Dead Wrong

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘I got to go.’ He made a move.

‘Hang on, I’ve a few more questions.’

‘Christ,’ he rocked with impatience. The dope didn’t seem to have settled him any. He sniffed again. Summer cold or cocaine eating away his nostrils? Joey D was a mess.

‘Why do you think they killed Ahktar?’

‘It was an accident,’ he said simply. ‘They were meant to give him a warning about something, that was all. The guy just went ballistic when Ahktar kicked him.’

And if he hadn’t had your knife, I thought, the blow wouldn’t have been fatal.

‘If you talked to the police,’ I began.

‘No way.’ He went rigid. ‘I already said, no police, no lawyers, nothing.’

‘You could get protection,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Twenty-four-hour guard, safe house, you reckon? All that for me? No way.’

‘What would they want to warn Ahktar about?’

‘Search me.’ He twitched again, an involuntary movement as though his skin were alive. ‘Look, I got to go.’

‘I’ve nearly finished. You hadn’t heard anything about Ahktar getting involved in anything?’

‘Dodgy? No. Bit of a nerd really, Ahktar. Nice guy but he wanted to be a lawyer, lot of studying. He partied at weekends, getting happy with the rest of us but that’s all.’

Secretly, I agreed. His recreational drug use was not reason enough for the heavies to come along and threaten him.

‘Do you remember Zeb having a go at you that night, in the club?’

‘Yeah.’ He was puzzled by my interest.

‘What was that about?’

‘He wanted a loan – he owed a lot of money. He was trying it on, promised to pay me ten per cent interest. I have this trust fund,’ he explained. ‘I told him no way, might as well flush it down the bog, never see it again. So he tries getting all heavy, threatening me, says he’ll put me out of business. I laughed at him. I’m only getting stuff for friends, I’m not a dealer, for chrissakes.’

‘Did you ever get stuff from Zeb?’

‘Once, maybe twice. And a couple of times he gets some from me. Dunno why, he could get more than I ever saw. Reckon he’d been helping himself, got a bit greedy, needed to top the bag up. He’d be paying over the odds getting it from me – last in the chain you get the highest mark-up. No head for business.’ Joey was serious. We could have been talking about building society flotations.

‘I’ve heard he was involved in bringing drugs into the country. Did you know about that?’

He shrugged. ‘You hear stuff; I didn’t want to know. That’s way out of my league. I never got into all that, I’m strictly small time.’ He grinned and for a fleeting moment he was a teenager having fun walking on the wild side. He coughed again.

‘Did you ever meet Rashid Siddiq? He worked with Zeb and his brother Jay?’

He shook his head.

‘How did you get the knife into the club?’

‘Gerry, one of the bouncers, he’s a customer of mine. I slip him a bit of something to help him relax at the end of the night, we had an understanding.’ He bit on his fingers again, tearing slowly at the skin around his nails.

‘How are you?’ I asked him. ‘Your grandmother’s worr-’

‘Sound,’ he cut me off. Sniffed.

‘You doing a lot of drugs?’

‘You a social worker in your spare time?’

‘You look rough, Joey. You look ill.’

‘Fuck off.’ But he didn’t move.

I watched the next couple of strokes.

‘It’s hard to get hold of stuff sometimes, that’s all. I get a bit shaky. Start crashing, you know. Stressed out, start to see things that aren’t there.’ He twitched. ‘Think people are following you. Does my head in. I just need a steady supply, that’s all. Get that sorted, no problem. I can handle it.’ He was all bravado now. ‘Tell her I’m OK.’

‘You still in business?’

He burst out laughing. ‘Yeah. You think I’m gonna start working at McDonald’s or something? Go on some pissy training scheme?’

A bee, heavy with pollen, careered towards us and bumped into Joey’s cheek. He swatted at it with his hand and knocked his shades off. The sunlight made him wince and he shielded his eyes with one hand while he searched for his glasses with the other. I got them first and handed them to him. His eyes were bloodshot, streaked with red capillaries, watering in the sudden light. Was that drugs too? Or illness or lack of sleep?

My guess was that it was all bound up together. The drugs that once gave Joey pleasure, not to mention profit, now brought paranoia and pain. He was an addict like his father before him, out of control.

‘I got to go.’ He stood up, trembling a little.

I clicked the tape recorder off. ‘Another appointment?’

‘Need to see if anything’s arrived yet, stuff’s been in short supply this last couple of days.’ No wonder he was so twitchy.

‘If you change your mind about…’

‘I won’t,’ he looked away from me.

‘I can play them this tape but I don’t know whether it’s enough to get Luke off. They have witnesses who are prepared to testify, to appear and say Luke killed Ahktar. If you’d come to an identity parade?’

‘No.’

‘But-’

‘It won’t bring Ahktar back, will it? And they’ll kill me.’

‘How long are you going to hide?’

‘Long as it takes.’

‘And Luke?’

‘I told you what went down. That’s it. I got to go.’ He walked away.

I watched him go, off to buy a bit more oblivion. I wondered what the drug culture would be like by the time Maddie was exploring it. How would I protect her from the worst excesses whilst letting her take the risks that all teenagers sought? Hah! I thought, I won’t. I’ll be on the sidelines worrying, trying not to let it show. If I can’t even get her to talk to me now about what goes on at school, she’s hardly going to confide in me about her drug taking!

A patter of applause at the end of the game and then the bowl-players were called for tea over at the small clapboard pavilion at the far side of the green.

I left the park and made my way back to the car, calling in at the public toilets below the entertainment complex. They were all galvanised steel and mottled concrete floors reeking of industrial-strength disinfectant and damp concrete, resilient to seawater, sand and the ravages of tourists.

I passed the train station on my way back to the main road but there was no sign of Joey. In the car park I noticed a white van. Unmarked. My stomach flipped and my heart stammered. I reasoned with myself all the way home, but the worry wouldn’t go away. It just lodged there like a bone in my throat.

When I arrived back in Manchester I felt sticky from the journey and my shoulder was stiff from the combination of driving and fretting, but I decided to strike while the iron was hot.

I was on time; it was nearly four o’clock, but the court was empty again. Finished for the day. No wonder the wheels of justice took such a long time to turn. I felt like kicking the statues in frustration. Instead, I rang Mr Pitt’s office. My bullish tone the previous day must have had some effect because the secretary greeted me with something bordering on warmth and told me she was glad I’d got in touch; Mr Pitt had been called out at short notice on a matter of some urgency, but was very anxious to hear what I had to say. Could I leave a number where I could be reached this evening? I gave her my home number and my mobile – I was going for a drink with Diane. She had no idea when he might call and warned me it could be quite late. I reassured her that anytime was fine.

I should have rung Mrs Deason, then. But I was putting it off. Still hoping that my fears about the white van were unfounded. What would I say? He’s a wreck, Mrs D. He’s all skin and bone, he’s got a graveyard cough, he’s jumpy as hell, nerves shot to pieces and when he’s not got enough drugs he’s getting panic attacks and paranoia. Oh, and by the way, I think I was followed to Prestatyn. They may be on his trail – the people who want to keep him quiet. The people who broke his fingers. So, I put it off, deciding to call her the next day. And in the meantime try and get things in perspective.

It was warm enough to sit outside the pub for the first hour. As it got darker the midges drove us inside. Diane had not tried any more lonely hearts’ adverts.

‘I haven’t had time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working flat out. You know, they did a feature on dating agencies on Richard and Judy.’

‘Diane.’ She knows daytime TV makes me squirm.

‘It’s very educational,’ she remonstrated, ‘popular culture. As an artiste,’ she waggled her eyebrows, ‘I feel obliged to keep up with the trends of the time. To have my finger on the pulse.’

‘Be better off on the remote control,’ I muttered.

She ignored me. ‘They were saying how hard it is to meet new people these days. A lot of couples meet through work so that rules me out.’

‘What about your commissions, your patrons or whatever?’

She snorted. ‘Hah! No nice Spanish restaurateurs as yet. No, the place that wants the corkscrews is owned by a woman with a string of caravans in Southport and some boarding kennels in Hyde. Talk about diversification.’ She took a swig of her drink.

‘I’ve been to the seaside today,’ I confessed. ‘Work, not pleasure. Well, I had a paddle.’

‘Southport?’

‘Prestatyn.’

‘I got stung by a jellyfish in Prestatyn,’ she said. ‘Awful. I could feel the poison travelling round my body for hours, honestly. Little stings and prickles breaking out everywhere, even my eyelids. Hardly a mark on me but bloody painful. So how was sunny Prestatyn?’

‘Depressing.’ I told her a bit about my meeting with Joey, about all the new evidence and the fishy bits, and how shaky the case now seemed against Luke. ‘Though that’s my impression. A lot of what I’ve got could be ignored. They might still want to go to trial, argue about it all there. I just wish it were sorted.’ I told her about the white van. ‘I think I might have been followed there. I’m worried about Joey, if they know he talked to me…Do I sound paranoid?’

‘A bit. It’s hardly surprising though, is it, what with the stalker thing and the fright you had yesterday. You sleep last night?’

‘Not well.’ I thought of Joey’s blood-red eyes.

Eating?’

‘Lots,’ I smiled.

‘OK.’ She was all practical now. ‘You’re going to see the lawyer tomorrow?’

‘Yeah – well, I’m hoping he’ll ring me tonight. If he doesn’t I’ll sit in his court all day if I have to.’

‘So, it’ll soon be over,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes,’ I said with more certainty than I felt, ‘see the brief, do my final report for Mr Wallace, include my invoice and leave them to it.’

I was feeling mellow by the time we left and ready for a decent night’s sleep. Our bikes were locked side by side at the back of the building. We’d released them, sorted out helmets and lights and said our farewells before wheeling round to the road. Parked on the opposite side was a plain white van. I felt dizzy. My mouth went dry.

‘Diane – the van. I think it might be the same one.’

‘Oh God.’

I noted the number plate. There was someone in the driver’s seat. It looked like Rashid Siddiq but it was dark and I could only see a profile. Was it the same van? My intuition was telling me loud and clear to be scared, to be careful.

‘Will you ride back with me? You could get a taxi home.’

‘Come on.’

We mounted up and set off. The van remained at the kerbside. We rode the two miles or so to my house. There was no sign of the van.

Diane came in for a cup of tea and a post mortem. I wanted her to stay the night, anxious that she might be at risk because of me, but she was keen to go home.

‘I’m irrelevant,’ she insisted.

‘Get a taxi then.’

‘Sal!’

‘Please, take your wheel off, get a black cab. I’ll pay. Please.’

She sighed but agreed to my demands. I saw her off in the taxi and made her promise to ring when she got back. In the moments while I waited I imagined her being attacked as she reached her home. Over and over I ran the images. I should never have let her go. I’d once been beaten up practically outside her door. That had been a warning to me to keep my nose out of a case I was working on, too.

When the phone rang I snatched it up. She was fine. We said our goodbyes and she told me several times to take care. Not that I needed the advice.

I was too wired to sleep so I made more tea. I sat in the lounge cruising channels and watching four things at once. Digger lay beside me, peering at me now and again out of one sleepy eye. We don’t have much time for each other, Digger and I, but the dog seems to have a sixth sense when I’m feeling bad and comes to give me some companionship.

The phone rang again. Dermott Pitt?

‘Hello?’

‘Sal Kilkenny?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Mrs Raeburn.’

‘Who?’

‘Debbie’s neighbour. He’s back. You said to ring, and he’s here now. The stalker.’

The perfect end to a perfect day.