by Colin Garrow
Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on the desk, closing the space between us. 'Really? But Frank Armstrong was there when this photo was taken.'
He swallowed and looked again at the picture. 'But he's not...' He looked up, panic etched across his face. 'He's not...'
'Not in the photo? No.'
He glanced at Carol. 'But...'
My sidekick jumped in. 'How d'ye know he's not in the photo if you don't know what he looked like?'
'I...I just assumed.'
'Why was Frank there that day?' I leaned back and waited.
'Well, cos he...' He let out a long, weary sigh. 'Because he picked us up. From the Hexagon.'
'Ye'd had lunch together? You an Andersson?'
He nodded.
'So why did Frank hang around?'
'We'd been drinkin, hadn't we? Frank - Mr Armstrong - dropped me at home after.'
'And what about Andersson? Where'd he go afterwards?'
He shook his head. 'I couldn't say.'
Carol tapped my leg and mouthed 'Ahmed'. I nodded. 'And how well d'you know Mr Ahmed?'
For the second time, our fat friend visibly started. 'Ahmed? Not at all, not at all. Never met him.'
'Sure about that? Never been to his house on Nugent Crescent? You know, where they have the girls?'
His head swung from side to side, like a ball boy at Wimbledon. After a long pause, he said, 'I was never invited.' At that, his eyes closed and he clasped his hands together as if he were about to say a prayer.
'Anything else ye want to tell us?'
'No.' He rubbed his face, fat jowls wobbling like a fleshy jelly. Then, dropping his head, said, 'Will I have to make a statement?'
Carol sniggered, and I coughed loudly to cover it. 'Why would ye have to make a statement, Mr White?'
He looked at Carol, then at me. 'For your records?'
'We're not the police.'
He sat up straight. 'You're not?' His head jerked to the hatch. 'Mavis said ye's were from the police.'
Biting my lip to keep from laughing, I said, 'Mavis a bit deaf, is she?'
His mouth opened and closed. 'Well who the hell are ye, then?' His voice had risen considerably in tone and there was now more than a hint of hostility.
I guessed it was time to go. 'Just a couple of interested parties, Donny. Cheers for your time.'
As I made for the door, the little man stamped his feet. 'Now just hold on a fuckin minute...' But we were already in the hall and heading for safety.
'That was interesting,' said Carol as we pulled back into traffic.
'But again, we didn't learn much. This whole Andersson stroke Ahmed thing could just be about a group of blokes in each other's pockets. Backhanders and the like.'
'An women on the side as well?' Carol shook her head. 'Not exactly above board though, is it?'
'No, but it doesn't mean they've killed anyone.'
She turned and stared at me. 'Maybe not, but somebody's killing people and in case ye'd forgotten, they've had a couple of goes at killing us.'
She was right, but even so, it felt like we were constantly running into dead-ends. My head was stuffed with things that didn't make sense, and I didn't have a clue what to do next. When I said as much to Carol, she laughed.
'It's obvious.'
'Is it?'
'Aye. We know when the photo was taken, and we know Frank was definitely there, so we have to get back to the office and check the job sheets from that day.'
'Right.' I frowned. 'Why?'
She gave me one of her for-fuck's-sake sighs. 'So we can see where he went after they took the photo, of course.'
'Donny said Frank took him home.'
'An ye believe him?'
I parked at Dilys McKinley's place again and we pulled on a couple of woolly hats in a bid to hide our faces. Keeping to the back streets, we got to the taxi office just after one o'clock. I'd replied to Fat Barry's text earlier to tell him we wouldn't be in, so I wasn't sure what sort of reception we'd get turning up out of the blue.
The girl on the desk was a stranger and there was no sign of Ken or any of the other drivers.
'Hi there,' she said cheerily, swinging round in her chair. 'Ye's wantin a taxi?'
'Who are you?' Carol glared at her and slid behind the counter to look at the old job sheets.
The young woman glanced at me. 'I'm Chrissy. Just started.'
'Jumping into me bloody grave, more like.' Carol rifled through the papers and passed a bundle to me.
'Ken's not in, is he?' I adopted a neutral tone, in an effort to combat Carol's irritation.
'Erm...' She fidgeted with the tassels on her cardigan as she watched Carol trash the place. 'He's gone home. Wasn't feeling well.' She looked up at me. 'His son died, ye know?' She made a mournful face, in case we didn't understand.
'Aye, I know.' I wandered over to Ken's office but it was locked.
A voice crackled over the radio. 'Hey pet, d'ye knaa where this Robson bloke lives? I canna find the hoose.'
Chrissy picked up the current job sheet and peered at it. 'She clicked the mic. 'The man just said it was Hopton Heath lane off Hopton Heath Road. So...' She bit her lip.
'C'mere.' Carol grabbed the mic. 'That you, Jimmy? It's a regular customer. The flat's not actually on Hopton Heath Lane - it's round the back on the corner of Naseby Road. Ye'll see a metal staircase going up to it.'
The voice crackled back, 'Cheers Carol, ye're a star. Hey, ye back at work?'
Carol gave the mic back to Chrissy. 'No, I'm bloody not.' She held up a bundle of papers. 'Cops must've brought back the sheets for Friday and Saturday. Worth a look, eh?'
I nodded. 'Maybe.'
In the car, we split the pile into two and started going through them. I had the ones for the days leading up to when the photograph had been taken, so ran through the pickups Frank had done. I couldn't see anything unusual about any of them - just the same old rank-to-Tesco's, Tesco-to-North-Shields, Shields-to-town, rank-to-Landsdowne, rank-to-Inkerman and so on.
On the day of the photo, Frank had cleared in town and picked up from the Hexagon at 1:35 pm. He'd called clear at Marston Road ten minutes later. Marston Road was right next to the building site where Andersson's new development was situated. Frank hadn't called in his next pickup until half an hour later, when he did Marston-to-Tudor-Grange. I wondered if Councillor Donny lived near my sister.
'Hey,' Carol said. 'Look at this.' She pointed to a job Frank had called in on the night he died. 'Picked up a flag-down from town to the Bull's Head. And then, guess what? Bull's-Head-to-Otterburn.' She blinked several times. 'That's where you live, Terry.'
'Aye.' I made a 'so-what' gesture.
'Didn't see Frank that night, did ye?'
'Well...'
'Cos ye told the fuzz ye were fixin your car and we both know that's a fuckin lie, don't we? You know less about cars than I do and that isn't a bloody lot.' Her mouth was tight and she was breathing quicker than usual, as if she was a little bit pissed off. 'Somethin ye want to tell me, Terry?'
Rubbing a hand over my face, I took my time answering. It was bound to come out sooner or later. I'd been hoping for the second option, but it seemed that stringing out the truth, like our investigation, had hit a dead end.
'Yes, I saw him.' Keeping my eyes on the sheaf of papers in my lap, I waited for the lecture. But it didn't come. I could hear her breathing, slower now and measured. Out the corner of my eye, I caught the shake of the head, the for-fuck's-sake expression.
Eventually, she spoke. 'Goin to tell me, then?'
I moved my head slightly towards her. 'He dropped a punter at the Bull and I was in there having a pint, so I got him to run me home.'
Carol shrugged. 'And?'
'When we got to mine, we just sat in the car an talked.' I hesitated. 'Frank was plannin to leave Lizzy.' I took a breath. 'You know what she's like - always treated him like shit, talked about him behind his back, shagged his mates. All he wanted was for her to b
e happy, but in the end, she wasn't interested in him. I think he finally realised he was just a meal ticket. Anyway, he met someone else - by chance, ye know. A young Syrian woman.'
'Oh, God, you're jokin?' She turned to face me. 'Illegal immigrant? Lap dancer? Of course, and Frank being a man past his prime, it wouldn't be hard to turn his head. Tch, typical.'
'It wasn't like that, Carol. He cared about her.'
'Oh, you know her, do ye?'
'No, but –'
'But nothing. I bet ye'd have fancied her an'all.'
'Told ye, I didn't meet her.' I paused for a moment, remembering the conversation I'd had with Frank that night - sitting in his car drinking, with him pouring out his heart and me telling him to stop being so bloody stupid, that she was probably living here illegally and would fleece him for every penny he had. I'd sounded a lot like Carol.
'I thought I'd persuaded him to leave her alone, that he'd end up getting hurt. But he just got angry, said I was hardly in a position to dish out advice what with my girlfriend upstairs packing her bags. He kicked me out the car and drove off.'
Carol picked at her fingernails. 'So what then? Where did he go after that?'
I leaned over and looked at the job sheet. 'He called in a couple of fake jobs while he was with me so you'd think he was still driving. He gave me the impression he was plannin to see his lady friend to sort things out.' I ran my finger down the job list. 'That must've been about nine.'
'So why did ye not tell the cops? What difference would it have made?'
'Seeing him laid out on the table, I thought he must have changed his mind, maybe told her it was over. So it didn't seem fair to tell Lizzy. Specially when I didn't know for sure.'
Carol nodded. 'Aye, I suppose.'
I cleared my throat. 'There's something else.'
'What?' She prodded my leg. 'What, Terry?'
'When I went back upstairs, Sharon was still sorting stuff out. I didn't want to get in the way, so I went for another couple of beers then walked around for a bit. Eventually, I went down to Frank's place. Thought maybe I could smooth things over, talk him round.'
'And?'
'The front door was open, ye know - on the latch. Frank was there, on the table.' I closed my eyes for a moment. 'He was dead.'
'What time was that?'
'Late. About half twelve, one, maybe.'
Carol leaned over and grabbed the job sheets. 'So what did he do after he left you?' She peered at the list of jobs. 'I gave him a couple of contracts on the Andersson account.' She tapped the sheet. 'There, two pickups from two different office complexes - that was six o'clock, then another one just after ten from the industrial estate down to...' She looked up. 'The Hexagon.' She passed the sheets back. 'Then he signed off.'
We sat in silence for a while, until Carol said, 'You think this foreign woman might be involved with Ahmed's lot? Like a sex-slave or summat?'
'It had occurred to me. Though the first night when I dropped Elise off, it just looked like any other party.'
'Aye but didn't ye say a couple of the guys almost had their shirts off?'
'They did, but that doesn't mean anything. Elise was still dressed and the people I could see in the other windows all had their clothes on. In any case, they weren't trying to hide anything, which ye'd expect if there was something dodgy going on. They'd at least close the curtains.'
Carol swivelled round in her seat. 'So, if Frank had dropped Elise off at that house before and maybe, I don't know, maybe seen his girlfriend in there as well..?'
'Hang on.' I went back to the sheets I'd been looking through. If Frank had made several drop-offs to the house, maybe he already knew there was something going on. 'Here, the week before, he dropped Elise at Central Station.' I looked up. 'That's where she was supposed to be goin when I dropped her off, so this one could easily have ended up being a Nugent Crescent job.' I checked the next night and there it was again, though this time the pickup had been from one of the offices. 'Maybe a few of Andersson's employees or associates were meeting up at the house? I mean, if it was just folks getting together for a drink or summat after work, why would they traipse all the way to Newcastle?'
She nodded. 'Why indeed. So what now?'
'Now? I reckon we should crash a party.'
Chapter 13
In the lane behind Nugent Crescent, it was darker than on my previous visit.
'Can't see a bloody thing here ye know,' said Carol, clutching my hand.
'Ye'll be able to in a minute.' We followed the wall down to the gate where I'd been so rudely interrupted before. Warning Carol to keep a lookout for Cockney Jamaicans, I put a foot onto the baton and hoisted myself up. Unlike before, there was nothing to see. Though the curtains were open, all the rooms in the house were in darkness. There were no signs of life.
As I jumped down, I fell against the gate. There was a click and somewhat bizarrely, it swung open. I glanced at Carol, but it was too dark to see her expression. 'Open sez me.'
'Ye're not going in?'
'Why not, place is empty.' I pushed the gate and peered into the yard. The two motorcycles were still chained up to the wall and the table and chairs were still on the patio.
Carol tugged at my sleeve. 'Terry!'
'What?'
'I don't know - just don't do anything stupid.'
'As if.' Crossing to the back door, I cupped my hands against the glass. It was pitch black inside. I beckoned to my accomplice. 'Where's the torch?'
She fished in her jacket pocket and pulled out a Maglite with a length of string attached to the end. I popped the loop around my neck in case I dropped it, then holding the torch close to the glass, switched it on. There still wasn't much to see - the door led to a passage and into the kitchen. The entrance to the latter was half open, revealing a long table and a few chairs, but little else. I moved across to the next window - what I presumed to be the living room. There were a couple of long sofas and several armchairs, along with a small coffee table. Against one wall were bookcases filled with DVDs, though what their subject matter might be, I couldn't tell.
And then the light came on.
I jumped back and Carol let out a squeak. The light from the living room lit up the yard and must have leaked into the room next door as well, for the previously darkened kitchen was now partially lit. We stood pressed flat up against the narrow wall between the back door and the window. If we moved, whoever was inside might see us.
'This is another fine mess,' whispered Carol.
I leaned over to her. 'We'll be alright so long as they don't come outside.'
Which, of course, is when someone decided to come outside.
I heard the footsteps advancing along the passage. Then the fiddling with the lock and the rattle of the handle. I was about to scream 'run' and drag Carol out into the lane, when the noise stopped. Maybe they'd changed their minds? Perhaps just checking the place was secure? Yes, that must be it.
And then the door opened.
The giant of a man who stepped into the yard clearly hadn't expected to encounter visitors, for his shout was almost as loud as mine.
'Jesusfuckinhell!' He aimed a fist in my direction, but only succeeded in hitting my shoulder. I grabbed his arm and gave it a yank.
'Terry? What the fuck?'
I let go his arm. 'Ralph? What you doin here?'
'Keep your voice doon, man.' He glanced around, then ushered us both inside.
'Well, bonny lad,' said Ralph helping himself to a beer from the fridge, 'if ye'd answer the bloody phone, we'd know what ye were up to, wouldn't we?'
'Sorry. I meant to call back.'
'Aye, aye, whatever. So, as I was saying, Mrs Carver's not the type to wait around for answers and since you were dragging your proverbials, she sent me to check this place out.'
I frowned. 'How d'you know where it was?'
'Unlike you, when I dae a bit of surveillance work, I dae it properly. See, when you pair of daft twats turned up here the ot
her night with the fancy masks on, I was over the road watching.'
'Over the road?'
He jerked a thumb towards the front of the house. 'My sister's lad has the upstairs flat. When I saw your car come down here, I parked up the top and ran along the back way. An by the way, I have to tell ye, mate, ye're not hard to follow - I could have stayed five cars behind and ye'd still have stuck oot like a sore dick.' He chuckled and took another swig of lager.
Carol butted in. 'You followed us? Ye cheeky sod.'
'Oh aye.' I nodded. 'The Volvo with the tinted windows?'
'That's the one. Great for keepin an eye of folk when ye divvent want to get noticed.'
'We did notice the car, actually,' said Carol. 'We're not totally stupid.'
He grinned. 'Anyhow, the next day, I got the lad to take over for a while, so he's been watchin the place since then.'
'And?'
He scowled. 'Seems there's a lot of individuals in and out, but without having a look inside, we'd no idea if they just like to party of if there's summat else gannin on. So when the lad called iz to say Ahmed and his cronies had all piled into their cars and taken off, I thought I'd have a look.'
'When did they leave?' I asked, suddenly concerned they might return.
'Charlie says they took a load of bags an that, so I reckon they're away for the night at least.'
I had to admit the furnishings were tasteful. Upstairs, there were three large bedrooms and a bathroom with a walk-in shower. Each bedroom was done out in pastel shades with matching furniture. Checking through the wardrobes, there was nothing untoward, and apart from the lack of mess, the place could have been the home of an average suburban family with teenage kids.
The only moment of excitement was a cash box Ralph found wedged under one of the beds. Producing a set of skeleton keys, he got it open in a couple of minutes, but there were no illicit diamonds or bags of crystal meth, only two passports in the name of Sanjay and Gita Ahmed. All apparently above board.
Back downstairs, we gathered in the kitchen.
'You disappointed?' said Ralph.
'Well, I'm kinda glad we didn't find half a dozen eastern European women tied to the beds with chains an that, but yes, I'm disappointed.'