Angel of Death

by Ben Cheetham

  Forester and his wife entered the house. Net curtains prevented Jim from seeing inside. He glanced at the clock. It was just past six. He wanted to make sure he was back home in time for Mark’s call, but he was reluctant to try what was on his mind with Philippa Horne in the house. Time ticked on: half past six, seven, quarter past seven. His fingers drummed an impatient rhythm on the dashboard. A few more minutes and he would have to make his move no matter what. His fingers stopped drumming as Philippa appeared from around the back of the house dressed in jeans and a sweater, carrying a garden fork.

  He drove to a phone box, dialled Forester’s home number, let it ring three times, then hung up. He counted off ten seconds, then redialled. As the phone rang again, he put his handheld tape recorder to its earpiece and hit the record button. One, two, three rings. Someone picked up. A voice came down the line. It was Forester, but not the Forester he’d heard in the city centre. This Forester was well spoken, his voice as sharp and cold as a blade of ice. ‘What the hell are you doing phoning me at home?’

  There was a brief pause. Then the voice came again. ‘What if my wife had answered?’

  Another silence. Longer than the last one. Punctuated by the eerie sound of Forester’s breathing, suddenly shallow with uncertainty. The line went dead.

  His heart thumping in his throat, Jim rewound the tape and played the voice back. There was a slight hiss of static, but the recording wasn’t bad. He still needed Mark to confirm it, but there was no longer any doubt in his mind – Edward Forester was the Chief Bastard. He felt no sense of triumph at the discovery, only a leaden sadness for all the lies and hypocrisy of the adult world.

  He drove back past the red-brick semi. Philippa Horne was digging over the garden’s borders, working out the strains of the day, blissfully unaware that her world was about to be shattered. He heaved a sigh and put his foot down. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock when he arrived home, but the phone was ringing. He ran to answer it.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Mark asked excitedly. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you all evening.’

  ‘I’ve—’

  Before Jim could finish, Mark went on, ‘Charlotte moved. I asked her to move her fingers and she did. The doctors think it was probably just a muscle spasm, but I know it wasn’t. She heard me.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Mark.’ Jim’s flat, heavy voice didn’t match his words.

  ‘What is it?’ Mark’s excitement was replaced by concerned curiosity. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘There’s something I want you to listen to – a recording I made. And whatever you hear, I want you to promise me you’ll keep it to yourself until I say otherwise.’

  ‘I promise I won’t say a word to anyone.’

  Jim hit play on the tape recorder and Forester’s coldly furious voice hissed into the phone. When the recording was finished, he returned the phone to his ear. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s him,’ Mark exclaimed. ‘It’s—’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Jim cut in.

  Mark’s voice dropped to a tremulous whisper. ‘It’s the Chief Bastard.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. I’d recognise that voice anywhere. Who is he?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  Mark’s voice rose in surprise again. ‘Why not?’

  ‘For your own safety. I can’t say any more than that right now. I don’t want—’ To make you an accomplice, Jim thought, finishing the sentence in his mind.

  ‘You don’t want what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is keeping you safe.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Mark asked tentatively, as if unsure he really wanted to know.

  As Jim thought about the answer to that question, a cold sweat seeped from the palms of his hands. ‘Take care of yourself, Mark.’ With a trace of regretful longing, he added, ‘And don’t ever forget, there’s nothing more important than the ones you love.’

  Jim hung up and looked at his hand that had gripped the phone, flexing fingers that felt tingly and stiff. He winced as a cramping pain streaked down his arm. He breathed out the pain, telling himself that what he was going to do was the only way to stop Forester. The tape recording was incriminating, but it would no more stand up in a court of law than the words of a dead murderess or the questionable recovered memory of an abuse victim. Not that there was any way the case would ever get to court. Without physical evidence, there was no chance of bringing charges against Forester. And all the physical evidence was long gone, except for the DVDs.

  As far as Jim knew, Forester possessed the only other copy of the film. It seemed a pretty good guess that the politician had a version in which his face was visible. In order to properly relive the experience, Forester would want to be able to see his face on screen. If that was the case, he would need to be insane or stupid to have kept hold of his copy after Grace’s rescue of Mark. And Forester was neither of those things. He was a cruel, calculating sociopath, a master of manipulating his audience and public image.

  There was one other piece of evidence that might connect Forester, and possibly a lot of other people, to what had gone on at the Winstanley house – Herbert’s book. But that had most probably been consigned to the burning barn.

  That just left the hitman. A pro like him would have plenty of places to lie low until the heat died down. And even if he was caught, there would be no incentive for him to give his client up when he was facing a life sentence no matter what. A snitch’s life was less than worthless in prison. Better to go down with a stand-up reputation.

  Jim took out his police ID. He stared at his photo. It had been taken shortly before Margaret left him, but it might as well have been from a different lifetime. His gaze moved to the South Yorkshire Police logo: ‘JUSTICE WITH COURAGE’. He wanted to believe in it. For a long time he had believed in it. But bitter experience had taught him that sometimes courage wasn’t enough.

  24

  Jim pulled into the kerb a couple of hundred metres away from The Minx. He scanned the vehicles parked outside the club. His gaze came to rest on what looked like a builder’s van with ladders on its roof. He knew it wasn’t a builder’s van, though. It was a surveillance van.

  If Garrett had the club under surveillance, there was every chance he was listening in on its phones too. He stared thought­fully at The Minx’s flickering neon sign, then turned his car round. He pulled over at a phone box and wrote its number on the printout of the paternity test results. Then he drove to the Xinchun Chinese Takeaway. The takeaway was owned by Li Xinchun, a known associate of Reynolds. It had been shut down for several years after a drugs raid found bags of cocaine, cannabis and cash under the counter. But since Li’s recent release from prison, it had reopened.

  Jim sat watching the Chinese girl behind the counter serve customers. When a stocky, middle-aged man in chef’s whites emerged from the kitchen, Jim got out of his car and entered the takeaway. ‘Li Xinchun.’

  Li eyed Jim with a kind of weary suspicion. ‘What do you want?’

  Jim took out his ID badge. ‘Just a word, that’s all.’ He jerked a thumb at his car. ‘In private.’

  With a sigh, Li followed Jim. ‘I’m operating a straight busi­ness now, Officer.’

  Jim started the engine and accelerated away from the takeaway.

  ‘Hey,’ exclaimed Li. ‘What are you doing? I’m working.’

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  ‘But I haven’t broken my parole. I’m clean. Search me if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I don’t give a toss about your parole. Now just sit there and keep your gob shut.’

  Li gave Jim a measuring look, as though trying to work out whether he was what he claimed to be. Jim pulled over within sight of The Minx. He held out the printout of the test results to Li. ‘I need
you to give that to Bryan Reynolds.’

  ‘Who?’

  A sardonic smile flickered across Jim’s lips. ‘I haven’t got time for games. Tell him to phone me on that number from a payphone in fifteen minutes.’

  Li remained motionless, his expression bewildered.

  ‘If you don’t do this, Bryan’s going to be in deep trouble,’ said Jim. ‘You know who I am, so you know I’m not bull­shitting you.’

  The confusion left Li’s face in a heartbeat. He glanced warily at the printout. ‘What is that?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. And if you value your neck, I’d keep it that way.’

  ‘Why don’t you give it to him?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, are you going to sit there asking questions? Or are you going to save Bryan’s arse from prison?’

  Li looked at Jim a moment longer, then took the printout and put it in his pocket. As he got out of the car, Jim hissed after him, ‘Remember, fifteen minutes, from a payphone.’

  Jim watched until Li was inside The Minx, then he returned to the phone box. Fifteen minutes ticked by. The phone rang. He picked it up and waited for the caller to speak. Reynolds’s voice came over the line in a cautious but menacing growl. ‘Is that you, Monahan?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘We are talking.’

  ‘Not on the phone. Face to face.’

  ‘Why the fuck should I meet you?’

  ‘Because if you don’t I’ll tell Mark the truth.’

  There was a brief pause, then Reynolds said, ‘When and where?’

  ‘As soon as it’s dark.’ Jim told Reynolds where, adding, ‘Make sure you’re not followed. We’ve got you under surveil­lance.’

  ‘Why are you doing this, Monahan? What’s your fucking game?’

  ‘This is no game.’

  Jim drove almost reluctantly to the meeting place. By the time he got there the sun was dipping behind the hills of Shef­field. The pain in his chest was back, and there were lights like stars in front of his eyes. He sat very still, breathing softly, sweat popping out all over his body.

  Twenty minutes later, headlights shone through Jim’s rear windscreen as a car pulled in behind him. The headlights flashed. He left his car and approached the other vehicle. It was a red Subaru. A good getaway vehicle. Reynolds was behind the steering-wheel. His skinhead sidekick, Les, occupied the passenger seat. Les got out, motioning for Jim to take his seat.

  ‘Were you followed?’ Jim asked, struggling to keep the pain out of his voice.

  Reynolds nodded. He spoke without looking at Jim. ‘We lost your pals in Darnall.’

  ‘Are you certain of that?’

  ‘I know how to drop a fucking tail. Now what do you want?’

  ‘I want to know why you asked Stephen Baxley to bring up your child.’

  The hard mask of Reynolds’s face remained intact, except for a twitch at the corners of his eyes. ‘Let me ask you something, Monahan. When you look at me, what do you see?’

  ‘A drug dealer, a pimp.’

  ‘A scumbag through and through,’ put in Reynolds. ‘That’s what I am, and that’s why I did what I did. Stephen was a good guy, intelligent, ambitious. He could give my child a real future.’

  ‘So you went to prison in return for him taking on Mark.’

  ‘Prison would have ended his career before it had begun, and any chance my kid had of a normal life along with it.’

  ‘And Jenny was happy to go along with your deal?’

  ‘She was when I made it clear I didn’t want anything to do with her or the kid. She’d spent her life rotting on Park Hill. That was the last thing she wanted for Mark. Stephen offered her a way out and she took it. It seemed like the best thing for all of us at the time.’ Reynolds’s eyes twitched again, more violently. He twisted towards Jim as though appealing for understanding. ‘Stephen was always such a steady bloke. How was I supposed to know that one day he’d go off his fucking nut and… and do what he did? If he was in trouble, why didn’t he come to me? I’d have helped him.’

  ‘He owed millions.’

  ‘I’m not saying I could’ve stopped his factory from going under, but I could’ve done something, given him some cash or a place to live.’

  ‘You mean like you did for him and Grace Kirby.’

  ‘Who?’

  Jim detected no hint of a lie in Reynolds’s voice, but that meant nothing with a man like him. ‘In February 1997 you let Stephen use a flat of yours in Attercliffe to hide a runaway named Grace Kirby.’

  Reynolds’s eyes widened a fraction in realisation, but he remained silent, wary of saying anything that might incriminate him in any way.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bryan,’ said Jim. ‘Whatever you tell me stays between us. You’ve got my word on that.’

  ‘You expect me to trust your word?’

  ‘No, but bear in mind that I’ll be in just as deep shit as you if my DCI finds out about this meeting.’

  As Jim had expected, Reynolds pursed his lips in satisfaction at this response – self-preservation was the only law a man like him understood. ‘Yeah, I know who you’re talking about, but Stephen called her Angel. How do you know about her?’

  ‘I’ll get to that in a bit. First tell me what happened with you and Angel.’

  ‘Nothing happened with me and Angel. I never met the girl. Stephen came to me one day and said he needed to use the flat. I didn’t ask why. I just assumed he was keeping a bit on the side. A few months later he came to me again, said he needed my help to get a girl out of the city and give her a false identity. Said she was in trouble with your lot. So I arranged for a mate of mine in Newcastle to look after her.’

  ‘Pimp her out, don’t you mean?’

  Reynolds’s eyebrows bunched. ‘How the fuck do you know that?’

  ‘I know a lot of things about what went on back then. What I want to know is how much you know. For instance, did you know Angel was only fifteen at the time?’

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue how old she was. All I know is Stephen asked me for a favour and I gave it to him.’

  ‘Are you telling me it never crossed your mind that she might be underage?’

  ‘It was none of my fucking business. Listen, Monahan, in a business like mine you get used to not asking those kinds of questions.’

  ‘So you’re OK with fifteen-year-olds turning tricks.’

  Leaning towards Jim, Reynolds said between clenched teeth, ‘Whatever else I am, I’m not into that kind of shit. And if I found out anyone who works for me was, I’d cut their bollocks off.’

  Jim regarded Reynolds with weary disdain. In a world where people made it their business not to know each other’s business, Reynolds wasn’t likely to ever be called upon to make good on his threat. ‘Stephen Baxley was into that kind of shit.’

  Reynolds licked his lips as though his mouth was suddenly dry. It took him a moment to work himself up to asking the question he didn’t want to ask. ‘He wasn’t into boys as well as girls, was he?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. But he knew people who were, and he allowed them to abuse Mark.’

  ‘That’s a fucking lie!’

  ‘Why would I lie? And what do you think the insanity that’s been going on in this city for the past few days is all about?’

  Reynolds shook his head hard. ‘Stephen wouldn’t…’ he started to say, but the denial died on his lips. He pressed a hand to his face, groaning as though a knife had been thrust into him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Again, I’m not exactly sure. Money, pleasure, maybe a bit of both.’

  ‘Who are they, these paedo cunts?’

  ‘There were five of them, including Stephen Baxley.’

  ‘Five,’ Reynolds repeated in a mumble of despair, digging his fingers into his face as though trying to prise something away.

  ‘Four are dead.’

  Reynolds’s hand slid away from his face. His eyes were sheened with moisture. There was an odd twist to his expres­sion. It wa
sn’t simply rage. It was something more. Something verging on rabid hunger. ‘I want a name.’

  Jim’s mouth opened and closed silently. The car suddenly seemed airless, and he couldn’t find sufficient breath to speak. He looked out of the window, scanning the road almost as if he hoped Reynolds had been wrong about losing his tail. I just don’t want any more people to die. Mark’s words echoed back to him. But Mark had only been talking about good people. Hadn’t he?

  ‘Give me a fucking name,’ continued Reynolds, his voice rasping like a knife on a whet-stone. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want me to do what you can’t. Don’t lose your balls now, Monahan. You know it’s the right thing to do. It’s not about the law, it’s about justice.’

  ‘Justice.’ Jim mouthed the word as though it was foreign to him. What was justice? He wasn’t sure he knew any more. The only thing he was certain of was that doing this was necessary to protect Mark and everyone like him from Forester. He reached into his pocket for the printouts and handed them to Reynolds. The simple movement took an effort that left him shaking.

  Reynolds studied the photos, running his tongue over his teeth as though in anticipation of a meal. ‘I thought you said there was only one.’

  ‘The man is Edward Forester.’

  ‘Forester, why does that name seem familiar?’

  ‘He’s a local politician.’

  Reynolds nodded with recognition. ‘I’ve seen the fucker on the news.’

  ‘The woman is his wife, Philippa Horne. She’s not involved in this.’

  ‘Politicians.’ Reynolds spat the word out in a vicious hiss. ‘Criminals in business suits. Well this is one suit-wearing fucker who won’t be spouting his bullshit much longer.’