Читать книгу Shadows: The gripping new crime thriller from the #1 bestseller - Paul Finch - Страница 16

Lucy clocked on at eight the next morning, and found a memo on her desk from DI Beardmore.

Report to Robbery Squad at 1st opp. Liaise with DS Tucker

(they’ve got you for one week – after that, we reappraise)

Lucy stood up from her desk just as Beardmore entered the DO.

‘You sure you can spare me for a week, boss?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said, pulling a face and stripping off his coat as he headed into his office. ‘But you started this thing, Lucy. Only seems fair you get a sniff of wherever it’s leading.’

She halted in his office door. ‘What about the break-ins on Hatchwood Green?’

Beardmore rustled distractedly through the usual pile of bumph that always seemed to accumulate on his desk during the hours of darkness. ‘I’m sure Harry can carry that for a few days.’

‘He’ll whinge.’

‘He always whinges. One thing he never does, though, is whinge to someone who cares.’ The DI didn’t look at her as he slumped down into his chair. ‘Go on … shoot up there before I change my mind.’

Lucy mounted the stairs with that usual mixture of elation and trepidation that always accompanied inclusion in major enquiries. It was a curious feeling, to be truthful. Most divisional CID officers had to juggle three or four minor investigations at any one time – sometimes more. It certainly kept them on their toes, but quite often it was routine stuff.

But the major investigations, or the ‘monster hunts’, were something else. On these occasions, you were after real predators, soulless psychopaths with an overwhelming urge and a huge potential to cause damage, deranged felons whose swift capture was deemed to be so important that you had to focus entirely on them, leaving everything else on the backburner. The thrill of these special investigations was often a reward in itself. This was certainly what Lucy had joined the police for.

The Robbery Squad office wasn’t too busy at this stage of the day. However, DI Blake and DS Tucker were already present, poring over a series of street maps spread on a desk in a corner of the room directly opposite from the one dedicated to the Saturday Street enquiry. Lucy also noticed that some maps had been tacked onto the walls, alongside photographs of the cashpoints she herself had earmarked as possible attack zones, plus the alley entrances and subway mouths in their vicinities. The majority of these were professional surveillance shots, taken from multiple high angles so as to fully recreate on film the anatomy of each environment. It might be early, but the Squad had clearly been busy.

DI Blake glanced up. ‘DC Clayburn … welcome.’ She herself had dressed down today, wearing only a jumper and jeans. ‘Glad you could join us.’

‘Delighted, ma’am,’ Lucy said, approaching the desk.

‘For the duration of the time you’re with us, it’s Kathy,’ Blake said, with half a smile. ‘Unless I need to pull rank on you. Which I’m sure I won’t.’

Unseen behind his boss’s shoulder, Tucker winked at Lucy.

‘I hear you’re a bit of an expert when it comes to undercover decoy work,’ the DI said.

‘I’ve done my fair share,’ Lucy replied.

Tucker grinned. ‘That’s putting it mildly, isn’t it?’

Lucy smiled coyly. ‘The last time it worked out quite well, I must admit.’

‘I’m guessing you know what I’m going to ask you?’ Blake said.

‘You want me to visit some cashpoints late at night?’

‘Correct.’ Blake indicated the spread of documentation, in particular the maps and the photos. ‘You’ve laid your plan to catch the Creep out pretty well for us …’

‘Thanks.’ Lucy nodded in sobre appreciation.

‘No, it should be us thanking you.’ Blake gathered up some sheets of what looked like work schedules and shuffled them together. ‘I was impressed at the time, and I’m even more impressed since we haven’t really been able to improve on it. It only seemed right that you should be in for the takedown. Assuming there is one.’

‘I just hope I haven’t caused a lot of fuss for nothing.’

‘Not a bit of it. I think your reasoning was pretty sound.’ Blake pursed her lips. ‘As long as you trust your informant and the psyche profile from West Midlands isn’t way off the mark, I think it’s a reasonable bet that this lunatic will strike again. And in case he’s only half-tempted, well … we’re going to put it on a plate for him. Now, speaking of madmen, we’re also closing in on the Saturday Street boys. I anticipate that we’ll be making arrests in the next couple of days.’

‘Oh, wow … that’s great news.’

Blake nodded. ‘Yes, but it’s going to keep me and quite a few of the rest of the Squad pretty busy. So, I’m giving you all the resources I can, but that isn’t many. Danny’s going to take point, and I can spare you four other detectives. After that we’re using spare bodies from Uniform.’

‘No one else from divisional CID available?’ Lucy asked.

‘I think you’re pretty pulled-out down in the DO. But me and Stan go back a bit; at least I was able to get you.’ She gave another half-smile.

DI Blake was a distinctly warm presence, even if she wasn’t especially demonstrative.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tucker chipped in. ‘Uniform jumped at it. We’re only taking a couple from each relief, so we’re not thinning them out too much. The younger lads and lasses can do the decoy stuff, the older heads can ride in the support cars with us.’

‘You’ll be working awkward hours, of course,’ Blake said.

Lucy shrugged again. ‘Only to be expected.’

‘We’re looking at nine in the evening till five in the morning,’ Tucker added.

‘We’ve also had it cleared that we’ll be working clean through the next fortnight,’ Blake said. ‘No days off, but overtime will be paid as per the norm.’

Lucy nodded. That made sense too, but it was impressive that the DI had managed to pull this off. She might be supervising a unit whose existence was under threat, but she clearly still had influence.

‘You can get off home for now if you want,’ Tucker said. ‘Take a few hours R&R. Briefing in here at nine p.m., operation goes live at ten-thirty. Alternatively …’ He tapped a stack of bulging buff folders on top of the filing cabinet next to him. ‘Since we’ve copied West Mids in on what we’re doing, they’ve sent quite a bit more paperwork through. So, if you’re bored, or you fancy a quick shuftie, it might be of some interest.’

As it wasn’t inconceivable that her life could be in danger during this operation, Lucy agreed that the new material would probably, at the very least, be worth a skim-read.

She found a spare desk, and laid the folders in front of her.

‘Oh, ma’am … Kathy!’ she said, as Blake and Tucker wandered away.

The DI glanced back.

‘You say we’re on this for two weeks. But DI Beardmore says he can only spare me for one.’

Blake gave another of those bland but warm half-smiles. ‘Like I say, Lucy … me and Stan go back. Let’s see how it plays out.’

As Lucy expected, the new stuff from West Mids mainly comprised copies of crime-scene observations, forensic and medical reports, witness statements and plenty of additional photographic material. There was also an updated e-fit.

Lucy found herself staring at this long and hard. The face looking back at her almost seemed inhuman; its eyes little more than slits and yet possessed of an eerie glint, its mouth curved upward in OTT fashion, creating the most extravagant image of pantomime villainy she’d ever seen. As far as she knew, this picture, or others like it, had been screened regularly on the news bulletins, and had been appearing in all the papers and online ever since the most recent attack. Surely, if there was anyone walking the streets whose face even vaguely resembled this bizarre image, he’d be in custody by now?

Definitely a mask. It had to be.

‘No wonder they call him the Creep, eh?’ a voice said.

Lucy glanced up and, fleetingly, her enthusiasm for working with the Robbery Squad flagged.

Detective Constable Lee Gaskin had just come in, and now stood alongside the desk. He hadn’t changed much since she’d last worked with him, standing about five-ten with a stocky frame, a thick neck, broad, sloping shoulders and big arms with heavy-knuckled hands. What remained of his hair was thin and mouse-brown, while his face was notched and pitted all over as though he’d had chickenpox as a child and had vigorously scratched – Lucy had never thought any face could exist that was so well suited for the scowl Lee Gaskin habitually wore. On this occasion, ironically, he wasn’t scowling, but smiling. It was cold, though, and it offered more than a glimpse of the nicotine-yellow teeth clamped together underneath it.

‘DC Gaskin,’ she said. ‘What a delight.’

She had already known that Gaskin was a part of the Robbery Squad. She’d glimpsed him several times in other parts of the building during the intervening weeks since the Squad had set up its base here, but so far had managed to avoid him.

‘I heard you’d finally got your long sought-for CID post,’ he said quietly but intensely. ‘Un-fucking-believable. Anyway, the good news …’ He stuck his thumb in the direction of the door. ‘The local DO’s downstairs. There can’t be anything up here for you, so don’t trip on your way down. Or rather, do trip … but make sure you fall all the way to the bottom, so they have to deal with your body rather than us.’

‘You sure you’re not confusing me with one of your prisoners?’ Lucy wondered, standing up, determined not to be cowed by him. ‘Isn’t that what normally happens to them?’

‘Whoa!’ he snorted. ‘A smarty-pants too since she’s put her civvies on. I’ll have to be on top form from now on.’

‘Well … first time for everything.’

‘And a last.’ He leaned forward, bringing his scabrous face right into her personal space. She was resolute that she wouldn’t flinch, difficult though this was. ‘Whatever you’re up here for, love,’ he said quietly, ‘I really, really hope it’s nothing to do with this big obbo we’ve got starting tonight …’

Lucy glanced across the office to see if anyone else had noticed the altercation, but they were all too busy, and Gaskin was still keeping it low key.

‘But if it is,’ he added, ‘and you have another cock-up … well, I’ll just have to make sure the boss knows damn well that you’ve got a long track-record for that sort of thing.’

‘You finished?’ she said. ‘Because if you have, get your rotten fag-breath out of my nostrils … right fucking now.’

Grinning almost ghoulishly, he stepped away from her and turned.

Slowly and precisely, Lucy replaced the West Mids paperwork in its relevant folders. Re-stacking them on the filing cabinet, and checking again that no one else had observed the minor incident, she walked from the room.

‘Why does it have to be him?’ she said under her breath.

She could ride this complication out; she knew she could. But it undeniably put a dampener on things. Why the hell did it have to be him?

‘Now, stranger,’ Lucy’s mother said from over the counter at the Saltbridge MiniMart.

Cora Clayburn was fifty-four now, and since her long fair hair had finally started running to silver, she had begun cutting it to shoulder-length. She was still a handsome woman, though – Lucy remembered her as a stunner in her younger days; she could even make the unflattering blue smock and heavy plastic ‘Assistant Manager’ tag look good.

‘Thought I could take you for lunch,’ Lucy said.

‘Ooh, had a pay rise or something?’

‘No, it’s just …’ Lucy shrugged. ‘You know.’

Cora eyed her suspiciously, sensing something untoward. It was always the same; Lucy had once successfully lied her way into the inner sanctum of the two most dangerous female gangsters in Manchester, but she could never fool her own mum.

‘You trying to bribe me?’ Cora wondered.

‘It’s not really a bribe.’

‘But there’s something you need to tell me and you want to sweeten the pill?’

‘Mum …’ Lucy tried her most plaintive voice. ‘I don’t live with you anymore, so you wouldn’t have known about this otherwise, but I don’t like hiding things from you.’

‘Hmm.’ Cora busied herself along the counter. ‘Let me guess … you’re off on another suicide mission.’

‘It’s not a suicide mission. It’s just undercover work.’

Cora pointedly said nothing. Neither of them needed reminding how badly Lucy had been injured and frightened the previous time she’d gone undercover.

‘But it’s going to be nothing like last time,’ Lucy added hastily. That was completely true, but she didn’t bother to explain that, whereas last time she’d been standing with those suspected of committing violent crime, this time it would be the other way around – she’d be out there with the prospective victims of it. ‘It’s with the Robbery Squad. Which means I’ll have big, hard blokes with me at all times. Plus, it’s here in Crowley … it’s only round the corner.’

Cora didn’t look mollified, but she didn’t raise any further objections.

It had never been the case that Lucy and her mother ‘didn’t get on’. Cora, a single parent living in Saltbridge, one of the older terraced districts in the town, which had suffered deprivation even into the twenty-first century, had raised her daughter alone, and with the odd exception of a few ‘wild child’ phases during Lucy’s youth, had turned her at length into a model citizen. However, Lucy’s joining law enforcement at the age of twenty had been a bone of contention between them, which had persisted for the last ten years. It was not that Cora disliked the police per se, but she considered that she’d seen some terrible things in her time – she knew ‘what went on’, as she was fond of saying. And every time her daughter climbed into her uniform, or now, as it was, plain clothes, she feared that something awful was going to happen. But, these days at least, these were concerns that Cora only paid lip service to, which Lucy took as a sign that she was at last getting used to the fact that her daughter was a copper for life.

Lucy left her Jimny in the MiniMart car park, and they walked together across the road to the Wagon & Horses pub, which, though popular with both factory and office workers at lunchtime, usually had a couple of tables spare. Today was no exception.

Cora ordered tagliatelle, Lucy a small portion of salad with poached salmon.

‘You eat like a rabbit,’ Cora said disapprovingly. ‘I don’t know where you get the energy from to do your job.’

‘Don’t like filling myself up at lunch,’ Lucy replied. ‘Makes me sleepy in the afternoon.’

‘Does that matter … if you’re working funny hours again?’

On reflection, Lucy supposed it didn’t, given that she was mainly going to be on nights. It would probably help if she could get some kind of shut-eye today, even if it was only short-lived. But she still wasn’t hungry, and that was probably down to the excitement of her forthcoming assignment.

‘I just didn’t inherit your miraculous metabolism, Mum, that’s all,’ Lucy replied.

Cora gave a sweet smile. Before spotting someone she knew across the pub, and waving.

‘All right, Cora … looking gorgeous today, as always!’ a burly builder shouted as he and his mate trundled across to the exit in their dingy overalls and heavy, dust-caked boots.

‘That Jimmy Ogden?’ Lucy said after he’d gone. ‘Now … he has put weight on.’

‘And he probably puts in a tougher day’s shift than the two of us together,’ Cora replied. ‘Just goes to show … we’re all different, lovie.’ She leaned across the table and playfully patted Lucy’s cheek. ‘So don’t feel inadequate.’

‘Get out of it,’ Lucy chuckled.

They continued in this fashion for the remainder of the meal, enjoying each other’s company, easily and idly avoiding any risqué subjects. Until inevitably, almost unavoidably, Lucy sat back, dabbed her lips with a napkin and, after the barmaid had taken their empty dishes away, asked: ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from him, have you? He’s not tried to contact you?’

Cora looked unperturbed by the question. She wore her readers as she perused the sweets menu. ‘Not at all. He said he wouldn’t, didn’t he?’

‘And he’s the kind of guy who keeps his promises?’

‘He kept them for thirty-odd years, love.’

And that, from her tone, was the end of this particular matter.

The ‘he’ in question was Lucy’s estranged father, who in so many ways signified a distant but dark past that still haunted and embarrassed her. Long before Lucy was born, Cora went through a wild child phase of her own, leaving her family home under such a cloud that she’d never speak to her parents again, and finally earning a living by performing nightly at a strip-club called SugaBabes on the other side of Manchester. She’d only been in her late teens at the time, and had been easily smitten by a handsome bouncer at the club, with whom she’d commenced a romantic relationship. However, when she unexpectedly fell pregnant with Lucy, she re-evaluated everything, and drew the conclusion that these underworld figures with whom she was increasingly involved could never be part of her daughter’s life. She thus packed the stripper job in, broke it off with her boyfriend, who was surprisingly amicable about it – most likely because he could (and did) take his pick of the rest of the girls there – and crossed the city to commence a new, more respectable life. In time, the ex-boyfriend, as he rose through the ranks of the mob, doing worse and worse things and yet reaping ever greater benefits, contacted Cora again, offering financial assistance in the raising of their daughter. But Cora, always an independent soul, continually resisted. In due course, she lost touch with him altogether … until last year, when unusual circumstances brought him back into both her and her daughter’s lives with shattering force.

It was a particularly horrific experience for Lucy, learning that her father was a villain. She’d grown up with the lie that her real dad had been a cheeky-chappie bus driver who’d abandoned them both because he couldn’t face the responsibility of parenthood. Of course, it didn’t make it any better that she was now a police officer; in fact, it made things a whole lot worse. If word of this revelation had got out, both father and daughter would find their respective careers imperilled. As such, they’d agreed to keep it quiet, and even now only a very tight circle of select acquaintances knew the truth.

Not that this prevented Lucy losing sleep from time to time.

Against her better judgement, she occasionally had to raise the subject with her mother. Even when, as now, it was patently obvious that Cora didn’t want to discuss it, Lucy just had to check that there had been no further contact from her long-absent father, aka ‘The Shakedown’, Frank McCracken.