‘How are you feeling?’ Della asked.
‘Took your time asking, didn’t you?’ I teased.
Della looked hurt for a few seconds, before it sank in that I was at the wind-up. ‘Listen, Brannigan,’ she said, pretending to be stern, ‘I don’t have to be here. I’m not on duty. I’m here out of the goodness of my heart, you know.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, meaning it. ‘I’m impressed. I’ve never known you go this long without a cigarette voluntarily. Actually, I don’t feel too bad. A bit woozy, that’s all. And my head’s throbbing. And now I’m awake, they’ll probably give me something for that. At least I know I’ll be out of here in a few days. How’s Crazy Eddy handling it, being locked up in a cell?’
Della stiffened to attention again. Her face shifted from concerned friend to alert copper. ‘You know who this guy is?’
‘Why? Don’t you?’
She looked faintly embarrassed. ‘As it happens, we don’t. He won’t say a word. He had nothing on him that would identify him, and his prints don’t seem to be on record. Who is he?’
‘His name’s Eddy Roberts. He’s an ex-Para. He got invalided out a couple of years after the Falklands war because he was out to lunch and not coming back. He’s supposedly been working all over the globe as a mercenary. He’s been back in Manchester since Easter. Apparently working as a hired gun. Among other things.’ I stopped, suddenly exhausted.
‘Kate, I know you’ve been through it, and I’m sorry to have to keep on at you. This isn’t the time to take a formal statement, but this is really important information. How do you know all this? Have you been chasing him?’ She had the good grace to look ashamed of herself.
I gave one of those laughs that turns into a cough halfway through. ‘No, Della. He was chasing me, remember. The reason I know so much about Crazy Eddy is because his wife and kids told me. Eddy Roberts used to be married to Cherie Roberts. The woman he blew away outside the post office on Tuesday.’
That was revelation enough to shatter Della’s official cool. ‘You mean, that wasn’t a professional hit job? It was a domestic?’
‘It was a hit job all right. Cherie had found out about the child porn racket. And I expect she threatened that she’d spill the beans to me. The fact that Eddy used to be married to her was, I suspect, totally irrelevant. If anything, it probably made it more exciting.’
‘And that’s how you got involved? Through Cherie?’
I was growing wearier by the second, but I forced a smile. ‘I thought you weren’t taking a statement?’ Della started to apologize but I waved it aside. ‘Only joking, honest. No, I got involved because Davy came home stoned out of his mind.’ I gave Della the thirty-second version of events around Oliver Tambo Close. I’d just got to the bit about interviewing Wayne and Daniel when we were interrupted.
She was only in her mid-twenties, but the night sister was fierce. ‘Is the patient awake?’ she demanded. ‘Chief Inspector, I gave you strict instructions to ring for a nurse if the patient showed signs of coming round. You’ve got no right to interrogate her on my ward without my permission.’
‘It’s my fault,’ I butted in. ‘I wanted to know what had happened.’
The sister busied herself with my pulse. ‘You’re in no fit state to discuss it,’ she said firmly. ‘Chief Inspector, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You can come back after Mr Rocco has seen the patient and if he decides she’s fit to be interviewed.’
Della got to her feet meekly and winked. ‘See you soon, Kate,’ she said.
‘I hope so,’ I sighed. ‘Oh, Della – before you go…Sister, can I ask the officer one question?’
The sister smiled, unexpectedly. ‘If you must. But keep it short,’ she added, frowning pointedly at Della.
‘The van. What sort of state is it in?’
‘Amazingly enough, it’s just superficial damage. You’ll be relieved to hear it’s not a write-off, according to Bill last night.’ She edged towards the door. ‘Thanks for your help, Kate.’
I watched her retreating back while the sister bustled about doing sisterly things to my reflexes. She asked me who the Prime Minister was, and I told her about the pain, so she gave me some pills once she’d finished her neurological observations. The last thing I remembered as I drifted into sleep was being grateful that I hadn’t written off the Little Rascal. It was only seven months since another homicidal nutter had sent my last company car to the great scrap yard in the sky. Any more of that, and the insurance premiums were going to be higher than the price of a new set of wheels.
The next time my eyes flickered open, I thought I was hallucinating. There, sitting on the uncomfortable chair, brown hair flopping across his forehead, eyes intent behind his glasses, was Richard. Seeing me waken, a slow, joyful smile spread across his face. I’d never seen a more welcome sight. ‘Hiya, Brannigan,’ he said. ‘You’re not fit to be let out on your own, are you?’ He stretched out an arm and gripped my right hand tightly. The bruises sent out a protest bulletin on all frequencies, but I didn’t care.
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ I said. ‘This is all your fault anyway.’
‘I had a funny feeling it was going to be,’ he said, grinning. ‘I see the blow to your head hasn’t improved your grasp of logic. They tell me you’ve not got brain damage, but I told the consultant different. He said there was nothing they could do about the state you were in before the accident. So I’m just going to have to live with it.’
‘Did you get bail, or was it Group 4 that escorted you to court this morning?’
‘The police withdrew their objections to bail, and they let me go without conditions. Ruth says they’ll drop charges once they’ve nailed the real guys in the black hats and cleared me. I came straight here, you know. I didn’t even go home for fresh clothes and a joint. You did a great job, Brannigan.’ He released my hand and dropped to his knees, hands clenched in supplication. ‘How can I ever repay you?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ I said. ‘You can start by giving me a kiss.’
He jumped to his feet. ‘I’ll have to close my eyes,’ he said, mock-seriously.
‘I look that bad?’ I demanded, suddenly discovering a new anxiety. I put my hand up to my head, discovering a thick turban of bandage that extended halfway down my forehead.
‘Two lovely black eyes, two lovely black eyes,’ he sang. ‘And a whopping great bruise on your jaw. Linda Evangelista won’t be worrying about you taking her place on the catwalk for a while.’ Before I could say anything more, he stooped over me and kissed me gently on the lips.
‘Call that a kiss?’ I snarled.
It got better after that.
When he finally came up for air, he said softly, ‘I love you, Brannigan.’
‘Don’t go getting soft on me,’ I murmured. ‘You’re only saying that because I got you out of jail.’
‘And you took care of my kid. I’ve heard all about what went on. Bill came to court this morning and told me how you’d ended up in here.’
‘Speaking of which,’ I interrupted before he got hopelessly sentimental in the way that only cynical journos can. ‘Where is Davy?’
‘Alexis took the day off to look after him. They’ve gone off to some fun palace this morning. She told Bill she’d meet me here…’ he glanced at his watch. ‘In about ten minutes, actually.’
‘God, you’d better not let him in here if I’m as much of a sight as you seem to think I am. He’ll have nightmares for weeks.’
‘Brannigan, you’re talking about a kid who thought Dracula was a fun movie. I don’t think a couple of bruises and a heavy-duty headscarf are going to freak him out. He knows you were in a car crash. The only thing I’m worried about is what he’s going to tell his mother.’
Epilogue
On the first day of Davy’s summer holidays, the three of us giggled our way along Blackpool prom on the open top deck of a tram. I was wearing a baseball cap that said ‘Kiss me slow’. Tacky, I know, but it cov
ered the uneven hair growth. At least it wasn’t stubble any more. I’d been less than thrilled to discover I had a bald patch where they’d had to shave me when they stitched up the hole that Moustache’s tripod had made in the back of my head. The hair seems to be coming back just fine over the scar, but it’s knackered my attempts at growing my hair. I’m back to short and spiky. Passé, sure, but I hadn’t had a lot of choice. And I didn’t look too much like a punk now the deep bruising had finally faded.
Davy had insisted on coming back north for part of the summer because he’d had such a good time at half-term. I can only presume he gave his mother a highly edited version of events, since she made no objection. We’d spent most of the day at the Pleasure Beach, only giving up on the white-knuckle rides when Richard dumped his lunch down the drain after a spectacular trip round the Grand National.
Now we were heading for the tower. Richard had decided that physically being on top of the world was the best way to symbolize the fact that as of tomorrow he’d officially be a free man. ‘I can’t wait,’ he said as we queued for the lift.
‘I didn’t think you were into views,’ I said.
‘No, for tomorrow, stupid. I can’t wait to hear the prosecuting solicitor saying they’re dropping all the charges against me.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Me too.’ It had been an interesting few weeks. In spite of his misgivings about my information, Geoff Turnbull had put full surveillance on Terry Fitz, Jammy James and the chemical kitchen. They’d swooped in the early hours of Friday morning. They’d actually caught Terry Fitz red-handed in a stolen Mazda MX5 halfway down the M40 with trade plates and five kilos of crack in the boot. A dozen bodies had been remanded in custody at Saturday morning’s Magistrates’ Court. According to Ruth, nothing had come up in the interviews that even remotely implicated Richard or me. The police had even managed to establish that James and his team of dealers still had no idea who had driven off in a ‘stolen’ car with a boot full of crack. Best of all, the police seemed to think they wouldn’t need me to testify in court, which I reckoned significantly increased my chances of celebrating my thirtieth birthday. After all, Crazy Eddy wasn’t the only hit man in Greater Manchester.
Speaking of Crazy Eddy, he’d been charged with murdering Cherie and attempting to murder me. According to Della, it looked like he was also going to be charged with a couple of other street shootings in Moss Side just after Easter. He was still doing the Trappist monk routine with all of the coppers who’d done their brains in trying to interview him. He hadn’t even asked for a solicitor. Interestingly, it turned out that Terry Fitz had been in the Paras with Crazy Eddy, which was how Eddy had got involved as spotter for the car stealing racket. The police also suspected that Jammy James’s outfit was responsible for recommending him to the child-porn merchants as a hit man.
There was another connection between the two teams. It turned out that James’s mob were supplying the designer drugs for the kids to the child-porn gang in exchange for videos they could sell on through their own network. Or, in the case of one of Terry Fitz’s cronies, hang on to for their own sick purposes. Which explained the mysterious Polaroid that had slipped down the side of the seat in the Gemini coupé.
The house in Oliver Tambo Close had been a proper little gold mine for the Vice Squad. Not only had they put a stop to the racket, they’d found the porn makers’ mailing list, investigation of which was currently causing marital difficulties from Land’s End to John O’Groats; or rather, from an executive housing estate in Penzance to a croft on the Shetland Isles. Served them right too. The only bleak piece of news was that the two middle-aged bastards who’d made most of the profits from the sleazy trade had legged it at the first sign of trouble. The word is they’re somewhere on the Algarve, playing golf.
And the police had finally released Andrew Broderick’s Leo Gemini turbo super coupé. In his shoes, I’d have been less than thrilled at being deprived of one of my company’s flagship motors for so long, but Andrew was a happy man. More than two months had passed since Richard and I had started doing the groundwork to expose the fiddle that the car dealerships were up to. And not a single one of the cars we’d purchased had been reported sold to his finance company. Which meant Andrew had been absolutely right about the scam, and with every day that passed without the cars being notified, he had more ammo to fight the war for his new distribution system.
Not only that, but the vague hunch I’d had had paid off in spades. With all the aggro there had been the day after the bank holiday, I’d completely forgotten Julia was supposed to be sending me a fax. When I finally got out of hospital, it was sitting in my in-tray, buried in a pile of correspondence that Shelley had been carefully nurturing for me.
What I’d asked Julia for was a company check on both Richmond Credit Finance and the chain of car dealerships that had been the main target of our investigation. It wasn’t difficult to come by the information. The only reason we don’t have it on-line ourselves is that it’s more cost-effective for us to get the info from Josh than to subscribe to the appropriate database. Anyway, when I’d been able to get my eyes to focus properly, I’d compared the two sets of directors. Surprise, surprise. The managing director and principal shareholder of Richmond Credit Finance was the wife of the managing director and principal shareholder of the garages, an interesting coincidence that is currently occupying some of the working hours of Detective Chief Inspector Della Prentice.
So, instead of trying to bully us into cutting our bill, Andrew was keen to make sure we felt Mortensen and Brannigan were properly rewarded for our efforts. I wasn’t about to argue with him.
After the tower, there was nothing for it but fish and chips. I suggested beating the traffic by going back to Harry Ramsden’s in Manchester, and the idea was supported by two votes to one. To take Davy’s mind off his disappointment, we challenged him to a race back to the car. We let him win, of course. He looked much more appealing than the Rolls Royce silver lady sitting on the bonnet of my slightly shop soiled, midnight blue Leo Gemini turbo super coupé GLXi. Some days you eat the bear.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I couldn’t have written this book without help from several sources. In particular: Diana Cooper, Paula Tyler and Jai Penna all contributed invaluable legal expertise and background information; Lee D’Courcy was generous with specialist knowledge in several key areas; Alison Scott provided me with medical information; Sergeant Cross at the Court Detention Centre kept me on the straight and narrow; Geoff Hardman of Gordon Ford (Horwich) filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the motor trade; and Brigid Baillie provided constructive criticism and encouragement throughout. It would have been a lot less fun without the Wisdom of Julia, the G & R team and the four-legged friends – Dusty, Malone, Molly, Macky, Mutton and Licorice.
Although the book is identifiably set in Manchester and other Northern cities, and many of the locations will be familiar to those who know the patch, all the places and people involved in criminal activities are entirely fictitious. In particular, there is no post office in Brunswick Street, nor any club quite like the Delta. Any resemblance to reality is only in the minds of those with guilty consciences.
About the Author
Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she lives in Cheshire.
Crack Down is the third of six novels featuring Kate Brannigan, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 1994.
Val is also the author of three tense psychological thrillers featuring criminal profiler Tony Hill. The first of these, The Mermaids Singing, was awarded the 1995 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, while the second, The Wire in the Blood, lends its name to the acclaimed ITV series featuring Robson Green as Tony Hill. She has also written two stand-alone thrillers, Killing the Shadows and A Place
of Execution, and five novels featuring journalist-sleuth Lindsay Gordon.
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By the same author
The Last Temptation
The Wire in the Blood
The Mermaids Singing
The Distant Echo
Killing the Shadows
A Place of Execution
Kate Brannigan Novels
Star Struck
Blue Genes
Clean Break
Kick Back
Dead Beat
Lindsay Gordon Novels
Hostage to Murder
Booked for Murder
Union Jack
Final Edition
Common Murder
Report for Murder
Non-fiction
A Suitable Job for a Woman
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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HarperCollinsPublishers 1994
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