Gallowstree Lane

by Kate London

  Nothing probably.

  Angel said, ‘Time for a cuppa.’

  Lizzie put her hand up for a moment’s concentration. Unbidden, the boy she had seen standing on the pavement with the upturned bicycle had come to mind. To be on that side of the street he’d have been going in the opposite direction, surely? Fleeting images, barely registered at the periphery of the action, came back to her.

  ‘Mohammed, can you go back to the camera covering the entrance to Maiden Lane?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. How far back do you want?’

  She checked her log. ‘OK, so ten o’clock.’

  ‘That’s about thirty minutes before the cars arrive?’

  ‘Yes, please. Play it as fast as we can watch it.’

  They were back to the distant high view of the nothing-special London road, life playing quick-time in the speeded-up CCTV: people walking, a road sweeper with his handcart, a group of girls sashaying speedily down the street, and then a bicycle pulling up on the pavement. Lizzie raised her hand for Mohammed to pause the recording. She tapped the bike so everyone knew what she was watching. The bike looked right – old-fashioned drop handlebars – and the boy riding it was in dark clothing. The playback resumed. The boy knelt and locked the bike. He walked along the street and disappeared through a door. The camera was positioned end on so it was impossible to see what kind of building he had entered, but a blurred street sign projected out onto the street.

  Angel said, ‘That’s McDonald’s.’

  Lizzie said, ‘Can you run it faster, please?’

  Five minutes passed in one. The door to McDonald’s opened and a boy in dark clothing emerged. He’d pulled his hood up. Lizzie tapped the screen and Mohammed froze the image.

  ‘Is that him, the same boy as went in?’ she said.

  Angel said, ‘Looks like. Same clothes. Same height.’

  If it was the same boy, he didn’t return to the bike. Instead, double speed now, he crossed the road. Other figures moved in and out of shot – a woman with a buggy, three boys in hoodies, on the other side of the pavement a lone figure tapping his way forward with a stick. The boy took a right into Maiden Lane. Lizzie checked the map again and confirmed what she already knew: there was no way through down Maiden Lane, not even by foot. The boy, when he left, would have to return by the same route.

  She checked her log for the arrival and exit of the vehicles.

  The business of the street transpired, but quickly, the people and the cars jolting forward like stop-go animation. Lives passing. The first car and then, after a pause, the second turning into Maiden Lane. After a gap compressed into seconds, they re-emerged. One. Two. The camera view remained high and distant, keeping a view of both cars. The traffic was moving freely on the right-hand side and the Toyota passed quickly out of the frame. But then, just before Mohammed zoomed the camera onto the darker car, a boy in dark clothing was glimpsed running into the edge of the frame back towards the bicycle he had left outside McDonald’s.

  Lizzie said, ‘See him?’

  Angel nodded. ‘Yes.’

  And then the boy was lost. Mohammed had zoomed onto the darker car and the exit from Maiden Lane was excised from the record. But there was a bicycle, just now, entering the frame and beginning to overtake the marked car.

  Lizzie’s phone rang again. She glanced at the screen – Connor’s nursery again – and rejected the call.

  The marked car’s lights were flashing just as the bike was passing. The frame tightened – Mohammed had zoomed in on the target – and the bicycle was lost. Lizzie remembered telling him to zoom back out, but it seemed to take an age. When the frame widened again there was a bicycle upturned on the pavement.

  Lizzie tapped it with her pen.

  Angel said, ‘I see him.’

  ‘Is it the same bike?’

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

  The boy was crouching down. It was a story of the everyday perhaps – a bicycle chain that was proving difficult to get back onto the gears – or it was something else entirely. He stood and took a step forward to the edge of the pavement. The arrests progressed, the men were put into the cars, and all the time the boy watched, motionless in spite of the action that was running quick-time around him.

  And then it was as if he awoke from a dream. He got back on the bike and crossed the road, cycling back in the direction he had come from.

  Angel turned to Mohammed. ‘Can you leave us for a moment while I talk to my colleague?’

  Ryan closed his eyes and covered his face with his left hand. His right hand, holding the phone, had fallen by his thigh. He was in the street, legs astride his bicycle, feet flat on the pavement, but he was really somewhere else entirely. He was somewhere winds howled, where the light flared so brightly that the landscape was obliterated.

  ‘Listen up, snitch. We’ve got Tia.’

  ‘I’m not a snitch.’

  The voice at the other end of the phone had no patience, and although Ryan felt like he was trying to move through some element thicker than air, somehow he had to make his mind work. The phone by his thigh was squawking its devastation.

  ‘You even LISTENING, wasteman? I got to say it again? We’ve got Tia.’

  There was the white light again, obliterating sense.

  He saw his sister with her braids, making that L shape with her thumb and forefinger on her forehead and laughing at him. Loser.

  He lifted the phone and said, ‘I’ll meet you.’

  ‘Where.’

  There were the other tatters blowing at the edge of his consciousness, where the light ebbed to twilight. Ragged flags blowing in the wind. Shakiel in handcuffs. The cops so calm, so organized. Steve shaking hands in the back of the car.

  He’d thought it was Jarral who’d given Shakiel up. But it wasn’t. Of course not. There was only one person apart from Shaks he’d told about being there when Spencer got stabbed: Steve. That’s why Kingfisher thought he was a snitch. Steve had told the cops and the cops had tried to arrest Kingfisher.

  ‘You meet me with my sis. You let her go. I’ll get in your car.’

  He had a place to go. A thing he needed to do. A couple of things he needed to do.

  Angel picked up the police radio. ‘Perseus from Metro Whisky Four.’

  There was no reply. Both stops had been made and the targets detained. The dedicated channel had been stood down.

  Lizzie began to speak, but Angel put his hand up to stop her. ‘Let me call Kieran first.’

  She waited, thinking about that boy on the bike. It had been Ryan, she was sure. Worryingly, she hadn’t had to convince Angel of that either. She tried to reassure herself. What kind of a danger was Ryan anyway? Just a boy on a bike. It was nothing. Her own phone was ringing. She glanced at the screen: the nursery again. But Angel had already given up on Kieran answering the phone and was talking to her.

  ‘Are you qualified for blue lights?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, I’ll drive.’

  She would call the nursery while he drove. He wouldn’t like it. What else could she do?

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the flat. We’re going to warn Steve. Shakiel had a firearm. Who’s to say Ryan hasn’t got one too?’

  48

  Sarah leant against the wall of the car hire company and flicked her Zippo lighter. She said, ‘It’s like I’ve taken cocaine.’

  ‘How would you know what that’s like?’

  ‘Maybe I’ve got a past.’

  ‘Have you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not really. Anyway, I’m so tired I can’t feel my face. Isn’t there a song about that?’

  Lee said, ‘Probably not a good idea to smoke, then.’

  ‘Just be ready to catch me.’

  ‘Great.’

  Sarah closed her eyes.

  Four SUV hire cars had passed the ANPR camera before and after Spencer’s murder. Of these, only one had a rental office that was less than ten minutes by foot from Ki
ng’s flat.

  Sarah had driven to the office straight from Loretta’s. It was, she felt it in her bones, a dead cert. King had hired a car for Spencer’s murder. Then, after the attempted arrest, he’d had to wait until 8 a.m. to hire another car from the same place.

  It should have been easy. A girl had been kidnapped. The inquiries were urgent. But the woman behind the counter – red nails, heavy foundation, bleached hair dry as straw – absolutely had to have a data protection form before she could share …

  Share! In her exhaustion, Sarah railed at the preposterous word. … before she could share information.

  Sarah had pictured herself reaching across the counter and grabbing the woman by the collar of her polyester shirt and shaking her. Instead, she had showed her warrant card and tried to balance courtesy with urgency whilst somehow not betraying that her face was numb with tiredness as she tripped off the key words that usually did the trick.

  Detective inspector.

  Homicide.

  My colleague will bring the form. In the meantime …

  But the woman pursed her lips and shook her head.

  ‘Sorry.’

  No reassurances could convince her. She absolutely had to have the form. And so Sarah had waited, thinking of Tia and trying not to panic, and Lee had both printed the form and done the hour-long drive on blue lights in a little over twenty minutes. Impressive.

  While the woman scrolled through the bookings, Lee muttered quietly to Sarah.

  ‘Got flashed by a speed camera on the way. Sixty in a thirty. For a form! Going to be fun writing that up.’

  ‘What could I do? Put her in cuffs?’

  The woman coughed and smiled with the ever-so-slightly offended eyes of the hollow people who just don’t get it.

  ‘This is him. Down on the form as twenty years old. My colleague took the booking.’

  ‘Did you make a copy of the driving licence?’

  The woman turned the monitor round and Sarah leant into the screen. The photo was small, indistinct. The man’s jacket collar was pulled up, covering any tattoo that might be there. And he’d given a false name. Still, no mistaking him: Jermaine King. Kingfisher.

  The car he’d hired this morning at 08:03 hours was a silver Audi saloon.

  Sarah rang the office to run the reg through the ANPR. Lee checked through the CCTV to capture the moment that King signed himself off as Ian Hill on the booking form.

  Sarah called Tommy to prioritize identifying Ryan’s new phone. ‘King will need to ring him.’

  ‘I’m already on it. Working from the sister’s number. Hopefully she’ll have sent him a text or something. I’m waiting for the applications to come back.’

  ‘Bingo,’ Lee said, approaching her with a pile of papers. ‘I’ve got the car King hired the night he murdered Spencer, too. I was bang on with the guess from the CCTV. It’s a black BMW X1.’

  And so they stood side by side on the street waiting for the office to ring back with the ANPR results. And Sarah, hoping for good news, closed her eyes. The hand that held the cigarette dropped to her side and she passed into the surface of sleep.

  Lee’s voice pulled her back.

  ‘No hits on the ANPR.’

  With a gulp of air, she swam to the surface of consciousness and opened her eyes. ‘OK, so either they’ve changed plates or the car must be near here. We have to send officers out to look for it.’

  ‘On foot?’

  He sounded incredulous at the suggestion. She was trying to think how to do it.

  ‘Or in vehicles. Unless we’ve identified somewhere King could hide a car.’

  ‘Christ, Sarah.’

  ‘She’s in the boot. That’s why they rented a saloon. If they’ve taped her mouth, she may suffocate.’ She’d worked it out now. ‘We’ll draw up a grid to the nearest ANPR cameras and task out the streets. We’ll do them all.’

  ‘You’re serious.’

  ‘Of course I’m serious.’

  49

  It wasn’t far to Steve’s flat, and Ryan had caught a lucky break. God knows he was owed one. When he turned into Farrens Lane he saw Steve crossing the road ahead of him, pulling the keys from his pocket. Ryan said, ‘Hi, Steve,’ and Steve turned and said, ‘My man.’

  Hard to believe even now that he was a snake.

  Steve smiled and said, ‘What’s happening?’

  There was a silence. Ryan folded his arms across his chest. Something passed behind Steve’s eyes. He said, ‘You got a phone for me?’

  Ryan gave the slightest shake of his head.

  Steve frowned as if momentarily confused but then turned and began to unlock the door. ‘Well, I’m sorry but I’ve got stuff to do right now.’

  Ryan slipped the machine out from his waistband and tucked it close into his body. ‘Can I come up anyway, mate?’

  Mate: that had always been Steve’s word, not his. Maybe it was that that made Steve glance back. Now he saw the gun and his face registered not only fear but also a flicker of calculation that confirmed all of Ryan’s suspicions. The fucking snitch! The recognition of the betrayal was a sudden splash of pain, like a ripple of the pain of Spence dying, or the thought of his mum standing silent on the walkway worrying. He had an impulse to shoot Steve there and then. But what would happen to Tia if he did that?

  ‘Upstairs.’

  He stepped inside behind Steve. The stairs were steep as they always were. The flat was like it always was. Too hot. Same shabby car seat. The sink full of dirty plates.

  Steve had made him sandwiches and given him curry. He’d liked him. Suddenly Ryan wanted to laugh.

  Only kidding, bruv. Who gives a fuck?

  He wanted none of this to be true. But it was true, and the gun burnt in his hand and his grip tightened. It was true about Spencer and it was true about his sister, and that was Steve’s fault. And it was his own fault too. He’d been a fool. He should have known not to trust anyone.

  Steve said, ‘I’m gonna roll a cigarette, OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You want one?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It would be tiring to stand with the gun, so Ryan sat at the little table in one of the rickety wooden chairs. He gestured towards the car seat on the floor.

  ‘Sit there.’

  That was the right way round. He should never have sat in the car seat. It was better this way. Now he was in control. He rested the gun on the table but he kept his hand near it. Steve sat where he was told and rolled a cigarette. Got to admire him: his hands didn’t shake. When he finished, he said, ‘I’m gonna bring this over to you. Is the safety on? Don’t want to get shot by accident.’

  ‘If I shoot you, it won’t be by accident.’

  ‘You want me to light it for you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ryan picked up the gun and pointed it at Steve. Avoiding the barrel, Steve leant to the side and lit Ryan’s cigarette. Then he sat back down and started rolling the second cigarette. He said, ‘Do you know much about guns?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Well, just in case, I want you to know that they go off real easy. I’m not going to try to rush you with that thing. I want you to know that.’

  ‘Think I’m a joke, innit?’

  Steve glanced at him. ‘I’m just scared, Ryan. Scared you’re going to kill me.’

  Ryan’s mouth tightened. Steve took a quick drag of his roll-up. ‘You want to tell me what’s happening?’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘I already told you too much.’

  ‘What are we doing now?’

  ‘We’re waiting.’

  ‘Waiting?’

  ‘I’ve organized to meet someone.’

  50

  The custody suite the Met had opened solely for the use of Perseus prisoners was in a station that had been mothballed prior to sale. When he’d been told its location, a smile had come to Kieran’s lips because it was Atcham Green, his first ever nick, and the one he had later taken Shakiel to on suspicion
of the murder of Daniel Harris. As they approached, the neighbourhood unsettled him. Had even the colours been different then? The cars, certainly. And the pubs too. The Crown: then beer-soaked carpets, now with a chalk blackboard outside offering pan-fried scallops. The high street had the same nineteenth-century brick elevation but the shop frontage had been occupied by the aliens who had seized control of the twenty-first century. A juice bar. A poncey bathroom shop. A vegetable shop called Pomegranate. What had become of the shitty bedsits above the shops with their bar heaters giving off a smell of imminent combustion? Did any remain or were they all now stylish studio flats with integrated appliances?

  The station’s blue lamp was unlit and the heavy dark double doors were marked with a sign. This is no longer an operational police station. For urgent enquiries … Kieran glanced at Shakiel but his face was a perfect blank.

  They turned down the driveway towards the yard, and the past surfaced in fragments. Graffiti in the men’s toilet: Barry Manilow wanked in here, and a pencil line drawn behind the urinals. If you can piss this high the London Fire Brigade needs you. In the men’s locker room the smell of hastily ironed shirts. The fluttering of a blackbird with a broken wing in a box with pencil holes in the lid that someone had brought in when – just six weeks of service under his belt – Kieran had been posted to the dreaded front counter.

  The AFO in the front passenger seat got out of the BMW and pulled the heavy wooden gates open. The large yard was empty except for a couple of marked patrol cars that had presumably brought the Romanian prisoners. Weeds were pushing up through the cracked tarmac and out of the building’s crumbling pointing. Once there had been stables. Cold mornings the horses’ breath had steamed the air and, up in the canteen, Kieran imagined the ghosts of the Mounted Branch sitting in their so-smart jodhpurs making it clear that no one else was welcome at their table. Not then, not now, not ever. Even in police heaven they’d insist on their own table.

  As Kieran took Shakiel out of the car and walked him towards the cage, his first arrest came to him as if his shirt collar was still cutting into his neck – a shoplifter who had picked a dog-end from the ground and smoked it waiting to go in. There had been a crowd of officers and prisoners talking shit and waiting their turn. But no queue today. He passed straight through to the custody suite. A nick should not be like this. It should be full of vehicles jostling for space and officers smoking and going out on warrants.