Crack Down

by Val McDermid

  ‘Hey, shitheads,’ I yelled in protest, breaking into a run without even thinking about it.

  They looked up, uncertainty written all over their faces. It only took them seconds to weigh up the situation and decide to leg it. If it had been after dark, they probably would have brazened it out and tried to give me a good kicking for daring to challenge their right to my stereo. Shame, really. I had so much pent-up frustration in me that I’d have relished the chance to show them my Thai boxing skills weren’t just for keeping fit.

  By the time I reached the car, they were round the next corner. The mashed metal of the lock wasn’t ever going to make sweet music with a key again. I pushed the control button that stopped the alarm shrieking. Sighing, I pulled the door open and climbed in. At least having the lock replaced would kill one of the hours I couldn’t find a way to fill usefully. Before I started the engine, I called Handbrake the mechanic, checked he’d collected the Beetle without a hitch and told him I needed a new driver’s door lock. That way, I wouldn’t have to hang around answering his phone while he nipped out to collect the part.

  I turned left on to Oxford Road and headed away from the city centre. I was clear of the curry zone in a few minutes, and straight into the heart of university residences and student bedsits. I pushed the eject button on the stereo. Goodbye Julia Fordham. Plangent and poignant was just what I didn’t need right now. I raked through my cassettes and smacked the Pet Shop Boys’ Discography into the slot. Perfect. A thrusting beat to drive me onwards and upwards, an emotional content somewhere below zero. At the Wilbraham Road lights, I cut across to Kingsway and over to Heaton Mersey where Handbrake operates out of a pair of lock-ups behind a down-at-heel block of flats. Handbrake is a mate of Dennis’s who’s been team mechanic to Mortensen and Brannigan for a few years now. And, for his sins, he also gets to play with Richard’s Beetle. He’s called Handbrake because he used to be a getaway driver for armed robbers, and he specialized in 180-degree handbrake turns when the pursuit got a bit too close for comfort. He did a six-stretch back in the early eighties, and he’s gone straight ever since. Well, only a bit wobbly. Only now and again.

  There was a Volkswagen Golf in one of Hand-brake’s two garages. As I pulled up, Handbrake emerged from under the bonnet. Anyone less likely to adopt the anonymous role of a getaway driver it would be hard to imagine. He’s got flaming red curls as tight as a pensioner’s perm and a face like a sad clown. He’d have no chance in an identity parade unless the cops brought in a busload of Ronald McDonalds. Handbrake wiped his hands on his overalls and gave me a smile that made him look like he was about to burst into tears.

  ‘Gobshites get you?’ he greeted me.

  ‘Caught them in time to save the stereo,’ I told him, leaving the door open behind me.

  ‘That’s saved you a few bob, then. The lad’ll be back with the locks any minute,’ Handbrake said, giving the door the judicious once-over. ‘Nice clean job, really.’

  ‘No problem with the Beetle?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah. Piece of piss. I left it outside your house, stuck the keys back through the letter box. Mr Music out of town, is he?’ I was saved from lying by the arrival of a young black kid on a mountain bike. ‘All right, Dobbo?’ Handbrake called out.

  The lad hauled back on his handlebars to pull up in midwheelie. ‘My man,’ he affirmed. He shrugged out of a smart leather backpack and took a new set of locks for my Peugeot out of it. He handed it to Handbrake, quoted what seemed to be an interestingly low price and added on a tenner for delivery. Handbrake pulled a wad out of his back pocket and counted out the cash. The lad zipped it into his leather bum bag and cycled off. At the corner, he stopped and took out what looked like a mobile phone. He hadn’t looked a day over fourteen.

  ‘Don’t take offence, Handbrake, but these parts aren’t a little bit moody, are they?’ I hate having to be such a prissy little madam, but I can’t afford to be caught out with a car built from stolen spares.

  Handbrake shook his head. ‘Nah. Him and his mates have got a deal going with half the scrap yards in Manchester. Product of the recession. Not so much drugs around, not so much dosh to be made ferrying them round the town, so Dobbo and a couple of his mates spent some of their ill-gotten gains on a computer. One of them checks with the scrap yards every morning to see what new stock they’ve got in. Then when punters like me want a part, we ring in and the dispatcher works out where they can get it from and sends one of the bike boys off for it. Good game, huh?’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’ I watched Handbrake pop the remains of the lock out of my car door. ‘Handbrake? You know anybody on the drugs scene that moves their merchandise in stolen motors?’

  Handbrake snorted. ‘Ask me another. I try not to know anything about drugs in this town. Like the man said, a little learning is a dangerous thing.’ Handbrake did A Level English while he was inside. Who says prison doesn’t change a man?

  ‘OK. How would someone get hold of a set of trade plates?’

  ‘You mean if you’re not a legitimate person?’

  ‘Why would I be asking you about legitimate people?’

  He snorted again. ‘Well, you can’t just cobble them together in a backstreet workshop. It’s only the Department of Transport that makes them, and the numbers are die-stamped into the metal, not like your regular licence plates. You’d have to beg, borrow or steal. There’s enough of them around. You could nick them off a garage or a motor in transit, though that way they’d be reported stolen and you wouldn’t get a lot of mileage out of them. Beg or buy a loan of a set off a delivery driver. Best way is to borrow them off a slightly dodgy garage. Why, you need some?’

  Handbrake likes to wind me up by pretending he’s the innocent abroad and I’m the villain. But I wasn’t in the mood for it right then. ‘No,’ I snarled. ‘But I think I might be about to deprive someone of some.’

  ‘Better be careful where you use them, then.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos you’ll get a tug is why. The traffic cops always pull you if you’re using trade plates. Not so much on the motorway, but defo if you’re cruising round. If they so much as think you’re using them for anything except demos, tuition or delivery, you’ve had it. So you better have a good cover story.’

  I was glad of the tip. I didn’t think this was the right weekend for a roadside chat with the traffic division.

  8

  I kicked my heels for the best part of an hour in Ruth’s waiting room while she was dealing with a client. I’d have been better employed catching up on my sleep. After I’d stood on for a major bollocking for my outrageous behaviour at Longsight nick, we sat glumly staring at each other across her cluttered desk, depressed by the lack of information we had to trade. ‘I suspect the officers actually working the case don’t believe a word Richard’s saying,’ Ruth said. ‘All I get is the condescending wink when I suggest that if they really want to make a major drugs bust they should be on the phone to every villain who’s ever grassed in his life. Anything to get a lead on the car thieves. But of course, they don’t really believe in the car thieves,’ she added cynically. ‘The one lucky break we have so far is that none of the police officers we’ve dealt with has made the connection between Richard and you. At least the superintendent is prepared to go along with the idea of a lie-down, even though he stressed that it was for his team’s benefit and not mine.’

  I got to my feet. ‘I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. I’ll let you know as soon as I get anything,’ I said grimly.

  Out in the street, the city carried on as usual. I cut across Deansgate and through the Victorian glass-domed elegance of the Barton Arcade into the knots of serious shoppers bustling around the designer clothes shops of St Ann’s Square. Nobody had told the buskers outside the Royal Exchange that this was not a day for celebration and their cheery country rock mocked me all the way across the square and into Cross Street. I’d abandoned the car on a single yellow line round the back of
the Nat West bank, and to my astonishment, I didn’t have a ticket. It was the first time all day that I’d got the benefit of an even break. I had to take it as an omen.

  Back home, I checked Richard’s answering machine and saved the handful of messages. I returned a couple of the more urgent calls, explaining he’d had to go out of town at a moment’s notice and I wasn’t sure when he’d be back. I also checked his diary, and cancelled a couple of interviews he’d arranged for the early part of the coming week. Luckily, he didn’t have much planned, thanks to Davy’s visit. God only knew how he was going to write this week’s magazine column. Frankly, it was the least of my worries.

  * * *

  Manchester’s rush hour seems to have developed middle-aged spread. When I first moved to the city, it lasted a clearly definable ninety minutes, morning and evening. Now, in the evening it seems to start at four and continue till half past seven. And on Fridays, it’s especially grim. Even on the wide dual carriageway of Princess Parkway, it was a major challenge to get into third. It felt like a relief to be in the airport. That’s how bad it was.

  I was ten minutes early for our meeting, but Della was already sitting in the domestic terminal with a coffee. When the automatic doors hissed open to let me in, she glanced up from her Evening Chronicle. Even from that distance I could see the anxiety in her deep-set green eyes. She jumped to her feet and pulled me into a hug as soon as I got close enough. ‘Poor you,’ she said with feeling, steering me gently into a seat. The sympathy was too much. Seeing the tears in my eyes, Della patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and said, ‘Give me a sec, I’ll get you a coffee.’

  By the time she returned, I was as hard-boiled as Philip Marlowe again. ‘Like the hair,’ I remarked. Her shining chestnut hair, normally controlled to within an inch of its life in a thick plait, was loose around her shoulders, held back from her face with a wide, sueded silk headband.

  ‘Thanks.’ She pulled a face. ‘Think it’ll impress a forty-year-old merchant banker?’

  ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘He thinks pleasure, I suspect business.’ Detective Chief Inspector Della Prentice is the operational head of the Regional Crime Squad’s fraud task force. She’s a Cambridge graduate, with all the social graces that implies, which means that when she’s got some bent businessman in her sights he’s more likely to think this charming woman who’s so fascinated by his work is a corporate headhunter rather than a copper. The problem is, as Della once explained with a sigh, the best con men are often the most charming.

  ‘We never sleep, eh?’ I teased.

  ‘Not with people we suspect might have their hands in a rather interesting can of worms,’ Della said. ‘Even if he is buying me dinner at the Thirty-Nine Steps.’ I felt a momentary pang of jealousy. Since Richard only ever wants to eat Chinese food, I don’t often get the chance to eat at the best fish restaurant in Manchester. As if reading my thoughts, Della said, ‘But enough of my problems. Any news on Richard?’

  ‘Not a sausage. I feel so frustrated. I just haven’t got any handles to get a hold of. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for me?’ I asked morosely.

  ‘We…ell, yes, and no,’ Della said cautiously, lighting a cigarette with her battered old Zippo.

  The ticket-free windscreen had been an omen. ‘Yeah?’ I demanded.

  ‘The fingerprint SOCO who went over Richard’s car did some work for me a while back when I was looking into forged insurance policies, and we got quite pally. So I bought her a butty at lunch time.’

  ‘What did she find?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s what she didn’t find that’s significant. She was being a bit cautious. Understandably, because she’s not had time yet to analyse all the prints thoroughly. But it looks like Richard’s fingerprints were on all the surfaces you’d expect – door handle, gear stick, steering wheel, the cassette in the stereo. But there were none of his prints on the boot, or the carrier bag or the plastic bags that the rocks were in. In fact, there were no prints at all on any of those. Just the kind of smudges you get from latex gloves. And Richard had no gloves on his person, nor were there any in the car.’ Della gave a tentative smile, and I found myself reflecting it.

  ‘D’you know, that’s the first good news I’ve heard all day?’

  Della looked apologetic. ‘I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. If I hear any more on the grapevine, I’ll let you know. Now, as to the other thing. You owe me, Kate – I thought when I left the West Yorkshire fraud squad that I’d never have to drink with another patronizing, sexist Yorkshireman. Today I discovered they actually get worse when they’re in exile on the wrong side of the Pennines. According to DCI Geoff Turnbull of the Drugs Squad, it’s understandable that a nice woman like me should be interested in drugs. After all, even if I didn’t manage to fulfil my womanly role by reproducing myself before my divorce, I must have contemporaries whose kids are in their late teens and therefore at that dangerous age,’ Della growled through clenched teeth.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I sympathized. ‘And when exactly are they letting him out of intensive care? I know a choir that’s short on sopranos.’

  Della managed a twisted smile. ‘Once he’d finished condescending, he did actually come up with some interesting information. Apparently, when crack first started to appear in this country, it was in relatively small amounts and in quite specific areas. The obvious inference was that there were only a handful of people involved in the importing and distribution of it, and while its presence was worrying, its level of penetration wasn’t seriously disturbing. However, during the last few months, small quantities of crack have been turning up all over the country along with some unusual designer drugs. The really worrying thing is that these finds have been coming out of routine operations.’ Della paused expectantly.

  I didn’t know what she was expecting. I said, ‘Why is that so worrying?’

  ‘It’s turned up where they didn’t expect to find it. The operations have been targeted at something else, say Ecstasy or heroin, and they’ve ended up producing a small but significant amount of crack as well. And it’s not localized. It’s dotted all over the shop.’ Della looked serious. I could see why. If small finds were appearing unexpectedly, the chances were that they were only the tip of a very large iceberg.

  ‘Any particular geographical distribution?’ I asked.

  ‘Virtually all over the country. But it’s mostly confined to bandit country.’

  ‘Meaning?’ I asked.

  ‘The sort of areas that are semi-no-go. Inner-city decayed housing, satellite council estates both in the cities and in bigger towns. The kind of traditional working-class areas where people used to leave school and go into the local industry, only there’s no industry any more so they graduate straight to the dole queue, the drink and drugs habits and the petty crime that goes with them.’ Della stubbed her cigarette out angrily.

  ‘I bet your Yorkshire DCI didn’t put it quite like that.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ Della said cynically. ‘Anyway, the bottom line is that it looks like we’ve got a crack epidemic on our hands. And they suspect that whoever is dealing this crack has a very efficient distribution network.’

  That ruled out the Post Office. ‘And they think Richard is part of that?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. But they clearly think he’s important enough to be worth sweating.’ Della sighed. ‘It doesn’t look good, Kate, I’m bound to say.’

  I nodded. She didn’t have to tell me. ‘Any suggestions as to where I might start looking?’

  Della looked at me. Her green eyes were serious. ‘You’re not going to thank me for this, but I don’t think you should be looking at all. These are very dangerous people. They will kill you if they think you’re any kind of threat.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? What option have I got, Della? If I can’t get the real villains behind bars, they’ll kill Richard. As soon as they find out just who drove off with their parcel of crack. You know they will. They
can’t afford not to, or every two-bit dealer in town’ll think they can give them the run-around.’ I swallowed the last of my coffee. I should have gone for camomile tea. The last thing I needed was to get even more hyped up.

  ‘Did you get the chance to ask about the Polaroid?’ Anything to avoid another unnerving gypsy warning.

  ‘I spoke to a woman DS in Vice. She said she couldn’t think of anyone off the top of her head, but she’d ask around. But the DCI running Richard’s case doesn’t seem particularly interested in it, probably because in itself it isn’t technically obscene.’ Della lit another cigarette, but before she could say more, bodies started flowing through the doors leading from Domestic Arrivals. Judging by the high proportion of men in suits clutching briefcases that seemed as heavy as anchors after a hard day’s meetings, the London shuttle was down. I stood up. ‘I think this is Davy’s flight,’ I said.

  Della was at my side in a flash. She gave me a quick hug, threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t about to be accosted by a small boy, and said, ‘Stay in touch. I’ll bell you if I hear anything.’ And she was gone.

  The first rush had subsided, leaving the stragglers who had had to wait for luggage from the hold. After what felt like a very long time, the double doors swung open on a woman in British Airways uniform, carrying a small holdall. By her side, Davy trotted, looking like he was auditioning for the moppet role in the next Spielberg film, hair flopping over his forehead in a slightly tousled fringe, big brown eyes eager. He was proudly wearing an outfit he’d chosen with his dad on his last visit, topped by the New York Mets jacket Richard had sent him from a recent trip to the States, still too baggy for his solid little frame. Then he saw me. All in a moment, he seemed puzzled, then disappointed. He looked around again, then realizing Richard really wasn’t there, he waved uncertainly at me and half smiled. My heart sank. As far as Davy was concerned, I was clearly a poor substitute. As if I needed the confirmation.