Alias

by Cari Hunter

  “When are you leaving?” I ask. I won’t be following her advice, and I’ll be damned if I ever mention her name to the SMIU.

  “As soon as I’ve packed. I’ll try to run those plates for you, the ones from the Copthorne house, and tie up any outstanding queries, but I can’t be involved to this extent. Not now.”

  “Why don’t you contact the SMIU? I could be on a plane out of the country in a couple of hours.”

  “Because I hope you’ll make the right decision.” She comes over to the window, watching the geese at the lock so she doesn’t have to look at me. “Whatever you might have done, whatever part you might have played in all of this, I believe that you believe what you’re saying.”

  I scoff. “Mostly you believe I’ll land you in the crap to save my own neck, if I turn out to be a shithead.”

  She does look at me then, and I’m shocked to see tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do in that situation,” she says. “I’ve no right to predict what you’d do.”

  Her honesty destroys my righteous indignation. I rip off a piece of kitchen roll, handing it to her in lieu of a tissue.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She wipes her eyes, and we go back to watching the geese fight over a handful of chips that a drunk has lobbed into the canal. As feathers fly and the water churns, he tosses the wrapper in after them and walks away.

  Chapter Twenty

  In no hurry to get home, I drive around the city, hitting Deansgate at lunchtime as office workers clutching Pret A Manger bags dodge between the near-stationary cars. Suits start to give way to self-conscious trendiness the closer I get to the university, and the complicated cycle lanes are full of students toiling against the headwind and the weight of their textbooks.

  For old times’ sake, I stop at the Barbakan deli to buy a four-piece loaf and kabanosy. The girl behind the counter greets me by name, my other name, clucking her tongue in sympathy and tossing in a black pudding, with her condolences.

  “I lit a candle,” she says in heavily accented English. “For Jolanta.”

  “She would have appreciated that,” I tell her, and push out through the crowd before I start bawling.

  Alternate showers of sleet and hail hit the windscreen as I leave the main road and slow for the first of many speed bumps. The forecast warned of a cold front hitting us from the north, with snow predicted for the Pennines and a slushy covering possible for the city streets. Between the jolts of traffic-calming measures, I daydream about Pryce sitting in front of her open fire, book in hand—something serious and literary, probably a classic—surrounded by sparkling white fields and mountains. She’s drinking whiskey from a crystal tumbler, her feet bare and her hair loose. Then I accelerate to hit a bump extra hard, because if she knew I was romanticising her in such a rose-tinted, hackneyed manner, she’d quite rightly slap me about the head.

  When I eventually arrive home, there’s no one skulking on the street, and the flat itself shows no signs of intrusion. Wallace has left a “just checking in” message, while Rob Reid’s is a more pointed enquiry: have I rescheduled my hospital appointment? And do I have an alternative number for Detective Sergeant Pryce, because she’s not answering her work mobile and the officers on her team have told him she’s on leave?

  I defer replying in favour of a long hot bath, during which I phone Priti to arrange a takeaway and cheesy film extravaganza for tonight. From the sound of her voice, it’s a date we’re both sorely in need of.

  Sinking down into the bubbles, I try to formulate a new plan of action, one I can implement without Pryce’s assistance or resources. Handing things over to the SMIU isn’t an option, nor is dragging her name through the mud. No matter how anxious I am to clear my own name, I won’t do it at the expense of hers. Too booze-addled for sagacity, I go back to basics, reminding myself of her earlier advice: “Find out who murdered your friend and why, and whether that person was a colleague.”

  “Friends,” I whisper, covering my face with a warm flannel. Pryce and I hadn’t known about Krzys at the time.

  The heat is making me dopey, so I drag myself from the tub and have a working lunch in the middle of my bed. Logic returns halfway through a kabanos, and I resolve to construct a possible sequence of events that starts with Krzys’s murder and concludes in Snowdonia. It’s something Pryce and I never got the opportunity to discuss, and I miss having her to play devil’s advocate as I hash out the timeline. We made a good team while it lasted, fitting together well in every sense of the phrase.

  “Why murder Krzys?” I write as a header. Then, “Threat to Hamer’s/to the drugs operation?/Blackmail to get Jo out of Copthorne?”

  I suspect the answer might be “all of the above,” so I move to the next point: “Who murdered Krzys?” Had Jo recognised his assailant? She’d been forced to watch, so might I have the identity of his killer secreted away somewhere? Where’s the gun? Pryce still has the bullet, and there has to be a weapon out there somewhere that matches it.

  Chewing and swallowing without tasting, I scribble the questions down and decide on my next point: “Why tell me?” Because we were still best friends, and I was unconnected to Copthorne, is the simplest answer. Surely the more pertinent question is “What would I have done next?” I was an undercover detective whose relatively straightforward drugs case now included a coldblooded execution. If Jo was too scared to go directly to the police, it seems logical that I would have outed myself as an officer and encouraged her to come to Belle Vue and provide a witness statement.

  “Of course you did,” I mutter, slapping my crust back onto my plate. I would have given her all the usual spiel: we can protect you; you’ll be able to testify via a video link; we’ll keep your name out of the press. So what the hell did she say that stopped us from doing any of that? I rock back on my chair and then fling the legs forward again, thumping them onto the laminate as the answer hits me: it must have been Jo who knew someone from MMP was working with Hamer’s, and this is the point she dropped the bombshell. It’s an answer so glaringly obvious that I bow my head, ashamed that I’m only just making the connection.

  Although I can’t recall the conversation or even prove it took place, it’s the most likely trigger for our flight to Snowdonia. Without that revelation, I would have requested an urgent contact and reported the murder regardless of Jo’s consent. Instead, not knowing how deeply the rot had set in, I tried to take her to a place of safety, and someone ambushed us.

  I shove my papers and lunch aside and curl under the duvet. I should feel elated, having created a plausible timeline that suggests I’m innocent of any crime, but every word I’ve written is worthless without proof. Pryce would say I’ve designed a happy ending for myself, and she has an uncanny knack of being right about these things.

  “Fuck her,” I say and have an unfortunate flash of me doing just that. It makes me damp and hot, and I pull the pillow over my head, groaning and cursing her name. She’ll be halfway to the bloody hills by now, and she’s still driving me mad.

  * * *

  With case-related inspiration proving elusive, I launch myself into a full-on housework offensive, hoovering, dusting, polishing the bathroom taps, and, saving the best for last, emptying the fridge of food that’s on the verge of sprouting legs and escaping of its own accord. The cleaning frenzy works on two levels: it stops me thinking about Pryce, and it’ll prove to Priti that I’m managing and don’t need her to move back in.

  She arrives at seven o’clock sharp, bearing Chinese takeaway and a selection of mindless action blockbusters. There’s a reinvigorated bounce to her step, and she’s lost the haggard, sleep-deprived look that had pinched her cheeks and reddened her eyes. I know it well, having seen it in the bathroom mirror not ten minutes ago.

  She loads a DVD as I load the plates, and we settle on the sofa with lap trays and a bottle of white wine.

  “Cheers,” she says, clonking her glass against mine. “H
ere’s to wankers getting exactly what they deserve.”

  “Hear, hear.” I sip my wine as she chugs half of hers. “Yesterday morning, wasn’t it?” I ask, struggling to recall the details from the news bulletin.

  “Yep. Someone spotted the little prick buying fags in a Texaco. He’d been hiding at his cousin’s in Eccles and dressing his daughter as a lad. He’d chopped all her hair off, but she stood there, hands on hips, and told our sarge, ‘My name’s Chelsea and I’m a girl.’”

  I toast Chelsea’s moxie with a prawn cracker. “Who’s got custody?”

  “Maternal grandma. Nice house in Heaton Chapel, so we’re hoping for a happy ending of sorts.” Priti tops up her glass and studies me over its rim. “What’s going on with you?”

  My sweet and sour suddenly becomes the most interesting thing in the room. I push a piece around my plate, gathering up sauce that I don’t feel like eating. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  She crunches a cracker thoughtfully and waggles the remnant at me. “You seem different, and I’m not sure if it’s in a good way. It’s like, you still have that death-warmed-over thing going on, but every now and again you’re getting this spaced-out sort of smile on your face.”

  Bollocks. That was probably when I pulled the coffee table closer for our drinks. I smile at her again, hoping it’s a more innocent version than the one she caught earlier. “I’m just happy to see you,” I say and she lobs a wonton at my head.

  “Fuck off. You’ve been up to something.”

  I return the wonton to her plate and chew on a bit of chicken. Although I’d dearly love to tell her everything, I have a promise to keep, and letting slip any kind of hint would inevitably lead to her wheedling the entire story out of me. One sympathetic word and I’d spill my guts before her chow mein went cold.

  She turns the volume on the telly down, hushing the clatter of gunfire and explosions.

  “Do I need to worry?” she asks.

  I shake my head, setting off a shockwave of screeching in my ear.

  Instead of challenging me, she closes her hand over mine. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No.” It’s all I can manage, but I take a proper hold of her hand and cling on to her. She brushes her fingers through my fringe, clearing a space for the kiss she presses to my forehead.

  “You know you can call me any time, day or night, don’t you?”

  I squeeze her hand, which must be answer enough because she makes a show of retrieving the bag of prawn crackers and offering me one.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She adjusts the volume in time for us to sit back and marvel at Melissa McCarthy’s absolute mastery of four-letter invective.

  “Just be careful, my darling,” Priti says as the scene quietens and moves on. “If you won’t let me help you, then that’s all I ask.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Manchester welcomes the weekend with overcast skies and the occasional belt of wet snow. My mood as gloomy as the weather, I open the curtains and get back in bed, where I stare at the clouds and fail to muster the enthusiasm to venture out into the cold again. An hour of fitful dozing makes me feel even worse, however, so I give myself a stern talking to and rummage in my bedside table until I find my gym membership card. My gentle reintroduction session turns into ninety minutes of cardio, topped off by a four-mile stint on the treadmill, and I emerge sweating and starving and ready for anything.

  A reread of my timeline over toast and cereal doesn’t bring forth many possibilities, though, and I finally plump for two borderline-relevant tasks that I can at least attempt solo. Before setting off, I slip Rebecca Elliott’s bus pass into my wallet and check my phone for messages and emails, finding nothing except a text from Priti reminding me of her work mobile number. I hover over my last text to Pryce, the empty space below it enticing me to send another, but no amount of cute emoticons or amusing autocorrect fuck-ups would fix things between us, and the more I think about her, the more I want to speak to her. I drop my phone in my pocket and grab my car keys instead.

  The threat of snow-induced chaos hasn’t kept people off the roads; it’s just made them drive like pillocks. I tailgate a Honda Jazz doing seventeen miles an hour on a forty stretch, until it swerves into a bus stop to let me past. I might have felt guilty, had the driver not interrupted his phone call to lower his window and shout “fucking slut!” at me.

  Making up for lost time, I give Curry Mile a wide berth and nip through Gorton to Beswick. The second woman from Copthorne lives in a two-up, two-down almost identical to Shannon Millward’s. Outside her house, a lad in a thin coat is scraping the meagre layer of snow from the pavement with his bare hands. As I park and turn off the engine, he stuffs a stone into the centre of his missile and launches it at a younger girl, who takes the hit on her shoulder and retaliates by battering him with her Peppa Pig. The shrieks of juvenile warfare bring out an overweight bloke from next door, who hauls both children up by their collars and shakes them like puppies as he drags them inside. He slams the door hard enough to rattle the foundations, but the blinds at his neighbour’s window don’t so much as twitch.

  I slouch in my seat, drumming the steering wheel as I contemplate my next move. It’s clear I haven’t thought this through. I can’t approach the woman as Alis Clarke, and I have little to no reason to approach her as Rebecca. In fact, making any sort of contact with her risks her tipping off Hamer’s, who would smell a rat if they found out I was knocking on the door of Jo’s escort colleagues. I need Pryce, with her legitimacy and her lack of connections, not to mention her common sense, which would have politely but firmly stopped me coming here in the first place.

  “Fuck’s sake,” I mutter, though I’m too fed up to put any real vehemence into it.

  Deciding to quit while I’m moderately behind, I start the car and retrace my route to Gorton. The local supermarket provides me with a handy parking space, and I double-check the address printed on the box Jo’s necklace came in. Abdella’s is small and tricky to find, its understated black façade swallowed up by the gaudy signage of the far larger Caribbean minimarkets that surround it. I buzz for entry, and a light flashes green as the lock disengages. Opening the door makes a bell tinkle, and I stop and stare at it like a dog mistrained by Pavlov. It seems familiar, but I can’t think why.

  A Pakistani woman behind the counter lets me gawp for a few seconds and then clears her throat. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, sorry.” I take out the box and open it to display the necklace.

  “No returns without a receipt,” she tells me.

  “That’s okay. I’m not returning it.” I snap the box shut, but I’m floundering already, unsure why I’ve come here. “A friend of mine bought this a few weeks ago, and I was hoping you might be able to tell me the exact date he came in,” I say, thinking on my feet. Detectives like exact dates. We like to put things in order and confirm a sequence of events. If there’s a whiteboard and photos to go with that sequence, we’re as happy as pigs in shit.

  The woman puffs out her cheeks, but it’s not as if she’s rushed off her feet in her empty shop, so she marches to the till to fetch a handwritten ledger.

  “Let me see it again,” she says.

  I give her the box, and she flicks back a few pages in the ledger and starts to cross-reference a three-digit code on the box lid.

  “Twenty-third of December, paid in cash,” she says, and a chill passes through me. I can imagine Krzys standing where I am now, weighing up the possibilities, deciding which Jo would like the most, which would suit her, and whether he could afford it.

  “Did he leave his name?” I ask, because it’s only an assumption that it was Krzys.

  “Paid in cash,” she repeats. “No name.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  She pushes the box toward me, but I hesitate and glance toward the door. “Are you the only person who works here?”

  “No,” she says. “I have two sisters.”


  “And you don’t remember selling this necklace?”

  She shrugs and then shakes her head. “I don’t work Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  “Okay.” I pick up the box. “This is going to sound weird, but do you remember me ever coming in here?”

  She takes her time, putting on a pair of glasses and leaning in close. “Maybe, with more hair,” she says at length.

  I lean my hand on the cool glass of the counter, steadying myself. “With a man?” I ask.

  “No. A lady, I think.”

  Jo. Jesus. I work the rest out quickly, and it takes all my self-control not to climb over the counter and rip the ledger from the shop assistant’s hands. “Can you check your book on February the ninth?” I say, opening my wallet and pulling out the bus pass I hadn’t needed to show the unnamed Copthorne woman. “I think I might’ve rented a safety deposit box from you.”

  She clicks her fingers as the penny drops. “Ah! Yes, that’s right. Here.” Her manicured nail tracks to a payment of seventy-five pounds. “Three months. We are very reasonable.”

  I nod and show her the ID. Reasonable rates apparently don’t require a passport or driving licence; she disappears behind the scenes, bangs about a bit, and reappears holding a small metal box into which she inserts a key. She sets the box in front of me, allowing me to do the honours. The lock catches and then gives as I turn the key, and the lid springs open to reveal a Jiffy bag, unmarked and unsealed. The woman watches me slyly as I tip its contents into my hand, but she sniffs in disgust when all I raise into the light is a neon-pink USB stick.