Jason had grown up around hard drugs and dealt them from the age of eleven, but he’d never quite got on with them. He opted for clarity. Drugs sullied his mind, and he knew that control was impossible when the brain started to bend. Sure, he had fun – when it was safe – but he knew his limits and wanted to live beyond thirty. In a warped kind of way, he admired Guns Akers, but he’d never let on. Guns never lost control, and out of everyone, he was the surest candidate for surviving. And he had the bag. Tyrone had confessed that, instead of destroying the gear, or storing it somewhere safe, he’d panicked and given it to his best friend. Jason should have known that Tyrone would go running to Guns after he’d squealed like a baby as he watched his bitch die. He was furious with himself for losing control, but he couldn’t help it; sticking the blade in had felt so good. But it also meant that his clothes had been covered in blood. The knife had become sticky and he’d only stopped thrusting when he’d lost his grip and cut himself.
He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. ‘I’m going for some air.’ Something about being in the same room as his brother and the goonies who surrounded him made him claustrophobic.
He stuck to the landing in the hallway, just to get some space; he knew he could go no further. If he could convince Guns to work with him and set Adam up, they could walk away with two hundred K and disappear. The rig in Cumbria was over for now, but there’d be others. Jason had good contacts all over the country; maybe he could start afresh in Europe. Paris was fast becoming the new centre of illicit trade in substances, and everyone spoke English.
But first, he wanted to talk to the bent copper. They used burner phones, one-time-use mobile devices that were disposed of after each transaction, to avoid being traced. Some geek on the other side of the world might be able to track the phone via satellite, but never the purchaser. Even the mobile virtual network operator could provide data from a one-off use mobile such as Jason used all the time, but he never gave a name when purchasing one, so it was foolproof if you stuck to the plan and discarded the gadget after every contact. They were cheap, reliable and utterly untraceable to a human being. Adam was sloppy with his and kept them for longer than he should. It would be easy to trace him to this warehouse if Jason could get a message to somebody. He was owed that much. He’d done what was asked of him; how the hell was he expected to know that the woman who was jogging through Potton Park when his brother was tripping off his tits on ket would turn out to be pals with the gaffer? No one, that was who.
He took a burner phone from his pocket and dialled the number recently given to him: they changed frequently. It was answered quickly and the exchange was short. A meeting place was arranged.
He’d go alone.
Chapter 45
Kelly waved at Johnny. They’d found each other in Potton Park, after a few phone calls. She wanted to check in with them all. She was acutely aware that these things could easily turn ugly. Callum and Josie were chomping on burgers, and the smell of cooking fat and burnt sugar filled the air. It was like a fair.
They watched as hundreds of people of all ages gathered in preparation for the speeches and the proposed march to police HQ. Kelly wondered if it would actually go ahead. Sometimes events like this talked the talk but fell flat. Ted treated everybody to hot chocolate and they hugged the plastic cups to warm their hands. Kelly still had a lot to do, but seeing her family was a welcome diversion, even if it was a short one. Rob had come with her, and was chatting to Johnny about security and potential flash points around the park. They nodded and gestured, and Kelly wondered why Johnny hadn’t joined the force after he left the army. She knew the answer, though: he’d had enough of watching people do awful things to one another.
Sharon, Thomas and Millie were at the front of the crowd, on a hastily erected stage, where somebody had set up a PA system. Sharon was due to give a speech before the march set off; Kelly wanted to hear it but suspected she wouldn’t have time. The crowd stilled and a man took the microphone and greeted the crowd, then introduced Sharon.
Kelly looked around and didn’t see any cause for concern. Except for the piles of litter, water bottles and other detritus from a large human gathering, there seemed to have been no problems. But that could change as they got on the move. She wouldn’t follow the march: that was a job for the transport and tactical police. But Callum and Josie were desperate to get involved. Johnny looked at Kelly; she knew that inside he was squirming.
‘Look, if you’re with them, what can happen?’ she said.
‘Please, Dad! We could have sneaked here anyway without telling you.’
‘She’s got a point,’ Ted said. As always, he stuck up for Josie.
Callum chipped in. ‘Come on, when do we ever get an opportunity to be involved in something like this? The TV cameras are everywhere, it’ll be talked about for years, and when your grandchildren ask you where you were when the people marched from Potton Park, what will you say?’ His question was directed towards Johnny, and everyone looked at him, waiting for his answer. It was a bold address, and Josie squeezed Callum’s arm. The tussle was over and the teenagers had won.
‘Call me!’ Kelly made them promise to keep in touch.
They said their goodbyes and Kelly and Rob made their way back to the estate. As they approached the flats, they heard Sharon’s voice over the mic in the distance. There was still a police presence, but the barricades were like ghost towns compared to an hour earlier. The press had accompanied the walkers and left only a skeleton presence behind with those unable to join in. The elderly, infirm or those otherwise incapacitated had stayed behind to cook, tidy up and make more banners in preparation for the return of the protesters. There was no plan to pack up and go home: this was just the beginning.
It was a weird sensation entering streets where previously there had been throngs of people giving interviews, singing, dancing, and shouting through loudhailers. Now there was quiet and an eerie sense of desertion.
It was an opportunity for Kelly to call the solicitor in Manchester. She’d been sent the production order by email. She paced up and down near the main barricade outside Wordsworth Towers and waited to be connected.
Rob stamped his feet to keep warm and watched his boss make the call. When she’d finished, she turned to him, and he was shocked at the expression on her face.
‘I need to call the counter-corruption intelligence unit.’
‘Boss?’
‘Keira identified Ormond as part of a network that supplied underage girls to older men. It was part of Tombday, do you remember? They took girls to parties, got them stoned or drunk, and raped them. Keira was part of that for a while, until Sharon put a stop to it. Keira recognised Ormond on TV and found this solicitor online. She never told Sharon what she was doing.’
‘Jesus. And you reckon Ormond found out?’
‘And had her taken out. But to make it look like a spate of gang attacks, he ordered a second, random hit.’
‘But they fucked up.’
They walked towards Wordsworth Towers. Ordinarily, she would call something like this in; her whole team would be in position, ready to follow the same trajectory as the boss. It wasn’t so now. She still didn’t know whose side Will was on, or Liam Brook. Her head screamed that Will had been doing Ormond’s dirty work all along, but her heart wouldn’t allow it. For Will to be a party to this made a mockery of everything she’d ever thought or felt about him. She couldn’t deal with that now.
‘We need to get Jackson and Tyrone somewhere safe,’ she said.
Rob agreed. ‘I’m with you, boss.’
They approached Jackson’s floor and made their way along the balcony. Kelly knocked on the door and spoke quietly.
‘Jackson, it’s Kelly Porter.’
The door opened. Part of her was surprised to see him; the other part was fearful that he’d double-crossed her. He always seemed to be where he should be.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yeah. I was just about t
o leave.’
‘Where are you going? Were you hoping to run away?’
Jackson stood back and let them in. He looked guilty, and Kelly knew she was correct.
He nodded. ‘I expected you’d turn up here, so I left a present for you in the living room.’ They followed him in.
‘A present?’
They went into the room and saw boxes and bags on the floor.
‘Evidence I’ve looked after for the Cotton brothers. It’s all yours; I’m out of here.’
Rob blocked his way.
‘Jackson. I need your help. I’m on my own here. Rob has my back, but my boss – the guy behind all this – wants me out of the way. I’m putting everything on the line too.’
‘You’ve already had my help. If it wasn’t for me, you’d never have known what happened.’
‘I know, and that’s why you have to stay. Run away now and you’ll be caught. Or what’s the alternative? A life on the run? It would kill you. Don’t change your mind now.’
‘She’s right,’ Rob said.
‘Keira had gone to a solicitor about something a very senior police officer was involved in. I think that’s why she was killed. She said he molested her, seven years ago, at a party held somewhere in the Lakes for older men seeking underage girls, some as young as ten. They were picked up off the streets, shipped in, drugged and used for sex. She recognised him from a newspaper when he posed for a charity event. It wasn’t an isolated case; there were hundreds of these parties over the years, and Keira was close to exposing his part in them.’
Jackson sat down heavily on the sofa. ‘I knew Sharon back then. I’d run away from a home, and she took me in. Keira had disappeared, and she was worried sick. When she came back, she had this look in her eyes, and she wasn’t right after that.’
‘Jackson, what is happening here is unprecedented. Stay and help Sharon Bradley rebuild this place. This is your opportunity to give something back.’
He laughed.
‘I know you think it’s bullshit, but I can see it behind your eyes: you believe in people. You’re in a position to make a difference. How does that feel? Has it ever happened before? Are you scared of it?’
‘Fuck’s sake, man! Leave me alone!’ He put his head in his hands. Kelly knelt in front of him and took his hands in hers. He looked up at her.
‘I’m going to be with you every step of the way. This is about looking forward, not back. It’s only a matter of time before we get the Cotton brothers, and we’ve got the evidence we need.’
‘But… I did stuff.’
‘Did you hurt anyone?’
He shook his head.
‘You were a courier?’
He nodded.
‘Couriers get less than three years these days, unless you’re dealing as well, and that should be commuted for your testimony.’
‘You can’t guarantee that.’
‘There are no guarantees for anything. Where’s Tyrone? We need to get you both out of here.’
A door opened, and Tyrone appeared.
Chapter 46
Jordan Watson bought a pasty from one of the corner shops that dotted the Beacon Estate. There weren’t as many as there used to be, not since the Tesco Metro had opened near the main tower block, close to the back entrance to the estate. Jordan was getting to know the layout pretty well.
He followed the crowd, not in a rush to go anywhere in particular, just gathering intelligence on how the estate worked. He knew, like everyone knew, that the police were after the Cotton brothers. He also knew that he had to find them first.
He had their faces burned into his memory. The last time he’d seen them was in the flat where drill music hurt his head and bodies came and went in a heaving mass, on the lookout for drugs or just to hang out somewhere illicit.
He flitted between intense concentration – formulating a plan – and simply watching, fascinated by how so loose a network could maintain a stranglehold on so many young people. It was the implementation of fear politics at its finest: he’d studied it in history lessons, analysing some of the most brutal regimes the world had ever seen, and it was alive and well inside this casual yet lethal band of brothers. On one level it was laughable – the lack of solid structure – but that was the point: structure killed regimes from the inside. Disorganisation was key when keeping human beings in a state of constant limbo and terror.
He knew from stories retold with vigour, for entertainment, by the boys and men he’d hooked up with, that the Cotton brothers earned every ounce of kudos they held, and wouldn’t hesitate to stick a blade into any person brave or stupid enough to challenge them. Jason was apparently the brains and Adam the incendiary device. Both vital, both necessary.
After his run-in with Adam, he’d dismissed him as a meathead. A dangerous meathead but one nonetheless. And he looked like a regular junkie. Jordan reckoned that Adam would be the easier of the two to overpower, if he had surprise on his side, and found him alone. The brothers were hiding somewhere, everyone knew that. There couldn’t be many people with him, and as the noose tightened, they’d start leaving.
Jason was a different beast. He was the one who called the shots. But Jordan reckoned Adam had gone out on a limb where his mother was concerned. Everyone knew that if a random hit on a woman had been ordered, it would be Jason who’d do it. Adam was the loose cannon, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed that he was nursing some pretty serious wounds: to his ego and to his face. Word had it that his brother had taught him a lesson for going rogue.
The people Jordan had met assumed him to be driven by scoring drugs, finding girls and riding bikes, but Jordan had been listening to every word. If he stopped for too long and thought of anything else, he reckoned he would go mad. The realisation that his mother might have been butchered on a whim was too much. He busied his mind with the girl he’d slept with, feeling disappointed with himself. He’d imagined chasing a girl for weeks, even months, before she allowed him to go that far. Here on the estate, within hours, he’d found someone who’d done it straight away. They’d performed the most intimate act together, and afterwards had nothing to talk about.
He guessed she was used to it by the way she got dressed afterwards and giggled at him. Her hands had been expert, as was her body, though she could be no older than sixteen. That level of experience came with multiple encounters, surely, and he began to worry about STDs. He’d seen disgusting photos online of rotting penises and wart-riddled vaginas. They hadn’t used a condom; she hadn’t given him time. He heard his mother in his head and remembered their conversations about condoms.
‘It’s less about pregnancy than about disease. It only takes one infected person to have sex with ten women and that’s it: game over. Think about that.’
He’d thought her over the top, but now, not so much. His cheeks burned and he bit into his pasty hard to try to erase her voice from inside his head. He had work to do and she was distracting him.
The group began to disperse, and he tagged along with a splinter group of boys who looked pretty streetwise. Their language was ingrained in the way they moved their bodies, and it was as if Jordan was watching a role play. They were tight. Not so tight that they would shut him out: why would they do that? The potential of a new member was always welcome, and waifs and strays were the mainstay of what they did, but at some point he’d have to prove himself of value.
‘That bitch is moving mad, rah. She’s bare jarring, say nuffin’.’
Jordan translated the hotchpotch of gang words quickly; he’d been exposed to them for a long time. He worked out that he’d just been told that the girl he’d had sex with yesterday, in front of a room full of other grinding blood, was somewhat promiscuous, as well as crazy. He couldn’t agree more.
‘Time to move on, blood. I need a trek.’ He communicated that he was friendly and he fancied a walk.
They fist bumped. ‘Safe.’
‘Come wiv, blood. My yard is a bare trek away. I got some sweet one for us
right there. Still.’
The young man who’d spoken indicated a group of girls, and made his intention clear that he was about to invite them all over to his place to take drugs. It was a positive step and might take him closer to his target. Jordan wasn’t sure what gave him the vibe about this particular group, but they smacked of confidence, control and swagger: perfect traits for the hard core of any gang. He could feel himself growing closer and closer to Jason and Adam Cotton. Someone, somewhere knew where they were, and young lads taking drugs had loose mouths.
In hiding, the brothers would need help. They wouldn’t be able to remain immune to the heat radiating towards them for long, unless they had a secure network of loyal aides. By now, everyone in the county, if they hadn’t had their heads up their arses, knew their names, and his dad’s two hundred K was up for grabs.
He shuffled along with them and the girls tagged behind. They wore their hoods up and Jordan fastened a bandanna around his mouth when he’d finished eating, throwing his pasty wrapper to the floor. Delinquency, he decided, felt rather satisfying.
An unwelcome image of his sister’s face appeared in his head and it made him angry. Why now, he had no idea, and he closed his eyes, willing her to go away. He had to stay steely if he was to have any chance of ending this.
He became aware of a car slowing behind them, and the two alpha males of the group stopped. They held their hands up in a reassuring gesture and nodded, before approaching the vehicle. The others slowed, but kept walking. Jordan looked behind him. The two men were talking to the driver, who looked to be in his thirties, and fairly respectable.
Little Doubt Page 23