by Chris Simms
‘Nighthawks swoop again,’ read the front headline. He scanned the lead paragraphs.
Yet more evidence of people illegally digging for archaeological artefacts has been discovered on the edge of town, this time on Round Knoll. Like the other incidents over the last few weeks, an excavation had been hurriedly made during the hours of darkness. Stacey Morris, Head Librarian and Chair of the Haverdale Archaeological Society, shed light on the mystery.
‘The fact that each dig has taken place on a hill top proves, in my mind, the culprits are searching for a barrow, probably an iron-age site. Though it’s indisputable any such find would be worth many thousands of pounds to unscrupulous collectors, what these people are hoping to find here is beyond me, since all the barrows in this area have been excavated long ago.’
Jon’s eyes strayed to a photo in the top right-hand corner. It was of very poor quality, little more than a prickly blob of brown topped by a curved greyish form. The two-tone split behind it suggested land and sky, divided. Superimposed over the corner of the image was a small graphic device depicting a swooping bird of prey with the words, ‘Osprey Watch’. He looked to the copy for further explanation.
Mum’s the word – has our female osprey laid her clutch? Captured here, proudly sitting atop the nest she and her mate have recently constructed in a pine tree overlooking a nearby reservoir, Diva looks every inch the expectant mother. Keep an eye on ‘Osprey Watch’ to find out if she and her magnificent mate, Alto – the first ospreys to nest in the Peak District in living memory – are to become parents. Photo kindly supplied by the Park Rangers’ Office.
He heard the inner door open and glanced up to see Shazia
Batyra beckoning. ‘Afternoon.’
‘Hello.’ Jon dropped the paper on the next seat and stood up.
‘Anyone going to check my licence?’ the young man demanded, holding it up.
‘Someone will be down soon.’
‘Is Constable Taylor in?’ The elderly lady from the couple asked. ‘Someone said they were checking. It’s Mr and Mrs Gower.’
‘I’ll have a look around for him,’ Shazia replied, stepping back to allow Jon through, then closing the door with a sigh of relief.
‘Not the best way of maintaining community relations,’ Jon stated matter-of-factly as they set off down the corridor.
She glanced back at him. ‘Easter Sunday. They could have picked a day when there are more of us in.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon. Did you go home?’
‘Yeah. The family know.’
Her eyes searched his again. ‘I’m really sorry about what happened at the hospital.’
‘Not your fault, don’t worry about it.’
‘The identification forms are upstairs. If we could take a statement and get some details about your brother too, it would really help.’
‘No problem.’
They climbed the stairs and headed down another corridor, the walls of which were dotted with various photos of the station’s officers lined up like members of a sports club. By the time they’d got to the far end, the photos were black and white and most officers had large moustaches or beards. In the room beyond was a general-purpose office, desks spread out in groups of four. He counted seven people.
‘Les,’ Shazia announced. ‘That couple downstairs is waiting to see you. The Gowers.’
An overweight officer somewhere in his forties looked up from the Sunday papers spread out on his desk. ‘Shit. Forgot about them.’
‘Their insurance company’s trying to reject their claim,’ Jon said. ‘You’ll need your notes that verified the lock to their side door had been picked. There’s also a boy-racer who’s brought his driving licence in.’ He thought about how the lad had sworn in front of the old couple. ‘No harm in letting him wait, though.’
The officer turned to Shazia for an explanation.
She waved a hand in introduction. ‘DI Spicer, Greater
Manchester Police.’
Jon watched the other officer as his face changed. ‘Sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’ He looked round again: four other uniformed officers, including Spiers. Two civilians, admin assistants by the look of them. He met all of their eyes, registering the guarded looks on their faces.
‘We’re in the corner.’ Shazia pointed towards her colleague.
‘No dedicated incident room?’ Jon asked as they made their way across.
‘No space for one. Those other doors we passed are offices for the senior ranks.’
Nightmare, Jon thought, realising the investigation into Dave’s murder would be sharing a space with any other incidents that came in. He knew the distractions that would occur, not to mention the potential for paperwork to be placed in the wrong tray, moved to another, misfiled and finally lost.
‘This is Rachel Scott,’ Shazia announced. ‘She’ll be helping us, entering reports into HOLMES and the like.’
One indexer, Jon thought, trying not to shake his head. ‘Who else is on the case?’
‘Constable Spiers and myself. Then there are Sergeant Brooks and Constable Conway who are due in tomorrow.’
‘What about the guy who called me – Mallin?’
‘Yes, Superintendent Ray Mallin is Senior Investigating
Officer. He’s in his office making a few calls, I think.’
So, not a lot going on then, Jon thought, making sure his irritation didn’t show.
Shazia was removing the identification forms from a file on her desk. He looked at the evidence bags on the adjoining table.
‘These Dave’s things?’
She looked momentarily alarmed. ‘Er . . .’
There’s not much that can be more distressing than seeing my brother’s head in a bag, Jon nearly said, stepping round the desk.
‘All this was removed from the hill where he was found?’
‘No, his hotel room.’
Jon looked across the table at her. ‘Dave was staying in a hotel?’
‘The Haven Inn.’
‘The one on the edge of town?’ He remembered passing it on his journey in.
She nodded.
Cheap and anonymous. Sounds like Dave’s style. ‘How did you know he was there?’
She looked uneasy. ‘Haverdale’s a pretty small place.’
Jon thought about the number of B&B places on the residential road leading to the hospital. ‘Small, but it’s got a fair few places to stay.’
She shrugged. ‘You know . . . word gets around. People not from here get noticed.’
There’s more to it than that, Jon wanted to say. He let it pass, focusing on the bags instead. The first contained several train tickets. Manchester Piccadilly to Haverdale.
‘He was using them as bookmarks,’ Shazia said.
Jon examined the next bag. It contained an Ordnance Survey map for the Haverdale area, beneath that was another bag with a slim booklet inside: Walks of Note Around Haverdale. Jon felt himself frown, unable to picture his younger brother developing an interest in hiking. Other bags contained clothes, toiletries, a pair of binoculars, a crumpled white towel.
‘And there was this, of course.’ Constable Spiers was holding up a smaller bag which contained a mobile phone. Dried blood covered it, clogging up the keys and obscuring the lower part of the screen. Jon leaned forward. Above the rust-coloured smear, the top half of the screensaver was visible. It was an image of a young woman, black hair tied back, delicate cheek bones. Her mouth was open in mid-laughter, revealing a pair of sharp incisors that weren’t aligned with the rest of her teeth. Jon looked at her eyes. Despite their happiness, there was something about them. Jon hoped she was just tired, but he’d seen that same sunken appearance on countless women he’d booked in for illegal use of drugs.
‘You’ve noted down the contents of the address book?’ he asked.
Spiers replaced the phone and swivelled a piece of paper round. ‘What there was in it.’
Jon picked it up. Seven entr
ies: Big Bro. Doug. Jock. L.A. Marco. Stew. Zoe.
‘You were the first and most obvious choice to ring.’
‘The others have all been called?’
‘That’s right. The Super did it.’
Jon looked at him, eyebrows half-hitched.
Spiers hunched a shoulder. ‘I’m not sure. A couple of answerphones, one number no longer in use. You’ll have to ask him.’
‘What about the last ten calls made and received?’
‘The Super’s noted them down. He’s been on it in his office.’
‘And the person who called this morning. Did it ring off, go through to answerphone, what?’
Spiers nodded. ‘Answerphone.’
Jon gave him a second but nothing more was forthcoming.
‘Got a transcript?’
‘The Super has.’
The Super, Jon thought. You’re not going to tell me another thing without his say-so. ‘What about these park rangers? The ones who recovered the bin bags from the top of the hill. I’d like to hear what they have to say.’
Shazia spoke up. ‘I took their statements. I’m sure you’d be welcome to have a look.’ She opened a file and extracted two forms. Jon started to read the mechanical language, eyes quickly beginning to skim the lines before moving to the bottom. ‘It would be far more useful to speak with them in person. Where might . . .’
Batyra and Spiers were now looking over his shoulder. He turned round to see a thick-set man in his fifties, greying hair just long enough to be curling out at the sides. Jon’s eyes flicked to the epaulettes of his uniform. Superintendent. So this is Mallin.
‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded, bushy eyebrows lowering into a frown.
By pushing her heels outwards, Zoe Croxton could feel tiny ripples in the concrete through the carpet. Bumps and nodules where some workmen hadn’t been arsed to do a proper job. And now the bastard things would torment her for fuck knows how long. Leaning on the arm of the sofa, she groaned with frustration.
The woman at the housing association place had said she was lucky – this was the first flat from a batch they were refurbishing that year. She looked at the carpet, it was the colour of dead leaves and not much thicker either. Eleven floors up was no place to be stuck with a baby, she thought. Christ, he’s already into every cupboard and drawer. What about when he’s able to climb? Every bloody window will have to be nailed shut.
Once again, she turned the mobile phone over in her hand, studying the beads of water trapped behind the screen. She glanced at her son who was sitting on the other side of the room, happily playing with several brightly-coloured action figures. ‘You little monkey. Of all the things you could have done, you had to do the worst. Dropping my phone down the bloody toilet. Jesus.’ Her eyes carried on across the floor, stopping at the small circular socket just above the skirting board. What she’d do for a landline now.
Hearing her, he lifted his head. For a moment it was Dave looking at her and she felt herself flinch. Their eyes were just the same. Oh Christ, Dave, where are you?
He was holding up an empty beaker, a questioning look on his face.
She glanced into the minuscule kitchen, knowing there was less than a litre of milk left. ‘Not now, kidder.’
As he lowered it again, the people who lived on the ceiling began moving about. A door closed, sounding almost like it was in her own flat. A few seconds later she heard a toilet flush and the wall whispered as liquid cascaded down the pipes.
Lighting a cigarette, she stood up and stared out the window. Just below her a seagull, strayed in from the coast, wheeled and circled. It slid off the edge of a current, dropping away to another and then rising smoothly back up. Enviously, she watched it, remembering how she could drift and float for hours, lying on the floor with an empty syringe at her side. Just to ride that feeling again, if only for a few minutes. She thought about the gang who ran the tower block. They had plenty of the stuff; they’d sold it to her often enough in the past. And if it hadn’t been for Dave, she’d still be pressing it into her arms now. She clutched her sides and looked down.
Way below, cars were moving along Trinity Way, two opposing streams of traffic destined never to touch. A person was crossing the footbridge, a stick-like leg momentarily emerging from below his head and shoulders. The torso tilted forward again, and just as the man looked like he would topple over, the other leg appeared in the nick of time.
She lifted her eyes, clearing the straggly edge of Manchester, scooting over the suburbs and sweeping miles of countryside in an instant. At the far right-hand edge of her view were shadowy hills. That’s where he is, she thought. Somewhere out there. Why aren’t you back, yet? Christ, Dave, I miss you. She pictured his face, the light that danced in those bright, blue eyes. Even when things were at their most shit, even when they’d had no money and nowhere to sleep, the sparkle refused to fade. He’d sit, never silent for more than a few minutes, before glancing up at her with a grin. ‘We’ll work something out, Zoe,’ he’d say. She felt herself smile.
‘You’ll be back,’ she whispered, turning away from the distant slopes. And if this bloke you’ve been on about is all that you reckon he is, we won’t be stuck in this shitty rabbit hutch for much longer.
Stubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray on top of the telly, she turned to her son. ‘Where’s your Daddy, then?’
His eyes immediately turned to the door leading in from the corridor. ‘Dada?’
‘No.’ She smiled, lifting him up and sitting back on the sofa with him perched on her knees. ‘He’s not here, Jake. He’s out there, somewhere.’ She jutted her chin towards the window.
‘With Redino, isn’t he?’
She punctuated the question with a bounce of her knees and the little boy giggled.
‘Going to make us lots of cash, isn’t he?’ Another bounce, followed by laughter.
‘Going to take us away from this bloody place, isn’t he?’ With this bounce, his laughter gave way to a series of little coughs. Zoe’s knees remained still and she held an ear to his mouth, just able to hear a faint crackling sound each time he drew in breath. She looked at the milky mucus emerging from his nostrils, suddenly aware of how his ribs were corrugating beneath her palms.
Oh no, it’s not coming back again, she thought. That’s the last thing I fucking need. Especially without Dave here to help. She slid her fingers round to his sternum, and by holding them there, could actually feel a tiny rattling inside. Shit, shit, shit.
She tried to remember the details of Jake’s last attack. How long before his lungs were hardly working and the fever set in? Two, or was it three days? All she could recall was Jake’s temperature suddenly rocketing. She and Dave had wheeled him down to Dr Griffiths’ surgery and the doctor had immediately rushed their son to the nearest A & E.
The flap of her letter box lifted, filling the flat with a creaking sound.
‘Zoe.’ The man held the end of her name, like a kid calling another one out to play.
Immediately, she clamped a hand over her son’s mouth, eyes wide with fear. Jake stared back, knowing not to move.
‘He’s not there, is he? Your useless tosser of a boyfriend has done one. Just you now. And if I can’t get the money off of him, I’ll get it off of you.’
She said nothing, palm pressed against Jake’s lips.
‘Zoe!’ The sing-song tone was gone. ‘You know how you’re going to pay me, because it’s the only fucking way you know how to earn money. It’s your choice. Come out of there and start looking for business or I’ll bring the punters up. Think about it, girl. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you.’
The letter box creaked shut, leaving her with the sound of Jake’s wheezing breath.
Six
Jon turned and held out a hand. ‘DI Jon Spicer.’
The hostile challenge in Mallin’s eyes almost disappeared.
‘Superintendent Ray Mallin. You have my condolences.’
‘Thank you.’
The Super’s stare shifted to his officers and Jon saw his eyebrows lift a fraction.
‘DI Spicer is completing the ID form,’ Shazia explained. ‘And he’s agreed to answer a few questions about his brother.’
‘Good. Thanks for your assistance, Detective.’ Mallin turned to go.
‘These possessions of Dave’s . . .’ Jon let his brother’s name hang in the air. ‘They were recovered from a hotel room, I understand.’
Mallin did a stiff turn about. ‘Correct.’
‘How did you know which hotel to call at?’
Mallin’s eyes connected with Jon’s, neither man speaking. Come on, Jon thought, let’s hear what’s making you all act like my brother’s the fucking criminal here.
The Super’s posture didn’t soften. ‘Your brother had come to our attention before this morning.’
Jon kept his silence.
Mallin pursed his lips, the breath coming out through his nose.
‘Listen, there are drugs in this town. A lot of them. First it was a trickle, now it’s becoming a flood. We’ve got all the attendant problems starting to show themselves. Burglaries are up. Car thefts, shoplifting, kids getting mugged for their mobile phones. We’ve got absenteeism from work and domestic breakdown. Last week three children from the same family were finally taken into care.’
Jon frowned. This sounded a lot more serious than weekend use of cocaine. ‘What sort of drugs are we talking about here?’
‘The most destructive.’
‘What, crack?’
Mallin shook his head. ‘I believe it’s known as crystal meth.’ Jon couldn’t believe his ears. Methamphetamine, a wickedly strong derivative of speed, was already wreaking havoc in towns and cities across the States. He’d attended a seminar given by a sheriff visiting from Washington State last year. The man had explained how the drug was relatively easy to manufacture – little more was needed than a few kitchen utensils, coffee filters, over-the-counter cold remedies, rock salt and ammonia. Recently, the drug had started appearing in Britain’s larger cities, but mainly on the club circuit. He’d heard stories of people not eating or sleeping for days while their supplies of ‘ice’ lasted.
