Strangers

Lucy looked in fascination at the image of Bill Pentecost, the north-west’s legendary boss of bosses. At first glance there was nothing immediately brutal about him, but on closer inspection something wasn’t quite right. He was weasel-faced, with a shock of greying ‘wire-wool’ hair. His features were lean and sharp-edged, and he wore steel-framed, rectangular-lensed glasses over a pair of narrow, ice-blue eyes.

‘Pentecost started his career as a council estate money-lender,’ Slater said. ‘His trademark was extreme terror; he would punish those who failed to pay up by crucifying them on doors. But he built his larger empire on drugs and extortion, finally coming to occupy a position as one of Manchester’s top godfathers. As such, his vision gradually broadened. He decided that he’d rather make deals than engage in crazy violence, and so arranged a meeting of all the heads of the region’s main gangs, at which he proposed the set-up of a kind of overarching north-west crime faction, in which they’d all participate and which in due course would become known as “the Crew”. Members would have an equal partnership and an equal say in all major decisions affecting the governance and protection of crime in this region, the endgame being to establish permanent peace and prosperity.

‘And guess what … with a few minor exceptions, it worked. Harmony wasn’t just restored to the north-west crime network, all these years later the Crew is still the leading underworld power in this region. It’s got a controlling interest in just about every racket you can think of, and Bill Pentecost, now in his mid-fifties, is firmly cemented in place as top dog.’

He paused to take a breath, and for the first time smiled – a rather tired smile, Lucy thought, the smile of a guy so used to thinking how unfair it was that these killers were all millionaires while the average copper spent so much of his time worried about his pension that if he didn’t laugh about it he’d cry.

‘As I say, you’re unlikely to meet him,’ Slater said. ‘He never gets his own hands dirty anymore. He’s got umpteen layers of fall-guys between him and the streets, but it’s important you know who he is, because quite a few of these girls are likely to be on his pay-roll, albeit indirectly. Which brings us to the second name you need to know, and this is someone it’s just conceivable you might meet up with.’

He indicated the left-hand image. This one portrayed a younger man, perhaps only his mid-forties, but again lean and feral of feature, an impression enhanced by a vaguely insane smile. His head was completely shaved, and his eyes sunk into pits. Lucy had the notion that if some Photoshop genius added a goatee beard and a pair of antlers, it would be a perfect spit for the Devil.

‘As I say, the Crew have many rackets,’ Slater said, ‘and one of the most lucrative is the sex trade. So this is their pimp-in-chief, the ludicrously named Nick Merryweather, more accurately known as “Necktie Nicky” thanks to his preferred method of despatching those he doesn’t like. For the record, Serious Crimes Division has two unsolved murders on its books wherein the APs, both of them underworld players, were found with their throats cut and their tongues pulled out through the wound. They’re suspected to be Crew hits, and Necktie Nicky, though a Crew lieutenant rather than a soldier, was almost certainly the assassin. So this is someone to be especially wary of, though most likely, if you do your job properly, you’ll be a flyspeck beneath his notice. That’s assuming he bothers coming out to check on business. He has lots of madams and under-pimps to do that for him.’

He moved along to the third and final mugshot.

‘Now … prostitution being what it is in the age of Internet-fuelled home industry, not even a terror like Necktie Nicky can exert ownership over the entire field. He doesn’t actually run any brothels – he protects them, in other words he takes a big share of all their profits. That’s the way the Crew work, which makes it hard if not impossible to hit them with any real criminal charges. But as I said, there’s so much sex-for-sale out there now that even Nick Merryweather can’t cover the entire spectrum. So to help him, he relies on this charmer, fellow Crew lieutenant Frank McCracken.’

McCracken’s face was in some ways the scariest on show, because it was the most normal. There was a hardness about it, for sure, but he was also a handsome man, square-jawed, dark-eyed, his lightly greying hair worn in a sharp crew-cut. His eyes were chips of glass – there was no doubt that this character would kick you to death if you said a word out of place. But he too was in his fifties, and if you weren’t on the look-out for villainy, it was possible you could pass him in the street without giving him another glance.

‘Anyone know what McCracken’s official role in the Crew is?’ Slater asked.

Another girl put her hand up. ‘The Shakedown.’

‘Correct again,’ Slater replied. ‘And you even use the underworld terminology, so ten out of ten. Frank McCracken’s role in the Crew, ladies and gentlemen, is what they call “the Shakedown”. If ever a lucrative theft is committed in the north-west area, like a robbery, a high-end burglary or fraud, or if pimps, dealers and bookies are active who aren’t “officially approved”, it’s McCracken’s job to ensure the Crew gets its cut. And trust me, he’s very good at it. Some of his methods, at least those reported to us as hearsay, are beyond imagining. On the upside, McCracken is another who only comes out to play if the opposition gets serious. It’s unlikely that small-time operators like you will actually encounter him.’

He paused to look them over. Everyone was maintaining a suitably serious aspect, but quite a few of the girls, again mainly the young ones, had noticeably paled.

‘I’d imagine none of you are feeling any the less nervous after what I’ve just told you,’ Slater said. ‘Sorry about that, but how would it help if I lied? This just underlines the importance of the front you put out when you hit those streets. As I said, the Crew don’t control all the sex-for-sale in the north-west. It’s too diverse, involves too many people and is too technology-driven. From your POV it’s a good thing that you won’t be the only freelancers out there. But it’s important that each one of you gets a good cover story and gets it right – who you are, where you live, why you’re on the game, etc. In the first instance, you won’t be going out there cold. Vice have loaned us one or two working girls who also happen to be snitches – but only the most trustworthy, so that means there’s no more than a handful of them. They won’t be able to hold all your hands all the time – and at some point you are going to be asked questions. It’ll happen less out there on the fringes of town, where everything’s a bit wild and woolly, than it would on the backstreets around Piccadilly and Whalley Range, but it’s going to happen and you’re going to have to be ready for it. Now you’ll all have protectors, you know that … but some crap you’ll just have to deal with. Any questions so far?’

‘Most punters would be surprised to learn there’s any kind of prostitution out on the road networks,’ one of the girls said. ‘People drive around all day and never see anything.’

‘That’s true,’ Slater replied. ‘We’re going to train you up on that as well. Because you start openly touting at some service stations and you’ll be locked up by Traffic before you can say “Cynthia Payne”. It’s the quieter spots the girls tend to work from: lay-bys, lorry parks, picnic areas – especially at night, when they’re deep in shadow. Again … sorry not to sweeten this for you, but it’s in those shadows where you’ll need to be. And it isn’t going to be nice.’

They broke for coffee at around eleven, and were on their way down to the canteen when Slater sidled up alongside Lucy.

‘PC Clayburn, is it?’ he asked.

Lucy waited to let the others pass. ‘That’s right, sir.’

He stopped next to her. ‘You were the one involved in the Mandy Doyle incident?’

Lucy’s heart sank, but there was never any option these days other than to admit her error and hope to brazen it out. ‘Right again, sir.’

He regarded her with an odd kind of indifference, which she found more unnerving than she would if he’d been openly angry. ‘So … what?’ he said. ‘You just admit it like that? No excuses? No convoluted self-justification?’

‘None whatever, sir. I dropped a total bollock, and that’s why I’m here now … I’m trying to make up for it.’

He readjusted the pile of paperwork under his arm. ‘I worked with Mandy Doyle on the Drugs Squad. We were partners for three years.’

Lucy’s cheeks reddened. ‘I’m just glad she’s alive, sir.’

‘So am I.’ He yanked at his tie to loosen it even more. ‘She’s an idiot, by the way. Always was.’

Lucy thought she’d misheard. ‘Sir?’

‘Mandy,’ he explained. ‘Spent her entire career trying to prove she’s as tough as the lads. Made up for her lack of imagination with a bolshiness that extended right across the board. Difficult enough when you were a similar rank. But if you were lower, you could expect to put up with a whirlwind of shit. But why am I telling you that, eh?’

Lucy was temporarily lost for words. ‘I … didn’t know her that well.’

He shrugged. ‘Lucky you. Or unlucky. She obviously had to blame someone once she went and got herself shot.’

‘Strictly speaking, sir, it was me who went and …’

‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘I read all about it, PC Clayburn. You had a guy in custody on suspicion of raping and brutalising an old lady, yeah? But by his own admission, and as later excavation of the deposition site revealed, he’d also murdered two young women. That should have put him in a different category. That meant he was physically pretty adept, and yet your gaffer went and left you – five days into CID – on your own, handcuffed to him.’

‘There was a police driver …’

‘The driver’s irrelevant. He was in a separate compartment of the vehicle.’

With Radio One playing, Lucy reminded herself.

‘He couldn’t necessarily have known what was going on in the back,’ Slater added. ‘Even if Haygarth hadn’t produced a gun, he might still have overpowered you.’

‘I was still a police officer, sir.’

‘Your loyalty to DI Doyle is touching, if a tad misplaced. She spent the next year saying you’d almost got her killed, when the reality was exactly the opposite – it was her who almost got you killed.’

Lucy preferred not to ponder that, even though her mum had – excessively. You didn’t dice with death every day as a copper, but it happened more often than in most civilian occupations. It didn’t pay to dwell on the near misses, to wonder what might have happened rather than what did happen. That was a sure-fire way to cost you your nerve for future such situations. But sometimes it was an effort to suppress those distracting thoughts.

‘You never should have been left in that vehicle on your own,’ Slater concluded.

‘I still looked the other way when I shouldn’t have.’

‘Oh hell …’ For the first time, Slater’s blank expression slackened; he almost smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have fancied watching a scrote like that take a piss either. The fact is there should have been two of you, minimum. And that was Mandy Doyle’s fault. She had tactical command, so she ought to have taken care of it.’

‘I’m glad you see it that way, sir. Not everyone does.’

‘Shit, Lucy …’ He walked again; she followed. ‘You know what this job’s like. Fill a form in wrong and it can follow you for the rest of your career if it suits someone’s purpose. But DI Doyle’s gone now on a medical, so theoretically that’s a clean slate for you.’

‘I want to get back into CID.’

‘I know. Priya told me.’

‘Can you and DSU Nehwal make it happen?’

‘Is that your burning ambition?’ he asked. It sounded like a genuine question.

‘It’s what I joined up for in the first place.’

This time he did smile. ‘So what were you watching as a kid? Cagney and Lacey? Prime Suspect? No offence intended … with me it was Miami Vice.’

‘Yeah, well … I guess we all got a bit of a shock when the reality hit us.’

‘Telling me. Anyway, the truth is, Lucy, we need detectives. Urgently … and I mean everywhere. Special units too, not just Division. Too many people are joining up these days who are only interested in fast-track promotion, and CID’s the wrong place for that.’ He halted at the entrance to the canteen. ‘So if you’re serious, and you do a job for us … we might be able to assist. It’s early days though. I mean we’ve got to catch a killer first.’

‘And you really think the Intel Unit’s going to have a role in that, sir?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it more likely forensics’ll nab her? Or some good old-fashioned detective work?’

He shrugged as he walked inside. It was already noisy and crowded, mainly with plain clothes and civvie admin staff from the MIR, though uniforms and traffic wardens occupied some of the tables. They threaded their way through to the service counter with difficulty.

‘We’re dealing with someone who’s deadly serious about what she’s doing,’ Slater said over his shoulder. ‘You can tell that by the scorecard she’s racking up. It’s always going to be shoe-leather that brings someone like that to heel. Whether that’s Plod going door-to-door, detectives bouncing around the MIR having great ideas, or you lasses walking those grubby roads in your kinky boots … it doesn’t really matter.’

‘We just nab her any way we can.’

‘Correct.’

But Lucy was under no illusion. Slater was clearly disposed to be her friend – possibly because, at thirty, she was older and more experienced than most of the other Intel Unit girls and maybe, therefore, was someone he felt he could look to. The Mandy Doyle incident aside, her record was pretty good – so that could only help. Alternately, he might just fancy her. But even that was tolerable if, when all this was over, it meant he and Priya Nehwal could exert some influence in her favour. And by the sounds of it, there was one sure way to make that happen – feel the collar of Jill the Ripper.

No pressure then.

Chapter 6

‘You sure no one’s going to see us?’ Barney wondered tautly.

Kev rolled his eyes in that exasperated way he’d so perfected during the many years of their relationship. ‘You tell me, Barn. Who’s actually going to see us? Look …’ He pointed through the van window at a patch of diminutive lights twinkling some distance away. ‘That’s Bickershaw.’ Now he pointed in the other direction, indicating a similar scattering of lights, so distant in this case that they were only noticeable because all other landscape features were hidden by the autumn darkness. ‘And that’s Leigh. So where are we, Barn?’

Barney didn’t know for sure, even though he’d driven them both here in his uncle’s shuddery old van. The truth was he didn’t even think this area of wasteland had a name. As far as he could recall from his daylight travels, it was a patch of emptiness lying just east of the B5237.

He shrugged, helpless to answer.

‘A shit-tip where nobody lives,’ Kev said irritably. ‘Where you’d be lucky to find rats, because rats are generally not that fucking stupid. Nobody wants this place. So not only is no one likely to see us … why should it matter if anyone does?’

Even to Barney – who was a bigger, heavier lad than Kev, but tended by instinct to defer to his lifelong mate on all matters where complex thought was required – the answer to this one was more than obvious.

‘Because it’s public land and fly-tipping’s illegal.’

Kev snorted. ‘But it was alright to dig coal mines out here, wasn’t it? And dump mountains of slag?’

‘I’m just saying,’ Barney cautioned. ‘Let’s be careful.

‘We’ll be careful. But for fuck’s sake, don’t let these bastards guilt-trip you.’

‘These bastards’ was Kev’s signature phrase, and his catch-all term for anyone he perceived to have higher control than himself, be they employers, bailiffs, police officers, the local authority, central Government itself, or anyone at all who qualified in his mind as part of the establishment.

‘Hypocrites, the lot of ’em,’ he ranted on. ‘If they wanted a rubbish tip out here they’d soon okay it …’

‘I said alright!’ Barney didn’t normally interrupt his mate in mid-flow, but of the two of them, he, ultimately, had most reason to be nervous.

They’d spent the whole of that dreary Sunday clearing out Kev and Lorna’s new flat, which the couple were about to move into at mates’ rates because its owner was Lorna’s brother-in-law. He’d offered to lower the asking price even more if they disposed of the pile of rubbish that the previous tenants, a bunch of art students at the local Technical College, had left behind. There were boxes of broken brushes, paint pots, turps bottles, easels, torn canvases, along with the ruined carpet from the main lounge, the festering contents of several bins, two mattresses, and even the bedding as well.

It had been a lot more work than the two lads had expected, taking them several hours to bring it all downstairs and load it into the back of Barney’s uncle’s van, which ensured that all the municipal recycling centres were closed by the time it came to dump the stuff. Having opted – at Kev’s insistence – for this other, simpler solution, it now looked as if they’d be at least another hour out here, on a one-time colliery wasteland which it had been quite a challenge just to access. They’d prowled its edges for half an hour or so, both driver and passenger tensing every time another vehicle drove past, before locating a track of sorts. This was little more than a ribbon of rutted, rubbly ground, but at least it was driveable and it led away from the B5237 in a straight line, running a couple of hundred yards before terminating in front of what looked like a burned-out Portakabin.

They halted here, and even though it was a desolate spot, the undefined outlines of rocks and stunted vegetation standing left and right, the pale flood of their headlights picked out a muddy footpath on the other side of the ruin. Barney was glad they were at least away from the road. He switched his headlights off and climbed out, glancing around and listening, before walking to the rear and opening the van doors.

Kev went with him, saying nothing as he dug into the mountain of refuse inside, hefting out a box filled with bric-a-brac, and strutting away through the gutted shell of the Portakabin. Almost by unspoken agreement, they’d decided to chuck the stuff somewhere on the far side of it, using the broken structure as a final shield between themselves and the road. But as Kev vanished along the meandering path beyond it, Barney thought he heard something.

He spun around.

A clacking, or clicking.

Most likely it had been branches rattling in a gust of wind.

There wasn’t much starlight penetrating the cloud-cover, but his eyes were finally adjusting to what little there was. Scrub-like thorn breaks were clumped to either side of the track, interspersed here and there by the odd stunted tree; the sort of charmless, twisted vegetation you saw so often on former coal-tips like this but rarely anywhere else. His vision didn’t spear very far into it – a few yards, but that was sufficient to show nothing moving.

Barney shuddered as he zipped his fleece. This desolation was the last place he wanted to be in right now. It was ten o’clock at night, and the nearest habitation – either Bickershaw or Leigh – were both miles away.

‘You’re one to talk about guilt-trips,’ Barney mumbled as he humped a roll of heavy, stinky lino onto his shoulder and stumbled through the Portakabin, following the same route as Kev. ‘Reminding me I owed you a few quid from when I was short, and calling this an opportunity to pay you back. It was only a few quid, lad.’

Naked bushes clawed at him as he pressed along the path beyond the ruin. Some sixty yards later, it opened out onto a flatter, harder surface – what had once been the concrete floor to another industrial unit.

‘This’ll do, here,’ Kev said from just ahead, as he dumped his load in a kind of unofficial centre-spot. Barney followed suit. They stood there, breathless, glancing round.

The B5237 was about three hundred yards behind them. The streetlights over the top of it were just barely visible, but their own vehicle was concealed by the trees and undergrowth.

‘Tell you what,’ Kev said in a “go on, I’ll humour you” kind of tone. ‘If it’s really bothering you, why don’t we build it all up into a bommy? I mean, it’s Bonfire Night in a couple of weeks. If some copper comes wandering around here, he’ll probably just think its kids. Won’t cock a snook at it.’

‘If you say so,’ Barney said, not feeling convinced.

‘There’ll be bommies everywhere this time next week. We’ll completely fox the bastards.’

Barney nodded again, before noticing that Kev was watching him – and only belatedly realising that this meant it was going to be his job to construct said bommy. While Kev lurched back along the path towards the van, he got to work, piling the rubbish together, and then looking for spare bits of timber with which he could form that distinctive pyramid shape.

A few minutes later, job done, Barney was also on his way back to the van. They passed each other in the process, Kev’s arms wrapped around a bulging bin-liner. They passed each other again a short time later, Barney this time hefting a couple of armfuls. And so it went on, the two of them working in relays until Barney was headed back to the van for what seemed like the fifth and surely final time – only to stop dead when he came in sight of it.

Because another vehicle was now parked at its rear.

Blocking it in.

The only conclusion – the only conclusion possible – was coppers.

For half a second, Barney’s world collapsed. He felt his bowels shrivel inside him. It wasn’t a serious offence, fly-tipping … except that he was currently on probation for pinching lead off a church roof. And he had no idea how much another conviction, even a minor one, might damage his chances of staying out of jail.

But now, slowly, he began to notice things that reassured him a little.

In the dimness, he couldn’t distinguish much about the car parked behind his van – he could only see the offside of it, and he certainly couldn’t identify its make or colour. But there were no Battenberg flashes down its flanks. Nor was there any kind of beacon or visi-flasher on top of it. That didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a police car, but its engine had been switched off and there were no headlights showing. Surely, if they were coppers, they’d still be sitting inside, waiting for the miscreants to come back?

Barney trod forward warily. Even drawing closer, it wasn’t possible in this gloom to determine whether or not someone was inside it. But then a voice addressed him.

‘Excuse me … can you help?’

He swung right, to find a woman sliding into view around the front nearside of the van.

Barney was shaken to see anyone at all, but this lady was the last person he’d have expected. Even in the dimness, she was a stunner: quite tall, an impression enhanced by her high-heeled boots and long, shapely legs, which were clad in spray-on black leggings. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of a shiny, silvery anorak, which was partly unzipped, exposing the best amount of cleavage he’d seen since last accessing the Butts & Boobs section of SexHub. She had a pretty face as well, and a nice smile. What looked like an awful lot of blonde hair was tucked beneath a smart black beret.

‘Erm … miss?’ he stammered.

‘I said can you help me?’

Barney remained tongue-tied; he was smitten. But it now struck him that whoever this lady was, she was still a potential witness to his crime. Even if she failed to recognise him again, she might recognise the registration mark on the van. Trust him to let bleeding Kev talk him into using his uncle’s vehicle.