Strangers

by Paul Finch

  At which very inopportune moment, a police van cruised around the corner into their path, and instantly applied its brakes.

  As did the two fugitives.

  ‘Yes!’ Lucy ran all the harder, again finding new strength. ‘Yes, yes!’

  It got better. The uniformed bobby who climbed from the van was a very familiar sight.

  PC Malcolm Peabody had clearly been despatched by Comms to the edge of the division in response to her calls. He looked stern-faced and suspicious as he pulled on his hi-viz anorak.

  ‘Malcolm!’ Lucy shouted.

  He glanced along the road towards her.

  ‘Grab those two!’ she hollered. ‘They’re murder suspects!’

  Lucy lengthened her stride. Despite Peabody standing right in front of them, she expected the duo to dart away or take some kind of evasive action. After all this effort to escape, there was no chance they’d just hang around and let an ordinary patrol officer put his hands on them. But fleetingly, showing his inexperience, Peabody was inert, torn by indecision.

  ‘MALCOLM!’ she shouted in warning.

  Peabody reached one hand under his anorak to clutch the hilt of his baton. But to both his and Lucy’s surprise, the female suspect’s reaction was neither to run nor fight, but to burst into loud, hysterical tears.

  ‘We’ve … we’ve not done anything,’ Lucy heard Darla Maycroft sob. ‘All we did … went shopping, came home … found this, this crazy woman at our house … thought she was a burglar. She caused damage there! She assaulted Peter! We ran for it … she chased us …’

  The performance clearly threw Peabody. He glanced agitatedly back towards Lucy, who was now only thirty or so yards away. The fugitives turned to look too. It was difficult to read their faces in the yellow street lighting, but though Darla’s cheeks were genuinely wet with tears, there was no sorrow there, no anguish. She was blank, devoid of emotion.

  Peabody stepped around them. ‘You sure you’ve got the right people, Luce …?’

  ‘Bloody fool!’ Lucy hissed.

  ‘Not to worry, love,’ the man called Peter told his woman, putting one arm around her.

  His face was not blank – but twisting slowly into a mask of demented rage.

  ‘OUT THE WAY!’ Lucy barged headlong into Peabody, buffeting him aside and aiming a furious kick at the male suspect’s crotch.

  The impact of toe in groin was bone-crunching.

  The man called Peter gave a shrill, pig-like squeal as he toppled sideways onto the road, hands clasping his crushed gonads.

  Darla Maycroft screamed too, but in her case with outrage.

  ‘You bitch!’ Lucy rounded on her, grabbing the lapels of her running top and head-butting her right on her pretty little nose.

  ‘Lucy, what the hell …?’ Peabody protested.

  Lucy spun the stunned woman around, kicking her wobbling legs from underneath her and knocking her down to her knees. Peabody’s mouth slackened open even further when she dug her hand into Darla’s hood, which now hung suspiciously low on her back, and gingerly withdrew two implements.

  The first was a large, heavy knife, its hilt bound with duct-tape, its thick steel blade at least fifteen inches long, the edge honed until it glinted, though for half its length it was also serrated – so that it might serve as a hand-saw.

  The second was a ball-peen hammer.

  Lucy dropped them to the ground, before twisting the suspect’s wrist behind her back, causing her to wince and cry out. It had only struck Lucy over the final few yards why the fugitives had come here, and what it was the man called Peter might have kept hidden in the local changing shed. Meanwhile, Peabody pulled his cuffs from their pouch and dropped to one knee alongside the groaning male.

  ‘In the States, Malcolm,’ Lucy said, breathing hard, ‘they call what that bastard was in the process of doing “reaching”. It’s something you’ll have to learn to spot … hopefully a lot quicker than I did.’

  Epilogue

  Even Blackpool tended to be quiet in mid-December. Its seafront, the world-famous Golden Mile, was lined with garish festive lights, the Tower glittered and shone like a five-hundred foot, wrought-iron Christmas tree, and there was some activity in the various bars, clubs and cafés tucked away down its side-streets, but the bulk of the resort’s attractions were closed.

  It was getting dark when Lucy crossed the tramlines to the Queen’s Promenade.

  She huddled inside her fleece and muffler, her gloved hands buried in her pockets, even her left one, which was still fixed in a cast of dingy, crumbling plaster.

  Everything was wet; it had been raining all afternoon, but now it was too cold for that. Instead, a bitter north-westerly brought squalls of sleet across the Irish Sea, setting the multi-coloured bulbs dancing on the overhead cables. It was high tide, so dark, grey waves boomed and foamed beyond the parapet railing.

  Despite all this, a solitary male figure waited on a bench, peering out into the tumult.

  Lucy approached him warily, but before she drew close, a towering shape stepped into her path. She glanced up at the scowling ape-face of Mick Shallicker. He gestured, and grudgingly, she held her arms out so that he could pat her down for a wire.

  ‘We going through this rigmarole every time I have to speak to him?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Frank thought you never wanted to talk to him again,’ Shallicker said. ‘Now suddenly you’ve agreed to a meet. He’s naturally suspicious.’

  ‘Both you and me know that if I were to say a word about this to anyone, I wouldn’t survive either.’

  He straightened up. ‘If nothing else, I had to make sure you haven’t got a monkey wrench in your pocket.’

  ‘How’s the knee anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Stiff.’

  ‘Good.’ She walked on past him.

  When she got to the sea-facing bench, she didn’t bother sitting, but moved to the railing and leaned her back against it. McCracken, who was wearing a heavy gabardine coat, a chequered scarf and dark leather gloves, regarded her with low-key interest.

  ‘Peter Janson and Darla Maycroft, eh?’ he said. ‘Him an amateur football coach … Under 16s, no less. Her a fitness instructor at the local gym. But I guess their names’ll now go down in history alongside Brady and Hindley, Fred and Rose …?’

  ‘They’ve been charged, not convicted,’ Lucy replied. ‘I can’t discuss it with you.’

  ‘Let me guess.’ He spoke on as if she hadn’t said anything. ‘On the outside a normal, respectable couple, on the inside a pair of arch-pervs. What was he … a jealousy freak? Gets off watching blokes ogle his sexy missus … but once it comes to the crunch he just can’t control the killer instinct it raises?’ He pondered. ‘She’d have to be a cow too, of course. I can just see it … he’s lying in wait for them, imagining all sorts, going loopier and loopier, and once the attack starts, she just steps back, happy she’s done her bit, content to watch …’

  ‘I wouldn’t give you the detail even if I was allowed to.’

  ‘No, course not.’ McCracken shuddered dramatically. ‘The turn-ons some people share though, eh? Was she on the game? Was that where he found her? Bet that was the origin of it. Someone gave him a bad time when he was young. So he’s got this inner rage. But then things start looking up. Gets a decent job, gets this peach of a bird. Trouble is there are still blokes lusting after her. “That’s no bloody good,” he thinks. “We’re not standing for that” …’

  ‘Why don’t we discuss what we’re really here for?’ Lucy said.

  Still McCracken ignored her. ‘Perhaps he starts off by giving her other clients a bit of a kicking. And they don’t want to report it because they don’t want anyone knowing they’ve been using prozzies. But even that’s not enough, because there are still these blokes giving his girlfriend the wicked eye. And you know, kicking the absolute shit out of these bastards is actually quite a lot of fun …’

  ‘Okay, why don’t we talk about it?’ Lucy interrupted. ‘Why don’
t we start with you telling me the part you played in it?’

  McCracken gave a non-too-innocent smirk. ‘Me?’

  ‘How long were your people tailing me for?’

  He feigned hurt. ‘We don’t tail people, Lucy. That’s your line.’

  ‘You were tailing me. You must have been.’

  ‘You sound very sure about that.’

  ‘I’m guessing you put a tail on me the moment your plan to get me kicked out of the job didn’t work,’ she said. ‘You must have had someone waiting for me outside the nick on the day I arrested those two maniacs. Outside the bloody police station. Isn’t that a no-no even by your circle’s standards?’

  McCracken shrugged. ‘That depends whether it’s a good tail or a bad tail.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Just suppose …’ He briefly seemed amused. ‘I’m purely saying this for argument’s sake, you understand, but just suppose the intent was not to give you a hard time, but to help you?’

  ‘Help me?’ she scoffed. ‘I’m a copper, I’m the shit on your shoes.’

  ‘You misheard. I said suppose the intent was to help you … as in you personally, not the police.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’

  ‘Again suppose, just suppose … someone had decided that getting you in trouble at work, stitching you up with your bosses, was … well, a bit mean?’

  ‘Someone?’ Lucy snorted. ‘You mean my mum?’

  ‘We both know your mum wasn’t happy about it. I mean, the truth is your mum doesn’t know what she wants. She hates you being a copper because she’s worried about you, but at the same time she’s proud of you too … I suspect it’s because she thinks you’re doing something worthwhile with your life.’ He sniffed as though disappointed. ‘I know a few people who’d strongly disagree, but that’s by the by. But you’re basically right. Your mum was hopping mad that you were suddenly in a bad place professionally.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight?’ Lucy’s tone remained scornful. ‘You changed your entire plan because my mum, a woman you haven’t shacked up with for thirty years, gave you a load of earache about it?’

  ‘Hey … she’s a persuasive woman.’

  ‘And as well as being henpecked by a lass you no longer even want … you’re now telling a pack of lies to your own daughter. Not quite what I’d expect from an underworld hardman.’

  McCracken sniffed. ‘Some truths are better left unsaid, Lucy.’

  ‘Level with me, McCracken. That’s all I’m asking. These last few weeks have changed my life in ways I can’t even quantify. I need to know exactly what happened.’

  ‘You need to know? I see.’ A gust of wind swept over them, laden with sleet. McCracken huddled deeper into his coat. ‘Okay, try this for size … when your mum came to see me last month and revealed to me that our daughter is a detective …’

  ‘I wish,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Wishes come true, as you’re probably about to find out. Which won’t make my life any easier. But the situation was as follows …’ He eyed her closely. ‘I was stunned, gobsmacked. My first thought was “how the hell are the lads going to respond to this?” Then imagine how I felt when your mum told me you were involved in this Jill the Ripper case, which somehow or other was bringing you closer and closer to people I might know. There are very few problems I can’t fix, Lucy …’

  ‘I’ve heard that,’ she said. ‘You’re the Shakedown, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s the title, yeah. We run the north-west pretty much any way we want, love. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of headcases out there who occasionally need reminding they have to pay for their privileges. So that’s basically my role, yes, and I undertake it using any method I see fit. But the truth was I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with you. I couldn’t just grease you, like I normally would with a copper getting a sniff. And I couldn’t kill you. I’d never have heard the last of it from your mother. So framing you with a foul-up your gaffers couldn’t ignore seemed like a plan.’

  ‘You mean beating up Des Barton?’ she said disgustedly. ‘Knowing full well I’d arrest you? And that it would probably get violent?’

  ‘Well, you can’t say it didn’t work out that way.’ McCracken sighed. ‘And then look what flaming happened – Suzy McIvar, flying off the handle as usual, decides that she isn’t going through the Executive …’

  ‘The Executive?’

  ‘You need to live and learn, darling. You really do.’

  ‘Learn what?’ She made no effort to conceal the mockery in her voice. ‘That you and your mates think you’re the Mafia?’

  His smile tightened; and briefly she wondered if anyone ever tested his patience this much and got away with it.

  ‘Good business is essential,’ he explained. ‘It’s why we’re all here. But good business isn’t possible in a state of war. So no one gets rubbed out without permission. And don’t bother quoting me on that, by the way … I’ll simply deny it.’

  ‘So what are you saying … that hit on Tammy would never have been sanctioned?’

  ‘Who knows?’ McCracken shrugged. ‘That’d be above even my pay grade. But it certainly wouldn’t have been cowboyed. And Suzy McIvar would have been nowhere near it. Anyway, the upshot was that not only did Suzy’s rash act give you a chance to save your job, it also enabled you to bag the Twisted Sisters and their nasty little side-line. Not a bad night’s work for a copper who might have been about to get shown the door. So all’s well that ends well.’ He shrugged again. ‘You’re happy, we’re happy.’

  ‘How can you be happy? Seriously, how the hell can you? Have you seen the charges the McIvars are facing?’

  ‘They’ve earned them, love. Look … I told you at the time that the rest of us would never have condoned what they were up to, even if we’d known about it. And that we certainly weren’t going down for it. So why should I worry?’

  ‘You can’t be sure you aren’t going down,’ Lucy said. ‘Jayne McIvar’s still trying to make deals.’

  ‘I can be sure, darling … because that’s not the way we play this game.’

  McCracken got to his feet and ambled to the railing. He stood alongside her, watching the thundering surf. Fleetingly, he looked deadly serious.

  ‘Even if you don’t believe we had nothing to do with that kiddie-sex racket, Lucy,’ he said, ‘believe this … we have no ownership of these operations. None of them. Whatever they involve, there’s never any trail that leads back to us, either on paper or electronic. SugaBabes … well, we visited now and then to shag the birds, but which red-blooded fellas wouldn’t? And anyway, it’ll take a lot more than the Twisted Sisters naming a few names to take us down. And later on, when Jayne and Suzy are sharing cells with people who will only require one phone-call to turn very nasty indeed, maybe they’ll retract even those statements.’

  Despite this obvious bravado, Lucy was actually starting to believe that the Crew had not known about the child brothel in Whitefield. She couldn’t help recollecting that heated but cryptic conversation between the McIvar sisters back at SugaBabes, when Jayne had pleaded for a trouble-free business, especially when there were Crew soldiers on the premises. With hindsight, Jayne clearly hadn’t wanted anything indiscreet said inside the club that might have attracted their bosses’ annoyance, because if the Crew had looked at SugaBabes more closely, maybe with a hypercritical eye, they might have found other things they disapproved of even more.

  All that said, Frank McCracken hadn’t picked this out-of-the-way rendezvous point because he wanted to see the Christmas lights. Clearly, he felt they, or rather he, still had some vulnerabilities. And she – Lucy Clayburn – was probably one of them.

  ‘The main thing where I was concerned,’ McCracken added, ‘was that even after the Twisted Sisters were arrested, it was obvious you weren’t going anywhere till you’d nabbed this Jill the Ripper. And like I said, we didn’t want her either. So, well … the best thing to do was help you get on
with it. Give you a shadow maybe. Someone to watch your back, just in case there were still one or two McIvar loyalists knocking around after their bosses were locked up. Wouldn’t have done for one of them to get in your way, would it?’

  Until now, Lucy hadn’t considered that there might have been retribution for her personally. That rarely happened to police officers, even when it was organised crime you were dealing with. But as McCracken had now more or less admitted, someone had followed her from Robber’s Row when she’d set out to check the home address of Darla Maycroft. Thankfully on that occasion, it had been someone with a remit to assist rather than obstruct – even if it did only extend to him slashing the tyres of her chief-suspects.

  ‘You strike me, Lucy, as a good honest copper,’ McCracken said. ‘I suppose I always knew there had to be one of those knocking around somewhere. But you also strike me as someone who needs to look over her shoulder a bit more.’

  ‘I’d have spotted your man eventually,’ she retorted. ‘Though I suppose it depends how long he was planning to shadow me for.’

  ‘That’s hypothetical now.’ McCracken moved away from the railing, tugging at his gloves to straighten them. ‘You caught your killers … you’ve not just saved your job, you’ll probably get that promotion you’ve been looking for.’

  ‘Am I supposed to thank you?’

  ‘Well …’ McCracken pursed his lips. ‘It could be the start of a healthy symbiosis.’

  ‘Symbiosis?’

  ‘Of course. I helped you nab a pair of serial killers. In return, you confirmed that Jayne McIvar is trying to cut deals. Not a bad way to get a partnership off the ground.’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight!’ she stated flatly. ‘There is no partnership. I never want to hear from you again, I never want to speak to you again, I never want to see you again unless it’s on a Wanted poster. We’re strangers, you understand? Total and complete strangers.’

  ‘Well … that works too.’ He treated her to another of those infuriatingly bland smiles. ‘There’s only Mick knows about us at my end. At your end there’s only your mum. We keep it to that select band and get on with our lives, happily not talking to each other, we should all be fine.’ He gave her a long, frank stare. ‘So … are we done?’