Jordan covered his face and looked away. He knew the driver. The men were spreading their hands and shaking their heads. It was clear that it was an uncomfortable conversation, but there was some type of understanding between them. They knew each other. He watched as the man handed something over and it was put swiftly into a coat pocket. The whole time, the boys never revealed their faces. The driver shot a glance in Jordan’s direction and his heart almost stopped. He quickly told himself that no one would ever recognise him in this ridiculous get-up: he looked like all of them.
When the two rejoined the group, they said nothing of their encounter. Jordan mulled it over. He’d seen plenty of examples of the police talking to people on the estate over the last twenty-four hours. They had varied from cartoonish – in the sense that the coppers looked way out of their depth and were ridiculed into moving on – to raw hatred. This encounter had been neither. It wasn’t a fact-finding exercise, and it wasn’t a casual interview by a copper doing the rounds. Neither had it been menacing. It had been more of a friendly chat and an exchange of goods.
Chapter 47
Will drove away, with Liam next to him. For three hundred quid, they now had the address of a warehouse in Penrith where the Cotton brothers were hiding, no doubt unaware of the amount of evidence being gathered against them. They’d be thinking to ride out the storm until Tyrone Fenton was arrested and charged for the murders and they could all go back to normal.
There was no normal any more.
He’d watched, helpless, as Kelly had worked her way deeper and deeper to the core of what was really going on. Maybe she’d put the last few puzzle pieces together already.
‘Should we call it in?’ Liam asked.
‘No, first we go to Ormond.’
‘What, to his house?’
‘Where else? Let’s go and see how far his loyalty extends when his skin is on the line instead of ours.’
‘What do you mean?’
Will looked at his long-time friend. He didn’t need to say anything. The two of them understood one another without saying a word.
They drove in silence. Ormond lived outside Penrith on some swanky new-build estate. They’d never been invited there, and had never had a reason to go, until now. They’d supposed that it would always come to this one day, and now that day had arrived. It was only mid-afternoon, but the sky was grey and the surrounding fields were covered in a thin layer of snow, merging the colours into one drab canvas. The big dump hadn’t happened, mainly because it was too cold.
They were glad in a way not to be working. Work came with a set of uncertainties that they faced almost weekly. There was always something to do for Ormond. It had never crossed their minds to say no.
Liam looked out of the window and Will concentrated. The traffic was light and they soon neared the address. Will’s heartbeat was slow and calm; he hadn’t felt such liberation for years. Not since the night he’d met Liam.
It had been freezing cold, he remembered that much. The radiators in the children’s home were old and useless, and anyway, the bastards who ran the place kept them off to save money. Will was crying in his bed, trying to get warm under a blanket. A blanket stained with his blood. Liam sat on the bed and asked him if he wanted to read a book together under the blanket, using a tiny torch he had.
He’d stopped crying. They soon became warm and fell asleep reading the book. From that night, they were inseparable. They shared moments of laughter together, and even some joyous times in the home. They also shared the horrors together, and both believed that it was the other who kept them alive. Ormond had thrown them a lifeline, but he also knew their secrets.
The house was grand, and a Mercedes was parked in the driveway.
They went past it and parked on the street. Still they didn’t speak. They’d become so adept at understanding what the other was thinking and feeling, that colleagues sometimes found it odd working with them.
That wasn’t their concern.
They went to the back of the house and peered carefully in through the windows, hoping to find Ormond at home. If not, they’d break in anyway and wait for him. He was in there, walking to and from a room off the kitchen, carrying papers and boxes, packing files into a suitcase. Will and Liam exchanged glances and nodded. They knew that if he was packing files away, he must know the game was almost up, and that he needed to tidy up what he could. That also meant that he was very unlikely to answer the door. So they rapped on the patio doors off the kitchen.
Ormond froze, but relaxed when he saw who it was. The relief soon turned to anger at the audacity of them turning up to his private address. He opened the door.
‘What do you two want? How dare you come to my house! My wife could have been here.’
Liam and Will looked at one another: it was confirmation that they were alone.
‘Sir, we didn’t know what else to do. Porter knows everything. She’s spoken to the solicitor Keira was seeing, and she’s got solid forensics against the Cotton brothers for both murders.’
‘How solid?’
‘Concrete.’
‘What about the plant?’ His voice was becoming loud and his face was turning red.
‘It never happened. We reckon one of the informants turned and is now working with Porter.’
‘Have you taken care of him?’
‘We can’t find him, sir.’ Though Will used the formal title, he spoke through gritted teeth. Ormond didn’t notice.
‘Porter has to be taken out.’
‘Sir?’
Ormond looked at the two men and smiled. ‘This is all going to be fine as long as she is taken care of. Come on, lads, are we getting cold feet? You have to do it; you know what will happen if you don’t.’
‘She’s a respected officer, sir.’ Will appealed to reason, but he could feel the situation slipping from his grip.
‘I can change that. I can prove her incompetence and arrogance. No one will miss her.’
‘Sir, we know where the Cotton brothers are. Why can’t we cut ties to them and let the law do its job? They go down, as they deserve, and we come up with a plan.’
‘A plan? For what? It’s there in black and white in that solicitor’s office. You fucked up!’ Ormond was roaring now, and pointing at them.
‘Sir…’ Will tried to prolong the discussion. Liam was clenching and unclenching his fists. Will couldn’t believe that they were being blamed for what Ormond had done. It was clear that no matter what they said, he was cutting himself loose.
‘I don’t need you two cowboys coming here and suggesting plans! Get out of my sight! And if you think of squealing when I’m gone, remember I still have the video tape. I swear on my mother’s life that every newspaper in the country will get that film.’
Before Will could stop him, Liam had walked to the kitchen counter and grabbed a knife from a block. He advanced on Ormond, who backed away around the island in the centre of the room. Chaos erupted. Will felt as though he was moving in slow motion, begging Liam not to be stupid. Ormond was old and slow and he tripped over a stool.
Liam got to him first and lifted the blade, staring into Ormond’s terrified eyes. Then he brought it down. Ormond screamed over and over again, but as the blows rained down, he stopped making any sound at all.
Will couldn’t watch, and turned away, only looking back when the noise of flesh being ripped apart subsided and Liam sat panting on Ormond’s chest. He was covered in blood.
Will went to him and shook him.
‘Get up.’
Liam did what he was told. Will took the knife and threw it in the sink.
‘We have to tidy up. Get those clothes off.’
Liam came back to the present and stared at him. Then he nodded and started to undress. Will found black bags under the kitchen counter and shoved everything into one. Then he checked the ground floor and found a shower, directing Liam to it, making sure he left no bloody prints.
‘Get yourself clean.’
While Liam was showering, Will found cleaning products and a bucket and set about mopping up what he could and cleaning anything he could remember touching. With Ormond dead, they might just get away with this, he thought. But then reason kicked in and he knew that was an impossibility, though when the counter-corruption unit found out what the man had been up to, they’d realise that any number of people could have a motive to kill him.
A shadow crossed his mind and he realised that he’d never find the tape now, not without ripping the house apart.
He checked that Liam’s things were all in the bag, and that everything was clean. They could do nothing about the body. Moving it would leave too much transferrable evidence: he’d worked as a detective for long enough to know that. It was better to leave it where it was and hope Liam hadn’t passed any vital evidence on to it. He wasn’t cut, which was a miracle, and he’d been wearing standard high-street jeans and hoody. They hadn’t had a drink, they hadn’t been seen, and they’d parked far enough away to not be remembered.
Liam came back into the room naked.
‘Jesus.’ Will ran upstairs and rifled through a wardrobe, taking care to wrap his hands in his sleeves. He found jeans and a top and ran back down. Liam’s trainers weren’t too bad, and he rinsed them under the tap. ‘Put these on outside on the grass. Come on, get dressed.’
Liam did as he was told and they went out the way they’d come in, careful not to touch anything. Liam put his stained trainers on, then they walked to the car and got in, checking the road to make sure no one was about. Will followed the line of sight from Ormond’s house and satisfied himself that they hadn’t been seen.
Then he drove away.
Chapter 48
Sharon Bradley spearheaded the march out of Penrith and north along the A6 towards the Cumbria Constabulary HQ. Millie held her hand, and on his daughter’s other side, Thomas kept his eyes peeled for trouble. If he couldn’t protect her at home, then he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
As the day wore on, he became more tempted to report Jordan missing. Millie didn’t want him to because she thought it might get him into even more trouble than he was already in. It was a dilemma that he wished Ella could help him with. He’d lost his anchor: the only person in the world who knew instinctively what to do when faced with a quandary concerning their children. He’d taken her for granted and allowed her to make the decisions, so now he was unprepared and amateur. He had no idea how to advise his daughter or discipline his son. His admiration for Ella extended beyond her qualities as a beautiful person; indeed, it was boundless. The strength, commitment, wisdom and poise necessary to nurture and encourage two other human beings was something he was only just beginning to appreciate.
Ella would have known what to do with Millie as she fled their home in search of answers he’d failed on. She’d know how to find their son. After that first glimpse of Jordan on the TV, he had had no further sightings, and neither had Millie, but they were both convinced he was hanging around the estate. Deep in his gut, Thomas knew that Jordan wanted revenge in his own style, and part of him wanted the same. But the thought of his son going to prison for the rest of his life for first-degree murder was unbearable, and he pushed it to the back of his mind every time it raised its ugly head, concentrating on Millie instead.
The policewoman was doing her best to find him as well: all units in Penrith had been told to watch out for him. Ella had known her son’s capacity for love, but Thomas saw his scope for remorselessness. That stillness, resolve and depth was something he recognised in himself; it had made him a ruthless businessman, retiring before fifty and living off his hard work. Jordan had the same steel in his eyes, and Thomas knew that whatever mission he was on, it would take heaven and earth to budge him.
For now, all he could do to revere the memory of his dead wife was to keep her daughter safe. He listened to the chanting as he marched, heard Sharon shouting about social justice and inequality. Three days ago, Thomas would have said she was missing the point. In a capitalist society, competition and inequality were key. In the survival of the fittest, some animals were caught and eaten. It was life. That was all.
But now, he admired the woman leading the peaceful protest, and he knew that Ella would have done too.
‘No more knife crime!’ they chanted, repeating the chorus as they made their way past stationary traffic. People got out of cars and took videos to post online, reporters clamoured for the best shots of the front of the march, and Millie squeezed Thomas’s hand. She bellowed along with them and car horns tooted in support.
The mood was buoyant and lively, but suddenly the atmosphere began to change and Thomas felt pressure from behind. He held onto Millie as she looked over her shoulder. They were close to police HQ. In the distance, they saw a stationary line of police cars, and Sharon began to slow down and encourage the human train to grind to a halt. The message was passed back, and before long, the whole convoy had come to a standstill. A man squeezed through the crowd and told her that she was welcome to stand on his car to address her audience.
Thomas went to help her up, taking Millie with him. Millie gazed at Sharon in anticipation, but Thomas was busy looking around him, working out the best way to get her out of here quickly should they need to. He felt that things were about to change.
‘Why are they blocking our way?’ Sharon raged. The crowd roared. Thomas reckoned there were over a thousand people listening to her. He saw movement near the police cars, and officers wearing riot clothes moved across the road in front of their blockade of vehicles.
‘Millie!’ he said firmly. He’d managed to hold her slightly away from the car on which Sharon stood. She ignored him and pulled away.
‘Why will they not speak to us?’ Sharon implored. The crowd rumbled its response.
From nowhere, a missile hit the ground and smashed. The crowd parted, and for a second, people didn’t know what to do. Cameras whirred, journalists shouted, children screamed. Another missile hit, and this time it made contact with a child’s head, causing them to wail.
Sharon appealed for calm. Thomas had no idea where the sudden violence had come from, but it wasn’t from the police.
‘Don’t allow yourselves to be tricked! Stop!’ she pleaded.
A bottle hit her in the stomach and she bent over, winded and in shock. Before anyone could catch her, she’d fallen off the car bonnet and crashed to the ground with a thump. Thomas grabbed Millie and dragged her away from the scene, which was deteriorating quicker than he’d imagined possible. He turned back for Sharon, but she was surrounded by people trying to help.
‘Dad!’ Millie struggled to get to Sharon too, but she wasn’t strong enough. Thomas pulled her behind a house to safety, and held her tight. She stopped wriggling and they sat down on the patch of grass behind the house, not caring who it belonged to.
Police sirens mingled with screams, and Thomas covered Millie’s head and held her close to him. A woman came out of the back of the house wielding a broom, threatening to knock the living daylights out of the pair of them, until she saw Millie’s terrified face. Thomas explained that they were innocently caught up in the trouble going on in the road, and the woman quickly ushered them inside and locked the back door.
They could hear the noise of pure wrath now, to the front of the house. Thomas left Millie with the woman, who’d taken it upon herself to hug her, and moved towards the window, peering through the closed curtains. The scene was one of carnage. Abandoned banners littered the road, people lay injured, police holding riot shields hit anyone in their path, knocking some of them senseless. Blood splattered on cars, smoke billowed from engines and children ran around rootless and terrified. He knew he had to do something.
His first instinct was to call 999, but he saw the foolishness in that as fast as it had come to him. He asked the woman if he could open her front door to see if he could get some of the casualties inside. She nodded.
‘No, Dad!’ Millie screeched.
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He ignored her and ran to the front door. ‘In here!’
A few people were cowering in the front garden and they ran inside to safety. Others saw him but were incapacitated or trapped on the wrong side of the police line. He made eye contact with an officer in riot gear, about to whack a woman over the head, and had an idea.
Of course! He slammed the door and ran upstairs. In the front bedroom, he took out his phone and opened the curtains far enough to film what was going on. He panned to the police blockade and saw that they were dragging people into vans. Many of them were young males, and a few took a kick to the guts as they were forced into the vehicles. He zoomed in as much as he could. He had several lawyer friends who might be interested in the footage when the day was over and the general public saw how disgracefully their police force had acted.
He was angry. Part of it was the unprovoked nature of the violent response. Part of it was that Millie and Sharon were right: there was no justice for those who refused to go quietly. The march had been peaceful, but now he re-examined his instinct that, as they neared police headquarters, the mood had changed. He panned left and filmed the last people running away, but he also caught sight of groups of people he hadn’t seen before, either at the barricades, in the park before the march, or during it. They looked like hired thugs.
He zoomed in and realised that one of them was carrying a knife. He felt his palms go sweaty and his stomach tense. The youth was walking towards a police officer.
Thomas forgot the phone and shouted to warn the officer, but his voice came from behind a closed window and went unheard. Then he realised with sickening clarity what he had to do. He held up his phone once more and focused on the man walking with intent. A colleague had spotted him, but it was too late and the blade made contact in the officer’s armpit, exactly where he wore no armour. Within seconds, the attacker was surrounded and apprehended on the ground, but Thomas could only stare at the officer, who lay unmoving, a pool of blood spreading out beneath him.
Little Doubt Page 24