by Mel Sherratt
So it was one thing to put on a show to everyone that they were a united couple, but really, did Kirstie have to keep throwing it in his face, making him look like a heartless bastard all the time? He was sure she was sleeping with someone else – not that he cared but it made her antics all the more annoying. She treated him like a prick. After leaving Flynn’s, he was disinclined to go home so he’d gone to The Genting Club on nearby Etruria Road and played a few tables, drunk some coffee with nice people until it was time to leave for his meeting.
He couldn’t believe he still had to babysit Kirstie. It had been three years since her old man had been locked up and he’d been sent to keep an eye on things. Granted, the luxury of living in Terry Ryder’s house and looking after his daughter was a major scoop but it meant he’d had to put up with so much arrogance and selfishness. Luckily, the money he was delivering should set him up for a better life. A twenty-five grand down payment to take Kirstie out of the equation, plus a ten grand fee for himself for setting it up when the time was right. Not that his brother, Ryan, knew about the ten grand. Jordan wasn’t the only one who was double-crossing him.
The setup with Kirstie had been good while it lasted but he’d be glad to be out of it. He was sick of being a dogsbody – that’s all he had become. Of course, he had Flynn’s, something he was good at managing, but Kirstie owned it at the moment. She also swanned round, taking the glory. Everyone knew he did a good job of keeping out the riff-raff and the dealers that he didn’t want in there. He had his own suppliers when necessary but he’d kept on the good side of the law purposely. Still, he wouldn’t have to put up with Kirstie for much longer, once Flynn’s belonged to him and Ryan.
Besides, he had fallen in love with someone else.
Jordan glanced up at the flats again, feeling a warmth rush through him at the thought of what was to come. He hadn’t planned it, but now that it had happened, he felt ecstatic. Once Kirstie was out of the way, and the heat was off him and Ryan, he was getting out of Ryder’s house and buying his own place. He’d just put a deposit down on a flat being built in the city centre. It was a new block; he wanted to be one of the first to live in them, plus be near to his club.
He glanced up again, smiling when he saw her window was the only one lit up on her floor. Flat 210. Sophie Nicklin was waiting – waiting for him. Sex with a beautiful woman who was a pleasure to be around. He couldn’t believe his luck. He’d only met her by chance as he’d walked through the main area downstairs and seen two blokes bothering her at the bar. After getting the bouncers to move them on, he’d offered to buy her a drink to make up for the lack of quality clientele that night and had been drawn in by her charm. When she got up to leave, Jordan had asked for her number and it had started from there. Six months later, he was wondering how long he could keep up with the pretence that it was all about sex. He wanted her all to himself, whenever he wanted – without Kirstie fucking Ryder breathing down his neck as if she owned him. Luckily, he didn’t have long to wait now. His plan was to make it happen soon.
Jordan heard someone approaching. He shook his head when he saw who it was. Really – Steve Burgess had been told to choose someone and he’d involved this cretin?
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he snapped.
Had he realised that removing the strap of the bag from his shoulder and over his head would hinder his reflexes, he would have left it where it was. He felt a hard object crash into the side of his head, let the bag drop to the floor so that he could retaliate, but it was too late. He stumbled to his knees as the second blow caught him straight across the nose. The stars in the sky mingled with the ones he could see flashing before his eyes. The toe of a boot cracked up into his chin and the blows continued to rain down.
As he took the beating of his life, all he could think of was Sophie, who would be waiting for him.
3.20 A.M.
Leah Matthews staggered, trying to negotiate the path alongside Harrison House. It was a two-mile walk from the city centre to her home at the dip of Ford Green Road. She’d been around Hanley for most of the evening and had left just after two a.m. It had taken an age but she couldn’t afford a taxi after drinking away most of her money.
It had become a regular occurrence lately – after a night out, if she hadn’t picked up a fella, she would grab something to eat on the walk back home and either start a fight in the kebab house on Town Road or mouth off at someone as she walked home afterwards. She never took a taxi unless she was really far out of town. She wasn’t one of those women who were scared of their own shadows, terrified that someone was going to run out of an entry they were walking past, grab them around the neck, drag them into the dark and attack them. Growing up with two older brothers on one of the meanest streets in Stoke-on-Trent had given her the courage of a bear when it came to defending herself, something she had needed on many an occasion over the years with the type of men she fell for. Bad boys – she couldn’t help but love them.
Almost dancing on her heels, so desperate to use the toilet after her marathon walk home, she folded her arms across her chest and shivered in the cold night air. The blouse she had on was no more than a thin piece of material covering her modesty, her fake leather leggings clinging to her uncomfortably after she’d ripped up the dance floor in Chicago Rock for an hour or more.
In the distance, she spotted her neighbour, Rita Pritchard, with her dog. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; she often caught them out walking as she was coming in from a night out. Despite Leah’s attempts to instil a sense of danger into the older woman, Rita had a mind of her own. She also liked a good natter, something Leah wasn’t in the mood for. She stepped off the path and onto the grass so that the noise of her shoes wouldn’t alert Rita, running past quickly, hoping to go unnoticed into Harrison House.
Two seconds later, she was flat out on the grass.
‘Ow,’ she cried out, turning back. Flicking strands of hair away from her face, she peered into the dark to see what she had tripped over. She stood up, brushed her clothes down and stepped a little closer. As her eyes adjusted to the night shadows, the shape came into focus.
It looked like a man lying there.
‘Wake up, you drunken bastard.’ She took another step forward. ‘You can’t stay out here. You’ll bloody well freeze to death.’
He didn’t make a murmur so she kicked him a bit harder.
‘Oy, wake up!’
Still no sign of life. She half wondered whether to walk away, leave him there, but it might be someone from the flats, and she knew she’d take great pleasure in banging on someone’s door to let them know who she had found. She nudged his shoulder with her shoe, pushing him over onto his back so that she could see his face.
‘Shit.’ Her hand covered her mouth.
Careful not to tread in the blood at the side of his ribcage, already pooling on top of the soil, she took another step nearer. He hadn’t made a sound, not even a groan: was he dead? She grimaced at the sight of his face, an unrecognisable mishmash of bruising and swelling, his eyes like two slits in a pie. Leah was surprised to see his watch still on his wrist, gleaming in the moonlight. Maybe she should . . .
She pulled her hand away sharpish. It would leave prints. There was no way she was taking the blame for something that she hadn’t done.
A white flash reflected in the bushes, catching her eye as she stooped beside the man. Peering into the darkness, she realised it wasn’t her eyes playing tricks on her. She moved closer, put a hand out and reached for it. It was a black bag with a draw-through string handle. She picked it up, undid the string and peeked inside. Her eyes widened as she surveyed the contents.
Gasping, she looked around. The lamppost on the path illuminated most of the green beside it and she couldn’t see a soul, not even Rita. Quickly, she pulled the string handle tight again and hooked it over her shoulder. Finders, keepers. Finders, keepers.
She stepped a
way again, this time turning to leave. Let someone else find him. She didn’t need to get involved. She didn’t want any more hassle at her door.
She did need money, though.
The bag wasn’t near the man; it might not have anything to do with him. And anyway, she was right – finders, keepers.
With one more glance up and down the pathway, then up at the flats to check that the coast was still clear, she tucked the bag into her side to keep it hidden and legged it into Harrison House.
3.30 A.M.
Sophie Nicklin woke with a start when she heard a bang. It sounded like a door being shut along the walkway outside. She checked her watch: no wonder she’d been dozing on the settee. Pushing herself up, she stretched and reached for her phone, saw nothing new and sighed. There had been no messages from Jordan since he’d texted her at one a.m. Usually if he was delayed at Flynn’s, or sometimes if he couldn’t come at all, he’d ring her to let her know. The very least he’d do was send her a quick text message, so that she wouldn’t worry.
She frowned, then moved to look out of the window. Harrison House was laid out in an L-shape, the flats having a shared-access walkway to all doors at the front of the building. She was the last flat at the end of the block so had the advantage of being able to see the side and the front of the large grassed area, as well as the path that was a cut-through from the main road to the entrance below. The times she’d stood in this particular window and waited to see Jordan appear and walk across to see her . . .
From somewhere up above, she could hear the thud of a bass beat. Since she was on the first floor, it wasn’t loud enough to bother her, despite the hour. It was more part of the problem living in a block of flats as large as Harrison House. So many people housed in close proximity was a recipe for disaster – no matter how clichéd that sounded. A door banging, someone shouting, loud music, a fight breaking out. Only the other night some brave sod had called the police because the Granger brothers had been scrapping again. Boy, those twins knew how to fight, going at it like animals, as if they wanted to kill each other. Still, floor one didn’t have too many rowdy residents. And it was home for now, much safer than where she’d been living this time last year in Birmingham.
She stared at her phone, willing it to ring. Sophie missed Jordan terribly when he didn’t turn up, ached for him even. Longed to feel his arms wrapped around her keeping her safe, making her feel wanted, cherished. Granted, he could only stay an hour or so but that time was enough to make her feel so loved and warm that it would always get her through until the next visit.
Falling in love with him hadn’t been on the agenda – then again, when is falling in love ever a plan? These things just happen. And despite him being upfront with her that he lived with someone, she believed him when he said the relationship was nothing more than a business arrangement. At first she hadn’t liked it, but as she’d seen more and more of him, she couldn’t help but care less and less. He consumed her every thought when he wasn’t with her. He made her lonely existence bearable.
She wouldn’t call him to see where he was. She knew by now that he would visit if he could. Often things would change right at the last minute and anticipation would turn to disappointment for them both in an instant. She was no fool, though – Jordan would never be her man. The woman he lived with was Kirstie Ryder and everyone knew that she was cold and callous and didn’t seem to have love enough for anyone but herself. According to Jordan and her friend Stella, Kirstie swanned around Stoke-on-Trent living off her dad’s reputation and money as if she were Lady of the Manor. Yet, even though Sophie knew she would be in for it if Kirstie ever did find out that she was sleeping with Jordan, she couldn’t stop. Maybe she was more addicted to him than she cared to admit.
Shivering now as she stood in her pyjamas, she looked down for one last time. The path, lit by a lone lamppost at its middle, was isolated except for a woman with a small black dog. They shuffled along together, the woman using a stick to keep her balance, the dog running ahead every now and then on an extendable lead. Sophie recognised her as Rita from the ground floor. She saw her often walking the path in the early hours with – what was the dog’s name? Maisie, that was it.
With a sigh, she closed the curtains. If Jordan did come now, he had a key and could let himself in. Oh, how she wanted him to climb in beside her, cuddle up to her, run his hands over her body and turn her to face him.
She turned out the light, sad to be going to bed alone.
6.00 A.M.
Allie Shenton hadn’t been out of bed more than ten minutes when the familiar ringtone on her mobile phone made her groan as she ran back through to the bedroom to answer it. She sighed as she listened to the caller tell her a body had been found under suspicious circumstances. Such bloody bad timing, but incidents didn’t stop happening just because she had things in her life to attend to.
As she felt the familiar thrill of excitement that washed over her whenever she got a new case, she tried to push away the guilt. Something to sink her teeth into right now would hardly be a bad thing. She wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with Karen, but she might bring peace to another family who had lost a loved one.
‘Why were we awake at stupid o’clock this morning? It’s only just past six now,’ said Mark as she joined him in the kitchen once she’d showered. He turned to hand her a mug of coffee. ‘Oh, you’re already dressed for work. What’s happened?’
‘A man’s been beaten and killed.’ Allie rested her back on the worktop as she took a sip of her drink. ‘You won’t think I’m heartless if I take the case, will you?’
Mark stared at her long enough to make her feel even guiltier. She hated to see that look of annoyance that he’d perfected over the years.
‘No,’ he spoke finally, ‘but I can’t stay at the hospital all evening on my own. It’ll drive me insane.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to!’ Allie almost shouted her words but knew he hadn’t meant it to sound like it was such a chore. ‘I’ll see if I can get off for a couple of hours at the same time you’re there.’
‘Okay.’
She touched his arm. ‘It’s not like it’s going to be this way forever.’
‘I know.’
‘We – we’ll most likely be planning a funeral this time next week.’
Mark drew Allie into his arms and held her for a moment. She felt the warmth of his chest, the beating of his heart. It was what she needed to keep her focused, grounded even. The past three weeks since Karen had been taken ill had been hard for both of them and she was grateful to him for keeping her spirits up, making her smile through the tears. Even more so after she’d received the rose last week and confessed that it wasn’t the first one.
‘Please be careful,’ said Mark. ‘Stay near to Perry?’
‘Ugh. If I have to.’ She smiled.
‘And don’t forget to keep a look out. I want you home in one piece.’
‘I’ll be here.’
6.15 A.M.
Allie pulled on a woollen hat and located her car keys. Luckily there was no ice to scrape from her car, even though the morning was still cold and dark.
Over in the north of the city, Smallthorne was less than three miles from her base in Bethesda Street and just over five miles from Allie’s home in Werrington. To get to the scene of the crime, she drove along a main road that cut through a long line of modest new-build properties, the odd light illuminating a downstairs window here and there. Past a large open space with a low wall around it and next up were the flats.
Harrison House had been built in the eighties and was mostly full of renting tenants. Like anywhere, certain people were prone to causing havoc but most of the time the shouts the police received were for either low-level domestics or anti-social behaviour. Allie cast her mind back, trying to think of more serious incidents in the vicinity, but apart from a knife attack on a man in his late fifties sev
eral years back, she came up with nothing. Still, she wasn’t relishing spending time there.
It was so early in the morning it took her just minutes to get through the streets. She left the main road and turned right into a cul-de-sac, the only way to drive in to Harrison House. There wasn’t room there to park her car, so she squeezed it into a ridiculously small space in the car park, partly blocking in a marked police car. As she got out, she spotted DI Nick Carter’s BMW. Yet again, she wondered if she would ever be ready to be in charge of her own murder investigation, or if she still wanted to stay hands-on as a detective sergeant, with her ear to the ground so to speak.
In front, she could see the path had been cordoned off with crime scene tape. In the distance, she saw the familiar sight of a white tent erected to contain and conceal evidence as well as the body. Even in the awakening first light, there were a few bystanders keen to rubberneck. Allie glanced up towards the flats as she locked the car door. There were several lights on at windows here too, people hanging over the walkway to look down upon them. She wondered as always if the killer was amongst those watching or if they had simply been woken by the noise as officers responded to the incident.
Harrison House was the type of place where everything could be going down, or nothing at all, and no one would be any the wiser. Not least the police. Everyone kept themselves to themselves, but an eye on each other too. It was going to be a hard task getting information from the people in those eighty flats. She sighed.
PC Angela Butler stood at the beginning of the path.
‘He was found by a woman out walking in the early hours, Sarge,’ she told Allie as she drew level with her. ‘She’s an old dear – couldn’t sleep so was taking her dog out for a pee. Victim’s face has taken a right old battering, plus he has a stab wound to the chest.’
