Fry had passed a row of shuttered shops, barricaded against the possibility of riot or ram-raid. On the corner, there used to be bullet holes visible in the concrete wall, at the scene of another notorious shooting. But the wall itself had been pulled down now. One more re-development site.
In some parts of Handsworth, fear prowled the streets like more black ghosts. If you lived in a place like this, it was best to keep your head down, filter out the things you don’t want to see. Close your eyes, and the world looks better.
‘There are lots of serious gangs in Birmingham,’ said Vince. ‘Not just the Johnnies and the Burgers. Your lot ought to go after some of them Asian gangs — the Lynx, and the Panthers.’
‘Right.’
‘Oh, but I forgot. You won’t take on the Asians.’
‘It’s nothing to do with me any more.’
‘Oh, yeah. You got out, didn’t you? Left it all behind. Lucky you.’
‘The local gangs, Vince.’
‘They’re not all bad, you know. Those crews have been around the city for a while. There’s two hundred members in the Johnnies, and they’re not all out shooting innocents on the street. Some of them are safe.’
The Johnson Crew was widely accepted as being the more organized of the two main gangs, having made loose affiliations with the local Asian heroin gangs in Aston as well as with Jamaican-born Yardies, until the Jamaicans became increasingly marginalized in the city. Despite being numerically inferior, the Burger Bar Boys had taken advantage of their small, tight-knit community and were seen as the more ruthless.
The UniSeven Studio shootings were in retaliation for the murder of leading Burger Bar Boy Yohanne Martin, who died behind the wheel of his silver Mercedes in West Bromwich High Street.
And it wasn’t just a bunch of testosterone-charged youths proving their manhood and earning respect. Girls were being drawn into the nightmare now. The suspects charged with the shooting of Yohanne Martin were seventeen and eighteen — and both of them were female.
The gangs got their names from two caf?es in Handsworth where black youths congregated in the late eighties and early nineties. The Burger Bar was on the Soho Road, while the Johnson cafe was in Heathfield Road. Legend had it that both gangs were originally friendly, but fell out over a bet on who won a game of Streetfigbter on the PlayStation. By the late nineties, their street fighting had moved off the computer screen and out on to the streets. And it was no longer a game.
The killings began in the last days of 1995 as the young men fought off Yardie gangsters, and then turned on each other in a bloody turf war. Betrayals, executions and tit-for-tat killings. Bodies on the streets of North Birmingham. Fry knew gangsters’ lives weren’t glamorous. They were full of fear and paranoia.
‘I want you to make contact with two men,’ said Fry. ‘Marcus Shepherd and Darren Barnes. They’re known on the street as S-Man and Doors.’
She could see by his expression that he knew them. Or had heard of them, at least. A spasm of fear passed across his face, before he forced his features back into that sullen mask.
‘Do you know which gang they’re in?’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Yeah, the m1 Crew. But I can’t do this. They’ll think I’m baiting them up.’
‘Setting them up for arrest?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But I’m not working with the police here, Vince. You don’t even need to tell them that I’m a police officer. I’m sure you can think of something to persuade them.’
‘I suppose.’
She watched him smoke his cigarette and think about it. Across the road, a drug dealer was operating openly, small plastic packages changing hands in full view. There would be lookouts at each end of the block, and a car arriving each day to distribute the drugs to the street dealers.
Being a civilian gave Fry an exhilarating sense of freedom. As a police officer, if she’d wanted Vince Bowskill to become an informant, she would have had to do everything officially. There was no such thing as a detective running his own snouts any more, with their names known only to him. Those days were long gone, swept away in the desperation to clean up any suggestion of corruption or dodgy practices.
Now, she would have to make Vince sign a contract and leave all contact with him to a properly appointed handler. In documents, he would be a referred to as a CHIS — a Covert Human Intelligence Source.
Immediately, her brain began to churn with extracts from the code of practice relating to Section 71 of the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. According to the code, she would have to get authorization from a designated authorizing officer, who would provide authorization in writing. Using the standard application form, she would have to provide details of the purpose for which the source would be tasked, the grounds on which authorization was sought, the level of authority required, a summary of who would be affected, details of any confidential material that might be obtained. She would have to keep detailed records of every task, and be prepared to account for her actions to the Chief Surveillance Commissioner. She would have to carry out a risk assessment on the deployment of her source. A risk assessment, for goodness sake.
She was amazed that she could remember all this stuff. It was even more incredible that, right at this moment, she could forget the whole bloody thing.
‘So will you help, Vince?’ she said.
‘Yeah, okay. Well, it’s family, right?’
‘Right.’
Angie had taken on her own jobs. Diane wasn’t entirely sure why her sister was so keen to get involved, but she wasn’t in a position to turn down help. What she needed most was someone to talk to, a person she could open up to and bounce questions off.
Right now, the only person who came close to filling that role was Angie. She wouldn’t have been Diane’s first choice, but this was all she had. She was waiting when Diane got back to her hotel in Brindleyplace.
‘This first witness, Louise Jones,’ said Angie. ‘She doesn’t work for the publisher any more. She left them months ago. They don’t have a current address for her — but they say she moved away from Birmingham.’
‘If she was on witness protection, she wouldn’t be giving out her address,’ said Diane.
‘No.’
‘But it seems someone got to her, nonetheless. Everyone is out to put the knife in. It feels as though the whole world is against me.’
‘There are people on your side, Diane. They’re trying to help you.’
‘I don’t know who they are.’
‘Well, where do you think I got a copy of the case file from?’
‘I don’t know.’
Angie shook her head. ‘Gareth Blake. He rates you.’
‘He told me to clear off home. Almost in as many words.’
‘He had to say that in front of his sergeant.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, what about this other witness?’ said Angie. ‘Tanya Spiers. Where does she work again?’
‘Some place called the Rosebud Massage Parlour.’
‘A massage parlour? Oh, great. There are so many massage parlours in Birmingham it’s a miracle they haven’t caused a worldwide shortage of baby oil.’
Diane agreed. Oh, a few of them were genuine, of course. They administered a good, healthy pummelling to get the stress out. Not a bad idea, either. But the others…
She pictured a grimy flight of stairs and a dim bulb. The sweet smell of cannabis creeping under a door, unmasked by the scent of incense and aromatic oils. An overweight dyed blonde in a low-cut lurex top and skin-tight leather. A fakefur rug and a price list on the back of the door. Sex and the City? Forget the glammed-up Hollywood version. The real thing was quite different.
She had no doubt that trafficked women still worked in the massage parlours of Lozells and Digbeth. Young girls fresh off the plane at Birmingham International, flight BA305 from Bucharest. They came believing they had a job in the hotel business, speaking little English and carrying even fewer possess
ions. And instead of going into a job, they were passed from hand to hand, deprived of their passports, beaten and intimidated by a succession of new ‘owners’ until they accepted their fate, became resigned to a grinding day-by-day degradation. And, of course, they were told over and over that the police couldn’t be trusted. So no one was going to come forward with information.
But there were lots of other places, officially licensed as massage parlours, where sensual massages and special services were openly advertised. These places were rarely raided, unless there was a problem. As long as the girls were called Chelsea and Holly, everyone turned a blind eye. And maybe Tanya, too.
Angie was leafing through a copy of Yellow Pages that she’d found in a drawer.
‘Yep, it’s listed.’
‘Nothing like being up front. I’ll phone them.’
‘And say what?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ said Diane.
But the woman who answered the phone said that Tanya didn’t work at the Rosebud any more. Another missing witness, like Louise Jones? If Diane had been a man, she guessed she would have been offered someone else’s services at this point, probably received the hard sell. But that didn’t happen.
‘Have you got Tanya’s home address, please?’
The woman sounded outraged. ‘No, I soddin’ haven’t.’
‘You must keep addresses on file. It’s one of the conditions of your licence.’
‘There was a moment’s silence. ‘You’re the police aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you say so? I always co-operate with your lot. Are you trying to catch me out, or something?’
‘If you could just give me Tanya’s address…?’
Angie had been listening with interest, and stood up when she’d finished the call.
‘Where, then?’
‘Off the Hagley Road.’
‘Naturally.’
At one time, prostitution in Birmingham used to be concentrated around Balsall Heath. A campaign by local residents and businesses had succeeded in driving most sex workers out of the area. But, of course, the problem just went somewhere else.
That somewhere else was the Edgbaston area, in several streets off the Hagley Road. It seemed to reach its peak near the Plough and Harrow. There were also reports of girls still operating around Speedwell Road, Hockley, and even in the Jewellery Quarter. Competition and a dependency on drugs had driven the going rate down to twenty pounds for a quickie in the back of a car. Surveys suggested that most people didn’t really mind the sex trade, as long as it went on behind closed doors, rather than on their street corner. The problems that residents had with prostitution were based on needles and condoms being left in places where they shouldn’t be, and vehicles driving aimlessly around looking for girls.
West Midlands Police now had active patrols in those areas and were taking a tougher line with the problem. Once happy to caution a driver for kerb crawling they were now arresting the offender and carting them off to the police station. A call was then made to their home address to verify the person’s identity, and the police would press charges.
The police said they were acting in the interests of both the girls and local residents. Many of the sex workers were beaten up, abused by pimps, and addicted to drugs. Some had even been murdered. Many were under age. But there were plenty of massage parlours in Birmingham offering sexual services, and these were seldom raided unless problems occurred. The girls at a massage parlour were less likely to be abused, less likely to annoy the locals, and far less likely to be taking drugs.
And getting girls off the streets of Birmingham only moved the problem from one place to another — in this case, the Black Country. Some said that Walsall had become the sex capital of the West Midlands.
‘How do we go about being unobtrusive in that area?’ said Diane. ‘Especially at this time of night. I’m not going to walk up and down Hagley Road like a prostitute. I couldn’t do it.’
Angie looked at her oddly. ‘I could.’
Diane studied her sister. A denial was on the tip of her tongue, but something made her stay silent. She was seeing Angie from a different perspective, picturing her standing on a street corner, looking available, trying to catch the eye of a passing motorist. Yes, she was right. Angie could do it, and wouldn’t look too out of place. Given the right clothes, anyway.
‘I know just what I’d need,’ said Angie.
‘Not for the first time, Diane wished her sister would stop reading her mind.
‘Forget it’, she said. ‘I’m going on my own anyway.’
20
At Five Ways, the road that had been Broad Street crossed the Middleway and became Hagley Road. This was the very northern end of Edgbaston, bordering on the reservoir — a long way from the cricket ground and the Priory Hospital.
J.R.R. Tolkien had lived around here somewhere. They said that the Two Towers were inspired by Perrott’s Folly and the nearby waterworks. There was a Tolkien Trail, Lord of the Rings postcards, and a Middle Earth weekend every May. Fry was glad she hadn’t arrived during that event. Imagine being surrounded by crowds of orcs and hobbits with bad breath and Birmingham accents. Wasn’t that one of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell? Somewhere between Violence and Heresy.
As a rule, enthusiasms didn’t come naturally to Brummies. They were usually careful to avoid emotional extremes, an attitude reflected in their accent. Other urban voices sounded strident, but the natural Brummie tone hovered somewhere between bewilderment and despair. And that was an understandable way of looking at the world, when you thought about it.
Fry could see a couple of tom carders working the phone boxes, sticking up adverts for massages and personal services. There were plenty of people glad to earn a few quid for work like that. So as quick as the council took them down, the cards were replaced. It was all the old stuff.
Andy Kewley called her back while she was standing outside a little Asian-run supermarket called Safebury’s.
‘I’ll talk,’ he said. ‘But not on the phone, obviously. I want to tell you about William Leeson.’
‘What is it about this Leeson?’
‘He’s the man who’s up to his neck in everything. It’s amazing that he’s survived this long, to be honest. I’d like to see you bring him down, Diane. You could be the person to do it.’
‘Okay. When do you want to meet?’
‘Tonight. Late, while there’s no one about.’
‘Andy, you’re getting really paranoid.’
‘You understand, Diane,’ said Kewley. ‘You know the score.’
‘No, I don’t think I do. Explain it to me.’
‘Well, you know what they say about things you don’t like being generally best swept under the carpet?’
‘I don’t have carpets in my house, Andy. I like nice, clean tiles.’
‘Diane, I want to help, I really do. But there are complications. Just take what I can give you and accept it as it’s intended. Don’t ask me too many questions. Trust me, it’s for the best.’
Fry grimaced. There was that word again. Trust. She had a negative reaction every time she heard it.
She sighed. ‘It’s the cemetery again, I suppose?’
‘Unless you’ve got a better idea.’
‘Oh, no. It’s becoming my favourite place.’
Tanya Spiers had an address in a City Estates flat near Perrott’s Folly. As Fry passed the Church of the Redeemer, a black youth stopped her to ask for twenty pence to buy a bag of rice at Safebury’s. For once, she forked out. It was a novel excuse, and twenty pence was hardly enough reward for his imagination. There was always a chance that he was telling the truth, too.
A powerful smell of blossom reached her from the gardens around Perrott’s Folly, reminding her of the cemetery at Warstone Lane.
At least these weren’t tower blocks. These flats were built on a more human scale. But Tanya Spiers wasn’t home — or at least wasn’t answering her door.
Maybe she took a pill and slept through the day.
Fry pulled out one of her cards and scribbled a message on the back before pushing it through the letter box. The steel flap was on a powerful spring. The slam as it closed echoed mockingly down the hall.
Outside the flats, a familiar silver grey Hyundai was parked at the kerb under a streetlight. Detective Sergeant Gorpal Sandhu leaned against the bonnet, his arms folded, a smile on his face. DI Gareth Blake was in the passenger seat, his mobile phone to his ear.
Coming face to face with Sandhu reminded Fry guiltily of what Andy Kewley had said in Warstone Lane cemetery about some of the Asian officers here in the West Midlands. Had he been hinting something about DS Sandhu in particular? Or was it just part of the smokescreen created by his obsessions?
‘We want a word,’ said Sandhu. ‘Please get in the car.’
Blake’s face was creased with concern, his eyes steady and sincere. Fry recognized that expression. This was the face of the caring, sharing, modern police service. A face that couldn’t always be believed.
‘Diane, you know the department really wants to be supportive. Especially in the circumstances…’
‘Thanks. Although I think I hear a “but” coming.’
‘Well, we were wondering…I mean, to put it bluntly, why are you still here? We thought you would have headed back to Derbyshire by now. Isn’t your BCU missing you? I imagine they’re always short-staffed up there in the sticks.’
‘Oh, they’re coping,’ said Fry. ‘In fact, I’m sure some of them will be quite happy to have me out of the way for a while.’
Blake smiled. ‘Oh, is someone stepping up in your place? I should watch your back, if I were you, Diane. That’s always good advice.’
Fry looked away. Gareth Blake was no fool. She’d almost forgotten that. Like all the best detectives, he could read between the lines. And he could listen between the words, too. Damn it, she’d have to be more careful.
‘I don’t get back here very often,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been catching up with a few people. West Midlands Police don’t have any objections to that, do they?’
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