I Know You (DI Emma Locke)

by Louise Mullins

  I swear the world stops briefly, the people nearby fall silent. Even the birds cease to chirp. Then a woman steps forward, keys jangling in her hand, breaking the silence. ‘You’ll want to speak to the man who hit him.’ She tilts her head in the direction of the male driver.

  I detect the trauma in his eyes as I approach him. ‘I swear I… not enough time to stop… it happened too quick… he appeared in front of me, but he was looking back at this girl.’

  I motion for one of the response officers to breathalyse the man and take him straight to the station for questioning, uncuffed.

  The woman taps me on the shoulder, and I whip my head back. ‘Sorry, officer. The girl…’ She points a shaking finger to the pavement. ‘She was arguing with him over there. She shoved him into the road. He didn’t stand a chance.’

  Ashleigh is slumped forward staring down at her hands clenched tight in front of her face when I return to Hawthorne Avenue, where I left her. She looks up and I give a gentle shake of the head. Her face contorts, her raw cry piercing the air.

  When I tap lightly against the window of the marked car, a signal for the uniformed officers stationed inside it to notify the custody suite to expect us, she appears more terrified than grief-stricken. I raise the see-through snap bag containing an ounce of cocaine from my vest and wait for her to deny knowing what it is, where it came from, or even why she fought with her older brother just seconds before shoving him in front of a fast-moving oncoming van as it hit the blind spot meeting the junction, either to prevent him from taking it or after forcing it into his pocket. Only she can tell me which. She opens her mouth to speak but all that comes out is a loud sob.

  She doesn’t resist as I snap a set of handcuffs over her wrists. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Joshua Owen . . .’

  She lowers her head, shoulders shaking, her jeans stained with tears.

  Jones taps me on the shoulder once I’ve eased her into the back of the van and shut the door. ‘Not now.’ I shrug him off.

  ‘I couldn’t stop her. She was gone from the house the moment I returned.’

  I lower my voice to a whisper. ‘A suspect died while we were in the process of arresting him. We’re fucked.’

  HONOUR

  Croydon, London

  I pull over, reversing into a space right outside the block, stop the car, and hit the horn, waiting for my passenger to appear.

  Carmen limps to the car leaning on her stick, eyes red, makeup too thick beneath them. She positions it in the footwell, it clicks and clacks as she does.

  I don’t say anything when she lights up. I open my window a crack to avert the cigarette smoke and breathe in the icy air through the gap, watching plumes of vapour mist the windscreen as I exhale. A light pattering of drizzle kisses my nose and forearm. I steer away from the kerb and out onto the road.

  ‘I thought we’d try the playground,’ she says, flicking ash that blows back through the window, dusting the dashboard and the knees of her expensive looking suit.

  I’m unsurprised she still smokes despite her bad health because I overheard Jerome discussing medicinal marijuana with Steven once and guessed it was because his mother smokes it. She probably doesn’t consider inhaling tobacco any worse.

  The playground where her eldest son was stabbed just four years ago.

  I nod my assent, signal into the right lane, navigate the roundabout, and slow as we meet the building traffic at the lights.

  ‘Is his phone still off?’

  ‘Yeah. The police said it hasn’t pinged yet, so it doesn’t look like Jerome’s switched it on at all since he left the house.’

  Just three days ago, if someone had said I’d be seated inside a vehicle next to Carmen I’d have laughed, but I feel we’ve reached an impasse. Our conversations have always been waspish and snappy, but since her earlier phone call she seems to have calmed, and now she’s here the awkwardness between us seems to have dissolved due to our mutual grief, a shared understanding only those who’ve lost a child can fully comprehend.

  Neither of us talk during our mission. I watch her flick the tail end of the cigarette out of the window from the corner of my eye, and turn the radio dial up a notch when she begins to click the ends of her long, manicured talons together as she wrestles with her conscience.

  Although I know she’s concerned for Jerome’s welfare, I can’t help suspecting there’s something else she’s battling to accept. After all, Jerome may have chosen to avoid his mother to protect his uncle, her brother’s whereabouts. Meaning either he or Keenan could be harbouring guilt over their motive for leaving their prospective homes, disappearing. But I get the impression Carmen argued with her son before he stormed off. That they exchanged harsh words she now regrets. That Jerome has no intention of returning until he’s calmed down. But even if I’m right, we still need to look for him, find him safe.

  When we reach the playground, I cruise past the swings at her insistence, giving us a decent enough scope of the area for a hoody-wearing lad. I want to evade the spot where Tyrell fell to the ground, thick blood oozing from his wounds and soaking through his clothes. The paramedics struggling to wrench his T-shirt from his sticky skin to inspect the slashes across his flesh, unable to stop the flow of blood.

  I lower the window to inhale the street-smog clotted wind, dry-heaving, listening to the rustle of bare branches as the swaying sycamores rub against each other, dancing to soundless chords.

  ‘Park here,’ she says, unfastening her seatbelt before I’ve even reversed into a space.

  We enter through a spindly grid-steel gate I can imagine a kid of three having the physical strength to open. The playing equipment looks ominous in the dark. The residual images I envision of kids playing, laughing, calling out to one another set my nerves on edge.

  I follow Carmen towards The Cube. A misshapen 3D square that’s been erected on an angle. The metal glinting in the streetlight.

  We’re stood beside the climbing frame, thick tubular rods raised above us in a horizontal line, shadowing the path at our feet so that it looks as though we’re walking under a large ladder. Steven used to raise his entire torso up and over the bars to prove he was just as capable as his father at pull-ups when he was just seven years old.

  Oh, how I miss those days.

  I’ve been wandering aimlessly, but I’m halted in my tracks when Carmen’s footsteps stop abruptly. ‘There,’ she says, raising one trembling hand in the air, directing my gaze to a shadowed space that causes me to involuntarily retract as I glance over to where she is pointing: to the cubby hole beneath the ten-foot high slide. ‘That’s where he was when they found him.’

  I imagine Tyrell lying there motionless, a five-foot-eleven eighteen-year-old, clothes blood-soaked, eyes set on the sky. I drag the sleeves of my coat down over my hands to disguise a shiver.

  Carmen bends slightly at the waist to rub her arms without letting go of her walking aid, leans her weight on first one foot, then the other, trying to stay warm. We continue walking together, noting the haunted look in each other’s eyes. It’s not just the cold that’s causing our skin to prickle.

  ‘Tyrell started smoking weed. Bought it off Marcus’s older sister, Leoni, to begin with. Then one day she’s out of skunk and gives him this number, tells him where to go, who to ask for. The following week the man he bought it from gives him another number, another name, another drop-off point, and he comes back with more than what he had the money for. Turns out they want him to sell the rest and split the money, so he gets to smoke what he wants when he wants on tick and they get to keep themselves out of the transaction. The next time they give him more, tell him where to go, who to meet. And in less than a month he’s kicked out of school for smoking cannabis, the police are called, they find empty rizla wraps containing crack residue in his pockets. He explains the situation but won’t give the old bill the names of the men who’ve been getting him to sell the drugs, and so he ends up on the local authority’s exc
lusion list. Can’t get a place in an education unit. Can’t get an apprenticeship without GCSEs. Can’t get a job without a reference from a college tutor.’

  ‘So he’s left with two choices.’

  She gazes at me sadly. ‘Get paid to sell drugs or get bruck up for knowing too much.’

  ‘He chose the dealers, so they promoted him.’

  She turns to me and nods. ‘How do you k—’

  ‘I saw something on TV once, about inner-city gang culture, how it begins, and ends.’

  She reaches out with one hand and pinches the arm of my coat twisting the fabric between her fingers, forcing me to look into her teary eyes. ‘They gave him a knife. Told him to protect himself while out on the street.’ The tears fall, and she releases me, turns away and rubs them dry. Mouth quivering, she turns back to me, adds, ‘He never ever took it with him. Except that day. They used his own weapon against him.’

  I look away. Watching such a stoic woman crumble before me is almost too much for me to bear. ‘Steven was killed with a hunting knife.’

  ‘Tyrell’s was a serrated blade used for gutting fish.’

  ‘Where do they get them from?’

  She shrugs. ‘Army surplus shop, I suppose.’

  I reach for her hand and feel the jagged edge of her uncertainty and fear grip my insides and we both shudder as the fat raindrops fall heavier, smacking the steel frame of the slide and causing it to echo in a synchronised tune, reminding me of when Steven was a toddler and made music by banging an upturned pan with a wooden spoon. As he grew older, he started listening to rap and writing song lyrics on the walls of his bedroom with permanent marker. I wish I hadn’t made such a big deal about painting over them now I know I’m never going to get the chance to read them or moan at him about them again.

  I could argue that he’d been influenced by his friends to leave the school grounds at lunchtime, to get lippy with me when I asked him to tidy his room. That he’d been conditioned by the music he listened to suggesting that drug-taking, cheating on your spouse, and peer-to-peer violence are normal occurrences, experiences you should expect as you mature into masculinity. But listening to Carmen recount the day the police knocked on her door, informing her of her firstborn son’s death, I realise it’s not that easy to place blame.

  ‘Tyrell chose that life.’

  ‘And Natalie, did she deserve to get shot?’

  ‘No one deserves to die. But did she do wrong by them? I don’t know, Honour. I feel like I don’t know my own kids at all. I live with them. I teach them right from wrong. I make sure they’re fed, clothed, kept warm, and sheltered. I help them with their homework. We go out for day trips every weekend. I care for them when they’re sick. I never miss parents evening or school plays. I take them on holiday once a year to Southend or Margate. I stick by my kids, make them laugh, listen to their problems, and try to find a resolution to them. But I don’t even know where Jerome could be, who his friends are, aside from Leighton and Marcus.’ She practically spits out the final name as though it’s poison.

  We both fall silent, listening to the distant cooing of a bird. Her stick sinks into the grassy verge as we traipse the wonky cracked path.

  We finally head back to the car, having walked the entire perimeter of the playground without coming across a single sign Jerome was a recent visitor, that his regular presence here wasn’t just a misjudgement on Carmen’s part.

  Carmen offloads the last dregs of her impactful story in one seemingly fluid paragraph as we squelch through puddles four inches deep. ‘Tyrell chose to buy drugs to fund the taking of them. No one forced him into the lifestyle. He got greedy, they gave him more work to do. The jobs got heavy, someone noticed what he was doing, who he was working for, or got pissed off that their kid brother or nephew was buying weed off an eighteen-year-old and decided to take his life, thinking it would bring down the local trade. If he hadn’t taken his knife with him that day, he might still be alive, but I expect they were all carrying knives.’

  I unlock the doors and get inside, out of the hammering rain. Carmen takes longer, as though still trapped in a glass bubble of memories.

  ‘I never thought it could happen to me. I thought I was too good a mum to have any of my kids get pushed into drugs or sucked into crime. But three of them?’ She laughs, her attempt at humour causing her to cry.

  I think I’m all out of tears. The only thing I have left is a desire to watch whoever hurt Steven burn. Though I no longer have the energy to spark the flame.

  ‘The funeral’s next week.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  She nods jerkily and swallows.

  I indicate, waiting for someone to give way. I lean over the handbrake and reach out to open the glove compartment to pull out a packet of travel-size tissues which Carmen grabs from my hand when someone signals for me to pull out of the narrow parking space as I take the exit onto the dual carriageway. Meeting the escalating traffic of the A232, the radio spits out a warning about an accident on the Barclay Road.

  I allow the car to roll forward, keeping my eyes on the vehicle in front as we crawl onward. I brake hard the second I sense trouble nearby, catch a familiar flash ahead. The sirens come seconds later. I glimpse Carmen wiping her eyes, leaving smears of walnut foundation on the tissue. I turn to the side window. A blaring ambulance shoots down the road, whipping up mud and soggy leaves on its desperate journey. Carmen flips down the mirrored visor with a thump and as the traffic seems to have stagnated, I watch her retrieve a bottle of Bobbi Brown from inside her handbag. She twists off the lid and settles it inside the ashtray I refuse anyone the use of. Except with Carmen’s recent grief, her distress matching mine, the rules don’t apply.

  ‘I had no idea Keenan had done a runner until DS Maguire turned up looking for Jerome, wanting to question him about the break-in at yours.’

  ‘Water under the bridge, Carmen. The fingerprints belong to Marcus. CSI doesn’t lie.’

  ‘I don’t blame you for thinking Jerome was the culprit.’ She squirts a thick dollop of foundation onto a clean tissue, the snot-riddled, tear-soaked one scrunched up in her palm, ready to dispose of. Her hand pauses, mid-wipe. ‘Water.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I’m only half-listening, watching the idiot behind me through my rear-view mirror, edging ever closer to my bumper despite the fact we’re gridlocked, and I’ve barely moved a fraction of a foot since entering the road.

  ‘You said water.’

  ‘Under the bridge, Carmen. Forgotten.’

  ‘No. The water tower.’

  ‘Park Hill?’

  ‘Where else?’ A little bit of sass has crept back into her voice.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘He’s in the last place he knew I’d look. Kim’s.’

  ‘You think Jerome is at your mum’s?’

  ‘She lives south of the park. You can see the water tower from her living room window.’

  ‘I thought you said Keenan doesn’t get on with her.’

  ‘He doesn’t. But Jerome idolizes his granny. Though I couldn’t tell you why. She wasn’t much of a mother, preferring drugs over her own kids.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  DS MAGUIRE

  Croydon, London

  Pierce stares at me with a vacant expression on his face and I wonder briefly what his reaction might be if I were to step up to him and demand he speak. Then before I can stop myself that’s exactly what I appear to have done.

  He barely moves his lips a fraction in reply as though concerned someone might be lip-reading the circular security camera over my shoulder. ‘Shortly after DCI Evesham’s death Rawlings was promoted to SIO and Supt Callahan and the Superintendent applied to transfer over to Surrey and Berkshire respectively. So in answer to your question aside from Rawlings I am the only member of the original Murder Investigation Team.’

  ‘I thought Rawlings was brought in from another district to assist with the case involving Tyrell’s murder?’


  ‘No. Rawlings worked drug enforcement from here. He was teamed up with Evesham, Collins, and Peters to investigate Dejuan’s crew, which led to Keenan’s mate getting banged up.’

  ‘So he not only worked alongside you on the Tyrell case, I’m presuming because of the involvement of drugs in his murder, but he also ran the investigation into Steven’s father’s cocaine emporium?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nods.

  ‘Then the major crimes section experienced a massive overhaul the second Evesham died?’ I glance from Pierce to Leanne.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she says. ‘I joined the intel team in 2016. Rawlings had already been devolved by then. And Benson and Hodges hadn’t yet begun their twenty-week training schedule.’

  The beneficiary in Evesham’s death was Rawlings. ‘Collins and Peters worked here with you until Collins was caught in possession of confiscated items that they seized during a raid on a property where Keenan’s mate – still locked up – was arrested, resulting in their own convictions. Their criminal activities were publicised after they were sentenced. Collins was knifed in prison a month after arriving. Peters was released on licence three weeks ago. And everyone linked to the operation is disappearing, getting stabbed, shot, or refusing to talk. Steven, Natalie, and Sinead are the most recent victims, but if you go backwards to Evesham, and Tyrell, the one thread throughout all three cases is cocaine. It started with Dejuan and his mate’s shady business dealings. And then there’s you, the golden boy, involved in all three investigations, still working in the force after being reported on by a fellow officer who witnessed you smoking cannabis. The same substance discovered in her handbag inside a locker in the CID unit where she worked, and which is covered from floor to ceiling in cameras.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m not trying to say anything, Pierce. I’d say I’m being fairly obvious in my accusation.’