Stolen

by Paul Finch

  McCracken shrugged. ‘I can help her out there—’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Lucy interrupted. ‘That would send exactly the wrong message. Look … Mum’s lonely. She’s got a couple of mates, but no one she really cares about and no one who cares about her … apart from me. There’s been no bloke in her life since she moved to Crowley.’ She registered his surprise. ‘Yeah, that’s right. A belter like Mum, and she’s been a singleton her whole life. She threw her best years away on raising her only child.’

  McCracken contemplated this. ‘Or alternatively … it’s just that I’m a tough act to follow.’

  ‘Hey, maybe,’ Lucy said with sarcasm. ‘Look – perhaps it genuinely wasn’t your fault that you totally screwed her up the first time. But it is going to be your fault if you do it again. I might as well be honest … these flowers, this birthday card. She thinks you want a reconciliation.’

  McCracken didn’t respond but appeared to give it more and even deeper thought.

  ‘I must admit,’ Lucy said, ‘I wondered it myself. What happened to Goldilocks?’

  He glanced up. ‘Charlie? She’s still around.’

  ‘Does she know you’ve been sending presents to other women?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And she accepts it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Me and Charlie have frank discussions about these things.’

  ‘This is bollocks. I want to know what you’re up to and I want it to stop.’

  ‘What I’m up to is showing affection to one of the most important women in my life. Come your birthday, maybe you’ll get a card and kisses too.’

  In your dreams, pal, she told herself, but his attitude was deeply disconcerting.

  ‘Whatever the truth is,’ Lucy said, ‘you’re out of line pulling stunts like this!’

  McCracken looked disappointed. ‘Sorry you think so.’

  It was the first time she’d ever seen him vague or distracted. Could it actually be that he’d acted this way towards her mother from some minor but genuine affection, which perhaps was confusing even to him?

  ‘Can I at least get a promise that you won’t do it again?’ Lucy said.

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! Look, I came here intending to tell you not just to back off, but to call her up and let her know there’s been a misunderstanding. To tell her that it’s best if you guys keep going your separate ways. Now all I want is that you don’t send her any more presents. Surely that’s not too much to ask?’

  But it was as though he hadn’t been listening. ‘Does your mother want this reconciliation she thinks I’m looking for?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t!’

  ‘You sure, Lucy? You speaking for Cora now, or just yourself?’

  ‘Look, I’ve asked you nicely. But I’ll play hardball if I have to.’

  McCracken looked amused. ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve been toying with this idea anyway. Next time I’m in the office, I might just go and see my DI … and tell him exactly what my and your relationship is.’

  ‘What … just like that?’

  ‘I’ll tell him I only found out recently. That I didn’t believe it at first, but that once it was obviously kosher, I decided to come clean. And I’ll take whatever shitstorm results from it.’

  McCracken appraised her, perhaps wondering whether she was deadly serious or simply a good actress. ‘You sure you want to do that, Lucy? You’re a hero at the moment. Why throw it away?’

  ‘I’m a divisional detective constable. We don’t have heroes at my level.’

  ‘And this’ll keep you down there for ever.’

  ‘And how will that stack against the outcome you’ll face? Because the moment my lot learn the truth, your lot will too. You think Wild Bill will settle for denying you promotion?’

  ‘It’ll be bad, there’s no question,’ he agreed. ‘It won’t be pleasurable for either of us … but I think I’ll be able to handle things at my end.’

  ‘You don’t sound too certain.’

  ‘We’ll only know when it happens, won’t we? But I’m not just going to run.’

  Fleetingly, that statement sobered her. The man in front of her had exerted life-and-death power many times. He was respected and feared across the underworld of the Northwest. Even the cops considered him untouchable because he had so many attack-dog lawyers at his beck and call, so many judges and jurors on his payroll, and so many fall-guys around him to take the rap, that he was almost impossible to prosecute. While if his reputation alone wasn’t enough to protect him from gangland rivals, his army of enforcers and gunmen would. And yet here she was – ‘a slip of a tart,’ as Les Mahoney had called her – an everyday detective constable with a blemished record, and yet she was so positioned that with a single sentence she could place him in serious jeopardy. She literally had him on a cliff edge. It almost made her queasy. And not in a good way.

  ‘Why don’t you make it easy on both of us?’ she said. ‘Promise not to contact Mum again.’

  His expression hardened. ‘And I don’t respond well to threats.’

  She shook her head. ‘This has got to be a wind-up.’

  ‘Why? Because I’ve found something in life I actually value? You think there’s no heart at all beneath this steely exterior?’

  She backed away but pointed a finger. ‘This is the last warning. You are not inveigling your way back into our lives. You’d better believe that’s more important to me even than my job.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Don’t test me, Dad.’

  He leaned against his Bentley, nonchalant again, the casual, confident achiever.

  She turned and stumbled back to her Jimny, fiddling clumsily with the keys, numbed at how badly that had gone and how little she’d obtained from him.

  ‘Rarefied atmosphere up on that moral high ground?’ he called after her.

  She didn’t look back, just hit the fob and opened her car.

  ‘Just remember, Lucy,’ he said, ‘when you tell them all about us … quite a few things have happened in your investigations of late which, shall we say, don’t exactly figure in the Greater Manchester Police rulebook. And they’ll come up too. Inevitably they will. But hey … if you don’t mind that, if you’re quite happy that you can just bullshit all that controversy away, in a career that’s hardly been controversy-free as it is, then good on you. I was only thinking yesterday … you get more like me than your mum every time I meet you.’

  She still didn’t look back. Just got into the Jimny and drove.

  Good God. She thought she’d had him on a cliff edge.

  Chapter 17

  He wouldn’t admit it, but Nathan always felt challenged by men who’d done something with their lives. It was amazing the kinds of people who turned up at FitnessFanatix. Individuals who’d known serious self-discipline in their time, who’d done physically demanding jobs, or had regularly courted danger – ex-soldiers, ex-cops and the like – and yet for some reason had let it all slip away, their sculpted physiques now dwindled into unimpressive shadows of what they’d once been, their reactions turned sluggish, their outlook on life morose, tired.

  Deep down, Nathan scorned such losers. But that wasn’t why he avoided working with these one-time alpha males. Mostly it was because, for all his contempt of them, he still felt challenged.

  That Monday evening, like all evenings, he walked the gym floor on the balls of his feet, in his regulation red tracksuit trousers, white tennis shoes and slashed crimson vest, the one that hid nothing from the world of his muscular, sunbed-bronzed physique with its multiple menacing tattoos. The vest was non-regulation, of course; as one of the permanent staff here, Nathan was supposed to wear a non-threatening white T-shirt, but no one really cared. First of all, because he was a good personal training instructor; he didn’t just talk the talk, he walked it too (or swaggered it). But also because he looked the part. A tad brutish maybe, with his shaven head and his constant menacing
frown – it was all nonsensically macho, but wasn’t that what this place was all about? Most of the blokes who came here did it because they yearned for big muscles and flat bellies, because they dreamed of being tough guys who would turn all the ladies’ heads when they lumbered past on the beach, or while walking their pet pit-bulls in the park. Whether that sort of thing really worked for the sophisticated twenty-first-century woman was a moot point, of course, but this was still the way most men thought. So, in that regard, Nathan was a great advert for the place.

  Even if, deep down, he was increasingly frustrated that this was all he’d ever be.

  He was twenty-four now, and personal trainer was the only job he’d ever held. It was great on one hand, because it was something he was good at, and he wasn’t too badly paid. Plus, it allowed him to run one or two other lines of private business, which were also pretty lucrative. But when he was putting some wimp through his paces on the rowing machine or the grappler, or watching him sweat and cringe as he pumped out the miles on the static bike, and then suddenly learned that the wimp had once worked in a field hospital in Afghanistan, or had flown fighter jets, or had climbed Everest or been to the South Pole, he was the one who felt inferior, he was the one who was intimidated – and that wasn’t great for Nathan.

  How could he prowl the gym as he was now, gruffly correcting poor technique, or telling people to put their phones away, or ordering them off the weights if they were going at it solo, when, inside, he didn’t feel like a real man? How could he smarm his way around the girls when the lies he told them about his undercover operations in Russia and Iraq, or his days as a submariner or paratrooper, were paper-thin, based on nothing more than his own imagination?

  Of course, at the end of the day, that didn’t stop Nathan looking for girls. When you were as red-blooded as he was, it was impossible to do anything else in a place like FitnessFanatix. They came in by the bucket-load. After the old ladies in the morning and the stressed-out mothers in mid-to-late afternoon, came the late teens and twenty-somethings in the evening, the lookers, the gorgeous babes who fitted their Lycra to perfection, whose skin soon glowed with perspiration. Those were the ones Nathan was really interested in, and the reason he always requested the late shift if he was allowed to choose. Of course, you had to be careful these days, in the age of the #MeToo movement.

  Frankly, that rankled with Nathan.

  You had to be especially careful in the workplace, where simply hitting on a girl could be seen as exploiting your position and might well be deemed a sacking offence. Looking was still free, of course – that was something, at least. Not that Nathan was content with that. He was bursting to get up close and personal with several of the regular girls here. But even so, for his own protection, he knew that he must win their confidence gradually, over a protracted period. Until then he’d have to restrict himself to feasting his hungry eyes. And right now, there were plenty such meals to choose from. From the blonde on the treadmill to the brunette on the power rack to the raven-haired darling on the dip bars. Above all, though, as always, his predatory gaze was drawn most to the redhead on the cross-trainer.

  Mainly that was because, tonight, unusually, she was here alone, but also because she was an absolute knockout. He’d been watching her for at least a couple of months now. She was a frequent attendee at the gym, and she worked hard when she was here, often pushing herself close to the limit, and fuck, did it show.

  She was about nineteen, he reckoned, and though, up close, there was something vaguely wintry about her, she was still an absolute beaut, with a porcelain-pale complexion, a pink, cherubic mouth and piercing blue eyes. Her hair wasn’t red as such but fair with reddish tints; it was also short, spiky and shaved at the back and sides, a near-punk look, which, along with her trim but terrific physique, and her little shorts and sweat-damp vest, only added to the ‘action girl’ lustre.

  Truth be told, Nathan was no keener on being challenged by athletic women than he was by rugged men, but in their case, it was a different kind of challenge – it was a taunt, a tease, it virtually invited him to meet it, and Nathan would never turn down any invitation with such a honeyed promise at the end.

  ‘See you’re on your own today,’ he said, idling past.

  She threw him a quick, incurious glance. ‘Very …’ She was breathing hard, almost too hard to speak. ‘Very … observant of you.’

  He nodded and smiled, and then realised that he’d already been dismissed. Mildly vexed, he turned away.

  ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘Don’t … don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that –’ she forced a breathless laugh ‘– I’m totally … wiped out.’

  He turned back. ‘I’m not surprised.’ The digital reading on the cross-trainer’s VDU was ample evidence of just how hard she’d been at it. ‘Four hundred calories! And this isn’t the only machine you’ve been on tonight, is it? You’re really putting yourself through it.’

  She focused on the VDU herself. ‘I like to keep … fit.’

  ‘Well, you’re …’ He paused. He’d been about to say that she was in great shape as a result, but that could have been construed as overstepping the mark. ‘You’re … certainly doing that.’ He edged away, not wanting to press his opening too much. ‘If you need anything, you know where I am.’

  ‘Oh!’ she suddenly said sharply. And then, more loudly, ‘Oh! … oh! … OH!’

  She came stumbling down off the machine on her right leg, all but carrying the left.

  Nathan jerked towards her with a look of concern.

  Her face etched itself with panicky pain as she hopped around in a half-circle. ‘Think it’s my hamstring … think it’s just gone.’

  ‘Okay, erm …’ He glanced around. ‘Here, quick!’ He dragged a bench over, so that she could sit on it and extend her injured limb to full length. He dropped to his knees but didn’t get any closer than was permissible. ‘Unusual for a hamstring to go when you’ve been working out all night. Normally happens when you’ve not warmed up properly.’

  The girl felt warily down the back of her left thigh, as she panted for breath. ‘I don’t think it’s actually gone. It just … well, it suddenly really tightened.’

  Nathan watched her carefully. She cringed again, in genuine pain, and he understood why. He’d torn a hamstring, himself, once, and he knew how horrible it could be. In his case, he’d literally felt and even heard it snap. Not that the naked, sensually muscled leg in front of him seemed in any way imperfect. He offered a spread hand.

  ‘I can … erm … have a feel for you, if you don’t mind? Or I can get one of the girls?’

  ‘No, it’s okay … you go for it,’ she said quickly. ‘See what you think, please.’

  Very tenderly, determined to enjoy it as much as possible, he ran his hand up the back of her thigh. The muscle was smooth and firm, the soft skin still damp. Good Christ, it was just as he’d always imagined. More importantly from the girl’s POV, though, there was no obvious damage there – no bump or ridge.

  ‘Does that hurt?’ he asked. ‘I’m not pressing hard, but …’

  ‘It’s a bit uncomfortable,’ she said. ‘But not too bad, I suppose.’

  ‘I can’t feel any swelling or tear. It might just be a strain.’ He moved his hand away and knelt back. ‘Probably best not to continue, though. Not tonight.’

  She nodded in full agreement. ‘I may have overdone it.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s nearly knocking-off time, anyway. Do you think a sauna would help? Or a swim?’

  ‘Well … a swim’s always good for recovery. But we close in about five minutes.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s just that …’ She extended an arm towards him, and he realised that she wanted him to help her stand up. He hurriedly obliged. Upright, she tried to balance again, pressing down gingerly with her left foot, and grimacing. ‘It’s just that … Hell, I don’t think I’m going to be able to drive home.’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘If you want to call a taxi, your c
ar’ll be okay here overnight.’

  He didn’t actually know if that was true. FitnessFanatix was part of the Forton Country Club complex, located on the southwest fringe of Crowley, quite close to the M62 motorway, in a largely rural area, and thus encircled by woodlands and pasture. The only other building within half a mile was the small country church of St Barnabas, which stood a hundred or so yards to the south. There wasn’t much daily villainy in this district, but though the Country Club had a hotel section, there’d only be a sleepy night-manager on Reception later on, and he couldn’t be expected to keep his attention fixed on every corner of the car park. It wasn’t impossible that a bunch of thieves could make an opportunist drive-by to see if there was anything worth pinching. But why scare her with that? The idea was to try and give the impression that he was being helpful.

  Even so, the girl didn’t seem keen on the idea. He wasn’t quite sure why. Because she didn’t have enough cash in her purse? Or could she be one of these women who didn’t like the idea of travelling in a taxi alone after dark, with a male driver she’d never met before?

  Either way, it was another opportunity for Nathan, one which, if he’d given himself two or three minutes longer to think about, he probably wouldn’t have taken.

  ‘The alternative is …’ he said, all innocent. ‘I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression or anything … but I can give you a ride home. Like I say, I’m going in ten or fifteen minutes.’

  She regarded him thoughtfully, with no apparent emotion – which made him nervous, though there was no disdain in that coolly pretty face. With a jolt, he realised that she was appraising him, looking him over properly, maybe for the very first time; checking out his well-defined pecs, his moody features, his mean but stylish tats.

  ‘Whereabouts are you going?’ she asked.

  Nothing she’d seen had put her off, he realised with a thrill.

  ‘Just into central Crowley. If you’re not too far from there, I’m happy to drop you off at home.’