deco retail palace boasting a variety of interconnecting floors and galleries, all airy and spacious and covered against the rain by stained, sound-proofed glass, and as such it was filled with traditional high street names.
No one could argue that in a depressed backwater of a town, which had suffered from its ‘Manchester satellite’ status rather than benefitted, the Crowley Emporia wasn’t a rare success story. But beneath it, the old subway system remained, even if it was little more now than a shabby relic of a forgotten past.
When first built at the end of the 1960s, Crowley shopping precinct had covered about a square mile and a half of the town centre. Major roads encircled it on three sides, and so the local authority had seen fit to install a complex of underground car parks and walk-throughs, only accessible by steep stone staircases. In addition to this, permanently faulty wiring had ensured they were ill lit. The net-result, even back then when the subways were used regularly and by necessity, was lots of graffiti, lots of litter and lots of unsavoury characters loitering in the gloom. Especially at night.
In modern times, the pedestrianisation of most of the above-ground area, and the addition of surface-parking and unloading bays for the retailers, plus new clean toilets and cafeterias, meant that this lower section was completely defunct. Certainly that was Lucy’s view. No one she knew used it any more unless they were up to no good. At least three times, she’d made juicy arrests down there: indecent assault, robbery, and possession with intent to supply. In truth, there was nowhere more ominous where this unknown letter-writer could have asked to meet her, but Lucy was increasingly determined that she wasn’t walking away from this thing empty-handed.
She and Des split up when they were a couple of streets away, and so when she arrived at her destination, Crowley Central Bus Station, at 8.35pm, she wasn’t quite sure whether she’d got there first or second. Not that it mattered. She halted her bike close to the entrance to the gents toilets, and lowered the kickstand. The bus station rolled away in a south-easterly direction, sliced into regimented rows by lines of lamp posts and steel-roofed shelters. One or two buses were idling at their terminals, the drivers behind their wheels reading evening papers. There was no sign of any passengers, but then it was now almost nine o’clock on a Thursday evening.
Lucy clasped her helmet under her arm as she walked west along a row of closed and grilled shopfronts, eventually coming to an entry-point, where a flight of wet stone steps dropped down a white-tiled stairwell. She shoved her hand into her pocket and cut the open line to Des. There was no point in it now. Once they were underground, all reception would cease.
Despite stepping lightly, her trainer-clad feet resounded as she descended, the only light above her already flickering on and off. At the bottom, some twenty feet down, she turned left. Here the white-tiled wall gave out and she was into the subways proper, a bare grey passage dwindling ahead of her, occasional patches of it blotted out where yet more lighting had failed. Lucy wrinkled her nostrils at the usual fetor of stale urine. She strained her ears for anything unusual, but heard only dripping water and the occasional muffled mumble of vehicles. When she started forward, she trod softly, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder to ensure that no one came down the stairway behind, but all she saw was the foot of that stairway gradually retreating into the twilight.
Des had been right: there’d been nothing specific in the last letter about where this guy expected to meet her, which didn’t bode well. There was no focal point to the Emporia Subways. It was a windswept maze of barren concrete tunnels. It was also a succession of tight corners, behind any one of which an assailant could be waiting.
She glanced around the first. Another passage trailed off. Most of the lights down that way were broken, so it led eventually into complete darkness. Meanwhile, an opening on the right connected with a cavernous space that had once been used for parking. It was strewn with litter and autumn leaves, water dripping from the brick arches forming its ceiling. At its far side, a large, barred gate blocked the slip road leading down from above. Lucy wandered in there anyway. The corroded hulks of two abandoned vehicles occupied a far corner, but there was nothing else.
Frustrated, she moved back to the junction. There were several more openings ahead, but increasingly this whole thing felt like a wild goose chase. She wondered if she should shout out to Des – he couldn’t be too far away – and then they could hook up and call it a night.
But some elusive sixth sense forbade this.
It was that old hunch thing again.
Perhaps Lucy’s was better honed than she’d thought, because half a second later she spied a figure crossing the passage about sixty yards ahead. She halted, but already the figure had vanished from view. Due to another faltering light bulb she’d only caught a glimpse of it, and that was insufficient to show whether or not it possessed the dumpy, raincoat-clad physique of Des Barton.
Again, instinct prevented her calling out. But she hurried forward.
The figure had walked across the passage from right to left, and when Lucy got there, it looked to have headed down a short flight of steps, at the foot of which another barred gate stood ajar. Beyond this lay some kind of darke
ned basement area.
Lucy hesitated. What actually was below the Emporia Subways?
Though she’d been a cop in this town for ten years, she didn’t know. Even during routine patrols of the Subways, Lucy had never descended to that level. Usually, it was closed off.
She sidled down the steps to the gate and peered through, though she wasn’t able to see much. It would have been nice at this moment to have her baton or CS spray with her, but of course she was in plain clothes and off-duty. She didn’t even have her handcuffs or torch. Despite this, she pushed at the gate. It was heavy and stiff, but it creaked sufficiently open for her to slide past it. She could just about discern a steel footway trailing away in front, steam rising through it. As her eyes attuned further, she saw pipes and valves on either side, and twists of leaky, foil-wrapped conduit snaking overhead.
She took her mobile out and activated the light, though it didn’t bring a great deal extra into view. Training it ahead, she progressed forward, feet clanking on the grille.
The route ran straight for maybe fifty yards before ending at a T-junction. Lucy stopped, more palls of steam drifting past. Five yards to the right stood a closed door made of heavy, riveted steel, with no handle visible. On the left, the passage led past a row of massive, churning cisterns. She opted for that direction, still training the light in front. But every additional step now felt like folly. There was no good reason why this informant, if that’s what he genuinely was, would be all the way down here. Despite these misgivings, she turned another corner.
More of the same faced her: conduit lining the ceiling, liquid gurgling through horizontal pipes. However, at least this next passage appeared to be doubling back towards the entrance. She followed it, occasionally getting caught in gusts of steam as they burst through meshed vents. However, a few yards further on, the path veered sharply to the right, terminating at a bank of wheels and dials. At which point, from somewhere in the dim recesses of this complex place, there was a short, thin squeal.
Lucy froze. It had not been a squeal that some human or animal might make, but metallic.
Try though she may, it was impossible not to picture a knifepoint creeping along metal.
Glancing behind her, she was confronted by a wall of steam so dense that it was more like moorland mist. Even her phone light failed to penetrate, turning it an iridescent white.
Another squeal sounded, this one closer – and accompanied by a loud clatter.
Still that terrible knife, but now a blunt instrument too.
Instinctively, Lucy felt again for her own weapons, which of course were hanging in her locker back at the station. Her ears strained for further sounds, only for the steam to actually envelope her, billowing up from below. Coughing and wafting, she lurched forward, trying to fight through it – and didn’t notice the figure standing in her way until she collided with it.
‘Hey!’ she shouted, jumping back, assuming the combat position.
Just as quickly, the steam evaporated, to reveal Des rubbing his thigh and glaring at her reproachfully. ‘You’re all knees and bloody elbows,’ he complained.
‘God almighty, Des … you scared the crap out of me!’
‘What’re you doing down here?’
‘I thought I saw … someone.’ She glanced past him, but saw only more steam. ‘I thought someone came down here. Was that you?’
‘I came down here because I couldn’t find you and the gate was open.’
That didn’t rule Des out, she supposed, but whoever she’d seen had looked taller.
‘You weren’t kicking things around?’ she asked. ‘Weren’t hammering pipes by any chance?’
He looked baffled. ‘Not as I noticed.’
‘Did you hear anything like that?’
‘I heard something, not sure what. I assumed it was you.’
‘The last one was like half a minute ago. Des … he’s got to be down here now.’
‘Unless that was what you heard.’ Des pointed up past her shoulder.
Lucy turned, and now that her eyes were fully adjusted, gazed through another mass of dust-shrouded pipework to a high, mesh-fenced balcony, accessible by a switchback steel stair and on top of which what looked like an exterior door stood open.
‘You mean he was making a quick exit?’ she said.
‘Yeah. He’s had his fun, he’s dragged us down here, and now he’s gone home.’
Lucy’s heart sank. Suddenly, it all seemed incredibly likely. The squealing she’d heard was the sound of unoiled hinges, the clattering the sound of the outer door being lugged open.
Irritated, she commenced walking.
Des limped in pursuit. ‘So where we going now?’
‘Out.’
‘That’s the first thing I’ve heard all evening that I like.’
They worked their way through the maze of pipes and conduit, at last locating the foot of the stairs and climbing to the top, where Lucy halted and looked down. From this height, it was impossible to make out any detail of the subfloor level they’d just wandered around.
‘Someone’s got nothing better to do, love, that’s all,’ Des said.
She shook her head, unsure what to think. They re-emerged into the outer world through a maintenance door that Lucy had previously only ever seen locked. It was located about fifty yards to the right of where she’d parked her bike.
‘I feel like a right pillock,’ she muttered.
Des shrugged. ‘Ultimately, it wasn’t too bad a call. You’re right in that we didn’t have much time to decide what to do, and it was a lead of sorts … there wasn’t too much scope for doing anything different.’
‘I dunno. We could have gone straight to the boss with it. That’s what you’d have done.’
‘And who’s to say I’d be right? You think Jim Cavill would have been happy with me if he’d been the one trekking all over town. It’s a bag of shit, chuck. These things happen.’
But Des was bouncing from foot to foot as he uttered these words of comfort, and Lucy knew why. It was nine o’clock, and he had to get home.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You shoot off. I’ll book the evidence in.’
He nodded, looking relieved, but just as quickly frowned. ‘I’d like to say “see you tomorrow”, but I won’t, will I?’
‘You don’t get rid of me that easily,’ she replied. ‘I’m back in uniform from Monday, and I’ll still be working out of Robber’s Row. We’ll see each other plenty.’
He slapped her on the shoulder, before turning and heading for the nearest corner. Lucy climbed onto her bike, but before she put her helmet on, glanced again at the black doorway leading to the subterranean level.
Anyway you cut it, this didn’t feel like a piss-take. She’d allowed herself to think that it was possibly because the whole thing was so elaborate. But for the very same reason she now had doubts. Hadn’t it all been just a bit too intricate? Especially when the most you were going to get out of it was a couple of sniggers. Especially when seven people had been brutally slain and what this really amounted to was an obstruction of that investigation.
Despite Des’s logic, it really didn’t compute that this was just a silly game.
Des checked his watch as he walked quickly along the pavement.
There were no two ways about it; Yvonne would go spare – especially as on this occasion he hadn’t even phoned ahead to warn her that he’d be late. It wasn’t like he could blame her either; not after twenty-five years of this kind of thing. When he’d first told her he was joining the Intel Unit and would be working a solid four-till-four, she’d initially been pleased. Though it had meant that he wouldn’t be around in the evening, which she wasn’t overly keen on, it had also meant that he’d be in by the time she woke up in the morning and would be with her for most of each day. It also meant the hours would be regular. There’d be no unexpected overtime. Somewhat typically though, this acceptable arrangement hadn’t lasted long, and they were already back in the realms of uncertai
n starts and even less certain finishes.
Des sighed and walked faster.
Yvonne had never really got used to him being a copper. They’d first begun dating at middle school. They were engaged when they were nineteen, and married by the time they were twenty-one. She’d then been stunned when, at the age of twenty-three, he’d announced that he was packing in his job as a trainee plumber and applying to join the police. It would be better money and better prospects, or that was how he’d tried to sell it to her, but it had still come as a hell of a shock. Because back in those days, kids from their part of Manchester, especially kids of mixed race, didn’t join the cops; not in the numbers they joined now. But she’d stuck with him – of course she had – through all the thick and thin that had followed, for which he was supremely grateful as well as still being madly in love with her.
Even all these years later, Des came over warm and fuzzy when he thought about this: the girl of his dreams, the perfect wife and the ideal mum, who’d not only kept a beautiful home for him but had gone on to bear him six children. Lord knew, that was hard enough in this day and age, but when the father was nearly always at work it would challenge anyone’s relationship. It was less warm and fuzzifying to ponder that, he supposed – especially when he had so little to show for all this time on the job. He earned thirty-six grand a year, which wasn’t too bad, but for a lifetime of unsocial hours it wasn’t a great pay-off.
Something that Yvonne was less than delighted about, along with her fears for his safety, of course, which never went away.
The main problem here was that Yvonne was superstitious. She got that from her late grandma, who’d been born in St Kitts, and who’d reckoned that just being a policeman was asking for trouble because it challenged the forces of chaos. Those forces didn’t forgive, Grandma had said, so being a copper would get steadily more dangerous the longer Des stayed in. Each new day, the evil stacked against him would increase, and the chance that something bad would happen grew ever greater. Now, in his third decade in the job, he thought, he must be walking very thin ice indeed.
