Crack Down

Chapter 20

I walked back through the office door on the stroke of twelve. The door to my office was closed. I raised my eyebrows in a question at Shelley. She pursed her lips and said, ‘I had to shut the door in case any clients walked in.’

Curious, I opened my door a couple of feet and stuck my head round. I saw instantly what she meant. Davy was still intent on the computer, but now Bill was sitting next to him, clutching his own joystick. Neither of them looked up at the sound of the door. I cleared my throat. Bill glanced up. As soon as he realized it wasn’t Shelley with some troublesome business query, I could see his attention leave the game and focus sharply on me. He got up, saying, ‘I’ve got to go and talk to Kate, Davy. Thanks for the game.’

Davy didn’t even look up as he said, ‘But Bill, you’ve got one more life!’

‘Well, since you’ve still got four, I guess I’ll have to concede. You win,’ Bill said, pretending to be petulant about it.

In the glow of the screen, Davy grinned, his body shifting strangely in the chair as he controlled whatever it was that was currently conquering the universe. Bill steered me out of the room and through into his office. ‘He’s a nice kid,’ Bill said. ‘No bother.’ I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Was I the only person on the planet who liked to live in a child-free zone?

Bill sat down and stretched his long legs in front of him. ‘So, how did it go?’

I filled him in on the weekend’s events. Maybe I should just ring Richard Branson and ask him to release it on CD. It would save me a lot of time. Then I ran through my interview with Geoff Turnbull.

‘You think he really will keep an open mind about Richard?’ Bill asked.

‘I doubt it. I think the only chance he’s got is for Turnbull to make a lot of arrests. When he realizes none of them even know Richard’s name, he’s going to have to unclamp his jaws from off Barclay’s leg.’

‘But he did go along with the short remand request?’

‘Sure, but that’s no skin off his nose, is it?’ My early jubilation at getting Turnbull to look properly at my evidence had evaporated. I wondered fleetingly how the families of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six had put up with this dislocating ordeal for the years it had taken them to have their loved ones released. I took a deep breath. ‘And now,’ I said, ‘I want to ask you a favour.’

‘Ask away,’ he said. ‘Hacking? Bugging? Your wish is my command.’

‘None of the above. It’s just that I’ve had enough aggro for one day. Will you phone Andrew Broderick and tell him what Turnbull said about the car? It’s hard enough keeping my head together without having to deal with someone else’s disappointments.’

Bill jumped up and engulfed me in a bear hug, his thick blond beard tickling my ear. ‘Poor old Katy,’ he said softly. ‘It’s not always easy, being as tough as old boots, is it?’

I let myself be held, wallowing in the illusion of security. There’s something very solid about Bill. I felt like I was being given a tranquillity transfusion. After a few minutes, I drew back, standing on tiptoe to kiss his beard. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Now, I’m going to take Davy for a swim and a pizza, and then the pair of us are going to get a pile of videos and completely indulge ourselves.’

‘You deserve it,’ Bill said. ‘You’ve done a helluva job, considering you started with virtually nothing to go at. Richard’s a lucky guy.’

‘What do you mean, lucky? When he sees our bill, he’ll be wishing he was back inside,’ I said. ‘See you in the morning, Bill. Unless you want to come round and play computer games with Davy tonight?’

‘I’ll pass,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some rather different games in mind for tonight. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.’ Somehow, I found it hard to believe the heart was the organ in question. I wondered who the lucky woman was this week. One day, he’s going to meet one with fancier footwork than him, and that’ll be a battle worth seeing. Till then, he’s working his way through the intelligent female population of the north of England. He once told me he’s never been to bed with a woman yet who didn’t teach him something. I don’t think he was talking about sex.

There were only a couple of dozen people in the fun pool at Gorton, so Davy and I made the most of the slides and the waves, treating the place as our personal pleasure dome. Although my shoulders screamed in complaint at first, the water therapy seemed to help. Afterwards, both ravenous, we scoffed huge pizzas and enough salad to keep Watership Down’s bunnies going for a week. Then we hit the video shop and chose more movies than we’d have time to watch. I didn’t care. Part of me felt a holiday sense of release. I’d done everything I could to get Richard freed. Now all I could do was wait, and I owed it to Davy to do that as cheerfully as possible.

As we drove across Upper Brook Street and into Brunswick Street, the traffic slowed to a crawl. I couldn’t see what the problem was, only that there was no traffic heading past us in the opposite direction. Eventually, craning my neck, I could see that the road ahead was cordoned off, and that traffic was being diverted down Kincardine Road by a uniformed policeman. Curious, I swung the car out of the queue, and indicated to the policeman that I wanted to turn right, heading back home. He gave me the nod, and I pulled round the corner and parked. I couldn’t help myself. There’s no way I could ignore something looking that interesting on my own doorstep. At the very least, it looked like someone had raided the local post office. I sometimes wonder whether I chose the career or it chose me. I turned to Davy and said, ‘Wait here a minute. I just want to see what’s going on.’ He flicked a glance heavenwards, sighed and pulled a comic out of his backpack.

I got out of the car and locked it up, then cut through the council estate so that I’d emerge at the mouth of a narrow alley off Brunswick Street, but further down than the road block. I was almost opposite the pelican crossing, and I could see that there was a second road block a little further down in the other direction. On the pedestrianized little shopping precinct on the other side of the street, two police cars and an ambulance were standing, doors open, just outside the post office. Around them milled a bewildered looking knot of people, police officers trying to keep them away from the person the ambulance crew were crouched over. The wailing cries of a child rose and fell like a siren. While I watched, another pair of police cars arrived.

One of the ambulance crew stood up and shook his head while his colleague continued to crouch on the ground. There was a commotion at the heart of the crowd, then a stretcher was loaded into the ambulance. The spectators parted, and the ambulance reversed on to the road and sped off. The crowd stayed back long enough for me to see a policewoman ushering two young boys into the back of a police car, which shot off in the wake of the ambulance, blue light flashing. It was hard to be certain from that distance, but they looked disturbingly like Wayne and Daniel.

By this time, I was a question mark on legs. I’d also spotted a familiar mane of black hair bobbing around on the fringes of the crowd, tapping people on the shoulders and thrusting a tape recorder in their faces. I checked that none of the cops were looking my way, then I nonchalantly nipped out of the alley, crossed the street and headed for Alexis. If anyone had tried to stop me, I’d have insisted I was on my way to a dental appointment in the precinct. If the police were suspicious enough to check it out, Howard’s receptionist knew me well enough to back me up.

As I drifted closer, I could see the police officers were working their way through the crowd, taking names and addresses rather than attempting statements. I could hear odd snatches of shocked conversation: ‘all over in seconds…’; ‘…balaclava over his head…’; ‘thought it was a car backfiring…’; ‘police should do something about them druggies…’ Alexis was over on the far side, tape recorder shoved under the nose of a uniformed inspector. I took my notebook and tape recorder out of my handbag and rushed round the fringe of the crowd to Alexis’s side. I arrived in time to hear him say in harassed tones, ‘Look, I can’t tell you any more now, you’ll have to wait till we have a clearer idea ourselves.’ Then, seeing me and falling for my instant disguise, he added, ‘And I haven’t got time to go through it all again. Get the details from her,’ he said, gesturing towards Alexis with his thumb. She turned and clocked me. Her face, already paler than usual, seemed to go even whiter.

‘For Chrissake, what are you doing here?’ she hissed.

‘I could say the same to you. What’s happened? Somebody taken a pot at the post office? And where’s the rest of the pack?’

‘Still on their way, if they even know about it. I just happened to be driving back to your house when it all came on top. Kate, you’ve got to get out of here! Now! Move it!’ Alexis started hustling me away, back towards the side street where I’d left my car.

‘Why?’ I protested. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’

‘Where’s Davy?’ she demanded, still shooing me away from the crowd and back across the street.

‘He’s in the car.’ We’d reached the opening of the alley and I stepped in, then stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t going another pace further until she enlightened me. ‘What is going on, Alexis? What happened back there?’

She ran a hand through her unruly hair and pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes out of her bag. She lit up and took a deep drag before she spoke. ‘I’m sorry, but there is not a gentle way of saying this. Cherie Roberts just got killed,’ she said.

I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. The air emptied out of me like a burst balloon. ‘A robbery? She got in the way?’ I asked.

My face must have betrayed my hope that this had been no more than a horrific accident, a tragic and malignant twist of fate, for Alexis turned her face away and shook her head, smoke streaming down her nostrils in twin plumes. ‘No. It was a hit.’

I squeezed the bridge of my nose between my fingers. I didn’t want to believe what Alexis was saying. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said half-heartedly. ‘For fuck’s sake, she was no big deal. She was just another single mum, trying to get through the days and keep her kids out of trouble.’

‘I’ve covered too many stories like this over the last couple of years in the Moss and Cheetham Hill,’ Alexis said bleakly, referring to the violent drug wars that have practically doubled Manchester’s homicide figures. ‘According to the eyewitnesses, Cherie was coming out of the post office after cashing her child benefit. There was a car parked on the other side of the road. When she came out, the car revved up, shot across the road, mounted the pavement and drove towards her. When they were a few feet away from her, she got blasted from the rear window with both barrels of the shotgun. It was, variously, a metallic blue Sierra, a silver Toyota, a grey Cavalier, and nobody’s admitting to getting the registration number.’

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. I could feel the brick rough against my fingertips. ‘Dear God,’ I breathed. I’d asked her to find out who had given her kids drug-laced transfers. And two days later, Cherie Roberts was on her way to the mortuary, stamped with the familiar hallmarks of a drug-related murder. Suddenly, my eyes snapped open. ‘Davy!’ I gasped. I turned on my heel and ran down the alley, panic pumping the blood till my ears pounded with the drum of my heartbeat.

I rounded the corner, imagination painting scenes of bloodshed and violence that even Sam Peckinpah would draw the line at, making all sorts of ridiculous bargains with a god I don’t believe in. I skidded to a halt by the car, feeling deeply foolish as Davy waved at me and mouthed. ‘Hi,’ through the glass. Alexis rushed up behind me, slightly breathless. ‘We need to talk,’ she said. ‘What did you ask Cherie on Sunday?’

‘The wrong question, obviously,’ I said bitterly. ‘I asked her to ask the kids who they got the transfers from. That’s all. She must have taken it further than that. Shit, Alexis, I need a drink. Are you finished here, or do you need to talk to some more people?’

‘I’m too late for the final edition anyway. I’ve got the eyewitness stuff for tomorrow’s paper. It’ll be a while now before the police issue a full statement. Let’s go back to your place, eh?’ She squeezed my arm sympathetically. ‘It’s not your fault, KB. It wasn’t you that pulled the trigger.’

So why did I feel so guilty?

It took less than a minute to drive round to my house. I parked in the bay outside Richard’s house and walked towards mine. Davy hung behind, bouncing up and down at the end of the path, waiting for Alexis to get out of the car so he could show her the videos we’d chosen. You can’t see my porch from the parking bays. There’s a six foot, gold and green conifer in the way. I’d never thought much about it before. But that afternoon, I was more glad than I can say that the tree was there.

I passed the tree and glanced towards my house. What I saw made me stumble and nearly fall. I regained my balance and took a couple of steps closer to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I felt sick. The white UPVC of the lower half of the door was pocked with hundreds of little black puncture holes. The glass in the upper half was crazed and starred, no match for the close-range blast it had sustained. Whoever had terminated Cherie Roberts had left me their calling card.