by Jack Gatland
5
Personal Crisis
Once Declan settled Derek Salmon back into his custody cell and ensured that the Desk Sergeant would arrange for the right medication to be brought in, the time had moved on past six pm and so he made the rush hour drive back to Hurley, hoping that some kind of normality might help him right now. The drive back from Epping had been silent, as if Derek Salmon had finally realised the severity of the situation and had resigned himself to it. Even when Declan had uncuffed him, leaving him in the hands of the Desk Sergeant, Derek hadn’t spoken a word, silent tears streaming down his face.
Declan wanted to cry too; tears of frustration and anger. This wasn’t on Derek, but on Janelle Delcourt and the Seven Sisters. He needed to link them to this without using what he already knew.
And that was going to be difficult.
His phone rang as he was driving; the screen on the car audio switched to Bluetooth phone mode, the display reading ‘LIZZIE’. Declan tapped it, connecting the call to the car audio.
‘Everything alright?’ he asked. The voice of his ex-wife came through the speakers.
‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘You remember how we said that even though we’re apart, we’d still make life or death decisions together about Jess?’
Declan didn’t like how this was going. ‘Go on.’
‘She’s been asked to a milkshake diner.’
‘She’s fifteen, Liz. She’s allowed to—'
‘On a date.’
There was a silence as Declan took this in. ‘With a boy?’
‘Of course with a boy! What else did you…’ the voice on the phone trailed off. ‘Oh, yeah. No, it’s a boy. His name is Owen Peterson.’
‘Have you met him?’
‘No. but I will. And I wanted to know whether you wanted to be here too when I do.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. After school.’
Declan thought for a moment. He’d been on dates when he was fifteen, but that was in Hurley, a sleepy little village, and it had been a million years ago. Now the world was different, scarier… But at the same time, he couldn’t stop Jessica dating purely because he was overprotective.
Could he?
‘Sure,’ he said into the phone. ‘I’ll be there. And thanks.’
Lizzie ended the call, and Declan continued the drive in silence, jumping when the phone rang again. A different name was on the screen this time. He answered it.
‘How old were we when we started dating?’ he asked. There was a pause, and then the voice of Kendis Taylor spoke.
‘Well, hello to you too, Dec,’ she said. ‘I was fourteen, I think. Why?’
‘Jess is going on her first date,’ Declan explained, but was surprised to hear Kendis laugh down the line. ‘What?’
‘Buddy, this isn’t her first date,’ Kendis said. ‘This is the first date that you know of. Come on, we were going out for a good month before I even told my parents about you!’
‘I told my dad immediately,’ Declan admitted.
‘Yeah, but your dad was a super detective,’ Kendis laughed. ‘He would have worked it out immediately, anyway. And Jess is like you. She probably keeps bigger secrets than this from you and her mum.’
Declan thought about this for a moment. He knew this to be true, as for the last couple of weeks Jessica had been helping him work through his late father’s notes, trying to help Declan work out who could have killed him. And part of this involved keeping everything secret from Lizzie.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, before realising something. ‘Sorry, why are you calling?’
‘Journo hat on,’ Kendis said. ‘Hearing that Derek Salmon is in custody for the murder of Angela Martin.’
‘No comment,’ Declan grit his teeth. Who’d told her? ‘And I’d like to know where you gained such fantastical news.’
‘I tell you, and you tell me,’ Kendis replied.
‘Off the record.’
‘Of course.’
Declan sighed. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think he did it. He’s taking the blame for something.’
‘That fits,’ Kendis agreed. ‘My source heard it from someone in the Sisters. Which means they’re getting it out there for some reason. And if I know…’
‘Then everyone else knows,’ Declan slammed his palm on the steering wheel in frustration. ‘Thanks for this, I owe you.’
‘Buy me dinner when it’s done,’ Kendis finished. ‘And give me the exclusive during it.’ She disconnected the call.
Declan drove for a while, thinking about what Kendis had said. If Janelle Delcourt was sending the news out, she wanted this known publicly. But why? What did she gain from ensuring that the world knew that a dying police officer caused a murder, when it was most likely connected to her? Tapping the dashboard again, Declan phoned Monroe.
‘Guv, the case is getting leaked to the press,’ he said when the call connected. ‘I just had a reporter—’
‘I know,’ Monroe replied, cutting Declan off. ‘Someone’s told the news outlets everything. Angela Martin’s photo was just on the TV. I need to know everything that Derek said to you when you were both alone, laddie.’
‘Want me to come back now and brief everyone?’
‘Don’t bother,’ Monroe said. ‘The cat’s out of the bag, so we’ll wait until Doctor Marcos has done her magic. But you need to tell us everything tomorrow, okay? And stop talking to Kendis bloody Taylor.’
And with that the phone disconnected.
Declan carried on down the motorway. He needed to find a link between the murder of Angela Martin and the Seven Sisters fast, because there were a lot of questions for Delcourt to answer, and an actual murderer to find.
The Six O’clock News was on when the police raided Stripe’s house.
It wasn’t Stripe that they were looking for; he was a child. They didn’t raid houses of children. They were after his parents.
‘Alfie!’ his mother screamed as the door was smashed in by a police battering ram. ‘Get upstairs and flush!’
Before Stripe could move though, the house filled with police officers, all moving as one, pushing Stripe’s mother to the wall of the living room and turning her to face it as they handcuffed her.
‘Trisha Mullville, I’m arresting you for class A narcotics dealing!’ the police officer shouted. ‘Anything that you say—’
He didn’t finish because at that moment Stripe’s father, currently tripping on a sizeable amount of ingested medications came screaming down the stairs like a deranged banshee, a large and vicious looking machete in his hands. He didn’t do anything with it though, as he tripped on one stair, crashing to the floor and cutting into his own arm with the blade, screaming as it bit into the flesh. The police ran in and restrained him before he could rise, taking the machete away and stemming the blood flow with a tea towel.
And then, just like that, it was over. Trish slumped against the door now, crying while her husband, Stripe’s father, was screaming incoherently as the police tried to stop him from swallowing his own tongue.
As Stripe sat beside the television, a woman made her way over to him. She wasn’t in uniform, and because of this Stripe knew she was probably the Vice officer in charge of the case. In her late fifties or early sixties, her short blonde hair mixed with grey, and a smart blue suit worn over a cream blouse, she knelt beside him.
‘Alfie, is it?’ she asked. Stripe nodded. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Bullman. We’re going to get a social worker in to stay with you, okay?’
‘What’s going to happen to them?’ Stripe asked, looking to his parents. Bullman followed his gaze.
‘They’ve done some bad things, and they’ll be dealing with that for the moment,’ she said. ‘But they’re low on the ladder, so the chances are they can make a deal.’
Stripe looked back to the news on the television. There was footage of a police crime tent in a woodland clearing, and the image of a girl, a school end-of-year photo was show
n over it. A young girl, smiling, her entire life ahead of her.
A girl that Stripe recognised.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked. Bullman looked to the screen.
‘They found a body in Essex,’ she said. ‘That’s a photo of her.’
‘That’s not her,’ Stripe replied, looking back to Bullman, a plan suddenly forming in his head. ‘She’s not buried in Essex.’
‘What do you mean?’ Bullman waved for another plain clothed officer, a stocky, white male with greying hair to join her. ‘Who’s not buried there?’
‘That girl,’ Stripe said. ‘Gabby Chapman. She’s not buried down south. I saw her buried.’
Bullman looked to the other detective for a moment before turning back. ‘Can you show me where she’s buried?’ she asked. Stripe smiled.
‘You said you could make a deal with my parents, right?’ he asked. ‘So I want the same thing. You let my parents go, and I’ll show you where the girl on the TV is really buried.’
Bullman looked to DI White, he of the greying hair. White looked to the television and then shrugged.
‘If it pans out, we can talk,’ he said. Bullman looked back to Stripe.
‘Did you see who killed her?’ she asked. ‘Was it a man? An old man? A police officer?’
Stripe knew who killed Gabby. He’d seen them put the body into the ground and bury it. But even though he wanted to save his parents from prison, there was no way that he was going to rat out Macca Byrne or his right-hand man Harrison. Instead, he simply shook his head.
‘It was dark, and it was in the Lickeys,’ he said.
DI White was on a radio, talking to someone just out of earshot. Eventually he walked back.
‘We’re taking your parents in for questioning,’ he explained. ‘And while we do this, you’re going to take us to where you saw the body being buried, okay? And if you’re not talking shit, then we can sort out some kind of reduced—’
‘No,’ Stripe folded his arms. ‘Amnesty.’ He looked over to his mother, who stared at him. She didn’t know that Stripe hung out with Macca Byrne, and her expression was one of stunned betrayal.
And Stripe knew that even if he showed the police the body, even if he did free his parents, life at home would never be the same.
6
Night Terrors
Ricky Johnston knew he’d screwed up the moment the bouncer kept staring at him.
He rarely drove down to London; the M40 was a boring motorway, and it was always a pain to drive back, especially if he wanted to toot some gak or have a few shots. Nine times out of ten he’d end up crashed on some tart’s floor, waking up with a killer headache and leaving before dawn. Somehow, he’d never worked out how to upgrade this into waking up in some tart’s bed.
But tonight was different. Although Ricky lived in Sparkhill in Birmingham, he’d been born and raised in North London, and a lot of his friends still lived in the area. So when one of his oldest friends had announced her twenty-first birthday piss-up, he knew that he couldn’t miss it. The only problem was that it was being held in Islington, upstairs in a trendy pub called The Old Queen’s Head, half-a-mile north of The Angel underground station. And although Islington was now a very nice, middle-class and gentrified area; you knew an area was gentrified when bakers were called boulangeries and loaves were now called artisan bread - it was also North London, right beside Hoxton and the Coleville Estate.
And that was Seven Sisters territory.
But he wasn’t there on business, he wasn’t there to start a fight; it was purely a social visit. And although Moses and Macca had been at each other’s throats for the last year while the Sisters and George Byrne had tried to rein each of them back, Ricky knew that they’d once been as thick as thieves. He knew he could gain some aggro from going south, especially after Macca and his gang beat the shit out of some Delcourt gang Paedo goon recently, but he could deal with aggro. Maybe even talk his way out of it.
And so Ricky Johnston had driven down to Islington, parking a couple of streets east and, once in the Old Queen’s Head had found himself a safe spot to base himself in upstairs, staying sober and drug free for a change, constantly aware of the entrance to the function room, and always keeping one eye on the other partygoers, worried that any of them could have connections to Moses and his psycho mum.
The problem for Ricky though, was that this made him stand out in the crowd, and the pub’s bouncer, watching a ton of early twenty-somethings party like there was no tomorrow couldn’t help but notice the one guy who sat by the window in his loud shirt and leather bomber jacket, watching everyone with great interest. In fact, the bouncer wondered if the guy was simply a hired bodyguard himself, until he heard the birthday girl call out his name, and demand that he stopped worrying and had a drink; he could drive back to Birmingham tomorrow.
Walking over to the birthday girl, now utterly wasted, her sparkly silver dress stained with red wine and the two floating helium-filled balloons attached to her now slowly deflating, and pointed to Ricky.
‘Who is he?’ He asked. ‘He looks like he wants to start a fight.’
‘Nah, that’s Ricky Johnston,’ the birthday girl laughed. ‘Known him for years. He’s actually trying to keep out of one!’ And with that the music changed to a Spice Girls song and the birthday girl danced off, belting out the first verse.
The bouncer walked back to the door, typing a message on his phone, sending it.
Got a Birmingham lad called Ricky Johnston here. Looks nervous. Any good to you?
He carried on watching the crowd while keeping a weather eye on the sober young man by the window. After a couple of minutes, his phone dinged.
Keep him there. On way. M
The bouncer looked at Ricky, suddenly feeling sorry for the little bugger. But, Moses Delcourt would appreciate this. And that was far bigger than some Brummie getting a beating.
Leaning back against the doorframe and nodding his head to the music, the bouncer found that he was enjoying the night.
Ricky wasn’t feeling the party, and after a couple of hours of sitting by the window feeling anxious, he decided to get back to his car and drive back to Sparkhill. He was feeling a little paranoid too; for the last twenty minutes, he was utterly convinced that the bouncer on the door had been eyeballing him. Which meant that he either wanted to fight Ricky or shag him. And Ricky wasn’t into either of those right now.
And so, deciding just to slip out of the party without saying goodbye, Ricky asked where the toilets were and walked down the stairs, slipping out of the back entrance to the pub. He made his way quietly down the street towards his car, breathing in the night air and allowing his heart rate to calm down as he did so. Once he was in the car, he could lock the doors. He could drive. He could…
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Ahead, Ricky saw some men turn into view from Cruden Street. They could have been anyone, but the moment they saw him they picked up their pace as they approached. Looking back to the pub, Ricky saw the bouncer outside now, watching him.
Turncoat bastard. Ricky knew that he was being eyeballed.
Now, with nowhere to retreat and the enemy approaching from the front, Ricky looked to his right and saw that he was beside the entrance to Raleigh Mews, a small apartment complex. Turning and making his way to the door, he started pressing the buttons on the keypad, buzzing as many people as he could. It was early, not even nine pm; there was a chance that someone in there would expect friends or a fast food delivery and would buzz him in without checking. Once through the door, he could make a run for it.
He was about to try again when a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around to face his pursuers. There were four of them in total; three wearing a combination of puffer jackets and hoodies, while the one at the front wore an expensive leather jacket. Ricky immediately recognised him.
Moses Delcourt.
‘I’m leaving,’ Ricky said. ‘I was born in London. I was seeing some friends. I swe
ar to you, I wasn’t working.’
The three men beside Moses grabbed Ricky, turning him around and backing him against the opposite wall, next to the gated garage entrance to the apartments.
‘You work for Macca Byrne though, yeah?’ Moses asked. Quietly and nervously, Ricky nodded.
‘I work for George, not Macca,’ he said. ‘But that sometimes means that I’m with him.’
‘Good that you didn’t lie to me,’ Moses moved in closer. ‘That would have been bad.’
‘I got no beef with you, Mister Delcourt,’ Ricky continued, cursing his stupidity for coming down to London in the first place. He looked to his side; there was a window leading into one of the ground floor apartments, a television visible through the net curtains. The news was on.
Surely they can’t do anything around witnesses, he thought to himself.
Moses was considering this. One of his gang was getting antsy, pacing back and forth. Ricky realised that he was obviously high on something, and that never made for rational decisions.
‘We should muck him up,’ the gang member snapped. ‘We should do to him what they did to Dave Ewan, man.’
‘Dave was an idiot,’ Moses replied calmly. ‘He was cruising for boys and he got punished. He deserved that beating.’ He was watching Ricky carefully. ‘Have we met before?’
‘We were at school together,’ Ricky said. ‘I was Year Three, you were Year Five.’
‘Nah man, that’s not what I meant.’ Moses was thinking now. ‘You were here when Macca came, weren’t you?’
‘Macca’s been here a few times, Mister Delcourt. So has his dad. That could have been any of them, as I was here twice with them.’
‘You anything to do with what happened with Dave?’ one of the gang asked. Ricky hadn’t been, but he’d heard what had happened. He shook his head.