Then, with bewildering suddenness, it was over. While the salesman was still speaking, most of his assistants switched their attention from the audience to the platform. With astonishing speed, the boxes that remained on the dais disappeared into the back of the van. By the time his closing speech was over, the platform was bare as my fridge the day before I hit the supermarket.
I worked my way back to the door, joining the punters who were slowly coming back down to planet earth to the depressing realization that they’d been comprehensively ripped off in a completely legal way with no comeback. By the time I made it outside the hall, the satisfied murmurs had turned into discontented mutterings, growing in volume as people began to examine the contents of their blind buying spree. My taxi was waiting, and I didn’t hang around to watch them turn into a lynch mob. Neither did the sales crew. As my taxi pulled away from the kerb, I saw the van and the two cars move across the car park. By the time the crowd got angry enough to do anything about it, the lads’d be halfway back across the Pennines.
I pondered all the way to Manchester. It was still almost too slender even to be called circumstantial, but all my instincts told me I was following the right track. I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed the handover of a parcel of illegal substances. I just hoped that it wasn’t wishful thinking that was shunting my instincts down the trail of Terence Fitzgerald.
It was nearly twenty to nine when I abandoned the Peugeot on a double yellow line a couple of streets away from the sprawling court complex round Crown Square. I was cutting it fine, since visiting ended at nine. I’d covered my back by phoning ahead en route from Sheffield, telling the duty inspector I’d been delayed by a puncture but that I would definitely be there within visiting hours. Looking on the bright side, I’d only have been allowed fifteen minutes anyway. I kicked off the tart’s shoes and pulled on the pair of Reeboks I always keep in the car, yanked off the hair band and shook my wavy auburn hair free. I grabbed the plastic bag I’d packed in Richard’s bungalow, then I jogged round to the back of the Magistrates’ Court building.
I slowed down as I entered the covered walkway that cuts into the ground floor of the building, and into the range of the video cameras. I didn’t want to look like I was storming the building. I pressed the door intercom buzzer. ‘Can I help you?’ asked a voice with more static than a taxi radio.
‘I’m here to visit a prisoner. Richard Barclay. I’m his girlfriend,’ I said.
‘Go through the double doors to the lift and press the button for the seventh floor,’ the voice told me as the door buzzed and the lock was released.
The lift door opened on a different world from the spiffy smartness of the courts. No wood panelling or cool marble floors here. The paintwork was chipped and dirty, the floors pocked with cigarette burns, the walls adorned only with anti-crime posters to intimidate the visitors. I was signed in by a cheerful police officer who ushered me into a tiny cubicle, with two low stools bolted to the floor. The cubicle was divided in half by a metal-topped counter beneath a thick perspex screen. On each side of the counter, there was a telephone handset. I stared through the screen. The other side was identical, except that there was no handle on the inside of the door. I could get up and go any time I wanted, but the prisoner didn’t even have that amount of control. I glanced at my watch. It was just after quarter to.
The door opened and Richard walked in, giving a depressing little wave. He sat down, and I found myself noticing all the things I had come to take for granted. The smooth, fluidity of his movements. The way his smile starts on the left side of his mouth before becoming symmetrically cute. I blinked hard and nailed a smile on. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I picked up the phone, waving at him to do the same thing. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,’ I heard through the earpiece. It wasn’t an accusation. His voice sounded strange, disembodied but immediate, not like a normal phone conversation.
‘Sorry, but it was your fault I’m so late. I was out there on the mean streets working for you,’ I said with a ghost of our usual sparring.
‘How’s Davy?’ he asked.
I swallowed. ‘He’s fine,’ I lied, hoping it didn’t show. ‘He’s in bed asleep.’ That bit was true at least.
His eyebrows rose in perfect arcs, just like Paul McCartney’s. ‘Before nine o’clock? On a Saturday night?’
‘Alexis runs a tight ship,’ I said confidently. ‘She’s having so much fun childminding that she’s worn him out. Movies, computer games, swimming, enough thick shakes to eliminate the EC milk mountain. Or should that be lake?’
‘Depends if it’s gone sour yet,’ he said. ‘Is he missing me?’
‘When he has the time to notice you’re not there,’ I said drily. ‘I’m the one that’s missing you.’
This time, the smile only made it halfway. ‘I feel like Tom Jones in “The Green, Green Grass of Home”,’ he said. He rubbed a hand over his face. He looked exhausted.
‘You don’t look like him, thank God,’ I told him. ‘They treating you OK?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess. I’ve got a cell to myself, which is an improvement on last night. And the food’s just about edible. It’s the boredom. It’s doing my head in. I’d kill for a decent book and a clean shirt.’
I waved the plastic bag. ‘Clean shirt, boxers, socks and a couple of books. Alexis chose them.’ He looked bemused. I wasn’t surprised. ‘She says it doesn’t mean anything’s changed between you,’ I added.
He relaxed. ‘Thank God for that. I can stand most things, but I don’t know if I could bear to go through the rest of my life being grateful to Alexis. Thanks, Brannigan. I appreciate it.’
‘You better had,’ I growled. ‘I don’t do this for my clients, you know. You’re going to be working flat out till Christmas as it is just to pay me.’ I brought him up to speed, stressing how tentative it all was. That didn’t stop him looking like a kid who was expecting Santa to turn up with a ten-speed mountain bike and a Sega Megadrive.
‘OK, I hear you. Gimme the bottom line. Are you going to get me out of here in time to spend some time with Davy?’ he asked. The trust I could read in his eyes pushed my stress levels into the stratosphere.
‘I sincerely hope so.’ I had a horrible feeling that if I didn’t, my failure would mean more than one disappointed kid.
Leaving Richard wasn’t something I’d relished. But the fresh air outside the court building was. I breathed deep, staring up at the sky, not caring that there was a blur of light rain in the air. I can’t remember the last time I felt so low. I checked in with the baby-sitters and Chris told me Davy was still spark out. I drove round by Terence Fitzgerald’s house, but the place was in darkness and there was no car outside. I contemplated a bit of burglary, but I knew it was madness. The second rule of successful burglary is: Always make sure you know enough about their lives to know when they’re likely to come back. I didn’t know nearly enough about Terence’s nasty habits. And I didn’t relish the thought of being trapped on the top floor with no visible means of escape.
I didn’t feel like going home yet. I gunned the car engine into life and cruised back into town. Almost without thinking, I headed for Strangeways. In the long shadow of the Victorian prison commerce thrives. The narrow streets are packed with wholesalers’ warehouses, lock-ups and shop fronts, selling casual clothes, electrical goods, jewellery, beauty supplies and furniture. They’re mostly family businesses, and the ages of the businesses are like the strata in a geological map. The Jews were here first, then the Cypriots, then the Asians, then a handful of boat people. We’re expecting the Bosnians any day now.
A lot of the business that goes on in Strangeways is entirely legitimate. And then, a lot of it isn’t. A diligent Trading Standards Officer spending a Sunday poking around the market could find enough infringements to keep a court busy for a week. They regularly do. Only nobody ever answers the summonses.
On a Saturday night, Strangeways looks as empty, dark and m
oody as a Hollywood film set. Except for the Jewish café, that is. Formally the Warehouse Diner, it’s an unpretentious dive frequented by the traders, petty criminals and occasional visitors like me. It’s the only decent eating place outside Chinatown that stays open till four in the morning, which makes it handy for all sorts of reasons. Besides, they do the best salt beef sandwiches in town, and the best fry-ups. Some dickhead nominated it for one of those ‘cheap and cheerful’ good food guides, which means that every now and again a bunch of tourists arrives to gawp at the regulars. I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere, though if you want certain items, you have to pick your time carefully. The rabbi’s a regular visitor, and the mornings he’s due there’s no bacon butties and only beef sausages.
I’d hit a lull; the early trade had eaten and gone and the nighthawks weren’t in yet. As I’d expected, there were a few familiar faces in the diner. The one I was most pleased to see was Dennis. He waved to me to join him and his two buddies, but what I wanted to talk about wasn’t for public consumption. I shook my head and sat at a table on my own. As my tea and sandwich arrived, so did Dennis. ‘What do you know, Kate?’ he greeted me, pulling out the chair opposite me.
‘Not a lot. Life’s a bitch and then you die,’ I said wearily.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Life’s a bitch and then you marry one.’
‘That’s no way to talk about the love of your life.’
He grinned. ‘Me and the wife, we’re modern. Into all the latest fashions. That’s what keeps a marriage alive. These days we have an S&M relationship.’
I knew I was walking into it, but I walked anyway. ‘S&M?’
‘Sex and meals.’ Dennis roared with laughter. It wasn’t that funny, but it was great camouflage. Now everyone would think I was just another victim of Dennis’s funny stories.
‘Nice one. You know a bloke called Terence Fitzgerald? Lives on the Quays. Drives a black Toyota.’
‘Terry Fitz? We were in Durham together.’ He didn’t mean on holiday. Durham jail is one of the meanest, bleakest places a man can do time. They don’t send you there for nonpayment of fines.
‘What was he in for?’
‘A blag with a shooter. He was the wheels man.
Like Handbrake, only nasty. They never got him for it but he run over an old dear when they was having it away on their toes after a job in Skelmersdale, and he never stopped. Slag,’ Dennis added contemptuously.
‘He been out long?’
Dennis shrugged. ‘A year or so. I don’t know what he’s doing these days.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘He’s working as a floor man for an outfit doing hall sales.’ I handed Dennis the crumpled flyer. ‘This outfit.’
Dennis nodded sagely. ‘This is his brother-in-law’s team. Tank Molloy. He married Fitz’s sister Leanne. Good operation he’s got there. Makes a lot of money. And he does it all dead legal. He shafts them, but he shafts them within the letter of the law. The BBC had a team following him round for weeks, trying to turn him over, but they couldn’t get nothing on him except for being immoral so they had to back off. Burly bloke, hair like a poodle, terrible taste in ties, that’s Tank. He’s usually the top man.’
I raised one eyebrow. ‘The top man?’
‘The one that does the patter.’
I nodded. ‘Sounds like him. Any drug connection?’
Dennis looked shocked. ‘What? Tank Molloy? No way. He’s an old-fashioned villain, Tank. He’s like me. Wouldn’t touch drugs with a bargepole. I mean, where’s the challenge in that?’
‘What about Terry Fitz?’
Dennis took his time lighting a cigarette. ‘Fitz has got no scruples. And he don’t give a shit who he works with. If he’s got in with the drug boys, you don’t want to tangle. He’s sharp, Fitz. The only thing he’s stupid about is shooters. He thinks they’re a tool of the trade. He wouldn’t think twice about blowing you away if there was just you standing between him and a good living.’
14
It’s a piece of cake, being a lawyer or a doctor or a computer systems analyst or an accountant. Libraries are full of books telling you how to do it. The only textbooks for private eyes are on the fiction shelves, and I don’t remember ever reading one that told me how to interrogate an eight-year-old without feeling like I was auditioning for the Gestapo. It didn’t help that Alexis was standing in the doorway like a Scouse Boadicea, arms folded, a frown on her face, ready to step in as soon as I stepped out of line.
Davy sat in bed, looking a bit pale, but otherwise normal. I figured if he was well enough to wolf scrambled eggs and cheese cabanos, he was well enough to answer a few simple questions. Somehow, it didn’t work out that straightforwardly. I sat on the bed and eventually we established that he was feeling OK, that I wasn’t going to tell his mum and we’d negotiate about his dad at a later stage. Already, I felt exhausted.
‘Where did you get the transfers from?’
‘A boy,’ he said.
‘Did you know the boy?’ I asked.
Davy shook his head. He risked a quick glance at me from under his fringe. I could see he was going to grow up with the same lethal cuteness as his father. However, since I’ve yet to discover any maternal instincts and I’m not into little boys till they’re old enough to have their own credit card, the charm didn’t work on me. I stayed firm and relentless. ‘You don’t usually take presents from strangers, do you, Davy?’
Again, the shake of the head. This time, he mumbled, ‘He wasn’t a proper stranger.’
‘How do you mean?’ I pounced.
‘Daniel and Wayne knew him,’ he said defiantly. ‘I wasn’t going to, but they said it was all right.’
‘Were you playing with Daniel and Wayne?’
This time he nodded. His head came up and he looked me in the eye. He was on surer ground now. Daniel and Wayne were two of the kids from the council estate. He knew I knew who he was talking about. I stood up. ‘OK. In future, don’t take things from people unless you know them. Is that a deal?’
Looking stubborn rather than chastened, he nodded. ‘OK,’ he dragged out.
‘I’m really not cut out for this game,’ I muttered to Alexis as I left.
‘It shows,’ she growled. Walking down the hall, I heard her say, ‘You going to lie in your pit all day, soft lad? Only there’s a pair of skates at Ice World with your name on, and if you’re not ready in half an hour I’m going to have to go on my own.’
‘Can’t we go later, Alexis?’ I heard Davy plead.
‘You’re not going to lie there half the day, are you?’
‘No. But I want to go and watch my dad’s team playing football this morning. We always go and watch them when I’m here.’
Silence. I bet standing on a freezing touchline watching the local pub team kick a ball badly round a muddy pitch was as much Alexis’s idea of hell as it was mine. I smiled as I headed through the conservatory and back into my own territory. It was nice to know that even Alexis got stiffed now and again. I pulled on last night’s jeans. I opened the wardrobe and realized I wasn’t going to be able to take a rain check on my date with the iron for much longer. I’d hire someone to do it, but on past experience it only causes me more grief because they never, but never, get the creases in the right places.
Irritated, I grabbed a Black Watch tartan shirt, a leftover from my brief excursion into grunge fashion, hastily abandoned when Della told me I looked like a refugee from an Irish folk group. At least it gave me an excuse to wear the battered old cowboy boots that are more comfortable than every pair of trainers I possess. I put a white T-shirt on under the tartan and headed out the door in search of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.
I crossed the common to the rows of four-storey council flats where Cherie Roberts lived. After all this time, I’m still capable of being surprised by the contrast with the neat little enclave where I live. At the risk of sounding like Methuselah at twenty-eight, I can remember council estates where the Rottweilers didn’t go around in pairs for s
ecurity. Oxford isn’t famous for its pleasant public housing, but I had school friends who lived out on Blackbird Leys when it was the biggest council housing estate in Western Europe, and it was OK. I don’t remember obscene graffiti everywhere, lifts awash with piss and shit, and enough rubbish blowing in the wind between the canyons of flats to mistake the place for the municipal dump. Thank you, Mrs Thatcher.
I walked on to the corner and looked down the narrow cul-de-sac, trying to remember which block Cherie’s flat was in. I knew it was on the top floor and on the left-hand side. I’d know it when I saw it, but if I could avoid climbing six sets of stairs, I’d be happier. There was nobody around to ask either. Half past nine on a Sunday morning isn’t a busy time on the streets where I live. I set off, chewing over what I knew of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.
Cherie was a pale thirty-year-old who looked forty except when she smiled and her bright blue eyes sparked. She didn’t smile that often. She was a single parent. She hadn’t ever been anything else in practice, even though she’d been married to Eddy Roberts for eight years. Eddy was a Para who’d fallen in love with violence long before Cherie ever got a look-in. They’d married in a moment of madness when he was waiting to be shipped to the Falklands to help win Mrs Thatcher’s second term. He’d come back with his head full of Goose Green and gone just crazy enough for them to invalid him out. He stuck around for the few days it took to impregnate Cherie, but before Daniel was much more than a tadpole, her soldier of fortune was off fighting somebody else’s war in Southern Africa. He dropped in a year later for long enough to give her a couple of black eyes and another baby before he vanished into Central America.
Davy is the reason I know all this. He’d been coming up to visit regularly for a few months when Cherie turned up on my doorstep one night. Davy had obviously been boasting about my brilliance as a private eye, for Cherie had a task for me. She explained, right up front, that she couldn’t afford to pay me in money but she was offering a skill swap. Her cleaning and ironing for my detecting. I was tempted, till she told me about the job. She wanted me to find Eddy. Not because she wanted him back, but because she wanted a divorce.