Читать книгу War on the Streets - Peter Cave, Peter Cave - Страница 7

The sex was quick, violent and sordid. Afterwards Glynis felt dirty all over, and it wasn’t just the accumulated sweat and grime clinging to the grey bedsheets. Thankful that it was over, at least, she dressed hurriedly as Sofrides lay back on his pillow, grinning with post-coital pleasure.

Glynis glared at him, undisguised loathing in her eyes. ‘Right, you’ve been paid in full. Now what about my score?’

Sofrides leered at her. ‘I got bad news for you, princess. Apart from having me tonight, you’re right out of luck. Ain’t a snort of coke in the place.’

It took several seconds for the words to sink into Glynis’s mind. When it finally did, her first reactions were of shock and sheer panic, quickly followed by a wave of pure hatred. ‘You lousy little bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You told me you were holding.’

She hurled herself across the room in a blaze of fury, her arms flailing wildly. Sofrides uncoiled from the bed like a snake, warding off the attack by grasping her by the wrist and twisting her arm savagely. Drawing back his free hand, he smashed her across one side of her face and backhanded her on the other. He pushed her to the floor, where she lay sobbing.

The dealer looked down at her without pity. He crossed slowly to a chest of drawers, opened it and pulled out a flat tobacco tin, which he tossed on to the bed. ‘I got some smack, that’s all. Take it or leave it.’

Glynis crawled to her feet, shaking and in pain both from the violence of his attack and her appalling craving. Uncertainly, she moved towards the bed and opened the tin. She stared dumbly at the loaded hypodermic syringe it contained.

‘Well, come on, darling. I ain’t got all night,’ Sofrides challenged her, seeing her hesitation. He moved up beside her, taking out the syringe and thrusting it into her hand. ‘Shoot up and get out, before I change my mind.’

Glynis stared at the syringe in horrified fascination. Her face was a mixture of desperation, fear and bewilderment. She glanced up at Sofrides, her eyes almost pleading.

His lips curled into a scornful sneer as he identified her problem. ‘You little silver-plated spoon-sniffers. You’ve never shot up before, have you?’

Glynis could only nod.

‘Here, I’ll show you,’ Sofrides said. He clenched his fist, pumping his forearm up and down half a dozen times. He pointed to his slightly throbbing vein. ‘Just there, see? Just stick the needle in and push the plunger. That’s all there is to it.’

Awkwardly, Glynis copied his movements, holding the syringe clumsily in a trembling hand, almost at arm’s length. Fumbling and shaky, she pushed the gleaming point of the needle towards her arm.

Sofrides looked away, letting out a little snort of disgust. ‘Oh Christ! Go in the bloody bathroom and do it, will you?’

Still unsure, Glynis slunk into the poky bathroom and closed the door behind her. Sofrides threw himself back on the bed, propped himself up with a pillow and lit a cigarette. He plumed smoke up at the ceiling, grinning. He felt very pleased with himself.

The cigarette had burned down to a stub before he thought about the girl again. After crushing it out in the ashtray he pushed himself off the bed and strode to the bathroom door, rapping on it with the back of his hand. ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’ he demanded irritably. There was no answer.

He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. Sofrides pushed the door open to find Glynis sitting stiffly on the toilet, her head lolling back against the pipe from the cistern. The empty hypodermic dangled loosely from her fingers at arm’s length. Her face was ghostly white, her eyes wide and staring and her body twitching convulsively and obscenely.

Sofrides looked at her without sympathy. ‘Feel rough, huh? Don’t worry. A couple of minutes and you’ll be high as a kite.’ He reached down to seize her by the elbow, and hauled her roughly to her feet. The empty syringe dropped from her fingers, shattering on the tiled floor.

‘Come on, I want you out of here,’ Sofrides told the girl curtly, as he tried to drag her out of the bathroom.

Glynis took a couple of shuffling steps and stopped, her legs sagging beneath her. She would have collapsed to the floor but for the dealer’s grip on her arm. He pushed her back against the bathroom wall, propping her up. There was the first trace of concern on his face as he noted her wildly rolling eyes, the tremors which rocked her body and the shallowness of her breathing. Even as he watched, Glynis seemed to be torn by a convulsion of pain which caused her body to jackknife and made her clutch at her abdomen with her free hand. She let out one long, shuddering groan and went limp, before sliding down the wall to sit on the floor like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.

‘Oh shit!’ Sofrides spat out in anger – but it was fear that registered on his face. He dropped to his knees, staring into the girl’s wide, but unseeing eyes. They were completely still now, and her body was totally motionless. Panic rising in him, Sofrides snatched up her wrist, feeling for the faintest hint of a pulse. There was nothing.

Sofrides pushed himself to his feet and stood there shaking for a few seconds, his brain racing. He turned towards the telephone, thinking briefly about calling an ambulance but rejecting the idea almost immediately. The girl’s face was already puffy and showing signs of bruising where he had struck her. He remembered the bite marks he had put in the soft flesh of her breasts during their brief sexual encounter. With his criminal record, reporting the girl’s death was tantamount to placing himself on a manslaughter charge at the very least.

He tried to think, as he paced round the small bedsitter several times, trying not to look at the girl’s lifeless form slumped just inside the bathroom door. He crossed to the room’s single window and stared out into the dark and deserted street.

There was only one choice, he realized finally. Somehow, he had to get the girl’s body into his car without being seen. After that it would be easy. London had hundreds of backstreets and alleyways where the body of a drug addict, drunk or vagrant turned up every so often. With nothing to connect the girl to him, she would be just another statistic.

His mind made up, as quietly as he could Sofrides began to drag Glynis’s body towards the door.

Paul Carney tidied up the paperwork on his desk and switched off the Anglepoise lamp. Rising, he crossed to the door and switched off the main light, plunging his office into darkness. Locking the door, he strode across the deserted main office towards the outer reception area.

The desk sergeant looked up at him, grinning, as he walked past. ‘Barbados for our hols this year, is it, Mr Carney? Or a world cruise, with all this overtime you’ve been putting in?’

Carney smiled at the man wearily. ‘Oh yeah, at least,’ he muttered. ‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’

The man nodded. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

Carney walked out into the night air, taking a deep breath before heading for the rear car park. On reaching his Ford Sierra, he climbed in and drove slowly to the main gates. He was exhausted, yet in no hurry to get home. Or at least back to the Islington flat, Carney reminded himself, thinking about it. It had ceased to be a home when Linda had walked out, over six months earlier. She’d even taken the dog.

The roads were almost deserted. Carney cruised past the rows of darkened office buildings for a couple of miles before turning off into the residential back-streets around Canonbury. He passed a small row of shops, some with their windows still lit or showing dim security lights in their rear storage areas.

The grey Volvo took him by surprise, shooting out from a small side road only yards ahead of him. Carney stamped on the brakes instinctively, allowing the car to complete its left turn and accelerate away from him with a squeal of rubber on tarmac.

Crazy bastard, Carney thought, reacting as a fellow road-user. Then the copper in him took over, asking the obvious question. What could be so damned urgent, at four-thirty in the morning? He stamped down on the accelerator, making it his business to find out.

Carney caught up with the Volvo at the next set of traffic lights. He pulled across the vehicle’s front wing and leapt out of his own car. He wrenched the driver’s side door of the Volvo open.

‘All right, you bloody moron. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he growled, before he had even seen who was sitting at the wheel. There was a long, thoughtful pause as he recognized the driver.

‘Well, well, well,’ Carney said slowly. ‘If it isn’t Tony the Greek. And what particular form of nastiness are you up to tonight, you little scumbag?’

Sofrides looked up at him with a fearful expression, cursing the cruel vagaries of fate which had thrown Detective Sergeant Paul Carney across his path this night of all nights. They’d had run-ins before – almost every one of them to his cost.

‘I ain’t done nothing, honest, Mr Carney,’ Sofrides whined, desperately trying to bluff it out.

Carney grinned cynically. ‘You don’t have to do anything, Tony. Just being in the vicinity constitutes major environmental pollution.’ He held the door back, jerking his head. ‘Out.’

Reluctantly, Sofrides climbed out of the car, still protesting his innocence. ‘I’m clean, Mr Carney – honest.’

Carney shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t be clean if you bathed in bleach and gargled with insecticide,’ he grunted. He paused, staring at the young man thoughtfully. There was something wrong, something out of character. Sofrides was not displaying his usual arrogance. He looked frightened, guilty.

‘What’s wrong with you tonight, Tony?’ Carney demanded. ‘Where’s all the usual backchat, the bullshit? You’re scared, Tony – and that makes me very suspicious indeed.’

Increasingly desperate, Sofrides tried to force a smile on to his face. ‘I told you, I ain’t done nothing. I just don’t feel so good, that’s all. Must have been something I ate.’

It wasn’t going to wash. Carney was convinced he was on to something now. He peered at Sofrides’s face more closely.

‘I do have to admit that you don’t look so good,’ he muttered. ‘In fact, Tony, you look as sick as the proverbial parrot.’ He paused momentarily. ‘Know what I think, Tony? I think you’ve just made a collection and I’ve caught you bang to rights. I think you’re carrying a major consignment of naughties, that’s what I think. The question is: what, and where?’

Carney suddenly seized Sofrides by the arm, forcing it up around his back in a savage half nelson. He frogmarched him over to his own car, opened it and pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the glove compartment. Snapping the cuffs around the young man’s wrist, he pushed him back to the Volvo, wound down the window a few inches and clipped the other bracelet to the door-frame.

‘So let’s take a little look-see, shall we,’ he suggested, returning to his own vehicle for just long enough to grab a powerful torch.

The Volvo seemed clean, much to Carney’s disappointment. Sofrides watched him search thoroughly beneath and behind the seats, in the glove compartment and underneath the dashboard.

‘See, I told you I ain’t done nothing. So how about letting me go, Mr Carney?’ Sofrides suggested hopefully.

Carney shook his head. ‘We’ve only just got started, Tony. It’d be a pity to break the party up this early now, wouldn’t it?’ He straightened up from searching the interior of the car. ‘Right, let’s take a little look in the boot.’

A fresh glimmer of panic crossed Sofrides’s eyes. ‘Look, tell you what. Suppose I make you a deal?’ he blurted out.

Carney sounded unimpressed. ‘Oh yes, and what sort of deal would that be, Tony?’

Sofrides snatched at his slim remaining chance eagerly. ‘I know a couple of new crack houses which have just opened up. I can give you names…places…times.’

Carney grinned wickedly at him. ‘But you’ll do that anyway, once I get you nailed,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ll sing your little black heart out just as soon as you see the inside of the slammer. You’ll have to do a bit better than that, Tony.’

Sofrides was really desperate now, clutching at straws. ‘How about if I set someone up for you – someone big?’ he suggested. ‘I’m only a little fish, Mr Carney – you know that.’

Carney paused, tempted. ‘And who might you have in mind?’ he asked.

Sofrides picked a name at random. ‘How about Jack Mottram? He deals in ten Ks at a time.’

Carney sighed wearily. The little bastard was trying to wind him up, he thought. ‘Jack Mottram wouldn’t piss on you if your arse was on fire,’ he said scathingly. ‘Now stop jerking my chain, all right?’ He pulled the key to the handcuffs from his pocket, releasing them from the Volvo door. He grabbed Sofrides by the scruff of the neck, dragging him round to the back of the car and nodding down at the boot.

‘Right, just so we don’t hear any little whinges about planted evidence,’ he muttered. ‘Open it up and we’ll take a little look in Pandora’s box.’

For a moment, Sofrides was tempted to try to struggle free and run for it. As if sensing this, Carney tightened his grip. ‘Don’t even think about it, Tony. I could outrun a little lardball like you in twenty yards flat. Besides, you might have a little accident resisting arrest, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?’

Sofrides sagged, realizing he was beaten. His heart pounded in his chest as Carney turned the key and opened the boot, then shone the torch inside.

Carney was not prepared for the sight which greeted his eyes, and he was visibly shaken. It was revulsion, quickly followed by a wave of rage, which washed over him as the beam illuminated the girl’s contorted body, her sightless eyes staring up at him out of her pale, bruised face.

‘Jesus,’ Carney muttered, with a long, deep sigh. His body quivered with shock and anger.

The desperate urge to run washed over Sofrides again at that moment. Not really thinking clearly, he twisted his body to break free from Carney’s grip and jerked up one knee at his groin.

Carney’s reactions were fast, but not quite fast enough to avoid contact altogether. Twisting his body, he winced with pain as Sofrides’s savage blow connected with the side of his hip bone. That, on top of his grisly discovery, was enough to make Carney snap. His mind exploded in a red mist of pain and rage. Suddenly, everything came out – his tiredness, his frustration with the job, his total loathing of little low-lifes like Sofrides. He raised the heavy torch and smashed it against the side of the dealer’s head, shattering the glass. Sofrides screamed in agony as Carney drove a full-blooded punch deep into his solar plexus and then cuffed him across the ear as he began to double up in agony. Several more blows followed as the policeman went berserk, venting the full force of his frustration in a few moments of blind, senseless violence. Finally he pushed Sofrides over the lip of the boot until he was half lying across the girl’s body, and brought the heavy lid crashing down.

There was a last, agonized scream from Sofrides, then silence.

Mentally drained and utterly exhausted, Carney fell back against the side of the car, breathing heavily and cursing himself under his breath. Sanity had begun to return now, and he knew he’d gone too far.

There was no smile of greeting on the desk sergeant’s face as Carney strolled into the station later that morning. ‘Excuse me, sir, but the DCI asked me to tell you to report to his office as soon as you came in.’

Carney nodded. He had been expecting it. ‘Thanks, Sergeant.’ He headed straight for Manners’s office and tapped lightly on the glass door.

‘Come.’ The man’s tone was curt and peremptory. He stared grimly at Carney as he walked in. ‘Sit down, Carney,’ he snapped, pointing to a chair.

Carney did as he was told, his heart sinking. Harry Manners’s use of his surname had given him a pretty good clue as to the severity of the dressing down he was about to receive. He looked across at his superior with what he hoped was a suitably contrite expression on his face.

There was a moment of strained silence before Manners spoke. ‘Tony Sofrides is in the Royal Northern Hospital,’ he announced flatly. ‘He has two skull fractures, a broken arm, ruptured spleen and three cracked ribs.’

Carney could not resist the only defence he had. ‘Christ, sir, did you see that girl?’

Manners nodded. ‘I saw them both.’ He paused for a moment, sighing heavily. ‘Goddammit, man, what the hell got into you? Don’t you realize you could have killed him?’

Carney hung his head, although there was a spark of defiance left. ‘So what should I have done? Slapped his wrists and told him he’d been a naughty boy? Look, Harry, I know I blew my stack, and I’m sorry.’

Manners was shaking his head doubtfully. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be enough – not this time.’

Carney realized for the first time that he was looking suspension, possibly dismissal, in the face. He could only presume upon their years together as colleagues, and as friends. ‘Aw, come on, Harry. You can cover for me on this one, surely. There’s a dozen shades of whitewash. Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, injured while trying to escape…’ He tailed off, studying his superior’s face.

Manners shook his head again. ‘I’m not sure I can – and what’s more to the point, I’m not sure that I should,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is that you had a chance to make a righteous arrest and you blew it. Not only that, but you beat the shit out of the suspect as well. That’s bad policework, and we both know it. It was sloppy, it was excessive – and it was dangerous.’ He paused, sighing. ‘And it’s not the first time.’

There was a pleading look in Carney’s eyes. ‘Oh Christ, Harry. Don’t throw that crap at me as well. Three isolated incidents, spread over fifteen years in the force. I’ve been a damn good copper, and you know it.’

Manners nodded regretfully. ‘Yes, you have been a good copper, Paul. But you’ve got a touch of the vigilante in you, and that makes you a risk. One that I don’t think I can afford to take any more.’

There it was, out in the open at last. Carney sighed heavily. ‘So, what happens now? Are you going to suspend me? Or would you prefer me to do the honourable thing, and resign? Hand over my card and go the way of all ex-coppers and take a job as a private security guard?’

Manners fidgeted awkwardly. He was not finding his task at all pleasant. ‘That’s not your style, Paul – and we both know it.’

‘Then what?’ Carney demanded. ‘Is there any kind of choice?’

Manners looked uncertain. He shrugged faintly. ‘I don’t know…there might be,’ he murmured.

Carney snatched at the thin straw of hope. ‘Well what is it, for Christ’s sake?’

Manners looked apologetic. ‘Sorry, Paul, but I can’t tell you anything more at the moment. It’s just something which has filtered down from the boys upstairs. I’d have to look into it more closely, and it might take a bit of time.’

‘And meanwhile?’ Carney asked.

‘Meanwhile you take a rest, on my direct recommendation,’ Manners said firmly. ‘You’re suffering from stress. Overwork, the sheer frustration of the job, you and Linda splitting up. Let’s just call it a period of enforced leave for the time being, shall we?’