Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery)

by Leigh Russell

  9

  ROSA PUSHED HER straggly hair from her face with the back of a hand without taking her eyes off the kid. His thin arms and legs jerked with frog-like spasms as he kicked a football at the wall. As far as she could tell, he was trying to hit the exact same spot each time. Mostly he missed. His flat face was screwed up with concentration, and he mumbled to himself each time the ball hit the wall.

  In response to the regular thudding of the ball, there was a sudden knocking from the other side of the wall. The next-door neighbour began shouting at the kid to stop his bleeding racket.

  ‘Shut the fuck up! Some of us are trying to sleep!’

  ‘It’s two o’clock in the bloody afternoon!’ Rosa yelled back, as loudly as she could.

  Her thin voice didn’t carry far. She hoped the miserable old geezer next door could hear her. If he didn’t leave it out she’d set Jack on him, see how he liked that.

  ‘Wait till my Jack gets home!’ she added.

  ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll have that fucking crazy kid locked up! Stop banging on the bloody wall!’

  Theo stopped his kicking. He wasn’t really a kid any more. His widely spaced black eyes stared at her from his pale face. ‘Wait till my Jack gets home!’ he screeched suddenly, the words tumbling out in high-pitched mimicry of his mother.

  Rosa gave a nod of approval although she wasn’t sure he understood a word he was repeating. Inside his twenty-two-year-old head he had the mind of a small child. It was time he learned to stand up for himself; if you didn’t fight back, they crushed you. People on the estate scented fear like sharks smelling blood. She had seen it happen. Jack’s father had been so scared of gang members on the estate he’d left without even saying goodbye. He had told her right from the very first night together that he wasn’t planning on staying around for long. For more than a year she listened to him babbling about finding a better life, away from London.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Anywhere away from this hellhole.’

  She had been a fool to believe he would take her with him. He had hung around for a few months after Jack was born, until she dared hope he would stay forever. Then he had gone, leaving her with a three-year-old problem child and a baby. She rarely thought about him now.

  ‘We don’t need no old man round here,’ Jack had told her, and he was right. ‘I ain’t never had no father and I ain’t starting now. If he ever walks back in our lives, he won’t walk nowhere again.’

  Her younger son’s vicious words frightened her, but she needed him. If it wasn’t for the wages Jack brought home she and the kid would struggle to cope. She watched Theo kick his ball repetitively against the wall. He was never going to get a job, not like Jack. Fat chance when there were no jobs any more. It was a miracle Jack had managed to keep hold of his for so long. He was off his face more often than not. She lived in dread of him coming home one day to tell her he’d been laid off. Jack laughed at her fears with the confidence of youth. Theo was completely different. Even the school hadn’t wanted him. They had given her a load of bullshit about home visits which had never happened, and tests and assessments, but it was clear they hadn’t known what to do with him. All they had ever wanted to do was take him away from her.

  ‘They come for him, I’ll kill them,’ Jack said.

  For once she had agreed with him.

  ‘You carry on,’ she told the kid, nodding at his ball.

  The football was nearly flat anyway and only made a dull thudding noise when it hit the wall. She wasn’t going to be bullied by some stupid git next door. Where the hell was Theo supposed to kick his ball? There was no way she could let him go outside. The kids on the estate would beat the crap out of him.

  ‘He’s not right in the head, that son of yours,’ the neighbour yelled.

  ‘He’s more right than what you are, you arsehole!’

  Theo needed somewhere to let off steam. She hoped the exercise would develop some muscle in him, making him stronger and better able to defend himself. Right now he looked like he could be snapped in two, like a dead twig.Someone banged so violently on the front door of the flat that the flimsy wooden frame shivered. She knew who it was. There was no way she was going to open the door to him. Apart from the fact that she didn’t want to see her neighbour’s ugly mug glaring at her, whenever she unlocked the front door Theo tried to run off and it wasn’t safe for him to go out alone.

  ‘Oy!’ her neighbour shouted through the door. ‘I told you to shut it! I’m trying to get some kip here. That crazy kid of yours needs to be locked away in a padded cell.’

  ‘Fuck off, you old git!’ she yelled back. ‘You got no right telling us what to do in our own home. He can play all he wants.’ She turned to Theo. ‘Don’t stop.’

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he repeated in his high monotone.

  ‘I’m trying to sleep!’

  ‘I hope you have nightmares!’ she called out. ‘Have nightmares and die in your sleep!’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Theo piped up, still kicking his ball.

  She turned away from the door and smiled at him. For all his spindly frame he wasn’t such a pushover any more. He was a sweet boy, but when his temper was roused he could bite and kick and scratch like a wild cat. She had been worried about him when he was younger, he had always been so puny, but he was shaping up well. Playing with his football helped.

  ‘Don’t you stop kicking that ball,’ she told him. ‘I’ll make us some tea. Jack brought cakes home yesterday. Do you want some cake?’

  Theo didn’t answer. He carried on kicking the ball. As she walked past she heard him singing softly under his breath. She tried to make out the words but it sounded like a foreign language.

  She had just reached the kitchen when there was a sudden crash as the front door was kicked open.

  10

  SAM DROVE THEM to the block of flats in Haringey where Lenny lived with his girlfriend. The exterior brickwork of the building was crumbling in places, the window frames were old fashioned and looked draughty, the paintwork was cracked, and the short path leading to the front door was pitted with broken stone.

  ‘Watch where you put your feet,’ Sam called out as she avoided stepping on a dog turd. ‘Nice.’

  She rang the bell to number seven and shuffled sideways to position herself right in the doorway. While they waited, a gust of wind whipped past them, making Geraldine shiver in her thin jacket. She thrust her hands deeper into her pockets.

  ‘Come on,’ Sam muttered, jigging impatiently from foot to foot.

  Geraldine watched her colleague out of the corner of her eye. Sam appeared to have fully recovered from a recent ankle injury that had prevented her from working for a couple of months. Now she looked even more robust than Geraldine remembered her. Solidly built and good tempered, impatient to crack on with the job, she didn’t seem to mind the cold. There was something earthy and grounded about her that was very reassuring.

  ‘I missed you –’ Geraldine’s words were carried away by another gust of wind.

  Before she could speak again, the door opened a crack. A woman peered out and demanded to know their business.

  ‘Who the hell are you? What you selling?’

  As she spoke, the door was already closing. Sam darted forward, put her foot over the threshold, and pushed the door open with her shoulder. The scrawny woman inside had no chance against the force of Sam’s muscle. Barely thirty, Gina could have been fifty. She glared at them with heavy-lidded eyes.

  ‘We’re looking for Leonard Parker.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who the hell’s that?’

  ‘We know who you are, Gina, so there’s no point in trying to fob us off with lies. We know who you are, and what’s more, we know Lenny lives here with you.’

  ‘Yes, well, I know who you are and all,’ the woman replied sullenly. A large wart on her chin seemed to tremble with the motion of her jaw
as her speech grew increasingly agitated. ‘And all I got to say to you is that you had my Lenny locked up for eighteen bleedin’ months and all for nothing because he done nothing, and you can bloody well leave him alone now. Go on, get lost, the pair of you. Hey, get out of it. What you think you’re doing?’ Her voice rose in anger as Sam stepped into the hall. ‘Sling your hook, or I’ll –’

  ‘You’ll what?’ Sam spoke calmly but Geraldine could tell she was enjoying being back on the job. ‘Are you going to call the police?’

  ‘This is harassment. This ain’t legal. You got no right –’

  ‘We just want to talk to Lenny.’

  ‘Well, he ain’t here.’

  ‘You don’t mind us coming in and taking a look around?’

  ‘I bloody well do mind. What a fucking cheek! This is my home. You got a search warrant or what?’

  Ignoring her increasingly shrill objections, Geraldine followed Sam into the flat. Gina had been honest about one thing at least. They didn’t find Lenny.

  ‘I told you, he ain’t here. Don’t believe me, will you? And before you ask, I don’t know where he is. And if I did know –’

  ‘Yes, OK, we’ve heard it all before,’ Geraldine interrupted her wearily, ‘if you did know where he is, you wouldn’t tell us.’

  Gina grunted. ‘But I don’t know, and that’s God’s truth.’

  ‘Can we sit down?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I need to talk seriously to you.’

  ‘You can say whatever it is you got to say right here right now, and then you can piss off.’

  Geraldine weighed up the risks of telling the truth. On the point of warning Gina that they believed Lenny to be armed and dangerous she hesitated. Gina didn’t strike her as easy to scare, besides which she was loyal to Lenny and no friend to the police. Plenty of people were willing to aid a villain to escape the law, just in order to spite the police. Gina was probably one of them. Geraldine didn’t believe Gina was in any danger. Lenny wouldn’t harm her. But she might well alert him to the fact that the police were after him, if Geraldine revealed the reason they were looking for him.

  ‘Gina, we only want to talk to Lenny. He’s not in any trouble,’ she lied. ‘We think he might be able to help us with an enquiry. That’s all. But it’s very important we speak to him as soon as possible. Will you ask him to call us the minute he gets home?’

  ‘Pull the other one. Think I was born yesterday? Think I’m going to fall for any of your gobshite? You fitted him up once. You ain’t going to get away with it a second time. Not if I got anything to do with it. I got friends will sort you lot out if you try and touch him again. Friends that know the law better than anyone. Better than any lawyer.’

  ‘Gina, this is important. You need to contact us as soon as he comes home. Will you do that?’

  ‘Oh fuck off out of it. I know your game, putting innocent people away. Listen to me, you smart-talking cow. You leave my Lenny alone, you hear me? He’s done his time. Leave him alone.’

  There wasn’t much point in staying. They tried to persuade Gina to tell them where Lenny might be, but she insisted she had no idea.

  ‘I told you, I ain’t seen him, not since before he was nicked. God knows where he is. Out the country by now, if he’s got any sense, with you lot after him the way you are. Bloody hell, can’t you leave him alone? What’s he ever done to you? And before you ask any more, I ain’t saying another word. Not one more word.’

  Back in the car, Geraldine requested twenty-four-hour surveillance of the flat, and instructed a sergeant to set up a watch for Lenny at stations and airports. With luck he would be completely unaware they were looking for him and would return to the flat where he would be picked up straight away. But they had to be prepared in case he had somehow got wind of the evidence they had found. After a short wait they saw an unmarked vehicle draw up, and they left for the police station.

  ‘It won’t be long till we find him,’ Sam said. ‘He won’t get far.’

  Geraldine didn’t answer. The idea that they had allowed a killer to slip through their fingers was too depressing to contemplate.

  11

  SAM WAS WHISTLING as she drove Geraldine back to the police station. Every red light seemed to be against them yet she didn’t complain. Even a minor traffic jam at some road works didn’t bother her.

  ‘How can you be in such a good mood, when the suspect wasn’t there?’ Geraldine burst out in exasperation. ‘And stop bloody whistling. It’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘Ooh, someone’s touchy,’ Sam grinned, but she stopped whistling.

  ‘You do realise this could turn into a major manhunt all over London?’

  ‘He’ll probably roll up at his flat drunk this evening, and we’ll have him behind bars before bedtime.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Geraldine waited, but Sam didn’t respond. ‘What do you think the DCI’s going to say?’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what this hissy fit is about. You’re not really worried about whether we get the bastard behind bars now or later on today, you’re just upset that the good-looking, new DCI won’t heap praises on you for a job well done.’

  ‘That’s not true. And you needn’t adopt that familiar tone with me when we’re working.’

  ‘This is just like old times. It’s great to be back. I love my job!’

  Geraldine was silent, wondering if Sam was right. There was no doubt Adam was good looking. But that was beside the point. If Adam had been a middle-aged woman, Geraldine would have been equally keen to make a good impression on her new detective chief inspector. It was a matter of professional pride, as well as ambition, to want to impress her superior officers.

  ‘Just shut up and drive,’ she told Sam.

  Until now Adam had seemed aloof, although courteous and pleasant. Even as his eyes focused sharply on Geraldine, she sensed that he remained detached, his fury a calculated performance.

  ‘What do you mean, he wasn’t there?’ His pale face flushed with anger. ‘How can you have lost him? He’s only been out of prison for two days, for Christ’s sake.’

  He stood up. Geraldine wasn’t short, but he seemed to tower over her from behind his desk.

  ‘This is crass ineptitude! We identified David’s killer, and you let him get away.’

  Geraldine frowned, her dismay at having failed to apprehend Lenny momentarily subsumed by the need to defend herself. If she had worked with Adam before, she might not have been so defensive. As it was, Adam knew nothing about her. Keen to make a good impression on him, she seemed to have messed up royally in her first week.

  ‘You let him vanish from under our noses! We had him. Jesus, he’s only been out for two days. How can he have disappeared? He came out, shot someone, and went to ground before we even knew it was him. It’s unbelievably inept. What the hell have you been doing?’

  His accusation was so unreasonable that Geraldine suspected he was judging her on her response to his ranting, rather than on her performance so far. The facts bore out that she had done nothing wrong. At the same time, her detective chief inspector must realise that she was watching him as he assessed her reaction. Unsure what to make of this goading, she kept her face impassive and spoke as calmly as she could.

  ‘There’s no reason why he would have disappeared. He doesn’t know we’re on to him.’

  ‘He just shot a man. How can he possibly think we’re not looking for him?’

  ‘But he has no idea we know it was him. Why would he? And we don’t know he’s done a runner. He just wasn’t at home when we went round there.’

  ‘So now you’ve managed to barge in and warn his girlfriend that we’re on to him.’

  ‘I stressed that he’s not in any trouble. I said I just want him to help us with an enquiry –’

  ‘And you think she’s not going to see through that? She was probably on the phone to him as soon as you walked out, warning him to keep out of sight. We may never find him now. He’ll move on, and
it’ll be down to some other force to pick him up, because we let him slip through our fingers. We’ll be a laughing stock.’

  He wasn’t testing her reaction to his verbal attack after all. He was genuinely put out at her failure, because it reflected badly on him. Adam was feeling under pressure himself, and was passing it on in the hope that she would somehow achieve a result. With a flash of empathy, she hurried to reassure him.

  ‘We’re doing everything possible to find him. We’ve got officers watching the flat twenty-four hours a day. If Gina goes out, we’ll follow her in case she leads us to him, and we’ll still have someone watching the flat all the time. We’ll keep it up until we find him. And we will find him. We’ve sent a notification to security at all the airports and stations in the UK, in case he got wind we suspect him. He won’t get away.’

  ‘He has got away. We can’t keep up this twenty-four-hour surveillance indefinitely. Where the hell is he?’

  ‘We’ll find him.’

  She met his gaze levelly and his expression altered. His shoulders sagged as he sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Geraldine. I was out of order just then. I thought we had him, you know. It would have been a coup, arresting a killer so quickly.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘This is my first case as DCI.’

  She nodded, reassured and at the same time dismayed. She wanted a superior officer devoid of emotion, a kind of modern Sherlock Holmes with a firm grasp of facts and a piercing intellect. Adam had those qualities, but his cool manner, which she had mistaken for professional detachment, was a façade. Underneath it he was insecure. With a few more investigations under his belt, he might develop into a brilliant team leader. In the meantime, he was worryingly vulnerable. All the same, Geraldine warmed to him more now than she had before, when he had seemed so cold.