by Pete Trewin
He finished the NCA report by half past ten. He rang Stuart but there was no answer. That was strange. A receptionist always answered. You might be kept waiting for a while but this was different.
After about six tries. Stuart answered.
‘Er, National Crime Agency, Stuart Madison speaking.’ He sounded distracted.
‘Stuart? Chris Crosby here. I’ve had a stroke of luck. I’ve just completed that report.’
‘Report?’
‘Yeah, on the Mason gang.’
‘Oh that. Listen, everything’s kicked off here. I’ll go outside and ring you on my mobile.’
‘What’s going on, Stuart? ‘Chris said when the NCA man rang him back. ‘You’re not under attack are you?’
‘We are, in a manner of speaking.’
‘Sorry, Stuart.’ He had been trying to make a joke.
‘No it’s all right. We’re having a shake-up here. The boss has already gone. I might not be your case officer next time you ring. It’s the government. They want to crack down on international drug smuggling before the G20 next month. They’re getting criticised by the U.S. and Brazil.’
There was a long pause.
‘Listen,’ Stuart continued. ‘I meant to ring you anyway. There’s a story going round that Kenny Mason drowned in Cornwall.’
‘That’s the rumour.’
‘Do you know where?’
‘Sorry, all I know is that it was in Cornwall.’
‘Well there’s another story going about that their South American contact was on that boat. That it went down with a huge consignment of cocaine and the money to pay for it. We’d love to have a more exact location, within half a mile would do. If we could get it that close we could borrow a plane with SONAR from the RAF and locate it.’
‘A drugs haul and a shedful of cash as well.’
‘And not just that. The story is that this courier had a laptop with him containing a treasure trove of evidence.’
‘But that’s exactly what I’ve got on the Masons’ money laundering activities.’
‘Nah. We won’t have the staff to follow that up. It would take years. This is sexy. If we could get this boat it would the biggest ever coup for the agency. At just the right time politically. There’ll be a big reward for whoever delivers this one for us.’
‘What about my evidence on the Masons?’
‘You can shove that up your arse. Get the location of this boat and you’ll be on our select list for ever.’
Jeanette came in and gestured to him from the other side of the office. Time for the meeting. No doubt to announce the company’s bankruptcy. People were already filing out.
When the room was empty he went to Simon’s office. The door wasn’t locked. He inserted Dennis’s gizmo into Simon’s computer.
He was a little disappointed with what he found. Playing games. On-line dating.
He checked Simon’s e-mail history. Nothing much concerning work. Except...there was a draft e-mail that hadn’t been sent. It was a fairly lengthy one to someone he’d never heard of in the National Crime Agency. It was about him. Chris Crosby. Or Christopher Paterson as Simon had noted. Chris had been saved by the bell. He erased the e-mail.
He joined the meeting just after it had started. The air of frivolity and holiday excitement had dissipated and an air of gloom had descended.
‘So there you have it,’ Tony Scoggins was saying. He was maybe fifty-years-old with a neat, silver-grey beard and close-cropped hair. ‘I don’t want to talk ill of the dead but Simon was fucking this firm over good and proper. Luckily, we managed to keep things on a relatively even keel despite his best efforts to the contrary. Jeanette will outline the financial situation.’
Jeanette handed round a number of sheets of paper.
‘Basically,’ she said, ‘we’ve got about two quid in the bank. But we’re due some payments on contracts. Especially the big one for the NCA.’ She looked at Chris who didn’t respond. ‘I don’t think we’ll have to lose anyone but don’t rule it out. We need a bit of time to think through a new management structure and get a lawyer to look at it. The fact that the firm was virtually bankrupt does help, strange as it may seem. As does Simon’s drugs dependency.’
‘That’s a bit...’ piped up a voice.
‘I know it sounds a bit brutal so soon after. But the hospital and police have confirmed that Simon was addicted to cocaine and heroin. All I can say is that it goes some way to explain his behaviour.’
‘Thank you,’ said Scoggins. ‘There you have it. Things are bad. We’re on the verge of going pop. But if we all pull together we can turn this company round. Give us a little time and we’ll come back with some concrete proposals.’
Chris found himself walking back to the office with Jeanette.
‘So who do you think sabotaged Simon’s presentations?’ he said.
She grinned at him.
‘I have absolutely no idea, Chris. Do you?’
They walked on for a few steps.
‘Do you fancy a drink and maybe a meal tonight after work,’ he blurted out. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’
She turned to look at him, surprised.
‘I’d love to Chris, but me and Tony are.....’
It was Chris’s turn to be surprised.
‘Going out? But he’s.....’
‘Twice my age and not exactly tall, dark and handsome? Well, I like him.’
Chris’s phone was ringing as he got back to his desk.
‘You the feller who was asking after Vickie Sefton?’ It was a male voice, calm and quiet.
‘Well, yes. Are...’
‘She’s not here. We’ve never heard of her.’
Jeanette’s phone rang.
‘Fellow here wants to talk to Billy Whizz,” she said, handing Chris the phone.
‘Hello.’ he said, trying to disguise any grumpiness.
‘Billy! Billy Whizz! It’s your uncle Ed. As if you didn’t know. How ya diddlin’?’
‘Fine.’
‘Only fine? What about Simple Simon, then?’
‘Sad. But there you go. He’d already had one catastrophic heart attack. He was an accident waiting to happen.’
‘Needed a little help though didn’t he?’
‘No time was there?’
‘Hey, come on. I put a lot of effort into this little job.’
Chris was aware of Jeanette.
‘You still there, Billy? I watched the back of his house from the Strawberry Fields site for a whole evening. It was quite nice in there, actually – apart from a bit of rain and wind but, hey-ho. A lady walking her dog asked me what I was doing. I pretended to be a Beatles fan. I made some phone calls to him on my mobile. And I drugged his moggy and nailed it by its tail to his front door. Woke up an hour later, screeching its head off. Quite a do it was. I reckon that’s what helped to finish the twat off. So now you have to deliver your side of the bargain, Billy boy.’
‘I’m just popping to the loo,’ Jeanette said.
The door clicked shut.
‘Look, Ed, he died of a heart attack. Natural causes. Best forget it now.’
‘Whoa, boy. Whoa there. It’s not as simple as that. It was hardly natural causes. He was on cocaine and heroin, you know. All it takes is a bit of a switch and bob’s your uncle. Alison’s really got it in for me. You’re going to have to go back and get that money so I can pay her back. It’s the only way.’
‘Not me.’
‘Yes, Chris, you. Otherwise I’ll have to let the relevant authorities know all about your past.’
TWENTY THREE
Stroller liked this Liverpool cafe culture thing. Sitting outside at lunch time on a warm autumn day sipping your coffee. People strolling by in sunglasses and summer clothes. He was wearing some nice clothes himself for a change. Expensive cotton shirt. Linen chinos. Dark brown brogues. And some nice classy designer sun-glasses. His new North Face jacket was slung over a chair. He’d gone for a stroll down to the new Liverpoo
l One shopping area and been really impressed.
He surveyed the street. Nice buildings, newly done up. Real stone paving and proper wooden seats. His new digs were clean and the rent was relatively cheap, he realized now. He’d always thought that Liverpool was a dump with all the windows put through, its inhabitants searching through dustbins for something to eat. He’d probably been inside too long. Maybe Middlesbrough was like this now.
Down the street somewhere he could hear the drone of a busker singing about the streets of London. And closer by he could hear a street preacher ranting on. Words floated in the air. ‘Jesus’. ‘Soul’. ‘Forgiveness’. Well he would show no forgiveness.
He’d checked all the obvious sources of information back at the hospital. Tax, NHS, National Insurance. Got nowhere. All he had was a name and a place called Frodsham near Liverpool. He finished his coffee and went inside. He paid the man at the desk and slid into a seat in front of a computer with a view of the street.
He looked up “Frodsham” on Multi-Map. A village south of the Mersey in Cheshire. Not too far away. He had no wheels yet so it would have to be public transport. But he needed an address. Ideally a post code. So which council area was Frodsham in? He googled it.
Cheshire West and Chester. What sort of a name was that? They must have amalgamated two areas. Soft cunts. He googled it and came up with the telephone number of the Council Tax department.
He opened his mobile and rang the number.
‘Cheshire West and Cheshire Council Tax department, how may I help you?’
A bored, young-sounding voice. Female.
‘Ah, good morning. I’ve just moved into a property in Frodsham and I want to check the Council Tax band. It’s Mr Edward Sefton.’
The risky bit.
‘Hang on a moment, sir. I’ll just get it up on the computer. What’s...’
‘Yeah, well,’ Stroller butted in. ‘The amount I’ve been quoted in this letter is ridiculous. I’ve...’
‘OK, OK, Mr Sefton. Got it now. So what’s the problem?’
‘I’ve just said what the problem is. The amount is wrong.’
‘OK, we can send out a form to fill in with an explanatory leaflet.’
‘I don’t want to fill in a form.’ He injected a dose of stressed-out, pissed-offness into his voice. ‘I’m fed up with filling in forms. Who am I speaking to?’
A pause.
‘Right, that’s Mersey View. Longshott Lane. WA6 8QX. I’ll get it off to you right away, sir. Have a nice day.’
On to Multi-Map.
‘How much for a printout?’ he shouted to the man at the desk. Balding. Middle-aged. Specs on a chain round his neck. Just the type to be nosy.
‘It’s a quid per sheet. One fifty if you want colour. Watch out, though, when you print off from the Internet. Sometimes you get all sorts of crap you don’t want getting printed.’
Stroller printed it off. Sure enough he got another sheet with some advertising shite on it. He rolled this sheet into a ball and tossed it into a waste-paper basket.
‘And how do you get to Frodsham from here on the train?’ he asked as he paid.
‘It’s a right faff by train. You have to change at Warrington. You’d think they’d organise a direct service wouldn’t you? After all, most of the people with jobs in Frodsham work in Liverpool. Frodsham’s the place to live round here. Probably better to get the bus. Main bus station’s down by the Pierhead. It’s signposted at the end of the street.’ He pointed. ‘Oh no, he’s outside again.’
A little fat man with long greasy hair was setting his rucksack in front of the cafe tables. Stroller edged back behind a pillar. Just at that moment it started to drizzle and the customers sitting outside began to herd into the main cafe.
The little fat man shrugged, picked up his rucksack and trudged away. Stroller noticed that he had a strange bald patch on the back of his head. Strange in not being in the usual place when men started to go bald.
TWENTY FOUR
Chris liked driving the M62 from Liverpool to the other side of the country. You saw the Pennines in the distance – often sulking under a low cloud but clearly defined today in afternoon sunshine. Then the road started to rise. Lorries began to slow down and labour, and you could feel your engine working harder. You were crossing the backbone of England. Within thirty miles or so you were going downhill and, as an extra bonus, not long after you passed Leeds, you could see the plateau of the North York Moors in the distance.
He stopped the car at a service station on the M62 and parked well away from any other vehicles. He checked the tracker. The dot was in Frodsham village. He checked the location. A Post Office. Restricted car-park. Then it dawned on him. The device must have been removed and placed on a Post Office van.
He went for a leisurely coffee then walked back to the car around the edge of the car park, checking for Ed’s space wagon. You couldn’t miss that but then Ed was crafty enough to have swapped it for a Fiesta or something.
On the A19 he stopped on a roundabout and after a few minutes doubled back on himself to the previous roundabout. All clear.
He left the A19 early and went into Teesside via Nunthorpe. As the road crested the brow of a hill he was suddenly confronted by the city stretching into the distance.
Chemical works. Nuclear power station. Not much heavy industry these days but dramatic enough under a bright, cloudless sky; sunlight glinting off windows and car windscreens.
He headed straight for the city centre and parked up in a multi-storey car park. After asking a couple of pedestrians, he found the Birth and Death Registry in a nondescript modern council office next to the Victorian Gothic town hall. The dark-haired, middle-aged lady on reception was friendly, and helped him fill in the necessary form with the things he could remember; names, occupations, places of birth. He didn’t have NHS numbers or anything like that. He gave his real name: no point in hiding now. She brought the register and left him to it at a table in a side office. He started twenty years ago and was shocked to find an entry for his mother only a year later. And one for his father only six months after that. The lady carried out what she called a “family search” and provided him with a location map for the cemetery and a plot plan. The fee was reasonable and he paid it out of his loose change.
The cemetery was only a short drive away, out of town at the beginning of the suburbs, but it was already beginning to get dark. Luckily, the burials were in chronological order and he found the grave quickly. It had long been abandoned and was overrun with weeds. The cheap headstone referred to “loving wife” and “loving husband”. No mention that they’d also been a mother and a father. Who had paid for the headstone? The council?
It was as if he’d never existed.
For a moment, he thought he was going to faint. He had to sit down on a gravestone, which stood opposite that of his parents.
He raised his eyes from the cruel words to look at the line of Eston Hills rising above the city in a long, whaleback ridge. To an observer up there, he would be an insignificant ant in a teeming city. After a few minutes he got up and walked slowly back to the car.
As soon as he reached the outskirts of the city in the car, he was lost. And it was getting quite dark now. New roads, housing estates, shopping centres, industrial estates. All this in only twenty years? He stopped at a service station and bought a map. Everything had changed. He was totally lost. Where was Crow Wood? It had been quite a large wood – several acres at least – and it had stood in farmland. Close to the edge of the city, true, but still in farmland. And it would be night soon. Not much time.
On the map he traced old roads which had been bypassed, hatching in with a pen those housing areas that had definitely been there twenty years ago. Now Crow Wood would be…. Shit. A huge road intersection stood exactly where the wood had been.
But, wait, the central area of the intersection was big, almost as big as the wood would have originally been.
He parked the car in a lay-by n
ear the intersection and waited five minutes just in case, but no one was following him. He had to cross a dual carriageway and a slip road but he reasoned that local people must still walk across the wood occasionally. Sometimes these new roads cut across the routes local people walked to and from work. And some must be stubborn enough to continue walking them.
Though there again, he had once read a story – was it by J.G. Ballard? – about a man who breaks down in a motorway spaghetti junction and can’t find his way out. Like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island.
The wood was still there. The trees bigger and more mature now. But it didn’t look as if it had been bashed about too much. Maybe some environmentally aware planner had saved it.
The edge of the wood was strewn with cans, bottles, chip papers, a bumper, bits of an exhaust. By the time he got ten yards from the edge, following a vague path, the hum of the traffic faded. Further in lay a pile of half-fossilised shit, probably from some lorry driver who had been caught short a couple of months ago. Then just leaves and the odd bramble bush. And, yes, bluebells. Late in the year for them; must be because of the North East being behind the rest of the country. The further in he went, more bluebells. Oaks, sycamores, hollies and hawthorns. The place was like a nature reserve – except that its location kept out the vandals.
He tried to orient himself with the aid of the map but the vegetation got so thick that when he was twenty feet in it was difficult to move or work out where he was.
He was looking for a large oak in the centre of the wood. This was where they had come as kids to go bird nesting and build dens. Bramble tendrils were mixed in with the high bracken fronds and snagged his arms and legs as he tried to force a way through. After ten minutes and with the light fading all the time, he found himself back at his starting point with blood seeping from scratches on his hands. They criss-crossed the scratches from the Frodsham woods of the day before which had hardly started to heal.