The Aden Vanner Novels

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘Not in.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Away.’

  Young Young pressed a hand against the chain. ‘Open the door.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Open the fuckin’ door.’ He kicked at it and James jumped back.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay’

  Inside, Young Young stalked into the living room as if he expected to find Eilish hiding from him. She was not there. He looked round at James and showed him the gaps in his teeth. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I told you,’ James’s voice was calm, ‘she’s gone away.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since this morning.’

  Young Young glanced at the stairs.

  ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘When’s she coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She out with Stepper-Nap?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  ‘You’re a liar.’ Young Young took a pace towards him. James backed up against the door. ‘She ain’t out with him. Where is she?’ He grasped a handful of James’s T-shirt. ‘It’s eleven o’clock on a Wednesday, man. Don’t dis’ me. Where the fuck is she?’

  James prised himself out of his grip. ‘She’s gone home for a few days.’

  ‘Home?’ Young Young looked about himself. ‘This is home ain’t it.’

  ‘Ireland. She’s gone home to Ireland.’

  Young Young tasted the spittle on his lip. ‘Yeah? That figures don’t it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘When she gets back you tell her Young Young’s looking for her.’

  Eilish sat in the alcove with the door shut. The gas light burned above her head and the last few drinkers were noisy out in the bar. She glanced at her watch. Ten to eleven. He was late, very late. The Crown in Belfast city centre, years since she had been here. She fingered the tattoo on her thigh through her jeans and sipped white froth from the Guinness before her on the table. Not as white as Dublin but better than the awful brown you got in London. She never drank Guinness in London.

  She lit a cigarette, glanced at her watch once more and waited. He wasn’t coming, the unreliable sod. And then the door clicked and a man stepped inside and sat down opposite her. He placed his pint on the table and looked her up and down.

  ‘Hello, Cahal,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Eilish.’

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Got held up so I did.’ He smoothed a black-nailed hand through stringy hair and took a cigarette tin from his pocket. His face was as lean and pinched as she remembered. His eyes were greyer and hollows crawled beneath them. He must be fifty now, she thought, wearing the same faded Levi’s and leather waistcoat he always had before.

  ‘Long time since I saw you, Eilish. You were no more than a girl.’ He sat back then. ‘Christ, you’re wearing well. What’re ye — thirty?’

  She nodded. ‘You’ve not changed yourself.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh I have that. Not so much hair these days.’ He drank his beer leaving a film of white on his upper lip. Voices lifted from the other side of the booth.

  ‘Closing time,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve a while yet. How’s your mother, Eilish?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Still in the South is she?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Eilish pressed her cigarette to the ashtray and leaned forward. She watched him watching the thrust of her breasts. ‘Jimmy Carter sends his best, Cahal.’

  ‘Does he now?’

  ‘He does.’

  He narrowed his eyes and licked the paper on the cigarette he was rolling. ‘Something I can do for ye, Eilish?’

  Vanner and Jimmy Crack sat in the briefing room in Harlesden. It was chilly, the inadequate heating barely raising a murmur from the radiators. Outside, night strangled the city. Vanner glanced at his watch. Two thirty in the morning.

  Ralph Elsdon was taking the briefing. Tim Carver from Immigration sat in the chair next to him in jeans, Timberland boots and a lumberjack coat like a Drug Squad copper. Elsdon had penned a map in the black marker pen on the revolving SASCO board.

  ‘House is on Radcliffe Avenue,’ he was saying. ‘Ground-floor flat on the right as you’re looking from the street.’ He tapped the box he had marked with the closed end of the pen and glanced at Carver. ‘Two illegals, Tim?’

  Carver nodded. ‘IC3. Jamaican. Been here a week already. Links with the Governor General massive that run out of Tottenham.’ He stood up and looked at Jimmy Crack.

  ‘Stepper-Nap, who runs the Brit-Boy posse over here lets the Jamaicans use Carmel’s gaff to keep the peace between himself and Tottenham.’ He took a bundle of photographs from the plastic wallet on the desk and passed them back. Vanner took two from a TSG officer sitting in front of him. The two men in the photos were young, early twenties, one with shortish dreadlocks and the other with his hair cut very close, a leather peakless cap on his head.

  ‘DI Vanner and DC McKay are here from the Drug Squad,’ Carver went on. ‘This address is flagged to them.’

  ‘AIU,’ Jimmy corrected him. ‘I’m from the AIU, Tim.’

  Carver coloured and looked back at him, unsmiling. ‘AIU,’ he repeated. ‘You want to give your bit now?’

  Jimmy stood up. ‘Stepper-Nap is the Daddy of the posse Tim told you about. He keeps his favours topped up with the Tottenham team. Right now there’s bad blood between them. His body armour smacked one of theirs in Jimmy Carter’s snooker hall off Kilburn High Road. I imagine Carmel’s busy so soon because no-one wants a war.’ He looked again at Carver. ‘I’ve been working my end of the deal for eighteen months and I reckon we’re looking at the biggest crack team in London.’ He paused then. ‘So I don’t want anyone sassing with Carmel about the Brit-Boys. As far as she’s concerned this is your average immigration spin.’ He scanned their faces, then he looked at Elsdon. ‘When’s she’s back here DI Vanner and me want a word.’ He looked again at Carver who pushed out his lips and said nothing.

  Elsdon took up his pen again. ‘We take up the forward position at the corner of Radcliffe and Leghorn. The TSG’ll jump off at the corner with Wrottesley. As far as we can gather from the Recce there’s no tension indicators other than the Sunrise Club. A black late-night drinker on Wrottesley. We’ve had a drive by and it’s quiet. We’ve no reason to believe that the illegals are armed.’ He glanced at the uniformed Territorial Support Group. ‘TSG’ll put the key in the door and we’ll need two at least round the back.’

  Jimmy Crack drove the car, following the TSG troop carrier. He glanced at the dulled neon sign of the black drinker as they passed it on Wrottesley Road. ‘I don’t trust Plug, Guv. And I trust Elsdon less. If there’s gear in the flat, which there might be, he’ll want the collar for that.’

  ‘I’ll talk to his Guv’nor, Jim.’

  Jimmy pulled over as the TSG van stopped at the jump off point at the junction with Radcliffe Road. Four in the morning now, the houses were dark and silent. Carmel’s place was three buildings down on the right. Officers climbed out of the troop carrier and the second van stopped in the road ahead of them. Plain-clothes PCs from Harlesden piled out and three of them went for the back of the houses. Vanner and Jimmy waited. Sitting in the dark with the heat blowing over his legs, Vanner thought about the grey of his father’s face. It made all of this irrelevant.

  Two TSG officers made their way up the path with the red battering ram between them. Vanner opened his door. He watched them. One good swing and they piled into the hall. He heard a second crash and then the sound of a woman screaming. He lit a cigarette, glanced at Jimmy and tossed away the match. ‘Give them a minute to sort it,’ he said.

  The flat was compact, made even more so by the TSG and the struggling Jamaicans they pulled from the second bedroom. Carmel stood in the hall in her nightdress, hugging herself with her arms. Elsdon moved past Jimmy Crack. ‘Hiding under the bed,’ he muttered.

  Jimmy grabbed his arm. ‘I want Carmel in the interview room at the
nick.’

  ‘After we charge her.’

  Vanner wagged his head. ‘Before,’ he said quietly.

  Just then the illegal with the dreadlocks broke free of the TSG officer trying to cuff him. Vanner stepped into his path and crashed him against the door. The man cried out, head bouncing hard off the wall. He crumpled at Vanner’s feet.

  ‘Put your hands behind your back,’ Vanner spoke through his teeth. The man groaned, and slowly lifted his hands to the small of his back. Vanner knelt on his neck. ‘Interlock your fingers.’ He placed one of his hands over the locked fingers and gripped. The TSG officer slipped plastic handcuffs over his wrists.

  They moved back into the front room. Carver was standing with Carmel. ‘Get dressed,’ he told her. Vanner looked at her, naked under the nightdress, the points of her breasts sharp against the flimsy material. Elsdon came in then with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He tossed them to her. The WPC in uniform came over, took her arm and ushered her to the TV set, then stood in front of her as she pulled the jeans up under the nightdress.

  In the interview room Vanner handed Carmel a Marlboro and lit it for her. He watched her eyes, weary yet defiant. She sat with her arms across her chest and stared between him and Jimmy Crack as if she did not see either of them. The WPC stood by the door.

  ‘D’you want tea or anything, Carmel?’ Jimmy asked her.

  She did not reply, just continued to stare across the space between her and the magnolia paint on the wall.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Jimmy sat back and looked at her. ‘This is informal, Carmel. Nobody’s charged you with anything yet.’

  Somebody knocked on the door and the WPC opened it then turned to Vanner. He scraped back his chair and went out into the corridor. One of the plain-clothes PCs held up an evidence bag containing three toothlike rocks of crack wrapped in clingfilm.

  ‘Where’d you find it?’

  ‘Under the mattress in the spare room.’

  ‘Where the illegals were sleeping?’

  The PC nodded. Vanner made a face and pocketed the bag. ‘I’ll bring it back in a while.’

  Jimmy had her talking when he went back inside. ‘Immigration’ll charge you, Carmel. You harbour illegal immigrants for Stepper-Nap,’ he stated quietly. ‘We know them, Carmel. They end up running with the Tottenham posse.’

  ‘Don’t know anything about that, man. Those two is just friends. They’re only staying one night.’

  Vanner laughed then. ‘What—like Holden Biggs?’

  Carmel made a face and sucked on the cigarette.

  ‘Young Young gave him quite a kicking,’ Vanner went on. ‘Hardman is he, Young Young?’

  ‘He’d eat you for breakfast.’

  Vanner smiled. ‘And what about Stepper—would he eat me too?’

  She stubbed out the cigarette.

  ‘How often does Stepper sleep over, Carmel?’

  ‘Ain’t none of your business.’

  ‘Once a week. Twice?’

  ‘I ain’t talking to you. Those two is just two guys I met who needed a place to crash.’

  Jimmy lifted one eyebrow. ‘Just now they were your friends.’

  ‘I make friends easy.’

  ‘So we’ve heard,’ Vanner said.

  He shook his head and brought the evidence bag out of his pocket and laid it casually on the table. ‘You talk a lot of shit, Carmel.’

  Carmel stared at the bag.

  ‘Three rocks. Found in your flat.’

  ‘It ain’t nothing to do with me.’

  ‘In your flat, Carmel.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t do that shit. It’s not mine. Must be those other two.’

  ‘In your flat, Carmel. That makes it your possession.’

  She swore under her breath.

  ‘Gets worse doesn’t it,’ Vanner said. ‘Now you’re looking at a possession charge as well as illegal harbouring. You’re in trouble, girl.’

  She looked between them again, lips pressed into her face. ‘Maybe you ought to talk to us.’ Vanner fingered the bag. ‘Then maybe we can talk about this.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘We think you do.’

  Jimmy sighed then and drummed his fingernails on the table. ‘Ever been in a women’s prison, Carmel? Ever been to Holloway?’ He glanced at Vanner. ‘They say it’s much worse than a men’s prison. Women can be so much crueller.’ He sat forward again and looked at the crack. ‘All kinds of weird women inside. Old ones, thin ones, fat ones. Child killers. Man killers. Gay killers. They love the new girl on the block, especially when she’s black and pretty like you.’

  Carmel shook her head. For a second her lip trembled and then stilled again. Jimmy looked at Vanner and they got up.

  ‘Well don’t say we didn’t try, Carmel,’ he said. They went to the door and the WPC moved toward the table.

  ‘Wait.’ Carmel looked up at them. ‘I don’t want to go down.’

  Vanner sat down slowly. ‘You want to talk, Carmel?’

  She hunched up her knees and gripped them with her arms. ‘I don’t know much.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t get told nothing.’

  ‘The team, Carmel. Tell us about the team. Where do they wash the crack?’ Jimmy leaned a fist on the table.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m just Stepper’s Friday girl. I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘Stepper brings in coke from Jamaica right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, Carmel.’

  ‘Maybe. I said I don’t know.’

  ‘Course you do.’

  ‘He don’t tell me nothing.’

  ‘What about Tottenham?’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about Tottenham.’

  Vanner sat back then and lit a cigarette. ‘So what do you know, Carmel? How come Young Young only took a beating from Jimmy Carter?’

  She shifted her shoulders, eyes fixed on the floor.

  ‘Jimmy Carter doesn’t just hurt people, Carmel. He kills them.’

  ‘I don’t know him. You ask Eilish. She knows Jimmy Carter.’

  ‘Eilish?’

  ‘Eilish McCauley. White bitch with long red hair.’

  Ryan drove with Webb to see the pathologist. Webb had worked on the belfry and come away with a footprint. The sole was the same size as the one they had got from the ESLA lifts. Ryan smoked a cigarette as he drove. ‘You got any ideas, Webby?’ Webb lifted his shoulders.

  Ryan smiled to himself. ‘That’s what I like best about SO13,’ he said. ‘So free with their information.’

  ‘You’re doing it again, Sid.’

  ‘Am I. And there’s me thinking about teamwork.’

  ‘We’re on the same side. What you need to know—we tell you.’

  ‘You talked to the blokes in the Gun Room.’

  Webb looked sideways at him. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They tell you anything?’

  ‘Nothing they haven’t already told you.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘The killings connected then?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  Ryan drove on. ‘You told me once that PIRA don’t let anyone use the same gun more than once.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So this is a different shootist then?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Ryan exhaled smoke at the windscreen. Webb waved it out of his face and dropped the window still further. ‘Is there anywhere you don’t smoke?’

  ‘Lifts.’ Ryan said after a moment. ‘Them and the Guv’nor’s car.’

  They parked the car and went into the mortuary. Ryan showed his warrant and they went down to the pathologist’s office. ‘How many cells are you looking at with women in them?’

  Webb shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Slips, okay. PIRA don’t have any close-quarter shootists who’re women.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘We know.’

  Ryan laid a ha
nd on the pathologist’s door. ‘You want to know what I think?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This has got nothing to do with PIRA.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Jessica Turner had no connection whatever with Northern Ireland. They kill political targets. They don’t shoot women in their homes.’ He looked at him then. ‘So either one of their guns went walkabout or they got the wrong person.’

  Webb grinned at him then. ‘You ever thought about a transfer, Slippery?’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘I’m a street man, Webby. Crash bang wallop sort of copper. Find them, watch them, then bosh bosh bosh — nick them. Your firm—I couldn’t stand the waiting.’

  The pathologist was flicking through papers on his desk when they went in. Ryan closed the door. ‘This is DS Webb,’ he said. ‘SO13.’

  ‘Ah.’ The doctor stood up. ‘Heard you were involved. Tell me, have you got anyone for the Docklands yet?’

  ‘Which bomb?’

  ‘Either. Both.’

  Webb just smiled at him.

  The pathologist sat down again. ‘Crime scene manager?’

  Webb nodded.

  ‘Accounts manager for our little deal,’ Ryan said.

  Webb stroked his moustache. ‘I want to know about the shooting,’ he said. ‘The body was already on the floor?’

  The pathologist pushed his hair from where it fell across his forehead. ‘Not prostrate. Hands and knees.’

  ‘Pushed over.’

  ‘There’s a contusion on her shoulder which indicates some contact. Yes, a push maybe.’

  ‘And the shots hit where?’

  ‘Side of the head,’ he touched his jaw. ‘Under here beneath the left ear. The others were in the neck and the top of the skull here.’ He motioned above his eye. ‘That one deflected off.’

  Webb nodded. ‘Angle of entry — straight arm? Bent arm?’

  ‘Powder burns. Two feet away max. Straight arm. Forty-five degrees.’

  ‘The killer standing?’

  ‘Over her, yes.’

  ‘Leaning on the door?’

  ‘Possible. Probably two-handed.’

  ‘Gun pointing down.’

  The pathologist nodded and took a selection of photographs taken at the scene and passed them over. Then he took some more from the mortuary slab and passed them across as well. Webb had seen the first batch in the incident room. He flicked through them again. ‘I think the killer was leaning on the door. Not enough room otherwise. Stability. It would make sense.’ He looked up again. ‘How tall?’