by John Barlow
They’d moved up to CID about the same time, too. It was always assumed that Joe would be the one rising through the ranks. But years later it was Andy’s name with DCI in front of it. That, plus all the trappings of success. The dull, functional office, the white shirt and gold cufflinks, and Andy himself growing more haggard by the day, slumped in his chair writing budgets, or dragging himself off to another meeting with other senior officers in pristine white shirts. Interpol had saved Joe from something far worse.
‘Je ne regrette rien!’
‘Quoting me French, yer dickhead? Look at yourself! Copper as good as you should’ve been a couple of ranks above me by now, easy. Now this? Tryin’ to kick-start your career with some crackhead in, where was it?’
‘Cleckheaton.’
‘Aye, there.’
Andy Mills had a rare talent for speaking the truth in a truly offensive way. But as a DCI he rarely got the chance. Modern policing, as he and Joe occasionally lamented over their fourth or fifth beer, was like being a filing clerk who occasionally arrests somebody then spends the next week worrying that he’s filled out all the forms correctly. And when you’re a DCI, you also got to worry about everybody else’s forms.
Andy glanced at his watch. His head and shoulders sagged, just a touch.
‘Sod it. I’ve got a drinks reception in the Town Hall. I don’t even know what it’s for.’
‘Warm white wine and the company of town councillors. Where did I go wrong, eh? This could all have been mine!’
Andy shook his head, the beginnings of a smile on his face.
‘Stick with it. You’ve got a dozen men ’til Monday.’
‘It’s Friday afternoon! Do they get overtime?’
‘No they bloody don’t. A few of ’em’ll be on weekends. That’s your lot. Let’s see where we are on Monday.’
He waited, saw that Joe was going nowhere, hands thrust into his pockets. It was the old Joe, all instinct and determination, when he’d been the most annoying detective on the Force, absurdly optimistic and wilfully stubborn. A right pain in the arse.
‘OK, you win. There’s a definite local angle, right? I’ll try and get you joint ops with Kirklees. Share the love, that sort of thing.’
‘Your bounty is endless.’
‘Bounty’s a chocolate bar as far as I’m concerned.’
Joe nodded and turned to leave. He’d heard that one before. It didn’t matter. He’d got what he wanted. Jane Shaw would get justice, whatever her son had done, and however he’d turned out.
12
It was already dark when he parked in Cleckheaton town centre, just behind the Bull’s Head. Twenty minutes down the motorway, but the contrast with an evening in Leeds couldn’t have been more marked. No groups of smart young people emerging from offices, jackets unbuttoned, ties loosened, back-slapping as they pushed into crowded wine bars; no streets crowded with pedestrians dodging the endless line of buses, each one full, top and bottom, windows misted up, as the city shifted into evening mode.
In Cleckheaton there was traffic. But only on the main road, and only passing through. There was an air of quiet desolation at this time of the day, as if those who worked here had all packed up and gone home in a rush, and now its empty Victorian buildings looked down, challenging your right to be here, daring you to stay. There was a faded grandeur, hints of an affluent past peeping out from behind bland, modern shopfronts; old buildings with clocks and classical stonework high up, but on the ground floor hair salons and pound shops. It was reminiscent of a seaside resort in winter, closed up against the cold, expecting nothing, promising nothing. But not threatening. Not a mean place. Almost kind, in its way.
Fortunately, the pub was nowhere near as desolate. It was about half-full, a decent Friday night crowd at the bar. Joe got himself a pint and chose a table by the window, in full view of the whole room. Kirklees District had agreed to cooperate on the Shaw murder. His new partner, DS Scannon, was supposed to be here, although he couldn’t see an obvious candidate. He checked his texts and nursed his drink for a minute or two.
Cleckheaton. He ran the word around in his mind. He’d only been here once before, ages ago, in search of the perfect pork pie after a tip-off about a butcher’s shop. He pulled up Google Maps. A few miles away was Batley. He’d been right about Lisa Cullen. Not long after he left her flat, she was seen driving off in a black BMW. An unmarked car had followed her to a pub in Batley, the registered landlord a Mr Daniel Cullen.
Joe was still thinking about pies when he noticed someone come into the pub. He wasn’t the only one. She didn’t actually push her way to the bar, it was more a matter of other drinkers making way for her, like the nervous dither of gazelles when a wildebeest stops by a watering hole in the Serengeti. She stood square on and waited to be served, arms out on the counter, head back, not a trace of patience in her substantial frame. And she made no sideways glance, no attempt to see if he was there.
He’d begun to think that perhaps it wasn’t her, when she got her drink and turned. Then there was no doubt about it. She walked over, a slight roll of the shoulders, a pint of lager in her hand. If he hadn’t been sitting snugly behind a bar table, he might have cowered, just a fraction.
‘Joe Romano, right? Gotta be. Rita Scannon.’
She didn’t look very CID, and she didn’t look much like a Scannon either. She was about his height, but wider, somewhere on the bulky side of buxom. Jet black hair cropped to a quarter of an inch, a full face, dark complexion. Her faded black jeans strained until the studs squeaked, and her cleavage was deep and unashamedly on view beneath a black v-neck T-shirt and a black leather jacket.
‘Jesus,’ she said, setting her pint on the table and lowering her considerable bulk down onto a stool opposite him, ‘is this your Friday night gear? Talk about a sore thumb. You might as well have a warrant card on your friggin’ lapel!’
He looked around. Plenty of people in work clothes, or what he supposed went for smart-casual. Thin jerseys tucked into tight ripped jeans. Was that still in fashion?
‘I did take my tie off,’ he said.
‘Oh, we’re gonna have fun!’
She leant in close, until he could see tiny flecks of olive-green in her large brown eyes.
‘That young lad serving at the bar? We think he’s spiking drinks to order. What d’you reckon? Is he the spiking type?’ She took a sip of lager. ‘I read the stuff you sent about the late Mr Shaw. What else’ve you got?’
He took a drink of his Tetley’s Bitter. It was way too cold.
‘We’re not doing small talk, then? Getting to know each other a bit?’
She did a pantomime roll of those massive, olive-flecked eyes.
‘What? Speed-dating for coppers? I’ve done my homework, partner. DS Joe Romano. Degree in French and Italian, stint as a schoolteacher, then joined the Force when you were twenty-eight. First time you’ve been SIO on a murder since you came back from France. I guess Interpol didn’t work out too well, eh?’
‘I didn’t send you any of that.’
‘No, I’m a detective, mon brave. No university degree to my name, either.’
She sat back, downed about a third of her lager.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘School of hard knocks, university of life. And,’ he raised his arm in an exaggerated gesture and pretended to consult his watch, ‘let’s just see how long it takes her to inform me of her lowly, working-class roots.’
‘Tou-friggin’-ché, Monsieur. But,’ she said, pointing at her face, ‘I don’t have to play the working-class card. I’ve got the ethnic ace up my sleeve, or hadn’t you noticed.’
‘Can’t say as I had, to be honest.’
‘A colour-blind male! Look at you! The wokeness! Anyway, I’m half Bangladeshi.’
‘Which half?’
The slightest flicker of a smile? He thought so.
‘The half that means I can’t go more than forty-eight hours without a lamb biryani.’
He watch
ed as she took another long drink.
‘This,’ she said, holding up her glass with one hand and wiping her mouth with the back of the other, ‘is the other half. Fourteen stone of Batley-Bengali, that’s me. Pure multiculturalism.’
He sat back and tried to savour his own beer. But it was still freezing. The proprietors of the Bull’s Head had clearly not read their Orwell.
‘Craig Shaw,’ he said. ‘Looks like Cleckheaton was his regular Tuesday stop-off. That’s when he disappeared. Vehicle tracking has him here that evening. Then nothing.’
‘Like I said, I’ve read the file.’
Joe began to wonder whether the line between matter-of-fact and tetchiness was different for DS Scannon than for most people.
‘Not quite nothing,’ she added. ‘His number plate was clocked on the bypass up near the M62. Nine-thirty on Tuesday night if memory serves. That’s about the time his stop-offs in Cleckheaton normally finish, isn’t it?’
Joe nodded, persevering with his pint, as if it was at this point his best and indeed only friend.
‘We know Craig,’ she added. ‘Knew, I mean.’
There was a hint of mischief in her voice as she reminded herself of the past tense.
‘Selling cannabis, apparently.’
‘He’s been inside for selling coke. That’s what his record says.’
‘His girlfriend told me he was focusing on softer stuff. Her idea. Kind of a business model, in the hope that sooner or later it would be decriminalized and he could go legit.’
She listened, her pint held up to her mouth, then sank most of what was left.
‘Interesting. Must have got himself a niche. I used to see him parked up in his Beemer, just round the corner, by Tesco’s. Y’know?’
‘Nope.’
‘The road under the old railway bridge. It was always like, shall I even bother? He’s been stopped a few times. Only ever had a bit of blow on him. Must have been shifting a fair bit, though. Nice motor.’
‘He was driving an old Toyota when he died.’
‘He was in a Beemer whenever I saw him. Flash but not too flash. Good choice.’
‘Last few weeks he’d been borrowing his mum’s car.’
‘Yeah, I saw the tracking. Old Corolla? Bit weird.’ She stopped, looked him right in the eyes, her hands flat on the table in front of her, and inhaled dramatically. ‘Joe, I think that might be a clue. What d’ya say, partner?’
‘Apparently he was using his mum’s car to avoid being seen by rivals.’
‘What rivals?’
‘Someone was warning him off. Threatening his mum as well. Phone calls, dog shit in the post, the lot. That’s why she reported him missing so soon. She was scared stiff. With good reason, as it turns out. Also,’ he said, picking up his phone, ‘I’ve got a picture of his girlfriend. She’s involved, one way or another.’
Rita tried not to laugh as he slowly navigated the labyrinthine complexities of his new device. Finally, he pushed it across the table.
‘The Beemer’s registered in her name,’ he said. ‘Lisa Cullen, she’s a student at Leeds Uni. They have a flat in Leeds. Nice city-centre pad, which is also in her name.’
‘You found her quick.’
‘A very nice mademoiselle in the French Department gave me a bit of assistance.’
She chewed on that one a while, seemed to consider a riposte, thought better of it.
‘The girlfriend? Was she shocked about her boyfriend dying?’
‘Hard to say. I think so. She’s smart, though. All kinds of smart.’
‘What’s her name again?’
‘Cullen. Lisa Cullen. She’s from a town somewhere around…’
‘Address?’
‘Ryeman Avenue. Batley. A pub called the Brown Cow.’
She looked at him.
‘You’re shitting me, right?’ She waited a whole second. ‘You’re not shitting me.’
She was on her feet before he had time to think.
‘Come on.’
He considered one last mouthful of his Tetley’s, but she was already gunning for the door, gazelles scattering left and right.
13
By the time he got outside, she was swinging herself into an old Land Rover, arse first, hands clinging to the top of the doorframe.
‘You follow me. Where’re you parked?’
‘Just round the corner.’
The Land Rover was covered in dents and had a ripped tarpaulin on the back. He made a mental note of the number plate, just in case they got caught up in an unexpected swarm of beaten-up farm vehicles on the way to Batley.
They left Cleckheaton and headed along a series of brightly lit main roads. She drove with a combination of relative caution and suicidal cornering, as if she disliked high speeds but was equally reluctant to touch the brake pedal. It didn’t look like the Landy had much in the way of suspension, either. From a safe distance behind, he could see her bouncing around on the driver’s seat as she lurched up and down the gears.
On they went, and it wasn’t clear to him at what point they’d left Cleckheaton. It was a strange kind of landscape, piecemeal and uncoordinated, neither urban nor rural. Pockets of housing sat alongside industrial buildings, old and new, nothing too large, and nothing very distinctive. Then there were stretches of farmland and open countryside. You came on them unexpectedly, as if you’d suddenly been transported fifty miles north into the Dales, only for another huddle of industrial units or a makeshift lorry park to come into view, shattering the illusion.
It was a ten-minute drive to Batley. He glanced at his messages. The teams had been out all afternoon, and Gwyn Merchant was now busy relaying the results, which were mainly that no one in West Yorkshire knew anything about Craig Shaw. All the individuals even remotely identified as potential suspects had been traced, interviewed and eliminated from the inquiry. Nothing was getting flagged up for further investigation. Gwyn was certainly efficient. No sooner had a new line of enquiry been identified, it seemed, than the lead had been followed up and discounted.
They passed the Batley Variety Club, the most famous cabaret venue in the North. He remembered the stories from when he was a kid. Every local musician that his parents knew claimed to have been in the house band when Louis Armstrong had played at the Varieties, and for Tom Jones, Roy Orbison, Neil Sedaka… Tony and him used to joke that if they’d all really been there when Armstrong came, there’d have been enough musicians to fill the club, never mind the orchestra pit.
He slowed down to see what had become of it.
‘A bloody gym!’
A mile or two further and Rita took a sharp left at twenty miles per hour. They entered a housing estate, the main avenue curving gradually up the valley side. It was the kind of council estate where he’d spent many hours as a copper: door-to-doors, domestic disputes, chasing up likely suspects, most of whom lived in places exactly like this. He remembered the sofas on the front lawns, the odd car on bricks, scary young kids with red faces waiting to cheek you off.
There were no cars on bricks here, though. Lots of cars, but good, solid stuff, decent family motors, right up to the odd Merc.
Rita came to an abrupt stop. By the time he’d parked behind her and got out, she was already leaning against the Land Rover, rolling a cigarette.
‘Need a quick smoke.’
‘Really?’ He looked around. ‘That bad, is it?’
‘This estate? Nah, one of the good ones. And the jewel in the crown,’ she added, nodding over her shoulder, then cupping her hands against the wind as she flicked her lighter, ‘is the Brown Cow. Ironic, eh?’
‘Is it?’
She took a long draw on her cigarette. They both watched as the smoke descended in a loose cloud around them, then disappeared in a single gust of wind.
‘The Brown Cow. It’s what the Cullens call me.’
‘Famous in these parts, are they?’
‘You might say that. Hold on.’
She took a long, long drag
.
‘I dunno about threatening Lisa Cullen’s boyfriend, but I wouldn’t go round threatening Ma and Pa Cullen without a bloody good reason,’ she said, before tossing the cigarette into the gutter with disgust.
With that she turned and marched towards the pub, the movement of her shoulders now just a little exaggerated.
The pub had been built in the sixties, at the same time as the estate. And it was in the same style. Squat and dull, with wooden panels beneath the windows, the rest of the walls prefab concrete. The reinforced glass door boasted a bright green poster announcing the week’s entertainment.
Race Nite – Tuesdays
Karaoke – Wednesdays
Bingo – Thursdays
She pulled the door open. Just inside was another sign:
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A DRUG-FREE ZONE. RESPECT.
‘We’re to believe that, are we?’ he whispered as they stood there and took in the surroundings.
‘You ain’t seen nothing. Come on.’
The main lounge was comfortable enough, with a pool table and dart board to one side, tables and chairs on the other side, and a long bar lined with lager pumps at the back. No real ale in sight. It wasn’t the kind of place that would have attracted him, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
There were a couple of dozen drinkers, well-inked young lads, some older blokes in baggy jogging pants, one or two in work clothes and boots. And every one of them watched, pint in hand, as the odd couple made their way through to the bar.
It was not until they got there that Joe realized: apart from Rita there was only one woman. She was standing on the other side of the counter, and she didn’t look happy to see them.
‘Evenin’,’ Rita said.
‘She’s not here,’ the woman said.
‘Joe, this is Karen Cullen,’ Rita said. ‘Pleased to see you too, Karen!’