Crack Down

Chapter 14

It’s a piece of cake, being a lawyer or a doctor or a computer systems analyst or an accountant. Libraries are full of books telling you how to do it. The only textbooks for private eyes are on the fiction shelves, and I don’t remember ever reading one that told me how to interrogate an eight-year-old without feeling like I was auditioning for the Gestapo. It didn’t help that Alexis was standing in the doorway like a Scouse Boadicea, arms folded, a frown on her face, ready to step in as soon as I stepped out of line.

Davy sat in bed, looking a bit pale, but otherwise normal. I figured if he was well enough to wolf scrambled eggs and cheese cabanos, he was well enough to answer a few simple questions. Somehow, it didn’t work out that straightforwardly. I sat on the bed and eventually we established that he was feeling OK, that I wasn’t going to tell his mum and we’d negotiate about his dad at a later stage. Already, I felt exhausted.

‘Where did you get the transfers from?’

‘A boy,’ he said.

‘Did you know the boy?’ I asked.

Davy shook his head. He risked a quick glance at me from under his fringe. I could see he was going to grow up with the same lethal cuteness as his father. However, since I’ve yet to discover any maternal instincts and I’m not into little boys till they’re old enough to have their own credit card, the charm didn’t work on me. I stayed firm and relentless. ‘You don’t usually take presents from strangers, do you, Davy?’

Again, the shake of the head. This time, he mumbled, ‘He wasn’t a proper stranger.’

‘How do you mean?’ I pounced.

‘Daniel and Wayne knew him,’ he said defiantly. ‘I wasn’t going to, but they said it was all right.’

‘Were you playing with Daniel and Wayne?’

This time he nodded. His head came up and he looked me in the eye. He was on surer ground now. Daniel and Wayne were two of the kids from the council estate. He knew I knew who he was talking about. I stood up. ‘OK. In future, don’t take things from people unless you know them. Is that a deal?’

Looking stubborn rather than chastened, he nodded. ‘OK,’ he dragged out.

‘I’m really not cut out for this game,’ I muttered to Alexis as I left.

‘It shows,’ she growled. Walking down the hall, I heard her say, ‘You going to lie in your pit all day, soft lad? Only there’s a pair of skates at Ice World with your name on, and if you’re not ready in half an hour I’m going to have to go on my own.’

‘Can’t we go later, Alexis?’ I heard Davy plead.

‘You’re not going to lie there half the day, are you?’

‘No. But I want to go and watch my dad’s team playing football this morning. We always go and watch them when I’m here.’

Silence. I bet standing on a freezing touchline watching the local pub team kick a ball badly round a muddy pitch was as much Alexis’s idea of hell as it was mine. I smiled as I headed through the conservatory and back into my own territory. It was nice to know that even Alexis got stiffed now and again. I pulled on last night’s jeans. I opened the wardrobe and realized I wasn’t going to be able to take a rain check on my date with the iron for much longer. I’d hire someone to do it, but on past experience it only causes me more grief because they never, but never, get the creases in the right places.

Irritated, I grabbed a Black Watch tartan shirt, a leftover from my brief excursion into grunge fashion, hastily abandoned when Della told me I looked like a refugee from an Irish folk group. At least it gave me an excuse to wear the battered old cowboy boots that are more comfortable than every pair of trainers I possess. I put a white T-shirt on under the tartan and headed out the door in search of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.

I crossed the common to the rows of four-storey council flats where Cherie Roberts lived. After all this time, I’m still capable of being surprised by the contrast with the neat little enclave where I live. At the risk of sounding like Methuselah at twenty-eight, I can remember council estates where the Rottweilers didn’t go around in pairs for security. Oxford isn’t famous for its pleasant public housing, but I had school friends who lived out on Blackbird Leys when it was the biggest council housing estate in Western Europe, and it was OK. I don’t remember obscene graffiti everywhere, lifts awash with piss and shit, and enough rubbish blowing in the wind between the canyons of flats to mistake the place for the municipal dump. Thank you, Mrs Thatcher.

I walked on to the corner and looked down the narrow cul-de-sac, trying to remember which block Cherie’s flat was in. I knew it was on the top floor and on the left-hand side. I’d know it when I saw it, but if I could avoid climbing six sets of stairs, I’d be happier. There was nobody around to ask either. Half past nine on a Sunday morning isn’t a busy time on the streets where I live. I set off, chewing over what I knew of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.

Cherie was a pale thirty-year-old who looked forty except when she smiled and her bright blue eyes sparked. She didn’t smile that often. She was a single parent. She hadn’t ever been anything else in practice, even though she’d been married to Eddy Roberts for eight years. Eddy was a Para who’d fallen in love with violence long before Cherie ever got a look-in. They’d married in a moment of madness when he was waiting to be shipped to the Falklands to help win Mrs Thatcher’s second term. He’d come back with his head full of Goose Green and gone just crazy enough for them to invalid him out. He stuck around for the few days it took to impregnate Cherie, but before Daniel was much more than a tadpole, her soldier of fortune was off fighting somebody else’s war in Southern Africa. He dropped in a year later for long enough to give her a couple of black eyes and another baby before he vanished into Central America.

Davy is the reason I know all this. He’d been coming up to visit regularly for a few months when Cherie turned up on my doorstep one night. Davy had obviously been boasting about my brilliance as a private eye, for Cherie had a task for me. She explained, right up front, that she couldn’t afford to pay me in money but she was offering a skill swap. Her cleaning and ironing for my detecting. I was tempted, till she told me about the job. She wanted me to find Eddy. Not because she wanted him back, but because she wanted a divorce.

I’d explained gently that Mortensen and Brannigan don’t handle missing persons, which happens to be no less than the truth. I could tell she didn’t believe me, even though I spent an hour outlining a few suggestions on how and where she might track down her errant husband. Relations between us weren’t helped when the agency was all over the papers a couple of months later because of a very high-profile missing person case that I’d cracked…Since then, whenever we’d met in the Post Office or in the dentist’s waiting room she’d been frigidly polite, and I guess I’d stood on my dignity. Not the most promising history for a successful interview.

I struck lucky on the third attempt. I recognized Cherie’s door as soon as I hit the landing. Daniel’s Ninja Turtle stickers were unmistakable, and obviously difficult to remove. Nothing so embarrassing to a kid as the evidence of last year’s cult. Taking a deep breath, I knocked. No reply. I banged the letter box, and was rewarded with a scurrying behind the door. The handle turned and the door swung open a couple of inches on a chain and the sound of the TV blasted me, but I couldn’t see anybody. Then a small voice said, ‘Hiya,’ and I adjusted my eye level.

‘Hiya, Daniel,’ I said to the pyjama-clad figure. I had a fifty per cent chance of being right.

‘I’m Wayne,’ he said. I hoped that wasn’t a sign from the gods.

‘Sorry. Hiya, Wayne. Is your mum in?’

He shrugged. ‘She’s in bed.’

Before he could say more, I saw a pale blue shape in the background and heard Cherie’s voice say sharply, ‘Wayne. Come away from there. Who is it?’

I cocked my head round the crack in the door and said, ‘Hi, Cherie. It’s me, Kate Brannigan. Sorry to wake you, but I wondered if I could have a word.’

Cherie appeared at the door in a faded towelling dressing gown and shoved Wayne out of the way. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

I was glad about that. She’d have had to be seriously hearing impaired to have slept through the volume her kids seemed to need from the TV. ‘Yeah, right,’ I said diplomatically.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I just wanted a word. Em…Can I come in?’

Cherie looked defensive. ‘If you want,’ she said, grudging every word.

‘I don’t want the whole neighbourhood to hear me,’ I said, trying desperately not to sound like I was about to give her a bad time.

‘I’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said defensively. She let the chain off and opened the door wide enough to let me in. After I’d entered, she stuck her head out and gave the landing the quick one-two to check who had spotted me.

I pressed against the wall to let her pass and lead me into the living room. ‘Out,’ she said curtly. Daniel reluctantly uncurled himself from the sofa and walked out of the room. Cherie switched off the TV and stared aggressively at me. ‘D’you want a brew, then?’ It was a challenge.

I accepted. While she was in the kitchen, I looked around. The room was scrupulously clean and as tidy as my place on a good day. Given she had two kids, it was impressive. It was a shame she didn’t have enough cash to upgrade from shabby. The leatherette upholstery of the sofa was mended with parcel tape in places, and in others it had completely worn away. The walls were covered in blown vinyl in a selection of patterns, clearly a job lot of odd rolls. But the paint was still white, if not quite brilliant, and she’d pitched some video shop manager into letting her have some film posters to brighten the place up.

‘Seen enough?’ Cherie demanded, returning from the kitchen on bare and silent feet. There was nothing I could say about her home that wouldn’t sound patronizing, so I said nothing, meekly accepting the mug of tea she held out to me. ‘There’s no sugar,’ she said. ‘I don’t keep it in.’

‘That’s OK, I don’t use it.’

The door opened a couple of inches and Daniel’s head and one shoulder appeared. ‘We’re going round to Jason’s to watch a video,’ he said.

‘OK. Behave yourselves, you hear me?’

Daniel grinned. ‘You wish, Mum,’ he giggled. ‘See ya.’

Cherie turned her attention back to me. She’d found a moment to drag a brush through her shoulder-length mouse-coloured hair, but it hadn’t improved the image a whole lot. She still looked more like a woman at the end of her day rather than the beginning. ‘So what’s this word you wanted to have with me?’

I swallowed a mouthful of strong tea and dived in at the deep end. ‘I’m really worried about something that happened yesterday, and I think you probably will be too. Davy’s up for the week. He was out playing yesterday morning for a couple of hours, and when he came in, he was in a hell of a state. He was really hyper, he was sick, and his temperature was all over the place. I got a friend of mine who’s a doctor to come around and have a look at him. The bottom line is, he was out of his head on drugs.’

The words were barely out of my mouth before Cherie jumped in. ‘And it has to be something to do with my kids, doesn’t it? It couldn’t be any of those nice middle-class kids from your street, could it? How do you think kids around here get the money for drugs?’

That wasn’t one I was prepared to answer. Reminding her of the muggings, burglaries and dole frauds that are the everyday currency of life at the bottom of the heap wasn’t going to earn me the answers I was looking for. ‘I’m not blaming your lads, Cherie. From what I can gather, they’re as likely to be victims as Davy was.’

That wasn’t the right response either. ‘Don’t you accuse my lads of taking drugs,’ she said dangerously, her eyes glinting like black ice. ‘We might not have much compared to you, but I take care of my kids. You’ve no shame, have you?’

That was when I lost it. ‘Will you for Christ’s sake listen to me, Cherie?’ I snarled. ‘I’ve not come here to have a go at you or your kids. Something scary, something dangerous, happened to Davy and I don’t want it happening to any other kids. Not yours, not anybody’s. You and me smacking each other over the heads with our prejudices isn’t going to sort things out.’

In the silence that followed, Cherie gave me the hard stare. Gradually, the sullen look left her face. But the suspicion was still there in her eyes. ‘OK. You got somebody else’s kicking. I had them bastards from the Social round the other day, doing a number about how Eddy’s not paying any maintenance and I must know where he is.’

I pulled a face. ‘Pick a war, any war.’

‘That’s more or less what I told them. So, what’s all this business with Davy got to do with me?’ The adrenaline rush had subsided and her eyes had dulled again, emphasizing the dark blue shadows beneath them. She sat on the arm of the sofa, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on mine.

‘These drugs were absorbed through the skin. From those tattoo transfers that the kids stick all over themselves. According to my doctor friend, the tattoos are impregnated with drugs. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s to give kids the taste for it. You know, a few freebies to get them into the habit, then it’s sorry, you’ve got to cough up some readies.’

Cherie pulled a pack of cheap cigarettes out of her dressing-gown pocket and lit up. ‘I’ve seen my two with a few transfers,’ she admitted. ‘I know they must have got them from one of the other kids because I don’t buy them the stickers, and they’ve had them some times when they’ve not had spends. But I’ve never seen them out of their heads, or anything like it. Mind you, the way they wind each other up, you probably couldn’t tell,’ she added, in a grim joke.

I mirrored her thin smile. ‘The problem seems to have arisen because Davy OD’d on the transfers. He loves them, you see. Given half a chance and a year’s pocket money, he’d cover himself from head to foot with them. Especially if they were Thunderbirds ones. Now, Davy says he was playing with Wayne and Daniel yesterday. A boy he didn’t know gave him the transfers, and he seems to have handed over as many as Davy wanted. He says he thought it was OK to take the transfers from the boy because Wayne and Daniel knew him,’ I said.

‘I suppose you want to ask my pair who this lad was,’ Cherie said with the resignation of a woman who’s accustomed to having her autonomy well and truly usurped by the middle-class bastards. Once upon a time I’d have been insulted to be taken for one of them, but even I can’t kid myself that I’m still a working-class hero.

I shook my head. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather you asked them. I think you’re more likely to get the truth out of them than me. They’d only think I was going to bollock them.’

Cherie snorted. ‘They’ll know I’m going to bollock them. OK, I’ll ask them when I see them. It’ll be a few hours, mind you. Once they get stuck into a pile of videos, they lose all track of time.’

‘Great. If you get anywhere, can you let me know? I’m going to be in and out a lot, but there’ll probably be somebody in next door in Richard’s. Or else stick a note through the door. I’d really appreciate it.’ I got to my feet.

‘You going to hand the slags over to the cops?’ Cherie asked. Behind her bravado, I could sense apprehension.

‘I don’t think people that hand out drugs to kids should be out on the street, do you?’

Cherie shook her head, a despairing look on her face. ‘Put them away, another one jumps in to take their place.’

‘So we just let them carry on?’

‘No way. I just thought you’d know the kind of people that’d put them off drug dealing for life. And put off anybody else that was thinking it would be a good career move.’

People get strange ideas in their heads about the kind of person a private eye hangs out with. The worrying thing for me was that Cherie was absolutely right. I knew just the person to call.