Текст книги "Bones in the Nest"

Автор книги: Helen Cadbury

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER TEN

Doncaster

‘I’ve got a feeling in my waters. And still waters run deep,’ Gav said, resting his head back and drumming on the steering wheel with his thumbs.

‘What are you on about?’ Sean stifled a yawn.

‘It’s going to be a pleasantly uneventful night. That’s my prediction.’

‘Hope you’re right. I’m knackered. I can’t wait for the weekend.’

Even though his weekend came midweek, it was still something to look forward to. They would be back on the day shift after that, at least for the next fortnight, until the pattern switched again.

Sean hadn’t been back to his dad’s since the Clean Up Chasebridge meeting. Another run of nights had left him too tired to face it. He was annoyed with himself for not visiting the estate agent either. He’d settled back into a pattern of sleeping into the early afternoon and watching chat shows with his nan. Today’s offering was slightly more challenging than most: a discussion about the death penalty for child abusers.

‘What d’you reckon to the death penalty, Gav?’

‘Don’t fancy it myself.’

‘On principle?’

‘No, just rather die in my sleep.’

‘Right.’

Sean flicked down the sun visor and checked his hair in the mirror. He was trying to grow it at the front, but it wouldn’t do what he wanted.

‘It’s a relief they’re not doing anything with that lad’s complaint,’ he said.

‘Saleem Asaf? Don’t worry about him. It’s his favourite game.’

Sean got his phone out and opened up a game of Tetris. ‘Keep him in our sights, though.’

‘Oh, aye. We’ll stick him with something one of these days. I can guarantee that.’

Sean wondered if Gav meant something legitimate, or maybe this was the sort of thing Wendy Gore had wanted him to listen out for. He didn’t have the energy, to be honest, although he couldn’t imagine himself telling her that. He was vaguely aware that the car was moving and stopping, moving and stopping. He tried to keep his eyes open, but it was so quiet, he couldn’t help himself. He was fast asleep by the time the call came through on the radio and he missed the beginning of what was being said.

‘The caller is on the first floor of Eagle Mount Two, top end of the Chasebridge estate. She says there’s been some sort of fight on the stairwell and someone’s been hurt. Ambulance is on its way. We couldn’t get much else out of her, so can you go and take a look? There’s something not quite right about this one and we need a safe pair of hands. Tread carefully.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ Gav said.

‘Do you think it’s a trap?’

Gav ground the gear stick around until he found first and put his foot down. ‘Fuck knows. Told you we were in for a quiet night.’

‘Funny.’

‘No, seriously, it’s gone five o’clock. It’s technically morning.’

Sean sat back and watched the town unfold around them. His heart sank at the thought of being pulled back to the Chasebridge estate in uniform. They skipped another amber light and were soon on the dual carriageway. Gav hit seventy, seventy-five. Sean wondered if they should have a blue light on, but he kept his mouth shut. They swung round one final roundabout and approached the estate along its west side where the four matching blocks of ten-storey flats were arranged round the square, like the upturned legs of a table. Beyond the blocks were the low-rises, with concrete walkways traversing them like shelves. They were empty for now, but the arrival of the squad car would soon bring an audience out to watch.

Gav lurched to the left without changing gear. Sean grabbed the door to stay upright.

‘It’s the second block from the main road, opposite the playground,’ Sean said.

The ambulance was already there; its crew got out of their vehicle as Gav pulled up on the pavement.

‘Gav, mate, the service door.’ Sean nodded towards the sheet metal door in the corner of the block. It hung a few inches open. ‘That’s where the stairs are.’

‘After you.’ The ambulance driver stood back.

Gav gave Sean the nod to go first. He peered into the gloom. There was no sound. He elbowed the door far enough open to get his head and shoulders through and switched on his torch. The beam picked out a pattern of brown marks on the concrete floor. He leant in further and saw the knees first: black jeans, narrow cut, and a pair of black Converse All Stars. He let the light play over the legs and up the torso. At first he thought the man was wearing a brown T-shirt, but as he held the torch steady, he saw he was covered in blood.

‘Gav!’ His voice resonated in the space and he heard a quiver of fear echo back at him. ‘Get the ambo crew in here.’

Sean flicked the beam up the stairwell to where the dawn was filtering through a murky window. Nothing moved. He edged closer, picking his way round the marks on the floor. There were three steps before the staircase turned and where the body lay, curled up like a sleeping child, one hand holding his stomach, the other resting on the concrete. There was blood everywhere, all over his hands and across the floor. His face was pale, but the underside of his cheek and neck were a dark purple.

‘Forget it, Gav. We’re too late. Way too late.’

He heard shuffling in the doorway and Gav telling the ambulance crew to stand down.

‘At least six hours,’ Sean said. ‘His skin …’

Post-mortem hypostasis, he’d learned about it at police college, even though he could never spell it. Gav was breathing heavily in the doorway, holding out a pair of latex gloves.

‘Put these on. I’ll put the call in and get the place secure.’

Sean had been leaning forward, not daring to touch the handrail or the wall, hoping for some sign of life, which was never going to come. As he straightened up, a wave of light fluttered behind his eyes and he wanted to grab the metal banister and hold on, but the rules kicked in: don’t contaminate the scene or get any blood on your skin. He blinked to focus and looked about him. Wedging his torch between his knees, he fumbled with the gloves. Light danced across the victim’s shoes, where remnants of mud and grass were wedged in the pattern of the tread. From beyond the door, Gav’s voice was urgent on the radio, but inside nothing stirred.

It felt like a long time that he stood there, three steps below the body. He didn’t need the torch now. The light was getting stronger through the upper windows. A door banged somewhere in the block and occasionally the lift mechanism ground into action. He dared himself to go nearer, to see the wound that had produced so much blood, but as he peered over the hunched up legs, he wished he hadn’t. The man’s jeans were open at the fly and his crotch was dark with a mess of deep-red flesh.

‘Christ!’ Sean looked away.

A fire door from one of the upper landings opened and Gav put his head out.

‘I’ve taped up every door to this staircase. Thank fuck the lift works. No one here yet?’

‘No one,’ Sean said.

‘It’s all right, mate,’ Gav called down. ‘Stay where you are. I think I can hear the sweet sound of backup. I’m on my way down.’

Sean could hear it too, far away but getting nearer, several sets of sirens, out of sync, harmonising for a few seconds, then splitting again. For those last few moments before the mayhem began, Sean forced himself to look at the man’s face, trying to get a clear picture in his mind of him as a person, not just a slaughtered animal. He had Asian features, or maybe Turkish. He was slim and, although it was hard to tell, Sean guessed he was nearly six foot. He wore a thin gold chain which fell inside his T-shirt and although, the curve of his cheek was already swollen in death, Sean could see he’d been a good-looking lad.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

York

‘Has anyone seen my phone?’

The laptops are set up in the dining room for the second night of the computer course. Taheera is standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips and her face like thunder. She’s looking directly at Chloe.

‘Has anyone seen my phone?’ she says again.

‘Um, I’m Kath, from the council,’ says the teacher. ‘IT trainer? I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘Taheera Ahmed, residential officer. My phone’s gone missing and I was wondering if anyone had seen it.’

Emma leans back in her chair, arms folded. ‘What you saying, T? That someone’s nicked it? We’ve been in here for the last hour. Haven’t we, Chlo?’

Chloe nods. She thinks about being in the car last night, tries to remember if the phone was there. She knows she didn’t pick it up.

Taheera is still staring at her. Seconds have passed.

‘I haven’t got your phone,’ she says.

She remembers Taheera texting before they got to her parents’ house, but not afterwards. There was a plate of Indian sweets, but no mobile phone. Chloe needs to tell her but they have a deal. A deal which says they can’t talk about yesterday.

‘Can I have a word,’ Chloe says, ‘in private?’

As she gets up, the other girls watch her. Perhaps they think she’s going to snitch on someone. Taheera is waiting in the hall.

‘So?’

Chloe is taken aback by her hostility, but she understands. They were not meant to get to know one another, step out of the roles they’d been assigned. Taheera has let herself be seen, shared a confidence, and now she’s closing herself in, trying to build up the wall between them again.

‘I haven’t got your phone,’ Chloe says. ‘I’m not a thief.’

‘Really? So where is it? I had it yesterday.’

‘I’ve never taken anything.’

‘How can you say that?’

It hangs between them. A life. She was convicted of taking a life. His name comes to her again. Jay. She doesn’t usually let it in, but yesterday she got so close. He’s whispering something to her now. Telling her to stick up for herself.

‘I didn’t see it after we left your mum and dad’s house. Maybe you left it there.’

‘Do you think I haven’t thought of that? I rang my mum and she’s looked everywhere. It’s not there.’

‘You can search my room if you want to.’

She turns and starts towards the stairs. Taheera doesn’t move at first, as if she’s deciding whether to give up, but then she follows.

Chloe opens her door and puts the light on. Her bed is made. Her clothes are folded in the drawers. She pulls the top one open and moves the few items of underwear to one side.

‘Look, here, look for yourself.’

Taheera shrinks back in the doorway. ‘It’s OK. I believe you.’

Chloe wants Taheera to say sorry, but she says nothing, just turns and lets the door snap shut on its spring. Chloe stands for a moment in the middle of her room and sees it as it is: bare and empty, no pictures of family on the walls, nothing to hint at a past and or a future. She feels weightless, like something untethered in zero gravity. Not zero gravity, Jay’s voice is saying, you know better than that. There is some gravity on the moon, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to stand there. They would have floated off into space for good. He’s right, she thinks. That’s not going to happen. The sound when the truck screamed past, every hair on her body raised, the feeling when Taheera slammed her against the side of the car, the knowledge that she hadn’t died, that she’d lived again; that’s what she has to hold on to. She looks at her face in the mirror on the back of the door and slaps her cheeks, hard. It hurts. It’s going to be OK. She’ll go back down to the IT class. She will listen. She might even take notes.

When she gets back, she’s missed something about Internet safety, but the teacher says she’ll fill her in later, right now she wants them all to look at the BBC weather site – it will remain hot for the next few days but some areas will receive occasional heavy showers – then the news. Chloe’s not interested in the national news. The website is the same as the TV news, but with more writing and even more boring. The tutor’s telling them how to search for local news. Chloe senses Emma watching her.

‘Type in a place, and you’ll get the local news,’ Kath from the council says. She suggests they all type in ‘York’. ‘What can you see?’

‘Town centre development unveeled,’ Emma reads out.

‘Unveiled. Good.’

Kath is oblivious to the fact that she’s embarrassed Emma by correcting her. Chloe understands now how this works. While Emma is busy digging some imaginary dirt from under her nail, Chloe types ‘Doncaster’ into the box. She waits, expecting the headline from the newspaper in the shop and her younger face staring back at her, but the picture on the screen is all greens and browns and the bright colours of racing silks: Residents’ Raceday and Family Fun Activities. She clicks on a triangle and the picture comes to life with the sound of horses’ hooves and a man’s voice rattling out the commentary. The tutor is flapping her hands.

‘Not just yet, Chloe, we’ll get on to the video content next session. Can you mute that? Can you?’

Emma leans over and grabs the mouse. The BBC news screen disappears, but in Chloe’s mind the horses are still rushing by on the track, as if she were a little girl again, holding on to her mum’s skirt, and her mum leaning into a man, both drunk, the man ruffling Chloe’s hair, calling her ‘sweetie’. The lesson is over. The tutor is saying that she’ll be back next week. She’s forgotten all about Chloe’s Internet safety.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Doncaster

Gav offered to finish off filling out the paperwork, while Sean drove round to the twenty-four-hour garage on the dual carriageway to fetch a couple of coffees. He needed the sugar more than the coffee, but it was the best way he knew to digest four sachets. The full circus had arrived by the time he got back: three squad cars, with their lights still going, and the Crime Scene Incident van, all parked up at the foot of Eagle Mount Two. An audience of women and children, still in nighties and pyjamas, was scattered along the walkways of the low-rise flats.

One end of the tower block was cordoned off behind blue and white tape and there were three uniforms stationed at each corner. One of them was PCSO Carly Jayson, Sean’s partner on his old beat. She was chatting with two little girls in rabbit onesies. As he watched, she lifted up her hat and ruffled her short, spiky hair. The girls laughed. He was surprised these children were up and about so early, but it had been a warm night and promised to be an even hotter day. The kids said something and Carly shook her head. He wondered if she’d told them what was behind the cordon.

Gav got into the car and helped himself to a coffee.

‘Cheers!’ He peeled back the lid, inhaling the steam. ‘Forty minutes to go: then we can down tools. I’ve given the tear off sheets to CID, but the sergeant wants us to stay put until the end of the shift, just in case, so I suggest we sit back and enjoy the show.’

Sean lowered the electric windows and the smell of bacon frying and a faint of whiff of dog shit competed with the aroma of the coffee. A black Range Rover pulled up and a man and a woman in suits got out. They headed for the service door, where a uniformed constable was guarding the entrance.

‘Reinforcements,’ Gav said. ‘They’ve brought them in from Sheffield. DCI Sam Nasir Khan and … I don’t remember her name. But he’s the one you have to watch.’

‘Oh,’ Sean said. He watched DCI Khan stride ahead, long legs like a cricketer.

The door opened and the two detectives stopped in the doorway, talking to someone inside. The woman said something to the constable on guard, who looked over to where Sean and Gav were waiting in the car.

‘What d’you reckon, Gav?’ Sean said.

Gav shrugged. ‘Drugs probably. There’s a load of gear coming in from Sheffield. No really big players round here, just these kids, getting in over their heads.’

‘You PC Denton?’ The constable who’d been guarding the service door was leaning in at Sean’s window.

‘Yeah.’

‘CID wants to talk to you. Sergeant says you know the building. The Indian one wants to look at the access points.’

‘I think you’ll find he’s Pakistani, of Kashmiri heritage,’ Gav muttered under his breath.

Sean’s legs were shaking, as if his body didn’t want to go back inside the building, while his brain was telling him it was all part of the job. He looked in through the door. An arc light flooded the stairwell and a white-suited forensic investigator was standing over the body, back turned.

‘Hang on a minute! Stay where you are. We haven’t got all the prints from the lower steps.’

He knew the voice immediately. Lizzie Morrison had worked the case that inspired him to take the leap from community support to constable. He hadn’t seen her since. She’d gone down to London, he’d heard, shacked up with some bloke, but here she was, back on his patch. His stomach flipped.

‘If we take the lift, sir, we can come in above the stairwell,’ he addressed DCI Khan. He kept his voice low, not wanting Lizzie Morrison to hear him. Not yet.

‘All right with you ma’am, if we cut round and come in above you?’ Khan’s voice boomed off the concrete.

‘Yep. Fine. Keep your eyes open, just in case I’ve missed something.’

She was staring intently at the ground as she spoke. Sean couldn’t imagine that Lizzie Morrison would miss anything at all.

One of the Crime Scene Investigators passed them some plastic shoe covers. Sean backed out of the service door and led Khan around the building to the main entrance. The battered stainless steel lift didn’t look promising. Sean pressed the call button and they put the shoe covers on. At first nothing happened, then a rattling whine from above them announced its arrival. It was cleaner than he’d expected, as if someone had recently scrubbed the floor with bleach. The smell of disinfectant intensified once the doors were closed and he was glad when they reached the second floor landing. There were four front doors leading off it. The fifth was a fire door.

‘Here,’ Sean said, and pushed it open.

They ducked under the incident tape and the voices of the CSI team came up from below to meet them.

‘Slowly. Eyes open,’ Khan led the way.

The stairs, like the lift, were surprisingly well looked after. The usual dusty corners of fag ends, crushed cans and old crisp packets had been swept up. Eagle Mount One, where his dad lived, never smelt this fresh, but here it looked as if a mop had been passed over the concrete and the handrail was smooth and clean. Something caught his eye. He stopped and bent down to get a closer look.

‘There’s a thread, some sort of cotton I think.’

It was hooked in a gap where one piece of the metal handrail had been soldered onto the next. Khan passed him a specimen bag without speaking. Sean’s heart was racing and he hoped his fingers weren’t going to shake. He could see which way the thread had snagged, so he used the open bag like a glove, pulled the thread back on itself and freed it from the jagged metal. Then he turned the bag round and trapped it like a tiny, precious snake. A gift for Lizzie Morrison; he hoped she’d like it.

They’d reached the last few steps before the first floor landing. On the next section of the staircase, another CSI was taking footprint patterns. It was Donald Chaplin. Sean heard him humming something that sounded like the tune from a car advert. Chaplin looked up and read his expression perfectly.

‘Verdi’s “Requiem”. The Agnus Dei. “Lamb of God” to you,’ Donald said.

Khan cleared his throat and Donald didn’t say any more, just went back to what he was doing and carried on humming his tune, as if he’d never broken off. Sean looked beyond him to the victim below, the body curled like a baby, a white plastic sheet placed across to hide the worst of the wounds. Sean could see how the blood had pooled in front of him like an oil slick.

‘Someone’s going to have his DNA all over their feet. They didn’t even try not to step in it,’ Khan said.

A trail of marks led towards the first floor landing. It was clear in the bright glare of the arc light that they were footprints. Each was labelled with a little white flag. The door to the first floor flats was propped open and he could see where the prints stopped abruptly at the doorway. Beyond the floor was clean.

‘How long has he been here?’ DCI Khan said.

Lizzie looked up and Sean instinctively stepped into the shadows behind the detective. This wasn’t exactly the right atmosphere for a reunion, but he still had the thread sample to hand over.

‘The pathologist reckons about eight or nine hours,’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s no ID on the body. The call came shortly after five this morning from the woman at flat three. A Mrs Armley. It’s not clear what took her so long to call it in.’

‘I think we’ll pay her a visit,’ Khan said, picking his way around the prints. ‘I’ll take the constable, he’s got a friendly face.’

Sean held up his plastic bag for Lizzie. Those familiar eyes were looking right at him. Her hair was tucked inside her white hood and he wondered how she’d got it cut under there, whether she still had the long dark bob that used to curl over the collar of her blouse.

‘Found this,’ he said. ‘Could be something. Looks like denim, maybe?’ He fought the urge to grin at her.

‘Sean?’

‘Police Constable Denton, if you don’t mind.’

‘Bloody hell. You did it! I knew you would.’

She had been the first to encourage him to apply for police college, to move up from PCSO to fully badged officer, but by the time he’d qualified, she’d disappeared to London. Khan turned round at the doorway to the first floor landing and Sean thought he saw the flicker of a smile, but it didn’t last.

‘Are you coming? We’ve got a statement to take.’

‘Thanks,’ Lizzie said. She took the bag and held it up to the light. ‘I see what you mean. It’s not quite white, more like a very pale blue. We’ll get it sent off. Check out Mrs Armley’s coat hooks while you’re in there. See if she’s got a denim jacket she does her cleaning in.’

Inside Mrs Armley’s flat, it was clear she wasn’t the denim jacket type and it seemed unlikely she’d leave a single thread of anything where it wasn’t supposed to be. All her furniture was in perfect condition; spotless as the day she’d bought it. Mrs Armley herself was about five foot tall and looked like she was in her early sixties. She was wearing a brown, nylon housecoat buttoned over her thin frame.

‘I told the young lady to let me know when they’ve finished,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a good going over.’ Her voice was soft, Irish underneath, but as if she’d been in Yorkshire for a long time. ‘I’ll have to get started soon, if I’m to get it all done today.’

‘There’s no need Mrs Armley,’ Khan said. ‘We’ll send out a specialist cleaning team. It’s very unpleasant.’

‘I quite agree. But I can’t be waiting around. If the day warms up any more, we’ll have bluebottles before we know it. And you know what that leads to, don’t you?’

The two men shook their heads.

‘Maggots.’

DCI Khan looked around the room, taking in every detail. The walls were white, the woodwork even whiter. There were no paintings or ornaments on display, except in a glass-fronted cabinet where a set of ornate, crystal glasses stood next to a pair of school photos. Two young boys, slim and freckled, with red hair and blue eyes. Sean knew the uniform. It was the Catholic high school that his own school used to fight on a regular basis.

Khan cleared his throat.

‘Is that what you’re worried about? Maggots? Now, I have an idea. Why don’t you come with us, and we can take some information down at the station? Then you don’t have to worry about the mess and it’ll all be cleared up by the time you get back.’

‘Oh no. That’s not what you do. That’s most irregular. I’ve seen it on the television. You’d only do that if I was a suspect, and I’m not a suspect am I?’

‘We just want a statement, and we want to do things properly. Our cleaning team will come, but they can’t come yet, because we’re not ready for them.’

‘Is it still there?’

‘It?’

‘The corpse.’

‘Yes. The victim’s body will be removed soon.’

‘The sooner it gets cleaned up the better. Disgusting …’ her legs folded under her as she sank down onto a brown velour settee.

‘Are you all right?’ Sean instinctively bent towards her. She was staring into space.

‘I don’t like to go out. I stay in, you see. It’s my nerves.’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Armley …’

‘I know you. Don’t I?’ She looked at him sharply.

‘It’s possible, I …’

Khan cleared his throat, as if warning him to say nothing.

‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘You look like that one off the telly. I don’t go out much. I’m phobic. But I like my programmes.’

‘Mrs Armley. We need to talk about the man out there on the stairs, about what’s happened.’ DCI Khan was pacing now, not that the room gave him much scope to pace.

‘Was it a man?’ she said. ‘Or a boy, do you think?’ She looked straight at Sean.

‘Sorry?’

‘I saw someone running. And I wouldn’t say he was much more than a boy. A fast runner.’

‘Can you describe him?’ Sean asked.

‘Dark.’ She dropped her voice to a stage whisper and nodded in Khan’s direction. ‘Like him.’

Sean winced.

‘When was this?’ Khan said.

‘Last night.’

‘But you only called us this morning.’

‘I saw him running. And I said, there’s someone up to no good. Then I couldn’t see him any more. I lost sight of him. This morning there was all this mess, footprints outside. I always wake up early, wake with the dawn. Anyway, I thought it was mud so I started to clean it up, then I stopped, when I saw …’ She fanned her face with her hand.

‘But what about last night?’ Khan said.

‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

‘And what did you see, Mrs Armley?’ Khan said, looking out of her window, as if it would all replay in front of him and tell him what he needed to know.

‘I’ve told you. I saw the boy running and then I lost sight of him.’

‘Who was he running from? Did you see anyone else?’

‘No. There was nothing else.’

When they got back outside, Gav was standing by the squad car looking at his watch, but Khan took no notice. He turned to Sean.

‘Do you think Mrs Armley was telling the truth?’

Sean was surprised the DCI was asking his opinion.

‘About what, sir?’

‘Any of it.’

‘Something odd about the way she described the body. She said “it”. Then she talked about seeing a boy running.’

‘But only after I’d told her it was male.’ DCI Sam Nasir Khan sighed and rubbed at a crease between his eyebrows. ‘I think we might need to get her in for a proper chat, which is going to be a nightmare if she really is agoraphobic.’

‘There’s not much soundproofing from the stairwells to the landings,’ Sean said, recalling the sound of footsteps running up and down, voices calling out in the night, which had punctuated his dreams as a child. ‘Unless they’ve done some improvements in the last few years, she must have heard something.’

‘Is that so? Let’s test that idea.’ Khan started to walk towards Eagle Mount One. ‘Come on, you know your way around. Let’s get out of the SOCOs way and find a flat in one of the other blocks. They must be pretty much the same. We’ll see just how soundproofed they are.’

Sean looked back at Gav.

‘I’ll be right here, son,’ Gav said quietly. ‘Just remind him there’s no budget for overtime.’

Khan was already heading up the path to the block.

‘I’ll go inside,’ he said, ‘you imagine someone’s stabbing you in the privates and we’ll see if anyone comes to save you.’

Sean thought he knew the answer to that. He also thought the chances of anyone willingly opening their front door to two police officers was slim. There was one option he could try.

‘Hang on a minute, sir. I’ve got an idea.’

He took out his phone and dialled. There was no reply. He rang again. This time the phone was picked up. A rasping breath and finally the familiar cracked voice.

‘Hello, who’s this?’

‘Dad? It’s Sean.’

‘Who?’

‘Sean. I’m round the corner. Thought I’d come in and see you.’

‘What for? It’s the middle of the fucking night.’

‘It’s the morning and I’m right here on the estate.’ He hesitated. Khan was looking at him, waiting. ‘Thought I might see if you needed anything getting in.’

‘Don’t bother, I’m skint.’

‘Well, I can sub you.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Jack cleared his throat. ‘You know what? Eileen’s not coming back.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Sean could feel Khan’s impatience. ‘So shall I come up?’

There was a pause, punctuated by his father’s laboured breathing, and the sound of him lighting up.

‘Mm. OK then,’ he mumbled through the cigarette in his mouth. ‘But don’t go expecting a cup of tea. I’ve no milk.’

Eagle Mount One was in desperate need of a Mrs Armley. The inside of the lift stank. The two men watched as the doors closed and two halves of a swastika came together in front of them. On the right-hand door someone had written ‘EDL’ and on the left, ‘NO SURENDER’.

‘Is that how you spell surrender?’ Sean wondered out loud. Khan said nothing.

Sean rattled the letterbox on the front door. He ran two fingers under his collar in an attempt to loosen it. A trickle of sweat was running into the armpits of his shirt.

‘Maybe you should wait on the stairs, sir. Do the scream as soon as I get inside, then we can go.’

‘You don’t want me to meet your father?’ The challenge in Khan’s voice was undisguised. His eyes were fixed on a sticker on the door, all that was left of a St. George’s cross, peeling around the edges.

Sean looked at his feet. Regulation kit, steel toecaps hidden under the black leather. He’d come a long way from the little boy whose mother was dead and whose telly was broken because his dad had kicked it in.

‘No. It’s fine.’

Although it wasn’t fine. It wasn’t fine at all. If this was a bright idea to impress DCI Khan, it was one he wished he hadn’t had.

At that moment the door opened.

‘Now then, lad. Look at yer! Trussed up like a wanker. I thought you’d packed it in.’

‘Hi Dad.’

‘Who’s this? Your business partner? Fancy suit, that. What’s he up to? Loan sharking? You’ve come to the right place. I’m flat broke.’ His laugh broke into a fit of coughing. ‘Eh, that’d be right, a loan shark hiring a bent copper for a bit of muscle.’

‘I’ll go to the staircase. Count to twenty?’ Khan sounded embarrassed.

Sean followed Jack into the narrow hallway and closed the door, trapping them together in a flat full of stale air and bad memories. The sympathy he’d started to feel for his dad was evaporating fast. He put his hand in his inside pocket for his wallet.