by Jo Bannister
‘A marked man?’ Her voice rose delicately on the question mark.
Shapiro smiled wearily. ‘Definitely. A woman would stand out like a sore thumb in that sort of setup. I’m sure there’s nothing Donovan could do that you couldn’t, but he’s twice as likely to be accepted by the gang and four times as likely to be trusted with the sort of information we need. I’m sure you’d make a splendid ram-raider, Liz, but be realistic: your only way in would be as a gangster’s moll and nobody’d talk times and routes in front of you.’
‘You be realistic, Frank,’ she retorted, amused, ‘I’m fifteen years too old to be a gangster’s moll! I take your point; but I wouldn’t want Donovan doing it, not with last night still so fresh in his mind. You need a steady hand for undercover work: he needs time to get his nerve back. What about Scobie?’
Shapiro shook his head. ‘You also need two braincells to rub together. How about Morgan?’
‘Maybe. Oh, what’s the point discussing it?’ she said then impatiently. ‘We don’t know that the man in the green hat was their look-out, let alone where to find him or how to infiltrate a fifth columnist. Forget I asked; I just can’t think what else to do.’
‘If it was easy,’ Shapiro said gently, ‘they’d have got these people in Harrogate, Barnsley, Mansfield, Nottingham or Leamington. We may have to face the possibility that they’re too bloody clever for us too.’
Liz was a pragmatist: she knew you couldn’t win them all. She could live with that. What galled her was being unable to think up a plan of campaign. She looked away in irritation; when she looked back Shapiro had his eyes closed. ‘Frank, you look like death warmed up. Get a few hours’sleep. I’ll hold the fort.’
Shapiro opened his eyes and sniffed. ‘The reason that senior posts are reserved for older personnel, Inspector, is that having your own office makes it easier to sleep on the job. A couple of hours’catching up on my paperwork and I’ll be a new man.’
It was probably a joke, but anyway the chance didn’t arise. As Liz was leaving the results on the fingerprints came through. The older of the two men downstairs was Edward Parker, sometime of Leeds; the younger was Martin Ginley of Motherwell; the dead man was Harry Black from Sunderland. Black and Parker had both done time for armed robbery, Ginley had convictions for theft and what used to be called joy-riding until it was noticed how often it led to funerals.
Shapiro scowled. ‘Is there nothing left worth nicking in the north any more, that all their blaggers have to come down here?’
He thought that being confronted with their own records might encourage them to open up. But he learned nothing that Donovan hadn’t already told him: what happened, who gave the orders, who had the weapons. On the face of it that might have been all there was to tell. But Shapiro knew men, particularly criminals; he knew when he was being lied to, and he knew when he was being told less than the truth. These two were holding something back; and he couldn’t think what or why.
Until he was back in his own office, chewing his lip pensively, when Scobie knocked and came in with his arms full of papers and a puzzled expression gathered round his rugby-player’s nose. ‘Sir?’
‘Constable?’
‘The hostage, sir. The girl DS Donovan was worried about, who nearly got her throat cut.’
‘What about her?’
‘I can’t find her, sir.’
Shapiro regarded him with more resignation than surprise. ‘You mean you’ve lost her statement?’
‘No, sir. She doesn’t seem to have made a statement. I didn’t take it, nor did Wilson or Morgan. Everyone on the train saw her but nobody remembers seeing her after they left the train. We don’t even have a name and address for her.’ Scobie watched the superintendent warily, waiting for the explosion.
Instead, slowly, Shapiro began to smile. ‘The cunning so-and-sos! We all know that a well-prepared criminal is likely to be a successful criminal, but fancy being well enough prepared to bring your own hostage!’
DC Scobie was very good at running after escaping crooks, at bringing them down with a well-timed tackle and bringing tears to their eyes if they attempted to resist arrest. He wasn’t as quick on the uptake. ‘Sir?’
Shapiro spelled it out. ‘She was one of them, Scobie. There weren’t three of them, there were four. It was her job to be young, pretty and terrified, and not to struggle or try to escape the way a real hostage might. Black would need all his wits to handle a real hostage, but an accomplice would co-operate. She probably meant to go along when they left the train. But they couldn’t take her up the shaft, not realistically; anyway there was no need. As we evacuated the train she slipped away in the dark and we didn’t even miss her till now.’ He chuckled. ‘No wonder the lads downstairs didn’t want to talk!’
Unsure what the joke was, Scobie didn’t think he’d risk laughing too. ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’
‘Not a lot you can do, constable, is there? When Sergeant Donovan gets back you could get a full description from him. We’ll circulate it, we might get lucky, but it’s my guess we’ll have to put her down as the one that got away. I doubt we’ll see hide or hair of her again.’
Chapter Seven
They stared bellicosely at one another, nose to nose through the wire mesh.
One of them was mostly black with grey brindling on the nose, the broad chest and front legs. The skull was massive and rounded, ragged ears set low on each side. The baleful eyes were oddly triangular, with a prick of reddish light in each. The bolster of muscle that was the neck swelled into the barrel chest without any perceptible join, then narrowed to powerful loins and long, strong back legs. A ratty tail curved up like a scimitar. The grizzled lips fluttered like curtains over yellow tusks and from deep in the muscular throat came a low growl like distant thunder.
The other one said in an Irish accent, ‘What do you call him?’
The constable at the kennels was deeply uneasy. He knew he was being pushed into doing something improper, and DS Donovan offering to take full responsibility wouldn’t save him if there was trouble. If the dog got loose. If someone reported it. If, God forbid, it bit someone.
Sergeant Barraclough would have had none of it. But Barraclough was on his holidays and Constable Sutton, deputizing for him, laboured under two handicaps. One was the matter of rank. The other was that he owed Donovan a favour for helping him break up a feeding frenzy once when he left a pen unlatched. Others might have helped had they been about at the time but not many would have kept quiet about it afterwards. Donovan never said a word. When asked about the marks on his arms he said, dead-pan, ‘Lovebites.’
‘He’s a stray,’ explained Sutton, ‘he’s going to be put down. He doesn’t have a name.’
‘Brian Boru,’ said Donovan with satisfaction.
Sutton unearthed a collar that would fit him, a lead that looked as if it might hold him and a muzzle big enough to accommodate those startling jaws. ‘If anybody asks—’ Donovan began; but he didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Yes?’ the constable prompted anxiously.
Donovan thought for a moment longer. ‘Lie,’ he said then.
He took the dog to a lock-up behind Brick Lane. Then he fetched Billy Dunne out of the public bar of The Fen Tiger. ‘Got something to show you.’
When Billy saw Brian Boru the scant natural colour – nocturnal for the most part, the little man didn’t get a lot of sun on his skin – vanished from his tarnished cheek. ‘Hell fire, Mr Donovan, what’s that for?’
‘What do you think? I want to match him.’
Billy was into a lot of things that weren’t strictly legal. He could always find a ton of bricks that were surplus to requirements, a keg of beer that fell off the back of a lorry, a reconditioned video that the insurers had understood was past repair. He probably broke a law every day of the week, but as long as he kept his head down and his depredations minor he got away with most of them: police time could usually be spent more profitably than trying to trace Bill
y Dunne’s breeze-blocks. It was more practical to use him than to charge him.
The little man backed the length of the lock-up as if the dog hadn’t been chained. ‘I don’t know about that, Mr Donovan, I really don’t.’
‘Yes you do, Billy,’ Donovan said patiently. ‘There’s dog-fighting going on round here and you know about it. And I want to know where to take him.’
‘It’s not like that, Mr Donovan,’ pleaded Billy. ‘It’s like – a secret society, they don’t admit just anyone. They get nasty if they think people are spying on them.’
‘What do you think he’s for,’ snorted Donovan, indicating the dog, ‘company? He’s my passport. He’s not neutered, he’s not registered, if he’s got a tattoo it’s a skull and crossbones on his biceps. He’s an illegal pit-bull and he makes me into a sporting man. They’ll be happy to see me. Anyway, what’s it to you? I’m not asking you to take me, just tell me where they are.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Billy whined again. ‘They don’t advertise. They don’t put a notice in the Courier.’
Donovan was running out of patience, which was not a thing he had in endless supply. ‘If they did I wouldn’t be wasting my time with you. If they did, I wouldn’t have to remind you there’s only a bit of a padlock holding the dog, I’ve got the key, and I don’t know when he last had a square meal.’
Billy thought it was probably a joke. With any other officer of the law he’d have been sure; with Donovan he couldn’t quite be. And he didn’t have to risk it. ‘OK! OK, Mr Donovan, I’ll tell you what I can. Not where they fight – I really don’t know that. But I know where they exercise them. You can’t give them a run in the park like a spaniel so they take them to the woods beside the river. You know the place? – there’s a little car-park.’ Donovan knew. ‘I don’t know if they’re there every night, but I reckon if you went about eleven, with the dog, you’d likely meet someone could tell you what you want to know.’
After lunch Liz was at the Magistrate’s Court giving evidence in a case of possessing cannabis resin. It wasn’t a major drugs bust, eighteen-year-old Peter Cole had enough joints for himself and a few friends, and he’d been selling them on that basis for about what he paid for them. It wasn’t an important matter at all, except in one respect. Peter Cole senior thought he could buy his son’s acquittal.
He’d hired himself the smartest barrister in Castlemere, he’d lined up experts to testify to the defendant’s intellectual and scholastic accomplishments, and he’d persuaded one of the group of friends to say that he’d bought the joints and was offering them to Cole. As a juvenile selling drugs to an adult the boy would get off more lightly than an adult convicted of selling to a juvenile.
The only obstacle to this convenient arrangement was that Liz had seen the exchange by the gates of Castle High when she’d been collecting her husband from school one afternoon. She saw who had the joints, who had the money, who ended up with what. Even if the subsequent deal suited both parties she was damned if she was going to watch one daft lad accept the lasting burden of another’s conviction for the sake of a new mountain bike.
‘Mr Fenton, I know what I saw,’ she said calmly, for about the fourth time. ‘I knew what I was seeing at the time, and nothing that the defendant, his father or anyone else has said since makes me doubt the evidence of my eyes. Peter was selling, the younger boy was buying.’
‘Then you’re saying that they’re lying,’ said Dan Fenton, the light of battle in his eyes – as if this were personal, as if he weren’t merely saying what he was paid to, as if he and the police witness hadn’t danced till the small hours at the Civic Ball last Christmas. ‘That the witnesses who’ve come here to give evidence before His Worship are telling lies!’
‘Yes, Mr Fenton,’ she said in barely restrained exasperation, as if he were an inattentive pupil who’d just that moment grasped what she was saying.
‘And can you suggest, Inspector Graham, why they should do such a thing?’
From the eminence of the witness box she looked down her nose at him. ‘I can conceive of a reason, Mr Fenton, yes. But as I have no evidence, perhaps I should limit my testimony to those things I have seen with my own eyes.’
The Magistrates, at least, found her account convincing. She was leaving the court-house with a satisfied smile when she heard a quick tread on the steps behind her and turned. It was Gail Fisher from the Castlemere Courier, absent without leave from the Press table. So it was a matter of some urgency. ‘I need a quick word – and for once it’s me that wants to go off the record.’
Liz smiled. Castlemere police enjoyed a useful relationship with the local paper and the two women had much in common. They didn’t agree on everything but rarely argued on important matters. ‘How can I help?’
‘I heard there was a rape in town last night.’
Caution dropped a veil in front of Liz’s face. She considered the implications before saying anything. Then: ‘Off the record? Yes. But we’re not ready to say anything official yet. I’ll call you as soon as we are.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Fisher. She was a few years younger than Liz, a dramatically attractive woman with a mass of curly dark hair and a liking for long dark gypsy skirts. Many reporters still working for provincial weeklies in their thirties have given up hope of getting anything better. But Gail Fisher had been to Fleet Street – Wapping, actually – didn’t like it and came back. The Courier was lucky to have her. ‘Really, I’m not wanting a story from you. I want to tell you one.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s not the first time. A friend of mine—’ She looked up with a wide-mouthed grin. ‘I know what that usually means, but honestly, it wasn’t me, it was a friend of mine. She was working late in her office about a week ago. The place should have been empty, but as she locked up someone jumped her in the corridor.’
Liz was staring at her. ‘Why don’t I know anything about this?’
Fisher shrugged. ‘Because that was how she wanted it. He had a scarf over his face, she couldn’t even make an intelligent guess at his age. Grey sweats, white trainers, that’s all she saw: she didn’t see how you could find him from that and she couldn’t have identified him if you did. She wasn’t prepared to go through the extra trauma of a medical examination, police questioning, maybe her identity coming out, when she couldn’t see how it would do any good. She picked herself up, went home, had a long bath and a stiff drink, and then she called me.’
‘You could have called me.’ Liz’s tone was of mild reproof; inside she was fighting anger.
‘No,’ said Fisher. ‘It was a matter of trust – I promised I wouldn’t.’
‘Then why are you telling me now? I can talk to her, but it’s too late to do anything useful.’
‘I don’t want you to talk to her. I’m not going to tell you her name or where she works except that it’s in the Mere Basin redevelopment. But if it’s happened before it’ll happen again. Once could be random, twice is a habit. I thought you needed to know that.’
‘I needed to know a week ago! I needed to know when there was a chance of finding him before another woman got jumped. It’s already too late for that.’
Fisher spread an apologetic hand. ‘I didn’t feel I had any choice. My friend had been raped once – forcing her to report it would be like raping her again.’
Liz nodded slowly, letting the anger go. ‘Is she all right?’
Fisher gave an unhappy shrug. ‘I don’t know. She’s on the pill, which is something to be grateful for. I want her to test for sexually transmitted diseases: she says she’ll go in a day or two but keeps not doing. She’s trying to pretend nothing happened; or rather, that what happened wasn’t so terrible after all. She says she’s had sex with men she didn’t know much better, and she’s had sex that hurt more. She says it doesn’t matter. She was back at work the next day, but she’s scared to death he’ll corner her again.’
‘Would she talk to me – like this, informally?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll ask.’
‘What’s she like? No,’ Liz added quickly, seeing Fisher about to shake her head, ‘I’m not trying to work out who she is, only if there’s something particular this man’s looking for. The victim last night was early forties, fair, well built, single, a successful businesswoman. Is your friend anything like that?’
The reporter’s eyes widened. ‘Inspector, my friend is exactly like that.’
Donovan borrowed a van, chained Brian Boru in the back. It was the only way he felt safe taking his eyes off the dog.
At eleven-fifteen that night the little car-park in the wood overlooking the water meadows of the River Arrow was not a hive of illicit activity. There were just two vehicles there. But that was two more than might have been expected, and neither of them was beating out the rhythm of the Lovers’Lane Rock. One was another van, the second a grey saloon with a small trailer attached.
With the dog on a long rope and a powerful torch in his other hand, Donovan followed the footpath into the trees. The utter darkness of the wood made the torch essential; otherwise he’d have brought a pick-axe handle.
They’d been wandering around for half an hour, wrapping the rope round trees and snarling at one another, and Donovan was about to head back and try another night when shadows moved at the edge of his sight and a man and a dog stepped on to the path in front of him.
A shudder of pure atavistic fear coursed through Donovan’s body, as if the devil and his familiar were abroad in the wood that night. He couldn’t tell how big the man was, only that he was solid with it; but the dog came halfway up his thigh, a swollen mass of bone and muscle under a coat that rippled in the torchlight. They stood immobile, blocking the path, while Donovan stared and Brian Boru drew himself up to his full impressive stature. The vibration of the challenge in his throat travelled the rope to Donovan’s hand. He flicked the torch upwards.