“I think Dad would feel better knowing his assets were being taken care of by immediate family,” Theo continued.
Dylan’s lip curled. He knew this would happen. With Uncle Eddie behind bars, Theo saw Fletcher’s death as his cue to take the throne. He’d always hated playing yes man to Fletcher when he considered himself the rightful heir.
Dylan moved closer to Theo and watched his face stiffen as he tried not to look intimidated by Dylan’s malformed appearance. “I don’t take orders from you. Until I hear different from Uncle Eddie, and only Uncle Eddie, business continues as usual. I do my collections, and you do… whatever it is you fucking do.” He took one sip of his pint and placed the drink back on the bar. It tasted of warm piss. “When’s Hurls getting here?”
Theo checked the expensive watch on his wrist, making sure he lifted his shirt sleeve long enough for the barmaid to see he was wearing at least twelve grand of Swiss engineering. “Any minute now. I hope you lighten up before dinner cuz. I don’t want your snarling face mean mugging me while I try and enjoy some lovely pasta.”
Dylan bristled. “You’re coming to the barn for dinner?”
“Lily invited me. Would be rude not to.” He leant closer and whispered, “She’s making a lasagne.”
The smugness on his face was hard to stomach. “You’re fucking disgusting,” Dylan said as Hurls entered the room with his minder. Why he had that steroid monkey follow him around everywhere, Dylan would never know. Sure, he looked intimidating to those uneducated in combat, but he’d last less than a minute against someone like Dylan.
Paddy Harlow-Hurley preferred to go by Hurls. Double-barrelled names sounded a bit wank in the sort of circles they were used to. “Boys,” he greeted them, “let’s get this over with.”
A pint was placed in front of him without asking. Dylan eyed him with suspicion. Why call them boys? The sons of Eddie and Fletcher Blackburn were not to be infantilised. Were the capos planning on making a move?
“First things first. When’s the next shipment due? Decker’s crew’s running low, and my guys are onto the dregs.”
Theo inflated his chest. “Some lads arrived in from Malaga yesterday. They’re at the safe house in Craster until—”
“I’m not talking that small fry shit,” said Hurls, folding his arms. “There’s only so much coke a group of chavs can swallow or stick up their arses. We need kilograms, not milligrams.”
“Friday,” Dylan answered. “Six kilos coming into NCL from Tenerife by way of Sierra Leone.”
That got his attention. Had he thought Dylan had been sat around on his arse since Monday? No, it was business as usual.
“You’ve got it coming direct?”
“Why give the Scousers a cut when we can bring in our own?”
Hurls pursed his lips. “Who you using?”
“AJ and Maggie.” Andrew James Peters and Margaret Peters were two of their best mules. No one suspected a couple in their sixties who looked like university professors. Maggie was a genius when it came to smuggling coke in her luggage. Not only did she do things like hide smaller baggies inside sanitary towels and empty shampoo bottles, but she would surreptitiously drip sardine oil onto the suitcases of other passengers on their flight. The sniffer dogs couldn’t resist.
Hurls nodded his approval. “And the cleaners?”
“Fully vetted.” AJ and Maggie would collect their luggage from baggage claim and visit the toilets before immigration. There, they would strike up a conversation with the hard-working cleaners and drop their supplies into the cleaning trolleys when no one was looking. The cleaners would remove the drugs from their trolleys before finishing their shift. AJ and Maggie would walk through immigration clean as whistles.
If Dylan didn’t know better, he’d say Hurls was disappointed. He’d wanted him to fail.
“Anything else,” Dylan asked, getting to his feet. He had collections to tend to.
“Yes, actually.” Hurls folded his arms and his minder mimicked him. Monkey see, monkey do. “I have a problem, which means Morrison has a problem.”
Morrison worked directly for Fletcher; he was on the second top rung of the ladder.
“One of the boys we have working over in Arthur’s Hill hasn’t been handing over all that we’re owed. I know he’s had clients round the clock—we’ve been watching the house—but he’s only forking over two-thirds of what it should be. Been going on for months.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
Anger flickered in Hurls’s eyes. “I want you to scare the shit out of him, that’s what. We’re owed a couple of grand. Find out where it is. Morrison will meet you on Thursday. He’s busy until then.”
Dylan ground his teeth. “Theo can do it.”
Theo’s mouth flopped open. “Careful, cuz. Morrison asked Hurls to ask you. Besides, I’m busy Thursday.” He said it flippantly and with a wave of his arm as if the idea of shaking down a rent boy was beneath him.
Dylan hated taking orders from Hurls, but he hated taking orders from Theo more. He knew what his cousin wanted. One poxy business course at the college—which he failed—did not mean he could run this family.
* * *
Cooper placed a chocolate muffin and a cup of lukewarm tea in front of Charlene Blackburn.
“Thank you,” she said, tucking straight into the muffin.
Charlene was a mess after a night in custody, but the news that she was no longer a suspect due to her short stature had brightened her complexion.
Despite her relief, Charlene’s face was still marked with grief, and she hadn’t stopped crying since they’d brought her in.
“Tell me more about Fletcher’s boys,” Cooper asked. “I met them yesterday, they’re both tall, just like their dad.”
“All the Blackburn men are tall. Lily must take after her mother.”
“Should we start with George?”
Charlene hugged the cup of coffee in both hands. “Well, George isn’t like the other Blackburns. If he didn’t have Fletcher’s height and eyes, I’d say he was adopted.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s nice,” she said with a half-smile. “I mean, Fletcher was nice, when he wanted to be, but firmness and hostility came naturally to him. George is meek and quiet; he doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Even Hazel had a vicious streak. I never met her, but I heard she’d raise her hands to the children.”
Cooper couldn’t help but show her repulsion in her expression. She couldn’t imagine raising a hand to her daughter. Cooper’s parents had smacked her from time to time under the guise of discipline. It was normal in those days she supposed. In those days? It was only the nineties. Still, to Cooper, smacking was nothing more than lazy parenting and an abuse of trust.
“George isn’t like them,” Charlene continued. “He’s not cut out to do what Dylan does. He’s not built for it. I mean, he’s tall, but he’s scrawny. He couldn’t intimidate anyone. He’s too sensitive.”
“What did Fletcher think of that?”
Charlene sighed. “He would tease him. He’d call him…” Her voice faded away. “He’d call him names that we’re not supposed to use anymore. Fletcher was from a different generation. He didn’t go in for any PC stuff.”
“I know a few people he would have got on with,” Cooper said, thinking of Superintendent Howard Nixon.
“George is a bright boy. He’s a bookworm and always has been. He’s good with numbers too. That’s why Fletcher had him do the accounts.”
Cooper nodded. “What about Dylan?”
She flinched.
“You know,” Cooper continued, “you cower every time I say that name. Are you scared of Dylan?”
She played with a silver bangle on her left wrist.
“Charlene?”
“Everyone’s scared of Dylan. You’ve seen him.” Her voice was shaky. “Can’t believe I used to feel sorry for him.”
“Why?”
Charlene rubbed her mouth with
her hand. “Do you know why his head is shaped like that?”
Cooper shook her head.
“Because of Fletcher.” She looked ashamed just for saying it. “He kicked Dylan… When he was still in Hazel’s womb. When he was born, his skull was misshapen.
Cooper had to work hard not to grab Charlene and ask her why in God’s name she could fall for a man who’d kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach. She found herself agreeing with Dylan’s appraisal of Charlene. The only explanation was money.
“I didn’t know,” Charlene said, by way of an explanation. “I didn’t know that story when I married Fletcher. I don’t know if he mellowed with age or if he and Hazel were simply a toxic match, but he never put his hands on me. Not once. The Fletcher I knew was a gentleman.”
“How did you meet?”
“I was a dancer. At Stilettos.”
In other words, she was a stripper. “Ah,” said Cooper, recognising the name of the bar from the list Dylan had given her.
“Fletcher would come in once a week.”
“To collect protection money?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. I didn’t know that at the time. This was before Eddie went to jail and I just thought of Fletcher as a regular. He could easily have someone else do it, but he had an eye for the ladies. I think he liked coming to the clubs. He’d come in every week and we’d chat. He’d always buy me a drink, but he never asked for a lap dance or say anything lewd. We’d just chat for ages. I told him I was a fan of Hemingway, and the next week he came in with a first edition of The Old Man and the Sea for me. It was a few months before he asked me out. After that, I never worked there again.”
Cooper gave her a supportive smile. That was quite the fairytale.
“I know people think I’m a gold digger, but I was earning good money dancing for rich idiots—really good money. I had a lot saved up. Dylan has me all wrong.”
“And you’re too scared of him to set him straight?”
Charlene gave a nervous laugh. “George told me he was sent to a special school because everyone assumed he was slow… because of his head. Dylan would fall asleep at his desk because he couldn’t sleep at home due to Hazel and Fletcher’s arguing. The nuns who ran the school didn’t take kindly to him sleeping in class so they’d beat him. Then, because of how he looked, he was a target for bullies and would get beaten up by the other kids at lunchtime.”
“It doesn’t sound like he had an easy life.”
“You don’t know the half of it. The nuns would tell Hazel he’d been naughty at school and then Hazel would give him the belt. All he ever knew was violence. Then one day, his growth spurt kicked in, and he realised he was big enough to fight back. So he did. He never took crap from anyone again once he knew his fists could protect him. Fletcher, Hazel, those bloody hypocrite nuns… They created a monster.”
- Chapter 14 -
While Cooper chatted to Charlene Blackburn and tried to find out any more details that might help the case, Tennessee travelled into Newcastle to talk to the owners of the eight bars who Fletcher Blackburn had been due to visit on the day he died. The young DS parked near Central Station and jogged across two lanes of heavy traffic to nip into a branch of Greggs. He bought a chicken bake, a sausage roll and a beef and vegetable pasty. His haul would hopefully keep him going until lunch. If he got lunch. It wasn’t guaranteed these days, and devastatingly, any food waiting for him when he returned home was bound to be vegan.
Finding a bench, Tennessee tucked into his sustenance and fought off a couple of aggressive pigeons. A techie with an eye for detail had done him a solid favour and identified the hotel where Hazel Blackburn was supposedly staying. According to Tripadvisor, there were almost two thousand hotels in Barcelona, and because Hazel hadn’t tagged the hotel in any of her posts, they’d had to use some detective work to narrow it down. The hotel had a rooftop bar; that narrowed it down to a more manageable one hundred and thirty-one. In the background of some of Hazel’s photographs, four spires from the Sagrada Familia could be seen rising into a perfectly blue Spanish sky. Gaudi’s unfinished basilica couldn’t have been far away. They estimated it was within a mile and that brought the list down to only five hotels. They could have stopped there and simply looked through the photographs of each hotel until they found the one they wanted, but the techie had noticed that the basilica was to the south of the hotel, and that brought their list down to one: Hotel de Tranquilidad.
Tennessee made the call and prayed that whoever was staffing the desk spoke English. To his surprise he was greeted by Zara, a Geordie lass having a gap year in Catalonia.
“And you’re sure? Ms Blackburn is definitely staying there?” he asked.
“Definitely. I saw her at breakfast. I can try her room, but I’m ninety-nine per cent sure I saw her get on the tour bus to Montserrat this morning.”
“No, that’s okay, Zara. Could you tell me if you saw Ms Blackburn on Monday the seventeenth of June?”
There was one direct flight from Barcelona to Newcastle per day, but it was also possible to go via Paris or Amsterdam. Technically, Hazel could nip into Newcastle, kill her ex-husband and be back in Barcelona in time for happy hour.
“Oh, goodness. Erm… I can tell you I’ve seen her most mornings. She likes to get to breakfast early so she can get one of the seats in the sunshine, but I don’t know if I’ve seen her every single morning.”
Tennessee thought for a moment about what Ronnie Rogers had told them earlier. “Would you say Ms Blackburn a tall lady?”
“No. She’s smaller than me, and I’m five-one. Should I ask her to call you when she gets back?”
He told her not to bother. Hazel had a decent alibi and was even shorter than Charlene was. With his mind at ease, he shooed yet another bloody pigeon away and returned his focus to whatever Fletcher had been up to on the morning of the day he died.
Bambi Bar was tucked away down a side street called Pink Lane. The bar was situated on the upper floor above a nail bar and Thai massage parlour. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never spot the entrance. A small sign on an unremarkable door showed a picture of a young deer next to a flourished letter B. Tennessee checked he didn’t have any crumbs on his shirt then pressed a buzzer and stared into a camera.
“Members only,” came the reply.
The DS held up his ID. There was a pause and a stifled swear word before the door clicked open. A man in a cheap suit, with thinning hair and bird shit on his left shoe, met Tennessee at the top of the stairs.
“DS Daniel. Northumbria Police. Are you the manager?”
“Frank. Frank Ashman. And, yeah, you could say that.”
Tennessee could smell stale cigarette smoke coming from fabric-covered chairs and barstools. A couple of ashtrays backed up his theory that Bambi Bar didn’t observe the smoking ban. The venue was one long main room with doorways branching off to other rooms. A metallic bar was in the centre, staffed by suspiciously young women in cropped tops and booty shorts. A lone customer sat huddled over a pint glass with a tatty newspaper. He adjusted his posture so Tennessee couldn’t see his face.
“I’d like to ask you some questions about Monday.”
Frank’s shoulders stiffened. “I don’t care what you’ve heard. None of our barmaids are on the game.”
Tennessee thought Frank doth protest too much. He suspected that behind the closed doors to the other rooms, he would find beds, and God knows what else.
“I’m sure they’re not,” he said dryly. “Now cut the bull. I’m here about Fletcher Blackburn.”
Frank looked suddenly nervous.
“When did you last see him?”
Frank rubbed his neck. “Not in a long time. Years.”
“He wasn’t here on Monday?”
“No. His son is a regular though.”
Tennessee sighed. “I said cut the bull. Dylan’s not a regular. He comes here to collect protection money, right?”
“Erm…” A bead of sweat form
ed in the centre of Frank’s forehead.
“Relax, Frank. It’s not like I’m going to tell him you snitched. Dylan gave me the list of bars he was going to visit on Monday voluntarily. He was due to come by, wasn’t he?”
A single nod.
“But he didn’t?”
Another nod of agreement.
“And Fletcher came instead?”
“No. I told you. I ain’t seen him in years.”
“What about his bodyguard?” Tennessee pulled up a picture of Ibrahim on his phone.
Frank studied it then shook his head. “No. Ain’t seen him either.”
“Did anyone representing the Blackburns come in that day?”
Frank led Tennessee away from the bar and his only customer. “No. Dylan was in the month before. As usual. He’s like clockwork. But business has been slow lately, which meant I was light by fifty quid. I was expecting a bit of a kicking, was beyond relieved when he didn’t show.”
Tennessee noted it all down. “So, to be clear, you haven’t seen any Blackburns in over a month?”
“Swear to God.”
“And you were here on Monday?”
“Yeah. From about ten in the morning to…” He thought about it. “To probably just after midnight.”
“Can anyone corroborate that?”
Frank looked even more worried than he had a moment ago. “The barmaids. Gilly and Lola were working Monday. They’re not in again until Friday. I can give you their numbers?”
Tennessee waited while Frank scribbled down two phone numbers. Bambi Bar was truly a depressing place. No wonder business was slow. It needed a deep clean and a visit from vice. As he descended the stairs, ready to walk the short distance to McDermott’s, Tennessee couldn’t help but contemplate what he’d heard. Fletcher hadn’t been to Bambi Bar to collect his money. Had he gone to any of the other venues? And if not, where the bloody hell had he been?
* * *
Just over a mile away, Paula Keaton was reversing into a rare parking space at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. She locked the car and approached the Great North Children’s Hospital.
Roll The Dice (DCI Cooper Book 3) Page 8
