by M A Comley
Before getting in the car, he searched his car boot and retrieved a steel bar he always kept hidden under a blanket. He placed it in the passenger foot well and leaned it against Julie’s seat.
“Just in case we need it.”
They reached the estate approximately twenty minutes later. Julie gave Hero the directions to the victim’s mother’s house. They were both on high alert, scanning the area nervously as they travelled through the deserted streets. “Christ, it’s like a ghost town. Is it always like this?”
“Probably,” Julie mumbled. “There, that’s the house we’re after.”
Hero pulled into a parking space outside a tiny terraced house and hesitated before he got out of the car, unsure whether or not he should take the bar with him. He relented, deciding it might provoke more aggravation than it deflected.
He rapped his knuckles on the wooden front door and wiped his hand down the side of his trousers.
“Just a fucking minute.” A woman shouted on the other side.
The door opened to reveal a woman in her late thirties, wearing a low-cut T-shirt and a mid-thigh skirt. Her eyes immediately ran the length of Hero’s taut body, and he cringed. If any other woman had surveyed him the way she had, he probably would have welcomed the attention, but the thought of this woman finding him attractive simply turned his stomach and sent acid racing up to the back of his throat.
“Mrs. Barrett?”
“Ms. Who wants to know?”
Hero produced his warrant card and introduced himself. “DI Nelson and DS Shaw. Mind if we come in?”
“Yeah, I do. What do you want? You lot are always coming round here badgering me about Jez. Why can’t you just fuck off and leave us alone?” Her heavily made-up eyes bored into his, challenging him.
“I’d rather go inside, but if that’s the way you feel, Ms. Barrett, I regrettably have to inform you that your son Jez Barrett has been murdered.”
The woman laughed and tilted her head back. “Wait a minute. What’s the date? April Fool’s Day was last month, wasn’t it? Go on, piss off, the pair of you.” She tried to shut the door on them, but Hero stuck out his foot to prevent it from closing.
“I’m not, I repeat, I’m not in the habit of giving people news like that without it being true. Now, can we come in?”
The woman dropped her bravado and stood back to let them in. Julie closed the front door behind them, and they walked into the tiny lounge at the rear of the property. The woman immediately crossed the room and picked up her mobile. She punched in a number, and before Hero could ask her to put it down, she spoke to someone on the other end. “It’s Trish. Get over here, now.”
When she hung up, Hero asked, “Who was that?”
She glared at him. “A friend. Is there a problem with me calling a friend?”
Hero smiled tightly and let out the breath he’d been holding in. “No problem. Actually, I was going to suggest it.”
The woman wasn’t reacting as a mother who’d just learned of her son’s death should be. Hero felt awkward, tongue-tied even, about how to proceed. He looked over at Julie, who merely shrugged back at him.
“Would you rather wait until your friend arrives before I tell you what happened?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.” She sank into a leather sofa and lit up one cigarette after another for the next five minutes or so, until a youth in his late teens barged into the room to join them. Two other boys followed, looking as though they had just crawled out of bed after only getting about an hour’s sleep between them.
Julie inched closer to Hero when visitors entered. He could hear her ragged breathing. Or is that mine? He recognised the other members of the Krull Gang immediately. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“What’s going on? What’s the filth doing here?” the taller one asked Ms. Barrett.
Ignoring his question, she scowled at him and asked, “Where’s Jez?”
“Out on a job. Why?” With a confused expression, he glanced first at Ms. Barrett and then at Hero, who decided to remain quiet and continue to assess the proceedings.
Ms. Barrett nodded in Hero’s direction. “He’s just told me he’s dead.”
The leader stormed across the room towards him, but Hero stood firm. “Is that right? He’s dead? Did your lot do it?”
Hero placed his hands in front of him and motioned for the young man to calm down. “Please, keep calm. Contrary to belief, no, we didn’t do it. You say he was out on a job. What job?”
“Like I’m going to fucking tell you. He works for me and was out on a job, end of. Where? How did he get done over?”
Hero looked over the youth’s shoulder at the dead man’s mother. “I was just about to inform Ms. Barrett of the circumstances of her son’s death. Nonetheless, it would help us in our enquiries if you told us what type of job he was on last night.”
“I ain’t fucking helping the filth. You get to the bottom of why he was killed,” he leaned into Hero, their noses inches apart, then added, “or I swear, I’ll come and hunt you down.”
“Are you threatening a police officer?”
The leader glanced over his shoulder at the two shell-shocked youths leaning against the wall. “Did you hear me threaten the nice police officer, boys?”
“Nah, didn’t hear a word,” one of the youths said with a shrug.
Hero squinted, and he and the leader of the gang glared at each other, sizing up one another, for a second or two. “He was found stabbed in the street, not far from here. If you’re not willing to co-operate and tell us what job he was carrying out last night, then the case will come to a halt right now. It’ll sit in the vaults as yet another unsolved murder. We seem to get a lot of them around this area. Any idea why?”
A smarmy smile lit up his peaky-white face. “Might do. Push this case aside, mate, and I’m warning you, your life won’t be worth living.”
Ms. Barrett stood up and tugged the youth by the arm. “Shut the fuck up with your mind games, the pair of you. I want to know what happened to Jez. Tell me?”
The leader of the gang moved back to the entrance of the lounge and leaned against the wall next to the other members. Hero tried to refrain from showing how relieved he was.
“I can’t really tell you any more than I have done already. Jez was found stabbed near here sometime yesterday evening. Without knowing what his movements were last night, there is little we can do to track down the murderer. There have been a few incidents involving prostitutes in this area lately. Do you know anything about that?” His question was aimed at the gang members, who all eyed him with contempt.
“For fuck’s sake, tell him,” Ms. Barrett ordered, but her words fell on deaf ears.
Hero turned to Julie. “Then our job here is finished. We’ve done what we had to do, Ms. Barrett. I’m sorry for your loss.”
He nudged his partner ahead of him, and they started to leave the room, but the leader’s arm shot out to block their path. “And that’s it, is it?”
Hero nodded. “We’ll work on the case as and when we have time in between more pressing cases already on our agenda.”
“Like that snotty bitch and her son’s case, you mean.”
Hero’s eyes searched his. “You know about that case?”
The leader laughed. “Only what I’ve read about it in the papers and seen on the news. Terrible incident. I hope you catch the bastards who did it.”
Hero held up his thumb and forefinger. “We’re this close to catching the bastards.”
The leader held his gaze for a split second, then dropped his arm to let them pass. They left the house and jumped in the car, and neither of them spoke until they were a couple of roads away and out of harm’s way.
“Can you pull over?”
Hero stopped the car, and Julie’s car door shot open. She thrust her head out and vomited in the road. He handed her a tissue to wipe her mouth after she’d closed her door again. “Bloody hell! I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.” Julie ran a tre
mbling hand through her hair.
“Too bloody right. I thought we handled it rather well, don’t you?”
“I have to admit, you called his bluff well, come the end, sir.”
Hero had to admit that this encounter with the gang had gone his way for a change, but he doubted if their next meeting would go as smoothly. Maybe the Krull Gang’s guard was down after learning about Barrett’s death.
Chapter 18
During the trip back to the station, Hero decided that the time had come to start rounding up the other gang leaders in the area for questioning.
He gathered the team around the minute they got back to the incident room. “Listen up, guys. It’s about time we started digging deeper into this gang-rivalry lark. Foxy, let me have the list of gangs we pulled up the other day, will you? Any luck with the CCTV footage from last night, by the way?”
Shaking her head, Foxy searched for, then handed him a file from the pile on her desk. “No good on the footage. Most of the cameras in that area were broke. Was that intentional? I’m not sure yet. I’m looking into it further.”
“Bugger, I was kind of relying on that to verify what we suspected already. I’m still keen to go down the gang territory route. Let’s start pulling these guys in. Leave the Krull Gang. Julie and I have already had a word with them this morning. They were cagey about what Barrett was up to last night. The leader told us he was working but refused to say what he was actually doing. I’m really not sure what else we can do at the moment, except interview the other gang leaders. Start rounding them up and pull them in. Someone might crack and shed light on who this damn girl is. She’s the key to all this, the prostitute murders plus Jez Barrett’s murder.” Hero walked over to study his notes on the board. He picked up the pen and added Jez Barrett’s name to the list of victims. “Who is she? And why the bloody hell is she proving to be so elusive?”
Powell cleared his throat. “How do you want us to go about this, sir?”
“Care to clarify that, Powell?”
“What I meant was, do you want the gang members in here at the same time, staggered interviews, or what? Also, can we ask uniform to help us pull these guys in? My thinking is that if we split up, we’re going to be spread too thin. We’ll need backup to bring them in for questioning. I doubt they’re going to come peacefully.”
“Good point. I’ll organise it with the desk sergeant right away. Now, how many people are we talking about here?” It was a rhetorical question, and he flicked through the file. Three other gangs competed for control of the area. He instructed Powell, Foxy, and Coltman to tackle the lesser gang leaders and told the team that he and Julie would deal with the leader of the Tidy Gang.
“We’ll pull them in together. Reception might not like it, but tough. While questioning the gangs, don’t come right out and ask about this girl. Do it craftily. Use the information Foxy has collated about each gang and try and get out of them the lengths they would go to in order to gain territory. I doubt they’ll come out and say what their intentions are, but gauge the interview. Tease and prod the information out of them. Under no circumstances mention this girl. See if they do. Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir,” the team responded as one.
“Any problems, or if anything piques your interest that you think I should know about, contact me immediately, okay? Right, let’s get this show on the road.”
In his office, the phone rang, and he sprinted into the room to answer it. “DI Nelson. How can I help?”
“Have you caught my wife’s murderers yet?”
That was an opening line he hadn’t been expecting. He recognised the man’s voice, but didn’t let on.
“I’m sorry, to whom am I speaking?”
“Oh, come on, Inspector, we both know you’re not stupid,” the man responded with a slur.
Hero checked his watch. Rupert Hartley was already drunk at half-past eleven in the morning.
“Mr. Hartley, I was going to ring you today with an update.”
“Sure you were,” Rupert replied tersely.
“It happens to be the truth. Thanks for saving me the trouble. We’re still no further forward with the case, I’m afraid.”
“That’s unbelievable. It’s been almost two weeks now. If I have to take it to your superiors, Nelson, I will do.”
In some ways, Hero was hoping he would carry out his threat. It might give him the go-ahead to pick up the gang with an armed response team in tow. On the other hand, it would also give his superiors ammunition to fire him for not being able to bring the family’s known killers to justice.
“As it happens, my team are starting to interview suspects today.” It was a half-truth, but Hartley didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, how convenient, Inspector. In that case, I better let you get on with your interrogations,” Hartley slurred before he rudely hung up.
Hero looked down at the phone and muttered, “You better had.”
Before leaving his office, he decided to give Dave Wheeler a call. “Wheeler? It’s DI Nelson.”
“Ah, the Inspector calls. With good news, I hope?”
“Not exactly. More for tapping you up about any news you might have heard on the grapevine.”
“About anything in particular?”
“Anything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Inspector. Give me a hint on subject matter, and I’ll give you an honest answer.”
Hero drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Another murder perhaps.”
“Another prostitute murder?”
The journalist seemed surprised by the revelation, which helped to put one of Hero’s other theories to bed. He’d suspected Wheeler had carried out a revenge attack on behalf of Hartley. But if he didn’t know about Jez Barrett, he couldn’t be the murderer. Unless he’s pretending to be confused.
“Nope. One of the Krull Gang was murdered last night.”
Wheeler was silent on his end of the phone line for a second or two before he let out a long, low whistle. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
Hero frowned. “Why on earth would I do that, Wheeler?”
“Never mind. How did it happen? And no, I haven’t heard anything from my snitches about this. I’m surprised about that as much as you.”
“He was stabbed, close to the estate.”
“Well someone had guts, to cut him down on his own doorstep like that. Any evidence left at the scene, DNA maybe?”
“Nope. You wouldn’t be fooling with me, would you, Wheeler?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.”
“I’m talking about what my partner and I overheard you and Rupert Hartley talking about at the funeral. Some kind of revenge scenario.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, man. You heard nothing of the sort. I’m sure if you turned up at any funeral of a murder victim, you’d hear the same kind of conversation time and time again. It doesn’t mean we’d act upon it.” Wheeler sounded genuine enough, almost offended, in his retort.
Appeased, Hero said, “I’m sorry. You understand my asking the question, don’t you?”
“I suppose so. But please be assured that I am not in the business of vigilantism, although I can quite understand why people do it. Have you been in touch with Rupert lately?”
“As it happens, he just rang me. He was, um, how shall I say this, a little worse for wear, perhaps.”
“What? He was drunk? At this time of the morning? Damn, I better call round there later to show him some support. I’ve been neglecting him, pressure of work and all that.”
“Thanks. I’ve got a busy day ahead. Otherwise, I would have called around to see him myself. I better get on, witnesses to question, et cetera.”
“I’ll get in touch if I hear anything, although you never know, someone might be doing your job for you and knocking the gang off one by one.”
A thoughtful Hero hung up the phone and glanced out the win
dow at the Manchester skyline. Maybe Wheeler is right. Normally, when a civilian in a group was targeted, his task would be the safety of the rest of that group. So why not now? What’s making me hesitate? The fact that the gang was the absolute pits caused him to rethink constantly. He could just imagine the outcry if news ever got out into the public domain that he was protecting the gang. He couldn’t have that. They were tough enough and ugly enough to look after themselves, and maybe getting a piece of their own medicine for a change would put a stop to them setting out to make other people’s lives miserable.
He shook his head, disagreeing with his inner voice, and mumbled as he stood up to leave his office, “Yeah, and that’s a pig with wings just passing the window.” He stepped back into the incident room. “Where are we at? Have you got all the names and addresses sorted out? Everyone know who they’re bringing in?”
His team nodded and showed him their thumbs after each question.
“Okay, people, let’s haul their arses in. Don’t forget—don’t mention the girl. If either one of them mentions her, let me know immediately.”
Chairs scraped as the team stood up to put on their coats. Hero scanned their faces. Most of them were painted with a reluctant determination that made him proud of his team. “Come on, Julie, let’s go and pick up Trevor… what was his surname again?”
She hitched her handbag strap over her shoulder and shook her head at him. “Munroe, sir. I hope you’re going to take that metal bar with you. I think we’re going to need it.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. It’s the Tidy Gang we’re dealing with this time, not the Krull Gang.”
Julie turned her back on him and headed out of the incident room. Under her breath, she replied, “Yeah, it’s the second notoriously nasty gang in Manchester we’re dealing with, not the first, this time. That’s all right, then.”
Hero caught some of what she prattled and smiled as he followed her out of the room. She wouldn’t be Julie if she weren’t complaining about something.
Chapter 19