Looking for Trouble

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

In the late post, I had another note from the Victim Support Scheme. I wondered if they’d noticed it was the same person they’d written to just the week before. I was impressed with their efficiency. I’d heard rumours that they were going to have their funding cut. Was nothing safe?

Bev rang to see about meeting up for a swim on Sunday morning and going back to their house for lunch. I told her about my injuries. I didn’t really want to bare all my bruises at the baths.

‘Bit of gentle stretching might be good for you,’ she said. I wasn’t sure, nor were my ribs. I accepted lunch and said I’d confirm the swim on Sunday morning. I asked if Harry was there. I wanted to tell him what Smiley had put me through.

‘He’s out,’ said Bev. ‘Another shooting in Moss Side, last night.’

‘Oh, no. What happened?’

‘Some little girl got caught in the crossfire, she’s in intensive care. One of the youths involved is dead. Harry’s been there since first light.’ Bev sounded pissed off. With the situation or with Harry?

‘It just gets worse,’ I said. ‘Kids with guns.’

‘They reckon you can pick one up for fifty quid, less than a pair of trainers.’

I made the sort of noises expected and rang off.

Ordsall and now Moss Side. Just down the road, but it still felt unreal – as though it were all happening in someone else’s city.

I fished out my cagoule, found my bag, made a sandwich and filled a flask. Nana Tello was in the lounge, pouring over the racing papers, ringing hopefuls with a stubby pencil. I told her I was off to the office. I’d have to talk to Ray about her staying – if I tried to tell her that I could manage fine now, she’d take umbrage.

Within an hour of getting to the office, I’d had two calls in response to my ad in the paper. A solicitor wanted three lots of papers serving on people and would pay nicely to get them off her hands and a woman wanted me to check whether her husband was really working late so many nights. The solicitor would have the papers ready first thing Monday morning and I arranged to visit the worried wife the same afternoon.

I opened two new files with the relevant details and allowed myself a cocky grin as I dropped them in the drawer of the filing cabinet.

I played with figures for a while; working out how much rent I owed the Dobson’s; ringing to check on insurance rates for minimum contents cover (two plastic chairs, a phone and a distressed filing cabinet); checking back with my invoices to tot up what I’d earned over the last couple of months. I tried not to let it get me down. It convinced me to call at the post office for a Family Credit form as soon as possible.

I took the letter addressed to Martin out of my bag and propped it up by the phone. Then I unpacked my lunch and ate it, gazing all the while at the letter.

It was proving impossible to deliver by hand. If I sent it by registered delivery, it could always be intercepted and signed for by Fraser Mackinlay. Fraser had consistently denied me access to Martin, denied he even knew him. I opened my Blue Riband, bit off a chunk, took a sip of coffee and thought. My mind went to the group who I’d seen with Martin at the night-club. I could hardly go back and ask Eddie Kenton to confirm whether Martin was staying at the house in Cheadle. But what about Bruce Sharrocks? I’d still not found anything to connect him to the others. If I asked him straight out, played the innocent, pretended I knew Fraser too, perhaps? But not over the phone. Easier to weigh up his responses face to face.

I rang his secretary to confirm that Mr Sharrocks would be in his office today. She was expecting him back from lunch at one-thirty. No, I didn’t want to leave a message.

I got to town a little early. I had a credit card in my pocket. The bank, obviously enjoying the draconian charges, hadn’t repossessed it. Feeling poor made me glum, spending a bit would cheer me up. The sales were on – they always are. I picked up a baggy cotton-knit top in cornflower-blue for myself, a pair of shorts each for Tom and Maddie and a pair of pyjamas for Maddie – all her other ones had shrunk while she’d grown. They no longer met at the waist or covered ankles and wrists.

I reached Albert Square at one-thirty precisely. The Town Hall is a great building; lovely creamy stone, carvings, clock tower. Inside, it’s all Victorian gothic, pillars and inner courtyards, marble floors. Any possible beauty is overridden by heaps of heraldic mural and fresco work and truckloads of gloomy portraits of local aldermen.

I asked the porter, in his ornate wooden den, the way to Social Services. With one eye on his crossword, he directed me to the fifth floor in the Town Hall Extension. I crossed the small side street and found my way in and to a lift. No marble pillars and brooding oils here.

I knocked on a couple of office doors as though I’d every right to and was soon told which belonged to Sharrocks. I knocked and went in. He was there, behind an imposing hardwood desk. There was a painting of a sailing ship on one wall and a display cabinet full of model ships on another.

He half rose from his chair. ‘Can I help you?’ I saw the hint of curiosity as he saw my bruised face, but he rapidly hid it.

He was larger than I’d remembered, broad-shouldered, a thick neck. His hair was thick, the colour of mustard, leonine around the craggy face. His chin was comic-book square, with a dimple just like Kirk Douglas. And his voice was familiar.

‘I’m looking for a friend of mine.’ I paused deliberately, uncertain about revealing too much.

‘Yes, well, I think you’ve come to the wrong place.’ A slight lisp, Mancunian accent. ‘As you can see, there’s no-one here but me.’

I couldn’t place it, but I’d heard that voice recently; not over the last few days, more like weeks. Think.

‘I’ll try next door,’ I bluffed. ‘I know she said Social Services.’

‘Ask at reception,’ he smiled. ‘They’ll be able to help.’

I forced a smile in return. ‘Thanks.’ My mind stumbled on towards placing the voice. It hadn’t been in person. A phone call. That faint sibilance, the light timbre. I opened the door and closed it again behind me.

Barry Smith. Barry Smith, that was it. He’d rung to arrange an appointment. He never showed up. I’d sat waiting in my office. Waiting. And there was something else…

I made my way back out onto the cobbled square. That day, when he’d rung, it was the day before I’d found JB’s body, it was the day that Leanne had seen Smiley rushing away. The day of his death. And I’d been safely out of the picture. Twiddling my thumbs and waiting for a bogus client. Barry Smith aka Bruce Sharrocks,

Oh, shit. I broke into a run. My ribs hurt. I was forced to walk quickly instead. I stood at the bus-stop, feeling like a target. When I got off the bus near home, I felt a sweep of relief that no-one else had followed me. I paused at the front door, looked up and down the street. No parked cars with men reading tabloids in them, no funny characters leaning on lamp-posts.

And no-one home. There was a note from Nana Tello saying she’d gone home, that Nina had rung and that Ray would be getting the kids. My armpits stank. I stood under the shower until the smell, and some of my paranoia, had washed away.

When I heard the doorbell go, it came flooding back. I put the chain on and called through the glass panels. ‘Who is it?’

‘Pete. Is Clive in?’

‘No.’ I left the chain on and opened the door, stuck my face through the crack ‘Was it you that rang before?’

He nodded.

‘I’m sorry, I did pass on your message.’

He gave a big sigh. Tossed his long hair back away from his face. ‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’

‘No. He’s hoping to be moving out. He might not be here much longer. I’ll tell him you came.’

I tore a piece out of Maddie’s scrapbook and printed the message in huge letters: PETE CAME ROUND – HE WANTS HIS MONEY. I pinned it to Clive’s door. I didn’t think Pete could hold out much hope, but at least I’d done my duty.

Nina was in when I tried her.

‘Garbage report,’ she said. ‘Hang on, I wrote it all out.’

‘Was it disgusting? Where did you do it?’

‘In the garage.’ She stretched the word out with her American drawl. ‘With a scarf tied round my face, rubber gloves and a can of air freshener.’

‘And?’

‘Disappointing.’

‘Oh no.’ My heart sank. I’d really hoped this inventive line of enquiry would give me the proof I wanted.

‘Nothing in the way of letters to Martin,’ she said. ‘Forms, nothing like that. Just garbage really. Except the condoms.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it takes two to practise safe sex. And there were a dozen in the bags. Someone’s having fun.’

‘You counted them.’ I blanched at the thought.

‘I take my work seriously.’

It didn’t prove anything really. Just that someone in that house had used condoms in the previous week.

‘What else?’

‘Vegetable matter, chop bones, chicken joints, take-away cartons, eight wine bottles, two whisky, beer cans, lots. I didn’t count those.’

‘Not one for re-cycling, our Fraser.’

‘Dead flowers, film cartons…’

‘Video?’

‘No, those little yellow ones for photographs. And one of them’s a chocolate junkie. Lots of Mars Bar wrappers, those bite-size ones.’

‘That could be Martin. Teenagers are often heavy sweet eaters, aren’t they?’

Nina went on with the list. Like she said, it was rubbish. The bottles and the condoms made sense when I thought back to the night I’d seen all the cars outside Mackinlay’s. Party time. Eddie there, showing his movies, or maybe even making one. Speculation. It could just as easily suggest Fraser had a drink problem and a lively libido. Monday night could have been a business meeting.

‘That it?’

‘You want more?’

I laughed. ‘What did you do with it all?’

‘I bagged it up and took it to the tip, along with the clothes I’d been wearing.’

I thanked her.

‘Yeah. I kinda wish I could’ve found something important,’ she said.

She had. But neither of us knew that then.