Jagger slapped him back, and Slade almost fell, catching himself on the bonnet of the Mercedes. Monty took a step forward, and Shack shook his head at him, “Don’t forget where your loyalties lie, Monty. There’s a good lad.”
“Monty? What’s he talking about? What the hell’s going on?”
“Slade, Slade, Slade,” Jagger smiled widely. “You’ve no idea have you?” He took out a pair of blue nitrile gloves from his jeans pocket, put them on and delved into Slade’s jacket pocket. With his fingertips, he brought out Slade’s gun and passed it to a man also wearing gloves who then disappeared inside the breeze-block hut.
Slade stared from one to the other, lingered on Monty, and settled finally on Jagger.
Jagger said, “Him there,” he nodded at Shack, “he’s taken over the Middleton operations. The Middleton crew have been permanently disbanded. His real name’s Dom. And Phil over there is head honcho in Harehills. He has a crew of three. All of them work for Crime Division, and all of them are winding down operations in that area, collecting data, sifting contacts. I am the new head of the Chapeltown gang. I am a detective sergeant – hopefully inspector this time next year. And my real name’s Jimmy. Jimmy Akhtar, at your service.”
“You—”
“Shut up. No need for melodrama, Slade. I have a team right now of 167 police officers and staff. They are dismantling everything you’ve worked for. They are uncovering everything you’ve ever fucking touched. Welcome to Operation Domino, Slade Crosby.”
“Bastard!”
“Monty is being of great value to us. Aren’t you, Monty?”
Monty’s head bowed, and he whispered, “Sorry, chief. I knew that—”
“Shut the fuck up you piece of shit! I’ll fucking have you, man. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll fucking have your head on a spike!” Slade spat at Monty. His lower lip trembled with fury; the big veins in his neck stood proud and throbbed, and his eyes were dampened with a red rage. And then he looked back at Jagger, “You ain’t got nothing on me anyhow. And when my lawyer—”
“Well,” Jagger pointed a stern finger, “I think we got that one covered too.” He nodded at Shack. Shack went to the breeze-block hut. “We needed a start, see. Something that gave us authority to blitz the fuck out of you,” he grinned. “Came up with this.”
From the breeze-block hut, Shack gently escorted a young lady. The left side of her face was Post Office red; she wore a gauze across her left eye, and a bandage over a shaved part of her head. Shack whispered something to her.
She squinted, then she nodded. Then she screamed, “That heem, that heem!” Her hand went to her mouth and Shack had to hold her up as she broke in fits of tears.
Slade looked on shocked. “The Polish whore,” he whispered.
“We got her underwear,” Jagger said. “So we got you for rape. And we had the Pooh Bear mug, the one you broke over this girl’s fucking head, fingerprinted. So we got you on a Section 18 assault. And then, not an hour ago, we got you for murder.”
“What?” Slade was getting hyper, chugging shallow breaths, feeling pins and needles in his fingertips, and watching as his field of vision seemed to shrink.
Jagger was in no hurry. “I’m going to tell you something now, Slade. But you have to promise me you won’t have a fucking coronary and croak.” He clapped his hands together in glee, “I’ve just got to see you on the stand! I have to!”
“Fuck you.”
“Remember when Blake and Tyler came back from killing Tony Lambert and his wife, Shelly?”
“I ain’t saying nothing.”
“Don’t have to. Anyway, remember how Tony gave Tyler a bust nose? Blood everywhere. Turns out that Tony did us all a favour; he actually killed the guy who murdered him and his wife.”
Slade stared hatred.
“Tyler mopped all the blood from his nose with tissues. Like a scruffy bastard, he just left them on the back seat.” Jagger pointed through the screen of the Mercedes, “You can probably still see one or two there now. Anyway, I took a few of them, kept them. And when Monty told me that Blake had lined up a new woman, it didn’t take Einstein to work out where he’d take her. Trouble was, I was a bit late getting there.
“He’d already raped the poor woman; she was nowhere to be found when I arrived. And anyway, someone else seemed to know him pretty well too, because when I got there, they’d already dropped the rock on your boy’s swede and put a round into his back. When I got near the tree, I saw someone running away.”
“You’re full of shit, boy—”
“Listen, Slade, you’ll like this bit. This is where I win my inspector pips.” And then he looked around at his colleagues, “nobody except these fine gentlemen knows about it,” and he laughed at Slade’s perplexed face. “I worked out the rock thing, that it’d been dropped from the tree, and so I took the tissues with Tyler’s blood on them, I dampened them in the stream, and I smeared his blood all over that fucking tree branch.”
“You lying piece of—”
“Shut up!” Jagger screamed. “I’m just getting to the really good part,” he smiled. “So you shot poor, poor Tyler for doing nothing wrong except having a nose bleed.”
Slade’s eyes filled with water.
“Want to know who actually killed Blake?”
Slade blubbed, the spittle from his lower lip let go and splashed onto his shoes.
“If I remember rightly, she had pink hair. I saw her running into the woods.” Jagger blinked, watched Slade’s expression turn to despair. “Pretty sure your daughter, Rachel, has pink hair.” He tapped his lower lip, looked to the clouds, “I wonder if they’re one and the same person. What do you think, Slade?”
Slade collapsed to the muddy concrete and sobbed like a wronged child.
Jagger squatted by his side and whispered, “So tell me; how much pain can one man take before his heart packs in?”
Chapter Forty-One
He wandered through the back door and the kitchen and into the lounge.
“You should whack her.”
“No, no. I couldn’t hit a woman unless it was in self-defence. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“Well I don’t bleedin’ know, do I? I can barely remember you!”
“Okay, look I’m coming over tonight—”
“Bring some Stella.”
He laughed meekly, “Right. Stella, yes.”
“And don’t be long.”
“I won’t… Kirsty? Kirsty, you there?” He listened but she’d hung up already. Brian dropped the phone back into its charger and paced the floor again, nibbling on his thumb nail. And through the lounge window he saw a car draw up outside. He peered, squinting into the late afternoon brightness that almost passed for sunlight, pulled back the net curtains and saw the sad bitch climbing gingerly out of the passenger seat of some old car as though she were a ninety-year-old woman.
Brian cracked his knuckles and smiled to himself as he went and opened the front door. He watched as she staggered closer, wondering what the bloody hell was wrong with her now. “Stupid cow,” he whispered and went outside. Then he saw someone else getting out of the car, and he broke into a trot, “Rosaline, what’s happened, honey?”
He supported her by the elbow and wrapped his arms around her, cooing until the driver appeared at their side.
“I think she’ll be alright,” said the young woman.
“What on earth’s happened to her?” Brian asked in his best voice of concern.
“She’s upset; a colleague of ours passed away today.”
“Oh you poor thing,” he said to Ros, and to the young woman, “I’ve got her, thank you very much for bringing her home. It was very kind of you.”
“No problem. You alright now, Ros?”
Ros whimpered, closed her eyes and allowed Brian to escort her inside.
As soon as the hallway gloom hit them, he kicked the door shut. “Who died?”
She shook herself free of his uncaring embrace and walke
d through into the lounge where she continued to sob quietly into a tissue.
“Don’t ignore me, Rosaline. You know I don’t like to be ignored.”
“Eddie,” she croaked.
“Collins? The man you went out with?”
She nodded, peered at him over her trembling hand.
“Christmas and birthday all in one.” The smile he wore eventually drifted away as he considered this. She was crying full on now, and by the looks of her puffy eyes, the eyelashes stuck together and the disgusting trail of snot hanging from her nose, she’d been crying all fucking day! And that thought prompted another, one that made his chest glow hot with anger. “I wonder,” he whispered, “if you’d cry like that for me.”
“Please, Brian; not now.”
“Not now? Not now? Not now what?”
“I don’t want to get into a battle with you. I just want to go—”
“Ha! A battle? Why would we get into a battle? It was a simple question. I just wondered if you’d be this upset for me if I passed away. That’s all. A simple question.”
“Of course I would.”
But she was lying. He could see it! Plain as day. Hollow. Words that meant nothing. Words so he’d be happy and leave the selfish bitch alone to go to bed and weep tears for a man she barely knew.
Barely knew?
His eyes squinted in thought. How did he know she barely knew him? She could’ve been… of course, she was. It made sense now! Ever since he started work in her office she’d been like a lovelorn teenager. And how often had she spoken of him? All the time! Never stopped! Eddie this and Eddie that.
Yes, of course, that’s where she went last night with him. Out with him.
“Come upstairs.”
“Oh Brian—”
“I said upstairs! Now!” He left the room and mounted the stairs with a determination in his face; a gruesome determination. Brian was nobody’s fool. He wouldn’t tolerate his wife sleeping around like some common whore, laughing behind his back, making a fool of him. He could imagine the young woman who’d dropped her off, laughing her tits off on the way back to the office or home or wherever she was going. Laughing her tits off because she knows Rosaline is shagging someone behind my back – and like a dumb idiot, I knew nothing about it; I welcome her home, help her inside, treat her well, trust her, and she makes a mockery of me. A mockery!
* * *
Ros looked at the front door through stinging eyes. He’d locked it, taken the key out. And so she took the phone from the handset, sneaked back into the lounge and dialled 999. She listened to the handset, and all she could hear was nothing.
Ros turned slowly around. Brian stood in the doorway with the lead in his hand.
“Who were you ringing?”
“No one.”
“I’ve had about all I can take from you.”
“Brian, I—”
“Get up those fucking stairs now!”
Before she could move he was in front of her and had her by the hair, pulling her out of the lounge and up the stairs as she screamed a futile protest.
There was a certain foundation to all of this emotion. Of course it had begun a couple of days ago with her night-long immersion in three inches of cold water, fully clothed. That was the start; it had brought her down to earth with a spine-jarring thud. She hadn’t recovered from it, the aches and the shivers that had spread through to her bones had persisted since then. But then, the news that underpinned that foundation, that Eddie had been shot and was in some shallow grave up in North Yorkshire, had warped her mind so out of true that she couldn’t think straight anymore.
At first she thought it was a crazy, morbid prank that Eddie had played to get back at her. And of course she’d deserved it – she’d done exactly the same thing to him for almost two whole years. She could see why he’d want a little retribution: taste your own medicine, Ros, and see how the hell you like it! This is what you put me through. But if it was a joke, a lesson, it was extremely elaborate – and it involved the whole office. There was no way Jeffery would allow that to happen. It was way off the morbid scale.
And so it was real. Had to be. And that’s when things became a little blurred for her, fuzzy round the edges like an old photo, sepia toned and scratched and beaten. Just when she’d become used to having him back in her life, just when she’d stopped chastising herself for leaving him out in the cold for so long, and most painfully of all, just as she’d come to terms with hooking up with last-chance-Brian when she really ought to have checked on Eddie’s marital status before jumping to conclusions, he’d been cruelly and stupidly taken from her.
What a waste.
Why go to the Crosbys in the first place? Did Eddie really think he would leave there with his legs intact, let alone his life?
And that set her off into fresh wails again.
Brian was filling the bath.
“No, Brian, not that—”
“Take your clothes off, Rosaline.”
He said it in such a blasé way, as though he’d offered a cup of tea and a digestive. Take your clothes off, Rosaline, and would you like a McVitie’s with it?
“No, Brian, please—”
“Why d’ya always test me? Huh? That’s what teenagers do to see how much power they got; they test their parents by being obstinate, by asking questions and refusing to obey commands. Why do you do it?”
She stared at him.
“Take your clothes off.” He whispered the command, but here was real menace in his voice.
Slowly, she began to undress.
“Come on, come on, I haven’t got all night!”
She undressed quicker, throwing the T-shirt in the corner, pulling off her jeans and socks. She stood there, swallowing her grief and feeling ashamed. But she didn’t know what for. Why was she feeling ashamed? Why was she allowing herself—
“Bra and pants too, come on, chop-chop.”
“No.”
Brian stopped still. Slowly he turned to face her. “Excuse me?”
She said nothing.
He turned off the tap. It dripped. “Take them off. If I have to ask again, I’ll whack you.”
Ros stood motionless for a moment or two. Then she burst into tears again and reached around and unclasped the bra, slid her pants off.
Brian smiled. He could see the scar below her ribcage, how it glistened in the light.
“Kneel down.”
“Why?”
He made to slap her and she recoiled, gasped and hid her face. Then she knelt down.
“In front of the bath, stupid! You really are tryin’ my patience. I have places to be this evening, and here I am wasting my time with you. D’ya think I want to do this? D’ya think I enjoy it? Hurry up, dammit!”
Ros knelt before the bath, head down submissively, her lips moved slightly.
And then he grabbed her by the hair and pushed her head under the water.
Ros panicked, arms thrashing in the bath, elbows banging against the hard enamel, trying to pull his hands off her, kicking out with her bare feet and making absolutely no impression at all.
“Eddie Collins is dead.”
She screamed and a hurried torrent of air bubbles broke the surface, and then she really did panic, and for a moment she managed to break the surface, gasped in some air, but got a mouthful of water too, and she tried to cough, but he already had her back under the water.
“I love you, Rosaline.”
And Ros was drowning.
Inside her head, there was tumult. It was filled with her own internal screams, and it was filled with the sounds of thrashing in the water, and sounds of air leaking out, and the heat of cold water burning in her lungs, and she felt the strangest most irrelevant things like her toenails digging into the carpet, like the faint scum-line of soap around the upper edge of the bath. And she could see the bottom of the tub. She could feel the coldness of the water against her eardrums. Her elbows hurt and she didn’t know why.
And she could
hear her own heart above all this tumult, slowing down, and she blinked less often, and she could feel the last few air bubbles running up the side of her face, almost tickling.
Brian hauled her out of the water. She coughed water, belched it and vomited it. She sucked in lungfuls of air and coughed it all back out again. Ros screamed.
“You do love me, don’t you Rosaline?”
“Fuck you,” she gasped. “I love Eddie.”
His grip on her hair tightened, and this time he rammed her head beneath the water. And this time the air flowed in larger bubbles up her face, she pushed it out. And she stared at the bottom of the tub feeling nothing. Her toenails sent her no strange messages; she didn’t even feel for the scum-line this time.
She let her hands settle on the bottom, closed her eyes…and breathed in.
* * *
There was a brief moment or two when it was all so serene. Of course, she knew it was death coming along, and really, it didn’t matter. Death came to everyone eventually. And drowning wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be. Everyone always wanted to die in their sleep, naturally she supposed, because it was like not being there while something horrid happened. But drowning was not totally unpleasant. There was the initial shock where your lungs don’t get air, they get water. And that was the worst part, she thought. But after that, when the convulsing was over with, it was so enormously peaceful. It was the transition from life to death, and it was utterly wonderful. Extremely relaxing.
Death was simply a change of state, that’s all. And people were frightened of it, not necessarily because they’d miss whatever they left behind, but because they’d never done it before – and people were always scared of new things.
But then that tumult she’d experienced a little earlier came back.
* * *
Daylight fell out of the air like cinders at bonfire. In its place, a mellow, cool yet insipid darkness washed over the land as quickly as an artist’s watercolour brush; the contrast dispersed and with it came a silence that was almost eerie.
Eddie ambled up the driveway, almost afraid to knock on the front door, now he’d rushed all the way here. What the hell was he going to say if Brian answered? Hi, just thought I’d pop by and tell Ros I’m not dead. It didn’t have the strength he was looking for, and more importantly, it was like a boast, it assumed she’d give a shit that he was alive anyway.
Black by Rose Page 33