Blood Mist (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  Robbie’s phone rang out with the brass intro to Beyoncé’s Crazy In Love and he grabbed it off the dashboard. The display read: ‘Spencer’. He showed it to Vincent.

  ‘Don’t pick it up, Robbie. He could be cutting himself a cosy little deal with the cops, with us as the price.’

  ‘But it’s Spencer. Our best mate.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you. You can’t trust no one!’ The feeling of peace evaporated and the all-encompassing sense of anxiety that Vincent had lived with for years started eating at his centre.

  ‘I need to sleep,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Yes, you do. We both do,’ replied Vincent with a calmness he just didn’t feel. ‘But we need to talk first, right?’

  The music stopped. Twelve missed calls. All from their best mate, Spencer.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Robbie, about all kinds of stuff. You remember when that woman copper called the tall, ugly bloke up the stairs?’

  ‘Yeah, and that bitch in the front room said, They’ve got the phone. You’re as good as guilty!’

  The passage of seconds replayed itself through Vincent’s head for the thousandth time.

  The woman copper went to close the living room door. The bloke’s footsteps were heavy on the stairs. Upstairs Jon was crying. Their mum was talking fast and loud. Without thinking, the baseball bat from the side of the sofa was in his hand and raining down on the bitch’s head as her hands flew up to protect herself. Vincent snatched her bag, took the car keys, tossed the bag down. They hurtled out of the house and got lucky opening the car nearest to the house. The bloke was on the pavement as they raced away, tyres screaming as they turned the corner at sixty miles per hour. Laughing like maniacs as they lost the chasing copper in the web of side roads, not knowing that they were speeding into a maze of insanity that they could never have imagined. Ever.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘Use the last of the petrol to drive down to Trinity Road police station and turn ourselves in,’ replied Vincent.

  ‘That’s a good idea, Vinnie.’

  ‘It’s a shit idea. It’s the last thing we should do. Didn’t you hear the Radio City news, on the hour, every hour for the last twenty-four hours?’ He regretted his outburst of anger as soon as it had left him, instantly absorbing his younger brother’s hurt at the sharp attack. ‘I’m sorry. This is all shit, all fucked-up beyond belief.’

  ‘So what’s new?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘Listen to what I’m going to say to you. It’s important you understand where we are right now. When we get caught—’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘That was before I heard on the radio what they’re going to pin on us. Mass murder!’

  Vincent pulled down the sun visor to block out the leering moon, the stamp of night, the dark hours and the creak of his bedroom door in the old house back in St Helens.

  ‘There were kids involved, Robbie.’

  ‘But we didn’t do it. There’s no forensic evidence – CSI and all that shit.’

  ‘Did you hear that woman copper or didn’t you? They’ve got the phone. You’re as good as guilty. They’re going to pin a multiple murder on us and there’s nothing we can do about it. They’ve made their minds up. They’ve planted a fucking telephone in the house. They’re going to do us for killing those posh bastards in Aigburth.’

  The wind whistled off the river and, in the silence of the car, Vincent heard his dad’s voice, hot, urgent and soft in his ear. ‘Don’t tell Mum. Don’t tell a soul.’

  ‘One condition, Dad!’ said Vincent.

  ‘One condition, Dad? What do you mean, Vinnie?’

  ‘Oh nothing, thinking out loud. Young kids got killed, a toddler, and they’re going to pin it on us. Where do you think they’ll send us for the rest of our lives? And no, they won’t give us parole because everyone thinks we’re like fucking Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. So no, there won’t be no parole, fucking get that one out of your head.’

  ‘Young Offenders Unit until we’re, like, y’know, eighteen?’

  ‘No. They’ll put us in the basement of Wakefield Prison until we’re eighteen and then they’ll put us in with the paedos because all the decent criminals will want to kill us because they think we’ve messed with little kids.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘Let’s try and grab a bit of kip and we’ll put our heads together in the morning. Let’s sleep on it.’

  Vincent opened the door and stepped out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘Opening the back door for you. You can sleep on the back seat.’

  With his brother curled up in the back with the woman copper’s coat covering him, Vincent settled down in the driver’s seat and watched the twinkling lights on the Wirral Peninsula.

  The wind combed the trees and bushes behind the car and sang a mournful song as it blew off the icy river.

  Vincent was dog-tired but knew he couldn’t sleep. He had to do the thing he’d always done, the thing that compelled him. Look out for his little brothers. As the moments passed, he couldn’t even think about Jon and what was happening to him.

  The phone rang. Spencer. Again. He turned the phone off and listened as Robbie’s breathing grew deeper and deeper. He would wait until his brother was sleeping soundly before he fulfilled his plan.

  Somewhere, in the gardens of the modern apartments overlooking the dark river, a wind chime rattled. It reminded Vincent that once upon a time, in a different life, he had won a badge in Cubs for making a wind chime and, better still, had negotiated a secret treaty in the small hours of the night.

  ‘I won’t tell a soul if you leave Robbie and Jon alone.’

  Robbie was snoring on the back seat. Vincent peeled off his shirt and got out of the car. The wind bit his skin. Half-dressed, he returned to the driver’s seat, without his shirt, shut the door as quietly as possible so as not to wake Robbie and looked across the cold waters of the River Mersey.

  He lifted the sun visor and stared in bold accusation at the smirking moon.

  Across the river, thousands of lights danced through the gauze of his tears. He turned on the ignition.

  56

  6.15 pm

  There were two piles of bank statements on Bill Hendricks’s desk. The Patels’ NatWest statements going back fifteen years, with the last five printed off from their internet banking facility. And the Tanner’s Barclays statements for the same period.

  Clay placed two mugs of coffee in front of him and pulled up a chair. ‘I’m glad to have a break from listening to Adrian White’s writing.’

  ‘Anything coming through?’

  ‘I keep thinking, imagining even, that I can hear fractured coherence, recognisable meaning buried in the broken syntax. But when I go back to the point where I sense clarity, it’s just not there on second listening. It’s the aural equivalent of something appearing on the edge of vision.’

  Hendricks looked at Clay long and hard. ‘Eve, there’s something else on your mind, I can tell.’

  ‘It keeps hitting me between the eyes. I think trawling through the Baptist’s writings might be a bum steer. Like he’s wasting our time at a time when we have no time to lose. He’s assisting the perpetrators and laughing at us for good measure.’

  ‘What’s the alternative, Eve? He’s got the inside track on this nightmare and you’re the first person he makes contact with in seven years. If you ignore his writing and something comes out of it, we’re all going to look like amateurs.’ He sipped his coffee.

  ‘Bill?’ She had his whole attention. ‘You know when you gave that statement to the press about the Pearson boys?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There was something not right. With the hacks. Did you get that?’

  ‘No. Only that there were so many of them, from far and wide. What do you mean, Eve?’

  The naggin
g doubt had come and gone and had been relegated because of more pressing concerns. But it wouldn’t go away.

  ‘I can’t rationalise it,’ said Clay. ‘But when I looked at them, it was like looking at a wall of circles with a single square stuck in the middle.’ The tap dripped inside her head and she tried to turn it tighter by asking, ‘Have you found anything from the bank statements?’

  ‘Oh yes. Forget what job they do or where they live, you can tell a hell of a lot about people from their bank statements.’ He pointed at the Patels’ statements. ‘Happy family.’ He pointed at the Tanners’ statements. ‘Sad family. As the Patels have grown richer, the Tanners have been sinking into economic decline, over the last ten years. Mrs Tanner stopped work and all the family savings have been spent on private healthcare for her. They tried her in several care homes but nothing worked out. She ended up being cared for at home by a succession of agency nurses, but they’ve had stability for the past two years. Mr Patel’s business has mushroomed and they’ve enjoyed exotic holidays, designer everything, flash cars, the full bling. When the recession hit, all the crap seemed to have slid clean off the Patel family, whereas what little the Tanners did have got gobbled up into the big black economic hole.’

  ‘Have you found a link?’

  ‘That’s why I disturbed you from Listen With Mother. Go back eight years.’ He gave her two sets of bank statements for the financial year starting April 2009.’

  She scanned the Patels’ income and outgoings for the month and then the Tanners’ parallel statement.

  ‘Can you see the same recipient for a standing order in both sets of statements?’

  She skimmed and scanned from one page to the next. ‘The Christian Grace Foundation’ seemed to rise from the page.

  The Patels’ standing order was for £1000 a month, the Tanners’ £150.

  Clay turned to May.

  ‘The plot thickens, Eve.’

  ‘In May, the Patels upped the amount to £1500, the Tanners to £250.’

  ‘If you look at the income going in for the month, that raises the contribution to ten per cent for both families,’ said Hendricks. ‘The Patels can afford that. The Tanners can’t.’

  ‘It’s that church,’ said Clay. ‘I bet you it’s the church Sandy Patel was telling me about. Excuse me.’ She reached out towards Hendricks’s laptop.

  ‘You think I haven’t tried Google? There are all kinds of Grace Foundations out there, but no sign of a Christian Grace Foundation.’

  She turned to the June statements. ‘Whoah! Whoah, whoah, whoah. £3000 from the Patels, £500 from the Tanners.’

  ‘Go to February.’

  Excited, she flicked through and saw that the standing order from both accounts suddenly ended. ‘You do Company House, I’ll try the Charity Commissioner and the two banks.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘We need to find out who these religious leeches are and who else they had their suckers into,’ said Clay, returning quickly to her laptop.

  ‘The whole Christian Grace thing could be a cover for something else,’ Hendricks speculated as his fingers danced over the keys.

  ‘Got it. Yeah, it was a registered company, dissolved in February 2010. What was happening in February 2010?’ Hendricks called across the room, waving to get the attention of Stone and Riley, who both took off their headphones. Before he had time to re-pose the question, Clay said, ‘February 2010? That’s when we caught Adrian White.’

  The information hung in the air as the room fell briefly silent.

  On the Charity Commission website, Clay clicked to search ‘Removed Charities’, typed in: Christian Grace Foundation, and chose ‘Throughout England and Wales’.

  ‘It wasn’t a registered charity because they didn’t want that kind of scrutiny. The Patels and the Tanners were mugged by the same religious con artists. And now they’ve been murdered on consecutive nights. Karl, get on to the banks. We need to access any records for the Christian Grace Foundation.’

  The phone on Clay’s desk rang and she picked it up before the first note ended.

  ‘DCI Clay.’

  ‘Eve, it’s Sergeant Harris.’ The duty sergeant of Trinity Road police station sounded mannered and she guessed he had someone on the other side of the reception desk. ‘I’ve got a young man here, a Lee Spencer, says he needs to talk urgently to whoever’s investigating the murder of the Patel family. It’s about the Pearson brothers, Vincent and Robert.’

  ‘Take him to Interview Suite 1 and organise a solicitor in case he needs one. I’ll be there right away.’

  57

  6.51 pm

  It took the duty solicitor Mr Robson fifteen minutes to arrive at Trinity Road police station and a further fifteen to consult with Lee Spencer. In that half hour Clay went digging for information about the fifteen-year-old and what she found made her pessimistic about his reliability.

  Excluded from school from the age of thirteen and a truant from the behavioural unit that battled to educate him, Lee Jonjo Spencer had convictions for shoplifting, handling stolen goods, breaking and entering into commercial premises and was a seasoned pickpocket.

  Sergeant Harris led two young men into Interview Suite 1: Lee Spencer and a smartly dressed, mid-twenty-something solicitor, Mr Robson. Harris looked at Clay, who said, ‘That’ll be fine.’

  He closed the door and Clay showed Lee Spencer her iPhone. ‘OK with me taping our little chat?’

  He nodded. ‘Yuh!’

  Even though Lee was a decade younger than Mr Robson, with his bleach-blonde hair and street-worn face he looked almost the same age. Clay estimated that in another five years’ time, he would look old enough to be the solicitor’s father. Dressed in a yellow Adidas tracksuit top and jeans that looked set to fall down to his ankles, Lee Spencer stared directly at Clay from under the peak of his Lacoste baseball cap.

  Robson and Spencer. It was a tale of two societies.

  ‘What do you want to tell me about Robert and Vincent Pearson?’ began Clay.

  ‘I want you to tell me that I won’t get done.’

  ‘Lee, mate,’ said Mr Robson. ‘DCI Clay doesn’t have the authority to grant you immunity from the law. No one has that kind of authority. My advice is you tell DCI Clay what you told me in the little meeting room and I’m sure it’ll put you in a favourable light.’

  Elbows and arms on the table, hands joined, Lee looked into the knots of his fingers, the conflict in his head written on his face.

  ‘Lee,’ said Clay.

  His eyes engaged with hers.

  ‘There’ve been ten murders in two nights. I was the first police officer there both times. I was the first person to see the bodies. If you help me, I will help you.’ She took in Mr Robson as she made the promise but delivered it squarely looking into Lee’s eyes.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Any way I can. You walked in here voluntarily. In my book, you’re already off to a flying start. There’s serious business going on here. You’re fifteen years old and you’ve walked into Trinity Road without your mother or anyone else to support you because you claim to know something significant. There are men in their forties, career criminals, who wouldn’t get involved in this even if they knew everything. They’d let other people perish if it meant they stayed out of trouble.’

  Something softened in his face and she sensed the bottling-up of tears behind the sullen stamp of his expression.

  ‘Lee, the one thing I haven’t got is time. If you’ve got something to tell me, tell me now. Based on what I know so far, another family’s going to get slaughtered tonight.’

  ‘Robbie and Vincent Pearson are my best mates.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s saying on the telly that Robbie and Vincent are wanted in connection with them murders in Aigburth, and that, like, they smacked some copper?’

  ‘I was there in their house when they smacked the copper. With a baseball bat.’

  ‘Whoah?’

  ‘Woe i
ndeed,’ said Clay.

  ‘But, y’see, I was with them on Sunday night. They weren’t in Aigburth acting like a pair of psycho arseholes.’

  ‘Tell me about Sunday night, Lee?’

  A sadness swept across the boy’s features and, for a moment, he looked like the oldest man on earth.

  ‘I’ve been calling them all day but they’re not picking up their mobile.’

  ‘You were with them on Sunday night? At the time,’ Clay stressed, ‘that the Patel family were murdered in their home in The Serpentine in Aigburth?’

  ‘Yuh. They weren’t anywhere near Aigburth on Sunday night. They were in Childwall with me.’

  ‘And what were you doing with Robbie and Vincent Pearson in Childwall?’ asked Clay.

  Lee glanced sideways at Mr Robson.

  ‘Go on, Lee.’

  ‘We screwed a house just by Childwall Fiveways, Rudston Road.’ He looked like he couldn’t quite believe that the words had come out of his mouth. ‘The stuff’s all stashed in my house, in my bedroom. We didn’t do any unnecessary damage to the house. Call Belle Vale police station. They’ll most likely have dealt with it.’

  ‘Bear with me, Lee,’ said Clay. ‘You didn’t, Vincent didn’t, Robbie didn’t phone up the Patel family from a stolen Nokia mobile phone? Sunday night?’

  ‘We got in the house, we robbed everything we could carry and sell, then we were out and back in Belle Vale double-quick. We were dead busy. Why would we be phoning people we don’t know in Aigburth?’

  ‘Lee, that was a courageous confession. I’m going to have to leave you here now and another officer is going to come and get some more details from you about what you got up to on Sunday. Mr Robson is one hundred per cent right. You have put yourself in a favourable light.’

  As she shut the door of Interview Suite 1, she began running down the corridor. Knowing she could make it upstairs faster than the lift, she hurtled up the concrete steps, her footsteps echoing off the glass walls like the laughter of the Devil at her back.

  A thought crystallised. If the call on the Patels’ answer machine hadn’t come from the stolen mobile in the Pearsons’ possession, then what the hell was going on?