by Roberta Kray
‘It could be hours before he comes out,’ Higgs said.
‘So we’ll wait.’
‘Guy Wilder’s brief was just arriving as we left. He’ll do his nut.’
‘Let him.’
Higgs gave a self-satisfied kind of smile as if she was pleased by the prospect of having Hugo Pinner standing around twiddling his thumbs – or maybe she was feeling smug about something else entirely. Valerie suspected that her sergeant didn’t always play by the rules, that she was the type of officer who liked to cut corners, believing that the end always justified the means.
‘What do you reckon, guv? Is Morton Carlisle an accomplice or a hostage?’
‘Hard to say, but I don’t reckon he’s as squeaky clean as he likes to make out.’ Valerie had taken an instant dislike to Carlisle, but she still wasn’t sure whether that was down to the man himself or the business he ran. There was something creepy about all those dead, stuffed animals, something that made her flesh crawl.
‘I wonder why Street chose here,’ Higgs said.
‘Because it’s the last place we’d think of looking. He probably got a kick out of hiding right under our noses.’
Valerie was pretty sure that he’d be down in the basement, the most secure part of the building and the most difficult to penetrate. If they broke in through the front or the back, he’d hear them coming – there was bound to be someone listening out – and officers could be targeted, picked off one by one, as they passed through the door. Another option was to seal off the area and let Street know that they were there, but that might create a hostage situation that could go on for days. So, for the moment, she had decided to sit it out. There was a different kind of risk in waiting for him to come to them – that a member of the public might get hurt – but hopefully it would all be over in seconds. They would have the element of surprise on their side.
‘Guv,’ said Higgs, shifting forward. ‘Look who it is.’
Valerie smiled as she saw Solomon Vale striding down the high street, walking quickly in their direction. ‘Well, fancy that,’ she said. ‘Another staunch member of the firm coming to help out in his boss’s time of need.’
Solomon Vale went up to Beast, tried the door, which was locked, and rattled the handle. He peered in through the glass. He rang the bell, stood back. Then he stepped forward again and hammered on the door.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Higgs said. ‘What the hell is he doing?’
Valerie frowned. Vale couldn’t be drawing more attention to the place if he tried. What was he playing at? It didn’t make sense. Unless…. She suddenly wondered if they’d been sussed, if this was some sort of distraction technique while Street tried to get out round the back. Snatching up the radio, she warned the officers at the rear of the building to be alert. But then, after peering briefly through the door again, Vale appeared to give up. He gave the handle one last rattle and started walking away from the shop.
Valerie didn’t know what was going on, but she had to make a fast decision. ‘Let’s take him,’ she said. She got on the radio again, put out the order and sat back and waited.
Thirty seconds later, Solomon Vale had been swiftly and discreetly removed from the high street and installed in the back of an unmarked car. He hadn’t put up a struggle. Although he was a big man, he knew when he was outnumbered. He also knew when to pick his fights.
Valerie climbed into the car beside him. ‘Solomon,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you again.’
Vale lounged in the corner of the seat, his arms folded across his chest. ‘No need to go to all this trouble, Inspector. You want a date, all you got to do is ask.’
She smiled thinly back at him. ‘You want to tell me what you’re doing here?’
‘Now how about that for a coincidence? I was just going to ask the very same question. Here I am, walking down the street, minding my own business and next thing…’
‘Why were you trying to get into Beast?’
‘Same reason anyone wants to go there. I was looking to buy me a nice stuffed parrot to cheer up the living quarters.’
‘Nothing to do with Chris Street, then?’
To give him his due, Vale made a pretty good job of looking surprised. ‘Chris? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t mess me about, Solomon. I’m really not in the mood.’
Vale glanced towards the shop and then, as if a light had suddenly dawned, he gave a light mocking laugh. ‘What, you think Chris is in there?’
‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’
‘I’ve already told you why I’m here.’
‘And we both know that that’s a load of bullshit.’
Vale placed a hand over his heart. ‘Aw, now you’re hurting my feelings, Inspector, and just when I thought we might have a future together.’
Valerie gave a snort. ‘Well, sorry to disappoint. And sorry to inform you that for the foreseeable future at least, you’re going to be sitting down Cowan Road police station. If Chris Street is in there, we don’t want you tipping him off.’
She made to get out of the car, but then, unexpectedly, Vale said, ‘Hang on a moment. Is Ava Gold in there?’
‘Any reason why she should be?’
Vale hesitated. It went against the grain for him to tell the law anything, but there was clearly something on his mind. He glanced towards the two officers in the front seat. ‘I want a word,’ he said. ‘On our own, just you and me.’
‘That’s not possible,’ DS Higgs said from the passenger seat.
But Valerie waved her objection aside. She wanted to hear what Vale had to say and wasn’t concerned about being alone in the car with him. She’d known him long enough to be sure that he wasn’t any kind of danger to her. ‘Five minutes,’ she said. ‘And if you’re messing me about, Solomon, I’ll charge you with wasting police time.’
Higgs shot her a look ‘Are you sure, guv, only —’
‘I’m sure,’ said Valerie firmly.
Higgs reluctantly followed DC Preston out of the car. As soon as the door had closed, Valerie turned to Vale. ‘So what’s on your mind?’
‘Ava Gold,’ he said. ‘She is in there, ain’t she? She’s in there with Silver Delaney.’
‘What makes you think that?’
He leaned forward, splaying his hands on his thighs. ‘Look,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘I’m gonna tell you something and it’s God’s honest truth. Chris Street ain’t in there. I know that for a fact. Don’t ask me how I know ’cause I ain’t gonna tell you. Just take it from me, huh?’
‘So you just want me to walk away? What do you think, that I was born yesterday?’
‘I don’t want you to walk nowhere,’ he said. ‘What I want is for you to go in there and get Ava Gold out.’
‘What?’
‘This is serious. I ain’t messing. That Silver – she’s cracked. She ain’t right in the head. You hang around here for as long as you like, but I reckon only one of those girls is gonna come out again.’
Valerie felt a wave of apprehension flow over her. ‘Get talking, Solomon. What the hell’s going on?’
He shifted in his seat, clearly torn between his discomfort in talking to a cop and the consequences if he didn’t. ‘Okay, this is how it is. ’Bout an hour ago, I was down the Lincoln. Silver and Danny Street are in there too. He goes for a slash and his phone starts ringing. She answers it, starts talking to someone called Morton. She ain’t happy; I can see that from the look on her face. She’s as nice as pie to him over the phone though. Then, soon as they’ve finished chatting, she grabs her coat and hotfoots it out of the joint without another word.’
Valerie shook her head, still unsure as to where this was going. ‘And?’
‘Well, I don’t think nothin’ of it at the time – why should I? – but then half an hour later I give Ava a call, just to see how she’s doing and all. We’re talking when Silver turns up at her place, out of the blue, ringing the bell, and Ava says she has to go down and answer
it ’cause she’s looked out the window and Silver’s seen that she’s there. “I’ll call you back in five minutes,” is what she says. So I wait for ten minutes and she still ain’t called back so I try her phone but it just rings and rings. I keep on trying, but she doesn’t answer. So I figure something’s wrong and I head down here.’
‘But why Beast? Why here?’
‘I tried Ava’s flat first, but there’s no one there. And well, there ain’t too many Mortons in Kellston so I figured it had to be this one that Silver had been talking to.’
Valerie gave a small exasperated sigh. ‘But I still don’t see why you think Ava’s in any kind of danger.’
‘Call it a hunch,’ he said. ‘But not the kind of hunch that you want to be ignoring. Silver’s involved in bad stuff. I can’t say more than that. I know she’s Danny’s girlfriend, but it comes down to loyalty, don’t it? Me and Chris go way back. He and Ava… well, he wouldn’t want to see her get hurt.’
Valerie had to make a tough decision about what to do next. She didn’t think Solomon was lying. What if he was right about only one of the girls coming out again? She opened the car door, stepped out and leaned down. ‘Stay here,’ she said.
Solomon gave a nod. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I bet you could get that shop door opened real quiet if you put your mind to it.’
She walked down the street, her thoughts in tumult. Should she go in? Shouldn’t she? Both options could have their consequences. Quickly, she got into another car where Higgs was waiting for her.
‘Guess what, guv? A call’s just come through from the station. Noah Clark wants to talk to you urgently.’
But Valerie had other things on her mind. ‘What does he want? Whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait.’
Higgs left a short dramatic pause before delivering her news. ‘Well, what he wants, apparently, is to confess to the murder of Jenna Dean.’
61
Silver Delaney was getting jumpy and agitated. She paced alongside the table, muttering to herself and shifting the gun from one hand to the other as if she was tired of holding it but didn’t dare put it down. Ava’s fear was starting to escalate. Whatever the girl had taken was beginning to wear off and soon she’d need another fix. Except she couldn’t get what she needed here. If she wanted more gear, she’d have to leave Beast. And if she was going to leave the building, she had some unfinished business to deal with first.
‘Why don’t we go to my flat?’ Ava suggested. ‘I’ve got some stuff. We could have a smoke.’
Silver stared at her, her eyes full of suspicion. ‘Ava’s not allowed to leave.’
‘Don’t you fancy a smoke? I could certainly do with one. And then we could… we could have a chat about things.’
Silver began playing with the tools on the table, using her free hand to pick up the sharp-bladed scalpels and put them down again. ‘You have to take the fur off first,’ she said, glancing up. ‘Or the skin. You have to peel it away so you can chuck away the shit inside – the guts and everything. You want to keep the skeleton, though. You need to keep the bones.’
‘Right.’
‘Morton told me all about it, you see. He liked to talk about it. Not when Danny was around, of course, but other times… when it was just the two of us.’ She picked out a small bleached skull and held it up for Ava to see. ‘What do you think this is?’
‘I don’t know. A rat, maybe? Something like that.’
‘A rat,’ Silver murmured. ‘Someone sent a rat to Terry.’ She gave a giggle. ‘Trojan tried to eat it. He ran round and round the office and ripped its stupid little head off.’
‘Did he?’
‘Chris doesn’t like rats. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ Ava said.
‘He’s scared of them. They give him goosebumps. They make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.’ Silver gave her a sly look. ‘What are you afraid of, Ava?’
Ava gazed back at her, trying to think of an answer that didn’t involve a crazed female wielding a gun. ‘Spiders,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t like the way they scuttle.’
Silver’s mouth slid open, revealing her small white teeth. ‘Imagine someone putting a big black spider on your face when you’re fast asleep.’
Ava gave an involuntary shudder. ‘I’d rather not.’
Silver stood up straight again. She looked first at the gun and then at her two hostages. ‘This is getting boring now. Where’s Danny? Do you know where Danny is?’
Ava, sensing a gap in Silver’s sense of reality, grasped the opportunity with both hands. ‘He’s at Market Square. He’s at the flat.’
‘What’s he doing there?’
‘He’s waiting for you… for us. We should get going. He’ll get the hump if we keep him hanging around.’
‘Who cares? I don’t give a fuck.’
Ava felt a stab of dismay, but she wasn’t giving up just yet. ‘Course you don’t. Why should you? But he’s got the stuff, hasn’t he? He’s got the gear.’ She was taking a calculated risk – Silver might decide to shoot her there and then – but with few other options she reckoned it was a gamble worth taking.
Silver considered this for a moment, her desire for a fix glistening in her eyes. ‘What about him?’ she asked, glaring at Carlisle.
‘What about him?’ said Ava, making her voice sound suitably callous. ‘Leave him here. Lock the door. No one’s going to find him until it’s too late.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah, or you can come back later if you want. We can both come back.’
There was a long silence in the room. Ava could feel her heart beating in her chest, a heavy thump that grew stronger by the second. She thought she felt Carlisle move beside her, but didn’t dare look at him. Slowly, very slowly, she rose to her feet. ‘You ready, then?’
Silver frowned, her hand tightening around the gun again. ‘You’re not supposed to leave,’ she said. ‘Daddy won’t like it.’
‘Then I’ll come back. I’ll come back after we’ve been to see Danny. Your dad won’t even know that I’ve been gone.’
Silver put her thumb in her mouth and stared at her.
‘I promise,’ Ava said. ‘I won’t tell him if you don’t.’
Eventually, Silver gave a nod.
Ava walked slowly up the steps, overly aware of the girl’s presence behind her. She knew that at any second her life could end. All it would take was one slight squeeze of that trigger. Her legs were trembling, a cold knot forming in her stomach. She found herself thinking about her mum and dad, about how they would cope if she died in this place. A lump lodged in her throat. She thought about everything she’d been through today, how many lines she’d crossed and how much she’d got away with. Everybody’s luck ran out eventually.
Five steps to go. Four, three, two, one. When she reached the top, Ava breathed a sigh of relief. The worst part was over. She was sure it was. She reckoned she was strong enough to overpower Silver, to wrench the gun from her, but she wasn’t about to do anything rash. She had to keep cool, stay calm and choose exactly the right moment.
Ava kept on walking towards the door. The broken glass crunched beneath her feet. Be patient. Be smart. She reached up and slid back the bolt. Then she turned to look at Silver. ‘You’d better put the gun away. Someone might see it.’
‘It’s dark,’ Silver said. ‘No one’s going to notice.’
Ava decided not to argue with her. She’d come this far, she didn’t want to blow it now. At some point Silver would drop her guard and when she did, that would be the time to pounce. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Whatever you think.’ As she opened the door and stepped out on to the street, she felt a second even greater wave of relief. Greedily, she gulped in the cold evening air. A steady rain was falling and she raised her face to the sky, grateful to be free again.
Silver closed the door behind them. Perhaps she sensed that something was wrong because she instantly flinched, a thin hissing sound escaping from her lip
s.
Suddenly, Ava found herself blinded by a strong white light. It seemed to fall all around her, wrapping her in its glare, pinning her to the spot. Immediately, she raised her hands to her eyes.
‘Don’t move! This is the police. Stay where you are!’
Ava froze, but Silver didn’t. Perhaps Silver’s response was automatic, instinctive, but her hand jerked up and the gun came with it. There was one loud bang and the next thing Ava knew she was spinning backwards, a blinding pain running through her body. She was vaguely aware of a volley of different sounding shots, of a cry, a series of shouts, of her own sense of falling before she crashed against the glass of the door. She wondered if she was dying, if this was it, the end, the grand finale. And then all her thoughts splintered… and then there was nothing.
