by Nicky Black
They stood at the gate with Barry, mouths gaping.
‘What the fuck?’ gasped Jed.
The garden had been stripped of its flowers, the grass torn up, the contents of the dustbin strewn across what was left of it. But worse than that, someone had scrawled a message in spray paint on the pebble-dash under the living room window.
“MONGOL.”
While Jed stormed up the path, Tommy pulled Barry around to face him, hoping he hadn’t understood what the word meant. Barry did, and his face contorted in pain. Tommy’s mind tumbled, and he looked around for any sign of Trevor Logan, but the street was deserted save a couple of stray children digging in the drains with sticks.
‘Come on,’ Tommy said, his fingers trembling as he took Barry’s hand and led him down the path.
Jed opened the door, pushing Barry and Tommy inside, calling out to his parents. Neither were home, the house silent bar Barry’s frantic cries.
As Tommy closed the door behind him, he noticed a folded piece of paper on the hallway floor which Jed bent to pick up. They exchanged a glance before Jed opened it, his face falling into a curious frown. He handed it to Tommy who looked down at a page torn from that morning’s Racing Post. It meant nothing to Jed, but Tommy’s eyes were drawn to one of the fixtures:
“6.34 p.m. PEACH SURPRISE.”
PEACH
Funny how the unemployed could afford their smokes but complained of having no money for food.
A morning spent on Valley Park was one thing, but the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary was quite another when it came to hopelessness. The ward was quiet as a graveyard, six beds containing near-corpses emitting no sound other than the beeps and clunks of apparatus.
It had been two days and still Sally’s temperature refused to subside. Unable to breathe for herself, a machine caused her chest to rise and fall unnaturally like clockwork. Tests had confirmed not only ecstasy in her system, but cocaine too, and Doctor Flynn had regarded him with eyes that told a story he didn’t want to hear. Just a couple of more days, she’d said, and they’d have to think about their options.
The nurse with the frizzy red hair, whose name he’d learnt was Pamela, had grown fond of Sally. He could tell by the way she stroked her hand and spoke to her about the poor girl who’d been brought in the night before and had her legs amputated. Sally was lucky to still have her legs, she’d said. She would be back up dancing in no time.
‘Here’s her things, Mr Peach.’ Pamela held out a hospital-issue bag. He took it from her and looked inside: Sally’s white dress, now dirty and soiled, a small, white shoulder purse and a pink camera. ‘I’ll get you some tea,’ Pamela said.
‘Strong, two sugars,’ he replied, robotically.
Sitting on Sally’s bed, he took the camera from the bag, checking the magnified window on its rear to see how many photographs she’d taken. Twenty. The camera could provide clues; perhaps she’d taken some snaps on the night of the rave. Maybe Collins was in them, dancing with her, putting a pill onto her tongue.
He switched the camera on, listening to the high-pitched whine of the flash warming up. He pointed the camera at Sally’s face, clicked and wound on, repeating the process until the film was finished.
He’d had to explain to the staff that Sally’s mother was dead, but he hadn’t given them the whole, gruesome story. The nurse, Pamela, was desperate to know; she was a nosey parker, no doubt about it.
‘What a shame, not to have your mam at a time like this,’ she’d said with a morose shake of the head. She was digging for information, so she could talk to her pals about the poor girl who’d overdosed – an overworked father and a dead mother. Cancer. Car accident. Suicide.
Tragic.
Sally’s sickly face brought back memories Peach would rather remained buried.
Try starved herself to death.
But they didn’t need to know that. None of their business.
He hadn’t noticed it at first, his wife’s self-absorption, the fussing over every stray hair or broken nail, pinching at the flesh under her arms, assessing its size with a tape measure, tapping at it with the back of her hand. It had got to the point where he became so tired of the constant need for reassurance, he’d stopped commenting all together, choosing to ignore her or walk away from any remark about a new line on her forehead or dimple on the back of her thigh. This served only to increase the amount of time she spent examining herself in mirrors, picking herself to pieces.
They were seven years into their marriage when Sally came along. He understood now that it wasn’t motherhood she avoided, but pregnancy, the idea of getting fat triggering a level of anxiety and simmering rage he only ever saw in criminals who realised there was no way out. Once Sally was born he’d watched in horror as Kathleen wasted away, hospitalised on many occasions, years of swings and roundabouts. For ten years she hopped from one diet to the next, one crisis to the next. In those final months, refusing all offers of help, she’d retreated from them both.
He hadn’t understood it; it didn’t compute, and it had scared the life out of him. To him she’d been beautiful, and he’d been lucky to find her, sitting shyly in the typing pool of the police station, her short hair curled around the backs of her ears in the style of the time.
‘Like Twiggy,’ she’d said.
He’d tried everything: persuasion, flattery, force. He’d ignore it, eating alone and making out it was perfectly normal. Eventually, he’d run out of options. He hadn’t known what to do, so he did nothing at all.
The hospital cubicle was heating up as the morning wore on, a fan whirring air around it to keep Sally cool. He’d picked up the post from the doormat that morning. Among the bills were half a dozen cards addressed to Sally. He opened them now, one by one, reading them aloud and placing them on the bed next to him. There was only one name he recognised: Selina, the girl who used to come for tea.
‘Such lovely friends.’ He hadn’t noticed Pamela return with his tea. She was reading the cards without asking if she could.
He reached up and snatched the cards from her, putting them into the bag with Sally’s other things. As he did so, he noticed another card, already sitting on the bedside table next to his steaming tea. He picked it up, his face flushing a livid red. A stick girl with a smiley yellow face for a head danced. ‘Little Raver!’ it read.
Furious, he shoved the card into the bag, but then his breath caught, shut off like a stopcock. Sally’s hand twitched and rose a few inches from the bed, and he felt his stomach pitch as her forefinger pointed to the curtain like a ghoul in an episode of Scooby Doo. Pamela held onto his arm as he lunged towards Sally, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, scouring her face for life. He felt the nurse’s hand pulling him back, but he resisted, wrenching his arm from Pamela’s grasp, his hands cupping Sally’s cheeks.
‘It’s me, it’s dad,’ he said.
‘It happens all the time, Mr Peach.’
‘She moved,’ he said, turning angrily to Pamela. ‘She bloody moved!’
‘It’s just a reflex,’ Pamela insisted.
Fire burnt his face. ‘Don’t just stand there, you idiot, get the doctor!’
Affronted, Pamela drew back her shoulders. ‘You know, you should talk to her,’ she said. ‘They can often hear what’s going on around them.’
Turning his back on her, he heard the soft-soled shoes withdraw as he looked at his daughter, absorbing a face that was starting to look like someone else’s.
He should talk to her, but words of endearment muddled themselves in his throat. They forever throttled him and stuck to the roof of his mouth. He took in Sally’s pale face, hearing the right words in his head, but feeling awkward, as if facing a headstone and wondering what to say, worried someone might be listening. He wondered, while he struggled to free his tongue, if he could ever be the sort of man who could show how he felt, say the right thing at the right time. It had lost him his wife, it could lose him his daughter.
&
nbsp; He gathered his courage and leant forward, brushing Sally’s hair from her brow. He put his mouth to her ear.
‘I’m going to get who did this to you,’ he said.
***
‘I told you to leave it, Mike, it might have nothing to do with him.’
Superintendent McNally was signing a pile of letters, and Peach winced at the use of his first name. Was this a telling off?
‘Oh, it’s got everything to do with him,’ he said, throwing a newspaper onto McNally’s never-ending pile of paperwork. “Spaced Out!” the headline read, “11,000 youngsters go drug crazy at Britain’s biggest ever acid party.”
McNally pulled the newspaper towards him, his eyes scanning it for barely a second before pushing it away. ‘He’s a nobody from a council estate. He can’t pull off something like this. Now let it go.’
Peach pushed the newspaper back across the desk. ‘Sir, I know—’
‘What? What do you know?’ McNally sighed and put his pen down, finally focusing on Peach. ‘That some two-bit party organiser may or may not have given MDMA to your daughter? Do I really need to mention the word evidence to you? I am up to my ears in unsolved crimes.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Peach, leaning forward and putting his palms on McNally’s desk. ‘If I can get a warrant to search Collins’s house—’
‘On what basis?’ McNally asked, tight-lipped. ‘What are you going to arrest him for? Being a smart arse?’
‘I’ll get him to come in voluntarily.’
‘You’ll stay away from him; do you hear me? You are too close to this. Give me time and I’ll get something sorted.’
Pushing himself away from the desk, Peach clenched his jaw. Time was something he didn’t have.
McNally’s eyes were bloodshot, and Peach noticed a slight tremor in his hand as he picked up his pen and pointed it. ‘And one more incident like this morning and you’re going home.’
He wouldn’t have called it an incident as such. He’d only just walked through the station door and she’d started on him. The woman had a mouth like a sewer, arms and legs riddled with track marks like a dire case of scabies, so when the addict spat in his face and called his mother a whore, what was he supposed to do? Give her a cup of tea and some sympathy? She deserved a clip around the ear and that’s what she got.
‘I’m giving you the building society robbery from Friday, we’re getting nowhere,’ said McNally. ‘Murphy’s got the file.’
‘That’s way below my rank, sir,’ said Peach, angrily.
‘We’re all mucking in right now.’
‘Sir—’
‘You’ll take it, or you’ll take leave.’ McNally’s tone indicated that the conversation was over.
***
Back in his office, Peach threw himself onto his chair, kicking at the bin, sending it scuttling across the room.
Tommy Collins.
He’d think of something. He’d arrest the little toe rag for breathing if he could.
He picked up Sally’s framed picture, something in him wanting to snap it in two. He quickly dropped it back into place as his office door opened, and DS Murphy entered wearing some semblance of a suit, the sleeves of the creased, linen jacket pushed up to his elbows, the legs of his trousers an inch too short revealing sockless ankles and brown loafers. He looked like a bag of spuds.
‘Don’t they knock in Manchester?’ Peach grumbled.
‘The Tyne Building Society, chief,’ Murphy said, ignoring the question and holding up a file and a videocassette. ‘And this.’ He held up another folder in his other hand, a wonky grin on his face.
Peach looked at it, guessing what it contained. ‘Shut the door,’ he said.
Murphy cast furtive glances up and down the corridor before closing the door and sitting in the chair opposite Peach’s desk, passing the folder to him. Peach opened it and looked down into a full-face image of Tommy Collins, long-lashed eyes looking slightly to the left of the camera.
‘Got the CCTV tapes from a night club called Phutures,’ said Murphy. It was the only club in town that played house music, he said, and Peach remembered the tuneless rubbish he’d heard from Sally’s cassette player.
‘Said I was from the brewery and the lass let me into the office,’ said Murphy, who drew a long breath, waiting for his boss’s response.
But Peach’s eyes were trained on Tommy’s face.
‘It’s a right dive,’ Murphy continued, ‘but then that’s all part of the scene, ain’t it?’ Another pause that wasn’t filled. ‘She knew two of them, though, the lass – names, addresses, their mothers’ knicker size.’
Peach held up a hand, tired of the wittering. He turned to the next photograph in the file: an attractive young man stood next to a smiling teenager who bore the hallmark Chinaman’s eyes and jutting chin of Down Syndrome.
‘Second in command, Jed Foster,’ said Murphy, leaning forward and tapping a finger on Jed’s face. ‘DJs at the club sometimes.’
Peach remembered the Fosters from the Reggie Collins case. The older brother was Tommy’s friend; joined at the hip they were.
‘Kept his head down, so the club’s CCTV didn’t catch his face,’ said Murphy. ‘Once I had the name it wasn’t hard to find him. That’s from the Northern Gazette a few months back, the re-opening of some youth centre.’
Peach scanned the image, saying nothing. In the photograph, the mayor and a diminutive white man with a black man’s afro and John Lennon-style glasses stood next to Jed and his brother.
He heard Murphy huff like a horse and sit back in his chair, peevishly. Peach sensed what he wanted, but expressions of appreciation weren’t his style. They somehow made him feel exposed, as if the respect he’d garnered over the years would disintegrate the instant such words were uttered.
‘I’ve been right busy this morning, boss. Not even stopped for a butty,’ Murphy said, grouchily.
Ignoring Murphy’s disappointment at not getting a round of applause, Peach turned to the next image of a man in his late twenties, receding hair tied back, his large, freckled face almost a perfect circle. He was completely unfamiliar, and Peach glanced up at Murphy, nodding his head to indicate he could speak again.
Murphy gave him the story with a little less enthusiasm. The girl from the club didn’t know this fella’s name, so he’d presented the face to some of the officers in the station until he got one: Frankie Donahue, known not for any criminal behaviour, but for his reputation for fixing just about anything with an engine. Even tractors apparently. Did a lot of “helping out” at Honest Jim’s in Benwell.
‘What else?’ Peach asked, snapping the folder shut.
‘All right, give us a chance, I ain’t Sherlock Holmes.’
He certainly wasn’t, and half a story was no good. He wanted to know everything about Collins; where he went, who he talked to, what colour his piss was.
‘What about the building society, boss?’ Murphy’s hooded eyes were on the other file. ‘McNally wants progress by the end of the day.’
‘Superintendent McNally,’ Peach corrected. ‘And you work for me, not him.’
Murphy sucked in his lips, hiding a smile. ‘I know what they meant now, boss,’ he said.
Peach stared back at him.
‘You know, that you could be … difficult.’
‘Hm.’ Peach looked back down into Tommy’s face. Difficult was no skin off his nose.
‘But that’s sound, chief.’ Peach could hear the brazen grin in Murphy’s voice. ‘I kinda like difficult.’
‘Go,’ said Peach, looking up and nodding towards the door.
‘No problemo.’ Murphy heaved himself from the chair, pushed up the arms of his jacket and sauntered from the office.
Peach peeled his eyes away from the door, a rare smile playing on his lips. Something about Murphy amused him. Most of his detectives flinched when he barked at them, most approached him with trepidation. He wasn’t one for doling out praise, the absence of a berating being his
usual method of imparting a positive message. It had come up in his first “annual appraisal” with McNally earlier that year, a pointless new exercise intended to patronise and create excuses for Human Resources to move the shit people around as often as possible, all under the guise of “increasing opportunities.” They wittered on about personal goals, objectives and “key indicators of performance.” Waste of bloody time.
He looked up at the wall to his left where he’d pinned a map of the city, a series of red dots indicating the venues of the last three months’ all-night parties: three in the east end, two at Gateshead quays, one in Newburn and one to the north near the airport. There was no obvious pattern to it – opportunistic choices, but there had to be some logic. Warehouses mostly, abandoned, easy to access from the main routes around the city.
He took the photographs of Tommy and his team mates from the folder and walked to the wall, tearing Sellotape from its reel with his teeth and sticking the photographs as well as he could to the peeling paint.
Sitting back down, he took in their faces. What had started as a minor infraction of the peace, a bunch of bored dole-wallers making a quick buck, was now up there in his mind with the major incident files on his desk: stabbings, shootings, armed robberies. McNally had ordered him to stay away, but anger was tugging at his gut. He was all too aware of the protocol around investigating crimes that involved victims who were family members. If he didn’t keep his distance he could face a disciplinary at worst, get a black mark on his ridiculous annual appraisal at best.
His fingers hovered over the building society file. Wouldn’t take him five minutes to flick through it he supposed, get a tick in the box.
The file was thin and flimsy, and he opened it, running his finger over statements from the staff and customers. He picked up one of the fuzzy stills from the CCTV: two figures were dressed in cagoules, the toggles tied tightly around their faces so only their eyes were visible. He looked closer at one of the robbers, a skinny lad with hunched shoulders and bulging, white knuckles. Peach could just make out the robber’s feet: white trainers, with a flash of lightening up the side.
