Deadly Shadows (A Dylan Scott Mystery)

by Shirley Wells

Young squinted at the card. “A home for the soul? What the fuck’s that about?”

  “I’ve seen the light.” Smiling, Joe tapped the side of his nose.

  “Eh?”

  “God’s shown me the way. He’s taken care of me over the years so now I’m giving back. I’m trying to show others the light.”

  “You’re a fucking Bible basher?”

  Joe shook that off with a smile. He’d been called worse, much worse. “I’m teaching God’s Word to those who need to hear it.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Perhaps you need to hear it. What did you say you were doing up here?”

  “I’m doing nothing. Sweet fuck all. The girlfriend buggered off and—” His voice was becoming increasingly slurred. Once again, he leaned in close to Joe’s ear. “Me and a mate did a job, only a small one, but the heat was on so I legged it. I took a train north, but I fell asleep on the fucking thing and instead of getting off in Manchester, I ended up in this shit hole. What’s the name of it again? Dawson’s Clough? What a bloody place. I only got here this morning but I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Fuck knows. Anywhere. Manchester, if I can hitch a lift.”

  “This place isn’t so bad.” Joe tapped the card. “Call in at the refuge before you leave. It’s a couple of miles out of town. You can’t miss it. Come and say hello to Doll. She’d like to see you again. And if you need somewhere to sleep, we can fix you up. Work, too.”

  “What sort of work?” For a moment, Young looked interested.

  “The honest sort. A bit of building work at the refuge. Or serving hot food to the homeless in town. We all pitch in and do what needs to be done.”

  “Thanks, but that doesn’t sound like my sort of thing, if you get my drift. I like to keep myself to myself.”

  “You can do that,” Joe said. “There’s plenty of time for privacy, reflection and talking with God.”

  “What the hell would I have to say to God? I can’t see him listening to me, can you?” He laughed at the idea.

  “Why not? He’s listened to me, Davey. I did some bad things—”

  “So? Christ, we’ve all done bad things. You served your time, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ve been banged up a few times, but some things—well, let’s just say I’ve done things I didn’t get locked up for, things I’m not proud of. I’ve seen the light, and now I’m helping others find the right path.”

  “You won’t catch me talking to—” Young broke off when he saw that two uniformed coppers had entered the building. “I thought I could smell fucking bacon, Joey. Can you? What are those pigs doing here?”

  Joe put a restraining hand on his arm. “Leave it. We don’t want any trouble, do we?”

  “Hey, you!”

  “Leave it,” Joe said again. “They’re not here to bother anyone.”

  “What? That’s all they fucking do. Eight months I did, thanks to those fuckers. Oi, over here!”

  “You did eight months for moving Class A drugs around.” Joe knew he was wasting his breath because Young was too drunk to care, but he had to try. “You earned a lot of cash while you were doing it too. Come on, forget it. You don’t want to spend the night in a cell, do you?”

  His words were pointless. The police officers were heading straight for them.

  “David Young?” the taller officer asked, and Joe groaned.

  “Who wants to know?” Young asked, flexing his muscles.

  “Are you David Young?”

  “I might be David Young and I might be the king of Siam. What’s it to you?”

  “David Young, I’m arresting you—”

  “Oh, no you’re not, sunshine. I’ve done nothing wrong. You can fuck right off.”

  “There’s been no trouble, officer,” Joe said. “He’s with me. I’ll see he gets home quietly.”

  “Fuck ’em, Joey.” Young grabbed an empty bottle from the bar and smashed the neck against the metal stool. He brandished the lethal weapon in the copper’s face. “Come any closer and you’ll get this, you bastard. Come on, then. What are you waiting for? Come and get me.”

  Joe tugged on his sleeve and tried to grab the bottle from him. “Put it down, Davey. See sense, man. You’re drunk.”

  “Fuck ‘em.” Davey continued to wave the jagged glass at the coppers, daring them to get close enough to cuff him.

  It took both coppers, Joe and a furious barman a good five minutes to disarm and cuff him. Young staggered against Joe. “I know what this is about, but if I hadn’t fallen asleep on that fucking train, I wouldn’t have got in an argument with the inspector, would I? I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. Of course I didn’t have a ticket further than Manchester because I hadn’t wanted to go past fucking Manchester, had I? He was—” The coppers dragged him away. “See you, Joey.”

  “You know where I am,” Joe called back.

  Young wasn’t listening. The idiot was too busy hurling abuse and kicking out at the coppers.

  Men like Young never learned. They did small jobs here and there, spent half their lives in jail, and continued to dream of the big job that would set them up for life. They weren’t bright enough to realise that the only way to beat the law was to outwit it. That was what Joe did. He always stayed one step ahead of the law.

  He drained his glass, said good-night to the barman and headed down to the viaduct. There she was—pulling on a cigarette, shivering inside a tight black leather jacket, legs clad in knee-length white boots. Long, curly black hair was flicked into her face by the stiff breeze.

  When she spotted him, she tossed her cigarette into the gutter.

  Joe didn’t speak. There was no point because her English was worse than useless. He neither knew nor cared where she came from. The Ukraine, possibly, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know how old she was either. Fifteen or sixteen probably. That didn’t matter either.

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind some corrugated tin sheeting erected to keep squatters out of the old mill. He pushed her up against the tin, pulled up her skirt, pressed himself hard against her as he fumbled with his zipper and then rammed himself inside her.

  Less than five minutes later, he adjusted his clothing, pushed a ten-pound note at her and strolled toward the taxi rank.

  Chapter Three

  “David Young?”

  “At last.” He pushed himself away from the wall, eager to escape. He’d had enough of police cells to last him a lifetime. He’d had enough of this sodding beard too. People seeing him scratch probably thought he had fleas. Perhaps he had. For all he knew, all sorts of exotic creatures could be breeding in it.

  A copper frog-marched him away from the cells, up to the second floor and along the corridor to interview room 3, where a couple of detectives waited. They’d been deep in conversation until he arrived.

  “Thank you, thank you.” The older detective shooed the young officer away and, when the door had closed, he put out his hand. “Good to meet you at last, Dylan. Keith Rhodes. And this is Craig Miller. Miller, meet Dylan Scott, aka David Young. Ex-copper—but we won’t go into that.”

  He spoke with a smile, as if Dylan’s expulsion from the police force was something of a joke. It bloody well wasn’t. Dylan doubted he’d ever stop feeling bitter about it. He’d arrested a well-known piece of scum, a habitual criminal, and had ended up in hospital for his trouble. Said piece of scum had then claimed that he, Dylan, had used unreasonable force. It would have been laughable if the good old British police force hadn’t been brushing up on politics at the time and deemed it necessary to show Joe Public that complaints about its officers were taken very seriously indeed. Instead of getting a bloody medal, Dylan had ended up in a cell before being kicked off the force.

  Still. No use d
welling on it. Water under the bridge and all that.

  “Sorry it’s taken a while to get you here,” Rhodes said, “but it took longer than anticipated to reactivate your identity.”

  “That’s okay. It gave me time to grow this.” Dylan fingered his beard.

  A smirk almost crossed Miller’s face, but he soon had it under control and continued to scowl his disapproval. Detective Sergeant Miller was late thirties maybe. Shaven-headed. Bull-headed.

  His boss, Detective Inspector Rhodes, was taller, slimmer and far more conservative in appearance. His suit was well cut, his silk tie was a muted blue and his shoes looked handmade. Clothes like his didn’t come cheap and a copper’s salary rarely ran to such style. Dylan wished it wasn’t so, but he couldn’t help weighing up every copper he met and wondering if he was on the take.

  “There was an incident earlier too. An as-yet-unidentified body was found in an alley. It was a particularly vicious killing.” Rhodes sighed at the inconvenience the murdered man had caused. “It never rains, eh?”

  It was the first time Dylan had been in an interview room since his dismissal from the force, but it seemed that nothing had changed. This one was cold and windowless. A wide table and three chairs sat in the centre. In one corner was a small table with a laptop perched on top. Décor was a kicked-and-scuffed white.

  “Please, sit down,” Rhodes said.

  Dylan sat opposite the two detectives.

  “So how did it go, Dylan?” Rhodes asked.

  “It was surprisingly easy.” He forgot the room, and how the building gave him the creeps, and dragged his mind to the more important matter of Joe Child. He’d been taken aback at how quickly Child had remembered him. True, Child had needed to pick his pocket to confirm his suspicions, but he’d been more than eager to take up their old “friendship.” “Your bods pitched up earlier than I expected, but yeah, it was fine.”

  “Was there a need to brandish a broken bottle in their faces?” Miller asked.

  “I thought so, yes,” Dylan said. “As I’m planning to tell Child that I’ve been forced to stay in the area until my court case comes up, I wanted it to be convincing.”

  He’d enjoyed hurling abuse at those coppers though, even if it had been only playacting. The fact that they hadn’t known it was all for show had merely added to the fun.

  Dylan wasn’t stupid. He knew his perceived crime hadn’t been forgiven or forgotten. No way would his being brought in have been sanctioned if the force hadn’t been desperate. Communities panicked when young girls vanished. People started complaining about police forces being quick enough to dish out speeding tickets but being unable to catch real criminals. Faith in the country’s forces dipped. Worse, the public started taking the law into their own hands. Dylan knew CID would much prefer to have one of their own going undercover, but time was against them. He’d worked undercover and been close to Child before, so he could walk straight into the bloke’s life and save them months of hard work.

  “A coffee would be good,” he said. “And a bacon butty, if there’s one going.”

  Miller’s lips thinned to a straight line. His eyebrows beetled together. Oh, yes, Dylan would enjoy winding him up.

  He was hungry though. And tired. He hadn’t been able to sleep in the cell and had spent most of the night pacing and reminding himself that he only had to endure it for a few hours.

  “Of course, Dylan. Sorry,” Rhodes said. “We’ll get something organised.” He nodded at his sidekick. “Get me a coffee while you’re at it, will you? And a Mars bar.”

  Miller didn’t bother to reply. He didn’t bother to close the door quietly behind him either.

  “Do you want to fill me in?” Dylan asked. “Or shall we wait for Detective Sergeant Miller to come back?”

  He found it impossible to say the words Detective Sergeant without a sneer curling his lip. He’d once been proud to call himself that, but now, if they offered him a million pounds, he’d tell them where they could stick it. Well, perhaps for a million he’d have a rethink. He was broke. He was always broke. A mortgage, a wife and two kids was the fast road to bankruptcy. He hadn’t had a well-paying job for months either. He certainly hadn’t had an interesting one. People didn’t realise that private investigators spent the majority of their time staring at computer screens.

  “I can give you a brief recap.” Rhodes opened a thick folder but didn’t consult it. He knew its contents by heart. “A year ago, Caroline Aldridge left home and went to live at Child’s—” he broke off as if uncertain what to call Child’s premises, “—commune,” he settled on, his nose wrinkling with distaste. “Three months later, she vanished. The last confirmed sighting of her was at the bus station in town. Ten minutes before that, she’d called her parents. Her stepfather insists she was simply calling to tell them not to worry and that she was safe. Who knows? He was brought in for questioning, and for a while we were convinced he was involved in her disappearance.” Rhodes nodded at the laptop in the corner of the room. “We’ll show you the interviews we had with him.”

  “That was when?”

  Rhodes consulted the folder. “April the fourteenth last year. Then, a couple of months ago—” He checked the contents of his folder again. “November the twentieth, to be precise, another girl, Farrah Brindle, went missing. She’d been living at home with her parents for the last month, but before that, she too had spent a few weeks at Child’s commune. She left her parents’ home on the night in question and a taxi driver dropped her off at a local service station. We have her on CCTV and she looked as if she was waiting for someone. We didn’t see her meet anyone and we’ve checked every frame of the CCTV, so we can only assume she was picked up in a car away from the cameras. Probably close to the roundabout.”

  “So she wasn’t living at Child’s when she disappeared? Hadn’t been there for a month?”

  “That’s right. As I say though, Child’s place is our only link between the two girls.”

  Miller returned with a tray that bore a bacon roll on a plate, three coffees in polystyrene cups and a Mars bar. Ask and thou shalt receive.

  “Thanks.” Dylan grabbed the roll and bit into it. It didn’t taste as good as it looked, but it was okay.

  Rhodes blew on his coffee. “I was just telling Dylan that the only link we can find between Caroline Aldridge and Farrah Brindle is that place of Child’s.”

  Miller nodded. “We believe it’s a front for some scam or other.”

  “No doubt. Joe Child finding God is on a par with Mother Teresa snorting crack cocaine while pole dancing with polar bears.” Dylan washed down his mouthful of bacon with hot coffee. “Any ideas what he might be up to?”

  “Not really, no,” Miller said. “That’s why you’ve been dragged in.”

  He made it clear that if it had been up to him, there was no way a disgraced copper would be allowed within half a mile of the building.

  “We thought drugs when he first set up that commune,” Rhodes said, “but with the girls going missing, we’re wondering if he’s branched out and is embracing the sex trade. We’ve got nothing on him. Not a thing.”

  “How old are the girls?” Dylan asked. “Both seventeen?”

  “Yes.” Rhodes flicked through his papers and pulled out two ten-by-eight photos that he placed on the table in front of Dylan.

  Both girls were slim with blond hair. Both were smiling for the camera.

  “Caroline—” Rhodes tapped the photo on the left, “—left home after a row with her parents. She’s always been a bit of a rebel, apparently, so a place like Child’s would have appealed to her. I can’t say I blame her for leaving home. Her mother’s a fat, idle waste of space and her stepfather’s a violent drunk. Caroline has three older brothers and they’re all regulars at the courts for minor offences.”

  He nodded at the other photo.
“Farrah, by all accounts, was a bright, happy young girl looking forward to university when she suddenly changed. She comes from a good family. Her father’s a teacher and her mother’s a doctor. One brother and one sister, both older, both doing well. Her parents say Farrah became moody, argumentative and lost all interest in school and a future at university. They believe something happened or she met someone before she ended up at Child’s. She lived at Child’s place for a month or so, and when she returned home, she was—” he shuffled through papers to quote, “—’a little better. Quiet and secretive, but not unhappy.’”

  “So they’re both local girls?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes. And that’s about all they have in common,” Rhodes said.

  “They’re both local, both young, slim and blonde,” Dylan said.

  “Yes.” Rhodes drummed his fingers on the table. “You got to know Child well, Dylan. What do you think he’s up to?”

  “Anything that makes money.” That was an easy one. “Drugs. Sex trade. Organ trade. Who knows? What he won’t be doing is having a nice cosy chat with his maker.”

  “We’ll show you the recordings of interviews with John Taylor, Caroline’s stepfather,” Rhodes said, nodding at Miller.

  Miller messed around with the laptop, sighed, hit a few more keys, sighed again, and finally said, “Ready.”

  The three of them clustered around the laptop. Dylan angled the screen so that he could see something other than a reflection of the ceiling light.

  John Taylor, a tall, wiry man with thin dark hair, gave monosyllabic responses to most questions. He didn’t look particularly nervous. Nor did he seem too concerned that his stepdaughter was missing.

  “She can be a right bitch at times, like her mother,” he said, “but I never done nothing to her. I never laid a finger on her.”

  “That’s not what we heard. Someone said you knocked her about.”

  “Like hell I did. Well, I might have slapped her once or twice, but kids need to know who’s boss, don’t they?”

  “Where do you think she is?” he was asked.