by John Barlow
This is a coincidence. Random. Poor girl, whoever she was.
“Friday afternoon, Mr Ray? Before your victorious evening at the Metropole.”
“I took the train to Peterborough to see a car. A Porsche 911 GT3. They were asking fifty grand.”
“Buy it?”
“Nope. It was still under a credit contract. You can look ’em up on the web. That wouldn’t necessarily bother me, but when you spend fifty grand you’ve got to be sure. I didn’t like what I saw.”
“Simple as that?”
“More or less. Got the seller’s number here.”
Steele takes the details. This time he doesn’t leave the room.
“And you always go by train?” Baron asks.
“Whenever possible. Means I can bring the motor back there and then. And turning up in a taxi gives me an advantage on price.”
“How so?”
“You turn up with no wheels of your own, tell ’em you want a quick sale, cash, they’re gonna be hard pressed to turn down your offer, however low it is.”
“On the downside, you have to travel the country with a small fortune in your possession.”
“Not had any problems yet.” John holds out both arms, demonstrating the impressive dimensions of his upper body. “I’m not a natural choice for muggers.”
“And that cash, the fifty thousand?”
“Bread bin at home.”
What about the money in the car?
“Would you allow us to see your flat, Mr Ray?”
“Yes.”
Baron suspends the interview and stops the tape.
“The old high school, isn’t it, up Whingate Road?” he asks.
“My flat? Yes. The art studio on the top floor. Plus the storeroom.”
“Head Boy, weren’t you?”
John nods.
Baron collects his Yorkshire Post and his file and says they’ll only be a minute. He offers to get John a coffee, but John’s had Millgarth coffee once or twice before.
“Art studio!” Baron says as he and Steele get to the door. “I once got caught having a smoke in that storeroom!”
“You went to the high school?”
“When I was in the first form,” Baron says, then waits for his colleague to disappear, “you’d only been gone a year.”
John can’t quite make out Baron’s tone, but it isn’t about happy school days.
“That,” he says, “was a long time ago…”
“And my dad,” Baron continues, as if he hasn’t heard John, “he was in uniform all his life, here at Millgarth mostly, running around trying to catch swindlers and muggers, the social detritus…”
“Yeah, like you said, we’re all crims…”
Baron shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean.” He stops, thinks, as if he’s trying to recall the events. “When I got to the high school, eleven years old, I read your name on the roll-call. Head Boy. People still talked about you. And do you know why?”
“Because I was gifted academically, good at sport, and a natural born leader?” John says, trying to annoy Baron, more out of curiosity than anything else.
“No. Because you were Tony Ray’s son. You were Head Boy the same year your dad was tried at the Old Bailey. What kind of message does that send out to teenage kids?”
“So, I should’ve been tarred with the same brush as my dad, at that age? Perhaps I was a good Head Boy, you ever think of that? Your name on that roll-call, is it, Inspector Baron?”
It isn’t. John has all the old roll-call boards on the walls of his kitchenette. Baron’s name is nowhere to be seen.
Baron is too smart to prickle at the jibe. He’s still enjoying this.
“Mr John Ray, Head Boy, leader of men! Cambridge University, graduates with flying colours, the prodigal son, the high-flier!” He does one of his pauses. It’s more effective this time. “Twenty-odd years down the line and he’s flogging secondhand cars on a backstreet in Leeds Nine. Secondhand cars, eh? Suck my cock, Mr Ray. That’s bullshit.”
Two offers of fellatio from officers of the law in just twenty-four hours, John tells himself as the door slams shut.
Alone in the room, he consults his iPhone. Ten missed calls from Freddy. The first at one in the morning, the last at seven thirty. Whatever Freddy’s been doing, it’s not sleeping.
He deletes the messages. Considers ringing Freddy. Thinks better of it.
Baron and Steele return.
“Just a few more things,” the Inspector says, after going through the rigmarole with the tapes again. “Was there any sign of a break-in at the showroom?”
“Not that I saw.”
“And it’s alarmed?”
“Yes.”
“Who has keys?”
“The keys to the Mondeo?”
“No. They were in the car when we found it. Who has the keys to the showroom?”
No choice. You’ve got no choice.
“Me, Owen Metcalfe, my salesman, and Connie García, the receptionist.”
“Miss García is your… half-cousin, is it?”
Thanks, Den.
“Way more distant than that. Sixteenth maybe. Maybe not.”
“And Mr Metcalfe?”
“Freddy. Everyone calls him Freddy.”
“Freddy. He and Connie are your only employees at present?”
“Correct.”
“And they are on your premises at the moment, are they?”
“Far as I know.”
“You’ve seen them both at the showroom this morning?”
“I was only there for a minute, early on.”
“You weren’t there that early, Mr Ray. When we called at eight fifty you hadn’t arrived…”
“Well, eight fifty’s pretty early for me. I was there just after that.”
“I only ask because our officers didn’t see Mr Metcalfe earlier this morning when they called, and he isn’t there now.”
“No?”
“So I ask you again, Mr Ray. Have you seen Owen Metcalfe this morning?”
Freddy. Where the fuck are you?
“No. He’s not always early. Y’know, young lad, Friday night Saturday morning…”
Baron sits back.
“Freddy…?” he says, looking up at the ceiling as he speaks. “His dad was also a common criminal, wasn’t he?”
John sighs.
“Freddy,” he tells Baron, trying to remain polite, “has never been in trouble in his life. His dad worked for my dad years ago. But that’s got nothing to do with Freddy. His parents divorced when he was six months old. He hasn’t seen his dad since then.”
Baron nods, as if savouring the information.
“Are you two close? Like a son to you, is what I’ve heard.”
John shrugs.
“Well, perhaps he’s never been charged with anything up until now, but personally, I’ve got him down as a prime suspect for rape and murder. That’s quite a lot of trouble, don’t you think?” He glances at his watch. “He won’t stay hidden long. Who knows, when we find him, perhaps he’ll have something to say about the money in the boot of your car, Mr Ray.”
The interview is concluded and the two detectives stand up.
“DC Steele will show you out,” Baron says, a hardly-concealed expression of satisfaction on his face.
***
“Always that much fun, is he, the Inspector?” John says as they make their way out of the station.
Steele ignores the question, his expression making it clear that he considers John’s sense of humour only marginally better than the smell of rotten fish.
They reach the lobby.
“Thank you for coming, Mr Ray,” says the young detective. “I’ll be your point of call if anything arises.”
He hands him a card.
D.C. Matthew Steele
West Yorkshire Police
Criminal Investigations Department (CID)
Millgarth, LEEDS
“Okay, thanks,” he says.
But Steele has
already gone.
Seven
He texts Den, then crosses the street and gets a packet of Marlboro Lights from the newsagent’s inside the bus station. The smell of fried onions and burger grease blows down from the open-air market just above the station, triggering memories of his childhood. When he was a kid his mum would drag him around the market as she checked up on the family’s vendors of knock-off perfume and electronic goods, and kept an eye on the competition. Until he was old enough to stay at home on his own, school holidays were spent traipsing around markets and backstreet shops with her. What a bloody way to grow up, he tells himself, grinning at the memory of his mother.
He calls Freddy. Nothing. Back across the road to Millgarth, lighting a cigarette as he goes, his first in weeks. Den appears through the ugly aluminium and glass doors of the station, looking very much like she wishes she wasn’t there.
He leans against the wall, drawing heavily on the cigarette.
“You want one?” he says as she approaches.
“I’ve given up. So have you.”
She takes one anyway, pulling a lighter from the front pocket of her jeans.
“You quit, but you still carry a lighter?”
“Yeah, fuck you too,” she says with a thin smile.
They smoke in silence a while.
“It was the crime scene I was called to,” she says. “Young lass in the boot.”
He takes another long draw. The thought of the dead girl in the Mondeo, together with the sudden nicotine rush, makes him shudder.
“Christ,” he says. “I don’t know what the fuck she’d done, but nobody deserves that…”
Den’s mouth hangs open a little.
They watch as three turquoise and cream buses play follow-my-leader out of the bus station and into the Saturday traffic on St Peter’s Street.
“So,” she says in the end, “do you know anything about this?”
Her tone is measured. Gentle.
“What?” he says.
She says nothing. Waits for his answer.
“I was with you last night, remember?”
The buses move round towards the Headrow and out of sight, spinning through their gears as they prepare for the hill.
“Den, I don’t have a clue. Don’t know who she is, or why she was in my car… I have absolutely no idea about that girl.”
“Okay, okay.” She believes him.
They smoke some more.
“They’re saying rape as well,” she says.
He nods.
“John, do you know where Freddy is?” Her voice is almost too quiet to discern.
“No. But he tried to ring me last night,” he says, staring at the burning tip of his cigarette. “Ten times. All through the night.”
“You told Baron that?”
He sighs.
“Nope.”
“And now? Freddy’s not picking up?”
He shakes his head.
“Ten times?” she says. “And there was no break-in at the showroom, right?”
Again he shakes his head.
“This isn’t looking good, you know that, don’t you?”
He looks straight into her eyes.
“He rapes her, murders her, then dumps her in a car that’s traceable to his place of work? Sound like Freddy to you?” He stops, rubs a hand over his face. “What if somebody’s setting him up?”
“So why has he disappeared?”
There’s a firm, unhurried manner to her now. Compassionate, but underneath she’s thinking things through, looking for the right way forward. It was the same when Joe was shot. The two of them standing there in the old showroom, Joe’s body on the ground between them, the slick of blood around his head spreading. She knew what to do, even then. And she knew what to say.
“I know how much Freddy means to you, John.”
He laughs. “Cliché, isn’t it! I love him like a son.”
“I know, you don’t have to…”
“For Christ’s sake, Den. You can’t believe he did this. You know him!”
As she listens, pity threatens to overwhelm her. Not for the girl; she’s seen enough death to know how to wrap that memory up good and tight. But John? Freddy is more to him than a son. He met Freddy at Joe’s funeral and took to him immediately, putting his trust in him when every instinct told him to trust no one. They built the new showroom together, made it a success. Freddy Metcalfe, a cocky, big-hearted lad with a fucked-up criminal pedigree of his own to deal with. John’d do anything for Freddy. And if his instincts turn out to be wrong, everything he’s achieved over the last two years will have been for nothing.
“Also,” she says, resisting the temptation to run her fingers through his hair, “this is the last time I can see you. Shouldn’t really be talking to you now.”
“Right.”
“You hear me?”
He lights a fresh cigarette, throwing the one he’s only half-smoked into the gutter.
Neither of them wants the conversation to end.
“The girl in the car?” she says, almost to herself. “She was wearing Opium.”
It had been one of his dad’s most popular lines, counterfeit Opium. The perfume is their private joke, a symbol of John’s break with the past, the act of paying full price for the real stuff a twisted homage to the defunct criminal dynasty of the Ray family.
But John is hardly listening.
“He’s got no family, you know,” he says. “Mum’s dead, dad disappeared when he was a baby. He’s got nowhere to go. Moved about a lot when he was growing up. No old school friends that I know of. He’ll be on his own somewhere, scared shitless. I better find him.”
She nods.
“Will you help me?”
“I can’t, John,” she says, mouthing the words silently. “Jesus, I just can’t, I mean…”
She stops, lets her cigarette drop to the ground and grinds it into the pavement until there are strands of tobacco in the cracks of the tarmac.
“I’ll give you a ring later,” she says, still looking down at the ground. “I’ll see what I can find out. And please, don’t mention this to anybody.”
She turns to go.
Baron emerges from the station entrance, sees them, makes his way over.
“DC Danson,” he says.
“Steve.”
She hesitates, doesn’t move.
John is still leaning against the wall. It takes a couple of inches off him, bringing his eye line down level with Baron’s.
“Mr Ray,” the Inspector says. “You’d be a lot more help to us if you were out and about look for your boy Freddy.”
“Right onto it,” John says, and stomps off down the street, clouds of blue smoke billowing out behind him.
They watch him go, heavy-framed but spritely, part Gérard Depardieu part storm-trooper, black jacket wide open, flapping in the wind. Where do you get that sort of presence, Baron asks himself? John Ray exudes an intense physical assuredness wherever he goes, something relaxed but also slightly dangerous. And he always looks as if he’s just walked out of a casino at seven in the morning.
“You know you shouldn’t be…”
“He texted me,” she says. “I was just filling him in on the rules. No more contact. He understands.”
“It looks bad. Murder investigation and we’ve got a CID officer playing alibi for a major witness.”
“I know.”
John disappears around the end of the building. Still they look, as if he might reappear.
“Very bad,” Baron says slowly, as if he’s waiting for something. “You really need to sort out this relationship, Den.”
It’s none of Baron’s business, she tells herself. But she’s wrong. It’s police business now. John Ray is police business. And she’s right in the middle of it.
“It’s casual,” she says, searching her pockets for cigarettes, knowing that there are none there. “With John, it’s not as if it’s…” she struggles for a word, “…permanent or anythin
g.”
“Really?”
“You know all this, Steve. When his brother was shot, he wouldn’t see anybody. Counsellor, family liaison team, nothing. Only me. He was a mess.”
Baron nods. He knows the story. Den brought John Ray back from the edge, and their relationship grew out of that, unexpected but somehow inevitable. She’s never tried to hide anything from her colleagues. That’d be asking for trouble. The whole station knows, Baron better than anyone.
“You enjoy the awards thing last night? Posh frocks, cocktails?”
“Yeah, it was a laugh actually.”
“Listen, Den. Keeping a change of clothes at John Ray’s place is one thing. Having your hands all over him in a room full of secondhand car dealers and journalists is another.”
“Is that the way your journo friend put it?” Den says. “Bit sensational, don’t you think?”
Baron’s head snaps towards her.
“The girl from the Yorkshire Post, I assume,” she says, playing innocent. “I saw her there last night.”
His phone goes off. She recognises the ringtone immediately: Derrrr-DA… Derrrr-DA… the cello music from Jaws.
“My sons downloaded it for me,” he says as he tries to locate the phone in the various pockets of his suit.
He was supposed to be taking the boys out today. His weekend with them. When he rang to cancel, still looking down at the dead body of a young woman in the boot of the car, the twins had already finished breakfast and were ready to go.
“Baron. Yes, I’m out the front… Okay… Right. Yes. Thanks.”
He digests the news for a second. John Ray was telling the truth: the trip to Peterborough yesterday, and his whereabouts on Monday morning, right down to the taxi. It all checks out. They’re even checking CCTV on Kirkstall Road to see whether he really did buy the Mondeo there.
“Okay, let’s find Freddy!” he says as he spins around and heads for the doors.
Den follows him inside. And as she looks at herself in the glass of the door, a very confused witness looks back.
Eight
When he gets back to the showroom it smells even better than before.
“I thought I’d carry on as normal,” Connie says, coming from the tiny kitchen at the back with a fat potato omelette an inch thick and far wider than the plate it’s sitting on.
