“Step forward, number 4,” the voice instructed. He took a step forward and stared into the glass.
If Hardman got an ID, it was over. Locked up he would be dead within days, and Honor wouldn’t make it that long.
“Step forward, number 6.”
Spider-man stepped forward. It looked like he had done it a million times before. Like he would again. That sometimes he would be nervous and sometimes he wouldn’t. That sometimes he would look into the glass and hope whoever watched from behind it didn’t recognise him. Today though he didn’t much care.
“Okay, number 6 step back. Number 4 step forward please.”
North took a step – lifting his boot, setting it down, lifting the other, setting it down. His reflection stared back at him. He could do with a hot shower and what passed these days for a decent night’s sleep. He thought about a narrow bed in a police cell smelling of piss. Even that had its attractions right this moment if there wasn’t the real prospect that he’d close his eyes and never get to open them again.
Time stopped.
Behind him the minds of the men opened up – curious, incurious, raging and bleak, the taste of stale booze and cigarettes, curry and something dark and unholy from Spider-man. The tears of a wife. He shut them out – he was either on the edge of complete insanity, or his brain was dialing up his intuition past the point of bearable.
Focus.
Who stood behind the mirror ?
A witness saw a tall man leave minutes before the discovery of a bloody corpse.
A jolt of recognition. As if he was in there with them, North saw it all play out in the dark room behind the glass. Hardman’s best Uncle routine, the inspector careful to reassure, the witness blooming under his kindly smile, his support and praise for her citizenship. Take her time. No rush.
“Step back into the line number 4 please.”
Although North could not distinguish figures behind the plate glass, he sensed movement. A noise like a door slamming. They would let the witness leave before allowing the line-up out from the room.
Their own door opened and the skeletal PC appeared. “All right, lads. Usual deal. The desk sergeant will see you right.” North started to follow Spider-man. “Not you, sonny,” the constable said, a hand on North’s shoulder.
As North signed the custody record for his watch, the inspector leaned in close, Hardman’s breath warm and smoky on North’s ear. “Sudoku teaches you patience, Mr North, and I’m a patient man.”
North fastened the strap of his watch around his wrist, his elbow leaning on the duty sergeant’s desk. Picked up the notebook. Slid it into the pocket of the oilskin as Hardman looked on.
“Here’s a puzzle for you, Sergeant.”
His colleague stood to mock attention, readying himself to play the inspector’s straight man.
“Normally, when we put forensics in, as you know it takes three weeks – sometimes more. They like to take it slow in the labs.”
The sergeant tutted loudly.
“Sometimes, I have to go along and shout at them. Sometimes, I send the wife – she doesn’t like things taking too long, which can be a relief for a man my age. But North here – his results came back very quick. No evidence against him whatsoever. No witness ID. No comeback on the prints despite the fact he admits himself he was in the office. No DNA at the scene. No blood on his clothes or his shoes or that nice watch or his book. And the Chief Constable himself rang for a chat, suggesting Mr North should get back to his life. Funny that – because he’s a busy man the Chief Constable what with all the silver buttons he has to polish and arses he has to lick.”
A frisson of shock from the sergeant, his eyes flicking left to right checking for eavesdroppers. Hardman carried on regardless.
The witness didn’t ID him from the line-up.
Hardman had to let him go, and he wasn’t happy. North was more worried about the Board. His name was in the system and it wouldn’t take the Board long to discover it if they hadn’t already. The longer Hardman talked, the more chance there was of finding another body on his streets all too soon – this one belonging to one Michael North.
“So here he is, going home in his own shoes and his clothes with his own watch and that intriguing little book, when by rights those things belong here, and I don’t like that one jot because I like things done the old-fashioned way. I’m a simple man, and this makes me ‘uncomfortable’ which is very close to making me ‘cross’. And he really wouldn’t like to see me ‘cross’ would he, sergeant?”
The duty sergeant’s response was understood.
“I don’t know what or who you are, Mr North,” said Hardman, switching his focus back. “And I’m not sure I want to. Despite your name, you don’t belong here. Take my advice: be on the next train out. London…” Hardman jerked his thumb away from him “…is that way.”
Chapter 44
NEWCASTLE
11.07pm. Wednesday, 8th November
Her thumb and forefinger in her mouth, the redhead whistled – low and piercing.
North was across the road, but even 50 yards distant, he could make out a body that promised the world. Grinning, the freckled girl stood up from the low brick wall opposite the station and with the sudden movement, her hair tumbled from its bird’s nest, bang-on ginger curls escaping like they were keen to be up and partying. She raised three fingers before slapping them against her bicep, then with her two index fingers drew a circle in front of her. Three words. The whole thing. A beautiful stranger wanted to play charades. She raised her eyebrows.
He nodded. He’d play. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.
The girl rubbed the end of her freckled nose with her fingers as if she had a cold. He stared at her. Blank.
She made a face that said What-are-you? Stupid? And rubbed the end of her nose harder, widening her eyes this time and shaking her head as if the hit had just kicked in. As if she was rubbing off white powder.
Jimmy the Sniff – the drug-dealer Hardman mentioned. She knew Jimmy.
Game over, she winked and started walking away, her long legs scissoring in baby blue paint-on jeans. Why were women always walking away from him these days? The Detective Chief Inspector’s words came back to him: “Be on the next train out”. It was excellent advice, and he watched her go.
Except that North wasn’t ready to leave town yet.
He stepped out into the road, back on to the pavement, her side of the street now.
Following. Admiring the view. He’d felt dead inside for the longest time – since he got shot? Since his mother died? Since he was born? He’d had no sleep for days, he was starving and Honor had abandoned him, but one thing he didn’t feel was dead inside.
The Board wanted Honor dead because she was making a fuss about her friend’s disappearance. If she was dead already, there was nothing he could do. If she wasn’t, her best chance of survival – and for that matter his best chance of survival – was knowledge, because it was the only leverage they had. And Jimmy the Sniff seemed as good a place to start as any.
The kitten heels of the ankle boots tip-tapped along the pavement ahead of him. The redhead walking like she was in a hurry, like she had some place she wanted to be, swaying and unsteady as if it had been a long day and she wanted done with it. She turned left, then right towards the river, glancing at him once, the suspicion of a dimpled smile before she ducked into a doorway and disappeared. North hesitated.
He still had time to catch the train Hardman told him to be on. Clear town before the Board sent a clean-up man in. Time to forget he ever met Honor. He peered down the narrow stairway, lined with black and white headshots of old Hollywood movie stars, and which led down into a basement. He thought about what Jimmy might know, the denim sway of the girl ahead as she rounded the corner. Honor’s sea-green eyes. He wondered if the redhead would let him use her phone to call Honor’s parliamentary office. Maybe Honor was okay? Maybe she would ring in? Maybe she’d even go back to the Comm
ons? He could explain why he kept Peggy’s book. There were all sorts of reasons to follow.
There must have been a sign at the door though he hadn’t noticed it. But perhaps not – some of these clubs liked to pretend they were decent, the sort of bar a businessman might find himself in to “unwind”. Nothing sleazy – nice girls, respectable.
It took a while for his eye to adjust to the gloom. Flickering candles on each table, tiny pin-prick stars across the ceiling. On an empty stage there was a pole and a girl who seemed to like it, while the banquettes around the walls were a crushed and midnight blue velvet – the nap worn at the edge from sweaty hands of sweaty men getting sweatier as the girls did their dances. At first glance he’d thought the club empty aside from the dancer – his redhead vanished into dry-ice and the bass beat of Eminem. Then the other women came into focus. A muscled blonde behind the bar, the sides of her head shaven and dyed like pink and purple leopard skin, and two scantily clad lovelies perched on stools admiring the contortions of the pole dancer. No one looked surprised to see him.
The pole dancer watched as she dangled upside down, her arms holding the bar – biceps bulging, her hair lost in the billowing smoke, her right leg wrapped around like a python, the left pointing to the stars, her best assets fighting gravity, glittering green and gold in their all-in-one bodysuit. He thought of the Lambton Worm, some story dragged out of his childhood, of a woman turned into a dragon who wrapped itself around a well three times – devouring sheep and cattle and babies. The pole dancer shifted her grip and her leg unwound itself out from the bar, the left moving down and away till they formed a wide-open V like the maw of a snake ready to swallow its next meal. In the mirrors around the club, smaller python women did the same thing over and over again.
He wondered if he’d miscalled it. If the redhead hadn’t done the come-hither. If his instincts were off and what she had been doing was walking away as quickly as she could when she saw him come out of the police station. But there’d been the charade, the dimpled smile, the sashay – his admiration. The way she’d seemed to sway all the harder the closer she got to her destination.
“I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “A guy called Jimmy the Sniff?” Close-up the barmaid’s face came in two halves, the right side dragging down, her mouth twisted out of kilter, the left plain ugly. A stroke? Bell’s Palsy?
She took her time pouring a hefty vodka shot into the glass of coke sat in front of each girl, the bottle held low then high then low again, the sleeves of her plaid shirt rolled tight to her shoulders, her biceps heavily muscled and forearms tattoed and meaty, the hands large and workmanlike, red and purple, as if she had problems with her circulation, though the nails themselves were long and oval, covered with tiny green crystals – like the nails of another woman.
“You don’t look the friendly type,” she said when she’d done, her lower jaw that of a bad-tempered bulldog.
“Don’t mind Stella. I’ll be your friend, pet,” a skinny arm draped itself over his shoulder as one of the two watchers took hold of the brass bar clamped to the oak counter and swung her stool closer, bringing with her the smell of coconuts and warm oiled flesh. The other girl’s breasts pushed against him as she too closed in. “You can never have too many friends, hinny,” her breath caramel-sweet and fizzy. They worked as a team. If they were planning to pick his pockets, they’d be sadly disappointed.
The leopard-skin blonde frowned at the girls, the lop-sided mouth a jagged scar, transforming the already strange face into a ruin. Stella didn’t like him, yet in the smoky mirror behind the optics as she stowed away the vodka, she’d authorized the come-on. North saw it – the slightest of nods as they looked to her for their cue.
Picking up a bottle of champagne from a metal bucket of melting ice, water trailing from it across the polished bar, she emptied it carelessly into a grubby coupe as one of his new gal-pals slid her bony hand into his lap and started burrowing.
He removed the hand.
“Like your boss said – I’m not the friendly type, much as I appreciate the thought.”
Bubbles scurried and popped in the glass in front of him. It was inviting but he had no money. He pushed it away.
“You’re our best-looking customer today, babe.” The barfly to his left giggled. “Anyway, the first drink’s free to members. And everyone’s a member.”
Cheap champagne wasn’t his go-to, but it had been a long hard bitch-of-a-day. He drank it – tipping the shallow glass back in one swallow, the taste sharp and bitter and gritty.
See how you like that, he caught, and the barmaid pulled out another bottle, gripping it by its long neck as if she might pour it or swing it against his head – she didn’t much care which.
Did we do good, Stella? Did we? The girl’s voices were cawing rooks strung out along a telegraph line in the fog. Tired – he hadn’t understood how tired he was till this minute. He flinched at the pop of the cork, his hand going for a gun that wasn’t there, and from a long way off he heard the two women laugh, pushing up against him, their small hands patting and pressing up and down his body as if they were searching him, rather than caressing him, caressing him rather than searching him. The champagne ran from the new bottle, deep gold in the lights that bounced from the overhead spots. He reached out – his hand huge suddenly. Unwieldy. The glass tipped as he picked it up, champagne spilling across the polished oak. The barmaid’s hand over his, another at the elbow, as he raised the dregs to his lips and tipped it, powder on his teeth, and he swayed, crumpled, and fell.
Chapter 45
NEWCASTLE
12.13am. Thursday, 9th November
His lolling head jerked upright on his spine and, as he came to, he vomited once violently and efficiently, green bile rising into his throat, unstoppable. He spat – his head thunderous, as if the bullet was ricocheting around his skull, bouncing from wall to wall and destroying everything in there.
Awake.
The redhead. A body like that always spelled trouble. She was waiting for him.
Someone instructed her to bring him here. What was he thinking?
His forehead was freezing; a bag of ice pressing against his temple, and he shrugged it off, regretting his haste as the earthquake in his brain brought down buildings.
A scrape of a chair along the floor and the spotlights blazed, smashing against his retinas like fists wearing knuckledusters.
“Would it help if I said I’m from Trip Advisor?” North coughed and spat again. The Mickey Finn left a taste like chewing green and rotting meat.
The pole dancer had disappeared along with the two barflies. The leopard-skin blonde still had on the plaid shirt but now she sported a tan-leather shoulder holster, and a Glock 17. Its weight unloaded was 25.06 ounces. Its weight loaded: 32.12 ounces. The gun, like the woman, looked to be on the heavy side.
The good news was the Board hadn’t caught up with him yet. The bad news – he moved on his chair and Stella’s steel-tipped boot came out and under it – tipping it to smash him, first against the pole and then against the floor. He willed the bullet in his brain to move and kill him where he lay – if only to take away the pain.
His mind filled with a storm of Stella’s invective as he gazed up at her, her eyes baggy and cold, white-blonde hair with its leopard-skin pink and purple trim shorn like a marine.
Extraordinary hair. An alarm was ringing at the back of his skull that he couldn’t switch off.
“The only reason you aren’t dead yet is that our Jess has a kind heart.”
For a second he wondered who she was talking about, then realised it was the redhead standing behind her. Jess winked at him.
“Does she take after her father?” he said. Stella heaved the chair back up till it rested foursquare-bang on its legs – North suspected for the simple pleasure of smashing him against the floor again when the mood took her. He braced, because she didn’t seem a patient woman.
“I didn’t kill Bannerman if that’s what y
ou’re thinking.”
Jess was the witness behind the glass. Reliable. Authentic. The only problem she was a born liar, sent by her mother to get him out of police custody and into their own.
“That’s a shame – Bannerman was a twat. But I’m more interested in what you’ve got to do with Peggy Boland. A little bird tells me you’re trying to find her.”
A little bird called Fangfang Yu – North would put money on it. Teenagers had no loyalty, especially when you hadn’t paid for it yet.
“It’s like I told Fang.” He spoke in the even-tempered voice of a zoo-keeper locked in a cage with a slavering beast that hadn’t been fed for a while. “Peggy’s mixed up in something she doesn’t want to be. And I’m trying to help.”
Stella snarled, and Jess laid a hand on the pumped-up arm. The girl’s nails matched those of her mother. She must have painted them for her. He wondered at the tricks genetics play – the adorable hour-glass beauty he’d followed through the streets, and this pierced bruiser of a harridan.
“And where does my nephew fit in to this? The nephew we bury next week.”
Nephew? He didn’t need any bullet in his brain to sense the woman’s fury. She was raging. Extraordinary hair. Walt Bannerman mentioned a woman with extraordinary hair came looking for Peggy. Instead, she must have found Fangfang. And after the teenage geek smashed her way into Peggy’s vault on behalf of a stranger, she called her only other ally.
Her nephew was Ned Fellowes.
And Stella knew Ned didn’t fly off any bridge. Didn’t credit such a thing. Moreover, if she thought North had anything to do with the lad being thrown to his death, she gave every indication she would take him apart, pack his body parts into a barrel and roll it down the cobbles and into the Tyne.
Killing State Page 21