Текст книги "Bones in the Nest"

Автор книги: Helen Cadbury

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Doncaster

A dog was barking. Barking then silent. Barking. Silent. Barking. Sean tried to turn over but his head was pinned to the hard ground. His tongue was thick, stuck to the roof of his mouth. He opened his eyes and a bright light burnt into his retina. He closed them again and the light lingered, an orange glow the other side of his eyelids. The barking had stopped but there was another sound, like an animal choking, gasping for air and exhaling in a shuddering grunt. It came again, choke, gasp, grunt. Sean tried to reach out around him to feel what was there but he couldn’t move his arms, they were trapped inside some kind of bag, a bag that rustled and slipped. This is my sleeping bag, he thought, and this is morning.

He turned his head slowly, weighed down by a dull pain, and forced one eye open. An army of beer cans stretched in front of him across the carpet, some still upright, others fallen in battle. Beyond the troops lay the enemy, snoring on the settee. Last night they had got very, very drunk. Sean was still drunk but he guessed Terry Starkey was in a worse state. He remembered trying to pace himself, keeping each can going longer until he was downing one for every two of Starkey’s. He focused on the empty cans and tried to do the maths, but the pain intensified between his eyes and he let them close again. Snatches of their conversation jerked back into play. Starkey talking about his brother’s death, how it had messed him up. Something about how that girl had to pay the price for what she’d done to his family; he knew where to find her now. He remembered Terry grabbing the front of his T-shirt and twisting it up under his chin.

‘I like you,’ he’d said. ‘You’re Jack’s lad and I’m going to trust you. But you fuck me over, Sean Denton, and I will kill you.’

Sean remembered his dad appearing in the doorway and mumbling something about the noise and how he was trying to get to sleep and Starkey letting go and laughing that loud, hard laugh, like it was all a game and they were mates, weren’t they? It was getting late when Terry Starkey asked the question Sean had been dreading.

‘So what were you inside for?’

‘Drink-driving. Caused a bit of criminal damage.’ It might have been true. He knew plenty who did it and got away with it.

‘Your old man thinks you did time for drug dealing!’ Starkey laughed and Sean brushed it aside, mumbling something about how his dad got mixed up on account of his liver disease.

‘Old bugger says the first thing that comes into his head!’

‘You must never drink and drive.’

Now Sean was remembering when Terry said that, and how he’d been wondering whether he should make something up about his prison life, but he didn’t need to because Terry started on some story about his car, the BMW, which wasn’t his at all. Sean tried to recollect what he’d said. It was something about being nobody’s chauffeur, so he reckoned the car was his now. Sean couldn’t follow why he thought this.

‘Could get a fucking house off him if I wanted it.’ Terry had grovelled in his pockets and pulled out a pouch of tobacco and some papers. ‘Got any blow, mate? I could kill for a bit of blow.’

Sean shook his head.

‘Good job I know his number!’ he tapped his head with the phone. ‘I can memorise numbers, me!’

He prodded the screen and put the phone to his ear. ‘Yo, man! It’s me. Yeah, me … No, you never said … Don’t fucking put the phone down on me … Shit.’ He dialled again and listened for a moment. ‘OK, have it your own way, I’ll leave a message. This is my message. I want some gear, can you sort that? Some nice bud, you can get it off my boy, Gary. Get a fucking taxi to the snooker hall and pick it up and bring it to me at number 9, Eagle Mount One, Chasebridge, you got that? You better have got that, because I fucking own you man. I own you … What the …? Fucking ran out of time, fucking thing’s beeping at me. Still, I think he got it.’

Now it was morning and Sean realised the delivery had never arrived. Which was just as well. He remembered going to the toilet and gulping handfuls of water from the tap. When he came back, Starkey had slumped on the settee, fast asleep. He took the cigarette out of Starkey’s hand and took off his shoes, tucking his feet up on to the settee gently, so as not to wake him.

With the light drilling directly into his brain, Sean tried to focus on what else had happened, what else had been said, and whether he’d remembered the gist of the evening. He’d had an idea. Had he followed it through? Yes, it was coming back to him; he’d used one of Terry’s trips to the toilet to find the recording function on his own phone and he’d recorded some of what Terry had been saying. He lay back and covered his eyes with his arm. That was better, darker. The snoring from the settee was steady and rhythmic. Soon Sean’s own breathing fell into the same pattern and he let sleep overtake him again.

The next time he woke it was because someone was speaking. It sounded like they were saying ‘worry folk’ but then it became clearer and Sean recognised his dad’s voice and he was saying ‘what the fuck.’ Then his dad kicked his leg through the sleeping bag.

‘’Ere you little bastard, what the fuck have you done to my living room?’

He didn’t feel drunk any more. He sat up and looked into the angry face of Jack Denton, spittle gathering between the gaps in his teeth and his hands balled into fists. He felt the old fear from his childhood and the urge to run. He was on his feet before he knew it. Something slid down inside the sleeping bag and hit the floor with a muffled clunk through the padding. He knew it was his phone and that it was important. As he bent down to retrieve it, he took his eye off his dad and missed the foot that was heading for a sharp kick to his kidneys. Sean staggered, tripped on the sleeping bag and fell, scattering the beer cans and their remaining contents across the carpet. He landed with his face next to the settee. Looking up, he saw it was empty. Terry Starkey had gone.

The room stank of beer and something sharper, which he hadn’t noticed last night. As he sat up, more carefully this time, he saw it in his father’s hand: a small bottle of Bell’s whisky, half empty, lid off. His father put it to his lips, his eyes shining, and swallowed a mouthful.

‘Good lad, that Terry, knows how to show his gratitude for my hospitality, not like you, you little shite. I thought you’d come to help me out. What you up to? Police work is it? Not in my fucking flat. He warned me you were up to summat. Taking pictures. I saw you. Where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘Your phone, what you’ve been taking pictures on. He wants it. He’ll pay me good for it too.’

Sean sat still. He needed to grab his jeans and T-shirt, find his shoes, and get past his dad. Jack took another swig from the bottle. Sean spotted one shoe behind the door and the other under the settee. The smell of whisky was the smell of his childhood and it made him want to retch. He reached for the shoe and Jack stiffened at the movement.

‘You’re not going anywhere until you give us that phone.’

‘It’s round here somewhere. You’re welcome to it. There’s nothing on it.’

Jack grinned at him. ‘You lied to me, didn’t you? Saying you’d come to tidy up. You’re just a frigging snitch.’ He gulped from the bottle again. There was only a couple of inches left in the bottom now. ‘We sort things out our own way round here.’

‘You shouldn’t be drinking, Dad. What happened to the Twelve Steps?’

‘They made me blind,’ he shouted, thumping the door frame with his fist. ‘See this?’

Jack Denton held his hand up in front of his face. ‘See this hand? This arm? Twisted out of shape, broken by a dirty pig.’

Sean knew the story off by heart. The strike, the picket line, the police, the dogs. The broken wrist and fingers that wouldn’t heal. The stiffening, the tingling and the numbness and the way the hand closed into a permanent fist. The way the alcohol took away the pain so it didn’t matter when the fist hit out at brick or glass or plaster, or flesh and bone. The last drop of whisky disappeared into Jack Denton’s mouth and the bottle hung by his side, empty. He blinked as its contents hit the back of his throat. Sean drew his knees up and tucked his feet under him. He pushed himself to standing and gathered the sleeping bag in front of him. The bottle in his father’s left hand swung up and back towards the door frame, where it shattered against the splintering wood.

Sean ran forwards, roaring words that he’d stored inside for years. Names filled his mouth and spilt out.

‘You fucking tosser! You bastard! You filthy fucking bastard!’

He slammed into his father, pushed him over, shocked at how light he was. It was like felling a feather pillow. Jack landed, gasping, on the pile of dirty clothes on the hall floor. Sean glanced back into the living room where his own clothes and shoes were strewn between the beer cans, but Jack was already getting back on his feet, the broken bottle still firmly in his hand. Sean ran, in underpants and socks, to the front door, clutching the sleeping bag. He threw himself out onto the landing and the bottle arced up and flew past him, shattering in front of the lift. He yanked open the door to the staircase and headed down to the exit.

At the bottom of the stairs he stopped. There was a pain in the heel of his left foot. When he looked back, he saw he’d left a trail of smeary blood marks. He must have stood on a piece of glass. Balancing on one leg, his back against the outer door, he peeled back his sock. There was a neat cut on the heel. He pressed it carefully to check there was no glass still in it, but it felt clean. Covering it again, he pressed it hard to staunch the bleeding. He couldn’t believe the irony. Assault on a disabled man in Eagle Mount One, forensic trail leads to suspended police constable. Maybe he should call it in himself. At least he’d get a ride back into town.

He stood there, naked except for his socks and pants, with only a sleeping bag for cover. His wallet and keys were in his jeans. All he had was his phone, his precious phone, loaded with evidence against Terry Starkey, safely at the bottom of the sleeping bag. He let his head fall back against the cool metal door. Evidence of what though? He couldn’t remember Terry telling him anything that made any sense. Maybe he should just wipe it all and go back up to his dad, talk him round, at least get his clothes back. As he slid his hand into the bottom of the sleeping bag and fished out the phone, he heard the mechanism of the lift, ascending from the ground floor. Prising open the door to the street, he glanced out. There was a man standing, hands on hips, on the edge of the pavement, with his back to the building. Jeans, bomber jacket and a thick neck under a bald head. Gary MacDonald. A passing car had covered the sound of the door opening and Gary hadn’t turned round, but there was no chance of Sean getting past him.

He let the door close. The lift had stopped. It had only gone up one floor. He couldn’t go out on the street, so he’d have to go up and he’d be trapped if he couldn’t get past the first floor landing. He held his phone tight in one hand and grabbed the banister to launch himself back up the stairs, trying to keep the weight off his bleeding heel.

At the first floor he could hear voices. It sounded like Terry Starkey and Jack. He thanked God that the access door had no window and took the stairs two at a time. He passed the second floor, pausing to catch his breath at the third. He listened again. Nothing. He risked another floor and almost didn’t make it. A door was opening onto the stairwell beneath him and he had a fraction of a second to duck into the doorway of the fourth floor landing, bracing himself as flat as he could manage.

‘Here, Terry! Look at this!’ He heard Gary’s voice and heavy feet on the concrete. ‘He’s dropped his sleeping bag.’

‘I told you to stay out there, he could have got past you when you came inside.’

‘He won’t have gone far.’

Sean gambled on the fact that Terry would be looking down, not up, and hooked his hand behind his back to grab the handle of the door. It was fire safety standard, with stiff sprung hinges. Silently and slowly, Sean prised it open.

‘He’s bleeding, look! The old bugger’s cut him up.’

The sound of their mirthless laugh covered any sound Sean made as he slipped through and closed the door softly behind him. He reorientated himself on the fourth floor. Same layout, same smell. He had to keep off the stairs now so he pressed the lift button and felt a surge of relief as it rattled up towards him. He stood to one side, ready to run, as the metal doors slid apart, but it was empty. Once inside he selected the top floor. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got there, but he couldn’t keep running, leaving a trail of blood for them to follow.

He was passing the fifth floor, straining to hear any sounds outside the lift. A door banged, but he couldn’t tell if it was above or below him. The sixth floor went by and he realised he had to do something to stop the bleeding. He stood on one leg, leaning against the cool steel wall of the lift and held his foot in his hand. There was nowhere to put his phone, and he needed both hands, so he placed it carefully on the floor. He pressed hard on his heel, hoping the pressure would help. At the seventh floor his phone lit up, the dog-bark ringtone resonating inside the metal box. Of course, it wasn’t a dog he’d heard in his sleep, it had been ringing when he woke up and he hadn’t answered it. He’d been mucking around with his ringtones last night, half cut on cheap beer and trying to bond with Terry Starkey.

The caller ID on his phone read Gav. He picked it up and answered.

‘Mate!’ Sean said. ‘Am I glad to hear you!’

‘Where are you? I tried earlier …’

‘I need some help, urgently,’ Sean’s voice was low. ‘I’m at my dad’s, I was … shit man, I’m in a lot of trouble, where are you?’

‘Doing house-to-house on the bloody Chasebridge estate. That’s why I called, to see if you fancied picking up your badge and doing some work for a change. You’re off the hook, by the way. Khan’s pulled his complaint.’

‘That’s great.’ He was passing the ninth floor. ‘Can you do me a favour? Probably a life-saving favour as it happens. Can you get to Eagle Mount One with a car? Now? I need you to get me out of here. Can you? Oh, Christ … Gav, Gavin, can you hear me? Oh fuck, fuck, fuck …’

The lift juddered towards the tenth floor, but the phone was dead, the battery empty. The lift stopped but the number ten didn’t light up and the doors remained closed. He was stuck between floors.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Doncaster

DCI Khan had turned his chair round and was sitting with his elbows leaning on the seat-back, his head resting in the cup of his hands as if his neck was too tired to support it. Another briefing was due to start in ten minutes and Lizzie wanted to make sure the AV equipment was working so she could share last night’s discoveries from the lab. Khan’s eyes were closed, so she crept past him, assuming he was as tired as she was. They’d both left late last night and somehow ended up wandering into the Taj Mahal restaurant. He hadn’t talked about the case or asked her very much about herself, but he’d opened up a bit about his own life, and she’d ended up feeling guilty about how she’d behaved towards him at the crime scene.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ His voice startled her.

‘Yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting?’

‘I have very low expectations, Lizzie, and they’re getting lower by the day.’

‘I’ll take that as an insult, I think.’

She turned on the laptop, but nothing happened to the projector, which was attached to the ceiling.

‘Do it in a different order. Try turning the projector on first.’

‘You’re wasted as a detective, Sam,’ she smiled. ‘You’d be better off in technical support.’

But he didn’t return her smile. He looked beyond her to the two boards where mirror images of Mohammad Asaf and Taheera Ahmed faced each other.

‘Yesterday, I went to see another parent who’d lost their child,’ he said, standing up stiffly and walking over to the picture of Taheera. ‘I watched the light go out in her father’s eyes. I’ve thought about your theory that it’s a family thing, a so-called honour killing, but when I saw him, I saw that whoever took her life, took his too.’

She waited, but he didn’t say any more. The silence between them was broken by the electronic whir of the projector lens opening up. She started the laptop again and eventually an image formed on the screen. The girl’s arm and the finger-shaped bruises filled the frame. She clicked forward to an enhanced image of the prints, clicked again and added an electronic Post-it note that said ‘pigskin’.

‘Gloves?’ Khan said.

‘Standard gardening gloves. No fingerprints.’

‘Like the ones in the potting shed that Chloe Toms had access to?’

‘Yes. But clean. The pattern’s the same, but the ones I took from the potting shed left traces of soil behind, which were easy to see under the microscope. This glove had never been used for gardening.’

She clicked on to another image. It could have been the wavy edge of a conch shell. When she zoomed out it became a section of the fatal wound across Taheera’s throat.

‘That’s some sort of oil, you see? It’s been picked up in the light source treatment. It may take a couple of days to run all the tests, but yesterday I discovered that the manufacturers use a specialist petroleum-based oil to finish new knives, whereas your average gardener buys an off-theshelf, vegetable-based honing oil. There’s no dirt or rust in the wound, which also suggests it was a brand-new knife. Like this one.’

Lizzie put the open pruning knife, in its clean plastic bag, on the table in front of Khan. He shuddered slightly.

‘A new knife and new gloves?’

‘Exactly,’ she said.

‘I’ll get someone to phone Halsworth Grange to find out whether Bill Coldacre has been to the garden centre recently. He might have provided the girl with new equipment, she’s only just started after all.’

‘You still think she did it?’

Khan shrugged. ‘She didn’t deny it.’

‘So she’s spoken?’

He shook his head. ‘Either she’s mad, or clever, I can’t decide. I was in there for four hours with her yesterday and she didn’t utter a word. She wouldn’t answer any questions, but she did draw this.’

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

‘Who is it?’ Lizzie said.

‘I don’t know. It’s not a great work of art. I’ve got one of the constables putting it through EvoFIT to see if it throws up a name.’

‘Do you think she saw this person?’

‘Hard to say. But she drew it with her right hand.’

‘So you believe me?’

‘Possibly.’ He rubbed his beard and she could see how tired he was. ‘Yesterday, I was being harassed by the duty solicitor and her probation officer to either charge her or let her go. The probation officer said we could have her recalled to prison if we think she’s breached her licence. The sighting of her on the Chasebridge estate would give us enough to get her locked up.’

‘She seems very vulnerable.’

‘More vulnerable than Taheera Ahmed, who’s dead?’ he said. ‘More vulnerable than her grieving family?’

Lizzie flicked through her slide show and avoided eye contact with Khan. She couldn’t get Chloe Toms’ numb expression and bony ribs out of her mind.

‘I’m not an ogre, Lizzie,’ he sighed. ‘You’re right. We haven’t got enough to hold her. When I came back from the restaurant last night, I arranged her transport and she went back to York.’

‘To the hostel?’

‘Yes. At least we know where she is. I’ve asked the North Yorkshire force to keep an eye on her and let us know if she does anything unusual. Thanks, by the way, for dinner, I appreciated it,’ he was rubbing his beard again. ‘Once she’s over the shock, we’ll try again. I’m sure she knows something.’

Lizzie was relieved, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. She still had to put the notes from Donald’s work into the next slide show. This promised to be a long briefing, with three cases to cover. Two homicides and an arson attack had sent Doncaster’s crime statistics into orbit and Commander Laine wasn’t happy.