by John Barlow
She took it, had a sip, then put it down.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘as soon as you’re ready, we have to go through some stuff. I’ll just pop upstairs to the bathroom if that’s all right.’
At the top of the steep, narrow staircase was a small bedroom. A few items of casual clothing strewn about, the bed unmade, a cheap radio alarm clock on the floor. No wardrobe, no drawers or shelves. Not even a bedside table. He didn’t have time to poke around. Somebody would be giving it a thorough going-over later in the day, not that there was much to go over. It did confirm what he already suspected, though: Craig might crash here from time to time, but he didn’t live here.
‘I’m OK,’ she said as he retook his seat on the sofa opposite her. ‘I’m all right now.’
He took out his notebook. With as much haste as seemed respectful he went through the standard questions. Form-filling, fact-checking, like a delivery clerk ticking off an order.
‘His address, please.’
She dithered, trying to get her eyes to focus.
‘Come on. Where does he really live? We need an address.’
Still she hesitated, playing innocent, even now, with her son lying dead in a police morgue. But why?
‘Where does Lisa fit into this?’ he added. ‘Were they…’
He stopped, as Jane Shaw’s body jerked forwards and vomit sprayed out onto the carpet. It wasn’t much. Bile and a few sips of sweet tea. He waited five… ten seconds as she steadied herself.
‘Clean that up later, eh?’ he said, handing her a tissue, but meeting her frightened stare with a steely seriousness. ‘I need something to go on, Jane. Give me an address. And the rest. Let’s have it now. Then I’ll go and find who did this. You all right with that?’
It came out of her as fast as the vomit. A babbling gush of relief. The address, the fact that Lisa was his girlfriend, that the BMW was registered in Lisa’s name, ditto the flat in the city centre where they lived.
‘And they’ve been threatening him,’ she said.
‘Who?’
She shook her head until her jowls quivered.
‘Phone calls, disgusting letters, telling him to stop.’
Joe was writing it down as fast as he could, notebook balanced on a knee. With his other hand he called the operations room.
‘And why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?’ he asked, waiting for someone to answer.
‘’Cos they said if he went to the coppers, they’d find out.’
He stood up, moved into the hallway and began relaying short, precise instructions. A team to look at Craig Shaw’s flat, his finances, his movements, known associates; another one to focus on Jane Shaw, from every angle, including a house search, a detailed interview, background, finances; meanwhile, a CCTV team was already gearing up to trawl traffic cameras close to the crime scene, and their remit was now broadened to include the BMW and the address of a flat in central Leeds.
Returning to the front room, he found her in a calmer state. Her eyes were clearer, and she hardly trembled at all. The smell from the vomit on the carpet was bearable, and she seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. In fact, she looked almost serene.
He sat down again, tried to think of sensitive words, something kind to say. Nothing came. And meanwhile, he wanted information. More than anything, though, he wanted to be away. He was buzzing for the first time in years, desperate to get the case moving, to feel the urgent, unsettling thrill of going after a murderer.
‘These people who were threatening Craig. Any idea who were they?’
‘Dunno. They never said. They’d phone here, send stuff. Dog shit in a jiffy bag.’
‘You saved any of the envelopes?’
‘No. Binned the lot. No idea who they were.’
‘Rival dealers?’
She said nothing. But she didn’t disagree. Her silence made it all so banal. Craig had been killed, burnt to a cinder, because someone else wanted to sell drugs to teenagers in small northern towns with funny names. Someone wanted to take his sordid, small-time place in the world, and it was worth murdering for.
‘He was doing his best,’ she said.
Joe stopped, wrote the sentence down. He was doing his best. That was one to come back to.
‘Lisa Cullen. Yesterday you told me you didn’t know her. Why?’
Her face held steady for a second, perhaps two. Then she cried. He watched as the tears raced down her cheeks. He felt a wave of sympathy, a sudden, urgent loathing for the world. Then, immediately afterwards, a sharp sense of satisfaction: it had been the right question.
And at that moment, with the faint whiff of vomit in his nostrils, he knew why he’d become police. Because he was tenacious enough to do the right thing by a grieving mother, even if that meant putting her through this.
‘I were trying to keep Lisa out of it. Thought they might get her as well.’
‘OK. The photo was taken up at the university. Was Craig selling on campus?’
She looked shocked.
‘No. I took the photo. I went up there. She were trying to get me to sign up for a foundation course.’
‘Lisa?’
‘Aye. Helping me. She’s like that. She were helping our Craig, an’all.’
‘Helping?’
‘An angel, she is. A bloody angel.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘That’ll be victim support. I’ll let ’em in on my way out. And I’ll be in touch soon. In the meantime, there’ll be a team here to search the house and to interview you properly and take a full statement. That OK?’
She nodded.
But Joe had already gone.
10
He drove into Leeds and parked just behind City Square. Years ago he’d busked here with his brother Tony. It had been their first gig. Only just teenagers, perhaps not even that. Two guitars and half an hour’s worth of Beatles songs. They hadn’t made much money, but it felt like treasure, money for nothing. Their parents hadn’t been pleased, though. The Romanos are performers, they’d said, not beggars.
He walked across the Square, looking up at the bare-breasted nymphs on high plinths that circled the pedestrianized central area. Titty Square, his granddad used to call it, and even now it was puzzling that the city’s strait-laced Victorian fathers had spiced up the plaza in front of the train station with semi-naked women. A nineteenth-century stab at lap-dancing, perhaps. He wondered what they’d done in Manchester.
His phone was pinging less frequently now. The investigation was already well under way. He’d organized most of it over the phone. The teams were assigned, everyone knew what they were doing. He should have been back at Elland Road, overseeing things as people swung into action. Gwyn Merchant had been named as his deputy. Not ideal, but there were no sergeants available. Merchant was a loudmouth, but a decent copper. He’d rally the troops, get the case moving. That is, he would normally. But for a black on black? Maybe not.
His newly assembled band of merry men and women would be huddled together in small groups, double-checking addresses, sorting out search warrants, divvying up the jobs as they prepared for an afternoon of legwork. Others would never leave the building, condemned to trawl through a bewildering array of databases and other digital resources, dragging up info from the National Crime Database and seeing where the possible links were. Meanwhile, the unluckiest of all would be limbering up for a long session of staring at CCTV footage. How long before a computer could do most of this stuff? Or all of it?
Lisa and Craig’s flat was just off the main square, down behind the station. It was in a converted warehouse next to the old canal, impressive in its way, plenty of balconies, cleaned-up brickwork, floor-to-ceiling windows on the fanciest apartments. Exactly the kind of chic city living that would attract an upwardly mobile drug dealer. Back in the day, this area had been somewhere to avoid, a mix of abandoned factories and open land looking onto a dirty, unloved stretch of the water. Since then, gentrification had been pretty muc
h full on. The drugs and sex had moved out. Ironically, Craig Shaw had moved in.
There’d be a team coming to interview Craig’s girlfriend and helper. But Joe wanted to talk to her first, get a clearer picture of where she fitted into things. Also, someone had to inform her that her boyfriend was dead. Joe wanted to see how she reacted.
‘Lisa Cullen?’ he said into the intercom. ‘DS Romano.’
She buzzed him in without a word.
The communal lobby smelled of lavender carpet cleaner and had the stern, angular appearance of commercial sophistication. It was like walking into a business hotel stripped of all but the essentials, comfortable yet bleak, despite the framed watercolour prints on every wall. He’d visited plenty of similar places when he and Sam got back from France and were looking for somewhere to live. But he’d resisted the call of the many bachelor pads on offer, mainly, he now realized, because of their soulless entrances. Plus all the bloody watercolours.
Craig’s was the middle flat was on the fourth floor. His earnings didn’t run to a split-level attic, or one of the apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows. Still, you’d have to be shifting a fair amount of gear to be paying the rent here.
When the door opened, the face that greeted him was nothing like the one in the photo.
‘Lisa? DS Romano.’
She looked straight past him. Seeing that no one else was there, she threw the door wide open and walked back inside.
When they’d spoken on the phone twenty minutes ago, she’d hardly been able to conceal her irritation, asking if Craig had been arrested, where he was, what he’d done… And they weren’t nervous questions. It was like a lawyer talking, or a minder, as if she knew that she’d be the one sorting everything out, whatever kind of trouble Craig was in.
‘Where is he, then?’
She stood in the middle of the large open-plan living area. She wore tight jeans, faded to an off-white and ripped at both knees. Her loose T-shirt looked like she’d had it on all night, but her longish black hair was brushed. There was none of the dark, severe make-up from the photo. Her face was pale, slightly pasty, and there was an edginess to her, but also something hard and resolute. A toughness that she’d definitely not acquired overnight.
‘This your place?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s in my name.’
‘The motor too?’
‘Motor?’
‘The Beemer Craig hasn’t been using for his work of late.’
‘It needs repairing,’ she said, not a moment’s pause. ‘We haven’t got around to it.’
‘Right, right. And you, you’re studying Media and Communications up at the uni?’
More nodding.
‘OK. You better sit down. I’ve got some bad news.’
She gave a little snort of derision which, just for a moment, made her sound like a petulant child.
‘I’m all right on my feet.’
‘Craig was found dead this morning.’
She froze. Eyes wide, her breathing coming momentarily to a halt. Her mouth remained closed, jaw clenched so hard that he could see the balls of taut muscle in her cheeks.
Then she let herself slump down onto a large beanbag, the closest thing to her in the modern, Ikea-heavy surroundings.
‘Bastards!’ she hiss-growled to herself, cradling her head in her hands.
‘Bastards? Who, Lisa?’
She wasn’t listening. She’d forgotten he was there.
But the anger drained from her in seconds. She sat, arms around her legs, literally pulling herself together, forcing herself to breathe.
‘Lisa? Who are they? You said bastards.’
She looked up. ‘What? I… No, I meant him. Silly bastard, got himself…’
Her voice fell quickly away. But her eyes were busy. She was thinking, moving past the shock, even now.
‘He was found dead in his mother’s car. It had been burnt out, over near Birstall. That’s where he was selling, right? Last sighting was a couple of days ago, Tuesday, Cleckheaton town centre. When did you last see him?’
‘Tuesday.’
‘Last time you spoke on the phone? Last WhatsApp, text message?’
‘Tuesday.’
She had wilted a little by now, and her answers were automatic. She was staring into space. But she was thinking.
‘Does his mum know?’ she asked.
‘Just been to see her. She thinks the world of you. Called you an angel. You’ve been helping Craig to sell illegal drugs. How does that make you an angel?’
‘Helping him to sell? No. Telling him what not to sell.’
‘Go on.’
‘Minimizing the risks. I told him to sell cannabis. Spliffs and shit.’
‘You mean rather than stronger stuff?’
‘It’s gonna be legal sooner or later. Look at Portugal. Look at America. California, Oregon, Vermont… Can’t stop it. You lot can’t, that’s for sure.’
‘Never said I wanted to,’ he said. ‘And you missed Massachusetts, by the way. The Puritan State. Legal there, too, I believe.’
She was not impressed by his knowledge of international drug legalization. In fact, she looked entirely wrapped up in her own thoughts, as if she’d already shut him out.
He only had a few minutes. His boss wanted to speak to him back at HQ. He gave it one last try.
‘OK. There are a dozen detectives on this case, plus me. If we’re gonna find who did this, you’ll need to tell me who was threatening Craig and his mum, how they were doing it, when they were doing it. And lastly, Lisa, look at me…’ She did. ‘Tell me why Craig was using his mum’s car to sell drugs. In fact, you can start with that. Go.’
She ran a hand through her hair.
‘There’s competition. They had his mum’s address. He got warned off. But he’s a stubborn bastard. Was.’
She stopped, a look of intense concentration on her face.
‘They threatened him?’ Joe asked. ‘And what, he ignored them?’
She nodded. Nothing else.
Joe continued.
‘He was getting his supply in Batley. Every Monday. Whoever was threatening him must have known that. So why are they going after the guy on the street? Sending dog shit in the post, calling his mum? None of that makes sense.’
‘They must have thought he lived at his mum’s house.’
He turned this over in his mind. Tried to imagine drug dealers scooping dog poo into jiffy bags to send to a rival. Ringing his mum? Nah.
By now there was a trail of tears running all the way from the corner of her eye down to her neck. Her head was held slightly forwards, so that strands of her hair fell across her face.
‘You’re gonna get ’em?’ she said, her voice suddenly a faint croak, her words slow, measured, innocent.
‘We’ll need a lot more from you. Details, everything you can think of. There’ll be an interview team here in half an hour. They’ll do a full search of the flat as well. They’ll have a warrant with your name on it. You have to tell ’em everything, Lisa. Every last detail.’
She took her time. But finally she looked up at him, making eye contact for the first time. She nodded obediently. A small, frightened girl with big, imploring eyes.
She was still sitting on the beanbag when he let himself out.
A good performance, he told himself as he took the lift back down to the entrance. Good, but not great. There was a hint of calculation, the sense of a person already planning their next move, just seconds after hearing the bad news. With his phone pressed to his ear, he threw open the main door and headed back out into the cold air.
‘Gwyn? Change of tack on Lisa Cullen, the victim’s girlfriend? I’m outside her flat. The Tannery, it’s called. Warehouse conversion behind the station. I reckon she’ll be long gone by the time the interview team gets here. Send someone down in an unmarked car now. I’ll wait ’til they arrive. A black BMW’s gonna be leaving the building. She’ll be driving. Just see where she goes. Nothing else. Asap, eh
? I’ve got brass to talk to.’
11
DCI Andy Mills was sitting behind a large desk, looking bored and stressed at the same time. His shirt was blindingly white, with sharp, pristine creases, gold cufflinks. But it only served to accentuate the large, flabby body of the man within.
‘One barbecued drug dealer!’ he said. ‘Congrats. You’re the Senior Investigating Officer. Wrap it up nice and quick, eh?’
Joe stood there and looked out beyond his boss. From the window you could see the back of Elland Road football stadium, the white East Stand towering over everything like a massive shrine to Marcelo Bielsa, the genius Argentine coach who’d led the sleeping giants back to the Premiership.
‘Investigation’s focusing on Cleckheaton and the surrounding towns.’
‘Radius?’
‘About ten miles. Tracking suggests it’s where he was dealing. He was found in…’
‘I know, I know,’ Mills said, glancing at the preliminary report on his desk. ‘Another few yards and Kirklees could’ve had him. Now he’ll be our bad stat. Unless you can get a conviction. Any chance of that?’
‘It’s not straightforward, Sir.’
Mills stifled a laugh.
‘You’re calling me Sir now?’
‘I’m trying to be formal, Andy. This is an odd one. I think we should see where it leads. I mean, properly.’
‘Drug dealer gets bumped off in his burnt-out motor, stash under the friggin’ seat? Sounds pretty straightforward to me.’
‘It was his mum’s car.’
‘Correction: small-time drug dealer. How much d’you think I can spend on stuff like this?’
‘Stuff? It’s a murder.’
‘Have you seen the cuts we’ve had to make these last few years?’
‘This isn’t what it seems. I’ve just spoken to his mother, and his girlfriend. Something just doesn’t feel right.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says instinct.’
‘Aye, well last time you acted on instinct you ended up eating garlic baguettes and singing the bloody Marseillaise. Look where that got you!’
Joe couldn’t help smiling. He’d met Andy seventeen years ago, the two ‘mature’ cadets at the West Yorkshire Police Training Centre. They’d been friends ever since. Andy was slightly younger, having joined the police after a couple of tours of Afghanistan with the Yorkshire Regiment. Joe, meanwhile, had done a couple of tours of the comprehensive schools of Leeds before opting for a career in the police.