Shadows

by Conrad Jones

  “You know him?” Grady asked.

  “We know of him,” Ade answered. “He was an enforcer for years, mostly low level stuff. He ran a team of bent doormen who had a habit of beating up dealers and robbing their drugs and money. The family are trouble with a capital ‘T’.”

  “You never nicked him?”

  “No. The usual story. He was a slippery bastard. We had a few complaints of assault but no one ever carried the charges through. Witnesses had a habit of forgetting what they had seen. We could never touch them.”

  “I see. Nothing new there,” Grady said with nod. “We also found ID for three other men from your area tossed on the wharf, so we’re assuming there were two men in the van and two escorting them in the car. Four in total.”

  “Another three?” Braddick asked with a frown. “That makes ten possible victims. Fucking hell,” he said in a whisper. “They left their ID’s so we would know who was here. They want their families and colleagues to know what happened to them.”

  “Right,” Grady said, gesturing to the dead men. “That matches with the number of marks on the beam.” He pointed to a CSI who was processing a pile of evidence. There were wallets, keys and random pieces of paper on the dock. “The other three ID’s are all from the same family. What was it again?” he asked Ade, frowning and checking his notes.

  “Farrell, Guv,” Ade said with a cold smile.

  “Farrell?” Braddick said, surprised.

  “I said you would love this.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me?” Braddick said, shaking his head. He rubbed his chin with his right hand. “The Farrells are trying to get back in business?”

  “Well, it looks like they had a go, Guv,” Ade said, gesturing towards the hanging corpses. “Doesn’t seem to be going that well so far, does it?”

  “You’re DS said you’re familiar with them?” Grady looked hopeful. “The Farrells, that is.”

  “They’re a big family that were fronted by father and two sons. More slippery bastards, I’m afraid.”

  “It sounds like you’re talking past tense.”

  “I am. One of the sons was killed in a fight and then the father and his other son disappeared last year.”

  “Disappeared to Costa Del Crime or were they made to disappear?”

  “We’re not a hundred percent sure. They either ran or they’re dead.” Braddick shrugged. “They were working with a Russian outfit and that only ever ends in tears. It would appear that the rest of the family has tried to pick up the reins.”

  “Like DS Burns said,” Grady gestured to the dead men, “It isn’t working out very well for them so far.”

  “And long may that continue. Okay, I can see the link to Merseyside,” Braddick said, smiling to himself. “Anything else that links to us?”

  “Yep. We have the nine, nine, nine call,” Grady added.

  “What call?” Braddick frowned.

  “A call was put through to the main switchboard at Chester, male voice, strong Liverpool accent, obviously very distressed.” Grady gestured to their vehicle. “I have a copy on my laptop. The caller was hysterical but he claimed that he saw what happened.”

  “Liverpool accent?” Braddick raise his eyebrows. “That isn’t a coincidence. Can I hear the call?”

  “Of course.”

  The four detectives walked over to a dark blue BMW. Braddick and Grady climbed into the front, the others into the rear. He closed the door, shutting out the biting cold and the relentless whistling sound of the wind. Grady pulled up the file on his laptop and clicked play.

  “Hello emergency service operator, which service do you require, fire, police or ambulance?”

  “Fucking all of them! They’ve got me mates, they need help. The bastards are hurting them!”

  “Calm down, sir. Where are you calling from?”

  “I don’t fucking know! We’re by the sea in some fucking Welsh place, Holywell or Holyhead… fucking Holy something… get the fucking police here, please… they’ve got our Gary! They said everything would be sound and nothing bad would happen!”

  “Okay calm down, can you see any street names or distinctive features around you?”

  “For fuck’s sake!”

  “I can’t help if I don’t know where you are, sir.”

  “There’s a big monument on top of the hill… like a spike… and there are ferries in the harbour. Me mates are in an old warehouse by the sea. I saw the fuckers coming and I tried to warn them but they wouldn’t answer the phone. There must have been no fucking signal or something… then they had guns, the dirty bastards shot our Gary in the legs… they’re fucking hurting me mates…”

  “Did you say that they had guns?”

  “Yes! Are you fucking deaf or stupid? I am trying to tell you that they’re hurting me mates. The fucking bastards!”

  “Okay, I’m going to connect you to the police. What’s your name, sir?”

  “I can’t tell you my name. Another car is coming… fucking hell they’ve seen me!”

  The line went dead.

  “That is all we have,” Grady said, looking out of the window. He pointed to a stone obelisk on top of the cliffs that overlook the harbour, ferry terminal and railway station. “I think he was up there next to Skinner’s monument. By the time the information had been passed on and the possible positions narrowed down, they were long gone. The accent, the van and the dead men, well that is why we called you.”

  “He was their lookout,” Braddick said, turning to his DS. “He saw them coming but couldn’t warn them.”

  “The phone signals here are crap. It’s like being on the fucking moon some days.”

  “We’ve got a witness out there somewhere,” Ade said, looking up at the obelisk. “He’ll be piss wet through, freezing cold, tired, hungry and frightened. But we know he is related to Gary Mason.”

  “How so?” Grady said turning.

  “He called him ‘our Gary’. It’s a Liverpool thing. He is related, no doubt about it. I’ll get onto HQ and get someone around to Mason’s family. If we know who he is, we’ll know where he is going. If we bring him in, we might be able to nail these bastards.” Braddick nodded in agreement and Ade opened the door, allowing the wind to scythe through the vehicle until he closed it behind him.

  “Was Gary Mason shot in the legs?” Braddick asked.

  “No but maybe one of the others was.”

  Braddick opened the window to call after Ade. “Make sure a full risk assessment is done before anyone approaches the Mason family. They’ll be trigger happy. Just put eyes on them for now.” Ade nodded that he understood. “And we need to put DI Cain in the loop,” he shouted over the wind. “Put a call into her too. She can coordinate things until we get back.” Ade walked away and took out his mobile.

  “How do you want to proceed?” Braddick asked the Welsh detective.

  “We will handle the Dublin side of things, informing the Garda and coordinating with them. The rest of it is more likely yours than ours, wouldn’t you say?”

  Braddick nodded, his hands deep in his pockets. The wind made the corpses swing, the ropes creaking against the rusty girders. “I think whatever happened here will be resolved on our patch, one way or another. We’ll need everything from forensics sent direct to MIT and the Drug Squad at Canning Place. DI Steff Cain heads up the DS.”

  “No problem. We’ll get on it.” Grady saw the divers arriving in a white van. “First priority is finding the missing men. I’ll brief the divers.”

  “Guv,” Ade said, tapping on the window with one hand covering the phone. His face was ashen, eyes wide with shock. Braddick lowered the window. “It’s DI Cain.”

  “What?”

  “They pulled her out of the Mersey this morning.”

  “What?” Braddick felt sick. “What the fuck happened?”

  “She jumped off Runcorn Bridge last night.”

  4

  Irene Cain looked into her husband’s eyes. Norman was drifting in an
d out of the real world. There were moments of clarity, his eyes clear, frightened and accusing. He looked at her as if she was the one who had tied his hands behind his back, trussed his legs together and gagged him. He was confused as to why she hadn’t fed him, hunger and thirst were burning inside him, driving him to the point of panic. The rest of the time, he was lost inside his decaying mind, unaware of their plight, eyes seeing, brain receiving but not communicating properly. Irene wished that he would stay locked inside his own mind. He was safer there away from the danger, the thirst, the hunger and the agonising cramps that being bound caused.

  She thought back to the night they were taken. Norman was settled in his armchair, Roy Orbison playing quietly in the background. The music seemed to soothe his troubled mind and he would doze the entire time it played. Sometimes he would wake up humming the tune but he could rarely remember the words. It was the only time she could relax and catch up with her soaps. Nursing Norman was a fulltime occupation. Sometimes it pushed her to her limits. There were days when her patience snapped. The days when he didn’t know her, didn’t know where he was, didn’t even know his own name. Those were the days when he could be awkward, aggressive and verbally abusive. Changing a grown man’s nappy and wiping his arse was difficult enough but when it was her husband, the man she had loved, married, had children with, admired, respected and adored, then it was heart-breaking. Sometimes he would call her a stupid bitch, get his hands covered in faeces and smear it everywhere. They were the days when she felt like giving up, putting him into care but the brief moments of lucidity swayed her to persevere. Now she wished she hadn’t. He could have been safe in a nursing home, tucked up in bed oblivious to what was going on outside. The night they were taken, there was a knock at the door and Irene had opened it. They forced the door so hard that she was stunned by the blow and they were overwhelmed in seconds.

  The men who had taken them had told her that they would be released unharmed if their daughter did as she was told. She had no idea what that meant. Steff was the smartest woman she had met, attractive, driven and successful. She couldn’t have been more proud of her although the dangers of her job were a constant concern. She didn’t talk about her job in detail but Irene knew she dealt with the most violent section of society; drug dealers. She had never met a drug dealer but she was positive that the men who had abducted them were just that. They were foreign and they were nasty and they were huge, frightening men who picked them up and carried them like they were dolls. Even at their strongest point in life, the Cains could not have resisted. They were peaceful people. Violence was only for the television or the news. It didn’t enter their world. Their world revolved around each other and their family. They doted on their daughters and their grandchildren. Steff had idolised her nieces. She spoiled them silly on birthdays and at Christmas. The family ribbed her constantly about meeting a man and having her own family but her job dominated her life. Still, they often talked about it. They hoped that she would have a family one day. Until Norman became ill, that is. After that, Irene was devoted to making his life as comfortable as possible while he died from the inside out. She loved him more now than she had when they married. He was her best friend, lover and soul mate. She missed him terribly even though he was still breathing.

  Irene looked at Norman. His eyes were closed and his breathing was laboured but steady. He seemed to be sleeping. She could smell him, the nappy full with two days of waste. Her pleas to be allowed to go to the toilet had been ignored along with her requests for water and the restraints loosened. At the end of the first day, they gagged her to shut her up. Having to urinate in her pants was one of the most embarrassing things that she had ever endured. The warm, wet feeling soon become cold and incredibly uncomfortable. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to cleaning Norman. That would be horrific. She had decided that she would sit him in the wet room clothed and peel them off one layer at a time, allowing the hot water to wash off the waste. His clothes would have to be thrown away but that was the least of her concerns. The first things that she wanted were the toilet, a drink, to talk to her daughters and then to smoke a cigarette, not necessarily in that order. Her mind stopped drifting as she heard the driver’s door open. She felt the vehicle rock as someone climbed into the van. She couldn’t see anything but she was certain that she could hear the engine turn over, splutter and then start. It juddered and then moved. Her heart raced as the van picked up speed and the radio was turned on. She could hear a deep voice muttering along to the music, not quite singing, not quite humming, somewhere in between. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted to her. It made her craving ten times worse.

  She didn’t know how long they had been travelling but it didn’t seem to be that long before it came to an abrupt halt. The radio was turned down and she heard voices, two or maybe three, one in the front and the others outside. Their language was alien to her, thick and throaty. The type of language that sounds as if they are arguing even if they are not. There were five minutes or so of discussion, some laughing and what sounded like whispering. The radio was turned up again and the van set off at speed. She heard sirens approaching and her heart jumped at the thought of the police surrounding the van and releasing them but as it faded into the distance, she cried again. The sound of children playing drifted to her, and then faded away. After what felt like an age, the van stopped and she heard the engine turned off. Footsteps and voices seemed to circle the vehicle and then everything went quiet for a moment. Her throat was dry and she felt sweat trickling down her spine. Fear made her skin tingle as if ghostly fingers were stroking her neck. The silence was deafening, threatening and oppressive. What were they doing? Would they leave them in some remote spot to starve to death? Would they set fire to the van to destroy the evidence? Irene had seen a drama on the BBC were the criminals seemed to know as much about forensic evidence as the police did. She didn’t want to burn to death. That would be a terrible way to die. She half hoped that they would shoot them and put them out of their misery. Whatever happened, she would be with Norman somewhere. She wasn’t a religious woman but she believed that their souls would find each other in eternity, wherever that may be. A love that strong couldn’t be extinguished by death, it would continue somehow. She just knew that it would.

  She jumped when the side door slid open and strong hands reached in and grabbed her. They pulled a hood over her head and she could hear Norman grunting through his gag. She felt herself being lifted upwards and out into the cold night air. She didn’t struggle, she didn’t have the energy and she didn’t want whatever was going to happen to hurt. As long as there wasn’t too much pain, death would be a blessed relief. She thought about Norman and how frightened he would be. Of course he wouldn’t understand what was happening to them. All he would know was that he was being hurt. She felt a sob in her chest at the thought, poor Norman. Hot tears stung her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her breath was caught in her chest.

  A door opened and she knew that they had been carried indoors. It was suddenly warmer and the sound pollution from the town was dulled. She was lowered onto something soft, and comfortable, and familiar. The smell of their surroundings were well known to her, her senses ultra-aware, trying to analyse where they had been taken. Then she felt her bindings being cut, first her legs and then her hands. She instinctively moved her hands to her face.

  “Do not move the hood for ten minutes,” a voice growled at her. “We will be watching you. If you are not sure how long that is, then count slowly to six hundred. Understand?” Irene nodded, not really understanding anything. She heard footsteps padding away, two sets, maybe three. She heard Norman breathing, mumbling under his hood. The smell of pine air fresheners, her favourite, drifted to her. Cooking smells from weeks before lingered in the fibres of the house, baked apple pies, roast lamb and bacon. The smells that made her house her home. The smells that never truly left because they were a part of them, a part of their very existence. She was home. She knew that she wa
s. They had brought them home.

  Irene counted slowly in her mind, desperate to rip off the hood and the gag, desperate to check if Norman was unharmed, desperate to drink and relieve herself and desperate to call Steff. The temptation to rush or stop at three hundred or four hundred was overwhelming but she daren’t. She could not risk it. They had said that they would take them home if Steff did what was asked of her and they had. She could barely believe it. There had been times when she thought they would be left to starve to death. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all. They had lived up to their word. Steff had said that drug dealers were evil, completely devoid of empathy. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

  She reached six hundred and pulled off the hood. The house was in darkness, yellow light seeped through the kitchen window from the street. Everything seemed normal. The shadows of her furniture were in the right places. She unfastened the gag and breathed deeply, her jaw aching and stiff. Moving carefully in the darkness, she decided to leave the light off to avoid blinking painfully against the glare. Norman was curled up on the settee. She took off his hood and removed his gag, his eyes wide open, almost catatonic. She walked into the kitchen and took a tall glass from the drainer. Filling it with cold water, she let it overflow for a few seconds before drinking from it. The liquid soothed her throat and quenched her thirst. She refilled it again and took a knife from the drawer before making her way back to Norman. His eyes didn’t flicker as she cut through his bonds. She removed the ties and sat him upright, placing the water to his lips. Norman sipped from the glass, water dribbled from his mouth down his chin and onto his cardigan. Irene waited for him to swallow before giving him some more. This time he gulped thirstily from the glass. His eyes flickered against the light, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints. He looked at her and smiled thinly, recognition sparked in his eyes for a moment.

  “Irene, where have we been?” he croaked. His voice hoarse. “I’m hungry. What time is tea?”