by Nicky Black
‘What you up to, then?’ he ventured.
‘Camping,’ said Carl, keeping his eyes lowered and walking on down the street, the stick running over their legs and back to the walls and railings of the front gardens.
Tommy swallowed a pang of guilt; guilt that wasn’t his to bear. The child was fatherless these last five years, just like him.
When Carl was out of sight, Tommy jumped down from the wall.
‘What did Smartie want, like?’ asked Frankie.
‘Nowt,’ said Tommy. What could he say? That Paul Smart wanted to be his new business partner? Joint bank accounts? Champagne with Paul Smart at night clubs with telephones on the tables? ‘Just keep it to yourself, all right?’
‘Aye, aye, I’ll keep shtum,’ said Frankie. ‘He’s a heed-the-ball, mind.’
Tommy hardly needed to be reminded.
As Frankie drove away, Tommy stepped into his dark hallway and crept upstairs, pushing open the door to the baby’s room. He looked down over the edges of the cot. She slept with her mouth slightly open, her dimpled hands twitching in dream. He kissed two fingers and placed them on her perfect, button nose.
In the bedroom, he slipped off his jeans and T-shirt and slid into bed beside Sam, only a sheet covering her ivory back in the sticky dawn. He traced a finger down her arm and she stirred, hitting out behind her with a ‘Gerroff!’
He put his arm over her body, filling his nose with her damp neck, curling his body around hers.
Her hand took his, and she kissed it, putting it under her chin where she held it tightly until sleep took her again and he felt her grasp loosen.
His family.
Through the open window, he heard the chiming of the stick on railings once more: little Carl Logan back on his patrol of the street. Try as he might, Tommy couldn’t erase from his mind the image of Carl’s dad, Billy, lying on the ground, riddled with bullets, Tommy’s own father standing over him with the gun in his hand.
He held Sam tighter to him, easing the spreading sense of shame.
‘Love you,’ he whispered, and he closed his eyes.
SUNDAY
PEACH
The scuffed trainer rested amid the circular stains of countless mugs of tea on Peach’s desk, the bag of money lying open at his feet. He still wore the long Mac over his shirt and jacket, his attention to appropriate summer attire hardly his top priority. There was nothing he could do, they’d said at the hospital. He should go home and get some rest.
As if he could rest.
He stared at the greenish glass screen of a computer that had appeared on his desk a few months earlier. It served no purpose other than to offer a distorted image of his own face. He’d never switched it on. He had everything he needed in the filing cabinets and the archives. In his head. The invitation to the computer course in his in-tray had gone unanswered since Easter.
The shadow of a figure drew his eyes to the window which overlooked the wide corridor of the ancient police station. There was no natural light, the grey Venetian blinds broken and bent, the imprints of fingers exposing a thick layer of dust. He was told that fancy new “vertical” blinds were coming. There’d been a meeting about it.
The figure’s face was at the window and Peach quickly dropped the trainer into the bag at his feet before the door opened and Detective Superintendent McNally stood in the doorway in a pair of grey shorts and some sort of Hawaiian shirt. His black hair was greased back as always, collecting in a bunch of short curls at the nape of his neck. The dyed hair looked absurd on a man approaching sixty, and Peach wondered how his boss had the metal to walk into a chemist and buy the stuff. Perhaps the wife got it for him. Perhaps he had no choice in the matter. Some called Mrs McNally assertive; Peach thought her a ball-breaker.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ McNally’s accent was southern, some might say posh.
‘Could ask the same of you, sir.’
‘Paperwork, bane of my bloody life,’ said McNally.
And an opportunity to get out of some household chores, thought Peach.
‘How’s Sally?’
Peach thought he heard a cheery tone to his boss’s voice. He kept his eyes lowered. Sally was in an induced coma, machines breathing for her, her brain barely functioning.
McNally sighed. ‘Look at the state of you, go home, will you?’
Home. Peach couldn’t think of anything worse. He’d never liked the place, but his wife had wanted a bungalow, detached from any other properties. Terraces were for a different class of people, and a detached house had been out of their range of affordability.
‘Just as soon as I’ve finished up here,’ he muttered, pushing some paper around his desk.
‘What did you get last night?’
‘An hour at the hospital,’ said Peach, rubbing at his eyes.
‘I meant the raid.’
Peach had to think for a moment, fatigue hanging like a fog in his head. ‘Sound equipment, decks.’
‘Drugs?’
Peach chewed at the inside of his cheek and McNally plunged his hands into his pockets.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to take you off these rave things. You know the procedure. You should take some leave, people will understand.’
Peach’s chin jutted in offence. He’d hardly taken a day’s leave in his life and he wasn’t about to start now, not while the crime kept going up and the number of bodies required to fight it kept going down. It was resources he needed, not a bloody holiday.
He eyeballed McNally. ‘Got someone else to put on it, have you?’ He stopped there. He shouldn’t speak to his superior like that, but McNally was non-confrontational. A wimp.
McNally flushed a little and stammered something about getting a temporary replacement Detective Inspector as soon as the next sick note came in. Peach’s DI had been off for a month already – stress they said. That’s what happened when you put women in charge, either off on maternity leave with their feet up or struck down with the pressure.
‘You need to stay well away,’ McNally said. ‘Get Murphy to do the legwork, that’s what he’s here for. But there’s no crime here, not unless …’
Not unless she dies.
Peach watched McNally bite back the words and begin to back away.
‘Ten minutes and I want you out of here,’ he said. ‘And don’t make me say “that’s an order”, but it is.’
Peach conceded with a nod of the head, eyes following McNally as he left the office and disappeared down the corridor.
When his boss was out of sight, he glanced down at the trainer hanging out of the carrier bag. It should be bagged and evidenced, but who was to notice? It would only lie on a shelf while more important crimes took priority.
With his DI at home watching Richard and Judy, he’d been trying to track down the organisers of these parties alone for the best part of two months. The system was so slow that by the time he got wind of a party, got the officers and resources approved and organised, the damn thing was over. Last night had been a one-off, the city unusually quiet and plenty of officers chewing their nails with nothing to do. After months of whinging, McNally had finally agreed to a temporary secondment, a sergeant from outside the area who could do some undercover work – someone the organisers wouldn’t recognise. And look who he’d got – DS Andrew Murphy, a detective Manchester CID had no doubt wanted rid of, a greasy-haired streak of piss with dopey eyes and the enthusiasm of a sloth.
His eyes settled on a school picture of Sally on his desk, aged around ten, taken just before everything went pear-shaped. She’d decorated the frame herself with crepe paper flowers and leaves – red, yellow, and green now faded to insipidness. She grinned rather than smiled, her mousy hair brushed over to one side, curling cutely at her ears.
He couldn’t look, and he turned away from the face, so like her mother’s. As she’d grown up, Sally had become more like Kathleen in both appearance and character – Kathleen’s old character, the one she had when he first
met her.
He felt the weight of his sleepless night and was about to stand when the office door opened, and DS Murphy stood in the doorway. He was a short, stocky man of around thirty, with eyes that sunk at the edges in a way that reminded Peach of the rabbit from the Magic Roundabout. Murphy was wearing the same clothes as last night and Peach wondered if he’d been to bed at all. The hat was gone, and his basin-cut brown hair hung like a pair of curtains over his face.
Peach frowned and waved him away.
‘Just came to see if you were all right, sir,’ said Murphy, entering the office, and closing the door.
The nasal Mancunian accent grated on Peach, the “sir” coming out like “soh”, but Murphy’s failure to act on his gesture irritated him more. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘And don’t come to this office dressed like that again.’
Murphy looked down at his baggy jeans and sweatshirt. ‘Got to blend in, innit?’ he said. ‘Can hardly turn up to a rave in me best clobber, soh.’ Murphy threw himself into the chair opposite Peach’s desk, hands clasped across his chest, legs spread wide. ‘How’s erm …?’ His voice tapered off as Peach’s eyes warned him not to cross the line into personal matters.
Murphy seemed to understand, and his expression changed from concern to its usual nothing. ‘Got info on your organiser, if you want it.’ He lifted his hips and thrust his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, pulling out a scrap of paper and leaning forward with it.
Peach snatched the paper from him and looked down at it. ‘Is this it?’ A scrawled list of two names, nothing else. Tommy, Jed.
‘Yup.’ Murphy slunk back into the chair. ‘Took me all night to get them, boss. Ain’t easy with this lot. Tight as a nun’s fanny, I’m not kidding.’
Peach pinched the bridge of his nose with distaste.
‘That’s the point, though, ain’t it?’ added Murphy.
‘What’s the point? I see no point.’
‘Well, it’s all top secret, soh.’
‘I’m quite aware of that. That’s why we have detectives.’ Peach handed the piece of paper back to Murphy. ‘I’ll need more than this,’ he said, ‘and it’s sir, if you don’t mind.’
‘No problem, mate. How about “chief?”’ Clearly “sir” was out of his reach.
‘Please yourself,’ said Peach. As long as he didn’t call him “Guv.” They weren’t on an episode of The Bill.
‘Sound.’ Murphy yawned and stretched, saying that was him off.
‘Off?’
‘You told me to piss off, chief, so I’m pissing off.’ Murphy shrugged his logic at him.
Peach blinked his dry eyes at his sergeant, rubbed his tongue over his teeth. Now he had names he wanted more.
He pushed back his chair. ‘Get me more on these organisers,’ he said.
‘Wha? It’s Sunday, boss, they’re all in fookin’ bed!’
‘Do it, or I’ll have you back in Moss Side before you can say barm cake. And less of the language,’ he added with a stern look.
Murphy threw his head back, clearly wishing he’d never come in to see how his boss was after all. ‘Prefer your stottie bread anyway, chief,’ he said. ‘They’re more spongy, know what I mean?’ He indicated the word with his fingers and thumb, then dragged himself from the chair.
Peach’s stomach rumbled a plea for food. He felt simultaneously sick and hungry, anxiety ebbing and flowing in waves. ‘And get changed, you look like a bleeding hippy,’ he grumbled. ‘Smell like one too.’
‘Brutal.’ Murphy was at the office door, where he turned and held up two fingers in the peace sign. ‘Have a groovy day, chief,’ he said.
When the door had closed, Peach scooped up the bag from his feet, took the trainer from it and held it up. It was all he had to identify the loser who organised these all-night raves. He’d been indignant at first when McNally assigned him the job – a PR exercise to appease the city’s angry residents who called at five in the morning complaining of the noise. It wasn’t even a case he could investigate properly, the warehouses empty by the time he got there, the organisers long gone, counting their cash. But now, as he stared at the trainer in his hand, he felt the bitter surge of repulsion, the same repulsion he felt for rapists and murderers.
Hearing McNally’s voice in the corridor, he opened the desk’s top drawer and dropped the trainer into it, locking it with the bunch of keys that sat forever heavy in his trouser pocket. The handle of the door moved, and the carrier bag of money was under his Mac before the door opened and McNally’s black head appeared.
‘Home!’ McNally ordered, opening the door wider and standing back.
Peach rose from his desk, hugging his Mac close to him as he left his office.
Five minutes later, he sat behind the wheel of his car, the morning sun dazzling his tired eyes. He pulled some of the bank notes from the bag and held them up, fanning them out and dropping them like floating leaves onto his lap. Profit from his daughter’s mangled brain.
A loud bang on the window startled him. Trevor Logan, the eighteen-year-old bane of every copper’s life, was staring through the driver’s window, a manic smile across his face. Here was everything Peach hated about places like Valley Park. Trevor’s face was raw with booze despite his tender years, his body emaciated, his eyes tiny holes of worthlessness. Trevor wavered, no doubt high on his latest fix as he stared at the cash on Peach’s lap. Peach pushed the money back into the bag, shoving it under the passenger seat as a splash of spit hit the glass. Another fist to the window, and Trevor was walking away, his stride hyper, his filthy mouth effing and blinding at nobody at all.
‘Understand them,’ the social workers said. But Peach would never understand. Trevor Logan had been dealt a shit hand, his father murdered in front of his eyes. But everyone was dealt a shit hand at some point in their lives. Plenty of people witnessed horror, death, and pain, but not everyone turned out like Trevor Logan.
TOMMY
The red squares of the radio alarm clock glowed 12.31 p.m. when Tommy peeled his eyes open. Senses recovering one by one, he pulled a pillow over his head. The vacuum cleaner droned, the baby howled, the theme tune to Countryfile blared from the television which meant only one thing: Sam’s mother, Denise, who thought a few years living in Northumberland afforded her some sort of authority on all things rural.
He turned onto his back, looking up at a familiar water stain on the ceiling. He liked to stare at it, creating the faces of aliens from its mushrooming outline.
His meeting with Paul Smart seemed like a murky dream now. Tommy had walked away, he’d agreed to nothing and nor would he, and Paul Smart would find some other mug to do business with. But the conversation had set his mind ticking – lights, bouncy castles, Frankie Fucking Knuckles. His heart chimed. He could picture it clearly: the rave to end all raves, something he could be proud of. Jed was right after all, he decided; they needed to change tactics, but they couldn’t step down, they needed to step up.
The familiar ambiance of his house helped dispel the foreboding he’d felt the night before. He felt himself blush, feeling foolish to have felt any fear in what was probably Paul Smart’s tenth meeting of the day. He was Sam's uncle, and even Paul Smart wouldn't hurt his own niece. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, sitting for a minute, the steady hammering of next door’s windows being boarded up adding to the unremitting noise. He rose and stood in front of the warped wardrobe mirror, wiping at the sleep that matted the corners of his blue eyes, sticking his long, spidery lashes together. ‘Lassies’ eyes’, his class mates had taunted.
His father’s eyes.
His skin was white as cotton, punctuated with dimpled cheeks that had ensured a life of getting away with anything from cadging sweets from the tuck shop to blagging weed off some serious hard men from South Shields. Tommy ran his hand over his head, giving it a good scratch at the back. Only when his mother had shaved off his Leif Garret-like curls at the age of twelve had he looked like someone from Valley Park should: hard
, poor. She couldn’t be arsed with the nits anymore, she’d said, the letters from the school, the knocks on the door from the anti-nit do-gooders. So off it came. He’d grown to like it, eventually, and everyone knew he was soft as clarts underneath the hard-looking exterior.
He breathed deeply, jutting out his ribs and slapping his bare, white chest like a primate about to do battle with his mother-in-law. He grinned cheekily at his scrawny frame, mimicking a body builder’s pose – first left, then right. He might be poor, he might be useless, but he was all man.
Opening the bedroom door, he tiptoed across the landing, sliding stealthy fingers around the bathroom door handle, but the vacuum cleaner rumbled into the downstairs hallway, quickly followed by the peep-toe shoes of Sam’s mother. Her hair was swathed with black dye, a band of white cotton wool framing a face thick with make-up. An old towel hugged her shoulders, held together with a clothes peg, protecting the silk blouse and pencil skirt that was her usual uniform. Denise was elegant, he supposed, in a Cruella De Vil sort of way. She could afford hairdressers, he knew that; any excuse to poke her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.
Denise glanced up the stairs and Tommy froze, mid-tiptoe, looking down into her fake face. It was Paul Smart’s face, only female. Sort of.
Paul’s older sister had been estranged from her brother for years. They lived barely a mile apart now and yet they couldn’t bear the sight of each other. Sam, ever protective of her mother, ever hateful of her Uncle Paul, wouldn’t even hear his name spoken in her presence.
Aware of the baggy boxer shorts sliding down his backside, Tommy waved a timid hand.
‘Christ almighty.’ Denise switched off the vacuum cleaner with her foot and marched back into the living room. ‘I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil,’ he heard her say, purposefully louder than necessary.
Sam’s face appeared at the doorway. That face: hazel eyes and round cheeks, smooth and tanned by the sun. Sometimes he thought she was so gorgeous he could eat her up.