Unti Lucy Black Novel #3

by Brian McGilloway

  The inside of the bank was as she remembered it. To her left now sat the cashiers’ counter. It ran the length of one wall, and measured about three feet from counter to floor. Atop the counter, protective glass panels, which had once separated the cashiers from the customers, dimly reflected among their spiderwebs of cracks, the limited light seeping around the frames of the boarded windows beyond. The whole room smelt of urine, suggesting that some of the street drinkers had, perhaps, been making the most of the space after all, while the boards covering the front door had been down for the Forensics team to work the scene.

  Lucy pulled out her torch and, holding it in one hand, her ser­vice gun in the other, she moved toward the cashiers’ counter, behind which the young man could be hiding. As she approached it, she moved the beam slowly from one side of the room to the other, scanning the space for signs of the young man. The light threw elongated shadows against the back wall, which shifted and banked as she moved across the rubbled floor.

  The heat inside the space seemed to build as she moved, her steps soundtracked both by the sound of plaster crunching beneath her boots and the sound of a hornpipe being played to a scattering of applause from outside.

  She reached the edge of the counter and directed the torch beam at the protective glass in front of her, hoping to see through to the space behind where the cashiers had once sat. Instead, the light glared back in reflection, the shattered shards of glass spilling it in all directions. She realized that if she wanted to check behind the counter properly she would have to climb over it.

  Laying the torch on the counter, she heaved herself up onto the wooden surface, then took the torch and stood on top of the counter, the glass partition atop it now reaching to her waist as she leaned over it, straining to see into the space behind the counter. She lifted the torch and, swinging it round, scanned the floor where the tellers’ chairs would once have sat.

  She was startled as the torch beam illuminated the man’s face. He looked to be in his late teens. His hair was cropped short and looked wet, whether with sweat from the exertion of running or by design, Lucy could not tell. His nose was crooked slightly at the bridge, as if once broken and now healed. He bore a piercing through his right eyebrow. He leapt up quickly onto the counter, knocking her off-­balance as he clambered back over the glass partition at which she stood and dropped down off the counter on the other side.

  “Jesus!” Lucy exclaimed, falling backwards, heavily, onto the floor, her torch clattering a few feet to her left. She struggled to her feet and grabbed the torch, turning the beam in time to see the youth make for the stairs that led up to the offices where she had first gained access to the building the day Grace had called her.

  She brushed herself down as she set off again in pursuit, making for the staircase, her shoulder aching where it had borne the brunt of her fall. She took the stairs two at a time, pausing only when she reached the uppermost step.

  She quickly checked each of the other offices at the top of the stairs, but it was immediately clear the youth wasn’t in either of them. By the time she reached the end office, he was already pulling himself through the glassless window frame above her. He slithered out through the space and onto the City Walls.

  It was significantly harder to get back out of the window than it had been to drop into the building through it. After putting her torch back into the loop on her belt, she had to wedge one foot against the wall sitting at a right angle from it, then use her other foot against the connecting wall to lever herself up sufficiently to make a grab for the frame. She managed to hold on with both arms, then used her feet to try to propel herself through the opening.

  Suddenly, she felt a hand grip hers and felt herself being pulled through the space. She looked up into the face of one of the Neighborhood Policing officers.

  “Did you get lost?” he asked.

  “Where is he? Did you get him?”

  The man shook his head. “The Guildhall Square’s heaving with ­people.”

  Lucy looked down through Magazine Gate, to the square beyond which, like Waterloo Place, was crowded with tents and exhibition sites. Chefs were standing at small gas cookers, frying up seafood, the saline smell carrying up onto the Walls on the warm breeze off the river.

  If the youth had gone down off the Walls into the square, he’d find it much easier to hide. From there, he’d have any number of escape routes into the city.

  They trudged down from the Walls and made their way back toward Great James Street, the uniform who’d had to abandon his ice cream stopping to take a proffered sample of seafood chowder as they went.

  “What?” He shrugged as Lucy watched him gulp it down. “Just getting in the spirit.”

  Tom Fleming was sitting in the soup kitchen, similarly helping himself to some soup, when she made it back to him.

  “He got away,” Lucy said. “But thanks for your help.”

  Fleming looked at her, one eyebrow cocked. “I knew you were on it,” he said. “Besides, he’s left his van here. There’s always that.”

  Chapter Forty-­Nine

  “THE VAN IS registered to someone called Rory Nash,” Fleming explained as they climbed back into Lucy’s car. “He has an address in Ardmore.”

  It took them fifteen minutes to make it to Ardmore, a village lying on the outskirts of the Waterside, just a few miles further along the road on which the residential unit where Robbie worked was situated. Despite its proximity to the city, it lay along a quiet country road, surrounded on all sides by fields, and separated, ultimately, from the main A6 road by the River Faughan. The river, starting in the Sperrin Mountains and running, in total, almost forty miles before discharging into Lough Foyle, followed the path of a glacial valley, skirting round the city.

  The house sat along the main Ardmore Road, though set back a little in its own grounds, surrounded by black metal railings sat atop a low red-­brick wall. Though initially the address looked dilapidated, once they had made it in through the front gates, they realized that the rundown bungalow which had been visible from the road was actually unoccupied and that to its rear sat the actual property. It was a two-­story detached house, in red brick, which, Lucy guessed, must comfortably have housed six bedrooms and at least two reception rooms, for the roof carried two chimney stacks at either end.

  A Mercedes sat in the driveway, the doors open, perhaps to allow the leather seats within to remain cool in the building heat of the day. A small white and brown terrier came scurrying around the corner of the house, yapping at them, its claws skittering on the brickwork of the driveway. It came to within six feet of them, then followed their progress to the house with short bounding movements, barking at them continuously, but never coming any further.

  “Shut up!” Fleming snapped at it, causing it to retreat a foot or two, then to resume its barking with increased fervor.

  The door of the house opened before they had reached it. A heavyset woman stood in the doorway. She wore a white top and denim shorts, the hem of which dug into the skin of her legs.

  “Help you?”

  “We’re with the PSNI,” Fleming said, showing his warrant card. “Are you the owner of a blue Volkswagen Transporter, registration ZUI 2257?”

  The woman nodded. “What of it?”

  “Are you Mrs. Nash?”

  “What of it?” she repeated.

  “Maybe we could do this inside,” Lucy said. “Out of the sun?”

  The woman stood a moment, as if undecided. She glanced toward the roadway, snuffed into her hand, then turned and walked down the hallway, the still open door the only invitation for them to enter.

  It was significantly cooler inside the house, not least because the hallway was tiled with marble, their passage along it marked by the alternating slap and slurp of the woman’s flip-­flops as she led them to the kitchen.

  “What’s happened to the van?” sh
e asked.

  The kitchen was tiled in a similar fashion to the hallway, its center dominated by an island in which was built a hob, the room to the right filled with a dining table and eight chairs. The space opened out, through two French doors, to a lawn to the rear, bordered by woodland. A quad sat in the center of the lawn.

  The woman held a glass of juice in her hand, but did not offer either of them something to drink.

  “Your van has been spotted several times now at a homeless shelter in Great James Street in Derry,” Fleming began. “We’ve been told that the driver of the van has been in conversation with some of the destitute men who frequent the kitchen and indeed some of those men have gone with him on occasions.”

  “Generally not to be seen again,” Lucy added.

  The woman nodded, more as an indication that Fleming should continue than an agreement with what she had heard.

  “We believe at least two of the men seen leaving with the driver of your van have been subsequently killed.”

  “By us?” the woman asked, incredulously.

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us that,” Lucy said. “We attempted to speak with the driver of the van today but he fled when we approached him.”

  “And?”

  “Do you know who has your van today?”

  “Probably my son. Did he do something wrong?”

  “If it was your son, he ran from us when we tried to question him.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the woman said.

  “And your son’s name?” Fleming said, taking out his notebook.

  “Padraig.”

  Fleming noted down the name. “We believe that Padraig isn’t the regular driver of the van. You wouldn’t happen to know who is? A man, heavy built, red hair?”

  “Sounds like my husband.”

  “That would be Mr. Rory Nash?”

  “That’s right.”

  Fleming waited for the woman to say something further, but she drained the juice and refilled the glass from a jug sitting on the counter.

  “Is your husband here?”

  The woman shook her head as she drained the second draught. “He’s working,” she said, then burped softly.

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a builder. A foreman.”

  “Where is he at the moment?”

  “Work.”

  “Whereabouts?” Fleming asked, exasperated.

  The woman shrugged. “I can’t keep up with where he is.”

  “Have you any idea why he’d be at a soup kitchen, picking up homeless ­people?”

  The woman finished the drink and placed the glass in the sink, her back to them. “Sometimes, if some of the workmen he hires let him down or that, he’ll need someone quick. A lot of the builders what came in from Europe can’t get work no more. They’ll work cheap. Saves us money, gives them a job.”

  “Did your husband do a driveway for a lady out toward Bready a few weeks back?”

  The woman shrugged. “I told you, I can’t keep up with what he does,” she said.

  “We’ll need to speak with your husband as a matter of urgency,” Fleming said. “Can you call him and find out where he is at the moment?”

  “He could be out of range,” the woman protested, before she’d even lifted her phone. “If he’s working up in the mountains or that, he goes out of range.” She picked up the mobile, pressed the speed-­dial button, and waited. They could hear the phone ringing through the receiver. The woman waited for six or seven rings, until they heard the call going to voice mail, then she hung up. “I told you,” she said.

  Lucy took out her card and handed it to the woman. “We need to speak with your husband,” she said. “We’ll be back before the end of day if he hasn’t contacted us before then.”

  “And we’ll need a word with your son, too,” Fleming said. “I take it he’s not here?”

  The woman shrugged. Just then, her mobile started to ring. She glanced at the screen, then quickly away.

  “Go ahead and answer it,” Fleming said. “Don’t mind us.”

  The woman hesitated, but the urgency of the ringing compelled her against her better judgment to answer it.

  “Yes? The police are here looking for you . . . Something about the van at a homeless shelter . . . I told them that. They want to speak to you . . . Where are you?” She listened a moment, grunted, then hung up.

  “He’ll meet you at the Strand Road station, he says.”

  “No need,” Lucy protested. “We can go to him. Where is he at the moment?”

  “He’s going to the Strand Road. He needs to collect the van anyway,” the woman said, folding her arms. “He’ll see you there.”

  Chapter Fifty

  IN FACT, IT took Nash almost an hour to reach the station, by which stage Burns was threatening to send out a team to pick him up. The desk sergeant who called up for Lucy, as it was her whom Nash asked to see, announced his eventual arrival.

  The man was at least eighteen stone, his height and breadth helping him carry it, though still not able to disguise the paunch of his belly, which hung over his trouser belt. His hair, while undoubtedly red, was shaven fairly tightly against his scalp. However, what most surprised Lucy, when she saw him, was Nash’s face. His features, naturally pugnacious and squashed, appeared all the worse due to the two black eyes he bore. They were clearly a few days old, the bruising already segueing from purple into yellow. He had a gash below his right eye, which had healed into a scab, though something had caused it to reopen at one side and a thin trickle of dried blood marked his cheek.

  “Are you Black?” he asked.

  “DS Black,” Lucy said, extending her hand.

  He looked stupidly at the offered hand, then wiped his own on the leg of his jeans and shook it. His arm was thick and matted with red curls, his forearm scarred. His hands and knuckles though were particularly bruised, one of them split.

  “Were you in an accident?” Lucy asked.

  “Perks of the job,” Nash commented. “A two-­by-­four in the face.”

  Lucy led him into Interview Room 1 where DS Mickey Sinclair was already standing. Burns had made it clear he wanted someone from CID in with Lucy on the interview with Nash. Lucy wondered whether it was just another way to keep Fleming sidelined or to make her feel more part of the CID team.

  “Sit down, Mr. Nash,” Mickey began when he entered the room. “We’re just looking to clear up a few things.”

  Nash glanced from Mickey to Lucy. “Unless your name’s Lucy Black, I’m guessing she’s the one I’m here to see,” he said to Mickey, unnecessarily indicating Lucy with his thumb for effect.

  “I’m DS Sinclair, with CID. You clearly already know that this is DS Black with PPU. We’ll both be sitting in today,” Mickey said. “Have a seat.”

  Reluctantly, Nash lowered himself onto the seat on one side of the desk, while Lucy and Mickey took the other side.

  “Maybe you can start by explaining why your son did a runner this afternoon when approached by DS Black here?”

  The man grunted. “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “I hope not,” Mickey said. “As I said, we’re just looking to clarify a few things.”

  Nash nodded. “He’s doing the double,” he said. “He’s on DLA on account of his back.”

  “DLA?” Lucy asked. “He ran like that because he’s claiming Disability Allowance?”

  Nash nodded.

  “In fact, he ran like that despite claiming DLA?” Lucy added. “I couldn’t keep up with him. His back wasn’t causing him problems today, particularly when he vaulted over the cashiers’ desk in the old bank on Waterloo Place. “

  Nash scratched the scab on his face, inspecting his fingernail after he did so, then wiping the blood onto his trouser leg.

  �
�It plays up in the winter,” he said. “Thank God for the good weather. He’s like a new fella.”

  “What was he doing at the soup kitchen on Great James Street today?”

  Nash inhaled slowly, as if readying a prepared response. “He was there for me. If I’m ever short a hand on a job, I can sometimes pick up someone there who’ll work the day for a few pound, cash in hand.”

  “Why there?”

  “A lot of the good builders who came over from Europe when things were booming are on the skids now,” Nash said. “It’s good to throw them a bit of work if you can.”

  “And presumably it’s cheaper for you than having to pay someone a full wage?”

  Nash feigned outrage. “They’re all paid. I’m a businessman. If I can get work for cheaper, and they can get paid a wage they’re happy with, what’s the problem? That’s capitalism in action.”

  “You don’t consider it exploitative?” Lucy asked.

  Nash shook his head. “They’re offered forty quid for a day’s work. If they need it, they’ll take it. No one’s forcing them into working for me. They choose to come along.”

  “And what about how they behave when they’re working for you?” Lucy asked.

  Nash frowned. “Meaning?”

  “Did you do a driveway for an older woman in Bready a few weeks back?”

  Nash raised his eyes, as if trying to remember.

  “Jeffries,” Lucy reminded him.

  Nash clicked his fingers. “That’s right. Nice old girl.”

  “She found you intimidating,” Lucy replied. “You had two men working with you: Kamil Krawiec and Aaron Moore.”

  Nash shook his head. “They don’t ring any bells.”

  Lucy pushed the picture of Kamil Krawiec across the table. “That’s Kamil,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Nash said, uncertainly. “I think I might have picked him up once. A while back.”

  “You picked him up twice,” Lucy said. “Once, when he was working on Mrs. Jeffries’s driveway, and then again last week, along with this man, Terry Haynes.” She pushed the picture of Haynes across to him.