by Joel Hames
Detective Sergeant Priya Malhotra was short, spiky, tough, clearly bright, everything Gaddesdon wasn’t. She reminded me of a cactus. She looked at me with the wariness of a cornered dog when Roarkes introduced us, and I already knew about the toughness and the intelligence from the transcript of her interview with poor Brian Betterson. Roarkes hadn’t got anything more out of Betterson second time round because Priya Malhotra had already got everything there was. She strode into Roarkes’ office, where he was sat at the desk flicking through bits of paper that looked like they’d been there for decades, and I was sitting with my feet on the side table trying not to fall asleep. She strode in, holding a file and looking like she’d just caught Jack the Ripper, and stopped short when she saw Roarkes wasn’t alone.
“It’s OK, Priya,” said Roarkes. “He might be a lawyer, but he’s on our side. You can speak in front of him.”
Priya, I noticed. He hadn’t called her Detective, or Malhotra, or just insulted her the way he insulted pretty much everyone who wasn’t a Chief Constable or a Chief Constable’s spouse. I filed that little insight away as she told us what she’d found.
What she’d found was that the story of Carson’s field was a little murkier than we’d been led to believe. For a start, there had been trouble when he’d come to buy it. It was up for auction from the estate of a farmer who’d died the year before, and everyone had assumed it would be going to the neighbour who’d grazed his sheep on it for decades. When Carson put his bid in there was the closest thing to uproar Bursington had seen since the Civil War, words were exchanged in the pub and, it was alleged, threats were made. Carson had laughed it off, apparently, but still. Someone had threatened him. And when it came to the planning applications, there were objections and insults, and if the villagers had bothered to coordinate their efforts they’d probably have worn Thomas Carson down, but they hadn’t, and they didn’t, and that had upset them even more.
DS Malhotra had spoken to the landlord of one of the local pubs, and a clerk at the council, and the development consultants who’d handled the applications on Carson’s behalf. No one suggested anything that might conceivably have led to the cold-blooded murder of two police officers. But Carson’s field was starting to look like it might be getting promoted from dead end to country lane, and country lane was the closest thing we had to something that might actually lead somewhere.
And there was something else. Something that might fit in with the Cullop comment and the insinuations of Mia Arazzi. DS Malhotra had been given the job of running through the Carsons’ financial affairs to see if there was anything useful there, and at first it seemed there wasn’t. Credit card bills, utilities, flirting with the edge of the overdraft, payments back and forth between personal accounts and company accounts that probably weren’t entirely above board but weren’t anything to shout about. Mortgage. Life insurance. They all checked out except the life insurance, which turned out to be nothing of the sort. Two hundred pounds every month, out of the Carsons’ joint current account, straight into some other account in the Bahamas that certainly wasn’t the Provident Union Life Assurance Company, whatever the reference on the standing order said.
It was noon and she’d been chasing the money for three hours, Malhotra said. Give her a week and she’d find out where that money was really going. The Bahamas were a hard nut to crack, but she’d spoken to some people who’d spoken to some other people who knew where the nutcracker was. But for the time being, it was another lead. Maybe Carson really was throwing money at someone on the council to get his applications through. Maybe this was something else entirely. She’d called Sally Carson and asked her about it, but Sally had told her she wouldn’t be saying another word to the police without her solicitor present. Her solicitor wasn’t Serena Hawkes – no one knew who her solicitor was, or if she’d even appointed one, so I didn’t think we’d be getting much out of Sally Carson for a while. Malhotra gave me a sideways look when she’d finished telling us about that particular conversation. It appeared she knew about my little visit to Bursington.
I rather liked Malhotra. When she left the office to grab some more files I asked Roarkes about her and how he’d managed to acquire another local officer, and he mumbled something about the article.
“What’s that?” I asked, even though I knew precisely what he’d said.
“That bloody article. The Arazzi woman. Bloody hammered me. Wankers upstairs thought I could do with some help. Whether I wanted it or not. And I don’t. Not from this lot. Someone else to go running to the press whenever her brain ticks over. Just what I need.”
I nodded, in feigned sympathy. He could do with some help. He wasn’t going to get very far with Charlie Gaddesdon and Sam Williams as his only backup, and from the little I’d seen of her, Malhotra didn’t look the type to spill her guts to Mia Arazzi. But I was used to Roarkes moaning and this wasn’t Roarkes moaning, not really. He was pleased about Malhotra, Folgate or not, and he didn’t really care about Arazzi, and the ridiculous notion I’d had the night before that he might be hiding something was just that, a ridiculous notion. Roarkes was trying as hard as anyone to solve the case. He just needed some proper help. Now, hopefully, he had it.
“So that’s one and a half officers you’ve got in your little army now,” I said, cheerily, and Roarkes scowled at me.
“What?” I demanded. It was Roarkes who insulted Gaddesdon every time he laid eyes on him, not me. A bit rich for him to take the high ground now.
“Do you know why Gaddesdon’s on this case?”
I shrugged. “No one else wanted him, I guess. They had to give you someone. They gave you someone they could do without.”
Roarkes shook his head slowly, and sighed.
“Gaddesdon volunteered. He insisted.”
“Why?”
“Because, my brilliant, incisive friend, Gaddesdon and Ahmet were friends. They trained together. Known each other for years.”
I remembered the flash of hatred, the expression on Gaddesdon’s face as he gazed through the window at a sleeping Carson, and then later, the figure standing motionless in the rain staring at the crime scene. Gaddesdon made a little more sense now.
Still, for all his motivation, he was no Malhotra. The woman had initiative. When she returned, the first thing she asked was whether she could have a word with Tarney, but Roarkes had bad news on Tarney. He’d been taken elsewhere, a police station in Chetwood, the other side of Manchester, and charges were being prepared. If there was any suggestion of corruption it couldn’t be investigated by anyone from Folgate, and that meant Roarkes and Malhotra, and Gaddesdon, for what he was worth, were persona non grata, which was a shame, because talking to Tarney seemed like a very good idea. Roarkes had spoken to Superintendent Adams at Folgate and asked him to have a word with his opposite number in Chetwood, to push against the ban, but he didn’t think Adams had pushed very hard.
“No surprise,” he said. “He’s one of them, Tarney’s one of them, everyone except me and you, Sam.”
I glanced over at Malhotra, who’d had to endure this little rant in silence, a frown playing across her face, and wondered whether it was time to present Roarkes with his own tinfoil hat. And for all the anger and paranoia, it didn’t really matter, because Tarney wasn’t talking anyway. He and everyone else.
By the time we were done going through Malhotra’s findings it was past two and I was starving. I’d skipped breakfast, I remembered, and not eaten a great deal of that chicken jalfrezi. I’d been surviving on police station coffee all morning, which was a bit like trying to survive on rehydrated dried grass with sour milk thrown in. The pubs weren’t serving anything except beer and crisps now the lunchtime rush was over, and the idea of a pub didn’t grab me anyway.
“Try the canteen,” said Roarkes. I didn’t like his smile as he said it, like he knew something I didn’t.
Five minutes later and two mouthfuls through a barely-digestible jacket potato, I knew it, too. Any alternative to
the station canteen was worth trying.
Roarkes’ latest choice of pub wasn’t much better than the first one he’d taken me to, but at least it was a real pub. The other customers were a mix of middle-aged alcoholics and underage street thugs, but no one seemed to be looking for trouble, so I allowed myself to relax. There was a stained paper menu on the counter, a long list of pies and sandwiches and supposedly “unique” burgers, but we were too late to order anything off that – when I asked them they looked at me like I’d asked for two pints of Guinness and some heroin. They were happy to sell me a packet of crisps and butter me a couple of slices of bread instead. I had a Coke, Roarkes tutting alongside me as he dipped his face in a pint of local bitter and tucked into his own crisp sandwich like he’d lived in the north all his life. Butty, I'd seen on the menu. That’s what they called a sandwich up here. A crisp butty.
I was sick of it. Sick of the rain, the people, the traffic, the shit food. Fook the crisp butty. Roarkes glanced up at me, fragments of crisp stuck to his moustache, and laughed. I hadn’t realised my expression was so obvious. I sighed, and took a bite. Soft white bread, thick coating of butter, nice crunch in the middle. I really was starving. I took another bite.
I wouldn’t admit it to Roarkes, but a Coke and a crisp butty wasn’t such a bad lunch after all. I finished it in a couple of minutes and asked for another one, and while I was waiting for them to make it I looked around at the alcoholics and the thugs and realised they probably weren’t alcoholics or thugs after all, just normal people enjoying a normal drink at a slightly unusual time of day. One of the youths nodded at me, like I was his mate.
I was worried. I was worried that maybe Manchester wasn’t such a shithole after all. I wasn’t having the best of times up here, no point pretending otherwise, and try as I might, I couldn’t blame Serena, who still fascinated me, or Roarkes, who was only trying to help me, or Carson, who might not be saying much but still drew me on like a distant glow in the darkness. If I couldn’t blame Manchester either, then maybe the problem was me.
15: Violence In The Air
BACK AT THE station I was starting to feel like a spare wheel on a car that wasn’t moving. Roarkes took a call in his office the moment I sat down, and I watched as his expression switched from annoyed to bat-shit furious in the space of a second. He raised one arm, pointed at the door and mouthed “fuck off” at me. I remembered how he’d handled Tarney. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
There was no sign of Serena, but Gaddesdon was hovering around, smiling at nothing in particular, and I wondered whether this spare wheel sensation was what he felt all the time. Plus the hatred, of course. I couldn’t forget the hatred. I went to find Malhotra and asked her if there was anything we could do to help.
She glanced up at me with a smile, then noticed Gaddesdon standing behind me. The smile faltered.
“Er, no, it’s OK. I’ve got everything under control here. It’s mostly just waiting.”
I looked past her, at the piles of paper carefully balanced on what looked suspiciously like a card table. If Gaddesdon couldn’t be trusted to deal with any of that then maybe he really was a liability.
As I walked back into Roarke’s office my phone rang. I checked the display before I answered. It was Maloney.
“Got anything for me?” I asked, feeling slightly dirty for having hoped it would be Serena.
“We’ve found him,” he replied.
“Found who?”
“Carson. Who Carson was.”
I waited for a moment, assuming Maloney was about to go on and tell me. He didn’t.
“So?”
“So you’ve got to come and meet someone.”
“Why?”
What Maloney had actually found, it turned out, was a man who claimed to know who Carson had been before he was Carson. Maloney’s informant – he wouldn’t give me the name, however many times I asked – was prepared to tell me what he knew, for a price, if we met face to face that evening.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly four. Roarkes was looking at me and shaking his head. He knew who I was talking to, and I knew what he thought of Maloney, but Roarkes wasn’t my boss.
“Where?”
“Pub. East End of London.”
The drive would be hell on four wheels. Everyone in Manchester would be trying to get out of it the same time I was.
“I can’t be there till late.”
“We’ll wait.”
Maloney gave me the name of the pub and the location. The Mitre. I’d heard of the place. Someone had been stabbed there a few weeks back. There was one other important detail.
“How much?” I asked.
“I’ve got it,” said Maloney, and I didn’t push it any further. I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash and I didn’t think Roarkes would be advancing me expenses for something like this. If Maloney was going to take the hit, good for him.
The drive was slow and uneventful, and inching closer to London didn’t bring with it any of the relief or euphoria I’d hoped it would. I thought about calling Roarkes and letting him know what I was doing, and then I pictured him, either shaking his head mournfully at my stupidity or spitting teeth at me for wasting good petrol. He knew I’d spoken to Maloney, but no more than that. And for all that Roarkes had brightened up that morning, the further I got from him, the more I heard Serena’s words, her worries, her suspicions. I called her instead. I told her where I was heading, and why, and even though she didn’t say it I could tell she was thinking the same things Roarkes would have said out loud. I told her I thought I might pay Tarney a visit when I got back, and she had no problem with that. She just didn’t know how I was going to manage it and why I was talking to her about it.
“You’re a local lawyer. Surely you know who’s acting for him? And you must know Chetwood, right?”
“Ye-es,” she replied. “I know the super there. But latest I heard, he hasn’t got a lawyer.”
“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t thought of that. And then I had one of those rare but beautiful Sam Williams brainwaves.
“What about you? You know the super, right? Get yourself in there. Act for him. He won’t complain, will he?”
“He might.”
“I know I wouldn’t,” I said, and instantly regretted it. There was what sounded like a stifled laugh from the other end of the line, and then it was back to business.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. It wouldn’t be easy, I thought. If someone suggested there was a conflict of interest between Tarney and Carson, she wouldn’t be able to take on Tarney. But who’d care enough to bother doing that?
I called Claire three times on the way, and three times she didn’t answer. I didn’t know how things were going to pan out tonight, but I wasn’t going to be driving back before tomorrow and I didn’t have the money for a hotel or any great desire to sleep in my car or borrow a bed off Maloney. All of which meant Claire was going to be seeing me tonight, whether she wanted to or not. Elizabeth Maurier phoned again, and I let it go through to voicemail. When I played it back she was telling me I couldn’t just put the past behind me and forget about it. I thought about the Grimshaws and their murdered daughter, and I hoped she was wrong.
And I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do about Hasina Khalil.
It was raining in East London, but not like it was raining in Manchester. I didn’t care. I’d be in my car, in the pub, in the car again and home. It could be raining blood for all it would bother me.
The Mitre, the dirty East End pub Maloney’s contact had picked, was just the kind of place you’d expect to meet someone who didn’t always walk the right side of the law and was prepared to tell you things he shouldn’t for the right fee. I’d been in enough of them myself. I was usually the one paying the fee. It was dark, there was a bit of loud metal playing and about thirty drinkers, all men, one woman behind the bar, two people playing pool silently and seriously, a smell of damp and piss and spilled beer and a general feeling that
if you said the wrong thing you wouldn’t get much chance to apologise. I kept my head down and tried to convince myself that the people staring at me weren’t staring at me at all, or if they were then it had nothing to do with Carson and Tarney and the nondescript green car that might have tried to run me over the previous morning. I wasn’t buying it. There was violence in the air. The Mitre made the Bull on Blackmoor look like the Ritz.
Maloney was sitting at a table in the corner furthest from the pool table. He wasn’t alone.
The man sitting with Maloney was grey-haired, and even from the far side of the room I could tell he was nervous. Maloney had obviously said something to him, or just looked significantly in my direction, because he was smiling at me with that everything’s cool smile people wear when nothing’s even close to cool but they don’t want to let it show. I recognised that smile. I’d worn it myself often enough. I was probably wearing it now.
Fine. If the guy was nervous, that was fine, that was my role decided for me. I was the guy who wasn’t nervous. I walked right up to the table, stood next to the guy, held out my hand and said, “Sam Williams.”
“Boris,” he said. “Boris Crick.”
I frowned. I couldn’t help it. The handshake was weak, but it was firmer than the name. I didn’t know what a Boris Crick would look like but it wasn’t this guy. I remembered that Maloney hadn’t given me the name either, and decided to act like it didn’t matter. This wasn’t one of those crack-the-case, get-inside-the-head deals. This was pay to play. There were two near-empty pint glasses on the table, which made my next move obvious enough.