by Emmy Ellis
“Don’t you worry about that. We turned off on the next country lane. We’ll make out if we get asked, that we went home the back way, out of sight.”
“What about me in his car?” She lifted a shaking hand and indicated Drippy.
“Easy. Say you shagged him at the warehouse, then went home for a bit. You returned to the corner a while later, weren’t even in his car at the dual carriageway point. Use the fucking brain you were born with, will you?” He rolled his shoulders and cricked his neck from side to side. “Move him to the bank, Dave. Put him so the back of his head’s hanging over the edge.”
Dave dragged Drippy under the armpits and positioned him where Lime pointed.
“Just sit on him and push his head under,” Dave said to Sarah.
She moved forward, the light from the headlamps illuminating the feet and lower legs, nothing else. Drippy had put those shoes on and laced them up, ready to come and see her. He hadn’t known his weekly visit would end like this. He hadn’t known today was his last. And she hadn’t known either. How fickle fate was, tricking you into thinking it was just a normal day, nothing to crow about, then shoving you down a different path, forcing you to face up to the fact that you’d seriously fucked up and had to pay the consequences. One thought, that was all it had taken. One sentence spoken to Drippy: ‘Let’s go somewhere else…’
She wished she could turn the clock back, barter with fate, tell her she was sorry and if she could let her off this one thing, this one murder, she’d do anything.
Sarah swallowed and, sitting on his torso, said a silent prayer and asked for forgiveness. She pressed her hand onto Drippy’s wrecked face, the blood wet on her palm, and let out a disgusted wail.
Lime and Dave laughed behind her, the sound of their combined mirth chilling her bones.
“Go on, girl, push him under then,” Lime said. “Talk about a slowcoach.”
Sarah did as she’d been told, hating herself for it but doing it anyway, because what was the alternative? She’d find herself drowned if she refused.
Water rushed over Drippy’s face, and despite him being unconscious, his body attempted some reflex reactions, his arms twitching, his chest jerking so she rose a little then sank back down. She cried the whole time, aware of her tears plopping onto his neck, thinking, cruelly, for self-preservation purposes, that the stream would wash them away as if they’d never been there, keeping her identity safe.
Drippy seemed to come alive, straining against her hold, and she added her other hand to apply more pressure, willing him to fucking die so she could leave and try to pick up the pieces her mistake had wrought. The cold of the water seeped into her hands, and another awful thought came: At least it’s washing the blood away.
She was wicked for thinking that. Wicked.
He stopped moving, and she was left staring down at her arms, seemingly cut off at the wrists, her eyes now adjusted to the semi-darkness. She raised her hands, and Drippy’s face popped up, circled by the stream, the current shoving at his left cheek, meeting resistance then slewing around his head to continue on its way, as if he were nothing but a boulder to navigate.
“Now push him into the water, all of him,” Lime instructed.
She snapped out of her head and into the now.
“Seems pretty deep here,” he went on. “He might even go under for a while before he appears again fuck knows where.”
The rush of the water, the shh-shh of it, seemed to echo his words, forcing Sarah to climb off Drippy and heft him with all her might, into the water. The splash was loud, and the surface closed around him, a liquid blanket. The current maybe swept him along, she couldn’t tell, couldn’t bloody see for the tears, and if she were honest, she didn’t want to.
She stood and stared at the used condoms on the grass. Her DNA was on them. In a panic, she sank to her knees and scooped water into her cupped hands, throwing it over them.
Lime tutted. “He was a litterbug. Got a tissue on you, Dave?”
She got up and turned away while the evidence was picked up, staring over at the many lights of the vehicles on the carriageway. When it came on the news, this bloody awful thing they’d done, this hideous thing she’d done, some drivers or passengers might recall looking this way and seeing figures as silhouettes in the light of the headlamps, the shapes of one woman and two men.
She had to hope they wouldn’t.
Otherwise, she’d be well and truly fucked.
Chapter Thirty-One
Isla was a wreck. Frank’s parents were here, unsettling her. Her father-in-law, Peter, moped around, morose, drifting from one room to the next as if he expected to find his son any second. Well, she could remind him Frank had been taken away, his body evidence now, apparently. Late last night, they’d removed him, and she’d immediately called an emergency cleaner from a list one of the policemen had given her, the type who specialised in sweeping in and vanishing anything to do with a murder, leaving it pristine, as if it hadn’t even occurred, all finished by four a.m.
Except she knew it had occurred. If she closed her eyes, images of the blood, of Frank on the kitchen floor, filled her head until it seemed nothing else had room to live in there. She’d had the presence of mind to ask her sister to take the boys to hers last night, keep them out of the way until Isla had sorted herself out. She’d managed three hours of sleep, but come eight o’clock on the dot, her in-laws had turned up on her doorstep, their eyes red-rimmed, their nose tips raw from rubbing them with tissues, and now, here they were, wandering around her house and getting in the bloody way.
Just their presence was grating.
She’d never really liked them, pretended for Frank’s sake. Well, she wouldn’t have to do that anymore, would she.
Marjorie, Frank’s mum, was getting on her last nerve. She swung from crying for her boy to bombarding Isla with questions she couldn’t answer. Who would want to kill him? Why wasn’t he at work during the day doing a normal job? What did he have to be a bouncer for? Why don’t you work, Isla? At least then my son wouldn’t have had to take a ridiculous position to earn enough money to keep you all. What do you do all day? This isn’t the olden times, you know. Women do go out to work, and it doesn’t look like you spend your time cleaning much. The dust in the corners. Terrible.
Isla had refrained from slapping her. The dust was Isla’s to ignore, nothing to do with Marjorie, so she could keep her opinions to herself about it, the old bag.
With Peter still floating from room to room, Marjorie cleaning the skirting boards in the kitchen—“I have to do something to keep myself occupied, and if you haven’t washed these in a month of Sundays, someone better had!”—Isla had a moment of peace. She stared out of the living room window, thinking about how her life was so messed up now. She’d have to work, like Marjorie had said, and she’d never move out of this house, not until she met someone else anyway. How long should she wait? A year? No, too long. Was six months acceptable? Her boys would soon get used to a new man about the place. Kids were resilient like that.
The street appeared the same as always, the scabby mums coming back from the school run, fags dangling from mouths, scutty babies in even scuttier pushchairs that had filth on them from biscuits or packets of crisps, transferred from sticky little fingers.
God, she really had to get out of here. These people weren’t her kind.
A car drew up to the kerb. It was the one belonging to the detective who’d been here until the early hours, asking her invasive questions, even going so far as to enquire about what she’d done the day before the murder. Why was that even relevant? She’d answered him as best she could, and he’d written down her answers in his pad, as if she were some kind of criminal and she’d killed her husband. Oh, there had been times she’d thought about it when he’d got on her wick, but it wasn’t something she’d have actually done. Anyway, she had an alibi for the day of death, she’d told him that, lots of CCTV picking her up at the shopping centre, all those shops she�
��d been in, then there was the taxi driver and the women at the after-school club, so if he thought to lay the blame at her door, he had another think coming.
He’d also asked for permission to look at her bank statements, and Frank’s, to see if any large sums of money had changed hands. What, did he think she had the cash to pay someone to kill Frank? She’d laughed, told him how ridiculous that was. He hadn’t looked as if he’d thought so.
He got out of the car, as did another detective, a woman with hideous orange hair, and they stalked up the garden path. Isla sighed and walked out into the hallway, moving to the kitchen door. Marjorie was on her hands and knees, a bucket of water beside her, and Peter looked out of the glass in the back door. She closed them in and went to the front door, putting her finger to her lips so the police didn’t speak and tip her in-laws off that they were there. She really didn’t need them ramming their noses in, Marjorie especially, and Peter, he was an embarrassment the way he was acting.
She showed the coppers into the living room, secured them inside, and pressed her back to the door. They stood opposite her in front of the sofa with no clear inclination to take a seat.
“Sorry,” she said quietly, “Frank’s parents are here, and I’d rather know what you have to say without them listening first.”
Detective Rod Clarke nodded. “Fair enough. You said to me last night that Frank worked at The Roxy as a bouncer.”
She nodded. “He does. Did.”
“We’ve been there early this morning, spoken to the owner, and they’ve got no record of Frank being employed there.”
Isla deflated at the news. “So what was he doing there then? Where did he work? He brought cash home, so he had to be doing something.” A note of hysteria smothered her words.
“The owner knows of him, said Frank worked for someone else.” He winced. “Now, this is where you might want to have a sit down.”
Her blood ran cold, and she stared at him, waiting for terrible words to be spoken. She just knew they would be. The orange-haired woman took a step forward. So that was how they were playing it, were they? Woman to woman, like Isla couldn’t take bad news from a man? Ginger placed a hand on Isla’s shoulder.
“Please, have a seat.” She guided her to the sofa.
“Frank’s parents,” Isla protested as she sat.
Clarke moved to stand by the door and leant on it. “Have you heard of The Brothers?”
While she didn’t get involved with the goings-on around here, she’d be stupid not to listen to the gossip. Of course she knew The Brothers, they’d taken over from Cardigan. There had been talk of it up the little shop, people relieved Cardigan was dead. “Yes…”
“Word is that Frank was involved with them, working at what they call being a ‘watcher’.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?” She knew what it meant, just didn’t want to let them know that. It would mean she really was a die-hard resident of The Estate, and she needed to distance herself from that.
“He was a lookout, as it were, someone who kept an eye on what was going on in a certain area, then reporting back to his employer. Now, the owner of The Roxy said the details are hazy as to whether Frank actually worked for them or not. Something about a lady keeping her eye on the girls and she maybe employed Frank instead.”
“Who?”
Clarke smiled. “I’ll be going to see her shortly. What we need to establish is whether Frank’s death is anything to do with The Brothers or this woman. Did he mention them at all?”
She shook her head. If he had, she wouldn’t have heard him anyway. She’d tuned him out most of the time, her mind on the next new dress or pair of fancy shoes. “No, this is all news to me. Why would he lie and say he was a bouncer?”
“Maybe he was asked not to mention his real employer. You must know how it works around here, how each patch has someone who runs it. While we try our best to haul them in on charges, they rarely stick. Alibis are powerful things, as is money, and if enough is offered, people will say whatever it takes to keep folks out of the nick.”
“Are you saying you might not be able to arrest anyone for killing Frank?”
“Hopefully that won’t be the case.”
Isla wasn’t stupid, she knew what he was saying. If The Brothers had anything to do with Frank’s murder, it was unlikely anyone would grass them up for it, nor would they have left any evidence behind. And what was that he’d said about money? She had the insane thought he might be being paid to look the other way, then dismissed it as ludicrous. It was grief talking, that was all.
“We’ll do our best.” Clarke smiled tightly. “I’ll be in touch if there are any new developments. Did Frank have life insurance?”
He stared at her as if to say: Because you’re the one who’ll benefit from it.
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll look into that as well.”
They left her then, striding out past a hovering, eavesdropping Marjorie in the hallway, who gripped a rag in her hands and wrung it as if it were the only thing keeping her sane. Peter appeared, brushing past her to slope upstairs, and all Isla wanted to do was scream and tell them to get out, never come back.
Frank had lied to her. He was a fucking watcher. How the hell had he got involved in something like that? It’d be that bloody mate of his, she’d bet.
Well, she’d be having words with him. She’d get the truth out of him if it was the last thing she did.
The front door closed, and Isla waited for the questions.
“What did they want?” Marjorie asked. “Have they found the killer? I have a right to know. He was my son. I gave birth to him, brought him up, and I demand that you—”
Isla wanted to scream. Instead, she sniped, “Oh, fuck off, Marjorie, will you? Just fuck off. You’ve always been a nosy bitch, but I don’t have to put up with it anymore, remember that.”
While her mother-in-law’s mouth sagged open and her bulbous eyes bulged, Isla grabbed her handbag from the newel post and strutted out of the house, pleased with herself for finally standing up to the nasty crow. She had something she needed to do. She knew how these things worked, knew what people like The Brothers did for the families of employees who were killed. They owed her, and she was determined to get her due. She wasn’t going to get a job if she could help it. Bloody hell, no.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Greg whacked some sausages in the oven just as George came into the kitchen. Beth wasn’t up yet, and despite them setting a time for the fake meeting she was supposed to overhear, he’d let her sleep a bit longer. He wasn’t with it enough yet to deal with her anyway.
George made their coffees. “You leaving her in bed?”
“Yeah.” Greg opened a packet of smoked bacon, ready to fry it when the sausages were almost done. “Thought we could do with getting lively before we have the discussion. I didn’t get to sleep for ages last night, so a coffee is on the cards first.”
“Sensible.”
The doorbell rang, and Greg frowned. Only a few trusted people knew where they lived. Like Lime, they preferred to keep their private location under their hats. And as far as he knew, they didn’t have any parcels coming.
So much for getting lively before dealing with anything.
“I’ll get it.”
He left the room, the chug and hiss of the coffeemaker following, the scent of a much-needed wake-up elixir tormenting him. He stared through the peephole in the front door and closed his eyes for a second or two, his temper igniting.
What the fuck is he doing here?
He sighed, really not needing this today, although he should have expected it, what with Frank and everything. They usually got the blame for things, so he shouldn’t be surprised.
He opened the door.
“Morning,” DI Clarke said, a grin plastered wide.
Greg ushered him inside, conscious of the neighbours seeing a copper at their door. Mind you, they’d keep their mouths shut, their curiosity to the
mselves. He didn’t think any of them would be too chatty about him and George living there, not if they valued their fingers. Cigar cutters were a decent threat.
He closed up and led the way to the kitchen.
Clarke sat at the table, crossing his ankles, white socks on show. George turned, stared at him, then handed him a coffee. He shook his head while making a third—Clarke was supposed to meet them at a remote location if he had any warnings to give, not come round to their bloody house.
Greg closed the kitchen door, hoping Beth didn’t appear until they’d got rid of the bent copper.
“I managed to come alone, because we really don’t need anyone else in on this conversation. I sent my partner off to look into some financial details regarding a case I’ve found myself on.” Clarke sipped some coffee. “Bloody lovely, that. A hundred times better than the shit at the station.”
“Fuck the coffee. What conversation are you on about?” Greg asked, playing dumb and sitting opposite.
George joined them, passing Greg a cup. “We pay you to make sure there aren’t any conversations, not ones that’ll bring us aggro anyway.”
Clarke shrugged, and his face broke out in that annoying smug grin of his, the one Greg always wanted to slice off. “You know I have to follow leads as if I’m going to do something about them, not that I will. It’s about Frank.”
George held up a hand. “Hold up, we don’t employ that twat, Debbie does. What the fuck’s he gone and done to have you on his back?”
“I know Debbie’s the one, I remembered on the way over here that she took over that street after Cardigan snuffed it, and I’ll be going round there to see her in a minute, let her know Frank’s wife might start sniffing around. I had to tell her what he did for a living—a watcher. The fucking owner of The Roxy opened his mouth first thing, in front of my DS, hence me telling you I have to be seen to follow leads. She’s not on the take so wouldn’t understand me asking her to keep that sort of thing quiet.”