‘Excuse me girls, I’m Detective Inspector Grogan, Merseyside Police. Were any of you acquainted with Ryan Boswell?’
Two of the girls in hooded tops dropped their gaze when Tara addressed them. The other two seemed prepared to answer the question.
‘Knew him from school,’ said a girl with bleached blonde hair and reddened eyes. ‘He used to hang out with us.’
‘Yeah,’ another joined in. ‘Was a good laugh, Ryan.’
‘Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt him?’
All four girls shook their heads and gave a collective answer of no.
‘It’s been another gang what’s done this,’ said one of the girls, who was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt. She had short dark hair and an array of piercings around both ears.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Turf,’ said the bleached blonde. ‘Has to be, don’t it?’
Tara gazed at the girl. She guessed her to be around nineteen or twenty, since she’d said that they’d known Ryan Boswell from schooldays.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘’Cos some other gang wants a piece of Vipers’ turf…’ Suddenly, the girl was elbowed sharply by one of her mates.
‘Shut up, will ya,’ said the girl in the hoodie. ‘Don’t talk about the Vipers, not to the bizzies.’
By this point, several other young people had gathered around Tara, eager to hear the conversation. She noticed also a couple of older men, perhaps in their forties or fifties, standing by the entrance to the alley where the body had been found. Both were smoking cigarettes, apparently watching people who stopped to place flowers, but Tara got the feeling that they were really observing what was going on between her and the young girls. She sensed an uneasy mood within this gathering. Fear or anger, she couldn’t tell which. Murray had left the car and joined her, which gave her a feeling of safety. He had his eyes fixed on the two men. Clearly, they stood out from the others. But Murray’s stare had induced some unease, and both men picked their way through those laying flowers and sauntered off.
‘What about Ryan’s girlfriend, do any of you know her? Her name is Carly McHugh.’
Most of those standing around her shook their heads, but one girl spoke up.
‘She wasn’t from around here,’ she said.
When Tara looked at the girl she realised she was much older than the others. She might even have been the mother of one of them. Round shouldered, heavy set with brown hair and a square face, she looked sternly at Tara.
‘Ryan was my nephew, my sister’s son.’
Tara acknowledged the woman’s response and now spoke directly to her.
‘I believe she came from Sunderland, but there is a possibility that she was here on the night Ryan was killed.’
‘Not from Sunderland,’ said the woman above the mutterings of the others. ‘Northern Ireland.’
Chapter 16
I’ve had my first row with Kirsty. I hope she’s not getting all possessive on me. Can’t stand that in a woman. I mean, I don’t ask her everything she gets up to when she’s out with her friends. She still goes clubbing with her giggling friend Mel, and she’s out at the pub on a Friday with her workmates. I don’t mind. I trust her. Why can’t she trust me? The other night she starts asking me a load a questions.
‘Thought you’d be home before this,’ she said. ‘The dinner spoiled.’
‘Had a delivery at Knowsley, and the traffic was a bugger.’
She was pretending to be interested in the telly, flicking through the channels, but I could tell she really wanted me to explain. Of course, I wasn’t on a bloody delivery at Knowsley. I was having a wee look out for what Daisy gets up to on a Thursday.
‘What did you do last night?’
Wednesday night is my night for going out without her, and she knows I don’t really have any mates to hang out with, so I usually make something up. Most of the time I just go to a pub for a couple of pints. And her da invited me to a mid-week Liverpool game. But lately, of course, I’ve started looking out again for Tara Grogan. Thought I might spot her running down by the Echo Arena, and lo and behold, I’m sitting in my van, minding my own business, when suddenly she’s looking right at me. Don’t know who was the most surprised. I managed a smile, but she just stood there glaring at me — like I’d no business breathing the same air as her. I wondered what she was really thinking about me. How did she feel when she saved my life from that crackpot Aeron? Was she glad to have done it? Or did she not even realise at the time that it was me nailed to that bloody frame and about to have my head lopped off? But I suppose I can’t expect her to have forgiven me for snatching her and trying to have my way with her. During my trial, I learned that she couldn’t remember a thing about it. So what’s her problem?
And my problem at the minute is what to tell Kirsty when I’m out to all hours chasing after beautiful women.
‘Sometimes, Kirsty, I just like to go for a drive,’ I told her.
‘But you drive all the time when you’re at work. Don’t you need to do something else?’
‘No,’ I said, pulling her close to me. ‘I’m happy to be home with you.’
‘You’re not going off me, are you?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘You’re not out with other women?’
I tried to laugh this one off, but it sent her into a mood, and I realised she was deeply suspicious of what I got up to when I went out alone or came home late from work.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ I asked.
*
She lay beside me, staring into my eyes, searching, I’d say, for a truth that I was never going to share. Fucking intuitive women, they do my head in.
I realised that I was growing irritable. Millie was still in the news, stories about how forensic analysis had solved the mystery of her identity. It even made it on to Crimewatch — again. They’d resurrected the story they ran on Millie’s disappearance, nearly eight years ago. How she had not been seen since leaving a leisure centre in east Belfast, how her family had never given up hope of finding her and how they were devastated when she was fished from the sea. But at least now she could be laid to rest, and the PSNI had begun a fresh inquiry into her abduction and murder, although they couldn’t establish the actual cause of death.
But still, I didn’t like the idea of a renewed investigation. What if they had more evidence than they were making public? If they had found my DNA, for instance. They might already be looking for me.
I turned my attention to the woman lying in bed beside me.
‘I love you, Kirsty,’ I said.
She looked at me for what seemed a bloody age.
‘Love you too,’ she replied at last.
Bless.
Chapter 17
He’d parked up on William Jessop Way, an area of the city by Princes Dock that had undergone extensive re-development in recent years. Apartment blocks, walkways and footbridges were now the modern landscape of an area steeped in the history of the port of Liverpool. The car sat on double yellows, but he hadn’t planned on being here long. He was waiting for a call. Janek was working somewhere around James Street. He would need to be picked up soon. It was not far from Princes Dock to James Street. He could have a smoke and listen to some music before the boss called. No Big Silence, a metal band from his homeland, blared from the stereo, the windows down, the sound booming across the dockland.
Aksel reclined in the driver’s seat, his right hand resting on the window which was open to let his cigarette smoke waft away. He closed his one eye to relax, his left eye he had lost as a boy, fighting with sticks in the forests surrounding Rapla, his home town. So immersed was he in the music and thoughts of life back home, and the girl he should have married, he was oblivious to the car pulling up behind him.
Both cars were BMWs, in the same colour, black, but different models. Three men climbed out of the 5-Series and bounded to the 3-Series where Aksel lay, almost asleep, the cigarette still
burning between his fingers. Two of the men held metal pipes, the third a baseball bat.
All of them laid into the car. Windows smashed, doors, roof and bonnet dented. Aksel had little time to react. He tried to start the engine. A metal pipe came through the open window, catching him on the side of the head. He slumped across the passenger seat. Thought he was about to die. The hammering on the bodywork, the thumping music and the pain in his head, he wanted to pass out.
Suddenly, the passenger door was thrust open. A hand reached inside, fumbling for the volume control of the stereo. When eventually there was silence, Aksel dared to raise his head and look at his attackers.
‘Get the fuck out of Liverpool. Next time you don’t get a warning.’
Aksel looked at the brown face of the man who’d spoken. He wanted to remember him. The man laughed when he saw the contorted face and the foreigner with just one eye.
‘Ugly bastard, aren’t you?’
His two mates came to look and added their own laughter. Aksel lay across the seat, praying. He was covered in glass from the shattered windows, and the side of his head throbbed — although there was no blood. Silence had ensued; he hoped they’d left. A moment later, he heard the sound of a car engine revving as it sped by.
He lay still for a while longer, waiting for his heart rate to steady. Lying motionless, he suddenly became aware of a burning smell. He sat upright, searching for his cigarette. During the attack it had fallen into the footwell and had begun to smoulder on the carpet. Reaching down, he lifted it between two fingers and took a long drag before tossing it out of the window. His mobile rang, and he knew it was time to go and meet Janek.
Chapter 18
Early evening, and they sat around Tara’s desk drinking coffee and discussing what they had learned so far about the murder of Ryan Boswell. Harold Tweedy expressed his concern that while everything pointed at a gangland killing, they had not yet identified any definite suspects.
‘We need to find out more about why Boswell was living in Sunderland and what type of work he was doing there for this gang,’ said Murray. Tweedy and Wilson both nodded their agreement. ‘Seems obvious that it was drugs related.’
‘Chances are he was a supplier for the area,’ said Wilson, ‘or he may have been a delivery boy.’
‘Maybe operating a supply route between Liverpool and Sunderland,’ said Murray.
Tara didn’t disagree with any of this speculation, but what niggled her most was the mystery of Boswell’s girlfriend and the possibility that she was the girl who had been seen running through the Treadwater Estate on the night of the murder. So far, none of the people interviewed were even prepared to admit that Carly McHugh had been there when Boswell was murdered. She wondered too if it was mere coincidence that the gun used in the killing had been used previously in Northern Ireland and that Carly McHugh came from there.
She decided that, for now, she would keep her theories to herself. They needed more information on the connection between Liverpool and Sunderland and Boswell’s movements between the two places.
‘We definitely need to learn more about the Vipers’ activities,’ Tara said in agreement with her colleagues. ‘And I would like to find out how and why a gun used previously in Belfast was used to shoot Boswell.’
‘A paramilitary-style shooting, too,’ Murray pointed out. ‘Is it possible that the Vipers are somehow connected with an organisation in Ireland?’
‘Could be the girl is the link between the two,’ said Wilson.
‘Tara, I’d like you to consult Matrix, and DCI Weir in vice and drugs,’ said Tweedy. ‘They may have some knowledge of links between Merseyside gangs and those in Belfast. Alan and John, I suggest you take a look at the recent activities of other gangs on Merseyside. If a gang war is about to start, other gangsters will know.’
‘Fine, sir.’
Tweedy’s departure from the office prompted the others to return to their desks. Tara instructed Murray to liaise with the guys on the Matrix team regarding Liverpool gangs, while she would contact DCI Weir. She fired off a brief email to the detective, describing her present case and requesting a meeting as soon as possible.
Before leaving for home, she browsed the bulletins posted on the police network and took a look at the BBC’s news pages online. A couple of weeks back she’d heard of the body of a young woman being recovered from the Irish Sea. At the time she’d thought little of it, save for a passing thought that it might in some way be relevant to her notion that a serial killer was responsible for multiple disappearances of young women around Britain.
The murder of Terry Lawler murder had first brought the idea to her mind, but so far she’d found no evidence to suggest that the journalist had been right. He had been struggling to find his sister Ruth, who had gone missing, and in the course of his investigations gathered information on twenty-nine women, including his sister, all of whom had disappeared without trace. Their bodies had never been found, and no one had been identified as a suspect in their supposed abductions. It wasn’t even a certainty that all of the disappearances were connected.
Lawler was murdered before any of his thinking on the disappeared girls had been made public, or even brought to the attention of the police. Tara was convinced, however, that Terry Lawler had discovered a common thread linking the disappearance of his sister with the disappearances of other women, and that he had reason to believe that one man was responsible for all of their deaths. And so she had retained an interest in this mystery, of why so many young women had disappeared in similar circumstances.
Today, the online news pointed her again towards Lawler’s (and her own) theory of the missing girls. There had been more cases of women vanishing since Lawler’s death.
The bulletin named the girl fished from the sea as Linda Meredith. Tara stared intently at the girl’s photograph.
‘John,’ she called, startling the hefty frame of the detective constable. ‘Dig out those photos from Terry Lawler’s flat.’
Wilson rose from his chair, doing as he was told but weary of the request. It wasn’t the first time that DI Grogan had gone off on one of her notions regarding this collection of pictures. Her theorising on the missing girls seemed to poke its way into every case.
A minute later, Tara had twenty-nine photographs, of various shapes, sizes and quality, of the young women scattered over her desk. It took just a few seconds for her to home in on one image. The picture of a teenage girl with dark hair and a bright smile.
‘That’s her. That’s the girl they pulled out of the Irish Sea.’
Chapter 19
The following morning, Alan Murray, looking chirpy, brought a report across the office for Tara to read.
‘Morning, mam. How are you, this fine morning?’
The surprise for Tara was not so much the upbeat voice but the fact that her DS did not have a chocolate bar, doughnut or biscuit in his hand.
‘You’re looking pleased with yourself. Your numbers come up?’
‘I wish!’
Then, Tara clicked to the reason behind Murray’s good humour.
‘How are things going with Trudy?’
‘Brilliant. Saw her last night.’
‘And?’ She saw the smirk spreading over his face. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘And… I saw her again this morning, if you know what I mean...’
Tara nodded and made a face. In a way she was delighted for him. Divorced by the age of thirty, Murray, since that time, had stumbled through one relationship after another. Trudy Mitchell was the first woman he’d seemed sufficiently proud of to boast about. And she was an older woman too, mid-forties to his thirty-seven. Tara had thought it an unlikely pairing; Trudy was a television producer and minor celebrity, and Murray a homicide detective. Mitchell had once been part of a bizarre — and highly publicised — ménage à trois with a famous actor and his wife. . She’d been a suspect for a time in the Jason and Aeron Collywell case, owing to a
past association with a satanic cult. A chequered history definitely, but Tara was hardly the world’s expert on romantic affairs. She’d already given Trudy Mitchell the benefit of the doubt and wished only the best for her detective sergeant.
‘I do know what you mean, and I don’t need you to fill in the details. I take it you didn’t just come over to share stories of your sex life with me. What have you got?’
‘Police in Sunderland carried out a search of the place they believe is Carly McHugh’s flat. Didn’t find anything untoward.’
‘Any sign of the girl?’
‘No. Neighbours say they haven’t seen her for more than a week. The flat was rented in her name, rather than Boswell’s. She’d been living there for over a year. Looks a fairly swanky place for such a young couple with no apparent source of income.’
He set two A4-size pictures on Tara’s desk, one showing the lounge of the flat, the other the exterior of the building. She gazed briefly at the photos. It was certainly a luxury pad; expensive-looking furniture, modern fittings — and the exterior of the building was pristine.
‘Unless you count drug dealing.’
‘Suppose so, but we have no evidence as yet. I wonder who was the brains of the operation. McHugh or Boswell?’
‘According to Aidan Boswell, Ryan had only been living there for five or six months. So was this a staging post for Viper activity, or were he and the girl mixed up in something else? I’m going to meet DCI Weir at eleven, see if he can help on the workings of this gang.’
‘Ryan’s funeral is this afternoon, might be worth popping along to see who’s there, paying their respects.’
‘Good idea. Take Wilson with you. He’s from Treadwater. He might recognise a few characters.’
Lethal Dose; Lethal Justice; Lethal Mind Page 57