Streetwise

by Roberta Kray

  With a feigned show of reluctance, she pulled another tenner from her bag. ‘You’d better. And you need to get your arse in gear right now.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ he said, grinning.

  Laura Higgs got out of the car, glad to be escaping the stench. She wasn’t under any illusions that Chris Street was suddenly going to come out of hiding when he heard the news, but it might be enough to make him drop his guard. He might take a chance that he wouldn’t normally take. Yeah, one mistake, one tiny slip, and they’d have the murdering bastard.

  58

  Fifteen minutes after she’d fallen asleep, Ava was abruptly woken by the sound of her phone. Her eyes blinked open and for a moment, confused, she wasn’t sure where she was. The phone kept on ringing. Quickly she got to her feet, stumbled across the room, found her bag, rummaged in it and snatched up the mobile. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Solomon,’ a deep voice said. ‘Sol. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.’

  ‘Oh, Sol. Hi. Yes. A bit tired, that’s all. Sorry, it’s been a long day.’ She gave her head a shake, trying to free it from the bleary daze of sleep. ‘They had me down Cowan Road for two hours.’

  ‘They didn’t charge you with nothing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I had the third degree too. Fuckin’ bastards turned my flat over. I mean, how much searching does it take to figure out that a man over six foot tall ain’t hiding in the wardrobe?’

  ‘They make a mess?’

  ‘Hard to tell. It’s not too tidy at the best of times.’ He laughed. ‘But that ain’t the point. It’s the principle, right?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s the principle.’

  ‘So are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Getting there,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’

  Ava wanted to ask him about Chris – she was sure that the two of them must have been in touch or how else would Sol have got her number? – but was afraid of saying too much over the phone. The law could be listening in and it wasn’t worth taking the risk. Just as she was trying to think of a subtle, roundabout way of addressing the subject, the doorbell went. She jumped, thinking it might be the police again. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘there’s someone at the door.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hang on a sec.’ She walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked down into the square. She saw the top of a fair head and then a familiar face gazing up. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured into the phone. ‘It’s Silver Delaney.’

  ‘Silver? What the hell’s she doing there?’

  ‘God knows, but she’s seen me so I’ll have to go down. I’ll get rid of her and call you back, okay? Just give me five minutes.’

  Ava hung up. The last thing she needed was company – especially Silver’s company – but there was no way round it. If only she hadn’t looked out of the window… but it was too late for that. There was no way of avoiding her and so she went downstairs and opened the door.

  Silver’s face was pinched and tight. She leapt forward, grabbing hold of Ava’s arm. ‘You’ve got to come, you’ve got to come right now! It’s about Chris. Danny needs to talk to you.’

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to come,’ said Silver, pulling at her sleeve. ‘It’s urgent.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll just get my coat.’

  ‘You don’t need your coat. He’s only round the corner.’

  ‘I need my keys, though. Hold on, I won’t be a minute.’ Ava rushed back upstairs, grabbed her coat and keys and ran back down the stairs again. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Danny’s got news. He’ll explain. He’ll tell you everything. But we’ve got to be quick.’

  Ava put on her coat as she accompanied Silver across the square, keeping her eyes peeled for the police. Would they be watching out for her, keeping her under surveillance in case she made contact with Chris? But she wasn’t making contact with him so she didn’t need to worry. There was no law against talking to his brother.

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ said Silver, slipping her arm through Ava’s. ‘I told him you would. I always know these things. I said Ava’s the type of girl who never lets anyone down.’

  The combination of the winter cold, the rain and her sudden exit from the warm flat, made Ava shiver. Or maybe it wasn’t just that. Silver seemed hyper, charged-up. Had she taken something? Coke or crack was the first thing that sprang to mind. The girl’s red spike-heeled shoes tapped rhythmically against the pavement, a noise that for some reason set Ava’s teeth on edge.

  They went up Market Street and turned left on to the high street. Silver began to walk even faster now, pulling Ava along beside her. ‘We’re almost there. Not far to go.’

  Ava glanced over her shoulder, but couldn’t spot anyone following them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Silver said. ‘There’s no one there. I checked. I made sure. I looked all around the square.’

  They came to a stop outside Beast. There was a closed sign on the door, but Silver took out a set of keys, chose one and put it in the lock.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ asked Ava as the door swung open. She didn’t understand why Danny would be at the taxidermist’s. And why was the shop closed? It wasn’t even five o’clock yet. She hung back, alarm bells going off in her head. This didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right at all.

  Silver grabbed hold of her elbow and dragged her roughly over the threshold. ‘Come on. Quickly! We can’t keep him waiting.’

  Before she knew it, Ava was standing inside the shop. It was dark inside, but there was a thin light coming from the back. Silver slammed shut the door and pulled the bolt across. As her eyes gradually grew accustomed to the gloom, Ava realised that the place had been trashed; cabinets had been broken and there was glass all over the floor. Near her feet lay the wretched remains of a red fox, its head almost severed from its neck.

  ‘What the —’ But as she turned to look at Silver, the words stuck in her throat. The girl was pointing a small black gun directly at her chest.

  59

  Silver’s face had taken on an odd expression. Her eyes were gleaming, her lips strangely twisted. A small gob of spittle nestled in the left hand corner of her mouth. ‘Get moving,’ she ordered, gesturing with the gun.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ava whispered.

  ‘The basement,’ Silver hissed back. ‘Go down the stairs. Over there, through that door where the light’s coming from.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why are you —’

  ‘Shut up!’ Silver snapped. ‘Start walking. Do what I tell you, Ava. Don’t make me mad.’

  Shocked and bewildered, Ava headed for the rear of the shop. She heard the thin crunch of the glass beneath her feet and from behind her the sound of Silver’s soft panting breath. She carried on walking until she came to the top of a flight of grey stone steps. By now her heart was thumping, dread knocking in her chest.

  ‘Down the stairs,’ Silver urged.

  But Ava hesitated, panic surging through her body. She looked down into the basement as if she was staring into the jaws of hell. If she went down, would she ever come back up again?

  Silver shoved the barrel of the gun into her spine. ‘I can shoot you right here, right now. Is that what you want, Ava? Is that what you really want?’

  With leaden legs, Ava slowly began the descent. Silver closed the door behind them. She listened out for any sound that might warn her that someone else was present. Was Danny Street waiting for her? And if he was, then why? All she had done was help his brother escape. Why should she be punished for that?

  She clung on to the wooden rail as she put one foot in front of another. Above her a single bare bulb hung from the slanting ceiling. Jesus Christ, if only she’d never looked out of that window. If only she hadn’t answered the door. If only… But those regrets weren’t going to help her now. She had just made what might turn out to be the biggest mistake of her life.

  When she reached the bottom of
the steps, Ava stopped. Ahead of her, at the end of a short corridor was a large well-lit room. The door was open. The smell of formaldehyde hung on the air. She felt the fear rising into her throat and tried to swallow it down.

  ‘Go on,’ ordered Silver, prodding her again with the gun. ‘Why have you stopped? You mustn’t stop. You have to carry on.’

  Ava knew she had no choice. Holding her breath she advanced, the brightness of the fluorescent light making her squint. As her vision cleared, the first thing she noticed was a long workman’s table in the centre of the room. Its wooden surface was covered with sharp metal tools, wire, clay, animal skulls, skin and bones. Then, as she shifted her gaze a fraction, her stomach gave a lurch. There was someone else in the room, only it wasn’t Danny Street.

  Morton Carlisle sat propped up against the wall, his head lolling forward, his legs stretched out in front of him. There was a bullet wound close to his collar bone and the left side of his shirt was covered in blood. His chest was still rising and falling, quick shallow breaths as if his lungs were straining to work. A thin wheezing sound came from his mouth.

  Ava automatically moved towards him. ‘God, what have you done?’

  Silver started waving the gun around again. ‘Leave him! Leave him alone! Don’t touch him!’

  Ava stopped in her tracks, glancing quickly over her shoulder. ‘You have to get an ambulance,’ she said. ‘Do you want him to bleed to death?’

  That small weird smile appeared on Silver’s face again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I want.’

  Ava’s heart skipped a beat. She looked towards Carlisle and then back at Silver. ‘Why? Why would you want that?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ said Silver sulkily. She pushed out her upper lip, pouting at Ava. ‘Sit down over there.’ She pointed towards the right where there was an old stained porcelain sink set into a steel counter, but then shook her head. ‘No, not there. Sit down by him. I want to be able to see you both. But don’t touch him, right? You mustn’t touch him.’

  Ava moved forward, skirted around the corner of the table and kept on walking until she reached the limp bleeding figure of Carlisle. She turned and slid slowly down the wall. She wrapped her arms around her shaking knees and stared up at Silver. ‘What now?’

  Silver seemed to relax a little now that she had both of them safely in her sights. She didn’t answer the question, though. Instead she said, ‘Did you know that this used to be a funeral parlour?’

  The last thing Ava needed was to be reminded of death, but she knew that the only way of avoiding it was to try and find a way to engage with her captor. She had to play for time. She had to keep her talking until she figured out a plan. ‘Yes, I remember it from when I was a kid. Tobias Grand & Sons.’

  ‘Do you know what they used to do in here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This was where they embalmed the bodies. Danny told me. Danny watched it done once. He watched a dead girl’s insides being sucked out through a tube. Is that gross or what?’

  ‘Where is Danny?’ Ava asked.

  Silver leaned against the table and scowled at her. ‘He’s not here. Why would he be here? This has nothing to do with him.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ava, trying to keep her voice calm while her thoughts ran riot. ‘I was just wondering. It doesn’t matter.’ Her eyes fixed on the gun. Was it the gun that Chris had lost? It had to be. It looked the same, but she was hardly an expert. ‘Is that your gun?’

  ‘It’s mine now,’ Silver said. ‘Finders, keepers. And it’s loaded.’ She looked at Carlisle and gave her little-girl giggle. ‘But you already know that. And the thing is, when it goes off, nobody can hear a thing. It’s the walls, you see, nobody can hear through these walls.’

  Ava gazed up at Silver, seeing for the first time the spatters of blood down the front of her white coat. She hadn’t noticed it before. The light had been too dim. She must have been standing close to Carlisle when… but she didn’t want to dwell on that. ‘Have you used it before?’

  ‘Before?’ Silver repeated, a tiny frown settling on her forehead. Then suddenly her brow cleared. ‘Oh, I get it. You mean Jenna Dean, don’t you? Now if anyone deserved to die, that bitch did.’

  ‘Did you kill her?’ Ava tried not to make the question sound like an accusation.

  ‘Might have done,’ Silver said. ‘Then again, I might not. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ava wasn’t sure if she wanted to know either. She wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed she was missing. A few hours, maybe even longer. Tash would probably presume that she’d gone to see her dad. She wouldn’t start to worry until later tonight. And then, even if it was reported, who would think to look for her in Beast? ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘You know why.’

  Ava shook her head. ‘I thought we were friends. Didn’t you say that, in the Fox? Didn’t you say that we were going to be the best of friends?’

  ‘That was before.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before Daddy found out about…’ Two stripes of pink appeared on Silver’s cheekbones. She glared down at Carlisle. ‘That bastard told Raynard everything.’

  ‘I don’t know who Raynard is.’

  Silver gave a sigh of exasperation as if Ava’s ignorance knew no bounds. ‘Works for my dad, don’t he? He came here. He came here asking questions and that stupid bastard spilled his guts.’

  Ava realised now what had happened upstairs. Raynard’s powers of persuasion had clearly gone beyond the verbal. She gave Carlisle a quick sidelong glance, unsure as to whether he was even conscious or not. How long could he survive for? Fifteen minutes, twenty? How long before all the blood leaked out of his body? ‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ she said, trying to ingratiate herself. ‘People should know when to keep their big mouths shut.’

  ‘That’s what I told him. But he wouldn’t listen. Kept saying that he was going to call the filth.’ Silver gave a high-pitched laugh, a sound that had a faintly hysterical edge to it. ‘The filth, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘So you had to stop him. Of course you did.’

  ‘Yes,’ Silver said. ‘That’s what I had to do.’

  While they were talking Ava was looking surreptitiously around the room. So far as she could tell the only way of escape was back up the steps. Had Silver locked the door? She didn’t know. She’d heard it close, but wasn’t sure if a key had been turned or not. Anyway, she’d never even make it that far. Now that she was sitting on the floor, she was at a distinct disadvantage. In the time it would take her to get up, to make a lunge at Silver, the crazy girl would have pulled the trigger. She cursed the fact that she hadn’t made a move upstairs where the light was bad and she might have stood a better chance.

  ‘I still don’t see why we can’t be friends,’ Ava said. ‘I’d never grass to the police. They had me down the station for two hours this afternoon and I never said a word.’

  ‘Ava Gold,’ Silver murmured. ‘Silver and Gold, silver and gold – do you get it?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ava said, smiling back at her. ‘Doesn’t that make us a team, you and me?’

  ‘We could have been friends, but it’s too late now.’

  ‘It’s never too late,’ Ava insisted.

  Silver gave a shrug. She didn’t look convinced. Her fingers tightened around the gun.

  ‘Why did… why did Morton want to talk to the police?’ asked Ava tentatively.

  Silver’s eyes glittered, her face growing angry. ‘It was all his fault,’ she spat, glaring at Carlisle. ‘It was, it really was. He wanted her to do it. He wanted Ava to do all those dirty things with those men. He wanted her to fuck them. That’s not right, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Ava said.

  ‘And now Daddy’s mad and he doesn’t love his little girl any more. So Morton has to be punished. And Ava has to be punished too. She has to be made to pay for all the trouble she’s caused. Do you see?’

  What
Ava saw was that she wasn’t going to get out of this damn place alive if she didn’t do something soon.

  60

  It was almost fifteen minutes now since Valerie had got the call from DC Lister, informing her that Danny Street’s girlfriend had turned up at Market Square and taken Ava Gold to Beast. There was no doubt in the inspector’s mind as to what was going on: Chris Street was holed up in the taxidermy shop and the clan was gathering to help with his escape.

  She sat in the car, her eyes firmly fixed on the door. She had made the decision not to go in. Chris Street was a dangerous fugitive. He was wanted for murder and if he could kill his ex-wife he wouldn’t think twice about shooting a copper. There were three unmarked cars and a van parked in the street as well as officers posted discreetly at the rear of the building. All of the officers at the scene were armed.