And he hadn’t even cast any blame.
She became aware that the gags had stopped firing and looked up.
‘That was all a bit ropey,’ she chimed in, hoping to be seen as a good sport. They laughed politely. Everyone was raring to get after whoever busted up her and Mason. They’d taken the piss something rotten but they were deadly serious about getting whoever did it. You stuck together.
Mason came in.
‘Matt! We weren't expecting you, we heard that you were tied up somewhere.’
Everyone within earshot laughed like it was the first time they had heard the joke. Mason joined in.
‘Bring it on.’
‘How you feeling?’ asked North.
‘Like an idiot.’
‘At least you didn't get stabbed in the process. You don't look so good though, are you sure you should be here?’
‘I couldn't lie in bed all day knowing they're out there laughing, thinking they got away with it.’
‘Sit down,’ he shooed a young constable off a chair.
The Chief entered and took the stage. Everyone settled. Mason was to lead the investigation with assistance from North. The Chief announced that Operation Orange would have to continue for now due to the media attention that would be coming their way but it would be scaled down and Scanlan would manage the reduced number of officers and they would only be available at particular times.
Arnie clearly had the arse about it.
Good.
A photo of Rawlins filled the screen. Everyone was to be on the look out. The details of the latest car he had nicked were given out.
The Chief left to go give a statement to the press and North took his place. Mason wasn’t yet up to speed. North filled them all in. All but the core team on the Lumsden case dispersed. The team went into their new home, a small office set aside for the investigation, and started to populate the walls with information. North went over to James. She had a pile of folders and print-outs on the table. She handed back his phone.
‘Thanks, can you put your number in it for me?’
‘I already did.’
‘Great, I’m going to be heading out, to follow up on what little I already have and see if I can get lucky on Rawlins. See what headway you can make from here - here is where I need you most right now,’ he headed off a protest. ‘If I draw a blank you need to provide something for us to go on with.’ She also needed the recovery time. ‘DCI Mason has been ordered to rest up. He will be trying to ID the people who did this to you and will also be coordinating things from here so you can bounce ideas off each other.’
She still didn’t look too impressed.
‘You were keen enough to work with him yesterday evening.’
So, thought James, he played it cool but underneath he had an ego just like the rest of us.
‘No, James, this isn’t about last night. Most of the work to be done right now is right here. I won’t be gone long then I will be back to join you. It’s a long shot but I have to close down all leads and I’ve been cooped up here long enough, so I’m electing to go. Are we okay?’
She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about him that made her trust him. She nodded.
‘Can you at least drop me at Lumsden’s so I can pick up my car?’
FOURTEEN
‘Why me?’
‘You’re my lucky charm, Deacon.’ The Super had authorised North’s wish to have her seconded as an acting DC.
They had dropped James off and were turning into the High Street. There was a crowd up ahead. The cafe and the seven eleven were blackened with soot. The Pond House roof had gone and the windows were now gaping holes into black, empty spaces. North pulled up outside.
‘And I’m you’re lucky charm?’ asked Deacon.
‘You are,’ he smiled. This was confirmation that he was onto something big.
He got out. A PC came out of the shop and dropped a bag of pop and pies into his car before coming over.
‘Guv,’ he acknowledged North. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were on the Lumsden case.’
‘That pub is a part of it.’
‘Nobody told me.’
‘What happened?’
‘Petrol bombed. The manager was in but escaped from upstairs with some bumps and bruises and a bit of smoke inhalation. It didn’t spread into the neighbours so no one else was injured.’
‘Anyone see anything?’
‘Quite a few people in the flats above the shops saw the fire, but only one person saw anything on the street,’ he pulled his notebook. ‘The bloke in fifty-seven saw someone running that way,’ he pointed back down the way North had come. ‘He had a puffer jacket on, it could have been a dark colour, like navy or black and he thinks he had a hood up. The lighting was poor and he just caught the back of him as he made off down the road.’
‘He?’
‘He thinks so. We’ve been looking for somewhere that might have recorded something but there doesn’t seem to be any CCTV anywhere on this street, or in the two blocks that-a-way. The shops all seem to have opted for metal shutters and alarms.’
‘Gang members?’
‘Odds on. Sounds like youngers. Probably got the clobber up front for doing it, gained a bit of street cred and a little something extra after the job was done. There’s a guy from the fire department and a forensics guy in there. The manager is somewhere about, name of John Smith.’
‘Serious?’
‘It’s the name that was over the door as the licensee granted by the court.’
Which meant he didn’t have any previous. At least anything serious enough to prevent him obtaining a license to sell alcohol. The sound of raised voices was heard from inside the Pond House shell and the man who was behind the bar the previous night was escorted out. His right arm was in a sling and he had various dressings, cuts and bruises on his hands and face.
Did they manage to keep anyone in the hospital?
‘I told him to stay out of there,’ said the PC.
‘Relax, you’ve done a good job. Once you’ve had breakfast could you take a look a few blocks further out in the direction they took off, for me?’
‘No problem.’
‘If you find anything call it into Dave the Desk for me, would you?’
‘This is all your fault,’ the manager started on North. ‘If you hadn't stuck your nose in none of this would have happened.’
North went blank.
‘What are you saying?’
He said nowt.
‘Are you saying that this is linked to your hiding Terry Rawlins upstairs? Are you saying you know who did this?’
His eyes searched the crowds for familiar faces.
‘No. No!’
‘So you don't know who did this?’
‘How the fuck would I know who did?’ He shouted for the benefit of everyone listening.
‘But you seemed to be implying that -’
‘I ain’t implying nothing!’
‘But you admitted to me last night that Terry Rawlins had been hiding here,’ North raised his level for the crowd. ‘Are you saying they burned the pub down because you helped put us on their tail?’
‘I don't know what you're talking about. I never said nothing. I don't know nothing!’ The anger had been replaced by fear.
‘Why all the security?’
‘What security?’
‘The motion sensors, lights, CCTV and grills round back.’
He looked at North like he was daft. ‘Maybe you haven’t noticed but it can get a bit rough round here.’ North wasn’t about to take any shit and it showed. Smith quickly changed his tune. ‘But the cameras and motion sensors are fake. There’s a bright light up on the wall and a couple of grills on the downstairs windows and that’s all. They want to deter any chancers but you’ve seen in there, other than the meagre stock needed to run the place and whatever takings are in the safe waiting to be banked, there’s nothing in there worth nicking.’
/> ‘Someone totalled your pub when you were in it. Maybe they meant for you to get totalled too.’
The look on his face showed that the thought had already occurred to him.
‘Is this what you escaped in?’ He was wearing trainers and a track suit.
He looked at himself. Nodded. ‘I threw some of my stuff out the window before I jumped.’
‘You were upstairs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Out back?’
He nodded.
‘What happened?’
‘I was asleep, heard a crash, woke up, then there was another crash and a weird sound, probably the petrol catching fire in the next room. Then there was a crash in front and then a brick came through my window and -’
‘They were coming in front and back?’
‘Yeah.’
So there were two of them, not just one. You couldn’t just lob a few bottles in the front and then nip to the back. It was a long way round. He let the PC know they were looking for a pair of scallies.
‘My room went on fire and I went to the window. There was no one there. I grabbed the stuff by the bed and jumped.’
There was the bog and the storeroom out back. He couldn’t have injured himself too bad coming down via either of those.
‘Do you still have your phone?’
A hand went to his side.
‘Let me see it.’
‘Why?’ he said, taking it from his pants pocket and handing it over without any fuss.
North ran through the numbers. Nothing matched Lumsden’s set. He had made only one call after the time of the fire. It was the only call since yesterday morning. There was no incoming.
‘Who did you call yesterday?’
‘No one.’
North waived the phone at him. ‘Last night?’
He thought about it.
‘My mam!’ It dawned on him. ‘I called my mam from the hospital.’
‘I need you to come with us to the station to make a statement.’ He was about to protest but North shouted him down. ‘At best this is arson Mr Smith, at worst attempted murder and I expect your full co-operation.’ He would never be able to instil the same kind of fear as an arsonist but he was the law and just talking to the law in public next to the scene where a threat on his life had just been made had its advantages. ‘Who do you run the place for?’
‘The brewery.’ The name was just about visible on a metal sign that lay on the kerb. It was the biggest brewery around so if there was a drug link and dope was being pushed through it, it was by a third party through this guy.
‘I'm sure your employer will expect your full co-operation too.’
‘I'll lose my job, my home’ it seemed to have just occurred to him. ‘They'll never open the place again. They'll take the insurance money and run. It was on its knees like everywhere else round here. The money is down the quayside with the kids. Everyone else goes down the workies and everyone barred from the workies comes here.’
‘Take him in and get his statement would you?’ North said to the other PC who appeared.
‘You can't, they'll do me for sure! Terry was a regular is all. He'd only been out the nick five minutes and the filth -’ he realised his error but could only stare, expecting a reprisal, but North said nothing. ‘Were after him again,’ Smith went on in hushed tones. ‘You should have seen him, he was in a right state. Shitting himself like you wouldn't believe – he’d actually pissed himself before he got here. The front of his trousers were soaked through. It didn't seem right you harassing him again already. He said he needed to make a call, keep out of sight for an hour or so, then he would be off.’
‘He use the phone in the pub?’
‘Yeah, I’m on pay-as-you-go, I can’t afford for people to be using it willy-nilly. The rest of it, we were just fucking about, you know, as you do. Everyone was pissed and the old bill aren’t exactly top of the pops in there, you know? They just felt like they’d got one over on you, seeing Terry get away, and so they were gloating. Quad – the first bloke you flattened – he’s a fucking head case. He came in looking for trouble when word got to him the fil-,’ he caught himself again, ‘that the law had been in. But you sorted him and we didn’t even know them kids who went for you. They must have followed you in, they weren’t even with us, but you fucked them up no problem. No harm done, eh?’
‘You reckon?’ said North looking at the pub. ‘Are you going to come assist us with our enquiries voluntarily?’
‘I haven’t done nothing!’
‘Then you have nothing to hide.’
North got one of the PC’s to take him in and then come back for his mate who would begin looking for any other possible witnesses to the runners.
He got back in the car.
‘You think he knows anything?’ asked Deacon who’d been a bystander.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Mason can find out.’
North called him with the details so he could start checking him out before Smith got there.
‘I don’t think he knows much,’ he said to Deacon, ‘and after all this he will probably give a wildly inaccurate description of the guy who collected Rawlins.’
‘The drug set-up at Denise Lumsden’s and her death, those syringes, now this, do you think that this could all be the start of a drugs war? A rival outfit wants another lot out, so they kill one of their dealers, make a horror show of it, then burn down their storehouse. Rawlins could just be some schmuck that got let out of jail at the wrong time and fetched up in the middle of it all?’
‘Not just a lucky charm, eh, Deacon?’
‘Don’t take the piss.’
‘I’m not.’ He wasn’t. ‘You could be right. All we can do is work with what we have and see what starts to materialise, but I don’t believe people like Rawlins just fetch up in the middle of stuff willy-nilly, as our Mr Smith would say. He might not know much but whoever he called does and that’s why I believe that they want Rawlins out of the picture. To break the connection. He’s our conduit to them.
‘And I have a problem with the way Denise Lumsden was killed, it just doesn’t sit right with me. If she was hit professionally they would have just killed her and stuck the needles in as their showpiece, they wouldn’t want to be hanging around any longer than they had too. The autopsy may prove me wrong, but it looked like someone had spent some time with her. It looked like a sadistic psychopath had been getting his jollies with her - but then why the syringes? And why all this other, subsequent shit? It’s a strange one.
‘James is looking into other possible cases around the country, old cases around here, that bear similarities to Lumsden’s. You never know. Right now we just don’t have enough information for any of this to make any sense and now we have gang members involved. Two Choirboys attacked me in there last night and we have a possibility that another two of them set light to the pub.’
‘It might have been the same two: pride, hatred and testosterone are a highly flammable mix. These kids are stabbing each other over a wrong look, the wrong girl, the wrong street - they’ve lost all sense of perspective. They could have torched the place just because you beat the crap out of them in front of everyone in it.’
‘The arson should at least help with the warrant for the pub’s phone records. How come we weren’t made aware of this already, anyway?’ He looked back at the burnt out pub. ‘The people we’re after have got better communication than this.’
‘The guys said they didn’t know it was related to our case. They were already out on duty when you gave everyone the brief. This kind of thing isn’t that uncommon. Last week Al - the PC with me at Lumsden’s yesterday - he and I had to break into a flat that was leaking water into the place below. We broke in, switched the water off, reported it all, then two hours later we get called back to the same block to a break in. It was the owner of the flat we had to force our way into.’
‘Didn't you leave a note or something? Wait, Al was supposed to do it, right?’
&nb
sp; She didn’t say anything.
‘Right.’ he said. ‘All we have left now is Rawlins’ parents.’
‘Where's that?’
‘Down the Sunderland Road.’
‘Can we swing by Al’s on the way?’
He shot her a ‘what now?’ look.
‘He didn't turn up this morning and I just checked with the station and he still hasn't called in. The sarge is a decent bloke but he can’t cover for him much longer.’
‘Al’s beginning to sound like a liability, Deacon. He's probably laid up with man flu, sparko on brandy and night nurse judging by the state he was in yesterday.’
‘He'll get bollocked if he leaves it any longer. It's not like him.’
‘Are you and he...?’
‘Give over! I'm more like his mam.’
‘Try again.’
She dialled.
‘Still not answering his phone?’
She shook her head.
‘Where's he live?’
FIFTEEN
Al wasn't answering his door either.
‘Maybe he's taking the cure down the pub,’ said North, but he didn't need the look he received to know that something was amiss. If that was the case he would have called in, using his best sick voice, before setting off.
They pounded the door and had several more goes at the bell.
Nothing.
‘Call his mobile again.’
Deacon couldn't see the point. North pressed his ear to Al’s letterbox.
‘Ah, shit.’
They could both hear Al’s phone ringing inside. The call tripped to voicemail and the ringing stopped.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she said. ‘Get in there.’
The building was old and the door was wooden, paint flaking, single Yale lock, probably bolts inside, but Al might not have bothered using them, the state he was in.
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