by John Barlow
‘Rita? Rita, is that you?’ he shouted across the room, as if everyone there would be pleased to hear his booming voice.
She stood, hands on hips, and watched as he bounded across to them, laughing as he slalomed between the desks.
‘Nah, yer knob ’ead, it’s another big Bangladeshi lass with a crew cut.’
‘Bloody hell! Good to see yer, mate!’
They did a handshake-cum-shoulder-bump. Joe watched, knowing that the nearest he’d ever come to that kind of home-boy familiarity was a pat on Andy’s back when they were both pissed and one of them was struggling into a cab.
‘You all right, then?’ she asked.
‘I’m bloody all right. You?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Looks like we’re both bloody all right!’ Merchant said, tapping her forearm with three fingers. ‘Getting yer stripes, is what I heard!’
‘Passed first time. Sergeant’s exam and the Board.’
‘You’re dingin’ mi chuffin’ dong!’
‘Cheeky twat! Anyway, you still like it over here?’
‘I friggin’ love it. I heard you were sniffin’ around.’
‘You lot needed a bit of help’s what I heard.’
They both looked at Joe.
‘He’ll do anything for a collar! Druggy scum included. Me? I’m more of a one-sixty-six man!’
‘You still going on about that shit?’ she said.
‘Statistics, not shit.’
‘Shit-tistics.’
Merchant shook his head. ‘One down, one less to go. That’s my motto. One-sixty-six!’
‘They’ll put that on your grave.’
‘Good. I’ll stand by it. Or, you know, lie. Anyways…’
‘Anyway,’ Joe said, ‘have you seen the report about the pencil?’
Merchant grinned. ‘Yeah. It’s on the system. Weird, eh?’
‘I’m gonna flag it up as restricted information, just ’til we see where it takes us. Keep it out of the news. What d’you reckon?’
They both nodded.
‘OK, I’ll clear it with Andy and Comms.’
The three of them stood there for a moment.
‘Gotta go,’ Merchant said. ‘I’ve got some crimes that really need solving.’
‘Anything interesting?’ Rita asked.
‘Nah, boring old shit. But, y’know, the victims aren’t friggin’ drug dealers, so we can justify the police time.’ He turned to Joe. ‘Only pulling yer plonker. I’m all behind the investigation.’
‘Good. We need someone to go through a pile of CCTV footage.’
‘Sorted. I’m on it. It’ll have to be Monday, though. That all right?’
He wasn’t waiting for an answer. He winked at Rita, then strode across the office, shoulders rolling, a hand flattening down his silk tie, a kid in his Sunday best.
‘Laters, big boy!’ she called after him.
He raised his arms, waving into the air as he went: ‘That’s what they say!’
‘You know him, then?’ asked Joe when he’d gone.
‘Gwyn? Since he was a kid. He’s a Batley boy, through and through.’
‘Small town, eh?’
‘He lived up the road from us. You didn’t know?’
‘Why should I? He works in Leeds.’
‘We were at school together. He was a couple of years below me. I encouraged him to join the Force, as it happens.’
‘Well, he was certainly amused that you made sergeant!’
‘Yeah, well I wasn’t a natural candidate for promotion in my youth. A bit lippy, if you can believe that.’
He nodded.
‘He kept that quiet.’
‘What, about him being at school with me?’
‘No, no. Batley. Forget it. Forensics are waiting. After that, do you fancy looking at a few hours of CCTV footage? I don’t want to wait ’til Monday.’
19
‘HB,’ she said.
‘And the flake of paint?’
‘Manufacturers all use slightly different colours. Bit like a pencil fingerprint.’
‘A pencil-print?’ he suggested, trying to lighten the mood.
She didn’t laugh. He’d known Bridgette almost as long as he’d been on the Force, but had never really worked out what made her tick.
‘We don’t have a database on pencil paint, wouldn’t you know,’ she said, speaking more to Rita than to Joe. ‘I mean, who uses pencils these days?’
Joe thought about the mug full of pens and pencils on his desk, and the time it always took him to find sharpeners and rubbers.
‘Fortunately,’ she added, ‘there was enough for the spectrometer, so we got an exact colour profile.’
She took a single sheet of printed paper and handed it to him.
‘It’s a slightly unusual shade of green. I’ve checked all the manufacturers I could find. A list of all the companies that paint their HB pencils in this colour.’
He took the paper from her. There were three words printed on it, right in the centre in a tiny font. Bridgette’s idea of a joke.
‘Gaia Office Supplies,’ he read out. ‘Do we know them?’
She clicked to something more interesting on her computer.
‘Not personally, but I believe there’s a new computer thing called Goggle or something. It’s magic. You just type in whatever you want to know and it tells you. It’s like the Deltic Oracles! I bet Gaia Office Supplies have one of those internet page thingies. They’re all the rage.’
He watched as she returned to her screen and scrolled down. She’d already lost interest. Forensic scientists never seemed to be very enthusiastic about their work. Yet for him this new information sent a rush of excitement through his body. A single flake of paint extracted from deep within the brain of a dead victim? Never mind the bloody internet, this was the magic.
Meanwhile, Rita was halfway out of the door, already staring down at her phone.
‘It was just the smallest bit of a pencil,’ he said to Bridgette. ‘And it might take us to a killer. Don’t you find that even slightly exciting?’
‘I’ll take dried sperm any day of the week. Sorry, just the way I am.’
He knew. The whole of Elland Road knew. Her divorce last year had briefly been the most talked about in the District. It wasn’t sperm that did it, though. It was human hairs. She’d found the same hairs in her husband’s underpants on various occasions and had kept them for analysis. They were all from the same person, and it wasn’t her. Or him.
‘Tell you what, though,’ she said, stopping what she was doing, just for a second. ‘If my green paint leads to an arrest, there’s a drink in it for me.’
‘Done.’
He folded the sheet of paper and was about to leave.
‘By the way,’ she added, a half-decent smile on her face, ‘pencils are better. Than dried sperm, I mean. And Gaia Office Supplies? It’s the sales director you’ll want to talk to. I texted you her name and number. A text message? Is that OK?’
He nodded. ‘Thanks. Text, yeah, that’s good.’
‘I would’ve used WhatsApp, but, y’know.’
‘I’m on the WhatsApp! Send me a WhatsApp! I’m a fluent WhatsApper!’
Her smile broadened. ‘Joe Romano on WhatsApp? Who knew!’
By the time they were back in the operations room, Bridgette’s message had already appeared on his WhatsApp. Her tiny profile photo was an enlargement of a dust mite, the motto below her name: There’s no escape. She’d re-sent the details for Gaia Office Supplies, no additional message, no gratuitous ‘x’ or ‘lol’, or one of those grinning emojis. He replied:
Thanks for that. BTW it’s Delphic Oracles.
A moment later, another message appeared: a photo of a woman’s hand, the middle finger extended upwards. Fair.
Rita was now going through the various phone numbers on the Gaia Office Supplies website, and getting voicemail each time.
He sat at his desk and stared at the image of Bridgette�
��s hand, her fingers slim and pale, no nail varnish. She had just become his seventh contact on WhatsApp. Three of the other numbers were work-related. His brother Tony the fifth. Then there was a random message from an attractive young woman called Sonya, a smartphone scam from Russia, he’d been told, but for some reason he hadn’t deleted it. The final contact was his ex-wife Jackie, who had used WhatsApp a few times recently as their divorce was being finalized. Clipped and painfully cheerful messages to keep him up to date on the progress of various bits of paperwork and arrangements for the sale of the farmhouse in France. It had all been very efficient and cordial; her new partner had bought Joe’s share of the property, lock, stock and smoking Jackie.
As a summary of his recent life, the WhatsApp contact list was not what you’d call edifying. But it was accurate. Looking around the office he wondered who he’d like to add, and came up with a shortlist of zero.
‘Nearly four on a Saturday afternoon. No one’s there,’ Rita said, phone in hand. She screwed her mouth up, thought about it. ‘This sales director? I’m gonna sniff her out, give her a bell at home. You?’
‘Another chat with Jane Shaw. You fancy coming?’
‘Nah. I’ll make a start on the CCTV if you want. See you back here after you’ve ministered to the grieving mother.’
He stood up.
‘Just one thing. Gwyn Merchant and the one-sixty-six thing? You’ve heard that from him before?’
‘One per cent of the population is responsible for sixty-six per cent of all crimes committed. Yeah, he was always a bit of a hardliner, y’know…’
He waited. She let him wait. The little pauses didn’t work on her.
‘Well,’ he said in the end, ‘he’s clocked off for the day. That’s pretty clear.’
‘He’ll be around if you need him,’ she said. ‘He’s solid.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s all an act with Gwyn. He’s a pretty thoughtful lad, as it goes.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘And he’s not had an easy life. But who has, eh?’
‘Yep. Anyway, they’re getting the footage ready in the AV suite. I’ll join you in an hour or so.’
20
He drove past the Brick. There was a van outside, and someone was unloading a large Marshall speaker. A guitar case was leant up against the van, and next to it a microphone stand.
He’d played his fair share of gigs in pubs like this when he was young. The Romanos, they called themselves. Half the audience would come because they thought it was a Ramones tribute band. A few bars into the opening song and people would turn to each other, grimacing in confusion.
But Tony refused to change the name. Too much Sicilian pride, too much love for the old country. Plus, it was Tony’s band. A good band too. They were offered a recording contract, on the understanding that they’d change the name. No dice. Tony wouldn’t hear of it. They broke up the same day. Joe was eighteen. His big break had come early, only for pride to take a massive Sicilian dump on it. Che sarà. He took his guitar down to the River Aire and threw it in. A few months later he was enrolling at Nottingham University.
Jane Shaw had the bearing of someone who’d been drinking steadily all day without getting drunk. The house stank of cigarette smoke. She looked awful. But there was no choice. He was already running out of time. All that stuff about one-sixty-six? No one else cared about small-time drug dealer Craig Shaw. He’d be allowed to slip through the cracks. It had to be now.
‘Right,’ he said, sitting on the sofa and noting once again how comfortable it was, ‘Craig had a BMW. But we have evidence that he’d been using your car for the last few weeks. Tell me why.’
‘I…’ she said, fumbling for a cigarette. ‘His was broken.’
‘No. Tell me now. He was using your car so that no one would know it was him, right? The people who were threatening him?’
She sighed, nodded.
‘These people, they came here, to this house?’
She nodded again.
‘Describe them.’
‘Two blokes. Heavy, y’know.’
‘How old were they?’
‘One youngish, twenties? The other one was older. Big, they were. Nasty.’
‘What about their hair?’
She thought about it.
‘Short. Shaved. Both of them.’
‘Did they threaten you directly in any way? Or make threats about Craig?’
She took a while.
‘They’d been posting the stuff through the letterbox. And ringing. Said they’d been watching him. Tell him to stop or they’d take care of him.’
‘When was this?’
‘About three weeks ago. Maybe a bit longer.’
‘That was when Craig switched cars?’
‘Yeah. I told him to. I was scared. I didn’t know what…’
‘They said they’d take care of him. Did they make a specific threat to kill anyone? This is important, Jane.’
She took a breath, straining to remember.
‘They’d sort him out for good. That’s what they said.’
He showed her photos of Cullen’s sidekicks. Not surprisingly, Daz and Ranksy both had police records. He’d downloaded the mugshots last night.
As soon as she looked at the phone, tears welled up in her eyes.
‘That’s them. Did they kill him?’
He stood to leave.
‘Ring me if anything else comes to mind. We’ll get ’em, Jane. OK?’
As he got to the door his phone pinged. A text message from Rita:
We have lift-off!
21
When he arrived in the AV suite, Rita had her feet up on the desk and was sipping from a can of Dandelion and Burdock.
‘Got a main suspect,’ he said. ‘Two, actually. What about you?’
‘This!’ She swung her feet off the table and pressed ‘play’. ‘The old road on the edge of Broadyards Country Park? It runs up towards Birstall, then you can take the B6135 to Drighlington.’
‘Jesus, do none of those places have normal names?’
‘Cleckheckmondsidge!’
‘That’s not a real one, is it?’
She shrugged. ‘Look. Nine-twenty, Thursday evening.’
He looked. The footage wasn’t too bad. It was black-and-white, medium-res, good enough to make out a cyclist in dark clothes and some sort of skull cap going up the hill at a pretty good lick, legs pumping, head down. The bike had three light-coloured strips on the crossbar and three more on each upright.
‘This is going away from Birstall?’
‘Yes. The back lane goes up towards the town. Then it joins this main road. The bike turned left, away from Birstall, towards Drighlington.’
‘And then where?’
She let a massive breath escape from her mouth.
‘The options are friggin’ endless. Look at the map, it’s nuts. And most of the roads have no cameras on ’em. You couldn’t have chosen a better escape route.’
He nodded.
‘And this is the best image we’ve got?’
‘It’s all we’ve got, so far. The cyclist’s about five-ten, I reckon. Lithe, physically fit, owner of a dark-coloured bike.’
‘With yellow tape stripes on it.’
‘Scuffed yellow tape stripes.’ She sat back in the reclining chair. ‘How many folk on our radar are gonna fit that description? We’ll nail this one. Easy as.’ She emptied the last dregs of the Dandelion and Burdock down her throat. ‘Anyway, what did you get?’
He sat down, suddenly deflated, despite the progress.
‘Your pals from Batley, Daz and Ranksy? They threatened Shaw’s mum. Told her that Craig had to stop dealing. But,’ he wagged a finger at the screen, ‘they’re big lads. It’s not them, is it? An accomplice? I’m bringing ’em in, whatever.’
‘We’ll have a job on, tonight.’
‘We could at least try.’
‘Get ’em first thing tomorrow. I know where t
hey live.’ She sprang to her feet, grabbing her leather jacket. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. The pencils!’
‘Go on.’
‘I got her at home. The Gaia Office Supplies sales director. Hippy-dippy type, based in Dagenham. Fancy acid-free paper, all sorts of ecological…’
‘And?’
‘And they don’t supply many places up here. But they do supply Cleckheaton Library. Come on, I need curry.’
‘You’re hungry after all this?’
‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’
A bhuna it was, then.
22
They drove the six miles down the M621 to Birstall because, according to the more expert of the two, curries in Leeds were ‘a friggin’ disgrace’.
The short trip gave Joe the chance to phone his deputy and bring him up to speed on the investigation. Gwyn Merchant had clearly taken the evening off, but he listened patiently, the sound of a TV in the background, and agreed to be in the office at six tomorrow morning to get things moving.
Birstall: another small town, but a slightly more picturesque one. There was even a bit of bustle in the town centre, with buses and taxis coming and going around a triangular market square enclosed on all sides by soot-darkened buildings from a century and a half ago, perhaps longer. And in the very centre, a statue of someone or other. Birstall’s favourite son. But the town wasn’t known for him. Not anymore.
Inside the Bangla Lounge the air was so ridiculously sweet and spicy that Joe was glad he’d let himself be dragged away from Leeds. The smell alone calmed him down, taking the edge off his anxiety. An unidentified main suspect, and two known persons of interest to haul in? The investigation was progressing quickly, but his nerves were raw and jangly. A bit of downtime was exactly what he needed.
As soon as they got a table the manager came across, chatting to Rita in Bengali for what seemed like an unreasonably long time. When they were done talking, everything had apparently been decided.
‘I just ordered for the both of us, hope that’s all right?’ she asked, as the manager disappeared into the kitchen. ‘We’re going a bit off-menu.’
‘That’s fine.’ He sat back. ‘So, Birstall, hotbed of English nationalist rage.’