Stolen

by Paul Finch

  ‘Hold up, mate,’ she shouted. ‘I need to speak to you.’

  As expected, he darted away, dashing along the pavement in long, lanky strides, the heels of his cowboy boots clopping like hooves.

  Lucy accelerated slowly as she pursued, glancing into her rear-view mirror in case he suddenly turned around and she needed to make a U-turn. After a few dozen yards, he veered left, vaulted a chain-link fence and ran over a grassy forecourt towards the first of several blocks of medium-rise flats, vanishing around the first corner. Lucy didn’t activate the lights and siren again but took the first left she came to, which was about fifty yards further on, and found herself on a slip-road leading into the very heart of the project.

  This was the King’s Hill estate. It wasn’t a particularly bad area, most of the units having been refurbished and privately sold, so she didn’t anticipate trouble. The apartment blocks had been constructed in two parallel lines and stood facing each other across a succession of interconnected car parks. There was nobody in sight, save for a couple of builders just ahead of her on the left, who sipped tea as they leaned on the barrier of a balcony.

  Then the idiot came into view again, his loping, lanky figure emerging from a ground-floor passage and cutting diagonally across the car park in front of her. He wasn’t moving quickly – in a leather jacket, tight jeans and heeled boots, he was hardly dressed for sprinting – and she caught up to him without needing to speed. He diverted left as she swerved the Jimny around and in front, hit the brake and jumped out.

  ‘Hey!’ Lucy shouted, racing after him. ‘Just wait up! You’re not in trouble …’

  He ignored her, making for the foot of a staircase, but he hadn’t even got to it when a burly, dusty figure came heavily down. It was one of the two builders, a tall but overweight guy, clad in the usual dirty jeans and ragged jumper, steel toecaps glinting through the rotted ends of his wizened leather boots. The runner slowed to a halt as the builder stood there immovably, arms folded across his barrel chest, a stern look on his bristling face.

  ‘Where you going, lad?’ the builder demanded.

  The runner, who looked as if he couldn’t believe that someone had had the audacity to bar his path, was too breathless and reddened in his sweaty, pock-marked features to answer. In fact, all he could do now was lean over and cough up a load of phlegm. The builder, whom Lucy recognised as Jimmy Ogden, a native of the next street to theirs in Saltbridge, and a bloke who’d been sweet on her mother for many years, shook his head and pointed back across the car park.

  ‘You’re going nowhere, pal, but back there. The officer wants to speak to you. I heard her, so I’m damn sure you did. Now you be a good law-abiding citizen, like what you’re supposed to. Then I won’t have to rip your neck out.’

  The lad didn’t need to wait long. Lucy was there in less than a second, grabbing him by the collar of his leather jacket. She mouthed a ‘thanks’ at Ogden.

  He winked in return and gave her a thumbs-up.

  It wasn’t always the case that Lucy could physically overpower a male suspect, despite her athletic physique, and most of the time she didn’t even try. But it soon became clear that this guy was all skin and bone. She considered the possibility that he might have a concealed weapon, but at present he was too busy struggling for breath after his brief exertion to do anything other than turn limp in her grasp as she marched him down a narrow passage and, when she found space between two wheelie-bins, slam him back against the wall.

  ‘Okay … who are you?’

  ‘You, you …?’ The guy was still sweaty and pink, but now he looked surprised as well. ‘You don’t know who I am, and you chased me?’

  ‘I didn’t chase you … you ran. And anyway, I might not know who you are, but I do know what you are.’

  ‘I’ve not done nothing.’

  ‘Maybe not today. Not yet. What about last Saturday night? Hang around the homeless crowd for their company, do you?’

  He shook his head, rank sweat dripping off his unwashed mane. ‘I’ve not done nothing.’

  ‘You realise I’m fully entitled to search you?’ Lucy said. ‘That’s because I suspect you to be carrying illegal drugs. That why you were heading back to St Clement’s … to make a bit more money out of people who’ve got nothing as it is?’

  He was recovering now, breathing heavily rather than panting. ‘You’ve got to show me your ID, you have to tell me who you are, what nick you come from.’

  ‘So, you’ve been stopped and searched before?’

  ‘I know my rights, that’s all.’

  ‘Well … I do have to do all that, you’re correct.’ She released his collar. ‘If I decide to proceed with the search.’

  He didn’t reply to that but looked bewildered.

  ‘Thing is, I’m busy,’ she said. ‘Especially … if you’re willing to share a bit of info.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Tell me where I can find Sister Cassie?’

  ‘Sister Cassie?’

  ‘Fine, you want to do this the hard way …’ Lucy pulled a wallet out and flashed her warrant card. ‘I’m DC Clayburn from Robber’s Row CID, and I’m officially requiring—’

  ‘Okay … wait.’ He raised his hands. ‘Sister Cassie? All this just for her?’

  ‘Like I say, you’re the one who ran.’

  ‘She’s just a numb-nut. A mental case.’

  ‘A mental case you’re happy to sell heroin to … along with all the other lost souls. Bit of a captive market you’ve got, isn’t it?’

  ‘Does ’em more good than you lot do.’

  ‘You cheeky bastard!’

  ‘Hey, at least I leave ’em happy.’

  ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘They call me Newt.’

  She appraised him; his greasy, spotty face, his lank hair. ‘Let me guess … because you’re always getting pissed on the profits?’

  ‘Because that’s my name. Kyle Newton.’

  ‘Okay, Kyle Newton … I’ll ask you one more time. Where can I find Sister Cassie? And I mean, where can I find her now? I don’t want to spend hours looking through that rabbit warren of misery again.’

  ‘I’ve not seen her today. Not yet. If she’s shooting up, she’ll be in the women’s toilets on that row of boarded-up shops. On the other side of Penrose Mill.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I know it.’

  ‘But I don’t think she’ll be there. Yesterday, she was saying something about going to services.’

  ‘Services?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly what it means, but … she said it once before when she was going to someone’s funeral.’

  ‘A funeral?’

  ‘I think so.’ He tried to remember more. ‘She said she wouldn’t be around till this evening because this afternoon she was attending services out on Fairview.’

  ‘Fairview?’ Lucy was bemused. ‘A funeral … on a landfill site?’

  Newton shrugged again. ‘That’s all I can tell you. I didn’t ask, did I? Told you, she’s a nutcase. Christ knows what she gets up to most of the time.’

  ‘This is all I bloody need,’ Lucy said, thinking about Fairview, that hideous, decayed wilderness, with its foul stenches and its drifting toxic smoke and its gangs of weirdo scavengers scrambling across it like beetles. ‘If this is a wind-up, Newt, I’ll make your life a misery from here on. It’ll be stops-and-searches every time I see you. I’ve got good contacts in the Drug Squad, and I’ll make sure you go right to the top of their list.’

  ‘On my honour,’ he protested. ‘She’s taking a few others to attend services on Fairview.’

  ‘On your honour?’ Lucy shook her head. ‘Your honour. Are you serious?’ She grabbed him by the collar, lugged him from the wall and threw him along the corridor with such force that he staggered and almost fell. ‘Get out of my sight, soft lad!’

  He hurried off, walking stiffly without looking back.

  ‘I ever see you again,’ she shout
ed, ‘I’ll pop those zits with the dirtiest needle I can find!’

  She was halfway back across the car park when her phone rang.

  ‘Lucy, it’s Malcolm’ came Peabody’s voice.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ she asked.

  ‘Naff all. I’ve door-to-doored all along Latham Street, Burton Avenue and Tulip Drive.’

  Lucy was so distracted by events that, fleetingly, she had trouble placing those addresses.

  ‘Housing estate alongside the canal … remember?’ It would have been more helpful had he not sounded irritated with her. ‘Near the garages where Lorna Cunningham got nabbed.’

  ‘Okay, yeah.’

  ‘It’s the same as on the Hollinbrook. No one saw or heard anything.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes, good. Because now I’ve got another job for you. You got wheels?’

  ‘I’m in my car, obviously.’

  ‘Meet me at the entrance to the Fairview landfill site.’

  ‘The landfill?’ She heard both surprise and disgust in his voice.

  ‘Yes.’ She climbed into her Jimny.

  ‘That’s half an hour from here. When do you want me?’

  ‘Now.’

  Chapter 19

  The Dead Man’s Hand was a pub on Halpin Road, a nine-mile section of dual carriageway running between Crowley and Urmston and comprising little more than petrol stations, car dealerships and container parks.

  In many ways, the pub’s name and its sign – an Ace of Spades with a bullet hole in the middle – were the most interesting things about it. Aside from that, it was a plain, square, pebble-dashed structure, exuding zero charm. Inside, it was more like a working men’s club than a traditional pub, but a club that had seen better days. Aside from the entry corridor, where the toilets and fruit machines were, it was a single room, big but cluttered with tables and chairs, and with one long bar on the left-hand side. It had a small stage, complete with the obligatory strips of shiny material hanging down the back, but these were tawdry and dingy now, and no one could remember how long it was since anyone had performed there. It was a spacious enough interior, the big row of windows on the right allowing in lots of light, though they only looked down on the concrete steps leading up from the car park, which was almost always empty.

  Hardly anyone patronised the Dead Man’s Hand any more, which is why it suited Miles O’Grady, almost guaranteeing privacy, even now at lunchtime. There were no other punters in, and even the obese barmaid, who had been disagreeably surprised to see him and his two cronies enter, had served them a round and promptly disappeared from view, as though to ensure that she wouldn’t be called on to do any more work. Just to be certain, though, O’Grady chose the table farthest from the bar, around which to have his conflab with Stone and Roper.

  ‘They didn’t just take my Jag for a joy-ride,’ O’Grady said, keeping his voice very low. ‘They smashed it into some innocent bystander and then dumped it back in my garage. That means I can’t even take it to be repaired. Sixty grand’s worth of motor gone, written off, for ever.’

  Stone’s eyes bulged over the rim of his beer glass. ‘Christ! Who was the poor sod?’

  O’Grady stared at him as if he was an imbecile. ‘What does that matter? Some old bloke past his sell-by date. The main thing is they’re playing for keeps. This is the shit they’ll stoop to, to get what they want.’

  Roper hadn’t touched his own drink yet. He listened grimly.

  O’Grady leaned forward. ‘So, the situation’s simple. We either up sticks and move … as in relocate to somewhere where we don’t know anyone and would have to start from scratch. Or we resist.’

  ‘Resist?’ Roper said, baffled.

  ‘Something wrong with that, Jon?’ O’Grady asked.

  ‘You said this was the Crew.’

  ‘Who else? Only Frank McCracken would be capable of that. Walking into the belly of the beast and making fucking ridiculous demands, at the same time as looking suave and managing to sound conciliatory.’

  Roper shook his head. ‘Miles … we know McCracken of old. He’s hardcore. A devil in a three-piece suit. And he’s got about twenty other devils on his payroll, if not more.’

  ‘And what are we … a bunch of pussies who don’t count?’

  ‘Miles, we can’t fight the Crew. We shouldn’t be fighting anyone. This routine of ours only works if we’re discreet about it.’

  ‘I went to bed on Sunday night thinking the same thing,’ O’Grady said. ‘That we’re basically screwed. We pay up or we die. Talk about a no-win situation. Except … I’ve been straining the old grey matter since then, and maybe I don’t accept no-win situations.’

  ‘Why is it no-win?’ Stone asked. ‘I mean paying up?’

  The other two looked round at their burly, bearded companion.

  ‘Would it really be so bad?’ he said.

  ‘Are you serious?’ O’Grady replied.

  Stone shrugged. ‘How much do they want?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re not getting a fucking penny. If nothing else, it’s the principle.’

  ‘That principle’s going to get us killed, Miles,’ Roper said.

  O’Grady held his jacket open, exposing a shoulder-holster and the grip of his Taurus. ‘Not if we pop that bastard McCracken first.’

  Roper shook his head again. ‘You call that straining the grey matter? For fuck’s sake, put the damn thing away. I mean for good. You never even carried when you were in the job. I doubt you’ve fired more than two or three shots in your entire life, let alone fired them into other people.’

  ‘So what do you want to do, Jon?’ O’Grady scowled. ‘Surrender? After all that work, after finally getting ourselves an income stream that knows no limits? You want to give it all away to a bunch of scumbag gangsters?’

  ‘It’s not all of it,’ Stone chipped in.

  ‘It’s too much,’ O’Grady snapped back. ‘And shut up, Bern. You’re here as muscle, not to give fucking opinions.’

  ‘You said we can’t move locations,’ Roper said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake. We’ve got half a dozen gigs in motion right here, right now. Including Dean Chesham. He’s going to pay us royally for years to come, and likely won’t even notice the loss.’

  ‘Can’t we manage that from the other end of the country?’

  ‘The Crew are not stupid. We’d have to cut all ties, we’d have to go abroad.’

  ‘That’s not a bad shout,’ Stone said, no doubt thinking about the island paradise he’d always envisaged himself retiring to.

  ‘Damn it!’ O’Grady said heatedly. ‘I’m not just cutting and running. And you two shouldn’t want to either.’

  ‘It’s about how much you want to live,’ Roper said.

  ‘And will your life after this really be living?’ O’Grady’s voice became sneery. ‘Remind me what they kicked you out for, Jon? Wasn’t it something inconsequential? Something that wouldn’t matter to anyone outside the job? Oh yeah, I remember … downloading child pornography from a site you were supposed to be monitoring. I mean, you’ll be top of everyone’s list for a job after we pack this racket in, won’t you!’

  He lurched around to face Stone. ‘And how about you, Bernie? Battered any suspects recently? Kicked anyone in the nads so hard you’ve induced a hernia? On no … that doesn’t happen any more, does it? Well, not so often … not as often as it used to when you were in uniform, eh?’ O’Grady snorted. ‘You’re another one who’ll easily secure a nice new career, aren’t you?’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Don’t you two cretins get it? Unless we’re prepared to emigrate, which wouldn’t be easy given our track records, we have no choice but to stand up to these animals.’

  ‘Miles …’ Roper’s voice was almost a plea. ‘The Crew are out of our league. You must accept that.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Suddenly, O’Grady seemed calmer. His expression turned crafty. ‘I told you I don’t accept no-win situation
s. So, instead of them cutting in on our action, how about we cut in on theirs?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘McCracken’s their shakedown merchant, right? Their taxman? He’s the one who collects from those who won’t willingly pay up.’ O’Grady shrugged. ‘We could do that.’

  There was a lengthy, uncomprehending silence.

  ‘Don’t look so bloody gobsmacked,’ he said. ‘We collect already, handsomely.’

  ‘We pick soft targets,’ Roper said. ‘Daft, spoiled rich men who don’t want it to get out about their secret lives. McCracken goes after the worst of the worst. A team pulls a blag, leaves security men all over the road, walks off with five hundred grand … are you gonna be the one who confronts them in a warehouse somewhere, demanding a fifty per cent share?’

  ‘We can do that if we’re official,’ O’Grady argued. ‘Look, the Crew don’t give a shit who works for them as long as it pays. There’s no loyalty among these thieving bastards.’ He still sensed that they weren’t on board. ‘Look … we take McCracken out of the frame, and I’ll make a pitch. I’ll go to their top dogs and I’ll say, “I can do that for you. If I can deal with Captain Shakedown, I can deal with anyone … so long as you lot back me up.” Why would they say no?’

  Stone gave it some thought, but again Roper shook his head. His long, thin hatchet-face now looked longer and thinner than ever.

  ‘Miles, you’re not going to take McCracken out. And even if you do, what about his outfit? For God’s sake … he’s only a subdivision of the Crew, but that subdivision’s fifty times bigger than anything we can muster. I’m sorry, mate, but –’ he stood up ‘– you’ve lost it.’

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ O’Grady demanded.

  ‘I’m out. I’ve had it.’

  ‘Wait!’ O’Grady growled. ‘Stay where you fucking are!’