by Gavin Smith
“Rob? Sorry the connection faded for a second there.” If it had, he hadn’t heard it. “It’s about mum. She had a visit from one of your colleagues, DC Slowey.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. Not sure what he was after. Probably all very routine. And she says he was very polite. But he upset her somehow, made her very antsy and tearful. You know how she is. No, of course you don’t. ”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I know you’re on sick leave. I know I shouldn’t ask. But do you know what’s going on? Could you find out?”
“Sharon,” he began, an unfamiliar weakness gnawing at him, urging him to tell her how much he needed her and how that wouldn’t stop him goading and exploiting and undermining her family to get to the truth about the murders. He cleared his throat and steeled himself.
“Sorry, high pollen count today. I get sniffy. No, I don’t know what Slowey was up to. But he’s a good guy and I’m sure his visit was purely routine. I’ll ask him next time I see him.”
“Thanks Rob. Was there something you wanted?”
“Well,” he mused, savouring a broken memory of loving in the afternoon, luxuriating in the heat for once, long shafts of sunlight picking out pale, sinuating curves, a simple and fragile necklace emphasising her nakedness, her curls spilling across her breasts and his mouth. He banished the image with a stifled groan.
“Rob? You still there?”
“Yep, sorry. Long day. Drifted away.”
“Anywhere nice?”
“Somewhere very nice.”
“Was I there?” Her tone had thawed, her voice deepened. He could end this now, limit the damage.
“Of course you were.” Or he could wade deeper and deeper until the riptide seized him and flung him against the rocks or out to sea.
“I shouldn’t be. But I am. Glad about that.” Was that tenderness in her voice, a catch in the throat, an excitement so enthralling it was almost innocent?
“I owe you an apology.” He ventured the comment believing it could tip the situation either way, inviting himself to end it gently.
“Yes, you do. You took your time ringing me. Let me think it was a one-night stand. A shoulder to cry on and a body to….well….”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? Come on, say it.”
“I need to see you again. I want more than one night.” He’d grown tired of the shallows and cast himself out beyond the breakers.
“I know. Do it then.” She cleared the line.
His face flushed hot and he paced like a demented predator in a cage, euphoria grappling with shame that was down but not out. He stepped inside and rummaged for the notepad on which he’d write his lies for Hayley. He’d betrayed her the second he’d decided to return to Sharon’s house and stopping himself now wouldn’t change that. Logic could justify anything if you were creative enough.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kelly was a good girl. Good in the ways that mattered anyway. She’d give it to him as often as he wanted, in any way he wanted. In one of Ali Bongo’s flats while the rest of them were wasted or skinning up or watching telly. In his own bedroom if his dad was too busy or pissed to ogle her and slap her arse on the way upstairs. In the shed at his dad’s secret allotment, nicely hidden in the long weeds behind the nice houses on Yarborough Crescent, the hidey-hole he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about, the place with the endless supply of weed. On her knees in an alley if he couldn’t wait to get her indoors. She’d make the right noises too. Like she was gagging for it. Like he’d filled her all the way up like no other man could. Like she was scared shitless and begging for her life if that’s what he was in the mood for.
And she was proud to call herself his missus. Proud to teeter along on his arm through the town, looking filthy in her stilettos. Proud to sit in the gallery at court, tutting and whispering ‘pig’ and ‘prick’ at the cops and lawyers and giving him a squeeze and a giggle when he walked off the stand with another community order; or crying like her heart had been ripped out when they finally sent him down and he did his three month stint at Glen Parva. Proud to have pleaded and cried and blagged her mum into driving her down to visit him at that Young Offenders’ Institute a million miles away in Leicestershire; her mum lingering in the background with the screws, believing her sweetest and only daughter was sacking her nasty boyfriend, as if she would, as if she had the guts even if she wanted to. He owned her and she knew it. He owned her and she liked it.
She’d been fourteen when they’d started, he eighteen. Long since barred from the premises, he’d still plied a decent trade at the school gate. She never bought but she always chatted, sometimes sharing a roll-up, with and without the special ingredient, sometimes offering him a swig of vodka. Eventually, her friends drifted away. Some of them were fitter with nicer asses or perkier tits but they thought they were a cut above with their books and exams and ponies. Not that Kelly was a dog. She was fit in her own way and willing, always willing. Breaking her in had been sweet. Not legal either but sweeter for it. That didn’t make him a nonce though; there were only three years in it and she was all woman.
She was almost perfect. If only she hadn’t been so needy. Wanting soppy words and cuddling afterwards. Wanting to know what he was thinking. But she’d shut up when she was told and he’d only had to slap her down once, when she’d kept asking about the business, when his dad had been all over him, when it had nearly gone down the pan because of that nonce Firth and that bent screw. He’d said sorry, after she’d said it first for winding him up.
He didn’t want to be like his dad, shacked up with someone he hated just to have someone to shag him, cook for him or put up with his beatings when he’d had a shit week or couldn’t hold his booze. He didn’t want her to be like his mum, hiding in the kitchen, chain-smoking and whinging her life away, sometimes losing it and pushing and pinching and screaming his dad into punching her down. He’d slapped Kelly but it wasn’t a punch. And he’d had his reasons. And she understood. He wasn’t his dad. He’d be better. He even thought he loved Kelly, whatever that meant.
So he could stand there and take whatever his dad gave him. It was just words; and if the belt came off or the fists flew, well he’d taken worse and kept his head up and his eyes dry.
“You don’t bring that little whore here again. Understand me, you little shite?”
His dad had propped himself on the spade he’d stabbed into the dry earth at his feet. Behind him, the door to the shed gaped, spilling its secrets: the old mattress he’d forgotten to put back the right way round, the empty tinnies, the porn mags, the condom he’d used in her then dropped and forgotten about.
“Do you hear me? Comprendez vouze, you numb, dumb prick?”
“All fuckin’ right, I heard you,” he snarled back, hands stuck in pockets in a display of insouciance that masked his skittishness.
“An’ you give me some respect, you lippy wanker. Don’t think I won’t hurt you ‘cause I will.”
Keith Braxton shook his head, flexed his knuckles on the spade handle, turned his great boulder of a head with its taut, flexing jaw muscles and spat into the cabbage patch.
“You’re me boy and I’m trying to set you up right with this. But this is big time. And if you fuck it up, you’ll wish you only had me to worry about when those Nottingham boys come looking for your sorry arse. Your ma will be picking bits of your skull out of the lino for months.”
“Sorry. Won’t happen again.” He submitted the way his dad liked it, dangling his lip, staring at his toes, mumbling like he was too scared to squeeze the words out.
“Better. Tell me this, boy. You got that bint under control? You tell her to keep shtum and scare the shit out of her, does she keep shtum?”
“Course dad. She’s a good girl.”
He didn’t feel the need to mention that Kelly’s mum had followed her here and kicked off big time. That was ages ago, nothing had happened since, no filth or
social workers had turned up and Kelly had said she had it under control.
“Loyal. Wouldn’t ever grass me up.”
“You’d better be right.” He reached behind him, grabbed another spade and threw it to Kevin. “You and me are gonna graft today. We are gonna dig deep, bury the merchandise and cover it over right with cabbages and spuds ‘til it looks natural. ‘Til it looks like there’s nowt under it but dirt and worms. There’s enough smack under that shed for me to retire. It’s going under the earth ‘til I’m satisfied you haven’t fucked things up for all of us.”
Kevin peeled off his polo shirt, dropped it in the dirt and stabbed at the muck with the spade, at first trying to follow his dad stroke for stroke, then slowing, lathered and gasping, realising that his dad had the muscle and the will and would lead the pace. For now.
Clutching the printout so hard his fingers almost pierced it, Slowey marched himself to the bike shed behind the custody block to smoke the emergency cigarette he’d begged from the gaoler. One day after his garden meeting with Harkness, four hours into a shift elongated by reams of paperwork, one hour after a chivvying phone call to the lab, ten minutes after receiving their email and five minutes after the printer spat out the hard copy, he stood, smoking, simmering and reading the news again.
The crime scene sample he’d submitted from the beating he’d taken at the Friars’ Vaults matched the DNA profile of Kevin Braxton. This was progress but it shouldn’t jar him this much. Perhaps, he reflected, a circuit had been closed. A suspect who’d been just another piece on the board now had a name. He was also linked to him viscerally, by blood and violence, and that was always personal, no matter how it was rationalised.
Harkness would have swooped on the miscreant with minimal thought and planning; but shock and awe policing was not Slowey’s style, even when a personal reckoning was owed. No, he would savour the cigarette, digest the news, map out a response in his book, do his research, stroke his goatee a little more and slot this piece into the jigsaw. He needn’t tell anyone for now, Harkness included. The DI trusted him to work with minimal supervision and that meant he could keep the knives he was juggling in the air long enough to avoid losing an eye.
So he ignored Harkness’s next nagging call when it came, unwilling to waste breath on half a tale, fearful that he was so excited he’d have to spill his guts. Sometimes that man needed to be saved from himself. Sometimes the case needed to be spared his ham-fisted zeal.
He knew Christmas had arrived five months early when he searched the database to update his notes on Kevin Braxton. Not only was he now linked to Slowey’s assault as a suspect, but he had a newly recorded offence of Unlawful Sexual Intercourse to his name. Some might see that as a complication, reflected Slowey. To him, it was ammunition.
Sauntering down the corridor and into the office of the Child Protection Unit, his red notebook open and ready, Slowey settled into a swivel chair, wheeled it into the centre of the room and waited for someone to get off the phone and ask him why he was grinning at them.
“DC Slowey,” said the team’s skipper, slamming his phone down and placing his elbows on a deep stack of case files. “Have you brought us good news or are you buttering us up for something unpleasant?”
“Oh, you’ll like this. You’ve got an offence of USI by Kevin Braxton on one Kelly Somerby. Done much with it yet?”
“Beyond reading it, no. Why?”
“I want to take it off your hands. I’m looking at this oik for burglary, assault and maybe more. Any objection to me throwing the USI at him at the same time?”
“Bless your heart. We should have you stuffed and mounted.”
“Nice image. I’ve got some conditions though.”
“Go on.”
“You do the video interview for me. You don’t approach the suspect and you tell the victim and her mother to say nothing to anyone about it.”
“Fair enough. Want to be in on the witness interview?”
“Why not? How soon can we jack it up?”
“How quickly can you write?”
Harkness had arrived at the prison gates with the air of a condemned man. He’d been weak enough to spend the evening with Sharon but not brave enough to stay all night, even if that meant returning home at something past midnight. Sharon had accepted this with neither surprise nor disappointment bur something akin to pity.
Hayley had been less stoical, regarding him through bruised eyes from the sofa where she’d been staring at rather than watching late-night television and nursing a bottle of Rioja. She’d calmly appraised his vacant expression, his mussed hair and his casual clothes. She’d gently reminded him of the dinner date he’d promised her, a date that had been marked on the kitchen calendar and in both their diaries. He’d meekly apologised and launched his barrage of fraudulent excuses.
She’d cut him short; asked him point blank if he was having an affair. He’d hesitated for half a second too long; not out of honesty, more out of squeamishness about the lie. She’d asked for her name, the classic interviewer’s gambit, making the confession implicit if the subject in any way acknowledged that the question itself was valid. Declaring that he wasn’t going to give his lover’s name had told Hayley all she needed to know.
Red wine soaking into his white t-shirt, the sting of her open palm ringing in his left ear, he’d been told he had a fortnight to decide whether he was moving out or buying her out of the house. He’d boozed himself into a stupor that would pass for sleep in the spare room, trying to plot out the future, grateful for the end of the lie, shamed by the manner of it, fading at the first twitterings of the dawn chorus and waking with a jolt as Hayley locked the front door on her way to work.
He’d been grateful for the appointment at prison, for the fact that the working world would oblige him to wear a suit, drag him out of the house and give him a routine and a purpose beyond his own compulsions. He’d also been grateful for Slowey’s assiduous filing system which had furnished him with a letter from the Chief Superintendent which, with minimal tweaking, authorised his enquiries at HMP Lincoln.
“Brian,” he said, shaking Hoskins’ hand as the gatehouse’s inner gate slammed shut behind him. “Thanks for doing this at such short notice.”
“What on earth do they do to you people?” he asked, accepting the hand diffidently, noting its rawness and Harkness’s poorly concealed wince. “You look like you’ve slept in a hedge. After dipping your hands in acid. And your mate, Ken Slowey. He was in a right state last time.”
“Sleep deprivation and regular beatings. It’s the latest trendy management theory. Incentivises your staff.”
Hoskins laughed politely and briefly. “I’m glad we could get you in today. This lad’s gasping to talk to you. Well, to Slowey but you turned up and you’ll do. With Dale Murphy gone he was nagging the officers on his wing constantly. They didn’t want the hassle so lumbered me with it.”
Hoskins gestured to a small gravelled area in the shadow of the admin block. “Let’s have a fag break here. So we can talk in private before we go indoors.”
“I don’t. I mean I haven’t. Not for years.”
“Then watch me and look like an addict.” Hoskins limped onto the gravel, propped himself against the wall with evident relief then lit a cigarette. “This lad, Jake Barnaby. Burglar and heroin-addict. Claims he was glad to get caught so he could get clean in clink. Probably means it. A lot of them do. Trouble is, they can get the junk in here if they want it badly enough.”
“How do they pay for it? I thought they only get pocket money inside.”
“On flexible terms, as far as I know. Like those bloody double-glazing ads on the telly. Easy to get hold of but you’ve got to read the small-print. If they get their hands on smuggled-in cash, they use that. Then you’ve got your credit options. Or they can get someone on the outside to pay. The fact is, one way or another, the trade thrives in here.”
“All smuggled in by visitors?”
“Some, certainly
. The dogs and the mirrors and the cameras catch some of it. But when we have a big problem, it’s probably staff behind it. Tops up the wages nicely for those who can justify it to themselves.”
“Murphy?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just giving you the lie of the land. Management is closing the book on him and don’t want it opened again.”
“Why are you taking this risk then? It’s not as if Murphy’s still a problem.”
“It’s not a risk. As far as the paperwork’s concerned, Barnaby’s admitting to offences ‘to be taken into consideration’ to help clear his form book. Just hear him out. He used to bunk with Firth. Had plenty of time to talk to him. Also saw plenty of what passed between Firth and Murphy.”
“Were he and Firth close?”
“You mean biblically? Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever they got up to, the lad’s still loyal to his mate.”
“I hope he doesn’t know who I am then.”
“I read the papers, mate, and watch TV. So do our guests. They also get their phone calls and their social time so they get the news and make the rest up just like the rest of us.”
“Let’s get it over with then.”
Hoskins led Harkness around the administration block to the visitor centre which abutted one of the prison’s spoke-like wings, inmates stacked high behind red brick and grey iron. He bypassed the rigmarole of prisoner reception where he’d have queued to be searched and scanned with all and sundry before even getting through the outer wall.
“Why are you going out of your way to help?” he asked Hoskins as they waited for the centre’s outer gate to be unlocked.
“Professional courtesy. Slowey helped me out once. I don’t like bent screws any more than the cons do. Gets me out of the office. Oh, and I’m retiring in three months so I’m not exactly chewing my fingernails over my next appraisal. Take your pick.” The gate was unlocked and Harkness was ushered inside. “I’ll hang around for a while to make sure it all goes smoothly.”