by David Mark
Russell knows he is being flattered, but the smile on his lips does not suggest that he minds. He takes a longer swallow of beer, and then leans forward, bringing himself closer to Ray.
“I’ve skimmed the operational reports,” he says, and then sneers. “She didn’t know half of what she was dealing with. They were never going to be there. This snout she had? This lass who told her where to raid? She’s bottom rung, mate. And if she had any sense, she’ll have told her bosses what she told Pharaoh the second she had the chance. They’ll have cleared out about thirty seconds after she told the brass she had located the latest farm. They’re too well connected. We only raid what they can afford to lose. There’s a system here, and she’s messing with it.”
Ray wrinkles his brow. His eyebrows meet in the middle and he blows air into one cheek, as if he has a toothache.
“There’s a deal in place? An arrangement?”
Such things are not unknown. During his career he has worked with plenty of senior officers who view their criminal targets as little more than professional associates. He has known officers who have turned a blind eye to wholesale criminality in exchange for being allowed to nab some headline-grabbing, midlevel dealer.
Russell waves the suggestion away. “It’s not like that. Not like it used to be. You and I both know the Vietnamese have been looking after cannabis for years. It’s almost their national dish. Nobody else even bothers. That’s what they do. It’s like Colombians and cocaine. Some people have just got a gift for it.”
“So who’s making waves?”
Russell sighs. “Pharaoh knew a bit of this, but she’s only scratched the surface. You think those blokes who got nail-gunned were the only ones? Man, the shit we’ve heard! We don’t know much about where they’ve come from or how far their ambitions stretch, but there’s a new outfit which has got the Vietnamese running scared.”
“The Vietnamese don’t scare.”
“Maybe it’s not fear,” says Russell irritably, gesturing with his pint glass. “Maybe it’s more pragmatic than that. We know these new lads have muscle, but maybe they have money, too. The Vietnamese farmers don’t make enough money to even pay the electricity bill on the places where they set up shop. They’ve got bosses. Paymasters. Maybe our new boys have bought the local labor and are backing it up with a few demonstrations.”
Ray raises his eyebrows, expecting more. “That’s a lot of maybes, Aidy. You’re in charge of the Drugs Squad, mate. Come on, now.”
Russell bristles. “You seen the last quarterly reports? You want to know how many raids we’ve successfully carried out these past few months? It’s almost daily. The scale of the operation is enormous. Somebody with a bit of vision has realized that most of the force don’t give a damn about cannabis, and they’ve taken advantage of that to make some serious money.”
“Where’s your intel coming from?” asks Ray. “The raids? Your targets?”
“Some we get from street dealers who’ve got an ear to the ground. Deals with people trying to shave a few months off sentence.”
“And the bigger raids? The ones that make the papers?” Ray fancies he already knows the answer.
Russell looks into the bottom of his empty glass, but Ray makes no move to fill it. The senior officer sighs. “Anonymous tips,” he says. “Good ones. Straight through to the mobile phones of me or a couple of my lads. They’re never on the blower more than a few seconds. Just give us an address and a time. We hit the place and the cameras start flashing. Nice picture opportunity, and the chief constable is happy.”
Ray sips his wine. Decides it hasn’t taken the edge off what he’s feeling. He finishes it in a gulp.
“They’re pacifying you,” he says. “Either that or taking out the competition.”
Russell shrugs. Looks at his glass again. Ray turns to the bar and nods to the young, skinny lad in a black Ramones T-shirt, who is fiddling with his mobile phone behind the bar. Signals for two more drinks.
Russell doesn’t speak again until he is wiping beer from his upper lip. “It’s all part of the business these days,” he says. “You know as well as I do we can’t get drugs out of our lives. We can’t get them off the streets. We can’t get them out of bloody prisons. It’s about showing that we’re trying. And we are trying, Col. But with the resources I’m putting into cannabis raids, the smack heads and coke dealers are having a ball. And how do I know the lads who’ve taken over the Vietnamese workforce aren’t looking after the harder stuff, too? I know bugger all about them except they’re hard as nails, very good, and very well informed.”
Ray purses his lips. Holds his tongue until the barman has brought him his change. Pockets it and then places his palms flat on the table, as if taking part in a séance. He appears to be thinking.
“Alan Rourke,” he says. “I don’t take him for some criminal mastermind.”
Russell gives a smile. “He’s hard, I’ll tell you that much. Nearly as hard as his old running partner. The stories I could tell you about him and Giuseppe Noye—”
Ray waves a hand. “Tell me the story I want to hear. Why is Rourke’s fingerprint on the bottle that smashed against a police van outside a bloody cannabis factory?”
Russell squeezes one hand with another. “The travelers aren’t much different from the Vietnamese,” he says, rapping the table with his knuckles to emphasize the words. “They do their thing. They stay in their own community. They fracture some laws and they cause us headaches. That’s always been the way. But we live in a multicultural society, Col. Sometimes they branch out.”
“And Rourke has branched out? He’s connected to this?”
Russell shrugs. “He’s a known commodity. He’s a tough guy with respect and backup. You’ve seen the witness reports. It was white guys. Big white guys. What’s to say it’s not the gypsies who’ve moved up in the world?”
Ray considers it. Thinks of Rourke: brimming with confidence and utterly unafraid as he kept his silence across the interview table, with a look in his eyes that suggested he would rather bite his tongue off than give up his secrets.
“Where is this coming from, Aidy? I wouldn’t even have known you knew the fella if he hadn’t mentioned your name. He only did that to see if I’d bite. To show he knew more than me. Made me look a right cunt. Why did you pay him a visit?”
Russell takes another swallow of his drink. Says nothing.
Ray gives a nod of understanding. “You got another call, didn’t you? On the mobile. Same voice that tips you the wink on which factories to raid is now telling you who to put the frighteners on. Bloody hell, Aidy, they may as well have you on the payroll. What did they tell you?”
Russell looks down at the numbers on his arm. The flashes on his uniform that remind him he is a very senior officer. “Just told me that Alan Rourke was worth a look. That if we had a bit of a lean on him, we might get a few more phone calls and a few more raids. He’s got some lad staying with him. The voice on the line said that we should leave him alone. The teenager. That we should remind Rourke that he’s not the boy’s father, and that the lad has friends.”
Ray pushes himself back from the table. He is always pissed off. Always aggressive. Can only hold himself back for so long. It’s taking an effort now.
“You may as well be on the payroll.”
Russell reddens. “How can I be working for somebody when I don’t know who they are? It was the right decision. A professional decision. I passed on a message, marked his card, and the phone calls kept coming.”
Ray isn’t listening. “The lad,” he says. “It’s the same one. The one who set the dogs on Pharaoh. Yes?”
Russell nods. Takes a swallow of beer. “Soon as I saw the description and Rourke’s name I decided to call you. You just called me first. I would have rung, Col. Now you’re looking after this, we’ll get somewhere.”
Ray rocks back, the chair on two legs. “Ho
w did Rourke react when you went to see him? What did he have to say?”
“Did all but laugh in my face,” he says. “Didn’t scare. Didn’t flinch.”
“And the lad? He was there?”
“Turned up as we were leaving. Climbing out of some flash bloody four-by-four as if he was a Lottery winner or Wayne fucking Rooney.”
Ray drains his glass. His gaze meets Russell’s. The senior officer looks away first.
“I know why you didn’t tell Pharaoh what’s going on with the Vietnamese,” says Ray softly. “It’s because you didn’t have much to tell without making yourself look like a bloody gopher for some drug dealers. I even get why you went to see Rourke. What I don’t get, Aidy, is how you can’t see what’s going on.”
Russell narrows his eyes. “Go on, then, smart-arse.”
“The lad’s the bloody player. The teenager. He’s the one who’s valuable to your friends at the end of the phone. Rourke’s up to his eyes in all this, but he’s overstepping his boundaries. It’s the lad who’s connected. It’s his gyppo connections that are causing your friends the headache.”
Russell seems unconvinced. “You’re a fucking long way from proving any of that.”
“I just need to know it, not prove it,” says Ray, putting all four chair legs flat on the floor.
“What’s your move?” asks Russell, looking at his watch and clearly deciding that four pints is enough. “The lad’s top priority, yes?”
“He set the dogs on Pharaoh. So we want him. But we want to know what’s in his head, too. It’s all linked. I’m getting a fucking headache here . . .”
Russell gives a smile, and any tension that existed between them seems to evaporate. Both are old-school. Ray would never even consider grassing another officer up. But he does at least recognize that he suddenly has a useful ace up his sleeve.
“The next time you get a call from your friends . . .”
Russell’s face drops back into a scowl.
“Go on.”
“I want in on the raid. I want to talk to whoever you pull.”
Russell seems to think about it. Gives a quick nod. “It could be sooner than you think. It’s been a few days . . .”
“Whenever. I’m not planning on getting much sleep.”
“Where are you heading next?”
Ray gives a little smile, pulling his phone from his pocket. He punches in a number with long, yellow-stained fingers.
“Shaz? Roll off whoever you’re on and get yourself in the car. We’re going on our holidays, love. Off to visit a few lovely little caravan parks.”
From the other end of the line comes a barrage of confused questioning. Colin Ray shushes her. “The ginger lad. He’s run to what he knows. He’s back with his people. And we’re going to go and make him unwelcome.”
4:14 P.M. HA’PENNY BRIDGE WAY, ON THE VICTORIA DOCK ESTATE.
MCAVOY, resting his head on the steering wheel, listening to his wife cry. Her sobs sound in tandem with the rain that beats on the glass.
“Come home,” she gasps. “Please.”
McAvoy looks out through the waterfall of rain that runs down the windscreen. The air is slate gray, the sky reaching all the way down to the deepening puddles and burst drains that are starting to obscure the roads and pavements.
“One stop, Roisin,” he says again. “One more stop and then I’ll come and take over.”
“She won’t stop crying,” she says again, and the desperation in her stabs into his chest like an icicle.
“An hour,” he says, closing his eyes.
“She’s screaming,” begs Roisin. “I can’t . . .”
She hangs up. She has never hung up on him before. He begins to call her back. His phone rings again. “Roisin . . .”
“No, lad. DCI Ray. Where the bloody hell are you?”
McAvoy winds the window down a crack. Lets some air into the vehicle. Watches the reeds sway in the tatty duck pond that separates the two modern apartment blocks that loom over the patchwork of semi-detached properties.
“I’ve been—”
“Don’t care,” says Ray. “Anyway, Tremberg’s been bending my ear about getting in touch with you, so I am, because it might make her shut the fuck up. Got her well trained, that one, ain’t you? We spoke to Alan Rourke. Gypsy bastard barely said a word. No ID on the lad who set the dogs on Her Highness, but Shaz is in with Rourke again now and is promising to stop his dogs getting the chop if he’s a bit more helpful. We’ve got fuck all on the Vietnamese or the petrol bombing. Nowt that would interest you, anyway. Reckon we should be checking the England cricket team from the way they threw that thing. Bloody awful bowling action. Anyway, Ben Neilsen’s over in Doncaster rounding up CCTV from when the Land Rover was nicked. Turns out they’ve got other vehicles missing, too. Merc, Audi, a Lexus or two. In Doncaster! You feeling in the loop now? Right. Fuck off. Bye.”
McAvoy is too tired to subject the exchange to analysis. He just nods to himself. Eventually closes his phone.
Beyond the glass, the storm is getting worse. The news headlines on Radio Humberside were starting to sound a little hysterical when McAvoy tuned in on the drive here. It is only a few years since Hull suffered near-biblical floods. There are still people living in caravans in their front gardens. Every time it rains the city holds its breath. The weather was top story, ahead of an appeal for witnesses following a nasty attack on Morpeth Street last night. A nineteen-year-old girl is in hospital with severe head injuries after being set upon by an unknown assailant around midnight. Friends have described her as a happy-go-lucky girl who would do anything for anyone. A spokesman for Humberside Police said it was too soon to speculate whether the incident could be linked to the escalation of violent crime in the city, rumored to be linked to the drugs trade.
It had made McAvoy grimace. Made him wonder, too, why he was chasing so hard after answers about Simon Appleyard when the living were being mercilessly persecuted.
With some difficulty, McAvoy hauls himself from the car. He is far too big for its cramped confines. Feels as though he should cut a hole in the roof to poke his head through. Worries he will pull the door off every time he grips the handle.
The wind and rain refresh him briefly. He looks up at the slate sky and allows the downpour to soak his face. Slicks back his hair and licks the collected droplets from his lips.
The flat he is after is on the ground floor, offering a decent view of the dense mess of reeds that all but obscure the water of the large rectangular pond. McAvoy and Roisin had considered getting a place on this estate when they first moved to the city. It is only a ten-minute walk from the center and was designed with upwardly mobile families in mind. The houses are small but neatly built and well looked after, but the sense of inner-city community that the developers had been aiming for when they called it an “urban village” has never truly materialized. Many of the properties are let to young flat-sharers by distant landlords, and there are too many FOR SALE and TO LET signs to suggest it is a place where people are desperate to stay. It is beginning to look tired, not least because of the moonscape that many of the streets are beginning to resemble, thanks to the widely predicted subsidence. A former working dock, it was landfilled to make way for the housing development. There are fears that the whole estate is beginning to sink.
McAvoy takes care on the damp timbers of the footbridge. Looks for signs of life in the duck pond. Wonders if there are any ducks hiding in there or if they, too, have left the estate for more comfortable accommodation in the East Riding villages.
He checks his notepad to confirm the address. Realizes he is already standing outside the doors to the apartment block and cannot put this off any longer. He rings the bell.
Seconds go by. Water drips down the back of his neck.
A burst of static from the intercom.
“Hello?”
“Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy, louder than he had intended. “I’m a policeman. Could I have some of your time?”
There is another pause.
“Come in.”
The door buzzes and McAvoy pushes it open. He finds himself in a wide, gray-carpeted, buttermilk-painted atrium. There is a set of stairs at the far end, and three brown wooden doors set in the remaining walls.
Number 29 is opening.
He recognizes the man in the doorway from the newspaper and TV appearances. He is in his late forties, with dyed blond hair swept back from a long face that nature has made unremarkable, but vanity has colored. The tuft of hair beneath his lower lip is dyed peroxide blond, and his sideburns are razored to a neat, almost devilish point. He has two rings in his left ear, and McAvoy doubts that his eyebrows are naturally as jet-black as they appear.
He is smiling broadly, a politician’s grin. He is wearing a purple V-neck sweater and loudly checked trousers that are more Rupert the Bear than Harris tweed. He is in relatively good shape, but the shape of sagging pectorals can still be made out through the material of his sweater.
“Plainclothes, eh?” Hepburn asks warmly. “Intriguing.”
McAvoy looks down at himself, standing in a puddle, all but raining on the floor.
“Still drizzling?” asks Hepburn.
McAvoy forces a smile.
“Come in,” Hepburn says. “I’ll get you a towel.”
He steps back inside the apartment and holds the door open. McAvoy wonders if he should offer to remove his boots, but remembers the fuss he had getting his shoes on this morning, and very much doubts that his socks match.
He follows the councillor inside and down a short corridor decorated with black-and-white prints.
He is led into a large living room, painted terra-cotta and designed the vaguely Javanese style. The blinds are raffia, and the prints on the wall are of elephants and traditional fishing skiffs, pots of spice and gentlemen’s club antique maps. There is an expensive-looking rug on the cream-carpeted floor, and the red chesterfield sofa gives the place the feel of a British Empire hotel gone slightly to seed. The two-seater table at one end of the room supports a huge vase of lilies. The other end of the long room is given over to a large flat-screen TV.