by Zoe Sharp
“Bike insurance?” I queried. “I didn’t know he had a bike.”
“According to the DVLA computer – and don’t ask, by the way – he’s been the proud owner of a new Honda CBR 600 sports bike practically ever since he passed his test.”
“How on earth did an eighteen-year-old sparky, who’s apparently firmly on the straight and narrow, afford a CBR?” Sean wondered aloud. “The insurance company must have been totally hammering him for it.”
“They were,” Madeleine said, and listed premiums that should have made Nasir’s hair stand on end.
“How the hell did he afford that?” I demanded.
“Good question,” Madeleine said, casting me a quick smile as though trying to make up for the earlier animosity between us. “His wages didn’t cover it, that’s for certain.”
“So,” Sean said, frowning, “he had to be getting the extra cash from somewhere. Any clues?”
“None, sorry. I’ll keep looking,” she said. “I suppose we can’t rule out the possibility that he was on the fiddle somewhere at work. Snaffling stuff away off the site he was on, maybe. What d’you reckon?”
Her words jogged my memory towards the conversation I’d overheard on that building site in Heysham. “What if he’d found out that Langford was working for Mr Ali, and threatened to spill the beans. He could have been doing a bit of blackmail,” I suggested.
Sean was frowning again. “Could be. I suppose that brings his boss into the frame, but don’t forget that Nasir had been paying out this extra cash for a while. Why would Ali wait until now to get rid of him? And surely on a building site they could have conjured up some likely-looking ‘accident’? Besides, who was Nasir threatening to tell, and was it really worth killing him over?”
We fell into a glum silence, pondering over the variables and not managing to make them slot together in any sort of order.
“What about you, boss, any sign of Ursula?” Madeleine asked.
Sean shook his head. “Nothing yet. I’ll keep on it, though. There’s only so many people she could have gone to.”
“Is there any point in talking to that Community Juvenile bloke, O’Bryan, to see if he knows anything either about Nasir or your sister?” I offered. “He seems to be the one with his finger on the pulse as far as extra-curricular activities go.”
“I don’t see why not,” Madeleine said. “We know Nasir’s been in a lot of trouble in the past, and O’Bryan would be the man who’d have the details. If Nas’s been up to anything recently it might even give us an idea where he was getting his money. What d’you think?”
He nodded. “OK,” he said slowly, then turned back to me. “Have you had a chance to find out any more from your friend on the paper?”
“A little,” I said. “They’ve fixed Nasir’s time of death to around three hours after we last saw him, and they reckon he was practically dead before he was moved.”
Sean rose, began pacing restlessly. “OK,” he said, “so let’s take some jumps in the dark here, shall we? Nasir comes and takes a pot-shot at you, Charlie, under duress, or so it would seem. He and Rog run away, and within a few hours Nasir’s been shot and left for dead. Question: why?”
“Was he shot because he tried to kill Charlie, you mean?” Madeleine supplied. “Or because he failed?”
“Exactly,” Sean said, turning to me. “Which brings it down to this – why does somebody want you dead?”
I swallowed. It was a question I hadn’t wanted to give much thought to. “I don’t know,” I said. “O’Bryan did warn me I’d become a target for the kids who’ve been doing these robberies if I stuck my neck out. It could have been that.” It sounded unlikely, even as I said it.
“What about this Garton-Jones character?” Madeleine said. “From what I saw of him at that Residents’ Committee meeting he’s a nasty piece of work, and he didn’t like being thrown off the estate. Disposing of you would have been a good way of killing two birds with one stone, as it were. He gets rid of his opposition, and frightens people enough to want him back at the same time.”
“And when that failed he took second best, you mean, and shot the messenger instead?” Sean pondered. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit extreme, and Garton-Jones strikes me as the sort of guy who’d have wanted Charlie to know who was behind it, and why, before the hit.”
Attila finished his phone call and replaced the receiver. Sean and Madeleine seemed to take this as their cue to leave, and I walked out to the car park with them.
“What about Langford?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance for your little chat yet?”
Sean shook his head and gave me a half-smile as he unlocked the Cherokee’s doors. “He seems to be keeping a pretty low profile at the moment, but I suppose that’s hardly surprising after he tipped you off about my neo-nazi past.”
I glanced at him, puzzled. “But he didn’t,” I said slowly. “It was Jav who told me about it first. Then I confirmed it through the archives at the paper.”
Sean stopped, turned. “Jav?” he demanded. “Young lad, peroxide hair?”
“That’s him. Why, d’you know him?”
He nodded, thoughtful. “Yeah, he went to the local college with Ursula. He was interested in her at one time, but Nasir supplanted him. I don’t think he took it very well.”
I digested the information for a moment. “Hang on, if Jav knew about Nas and Ursula, why did he tell me all that stuff about you hating Nasir? He must have known you didn’t have a problem with it.”
“Maybe he was jealous that she turned him down,” Madeleine suggested. “Maybe he wanted to cause trouble for the family by way of revenge.”
Sean glanced at me, his expression troubled. “Or maybe someone else just put him up to it.”
“Like who?”
“We come back to Langford again,” I said. “He certainly would have known about your past connections.”
“Yes, but so would anyone who had access to a newspaper library,” Madeleine argued.
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Sean said, climbing into the Cherokee and sticking the keys into the ignition. “I’ll ask Harvey Langford. You ask Jav.”
“Yeah, great,” I muttered under my breath, stepping back as they slammed the doors and the V8 fired into life. “All I’ve got to do now is find him.”
Eighteen
Two days later, Pauline came home. I had mixed feelings about it, on the whole. Of course, I was delighted to see her back safe, but with the situation on Lavender Gardens worsening, it might have been better if she’d stayed away.
The police had implemented a Zero Tolerance policy on the estate. Their uniformed presence was high, but it wasn’t providing the calming effect they’d been hoping for.
Inevitably, it seemed to be the teenagers who were bearing the brunt of the draconian measures. Between the boys in blue and Garton-Jones’s mob, they were getting it from all sides, and the temperature was rising. I was uneasy about leaving the house with only Friday in residence to go and meet Pauline from her flight.
All the kids were keeping their heads down, including Jav, who seemed to have gone to ground. I hadn’t even caught sight of the Asian boy since Sean, Madeleine and I had our meeting at Attila’s place, never mind caught hold of him.
Now, sitting in traffic on the M61, I had time to let my mind wander in circles, mentally cursing the lack of hard information I had to go on.
Still, at least I didn’t have to slum it getting down to Manchester. Jacob said he had some parts to collect from a dealer friend of his in the area, and he’d kindly agreed to combine the trip with an airport run. Pauline hadn’t mastered the art of travelling light, and the cavernous rear load bay of Jacob’s battered old Range Rover was filled to bursting by the time we’d crammed all her cases in.
I took the back seat and let Pauline ride up front. She settled into the worn leather upholstery with an air of satisfaction. “This is a proper way to travel. It beats a smelly old taxi any day,” she announce
d. “You should try sitting in one of those airline seats for hours. The feller next to me was all elbows and a weak bladder. Up and down every five minutes. I swear I didn’t get a wink of sleep all the way back. I’ve no idea what day it is, even.”
It wasn’t long before she worked the conversation round to the situation at home. Then I spent the rest of the journey being bombarded with questions about Fariman’s state of health, Mrs Gadatra’s state of mind, and Lavender Gardens’ state of readiness.
When I told her about the new policing policy, she snorted. “Daft buggers, they’re going to make things ten times worse.” She twisted over her shoulder to look at me. “I hope you told them, Charlie.”
“Unfortunately, the local chief constable doesn’t consult me before he decides these things,” I said dryly.
“Well, what about that policeman feller who used to come calling when you were ill last winter?” she demanded. “MacMillan, wasn’t it?”
“He came to see me twice,” I pointed out. And I hadn’t exactly been welcoming. His overwhelming disapproval of the actions that had led to my temporary incapacity had been too plain to be ignored, however much he seemed to have softened down his attitude since.
Wisely, perhaps, Pauline didn’t pursue that one any further.
We managed to get into Lavender Gardens unmolested, although we attracted close scrutiny from Garton-Jones’s heavies as we went past. They’d already checked out Jacob when he turned up to collect me earlier.
As I should have expected, Friday went totally ballistic at his owner’s return, bouncing round the living room like a puppy and letting out ear-splitting yelps. The Ridgeback had that crafty look in his eye which said he knew full well this was one occasion when he could get away with total disobedience, and he was damn well going to make the most of it.
Our efforts to shut him up had Jacob grinning. He made his excuses and left quickly once we’d unloaded Pauline’s cases. I supposed I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to leave a Range Rover too long unattended anywhere on Lavender Gardens at the moment. It didn’t matter that it was fifteen years old, and the body was slowly taking on an interesting mottled two-tone colour scheme as the rust encroached on the cream paintwork.
In the midst of all this havoc, it would have been easy to miss the sound of the phone ringing. Pauline dragged her frenzied dog off into the kitchen and closed the door behind her, leaving me to pick up the receiver.
“Charlie!” It was a woman’s voice on the line that I didn’t immediately recognise, the tones made echoing by the distortion of a mobile phone. “Where on earth have you been? I’ve found him!”
“Madeleine?” It took me a moment to catch up. “Who have you found? Roger?”
“No, more’s the pity,” she said. “Jav. He’s inside at the moment, but I don’t know how long he’s going to stay there.”
“Inside where?”
“That gym that Nasir went to, remember? I found out he was also on the membership list and I’ve been keeping an eye on the place to see if he turned up. He arrived about an hour ago. I’m in the car park. Do you want me to go in and talk to him?”
I bit my lip, glanced at my watch. “No, stay put. I’ll be with you in ten minutes and we’ll go in together. That way he’s less opportunity to try and lie about what he told me. OK?”
“OK,” she said, and rang off.
I turned to find Pauline in the doorway with a resigned look on her face. “I won’t ask what you’re mixed up in now,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Pauline.” I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t go looking for trouble.”
“You don’t have to go looking, dear – it comes and finds you,” she said, then gave me a quick grin. “Go on, girl, don’t look so mortified. Get off with you if it’s so important. Just don’t think you can fob me off indefinitely. I’m going to want to know what you’ve been up to before too long, in all its gory detail!”
If only you knew, I thought.
***
When I turned into the car park of the gym Madeleine had mentioned and pulled up alongside the Grand Cherokee, she climbed out as soon as I’d brought the bike to a halt.
“Jav’s still in there,” she said, by way of greeting. “Let’s just hope he can give us some answers.”
I nodded as I dumped my helmet and gloves onto the passenger seat. She blipped the door locks and we walked across the mainly deserted car park towards the squat pale blue building that was the health club.
Nobody was manning the reception desk as we pushed open the main doors, and we didn’t give them chance to be slow on the uptake. Instead, we carried on straight through a second set of glass doors into the gym proper, then paused to look about us.
It wasn’t difficult to spot Jav. Apart from the blond teenager, the place was deserted. He was working on a set of barbell bench presses at the far side of the room, and his technique was poor enough to make me wince.
He didn’t look round when we walked in, too busy concentrating on locking his arms out against a weight that must have been ten kilos too heavy for him. I nodded silently to Madeleine, and we moved quickly over to stand on either side of him.
He twitched as we came into his line of sight, one elbow buckling. If Madeleine and I hadn’t grabbed hold of the bar, he would have been in trouble.
Mind you, he was in trouble anyway. We pushed down at both ends until it was driving onto his chest, pinning him to the bench.
I shook my head sadly. “One thing I always say to people when they start training, Jav, is never to do bench presses without someone to spot for them,” I said, my voice bland. “If we hadn’t come along then you might have had a nasty accident.”
“Get it off me!” He writhed under the bar, but the combination of the two of us pressing on top of it, and the fact he’d overloaded it to begin with, was enough to hold him.
Madeleine tutted. “Now now, Jav, don’t get stroppy,” she said. “We just want a little chat.”
He kept struggling, but it was a lost cause, and it didn’t take too long before even he realised the fact. Then he stilled and asked sullenly, “What do you want?”
“That’s better,” I said. “I want to know who put you up to coming round and priming me up with all that bullshit about Sean Meyer.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Jav spat, his lisp conspicuous. He gasped as Madeleine and I leaned a bit further onto the bar.
“Yes you do, Jav,” Madeleine said. “Somebody gave you the information, patted you on the head and sent you off in Charlie’s direction, and you did as you were told like a good little boy, didn’t you?”
I took in the mulish look on Jav’s face and gave her a harsh glance. And I thought she was good with children. Ah well, too late now.
“What are people going to think when they find out you’ve been tipping off the police?” I tried a different tack.
Jav’s expression didn’t change much, but at least he said, “They won’t think anything, because it wasn’t me. I don’t talk to the filth,” he panted, no doubt making a sly dig at MacMillan’s interest in me.
“Well, somebody’s been talking to them, Jav, trying to drop Sean in it, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you’re the common element here,” Madeleine pressed. “So, who primed you?”
There was a flash of movement on the other side of the glass doors. A couple of figures dressed in pale blue polo shirts, and moving hurriedly.
I saw from Madeleine’s face that she’d seen them, too. Knew that our time was running out fast.
“So, come on, Jav,” she tried one last time, “who was it?” and before I could stop her, she added sharply, “Was it Langford?”
I held back an inward curse, as the doors to the gym flew open, and two large members of staff hustled in.
“Oi,” one of them shouted, “what the hell d’you two think you’re doing!”
We ignored them for a second longer, holding the bar down on Jav’s chest. “Yes, all right, yes!”
he cried. “It was that bastard Langford, all right? Now let me go!”
We complied with his request abruptly, but left him to shift the bar himself. For a few moments he just lay there, dragging air into his constricted lungs. One of the staff grabbed the barbell to lift it off the boy. I noted in passing that Attila had been right about the quality of the staff here. His technique wasn’t much to speak of, either.
The other man snatched at my arm, started to try and drag me across the floor towards the exit.
Big mistake.
I broke his grip in an automatic reflex action, twisting his hand back to reverse our positions. Getting out of wrist holds had been part of Lesson One on my self-defence courses. I could do it in my sleep.
The man swore and struggled, but I had his wrist joint, elbow and shoulder all under considerable tension. I could have held that lock all day with one hand, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done about it.
Jav was on his feet by this time, rubbing his chest and glaring at us. The other staff man had jerked the barbell back onto its stand and was eyeing up Madeleine, clearly wondering if she was dangerous, too.
“It’s OK,” I said, “we’re leaving now. There’s no need for the strong-arm tactics.” I met Jav’s eyes and held them for a long moment. “But God help you if you’ve lied to us, Jav.”
I let go of my captive with enough of a shove to send him sprawling, giving us space for a dignified retreat. At the doorway I glanced back at Jav, and saw the fear there. Stark, it was in the lines of his body, behind his eyes.
But somehow I knew that it wasn’t me he was afraid of.
***
“Look, I’m sorry, I panicked,” Madeleine said later. “I saw those two coming for us, and I just wanted to get an answer out of him quickly.” She turned away from the window and shrugged with a rueful smile. “I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sean put down his coffee cup, moved over to put his hands on her shoulders, and smiled back at her. “It’s OK,” he said lightly. “We’ll work round it.”
We were in the living room at my flat, which had seemed like the only safe neutral territory to meet up with Sean after our abortive interrogation of Jav.