After a long silence the same voice as before said: ‘Did you get the money?’
‘Yes.’
A longer silence. He was obviously disconcerted – a period of negotiation had been expected. ‘All of it?’
‘Yes. All of it.’
‘OK. Stay where you are.’ He rang off.
Twenty minutes later he was back. ‘What’s the number for your portable phone?’ Norris gave it. ‘OK. Here’s what happens. Nine o’clock tonight you put the money in the boot of the Roller and sit there waiting for us to call. Understood?’
‘I understand.’
‘And listen to this: the person who collects the money will only be a messenger. He won’t know where your old lady is. So if I were you, I’d play ball. It’s your only chance to get her back.’
So far, so good. They’d kept their word Friday night; now he’d find out if they could deliver the goods again. But the goods he had in mind didn’t include Marina Norris.
It was raining, turning to sleet, as Bradley Norris placed a small bundle in the boot of the Rolls. The clock on the dashboard, which no longer had a tick to disturb the discerning driver, said five to nine. Six minutes later his phone rang.
‘That you, Norris?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is the money in the boot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Here’s what you do. Drive south on the M6 to the Knutsford services. Park the Roller about two spaces away from the end of one of the rows of cars, pointing outwards. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Right. When you get there walk into the restaurant and order yourself a nice meal. Take at least an hour to eat it. Then go back to the car and drive home. OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I reckon you’re about ten miles away, so be there in fifteen minutes. Any later and it’s off. Understood?’
‘I understand.’
‘Oh, and you can leave the boot locked. We have a key.’
And he was gone.
The phone call was made by Frank Bell, the big one, and leader of the gang. He was the brains behind their schemes. He folded the little Motorola portable phone acquired earlier via a teenage car-thief and placed it in one of the pockets of the camouflage jacket he wore. ‘He’s on his way,’ he said, looking at his watch.
The man seated beside him was similarly dressed, except his jacket bore the insignias of several crack regiments, not all of whom had fought on the side of the Allies in World War Two. He was called Shawn Parrott, and was further distinguished by his unprepossessing physiognomy. Parrott was only average height, but he had steel cables for sinews and a pair of hands like excavator shovels. He was the action man, the Mr Fix-it, the killer. The only emotion he’d felt when he blew Harold the chauffeur to Kingdom Come was inside his jeans, but that was his secret.
* * *
Norris, never a fast driver, made it well within schedule. He was fussing over the unfamiliar light switches and other controls when the phone rang again.
‘Yes!’ he barked into it.
‘Our mistake,’ said a new voice. ‘Drive down to the next junction and back up the other side. Then follow the old instructions.’
Fifteen minutes later Parrott and Bell watched the Rolls creep tentatively into the northbound car park, feeling its way like a new rat in a laboratory maze. Norris turned down an aisle, then changed his mind and headed for the next one. He paused, saw a better space, and moved forward again. He drove through one bay and parked with the car pointing outwards, exactly as ordered. After a few seconds the lights extinguished and the door opened. The two men watched him walk purposefully towards the restaurant.
The third member of the gang was called Darren Atkinson. He’d followed the Rolls down the motorway in a battered Bedford van. He pulled into the space behind it and switched off the ignition with a screwdriver. Then the three of them left their vehicles and walked towards the toilets, Atkinson in front, Frank Bell and Shawn Parrott about fifty yards behind. They all had pees, without acknowledging each other, and walked back the way they’d come. They were confident the American wasn’t under surveillance.
Frank Bell started the Sierra and drove it across the car park, stopping next to the Rolls. Darren Atkinson was already lifting the boot-lid.
‘Hurry up!’ Bell urged him.
The upper half of Atkinson’s torso vanished inside the cavernous boot of the Roller. He emerged holding the bundle, which was wrapped in a Town & County carrier bag. This is all there is,’ he hissed.
‘Are you sure?’
‘’Ang on.’ He dived inside again. There’s nowt else,’ he declared.
‘C’mon, then. Let’s go.’
Atkinson jumped into the back seat of the Sierra and Bell let the clutch out. He drove quickly but without any visible fuss, careful not to attract attention. They left the stolen Bedford for the police to find.
Atkinson passed the package to Parrott, in the front seat. ‘Bastard’s done us, if you ask me,’ he said.
Parrott fumbled with the wrapping until he reached the contents. ‘What the fuck’s this?’ he cursed. He was holding a video cassette.
Bell, driving, looked across at it. ‘What else is there?’
Parrott lifted a manila envelope out of the bag, stuffed full of something. ‘This looks more like it,’ he said, pulling a bundle of notes from it.
Bell eased the Sierra into the middle lane, keeping a careful eye on the speedo. ‘What are they? Twenties?’ he asked.
His partner-in-evil flicked through them. ‘Yeah, all twenties.’
‘Can’t be more than a few thousand there. Anything else?’
Parrot groped around in the bag and found a sheet torn from an A4 pad. Printed on it in block capitals were the words: Watch The Tape, Then Ring Me.
‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘He’s sent you a fuckin’ love letter.’
None of them owned a video machine. They drove slowly up the M6, towards the next junction.
‘My mam’s got one,’ Darren told them.
‘Where’s she live?’
‘Sutton Coldfield.’
‘Fat lot of good she is, then. What about that bird of yours?’
‘No, she sold it.’
‘What about you, Shawn? Any ideas?’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘Well, hurry up about it.’
They’d reached the junction. ‘Off ‘ere,’ Shawn ordered. ‘Towards town.’
‘Where are we heading?’ Frank Bell asked.
‘Just a friend’s. Where I get the phones. He’d prefer it if you didn’t know ‘is name.’
Frank Bell smiled with satisfaction. At last he was going to meet the mystery man who supplied them with an endless supply of portable telephones and ringed cars. He needed Shawn Parrott for his connections in the underworld, but he didn’t trust him any more. At one time, on the streets of Belfast, he had preferred to have Shawn guarding his back rather than anyone else, but now he wasn’t so sure. There, the lines of authority were clearly defined, but now they were blurring at the edges. Shawn Parrott was growing cocky, and that meant dangerous.
They drove up the Chester Road, past Old Trafford and picked up the Stretford Road. Parrott’s directions were terse. ‘Straight on,’ or: ‘Right ‘ere,’ were the limits of his communications.
‘Maybe you should ring him,’ Bell suggested.
‘Yeah, lend me the phone.’
Bell removed it from an inner pocket and handed it over. The contact was at home.
‘Hi, it’s Shawn.’ The other two listened to half of the conversation. ‘Do you have a video-player?’ ‘We have a video we need to watch.’ ‘It’s important.’ ‘Fuckin’ important.’ ‘I don’t know what sort of video.’ ‘Thanks. I’ve got the Skipper with me. Do you mind?’ ‘Cheers. We’ll be there in five minutes.’
He closed the phone and handed it back. ‘He said it’s OK. Turn right ‘ere.’
Frank Bell swung the car roun
d the corner, down a narrow street of workers’ cottages whose doors opened directly on to the pavement. The mill-owner obviously hadn’t expected his tenants to have the time or energy for even a minimal amount of gardening. He’d never dreamt that one day they’d all own cars, but now the streets were lined on both sides with parked vehicles of every size, colour and economic status. A good-looking black girl was standing under a street-light. She was wearing hot pants over suspenders and stockings. Sprayed on a wall was the message: Welcome to Moss Side.
Parrott wasn’t sure of the house. They drove right round the block and up and down several similar streets, past the black girl again, before he said: ‘This is it.’
‘You stay in the car,’ Bell told Darren. ‘Any problems, drive off and come back in half an hour. And stay away from the tom.’ They stepped between the parked cars and pressed the doorbell.
It was answered by a man of mixed race, much younger than them. He was pale-skinned, but his curly hair and facial features revealed his family history. ‘Hi, man,’ he said, beaming, as he and Shawn exchanged a ‘gimme five’ handshake.
‘This is the Skipper,’ Shawn said.
‘Frank,’ said Bell. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Hello, Frankie. Come in. Make yourselves at home.’
They went through into a sitting room. It was furnished with a big suite covered in flowered material, and a pair of massive hi-fi speakers, from which a drum rhythm thumped like an overdose. A peroxide-blonde girl was sitting on the settee.
‘Business, sweetheart,’ he said to her. ‘Can you find yourself something to do?’ She stood up and sulkily left the room. ‘Now, what’s this about a video?’
Shawn handed it to him. He examined it, as if expecting its outside appearance to betray its message. ‘How are you getting on with the phones, Frankie?’ he asked.
‘OK. No problems. You do a good job for us.’
‘Which one are you using?’
Bell removed it from his pocket and showed it to him.
‘Oh, that one. Nice little job. How many times have you used it?’
‘Five, maybe six. Just short calls, though.’
‘Mmm. Better let me swap it for a re-programmed one. They’re getting better all the time at putting a stop on them.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I see you’re still using the Sierra.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Got a nice Cosworth in the pipeline, if you’re interested. Full set of paperwork. Belonged to a dentist in London.’
‘Not at the moment, thanks. Can we see the video?’
‘Sure. It’s part-way through. Do you want to watch it from the beginning?’
‘Er, no. From where it is now.’
‘OK. Here we go.’
He thumbed the remote control. There was the usual snowstorm of noise on the screen, then it cleared to show a stretch of pavement and road, wet with rain. Vehicles and pedestrians moved silently across the picture, and an occasional figure turned towards the camera, looming large before disappearing beneath it. Frank Bell and Shawn Parrott leant forward, hypnotised by the flickering image.
A Rolls-Royce came from the right, and stopped in the centre of the screen. An old lady pulling a shopping basket on wheels was in the foreground. She turned, as if to speak to the chauffeur as he walked round the car to open the rear door, letting the elegant figure of Mrs Marina Norris out on to the pavement.
‘What shit’s this?’ Frank Bell cursed through his teeth.
Shawn Parrott sat like a statue, his ugly face slowly turning the colour of bird droppings. ‘You said there wasn’t no fuckin’ camera,’ he hissed at Bell.
There wasn’t. They must have put a new one in.’
They watched Harold the chauffeur get back into his seat, and a few seconds later a pair of legs appeared at the top of the screen. As they approached, the unmistakable figure of Parrott was slowly revealed. The camera zoomed in on his face.
‘Oh man! Oh man-oh-man!’ the owner of the video machine sniggered, slapping his knee. ‘Ha ha! If you could see your face. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, Shawn, old buddy, but I’d say someone has you bang to rights.’ He fell back into his chair clutching his sides with laughter.
Shawn wasn’t amused. He was aware that Mrs Norris would be able to give a description of him, but the rantings of an hysterical woman were worthless compared to this. It was a picture of his face, in close-up. He’d be identified within hours.
Outside, the black girl had wandered across to talk to Darren in the car. He wound the window down and leered at her. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I could make a nice white boy like you very happy. Asda prices.’
She’d been beautiful, once, but now had a livid scar from her left ear to the corner of her mouth. Darren shuddered at the sight – he’d heard scars like that called Jamaican telephones. ‘Sorry, love. I’m just the driver,’ he said.
‘Some other time, maybe?’
‘Yeah. Definitely.’
They were exchanging good-natured banter when the other two spilt out of the house. ‘I said leave the tom alone,’ Frank Bell snapped at him as he climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. Darren shrugged his shoulder at the girl and wound up the window. As they drove away she saw the pale face of Parrott, in the back seat, turn and watch her until it was lost in the reflections of the street-lamps. There was something in his look that she recognised, and she pulled her thin jacket tighter around herself, as if it would keep out the fear, as well as the cold.
CHAPTER THREE
There were about twenty of us at Tuesday morning’s big meeting. Superintendent Gilbert Wood outlined the strategy and progress so far, leaving Acting DI Newly to fill in the details. I think my chief purpose was to keep the Assistant Chief Constable off his back.
The body was now positively identified as Harold James Hurst, aged thirty-nine. He’d been shot at close range with a single bullet to the back of the head, and little attempt had been made to conceal the body. A retired couple out for a walk in the woods had heard what sounded like a shot at about three o’clock on the Friday afternoon, and that tied in with the pathologist’s estimate of ToD.
The tyre tracks and the bullet, found in the mud underneath him, proved that he’d been brought to Heckley in the Rolls, alive, and killed where he lay. It was a long way to come, and somebody obviously had local knowledge. Straws like that can be important. I told everybody about my little talk with Mr Norris and my visit to the Royal Cheshire Hotel. We agreed that finding his wife, and her boyfriend, was a priority.
I didn’t feel terribly well, probably due to overeating on an empty stomach. After the meeting, Nigel dispatched the troops and I wrote the reports that I’d intended doing before Annabelle rang. I tagged them for the computer and concentrated on reading the printouts to see if anything leapt off the page in a blaze of clarity. Nope, just the usual spelling mistakes.
Gilbert came up behind me and put his hands round my throat.
‘Aargh! The Profiterole Strangler strikes again!’ I croaked.
He gave me a shake and moved round to sit next to me. ‘So what did the doc say?’ he asked.
I shoved the print-out away and downed my last drop of coffee. ‘Nothing. I couldn’t get through.’
‘Did you try picking the phone up?’
‘OK, so I haven’t tried. Shove it over.’ I looked up the number in my diary and two minutes later I had an appointment to see Sam Evans at his Wednesday-evening surgery.
‘Bet you feel better already,’ Gilbert said.
* * *
Bradley Norris was watching CNN news at home when the next call came, more or less as he’d expected it. He’d guessed that they would take all night to digest his message, and smiled with grim satisfaction. He was beginning to read their minds, know what they’d do before they did. It was a technique that had served him well in thirty-five years of business.
He waited until an item analysing the fiscal situation among
st the Pacific rim countries had concluded – it took twelve seconds from start to finish – and picked up the phone.
‘Norris here,’ he said benignly.
‘What do you want?’
‘Ah, hi there. I’m so glad you called. I want to do business.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘Big-money business – what other sort is there? The goods I left you were a gesture of good faith – I could have you in the can by tomorrow, if I wanted. I think we ought to meet.’
‘Where?’
‘That’s up to you. You’re calling the shots.’ The smile returned. No, they weren’t – he was calling the shots.
‘We’ll ring you back.’
He’d expected it to be a short phone-call, if they were smart. It’s possible, by triangulation techniques, to trace the approximate location of a mobile phone. They might think he was setting them up.
An hour later they were back on. ‘We meet in Liverpool. Cunard Road, near the back of your store. There’s a big pub on the corner, called the Empress of Canada. Be in there about three o’clock. Should be quiet then.’
‘Good. You don’t waste time. I like that.’
‘See you then.’
‘Bye.’
Norris chuckled. Already they were saying polite farewells to each other. He watched an item about the movements of players between baseball teams, then wandered down to the kitchen to tell his housekeeper that he would be in for lunch.
At exactly three o’clock the Rolls-Royce slid to a standstill in a sidestreet off Cunard Road. ‘Wait here, please, er, Ron. I don’t think I’ll be too long,’ Norris said.
‘It’s Rod, sir,’ said his new chauffeur, sent by the agency. He had lank greasy hair and an earring. Norris was determined that their relationship would be a short one.
‘Rod, right,’ he said.
As before, he was in the wrong place. It wasn’t the sort of establishment he would have dreamt of entering normally, and he didn’t feel safe, even though it was nearly empty. He’d ordered a pint from the unshaven landlord when the phone behind the bar rang.
The Judas Sheep Page 4