Fault Lines

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Sod that. I’m buggered if I’m going to trip up to the bar and ask for the other half,’ Drakeshill said. ‘No tip for her.’

  Spinel smiled sourly. He had seen too many waitresses and barmaids hiding resentment at the way Drakeshill stuffed hard, dirty banknotes into their cleavages with his sausage-like fingers to be sorry that this one wasn’t going to get a tip. He’d been waiting for the day one of them fished the money out of her bra and hit Drakeshill with it. It had nearly happened once and Spinel had had to intervene and turn the whole thing into a joke.

  Drakeshill was not the kind of man to take that kind of insult lightly. He’d probably have slugged the tart for real and then everyone in the place would have remembered them for all time, and a fruitful – if tricky – relationship that had taken years to build up would have been damaged.

  It was quite a good kind of double-bluff cover, Drakeshill’s behaving so like a fictional Essex gangster, Spinel thought, but there were times when it would have helped if he’d cool it a bit, and not fling his money about so obviously or surround himself with the tough ‘boys’he employed as mechanics.

  Spinel knew all about them, and in a way approved of Drakeshill’s giving them work. After all it kept them off the streets – some of the time anyway – and there weren’t many other jobs they could have done with records like theirs. Nightclub bouncing and minicabbing were just about the only things, and if the politicians had their way, even minicabbing would be regulated soon and ex-cons wouldn’t have a hope.

  The worst downside of Drakeshill’s lot was that most of them looked like heavies. That tended to pose an irresistible challenge to anyone in the Job who came across them and they were always being picked up for this and that. Spinel had to spend far too much time dealing with the fallout.

  He was always reminding suspicious colleagues that the boys were real mechanics, in spite of their records, and that they did a good job with the rubbish motors people flogged Drakeshill. So far, the DI had believed him, or near enough not to make too much of a fuss too often. But once in a while, when stories of intimidation and baseball-bat injuries started circulating about the police station, one of the boys had to be picked up and made an example of. Spinel couldn’t save them all.

  There were times when he tried to make Drakeshill keep a firmer hand on some of the more excitable ones, but it didn’t do to say so too often. Drakeshill was not a man to be criticised lightly.

  ‘Could you fancy something as skinny as that, Bal?’ he asked, watching the barmaid’s flat, denim-clad bottom swaying as she slipped out from behind the bar to wipe a newly vacated table and smile at one of her more favoured customers.

  ‘Not me. I like’em more … more interesting than that,’ Spinel said, looking at what he could see of the foxy little face with its hard eyes and thin-lipped mouth. ‘More brains and less spiteful-looking.’

  ‘I like bigger tits meself. Well, are you going to get the other half or am I?’ Drakeshill knew better than to give Spinel orders, but they were both well aware of who most needed to keep whom sweet. Spinel stuck his long legs out from under the table, pushed himself upright in one easy movement and went to get his snout another pint.

  ‘So, what’ve you got for me, Marty?’ he said, as he brought it back. He stood for a while, knowing that Drakeshill found his much greater height annoying, even intimidating.

  ‘Not a lot this time, old son.’ Drakeshill ignored the tall figure looming over him and shook the heavy gold links of his identity bracelet down his wrist, removing the coarse dark hair it had pulled out of his arm. ‘If I hadn’t spent a fortune on this, I’d chuck the bloody thing out.’ He scratched one pitted nostril. ‘But there’s talk among some of the lads of a lorry coming up from Dover with a biggish delivery of smack.’

  ‘Name? Load?’

  Drakeshill told him which haulage company was being used, he thought without its owners’knowledge, and said he’d heard the drugs were hidden in a shipment of dried fruit coming in from Turkey, but he couldn’t swear to it. They could have been concealed somewhere in the lorry’s structure.

  Spinel was busy counting out the requisite number of twenty-pound notes when he said, as though it was a not-very-important afterthought, ‘By the way, Marty, did you have to send your boys out to nick a load of GTIs?’

  ‘Who says I did?’ There was laughter in Drakeshill’s voice, and his round dark eyes were alight with mockery.

  ‘The crime squad. According to them you’ve been doing a Fagin and sending your team out to nick hand-picked cars.’ Drakeshill laughed again and Spinel nearly lost it. ‘What the fuck were you thinking of, doing it on your own patch? It’s one thing to buy up stolen gear from the other end of the country, quite another to set up the thefts in a place where everyone knows who you are. You’ve embarrassed me and I’ll have trouble keeping you out of the courts on this one.’

  ‘You’ll have to, won’t you?’ Drakeshill grinned. ‘I’m not admitting anything, mind, but a man like me has to keep his hand in once in a while, Bal. If he wasn’t known to be on the wrong side of the law he’d never find out what you needed to know, now, would he?’

  ‘Which is the very point I made to my guv’nor, Marty.’ Spinel was working to sound casual. It was important to keep the relationship easy. ‘You’d better lay off for a bit. It can’t go on. You’ll ruin everything if you draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘Drawing the right sort of attention keeps the wrong sort off.’

  ‘I know that’s your theory, Marty, but this was stupid. Why d’you need to have cars nicked anyway?’

  ‘Even I’ve got to earn a living, Bal,’ Drakeshill said, with a winsome little smile, as though he were Oliver Twist asking for more. Then he let his face relax into the usual piratical leer. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  Barry Spinel shook his head. ‘Used cars is a licence to print money even on the right side of the law, you old villain. Don’t push it, Marty. I’m serious. Keep your nose clean for a week or two at least. Just till everything quiets down and the crime squad stop watching you. OK?’

  ‘You giving me orders, old son?’ For all his pantomime-gangster act, Drakeshill could sound remarkably dangerous.

  ‘Friendly warning, Marty.’ Spinel was not particularly bothered by the threat. ‘Just cool it. For the moment.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. But you think about it, too. You need me.’

  ‘Way I see it, Marty, we need each other.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, don’t you forget it.’ Drakeshill drank some more of his ant’s-piss beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘So how’re your colleagues getting on with the murder then? Doesn’t sound from the radio as though they’ve got much yet.’

  Spinel shrugged. ‘Fat lot of nothing from all I’ve heard.’

  Drakeshill nodded and a few minutes later they parted. Spinel decided to go back to the nick to have another crack at Doughface Deal. He’d been collecting the worst sexist jokes he could find and so far she hadn’t blinked an eyelid at things even he thought were gross. But he’d heard a really good juicy one from Marty, and he wanted to try it out. If this one didn’t make Doughface wriggle he’d give up on her.

  As he passed Drakeshill’s forecourt and had to stop at the lights, he saw one of the newest and youngest mechanics moving down the slope. He was a gangly boy called Wes, who’d done time for ABH after his snooker cue had broken across a mate’s face. Wes looked self-conscious, as though he had something to say. Spinel wound down his window and called out, ‘Yeah? Wes? What is it?’

  The boy jumped a mile, as though someone had poked him with a hot skewer, and looked all round him. Dozy bugger.

  ‘Wes!’ yelled Spinel. ‘Hurry up. The lights are changing. What d’you want?’

  ‘What? Want? Me? Nothing.’ He looked like crying. Poor sod wouldn’t last long with the rest of them if he went on like that. They were tough, Drakeshill’s boys, and they had a reputation to keep up. They couldn’t be doing with wimps o
r nerds.

  Spinel shrugged and wound up his window. Some idiot behind him was leaning on his horn. The lights had gone green. So what? He’d have given the bastard the finger if he’d been sure he wasn’t on the Police Committee.

  Chapter Eight

  Against her better judgement Trish had put the scrap of paper with Blair Collons’s phone number in her handbag. Normally she wouldn’t even have contemplated talking to a client on the quiet, but Kara had begged her to help him, and Kara was dead. It might be irrational to feel that that gave her plea extra force, but Trish didn’t see how she could ignore it. The code of conduct was a problem, but she’d find a way to get round that if she had to.

  She went up the spiral stairs to shower. The hot water gave her the usual pleasure, sluicing the frustrations and grubbiness of the day off her body and out of her hair. The ache that had settled down her neck and across her shoulders began to ease as wet warmth filled the big shower cabinet. Steam billowed around her and the water splashed up against her legs.

  Rolled into a huge red towel, with her short hair looking like the pelt of an otter around her well-shaped head, she went back into the bedroom and lay down on top of the duvet to dry off and think about what she was going to do. After a while she reached for the phone and propped it on her damp chest.

  Blair Collons answered after three rings. As soon as she had identified herself, he gasped and said, ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you back within five minutes.’

  There was no way Trish was giving out her home phone number to a man like him. She’d long ago arranged to have it automatically withheld against all 1471 calls, so he wouldn’t be able to get it that way. But she couldn’t think of any good reason not to give him her mobile number.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Don’t go away. I’ll ring you back. Please wait.’ The connection was cut.

  Trish blinked. If she had to wait five minutes, she might as well dress and get herself a drink. She chose her loosest, sloppiest jeans and a long, soft cashmere tunic George had given her for Christmas.

  She was just pouring out a glass of white wine from an open bottle in the fridge when the mobile rang.

  ‘Thank you for waiting,’ Blair gasped into her ear. ‘I had to get to a callbox. They’re bugging my phone.’

  ‘I see,’ Trish said, the frown dragging her eyebrows together across her nose. She drank some wine, grimacing at the sharpness, and waited.

  ‘I know what you said about your professional ethics and I can respect that, but we have to meet, Ms Maguire. And soon. I think –’

  ‘Mr Collons, I’ve explained why that’s not possible.’

  ‘No. We must. Listen. I have to talk to you about Kara. She trusted you. You can’t let her down now. Not after what was done to her. It’s too important.’

  ‘Look, of course I’d like to know anything you can tell me about Kara,’ Trish said, almost truthfully, ‘but we can’t meet, and I ought not even to be talking to you like this. I really mean it. I’m sorry, but any other conversation we have before your tribunal will have to include your solicitor.’

  ‘It’ll be too late afterwards. There are things you need to know now about what Kara was doing. They explain why she died.’

  ‘Then you should tell the police,’ Trish said firmly. ‘At once.’

  ‘I can’t You don’t understand. They won’t believe me. That’s why I was sacked, to make sure no one would ever believe me. There’s a faction in the town hall that’s so frightened of what I might say that they had to make sure I’d look unreliable.’

  So that’s what all this is about, Trish thought, in some relief. He’s invented a grand conspiracy to deal with the humiliation of being accused of a shabby little crime. Aloud she said kindly, ‘Have you talked to your solicitor about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, Mr Collons, that’s what he’s there for, to protect your interests. He’d be able to contact the police for you and be with you while they interviewed you to make sure you were fairly treated and taken seriously.’

  ‘He mustn’t know anything about it.’ The statement was more forcefully delivered than Trish would have expected. ‘Not under any circumstances.’

  ‘Don’t you trust him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why not?’ Trish asked, quickly adding, as she realised she’d probably let herself in for a long paranoid saga. ‘Not that it matters. What does matter is that you have a solicitor you can trust. I could probably recommend someone.’

  She wondered whether she could sacrifice George, then decided that wouldn’t be fair. He always had more work than he could comfortably handle and, in any case, life was more likely to remain tolerable if one of them stayed free of this peculiar client.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Blair said again. ‘You see, Kara recommended Bletchley as soon as the council sacked me. She said he was the best solicitor in Kingsford.’

  ‘Well, that sounds all right,’ said Trish, in the tones of a games mistress urging her bored, cold charges to run out on to a muddy hockey field and do their bit for the school. ‘So?’

  ‘No, it isn’t all right. I thought it was, too, up until yesterday when I went to his office before we came to see you. What I heard then horrified me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because it showed how dangerous it would be to let him hear what I’ve got to tell you. That’s why I was in such a state when we met in your chambers.’

  Trish could hear him panting and fumbling for more coins to feed into the phone.

  ‘I still don’t understand. What happened when you were in Mr Bletchley’s office?’ she asked patiently, when he had put in his money. She also offered to call him back if he was short of change, but he assured her he had plenty.

  ‘It was while I was waiting for him, outside his office where his secretary sits. She took a phone call for him while I was there.’

  ‘From whom?’ Trish asked, wishing she didn’t have to work so hard to winkle out a story she did not even want to hear.

  ‘I don’t like using names over the phone.’

  ‘You must if I’m to understand what all this is about.’

  ‘A man called Drakeshill. Martin Drakeshill,’ Blair said, with a gulp. ‘He’s a local gangster, you see, who pretends to be just a second-hand-car dealer, so if he and Bletchley are working together, that means –’

  Trish had to laugh. ‘Oh, Mr Collons, every solicitor in the country who has anything to do with the criminal law has clients who are known to the police. That’s one of the things solicitors are there for. And if yours is the best known in Kingsford and this Drakeshill character operates there, it’s only natural that he should have chosen the same practice as you.’

  Apart from a series of heavy, aggrieved-sounding breaths, there was silence on the phone. Trish tried again, having sipped a little more wine during the interval. ‘Having criminal clients – if that’s what this man is – doesn’t mean that your solicitor is anything but squeaky clean, Mr Collons. Now, I think we ought to stop this conversation right here.’

  ‘I should’ve known you wouldn’t believe me. No one ever does, except Kara. But she told me you’d be different. She told me you’d help. She believed Drakeshill was in league with the council and –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t tell anyone I said that. You won’t, will you? Please.’

  ‘No,’ said Trish, with complete sincerity. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Thank you. Kara told me I could trust you, but I wasn’t sure. You can never tell, can you?, until people show themselves to be trustworthy.’

  Trish thought of Kara’s letter and wondered whether, having listened to too much of this sort of thing, she had decided to shift the burden of Blair Collons on to someone else.

  ‘Look, Mr Collons, why not write it all down – everything you suspect about what happened to Kara – and send it to me? That way I can concentrate properly.’ And,
she thought, if there’s anything in it, I can involve James Bletchley and keep on the right side of the code.

  ‘No. That would be far too dangerous. We can’t trust the post any more than my home phone. They’re watching me. They know I know too much. Please, Ms Maguire, please let me come and see you. I could get them off my tail long before I got anywhere near you so that no one would know. You wouldn’t be in any trouble.’

  Trish sighed. There was no way she was letting him come to the flat. No barrister would willingly allow any client, let alone one as weird as Blair Collons, to know where she lived. She tried again. ‘As I said, the people you should be talking to if you’re worried about anything to do with Kara’s death are the police. I’m sure they won’t be swayed by anything anyone on the council has said about you, but if you like I could have a word with them myself. I’ve already been interviewed, but if you’d rather not approach them in person, I could always phone them for you now and let them know that you were a friend of Kara’s and might be able to help. How would that be?’

  ‘It would be a disaster.’ His voice was tragic. ‘You must promise not to talk to them until you’ve understood everything. And then you must promise you won’t ever say that it was me who told you. Not now; not ever. Please. Say it. Say you promise.’

  ‘All right. All right. If you don’t want me to talk to them for you, I won’t. It’s all right, Mr Collons. You don’t need to be so het up.’

  ‘You don’t understand. If you’d only let me tell you all about it, you would. And you need to understand in case they come after you, too. They probably will, you see. They’ll know you were a friend of Kara’s, just like I did. And they’ll be afraid she might’ve talked to you, too.’

  ‘Now, calm down,’ said Trish, sounding nearly as tetchy as she felt. ‘Mr Collons, you really mustn’t get hysterical.’

  ‘But why won’t you listen to me? Oh, Christ! I feel like Cassandra.’