by A K Reynolds
A fat man with greasy brown hair and the world’s worst case of acne was sitting at a worktop which ran the entire length of the wall. On it was a bank of six computer screens. His left hand was poised over a keyboard and his right rested on a mouse. Five unwrapped Mars bars were stacked in an unruly pile next to it. And beside them were four screwed-up wrappers in the middle of a small sea of chocolate crumbs. The fat man turned to look at me through his horn-rimmed spectacles. The light caught them, concealing his eyes for a moment.
‘Jo, long time no see. To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Then he saw my face properly. ‘What happened to you?’
‘That’s not important. I need a favour, Rustin.’
‘I don’t do favours.’
‘Make an exception. I’ll give you a defence pro-bono next time you’re up on a charge.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘We could work something out. What do you want?’
‘I need some information about a couple of gangbangers.’
‘Who?’
‘Kieran Rockwell and Jarrad Stronach. Have you heard of them?’
‘No. Should I have?’
‘They’re criminals, so I thought maybe . . . never mind. Will you get some information on them for me? I need their addresses, and it’d be helpful to know who they live with.’
He took off his glasses, wiped them on his red T-shirt, and put them back on.
‘Maybe. What do you want them for?’
‘I thought you didn’t ask questions in your line of work?’
‘I don’t, I’m just curious to know why a practising barrister should come to me for information about a couple of undesirables.’
‘Long story. I’ll tell you some other time.’
‘Okay. What can you tell me about them?’
‘Rockwell lives in Harpurhey. Stronach lives in New Moston. They’re both sixteen.’
He stroked his chin with plump chocolate-stained fingers.
‘It doesn’t sound like too big of an ask. Make yourself a coffee and make me one while you’re at it. I’ll see what I can do.’
He began tapping away on his keyboard while I retreated into his kitchen and busied myself with the kettle and a tin of barista-style instant coffee from Aldi. I took the coffees through to his front room and put his next to him on the worktop. He broke off from his work to take a sip, then got right back to it. I was just finishing my coffee when he turned in his swivel chair to face me.
‘Rockwell lives at home with his mum and dad on Firth street. Stronach lives with his mum on Aspect Close. Stronach’s mum is a lone parent. Stronach spends his time trolling around his local streets selling drugs. Rockwell and Stronach are at the bottom end of the food chain. They deal for a nasty piece of work called Murray Jenrack, or they did. It looks like he’s dead.’
‘What do their parents do?’
He tapped his keyboard.
‘Rockwell’s mum and dad are unemployed. Stronach’s mum works on the tills at the Harpurhey Asda. She does shift work. This week she’s on 1 till 10 p.m.’
‘Can you get me photos of the parents?’
‘Already done.’
Rustin clicked his mouse. Three sheets of paper spewed from a printer under the worktop. He reached down, grabbed them, and handed them to me. The first gave me Rockwell and Stronach’s full addresses; the second was a photo of Rockwell’s mum and dad; the third was a photo of Stronach’s mum. She was wearing her work clothes – a pale green top with a green and black zip jacket and black trousers. The zip on the jacket was unfastened and her breasts and belly bulged forth from it, stretching the fabric of her white polo shirt. Her hair was mousey and cut short so bad she could’ve styled it herself. She was smiling but wore a beaten look. I’d met a lot of women with that same look about their face, all of them mothers to sons who’d gone into the drug trade.
‘Thank you, Rustin. I owe you one.’
‘I’ll call it in some day.’
‘I know you will. By the way, I’d like another favour.’
His face twisted into a cynical half-smile. ‘What is it this time?’
‘Could you give me a lift?’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I got out of Rustin’s car, half an hour later, at the Harpurhey shopping centre. I thought the last place Hench and his goons would be looking for me would be right under their noses on their own patch. It was a high-risk strategy but it seemed to work. As I made my way along the pedestrian precinct past Asda, with my beanie hat jammed low on my head and my scarf keeping out the winter breeze, no-one paid me any attention.
It was 11 a.m. and my stomach was growling. I needed sustenance if I was to have the energy required to carry out my mission. I went into Bob’s Café, a greasy-spoon establishment in the pedestrian area down the side of the supermarket, and demolished a fried breakfast. I finished it forty-five minutes later. I paid the bill and bought a couple of newspapers to kill time, the Daily Mail and The Guardian, returning to the café to read them, getting through three cups of coffee while I was there, even though the stuff was weak.
At 1 p.m. I looked closely at my photo of Jill Stronach, Jarrad’s mum. She had blonde hair scraped back into a tight bun and the seamed face of a heavy smoker. Her skin was the unnatural orange that people get from using fake tan, her eyes an unhappy watery green. Her mouth drooped at the corners. She was forty years old but could have passed for sixty.
Thrusting the photo back into my jacket I donned my disguise and went into Asda. As I passed by the tills I looked at their operators, studying each till I saw a woman I recognised as Jarrad Stronach’s mum, her name badge confirming it.
It was time to go to New Moston to visit her son, while she was otherwise engaged.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I reasoned that Stronach would be an easier proposition than Rockwell, as he didn’t have a father about the house to protect him. And at this time, with his mother at work, he’d be on his own. I knew his type, having defended it many times. The chances were that he wouldn’t get out of bed until noon and he’d spend his afternoon playing computer games while smoking himself senseless.
It was tempting to get a taxi but I decided they were better avoided in those parts. You never knew who the drivers might work for. Many of the small businesses in an area like that were likely to be laundering money for people like Hench.
The walk to New Moston took me three quarters of an hour. Aspect Close turned out to be a dismal cul-de-sac of grey pebbledash houses just off West avenue. Stronach lived at number twenty-three, a semi-detached which had two bedrooms, judging by the amount of windows it held. The garden was overgrown and the overall impression the place made on me was one of working class poverty. My heart went out to Stronach’s mum, but I couldn’t afford to let sentiment get in the way of what I needed to do.
I hadn’t thought through how I was going to gain entry to Stronach’s home. In the end I just knocked on the front door. That became Plan A. I didn’t have a plan B. Luckily, I didn’t need one. The door opened, and Stronach appeared in the doorway standing on his crutches.
He was wearing a black T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley smoking a massive spliff on the front of it, and a pair of black jeans with white contrast stitching. The crotch of his jeans hung level with his knees, giving me the impression he’d just shat himself. Although he was only sixteen he had the bulky physique of an older man who’d been bodybuilding for years. I guessed he was on steroids. His face matched his physique in that it was square-ish, and his head had a cubic appearance. His brown hair was dreadlocked and his mean face was pale, a distinguishing feature I’d found particularly frightening during our first encounter. It didn’t frighten me anymore. That’s because he was looking at me with dread in his brown eyes. They were shiftier than a pair of rats in a cage. Plus, he was hyperventilating.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said, gasping. He stepped back in the ungainly way of one who was unaccustom
ed to getting about on sticks.
I went into the front room, which was furnished like the deluxe showroom of a cheap furniture store. Everything was black, burgundy and red, as if the devil had chosen the colour scheme. A half-smoked joint lay in an ashtray, a grey column of smoke spiralling from the glowing end up to a nicotine-stained ceiling painted over.
I caught sight of myself in a red framed mirror on the wall and realised why Stronach was so scared. Dressed in my flying jacket, I had the body shape of a man, albeit a rather slim man. Along with the black beanie hat and the black scarf covering my nose and mouth, I might have been mistaken for someone Stronach worked for. He probably thought I was the man who Murray Jenrack, his former – now deceased – boss, had answered to. If that was the case, Stronach probably assumed I was a ruthless killer who was armed and prepared to waste him for losing the drug money he’d been carrying on Tuesday night.
When I reached the centre of the room I turned to face Stronach and waited for him with my arms at my sides. He lurched clumsily towards me, not yet used to his crutches and plaster cast.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. It wasn’t my fault we lost the money. It was Jenrack’s fault. It was his idea to mug that mark in the alley.’ I didn’t reply, instead giving him a hard stare. All he could see of my face were my eyes. ‘I’ll get the money. I promise you won’t go short. Me and Rocky, we’ll do anything it takes to get you the money by the end of the week.’
I stepped forwards with my left leg and swung my right leg up, my foot aiming for his groin. He saw it coming and tried to lurch out of the way, but his speed was badly compromised by his injury. My foot slammed into him right where it hurt most, and, letting go of his crutches, he collapsed with an anguished groan onto his mother’s vulgar shag-pile carpet.
I got on top of him, pinning him down to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere, although that move was hardly necessary as escape seemed very far from his mind.
With a sweep of my arm I pulled the scarf from my mouth then I thrust my face close to his. ‘Recognise me?’
With eyes as big as the headlights of a dump truck, he stared back at me and shook his head.
I removed my beanie. ‘How about now? I’m the one who took that money you’re shitting your pants about.’ He nodded. ‘Why did you attack me? What were you after?’
He looked puzzled. ‘What?’
‘You and your friends wanted something from me. What was it?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
I’m not a violent woman or a sadist but these were desperate times and I badly needed to know if he was telling me all he knew. I got to my feet and kicked him in the gut. He made a noise like a punctured tyre.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know what Jenrack wanted.’
‘That doesn’t make sense. You’d better start making sense real quick. My patience is wearing very thin indeed.’
I gave him another kick in the guts to impress upon him the urgency of the situation.
‘I don’t know,’ he hissed. ‘Honest, it was Jenrack’s idea to come after you. He’d heard you had something on Devlin. Some secret of Devlin’s which could get him put away. He never told us what it was, but he said it’d make us all rich.’
‘Devlin?’
‘Jake Devlin, the businessman.’
Jake Devlin. I’d heard of him. He was a rich bastard who owned a mansion on Rossmill Lane in Altrincham. It was odds on that Hench and the others were working for him.
‘Tell me about Hench.’
‘You don’t want to mess with Hench. That’s all you need to know.’
I was about to leave when it occurred to me he might have friends he could call who’d intercept me and mess up my plans, not to say my life. There was a landline telephone plugged into the wall. I disabled it so completely with one of his crutches that it could never be used to make a call again.
‘Where’s your mobile phone?’
‘I don’t have one. You took it.’
I tapped him forcibly in the groin with the end of the crutch.
‘Your funeral.’
‘All right.’
Reaching into his pants he pulled out a mobile phone. I took it from him, switched it off, and pocketed it. The red room had begun to feel oppressive with its hell-inspired colour scheme, so I left Stronach to contemplate his fate.
Making my exit from the house, I walked rapidly to the end of Aspect Close. Just before I got there, a black Subaru Impreza WRX screeched around the corner. The black driver was wearing a red, green and gold bandana, and, judging by his facial expression, was pissed-off. It didn’t take a genius to work out that he was Jenrack’s boss, and had come to collect his dues from Stronach.
It was equally easy to work out what would happen next. He’d find Stronach lying on the floor of his own hellish sitting-room, and Stronach would tell him that the woman who’d stolen his drug money had only just left. Bandana man would get Stronach to describe me, then he’d kill Stronach and come looking for me. I had approximately thirty seconds to get out of sight, a minute if I was lucky.
The gunshot I heard ten seconds later told me I wasn’t going to be lucky.
I sprinted down West Avenue to the corner of Bridport road, by which time my lungs were on fire. At a slow jog, and with a heaving chest, I entered Lower Memorial Park through the gate. A narrow sandy path forked right and left in front of me, cutting through a sward of rough grass, which I ran across, heading for an area to my right which was covered in trees. An old man taking a stroll had taken notice of the wooden sign ordering the public to stick to the path. He glared at me but didn’t say anything. When I got to the cover of the trees I felt marginally safer. Bracken crunched beneath my feet and branches clawed at my body as I hurried through the copse, eventually coming to Moston Brook, a shallow stream with a muddy quagmire at either side of it. I leaped it with a splash.
Emerging from the trees I passed a bench with three people sitting on it, all of them lined and old before their time. No doubt they were enjoying a fix or waiting to be supplied with one. I didn’t wait to find out as I emerged from Memorial Park onto Mill street, a long straight road with industrial buildings siding it. The place made me shudder. There was nowhere to hide. My lungs were incinerated by that time, but somehow, with a supreme effort, I was able to keep running until I’d turned the corner and was safely out of sight, at least for the moment.
I walked rapidly along Oldhan road then turned up Albert street west, a forlorn-looking thoroughfare of brick terraced houses, many of them dolled up with white rendering gone grey with age, or make-believe stone cladding. My ears must have been especially attuned to the danger I was in, because amidst the hum of traffic, I heard the throb of an engine I recognised as that of a Subaru Impreza. Next to me was the cream and blue façade of a pub called the Lamb Inn. It looked welcoming. I darted inside.
The Thursday lunchtime drinking crowd had dispersed, leaving a residue of ageing alcoholics with large thread-veined noses. They were sitting in groups of two or three, deep in murmured conversation. A few glanced up at me as I came in; most didn’t bother.
After all the excitement I’d had I needed a drink. I went to the bar.
‘A half of Crazy Jane, please. No, wait, bugger it. I’ll have a pint for once in my miserable life.’
The barman pulled me a pint and I paid for it, took it to a seat in the corner, and tried to calm down sufficiently to work out what my next move should be. Outside, a police siren wailed, presumably heading for number twenty-three Aspect Close. But if it wasn’t, there would be plenty of other work in the area to keep its crew occupied.
In a state of near despair I drank my pint while trying not to look like the hunted woman I was, but I couldn’t stop myself from anxiously glancing around the room every time I took a sip of beer, and letting my gaze linger on the door. I expected Hench or Bandana Man to burst through it any second.<
br />
Who was Jake Devlin? Was Sarina okay?
I checked my mobile to see if Sarina had been in touch. She hadn’t. The knowledge raised my stress levels from uncomfortable to high.
One of the problems I had was that I couldn’t think straight. If I could manage that, I might be able to figure a way out of my problems. The reason I couldn’t think straight was that I felt exposed. I was an animal of prey, presenting an easy meal for predators. What did animals of prey do? Find a place to hide, lie low, and regroup. But where could I go?
My parents had relocated to Spain a few years previously, so I couldn’t go to them. Even if they’d still been living in England, it wouldn’t have been a great idea to go to their house. I wouldn’t have wanted to risk drawing them into the mess I was in. I had friends, but had the same reservations about going to stay with them. I didn’t want to put their lives at risk. I seemed to have no one to turn to.
Then it came to me. The perfect hiding place to hole up in, and calm down, while working out how to save myself and Sarina.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Four years earlier I’d been called on to defend Duke Muldoon, a fifty year old hard man who was being tried for GBH and wounding with intent. Word was that Muldoon was a gangland enforcer, but he presented as an amiable rough diamond type. He told me that when he’d injured his victims he’d always acted in self-defence, and that other than for this one incident, he’d always been a law-abiding citizen. I didn’t know whether to believe him, but my job was not to reason why but to develop with him the best defence possible, which is what I’d done. On close scrutiny it turned out that the police had breached the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 when investigating Muldoon’s crime. I successfully argued that the case against him shouldn’t be brought to trial because the failure of the police to observe PACE made it unsafe to do so and would prejudice the trial. The judge summarily dismissed the case, much to Muldoon’s relief. Hard man though he seemed to be, he didn’t fancy a long spell in jail. A couple of years later, Muldoon paid me a visit out of the blue, at the Chambers I worked in. He was proudly clutching a hardback book called King Gangster.
