Sorrow Bound

by David Mark

  Tremberg tries to get her bearings. Works out where she is. She’s half a mile from the prison on the street that leads to the Preston Road estate. Tremberg has only been working in Hull for a year and has not had time to familiarize herself with every neighborhood, but knows the PRE by reputation and is grateful that it was never her beat when she was still in uniform. More anti-social behavior orders have been handed out here than on any other estate in the city boundary, and barely an edition of the Hull Daily Mail is published without it containing some report or another about teenage gangs making life miserable for “decent” people.

  Tremberg rarely troubles herself with the politics of her job or the social background to the crimes she investigates. She does what she’s asked, and enjoys catching villains. She’s good at it, too, even if she is currently feeling less than happy in her work. As one of four detective constables on the Serious and Organized Crime Unit, she has little say in which of her senior colleagues she is paired with, but she enjoys her working days considerably more when helping McAvoy or Pharaoh. At the moment, she is working for Detective Inspector Shaz Archer, and loathing every moment of it. Archer and DCI Colin Ray are effectively leading the unit’s investigation into the spike in organized crime. Pharaoh is overseeing, but her day is so filled with paperwork and budget meetings that Ray and Archer are running the show; reveling in being top dogs.

  This morning, Ray had told Tremberg to accompany Archer to Hull Prison because there was a better chance that the man they were seeing would warm to two women more than he would to Ray himself. Tremberg had seen the logic in that. It is impossible to warm to Colin Ray. He’s a walking sneer, all yellow teeth and nicotine-stained fingers; all curses and spittle and ratty little eyes.

  Tremberg had accepted Ray’s orders with good grace, even though she had despaired at the thought of spending the morning with the snotty detective inspector who seems to be the only female that Colin Ray has any time for. The two are pretty much inseparable, though they make for unlikely friends. Archer is part of the horsey crowd and spends her free time playing polo and knocking back Pimm’s with people called Savannah and Sheridan. Ray coaches football in his spare time and spends his money on greyhounds, lager, and ex-wives.

  Tremberg is not the sort to be jealous of her female colleagues and does not object to the fact that Shaz Archer is extraordinarily attractive. It’s Archer’s personality she bridles at. She puts Tremberg in mind of a California high school bully in a film for teens. She holds everybody and everything in open contempt, and uses her looks to manipulate colleagues and crooks alike. Her arrest record is impressive, but Tremberg finds the way she flaunts herself distasteful. While Tremberg admires Trish Pharaoh for just being herself, for being sexy and mumsy and hard as fucking nails, with Archer it’s all strategic. Every time she purses her lips or blows on her perfect fingernails, she’s doing it to get a reaction out of somebody. She keeps miniskirts and crop tops in her desk so she can get changed into something exotic if she’s interviewing some easily led pervert, and there are rumors she has traded her affections for confessions in the past. Tremberg knows police stations to be termite mounds of malicious gossip and had originally decided to ignore such slander about a female colleague. Then she got to know Archer herself, and decided the woman was, if nothing else, a bitch of the first order.

  Still, she didn’t look quite so well groomed this morning . . .

  As Tremberg passes the bakery, she has to bite down on her smile again. The morning’s interview at Hull Prison had been fruitless in terms of information, but Tremberg wouldn’t call the day a waste of time. It’s hard to think of any morning as a write-off when it involves watching a drug dealer chuck a plastic cup full of piss all over your boss.

  “How did he even do it?” Archer had spat, furious, as the guards led the laughing Jackson away, and her waterproof mascara began to prove it wasn’t piss-proof by running down her cheeks.

  Tremberg had had no answer. She had thought Jackson was just ignoring them. Instead, he was busily urinating beneath the desk, waiting for the right moment in the proceedings to demonstrate his strength of feeling about their questions. It had worked, too. The interview was terminated without him even confirming his name; let alone who had paid him to be at the wheel of the marijuana-filled transit van that had been pulled over by traffic officers eight weeks earlier. Tremberg had been planning to tell the middle-aged convict that it was in his interests to talk to them; to point out that his employers had lost money, and face, because of his decision to drive at fifty-three miles per hour on the bend of the A63. She wonders if Jackson will learn the hard way.

  Tremberg turns her head away from the bakery as she passes, avoiding the temptation to stop and drool. Across the busy street, an attractive, pink-haired woman is hanging a special-offers poster in the window of a nice-looking hair salon. Inside, a pretty young blonde looks as if she may eventually stop talking for long enough to cut some hair. Next to it is a smaller shop that looks as though it has not been open long. SNIPS AND RIPS says the sign, and the lettering on the large front window declares it to be a specialist in clothing repair, dressmaking, and curtain alterations. Tremberg, who has a nasty habit of pulling buttons off shirts and snagging the cuffs of her trousers on chair legs, makes a mental note to remember that it is here.

  “It’s Helen, isn’it?”

  Tremberg turns, startled. Police officers are rarely pleased to be taken by surprise.

  “It is! Jaysus, how are you?”

  The girl is stunning, in a mucky kind of way. Petite, tanned, and toned, she is wearing a purple bikini top, tracksuit trousers, and Ugg boots, and is pushing a stroller in which a dark-haired baby is chewing on a sun hat. She has a tangle of golden necklaces at her throat and several earrings in each ear.

  Tremberg tries not to frown as she struggles to remember where she knows the girl from. Is she one of the travelers from the Cottingham site? Has she tipped them off on some stolen goods, maybe? But Helen? Not “Detective Constable”? Who the bloody hell . . .

  “Roisin,” says the girl helpfully, in an accent tinged with Irish. “Roisin McAvoy.”

  Tremberg finds herself flustered, embarrassed at not having remembered her sergeant’s wife. They have only met once, and then only briefly, but McAvoy had once opened up to her about the circumstances of his meeting Roisin, and Tremberg hopes her face does not betray her as the memories flood in. This is the traveler girl that McAvoy saved. The girl who suffered agonies at the hands of attackers when not yet a teen. Whom McAvoy revenged, and to whom he later gave himself completely.

  “Roisin, of course, I’m sorry, it must be the heat. How are things? Warm, isn’t it? And goodness, who’s this little thing? Lovely, lovely.”

  If Roisin finds Tremberg’s gabbling amusing, she hides it well. She smiles at the constable and then crouches down by the stroller. “This is Lilah,” she says proudly. “Our youngest. Seven months now. Hasn’t she got her daddy’s eyes?”

  Tremberg is never comfortable around children, but as she bends down, she does at least appreciate the sloppy, gummy grin the child turns her way. Lilah’s eyes, as promised, are brown and innocent, looking out at the world in confused fascination.

  “She’s a stunner,” says Tremberg, and then winces as she hears Archer honk the car horn.

  “That for you?” asks Roisin. “Tell them to hold their horses.”

  “It’s my boss. Well, one of them. Bit of an incident at the prison this morning.” Tremberg holds up the packet of wipes by way of explanation. “She needs these, fast.”

  “Have an accident, did she? Scary places, prisons. There’s some Sudocrem in my bag if she thinks she might get a rash . . .”

  Roisin says it with a smile, but her accent is pure traveler, and Tremberg finds herself wondering how difficult it must be for this young girl to be married to a policeman when she grew up thinking of them as the enemy. There
must be times when the worlds collide, she thinks, and remembers the night Ray and Archer put the cuffs on the drugs outfit’s enforcers up at the traveler site. There had been rumors that McAvoy was there, too: bloodied and dirty with his great fists grazed to the bone.

  There is another angry blast on the horn.

  “Patient woman.” Roisin smiles.

  “Oh, she’s a love,” says Tremberg sarcastically. “What brings you up this way, anyhow? Kingswood you live, isn’t it? Or did your husband tell me you were moving . . .”

  Roisin nods, like a teenager about to tell a friend what she is getting for Christmas. “We’re living out of boxes at the moment, but we should exchange contracts next week. Aector’s taking care of all that. Lovely house, though, down by the foreshore, under the bridge. Old cottages, done up a treat, so they are. I’ve got a load of ideas. I’ve spoken to Aector about having a few people over when we get moved in, so it would be lovely to see you. Bring a friend or two. Maybe not whoever’s honking that horn, though . . .”

  Tremberg smiles. She can see how McAvoy fell for this girl. She’s not just beautiful; she has some inner light, some warmth. She is a soothing presence. This is what McAvoy comes home to, she thinks. This is what keeps him upright. Keeps him good. Keeps him alive . . .

  “Oh, before you rush off, can I give you one of these?” Roisin reaches behind the stroller and hands Tremberg a flyer for the alterations service across the street. “My friend’s place. Mel. Met her at salsa not so long ago. Such a nice person. This is her dream, running her own place. She’s really good, too. I’m just here for a bit of moral support, because she feels a bit daft sitting there when there’s no customers. No air-conditioning in there, either, so she’ll probably have me wafting the door! Anyway, I’ll let you go, but it’s lovely to see you again.”

  To Tremberg’s surprise, Roisin reaches up and gives her a clumsy kiss on the cheek. Tremberg gets a whiff of sugary pop, of expensive perfume and hand-rolled cigarettes, then gives a vague wave as she heads back to the car. She stops after a few paces, when she remembers that she owes Roisin a thank-you. A few months back, Tremberg had been badly cut during the hunt for a killer, and through McAvoy, Roisin had sent her a pot of some herbal remedy that had helped take the sting out of the wound. At the time, Tremberg had tried to make a joke of it, and asked her sergeant if his perfect wife was a white witch as well as everything else. McAvoy had looked hurt, and Tremberg had ended up scolding herself for being mean, and feeling like she had just punched a rabbit in the face.

  “Next time,” she says under her breath, and opens the car door.

  “Could you have taken any fucking longer?” demands Archer as she snatches the packet and begins pulling out fistfuls of wet wipes. She scrubs at her tanned brown arms, her made-up face, and down into the cleavage of her pink tennis shirt. “No lemon?”

  “They were out of lemon,” says Tremberg, wincing as her sweat-soaked shirt presses against the skin of her back as she sits down. She looks in the rearview mirror and watches Roisin waiting for a gap in the traffic; singing gently to baby Lilah.

  Archer scoffs, and then reaches into her designer handbag and starts pulling out lipsticks and assorted blushers.

  “Who was that, anyway?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “The tart? Tits out. Fat arse. Asking the world to fucking look at her.”

  Tremberg opens her mouth to explain, then changes her mind. “Just somebody I know from a case.”

  Archer loses interest as she begins applying eyeliner. “On the game, is she?”

  Tremberg looks at her boss and lets a little temper bubble to the surface. “I think you’ve missed a bit.”

  • • •

  11:44 a.m.

  A taxi office off Hull’s Hedon Road; halfway between the prison and the docks.

  In the back office, Adam Downey is sipping whiskey. It’s an expensive bottle. Japanese. It came in a metal casket with a samurai on the front. It’s supposed to be one of the finest spirits in the world, and he’s drinking it from a crystal tumbler that weighs as much as his head. To Downey, the tipple tastes like petrol and heartburn, but he reckons he looks good while sipping at it so tolerates the bad taste.

  Downey is in his early twenties. He’s a handsome lad who takes his appearance seriously. He’s in good shape, with muscles built for showing off rather than for lifting anything heavy. He looks like he should be auditioning for a TV talent show. He has a pop star appearance. He’s a vision in designer white sneakers, slashed-neck T-shirt, and a hundred-pound haircut. The diamond in his earlobe cost him a mint, and the little stars he has tattooed behind his ear show he can take a bit of pain if the reward is worth it.

  He’s flicking through a porn mag in the back room. He likes black women best of all. Usually he looks for something stimulating on his top-of-the-range mobile phone, but the reception here is terrible so he has resorted to old-school thrills.

  Out front, half a dozen drivers sit snacking and sweating, waiting for the phone to ring. Three of them are Turks. Dominating the scene is Bruno, a mountain of muscles and dreadlocks. They’re his team. His boys. They do what he fucking says.

  For the past few months, Adam Downey has been somebody to fear. He has been a drug dealer since his teens. He was always going to be trouble. He grew up in a nice house with a stable family unit, but he was never any good at living the quiet life. Downey wanted to be respected. Admired. Feared. He had put himself in harm’s way from an early age, and by his mid-teens he was running drugs for the punk rocker who used to run the trade in the east of the city. Orton, his name was. He didn’t look like much of a drug dealer. He had little in the way of style. He was all tattoos and combat pants, lace-up boots and piercings. But for the best part of fifteen years he was responsible for most of the gear that came through the docks. Downey was never his muscle or the brains, but he was reliable and ambitious and soon became one of Orton’s confidants. It was when Downey got sent to prison that things changed. He showed up on somebody’s radar. He got headhunted. A phone was pressed to his ear as he lay in his bunk, and a man with a refined accent and perfect diction told him he had been talent-spotted. A new outfit was safeguarding the interests of a number of established crime organizations on the East Coast. Orton was refusing to see the benefits of following suit. They were seeking somebody young, ambitious, and capable who could step into the gap that would be left by Orton’s imminent departure. Would he be interested in the position? It hadn’t taken Downey long to make up his mind. For as long as he could remember, he’d secretly thought of himself as the prince of the city. He daydreamed about people doing his bidding. He fantasized about dispensing mercy and justice in equal measure. He wanted to point, nod, and know that whoever had wronged him was going to learn just how very special he was.

  Downey had said yes.

  Soon after, his sentence was inexplicably cut. He found himself back on his own streets. A grateful, oblivious Orton had come to pick him up from the prison gates. He had Big Bruno by his side. Orton handed over an envelope full of cash, which Downey pocketed. Then Bruno drove them to the woods. They were barely free of the city when Orton began to realize things were not going as he had planned. He began asking Bruno where he was going. Asking him who had been in his ear. Offering him cash and blubbing about his family.

  Ten miles from Hull, Bruno pulled Orton from the car. He smashed the old punk’s head open with a hammer. Then Downey joined in, too.

  Downey likes being a drug dealer. He likes the fact that the police don’t seem to know anything about him but know that somebody like him must exist. He likes that the men he has recruited to his cause are so international. It makes him feel sophisticated and cosmopolitan. He likes the occasional phone calls he gets from his employers, praising him for his initiative and tenacity. He likes feeling like a somebody.

  The taxi firm is the perfect front for h
is operation. His drivers rarely pick up real fares. They just attend the addresses they are given and hand over the packages that Downey has carefully weighed out for them. Their customers are all approved and trusted. It’s a slick operation with a huge turnover. Downey doesn’t have to worry about how to get the gear into the country. His job is to get it from Point B to Point C, where it will be cut, packaged, and passed on to other people in the chain. Downey’s drivers know what they are involved in. They get paid handsomely for it. It’s a system that works, and which makes Adam Downey feel blissfully fucking untouchable.

  He sips his whiskey again. Grimaces.

  It’s hot here, in this small, bare office, and Downey wants to go and sit out front with the lads. They’re a good crowd and seem to respect him. But he believes that being aloof adds to his image, and Downey loves image. He watches himself in the mirror, and plays with the grenade.

  Downey nicked the grenade when he was picking up a wholesale delivery. Among the crates of white powder were a half-dozen handguns and a leather bag full of grenades and plastic explosives. Impulsively, Downey had wanted one. He knew the guns would be missed were he to help himself, but the grenades seemed deliciously inviting. They didn’t look the way he had seen them in war films. The one he holds in his palm is black and square: no bigger than his mobile phone. It has a pin through the top and Russian lettering down its side. He likes to hold it. Likes to play with the pin. Dares himself to throw the grenade in the air and catch it again before it can detonate.

  Downey hears the front door of the taxi office bang. There is a muttering from beyond the door to his office, then it is pushed open by a tall, dark man in a football shirt and camouflage trousers.

  “We knock in this country, Hakan,” says Downey over the lip of his glass. “Remember? We flush toilets, too? None of that folding up the toilet paper and putting it in the trash. We’re not keen on shit samosas.”