Текст книги "Death in Dark Waters"

Автор книги: Patricia Hall

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They followed him through the reception area into an office with several workstations and immediately saw why he was so distraught. Stevie Maddison lay where he had fallen in front of a desk, his gun still clutched in his hand and a single bullet wound to the side of the head matting his short fair hair with rapidly darkening blood. His blue eyes were still open, gazing sightlessly at the world with a faint look of surprise in them, his jeans and t-shirt, sodden from the rain, clinging to a skinny body which appeared heartbreakingly small to the men crowded above him. The man Mower knew as DS Jake Moody lay sprawled on the other side of the room, close to a doorway leading to the rear of the building, his white shirt soaked with blood, another gun at his feet. Mower crouched down and felt his neck for a pulse.

“He’s just about alive,” he said feeling a flicker beneath his fingers. “He’s our undercover man,” he said. “Drug squad. Name’s Moody.”

“So what’s the fuck he doing shooting kids?” Dizzy screamed at Thackeray. “What the fuck’s going on? And where’s the other bastard who was here just now, the bastard who ran?”

“Taken care of,” Thackeray said shortly, using his mobile to ask for an ambulance urgently. He glanced around the room.

“Did you see exactly what happened?” he asked. Sanderson shook his head, looking dazed now as the full enormity of the situation sank in.

“I heard the first shot as I came through the door,” he said, his voice husky now. “I kept down, man. I’m not kidding you. Over there, behind the reception desk. Then more shots and one guy ran out and after that nothing, silence.” Thackeray nodded.

“This is a crime scene,” Thackeray said pointedly to Dizzy B, glancing at Stevie Maddison’s huddled body and wondering if it would ever be possible to establish who was assailant and who was victim here. “I want you to wait outside till the ambulance and the heavy mob turn up and tell them what’s happened. Kevin and I have something we must do before this place floods and evidence gets washed away.”

They had all been conscious since they had entered the building that there was a rushing noise coming from further inside. As Dizzy B turned away to go outside, shoulders slumped, Thackeray led Mower further back through the offices until they traced the noise to an open door leading to descending stone steps. The rushing sound became louder, drowning out coherent speech but Thackeray did not hesitate, leading the way down steps into a cellar where a single lightbulb still burned. The floor was dry except for a damp trail of footprints from the steps to the corner where a heavy metal plate had been lifted to reveal what Mower realised must be Bradfield’s hidden waterway, rushing beneath them with terrifying force.

“Why?” Thackeray mouthed at Mower pointing at the trail of water. He hurried to the manhole and lay flat on the floor, his face, as he leaned into the cavity, splashed by the torrent, making it even harder to see anything at all. Reaching around as far as he could stretch, he realised that on the downward side of the icy cold flow there was something solid. He could make out the mesh of a thick wire cage of some kind, which had been attached to the roof of the culvert that for large parts of the year carried no more than a modest stream of water down to the River Maze.

Suddenly something pale bobbed into view and wedged itself against the mesh. Thackeray reached forward to catch it but it was not easy to estimate the distance in the near-darkness and, after a frantic second’s scrabbling at the edge of the manhole trying to regain his balance, he pitched forward into the stream head first and the rushing water closed over his head.

Shouting incomprehensibly and uselessly against the noise of the water, Mower flung himself flat and leaned as far as he dared into the opening, sick with fear and not seriously expecting ever to see Thackeray alive again. But to his astonishment after a few seconds he found that he could just make out the DCI wedged against some sort of grille with his nose and mouth barely above the waterline. More often than not the swirling stream rose and hid him completely, but every time he emerged again, his head bent under the culvert’s stone roof, fingers clinging grimly to the mesh behind him, coughing and choking but undoubtedly still alive. If the mesh gave way, Mower thought, he would be gone, carried helplessly for the mile or so it took the culvert to carry the torrent back into the open air of a rocky defile between the hills on the eastern side of the town, and no doubt drowned long before he reached the open air.

For a moment the two men’s eyes locked and Mower seemed to hesitate. Thackeray knew why and, for a split second, as the water surged over his head again and he was left choking helplessly in his sliver of breathing space against the slimy stone of the roof, he saw the face of Rita Desai, her eyes as full of light and laughter as they had often been before he and Mower had last seen her sprawling lifeless in the dust of a haulier’s yard.

Half drowned, his chest compressed by the sheer force of the rushing water so that breathing was almost impossible even when his nose and mouth were above the surface, Thackeray almost gave up only to see, when he had shaken the water out of his eyes one last time, that Mower was leaning down as far as he could and trying to reach him. With a desperation born of despair, Thackeray eased himself slowly towards Mower against the pressure of the stream until the two men could just clasp hands.

With his own body now spreadeagled right across the open manhole, one hand clutching the edge with desperate determination, Mower hauled Thackeray inch by inch towards him until he too could gain a purchase with icy fingers on the edge of the manhole and, between them, arms locked, they could begin to haul themselves out of the reach of the greedy, sucking black torrent below.

It took minutes, every one of which seemed like an hour, before Thackeray scrambled out to fling himself flat on the floor like a landed fish, choking and gasping, alongside Mower who had also rolled away from the manhole onto his back, utterly exhausted. It was Thackeray who finally found the strength to get back to his feet, shivering in his sodden clothes, to push the metal manhole cover back into place, hiding the deadly stream and reducing the noise to the point where conversation was just about possible. He held out a hand and pulled Mower upright.

“I owe you,” he said, holding on to the sergeant’s hand for a second.

“Think nothing of it, guv,” Mower said with an attempt at a smile. If it had been him who had gone into the water like that, he thought, he might not have made any particular effort to get out.

“There’s a sort of cage down there which Foreman must have been using for storage,” Thackeray said. “In normal times it wouldn’t have interfered with the flow of water, so no one could have guessed. It’s only recently the water company started complaining about the flow of the Beck not being right. I guess if Foreman’s made off with his stash of heroin or cocaine or whatever, the water’s running more smoothly tonight. They might not get quite the inundation they were expecting.”

“Shall we get out of here, just in case,” Mower said, glancing at the manhole cover which was rattling from the pressure below.

“I don’t think it’ll come up that way, but this place will certainly flood if the water in the street gets into the offices and pours into the cellars from above,” Thackeray said. It was only then that Mower noticed that the DCI had reached inside his sodden jacket and was clutching something in his left hand.

“What’s the fuck’s that?” he asked, not sure that he wanted to know the answer.

Thackeray shook his head, his eyes unreadable in the gloom.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it’s a baby’s skull.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mower whispered with a long slow sigh.

Chapter Twenty

“You’re not going to like this,” Michael Thackeray said to superintendent Jack Longley as he brought him up to date with developments the next morning. Apart from the darker than normal circles under his eyes he gave no indication that he had come so close to death the previous day. Only his wrenched muscles, and throat and lungs which felt as if they had been scoured with sandpaper, reminded him of how close to the edge he had been. His whole being now was focused fiercely on Barry Foreman and making sure that this time the security boss did not slip through his fingers.

“Try me,” Longley said.

“I want to interview DS Jake Moody under caution, as a suspect.”

“The drug squad aren’t going to like that,” Longley said, although his own expression remained relatively unperturbed. “It’s when you tell me you want to interview me under caution that I might get alarmed these days. Did you read about the number of senior officers being suspended? Why Moody, any road? I thought he was a victim, not a suspect.”

“Maybe,” Thackeray said. “Obviously I want his version of what happened when he was shot.” He hesitated.

“But that’s not all?” Longley prompted. “You think he went over to the other side? He wouldn’t be the first undercover cop to do that.”

“Ray Walter hinted he’d not been providing much intelligence. Why the hell not, I’d like to know,” Thackeray said.

“You think he was taking back-handers from Foreman? Playing both sides against the middle?”

“Maybe worse than that,” Thackeray said. “Now we’ve got Foreman’s fingerprints they turn out to match some on the dirty videos at Stanley Wilson’s place. And our own intelligence did come up with something interesting when they were trying to match the unknown prints from Wilson’s house. They came up with a Brian Freeman, who did a long stretch when he was in his twenties. He was an enforcer for a gangland boss in Manchester. One of the things he enjoyed was stubbing out cigarettes on people. And guess who he shared a cell with in Strangeways.”

“Stanley Wilson?” Longley hazarded.

“I guess Foreman was terrified Wilson had told me about his change of identity. That would really have scuppered him just at the point when he was ingratiating himself into the legitimate business community in Bradfield. I don’t know if anyone else was with him at Wilson’s place when he was killed but I’m sure Foreman was there himself. And I guess he enjoyed the violence just as much as he used to in the old days.” Thackeray hesitated.

“I want Moody’s prints taken,” he said. “Wilson’s longtime boyfriend, Harman, reckoned that Stanley Wilson had a new black boyfriend but it’s just possible that if the person he saw was actually Moody, he was visiting Wilson for his boss and Harman jumped to the wrong conclusion. I want Moody’s prints taken and I want to see if Harman can identify him. If he was there, I want to know why, and what he knows about Foreman’s visits.”

“Moody’s not gay, is he?”

“That’s not the point,” Thackeray said impatiently. “Foreman has been to Wilson’s place, the home of a man he says was nothing more than an insignificant clerk in his organisation. Foreman’s been paying him over the odds – bonuses he says, set-up money for Wilson’s porn business more likely, part of Foreman’s money laundering operations, like the development company in Leeds and God knows what else when we’ve finished going through his books. But recently, according to Val Ridley, who’s been trawling through Wilson’s bank statements, Foreman’s been paying Wilson £1000 a month, on top of his salary. That looks more like blackmail to me, and Foreman’s not a man to put up with that for long.”

“You think Foreman tortured him and killed him?” Longley asked.

“It’s a distinct possibility. So far we’ve only charged him with possession of the consignment of drugs he had in the Land Rover when he was arrested, but there was enough there to remand him in custody while we get our act together on the rest. And we’ve got his prints and a DNA sample so the forensic people can get to work on those. But before I start questioning him about Wilson I want to get to grips with Moody and find out just how far his undercover activities took him. Even if he’s clean he knows more about Foreman’s movements over the last few months than anyone else. We’ve possibly linked Foreman to one murder now and there are three more suspicious deaths being investigated. Mower says that he found a lad who saw something near Donna Maitland’s flat the night she died. That needs chasing up too. But I need Moody’s evidence first, and I need it quickly, not in a couple of weeks when the drug squad have debriefed him and decided what they want to tell us and what they don’t.”

“Is he fit enough to talk?” Longley asked. Thackeray shrugged.

“He’s regained consciousness but he’s lost a lot of blood so it’ll be a while before I can do a detailed interview. But as soon as the doctors give the OK, I want to be in there, getting whatever I can.”

“And Foreman’s girlfriend?” Longley asked.

Thackeray glanced bleakly out of the window where it was possible to see streaks of blue in the sky above the cherry trees in the town hall square, and a pale sunlight for the first time for months.

“The underwater search team are down there now,” he said. “They’ll be there, all three of them, Karen and the babies, I’m sure of that, but how the hell we’ll ever prove that Foreman dumped them there I can’t imagine. There won’t be much forensic evidence if they’ve been trapped in that torrent for a while, possibly not even a cause of death.”

“They probably drowned anyway,” Longley said, his face sombre. “Poor little beggars.”

“You can just imagine what an imaginative defence lawyer would get out of that: Karen was so distraught when she and Foreman split up that she chucked the babies in the Beck and then herself; or else, any one of Foreman’s employees could have known about the access to the water from his cellar and dumped them in for some reason of their own; or else, all three of them slipped into the water accidentally in one of the downpours we’ve been having and the bodies were washed as far as the obstruction …”

“Could they have become trapped in Foreman’s cage arrangement if they’d gone in higher up?” Longley asked.

“It’s just about possible, though it would be a bizarre coincidence if that’s what happened. The upstream side of the hiding place was only constructed out of wire strands. A body could have got entangled there, and then taken the full force of the water as the flood rose. It only needs the babies’ pushchair to turn up somewhere higher up the stream to get him off the hook.” Thackeray shrugged dispiritedly.

“And we all believe in Santa Claus,” Longley said. “Talk to the Crown Prosecution Service. You were right about Foreman and I was wrong and that’s the one I’d really like to pin on the bastard if we pin a murder on him at all.”

“Oh yes,” Thackeray said. “Don’t worry. If it’s humanly possible to make a charge stick, I’ll do it. I can promise you that.”

They buried Stevie Maddison and his best mate Derek Whitby side by side in the municipal cemetery high on one of Bradfield’s seven windswept hills, Derek’s friends and relations muffled in dark coats and hats on one side of the double grave, Stevie’s, fewer in number and more casual, shivering in insubstantial multicoloured jackets, on the other. As the commital prayers ended and the ritual handfuls of dirt rained down onto the two coffins a tall black woman, her pashmina streaming in the wind, began to sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in a voice so powerful that not even the bitter Pennine gusts could whip the sound away completely. Standing between a tired-looking Michael Thackeray and a newly clean-shaven Kevin Mower at the rear of the crowd of mourners, Laura Ackroyd, wearing a soft black velvet beret to conceal the bandage she still had round her head, shivered and felt the tears prickle.

“What a bloody waste it all is,” she said. Thackeray put his arm around her protectively as the hymn ended, the mourners began to straggle away and the grave diggers moved forward with their shovels, anxious to complete their thankless task before the dark clouds on the horizon unleashed more rain.

“Come on,” he said. “Some good came of it all in the end.”

“Foreman, you mean?”

“So far we’ve only charged him with drug-dealing but that’s open and shut, and he’ll go away for a long time. The rest will take longer to unravel but I’ll have him for at least one of the deaths in the end.”

“Karen and the babies, surely,” Laura said with a shudder but Thackeray shook his head.

“Now the water’s gone down, most of the remains have been recovered,” he said, his face grim and Laura knew better than to press him for more. “They were all there, all three of them, but it’ll be a forensic nightmare to prove how they died, let alone who killed them.”

“And Stevie and Derek?” Laura asked, glancing back at the cars in which the Maddison and Whitby families were embarking on the rest of their shattered lives. “They were only kids.”

“All those forensic reports are in now and the CPS is looking at charges of murder. Foreman’s claiming that Stevie and Jake Moody, our undercover man, both had guns and shot each other, which we might have believed from the circumstantial evidence, but someone wiped the second gun clean after the shooting and the only person who could have done that was Foreman, no doubt in a moment of panic. Moody certainly wasn’t in a fit state to be worrying about fingerprints on triggers. Foreman’s claiming he tried to stop Moody from killing the boy but I think it’s more likely Moody tried to stop Foreman so Foreman shot him as well. They removed three bullets from Moody’s body, two of which definitely came from Stevie’s gun, the third is so badly damaged that it’s difficult to tell. They’re still working on it. He’s lucky to be alive.”

“What’s Moody saying?” Laura asked. “Isn’t he fit to talk yet?”

“Moody’s saying a lot of things, none of which make much sense,” Thackeray said.

“Jake Moody was as bent as a three pound note,” Mower suddenly said. “He was lording it around the Heights in the Beamer as Mr. Pound, Foreman’s minder. Why, if he wasn’t involved in the drug trade? He was in it up to his neck. Why else didn’t he call his guv’nor when Foreman decided to move all the gear from his cellar to avoid the flood? If he was undercover, what the hell was he undercover for if it wasn’t to look for an opportunity like that, to nick them with a serious consignment in transit, no argument? As it was, it was pure chance Dizzy and I were there to see what was going on and make sure Foreman was stopped in the Land Rover. As far as I can see the only thing we’ve got to thank for pinning Foreman down at all was the bloody weather.”

“The drug squad don’t like that interpretation,” Thackeray said.

“They wouldn’t, would they?” Mower came back quickly.

“Moody’s claiming he did everything an undercover cop could safely do in the circumstances. But don’t worry, Kevin. We’re looking very carefully at his story too.”

“And pigs might fly,” Mower muttered.

The three of them walked towards Thackeray’s car which he had parked behind the two families’ funeral cars on the gravel pathway some hundred yards from the new graves. Behind them the other mourners beginning to scatter, shoulders hunched against the wind and the first spots of rain, but as Thackeray unlocked the driver’s door, Laura took his arm.

“This looks like a delegation,” she said softly. The mothers of the dead boys were approaching side-by-side, each of them red-eyed but with a determination that was not diminished by the chilly gusts which made Laura shiver and Mrs Whitby clutch firmly at her large black hat. Behind them some of the rest of the mourners turned and stood watching in silence, like an accusing chorus.

“Inspector Thackeray? I’m Dawn Whitby, Derek’s mother …”

“I know,” Thackeray said. “And can I say how sorry …”

“It’s too late for that now, Inspector,” Mrs. Whitby said firmly. “Too late for Derek and for Stevie. What happened to them has happened. But Mrs. Maddison and me, we’ve come to a decision. We want to tell you some things that we learned while this was going on, some things we heard, some things we seen with our own eyes. We want to make sure now that no other boys die like our boys died. So if you want evidence, we will give you evidence. It’s the least we can do, the least I can do before I go home to Jamaica. And we think if we decide to talk to you then maybe some others will too.”

“We want the man they call Ounce off the estate,” Lorraine Maddison broke in. “He’s a dealer and he’s maybe a killer too. Stevie told me he saw him the night Derek died. He was there on the roof when Derek was pushed off Priestley House.”

“And he was there when I was trying to get Derek clean,” Dawn Whitby said. “He was brazen that one. He came to my home offering Derek cheap drugs. He was the one who wanted to keep him hooked.”

“You didn’t say you knew who the dealer was,” Laura said softly, recalling her own interview with Dawn Whitby. Derek’s mother glanced away and Laura guessed that even she had been too afraid to disclose everything she knew.

“Do you know who he is?” Thackeray asked carefully. “Is Ounce his real name? Can you identify him?”

“Ounce is what the kids call him. It’s like a joke, I suppose. He’s called Mr Pound,” Dawn Whitby said. “You see him aroun’. He drives a big blue BMW. I’ve seen him, even at the Project I’ve seen him where you’d think Donna Maitland would have more sense than to let a dealer in.” She glanced at Lorraine Maddison.

“We can identify him,” she said.

Thackeray’s eyes met Mower’s for a second and he saw the triumph there.

“It’s Moody,” Mower mouthed. “I bloody knew he was bent.”

“You’ll make statements telling us everything you’ve learned about Mr. Pound?” Thackeray asked the two women, who had linked arms now against the bitter wind. They nodded.

“Gotcha,” Mower said, and raised a clenched fist in the air.

Later that evening, when Thackeray brought a tray to Laura where she was sitting with her feet up on a sofa, eyes closed and bandaged head resting against a cushion, the fury which had threatened to consume him ever since he had been told she had been taken to hospital gradually eased.

“You’re safe now,” he said quietly, putting the tray down on the coffee table and kissing her bruised cheek gently. She opened her eyes and smiled.

“And you’re learning to cook. I’ll domesticate you yet.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” he said, peering at the scrambled eggs and bacon he had prepared with a sceptical look before perching himself on the edge of the sofa beside her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Now you’ve got Foreman? Is that the end of it?”

Thackeray did not reply immediately. Had he, he wondered, really exorcised the obsession with Foreman.

“Foreman’s saying absolutely nothing but Moody’s decided that he’s on our side after all,” he said slowly. “He’s giving us chapter and verse on Foreman’s drug business, saying he had to get seriously involved to gain Foreman’s confidence. And there’s enough to charge Foreman with Wilson’s murder on Moody’s evidence. He says he dropped Foreman off at his house that day – not an unusual event, apparently. Foreman used to go there personally to pick up his dirty videos. And forensics have come up with corroboration of Moody’s version of what happened the night of the flood. One of the bullets they took out of his body came from the gun that killed Stevie. Only Foreman could have fired it.”

“So you’ve got him for two murders.”

“There’s a lot of loose ends though,” Thackeray said. “It’ll take months to be sure what will stand up in court and what won’t. Donna Maitland’s death, that’s the one which is exercising Kevin Mower, but the crime scene was so contaminated that we’ll be unlikely to make a case against anyone there. And Derek, the boy on the roof: Moody denies he was anywhere near the Heights that night, and no one else has come forward in spite of Derek’s mother’s efforts.”

“And Karen and the babies?”

“Moody says he knows nothing about any of that either.”

“Do you believe him? He could be covering his own tracks,” Laura suggested.

“He could, but if we want him to give evidence as a witness on the rest we may have to accept we’ll never know the truth about some things. It’s rough justice but maybe the best we can do.”

“I thought you didn’t make deals.”

“We don’t make deals,” Thackeray said. “But the CPS assess how likely we are to get a conviction, you know that. And you know what that estate’s like. There’s not enough evidence to pin down anyone for Donna’s death, or Derek’s, nor likely to be.”

“Or to catch whoever tried to kill me?” Laura said, turning away, overtaken by the tearfulness which had dogged since she came out of hospital.

“Maybe not,” Thackeray admitted. “We’ve not traced any witnesses.”

Thackeray sat very still for a moment beside her before he took her hand in his.

“That day,” he began hesitantly. “That day, I really thought I’d lost you. I thought history was repeating itself and I was going to be alone again.” His grip on Laura’s hand tightened. “And the thing that hurt most was that I might have missed my chance of asking you what I should have asked you long ago.”

Laura reached forward and put a finger on his lips.

“For a man who asks questions for a living you’ve been remarkably slow with this one,” she said. “But I’m not sure this is the moment to choose. Can you give me some time?”

Thackeray looked for a moment as if he had been struck across the face, but then he nodded and touched her bruised cheek gently.

“Sorry,” he said. “As much time as you need.”