The Prodigal: Valley Park Series 1

by Nicky Black

  ‘Why did you have to go upsetting Tania, eh? Why?’ he accused her.

  ‘I had a right to know if it was true!’

  ‘Putting all sorts in her head. The whole thing’s blown – it’ll be her!’ He pushed her away. ‘Get the kids up and out the way.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘No, forget that,’ he said, unrolling the spare quilt from under the bed and pulling out a shotgun. ‘Leave them in bed. Don’t go out.’

  Nicola saw the gun and panicked. ‘Micky, what’s going on? This’ll just make it worse...’ But Micky had stopped listening. The gun was just in case, his instincts told him to keep it near him, and he always listened to his instincts. He stood at the window once more. Come on, you fuckers! Micky would rather spend years behind bars than be thought of as a grass. No competition.

  Half an hour later, Nicola stood anxiously in the bedroom doorway in her pyjamas as Micky stood rigidly at the bedroom window. The police hadn’t come, and Micky was breathing heavily, his neck red, his face hostile, the shotgun now firmly in his hands rather than at his feet.

  ‘Micky, who are you waiting for?’ she croaked. Maybe she could persuade him to relinquish the weapon. But Micky had seen something and his eyes stared straight ahead like a cat who’d caught sight of a flightless bird. He waved his arm behind him to get her out of the way. She walked into the bedroom just as she heard glass breaking downstairs, and footsteps walking down the hallway into the kitchen. Micky spun round and lunged towards her, pulling her into the room and closing the bedroom door.

  ‘Get back! Get in there!’ he hissed at her, pointing at the wardrobe.

  ‘No! The kids, Micky!’ she cried. But he thrust open the wardrobe door and pushed her inside, locking her in. She stood, frozen with fear. She prayed with all her might that it wasn’t Lee’s feet she heard coming up the stairs. She peeked through the gap between the doors. Micky’s gun was pointing at the bedroom door, but something caught his eye. Micky’s stare was fixed on her fluffy, white dressing gown hanging from the back of the door. Small streaks of grey were still showing on the lapel, where Nicola had knocked over the ashtray the morning Tiger had had him kidnapped and tortured. It had been about five a.m. The ashtray was overflowing, the house stank of cigarettes. She’d been up for hours, chain-smoking. The smoking of a person on edge, nervous, waiting for something. His gun dropped for a second as the realisation hit him. He turned to see one frightened eye peering from the wardrobe. The eye met his as the door came crashing in, his gun uselessly pointing at a pair of slippers instead of the torsos of his assailants. He was face-down on the bed a second later, a pistol at his head. His head twisted and he looked at Nicola. Inside the wardrobe she held her heart. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’ she mouthed. His eyes never moved from the crack in the wardrobe doors as the gun went off.

  The men were gone as quickly as they arrived. Nicola stood rooted to the spot inside the wardrobe. Micky’s eyes were still looking at her. A great stillness was enveloping him, the stillness of time. No regret, no recrimination, no fear or pain. No feeling at all. His eyes slowly began to look through her rather than at her, and the blood mushroomed onto the white quilt. She started to shake from head to foot, and she slid down inside the wardrobe, her hands shuddering at her face as she heard the drone of police sirens. They were too late. He was too late.

  Lee opened the wardrobe doors and looked down on the crumpled Nicola, her body curled into a ball among coats and dresses. He held out his hand to her, but she ignored it and moved herself forward onto the floor then slowly stood up. She backed away from him and looked at her husband’s body. ‘Can I?’ she asked DC Thompson. Jane nodded at her and stood back as Nicola stood next to Micky, bent down and kissed his head. Lee watched uncomfortably. ‘The kids?’ she asked blankly.

  ‘In the car,’ said Thompson gently. ‘They don’t know anything, they’re fine.’

  Lee walked out of the room, head bowed in remorse. Meadows had been right. They were all bleating like frightened goats already, and the police had been on their way to arrest Micky Kelly. Fear and impatience had overruled his reason, and now the price had been paid.

  TWENTY

  The rain thundered off the caravan roof like a shower of stones. It had been unremitting for two days, thunder and lightning splitting the world open. The water didn’t dribble, but poured down the swollen windows. Outside was colourless and dark, and Nicola and Margy sat under blankets with their steaming Cup-a-Soups, Michael Jnr and Liam hunched on the floor playing Hungry Hippos while Amy slept in the bedroom. Little Jimmy sat on a beanbag, book in hand, glancing now and then covertly over the pages at the two playing brothers, pretending not to be interested in such childish games.

  ‘Not really the weather for caravans,’ Margy said as she looked at the condensation on the windows.

  ‘No,’ Nicola muttered, not sure how she was going to break the news. ‘I was thinking in bed last night about going back to the refuge. I could get the bus down tomorrow, I’ve only got a couple of bags.’

  ‘What for?’ gulped Margy, a mixture of shock and hurt.

  ‘Margy, you’ve been dead kind but I can’t live here, I need to get myself sorted.’

  ‘I’ll get you sorted.’

  Nicola answered with a half-hearted ‘No’, trying not to sound ungrateful.

  ‘I’m managing the biggest bloody community centre in Berwick, man. I can give you a job, you can stay here until we sort a house for you. The school’s lovely, isn’t it, Jimmy?’ Jimmy’s huge, bespectacled eyes didn’t leave the page but he nodded. ‘In fact, come and stay at the house, with us. It’ll be ready in a couple of days.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course you could.’

  Nicola was firm now and her face pleaded with her friend. ‘Margy, I’ve got things to do. Kim’s on life support, I need to be near her. I’ve got three kids to get settled, I can’t live in your pockets, I have to get on with my life.’

  ‘Why can’t you get on with it here?’ Margy asked bluntly, then she softened. ‘I’ll miss you. Again.’

  Nicola set her cup down, put an arm around Margy and hugged her like she was her mum. ‘I love you, you’re the best friend anyone could ever have. But you can’t sort everything all the time.’

  Margy felt somewhat guilty. She’d committed a cardinal community work sin – instead of empowering people to do things for themselves, her natural instinct was to do things for other people. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, she’d been taught. She rebuked herself with a sigh. ‘I know. I just take over, don’t I? I can’t seem to help it.’

  Nicola nodded and kissed Margy on the head, comforted by her friend’s devotion. But in the silence that followed, gloom came rushing over her like the deep grey waves she could just see through the misty window, and her stomach churned as she thought about what lay ahead.

  She was dreading the funeral. Margy had said she didn’t have to go. Didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to. Margy was right, too, and Nicola had even thought about it – about not going to her own husband’s funeral. But the thought had lasted a mere second before it drowned in a mixture of loyalty and guilt. Besides, someone had to organise everything, pick a coffin, hymns, readings, send invites, someone had to make sure there was a headstone for her boys, and his girls, to go to when they were grown-up and missed the dim memory of their father. No, she would give him a proper funeral and lay him to rest with the dignity she’d watched fade away from his proud life.

  ‘You should take her up on her offer,’ said Margy, reading Nicola’s thoughts. Nicola blew into her mug and took a sip of the salty liquid. She might not have any choice. Micky had left nothing, and she had nothing. Tania’s letter lay in its envelope in her bag – the offer of money, Micky’s money, to pay for the funeral. There was nothing warm about the letter. An acknowledgement that neither knew the other existed, that Tania had loved him and wanted to make sure he got a decent send-off. She still cou
ldn’t believe he would betray his friends like that. She would never believe it, and neither should Nicola.

  Margy peered at Nicola, whose eyes were taking in the interior of the big old caravan that had served as Margy’s home for the first weeks of her move, provided by the police after the death threat, just until they could get something more permanent from the Council. The threat had come from Micky, Margy was sure of it, in which case it would be okay for her to go back now. But her loyalty to Valley Park was fading. Little Jimmy was coming out of his shell. Joe was drinking less and laughing more. She hadn’t realised the stress the place had put them under. You’ve done your bit, Joe had said, now let’s concentrate on us.

  ‘What about lover boy?’ Margy asked, making Nicola’s eyes dart to Margy’s face then down to her own toes, wriggling under the tartan blanket. Nicola shrugged and sighed.

  ‘We killed Micky, Margy,’ she said in a low voice while the kids shrieked at the start of a frantic new game of Hungry Hippos.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ said Margy, shaking her head.

  ‘Yes, we did. I should’ve just left him. Gone to live somewhere else, started a new life.’

  ‘You know he would have found you, wherever you went. This lovely new life of yours wouldn’t have been worth living.’

  ‘But the kids, Margy, look at them, they loved their dad. And I should know what it’s like to be, well, dadless.’ She held a palm up to her forehead and stared sideways out of the steamed-up window.

  ‘They’d’ve grown up just like him,’ said Margy.

  ‘They still might, Margy,’ said Nicola sadly. ‘Look at the people around us on that estate, it’s full of Mickys, they’re everywhere.’

  Margy took a gulp of soup and smacked her lips. ‘Exactly why you should move here,’ she said chirpily.

  Nicola grinned at her. ‘Margyyyyyy,’ she said warily. But the caution in her voice did nothing to stop Margy smiling widely and giving a little victory shuffle, spilling some of her chicken soup onto the shelf of her chest.

  ‘Shit!’ she spluttered under her breath, and Nicola giggled as Margy swiped at her white T-shirt, her chin multiplying several times as she strained to see what she was doing.

  ‘You know, when he’s near me, I’m a wreck,’ Nicola said to Margy, who stopped wiping her chest and looked at Nicola with sympathetic eyes. ‘My thighs tingle and everything.’

  Margy nodded and put her bottom lip out. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You could bring him with you?’

  Nicola shook her head and Margy gave up. She’d be back in Valley Park tomorrow to sort out Micky’s affairs. Nicola’s face turned to Michael Jnr and Liam playing on the floor. They’d stopped asking about their dad for now, and Nicola thought about the time when they would be old enough to know the truth. Or perhaps they knew it already.

  Lee sat back casually, eyeing the pouting Gallagher, who squirmed in his seat in the interview room. Gallagher’s eyes were fixed on the green light of the tape recorder. It read eight minutes. Eight minutes of this twat grilling him. Joyce was somewhere else, in another room, Meadows having a pop at her. She would keep shtum, that was the deal. But Joyce had been jittery as hell since it all came out. For having a stressful, high-powered job, she wasn’t handling the pressure well at all. She’d been drinking. Too much for a woman in her condition. Last night she’d hurled an empty bottle of wine at him, her career ruined, her family stunned and her friends silent as night. He didn’t exactly know what she had to complain about. She’d done very well out of it: nice new kitchen, fucking shoes pouring out of the bedroom. After she’d calmed down they’d come up with the only plan open to them right now. She’d say nothing, let him handle it. He’d seen people get away with it for years, he knew just how to play it.

  ‘You think you’re dead clever, don’t you?’ said Lee calmly, ‘that you know every trick in the book? But we’ve already pieced it all together so it’s pointless, this ‘no comment’ shite. The joke’s on you, pal.’

  Gallagher smirked: he didn’t think so.

  Lee sat forward. ‘First rule in detection: look at the evidence, what is it saying?’

  ‘You tell me, Sherlock.’

  ‘Well, it’s saying to me that Micky Kelly was supplying you with cocaine for your wife and her friends’ seedy little habits.’

  Gallagher shook his head, turning his mouth down at the sides.

  ‘We’ve got your phone records, we’ve got what you’ve been looking at on your computer, we’ve got the scales in her bedside drawer, we’ve got traces in the glovebox of your car, we’ve got lists of her mates and what they owe her, we’ve got the cash, we’ve got wardrobes full of expensive clothes, handbags, shoes. My God, she makes Imelda Marcos look like Cinderella.’

  ‘My wife has a good job. I don’t ask what she spends her money on.’

  Lee looked him hard in the eyes. ‘Gallagher – you can’t argue with evidence, it’s fact. Oh, and by the way, one of her mates has done a deal.’

  Gallagher stretched back in the chair and folded his arms. Lee could see the beads of sweat forming on his brow as redness crept up his neck.

  ‘Be a man for once, eh, not the wimp at the beck and call of wifey, and tell me how Mark Redmond was involved.’

  ‘You’re the genius, work it out for yourself.’

  ‘I’m stumped. Who would bother using their own stash to frame a nobody? Who would throw money away like that? Stakes must’ve been pretty high.’ Gallagher picked at his bottom lip and peeled a long line of skin from it. He considered it before putting it in his mouth.

  ‘Hate this silent routine.’ Lee stood up and walked around the room. ‘So, let’s have a guess – Mark knows you’re buying from Micky, threatens to grass you up. Bad lad made good, doing the right thing for his community. Or maybe he wanted some money, whatever… You use the stash you’ve bought for wifey, get in the house, leave traces for evidence, then bung it up the drainpipe – that’s how you knew exactly where to find it, that’s why you did the arrest. So any evidence, any particles of your sad little being that you left behind, wouldn’t count. No wonder he was fucking angry, no wonder the poor kid killed himself taking the rap for a bent copper. What a bastard you are.’

  ‘Not even warm.’

  Lee looked back at Gallagher whose eyes were fixed on the tape deck. He lifted his gaze to Lee and pulled his finger across his throat.

  Looking at his watch, Lee leant across the table. ‘Interview paused at ten thirty-six a.m. for the suspect to use the lavatory,’ he said and pushed the stop button on the tape deck.

  ‘I want a deal,’ said Gallagher matter-of-factly. ‘I know you’re shagging Kelly’s wife.’

  ‘So? You’ll get no deal until you tell me who framed Mark Redmond.’

  ‘And I know her life won’t be worth living if it gets out she grassed on Tiger Reay’s boat party.’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘She did. Micky Kelly would never grass on Tiger.’ He mimicked Lee: ‘Look at the evidence, what is it saying? She informed to you, you informed the boss. There wouldn’t have been a raid without pretty cast-iron evidence coming from wifey. And if I breathe a word out there, she’s dead meat.’

  Lee’s face hardened. ‘Okay, what are we talking?’

  ‘Lose the list, lose anything to do with my wife, her friends. I’ll admit it was my habit, fell into temptation due to stress, I need help etcetera.’

  ‘Did you use it?’

  ‘Nah, can’t stand the stuff.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why d’you think? You’ve seen my wife: don’t say she’s not attractive.’

  Lee couldn’t disagree. ‘Okay, so who did it?’

  Gallagher thought for a moment, still weighing up the pros and cons of the conversation. ‘Micky Kelly.’

  Lee frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mark wouldn’t groom the kids for Micky’s dealers.’

  ‘But the Woods kid said he did.’

  ‘Micky found out, heard
Mark telling Nicola that the kid was bent. Bad news in an IRA family – hate gays. Micky told me to arrest Mark or else he’d drop me in it, then he told Tyrone to give evidence that Mark had offered him drugs or else he’d tell his brothers he was queer.’

  Lee felt the pieces all falling into place like cherries on a slot machine.

  Gallagher continued. ‘Micky had everyone stitched up like a kipper, that’s probably why the lad killed himself, there was nowhere else to turn.’ He told it like he was proudly delivering the punchline of a long-winded joke.

  Lee’s immediate thought was why Mark hadn’t told Nicola, but then he didn’t know the guy, maybe he didn’t want to break her heart, or maybe he didn’t want Micky to break his legs. Or hers.

  ‘Cheers for that, Gallagher,’ Lee said as he made his way to the door.

  ‘You’ll see to the list?’

  Lee turned and looked over his shoulder, ‘Sorry, mate, submitted it first thing.’

  Gallagher threw him a murderous stare. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ said Lee as he closed the door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The clouds hung black and threatening over the Tyne, though the sun shone down on the station. Lee had stepped outside for some fresh air after finally charging Gallagher and his wife. The papers would have a field day with this and rightly so. He thought of Nicola. The funeral was that afternoon, and he wanted to be there. The church – Lee wondered at the irony of it. An ungodly man if ever there was one. But he knew the priest would find good things to say about Micky Kelly, a man who’d spent his life helping old ladies across the street, keeping the likes of Gerry Woods in order and the other East End boys out of the local pubs where they would have caused no end of bother. The sort of anti-hero that stole from the poor and gave none of it back. But Lee knew he couldn’t be seen with Nicola, he wasn’t that reckless. And besides, she hadn’t responded to his letter. He’d kept it brief. Apologised, told her he missed her, he still wanted to be with her if she could forgive him. Even Margy had failed to persuade her to respond. She was tied up organising the funeral, Margy had insisted, and Kim’s house and Micky’s affairs. There’s a lot to do when someone dies. Be patient.