Race to the Kill, page 14
She screamed and stepped back into the corrugated iron fence.
‘Wolf!’ a female voice called.
The dog dropped down, glanced back to where it had come from, then turned to Chloe again, tail wagging, gathering himself as if to jump once more. She could see now that he was just trying to play, but she was shaking.
A young woman appeared from the scrapyard. She had dyed blonde hair, cropped and spiky, and she held a lead and collar in her hand.
‘Come here, Wolf!’
She looked at Chloe and Melissa.
‘Oh,’ she said, and seemed to forget about the dog. ‘What are you doing here?’
The you was directed at Melissa.
‘Do Lou and Derek know you’re here?’ She grabbed the dog’s neck and managed to get its collar back on.
‘We came to watch the rescue dogs race. Are you going to let him run?’
‘What?’ The girl looked at Melissa as if she was mad. ‘Look, you need to go home and take your friend with you. Go on. Before Lou and Derek find out. I heard them saying they were having second thoughts about you coming to live with them anyway, because you’re a bit of a handful, aren’t you? So what are they going to think if they know you’ve come here on your own?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I do, Melissa Heron. I do know, because I listen. Now it’s your turn to listen. Get out before I tell your social worker myself.’
Melissa didn’t answer. Chloe watched a flicker of sadness pass across her face, then it was gone, and in its place a look of grim determination settled across her clenched jaw.
‘Come on, Chloe,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t get to tell me what to do.’
She teetered off towards the stadium building in her heels. As Chloe made to follow her, the other woman grabbed her arm.
‘What were you doing skulking round the fence like that?’
Chloe just shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Get her out of here, if you’re her friend. And stay away from the yard, or I won’t call the dog off next time.’
Chloe turned and went after Melissa.
‘Who the hell is she?’
‘Just some girl who works for my aunt and uncle. She’s nobody.’
‘What’s she so worked up about?’
Melissa turned to face her. ‘She’s right, in a way. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m still on supervised visits. That means Aunty Lou visits me but there has to be someone else there, like a social worker or one of the staff from the home. It’s because my dad’s got a criminal record and I’ve got a history of running away.’
‘So you shouldn’t have been here on Saturday night either?’
Melissa shook her head. ‘I’m supposed to be coming on a proper visit soon, with the social worker, but it keeps getting cancelled.’
Chloe chewed her bottom lip. She didn’t like the situation she’d got herself into. It had trouble written all over it.
‘If anybody asks,’ she said, ‘I don’t know any of this. I just came to watch the dog racing and as soon it’s over, I’m putting you in a taxi back into town, and I’m going home.’
‘Don’t be pissed off with me, Chloe.’
But Chloe wasn’t listening. She was walking towards the new building.
‘Is this the kennels, then?’
‘Yeah,’ Melissa said, staggering slightly to catch her up. ‘Shall we see if Indian Whisper’s there?’
In front of the new single-storey block, someone was rolling out turf on their hands and knees. Chloe watched for a moment, itching to suggest he should have the rolls closer together, but she was wary of speaking to anyone here after the young woman’s outburst.
‘Hiya, Tommy!’ Melissa called.
The man looked up. He was plump, with an easy smile. He looked familiar and Chloe wondered if she’d seen him on Saturday.
‘Hi, Melissa! Who’s your friend?’
‘This is Chloe.’
He stood up and rubbed the soil off his hands on the back of his trousers. He held out a hand for Chloe to shake. She took it, and remembered where she’d seen him, dragging the drunken customer out of the bar towards the fire escape. His hands were muscular and he gripped hers tight before he dropped it, as if he didn’t know his own strength.
‘We came to see Whisper,’ Melissa said.
‘Whisper?’ he spoke slowly.
‘Yes, Derek’s dog that hurt his leg. Indian Whisper. Is he in the kennels?’
Tommy shook his head.
‘Joe shot him.’
Melissa gasped.
‘He shot him with a bolt gun and buried him in the field on the other side of the Horse Road.’
Melissa’s eyes filled with tears. Tommy shuffled from one foot to another, at a loss as to what he should do. Chloe took Melissa in her arms and held her close.
‘There, there,’ she whispered into Melissa’s hair, as the girl sobbed into her shoulder. ‘Perhaps there wasn’t any choice. If it was a bad break, he would have suffered too much and it might never have got better.’
She didn’t believe what she was saying but Tommy nodded, relieved she’d come to his rescue.
‘Maybe we should go,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you back home.’
‘Yeah,’ Melissa said, between sobs. ‘I don’t want to stay here. How could he do that?’
She let Chloe guide her, one arm over her shoulder, across the car park towards the road.
As they reached the gates, a battered red pick-up drove in and stopped level with them. The window opened.
‘Hey, little sister.’ A man who looked like a slimmer and more muscular version of Tommy, smiled out from under a baseball cap.
This time Chloe had no trouble recognising him. He’d spoken to her at the rail on Saturday night, mistaken her for Melissa, then threatened her. He’d been the first to grab the drunken punter too. While Tommy’s features were soft and gentle, this brother was all cheekbones and chiselled chin. To some he might be handsome, but to her he simply looked cruel.
Melissa glared at him.
‘How could you, Joe?’
‘What have I done?’
‘That poor dog, you killed him!’
‘Hey, hey.’ He held his hands up as she approached the car window. ‘He was really badly hurt. What kind of a life was he going to have, in pain and waiting forever in a dogs’ home for someone to take pity on him? It was a mercy killing.’
‘You had no right!’
‘Life’s tough sometimes, Melissa. That’s just the way it is.’
Melissa pushed past the pickup and headed for the road. She stumbled on a loose stone and twisted her ankle with a yelp. When she lifted her right shoe, the heel was hanging loose. Joe backed up until he was level with her. Chloe followed and reached out to steady Melissa.
‘At least let me take you home,’ Joe said, his voice softer this time. ‘It doesn’t look like you’re going to get much further on those shoes.’
Chloe felt as if she had become invisible, as Melissa, tears streaming down her cheeks, shrugged her off and got into the car. Joe looked up at Chloe as if he’d only just noticed her.
‘Do I know you?’
She shook her head.
‘Whatever you think you’ve seen or heard here, forget it,’ he said. ‘Not your circus, not your monkeys.’
She watched them drive away, then she turned towards the Horse Road. She glanced back into the car park, half-expecting to see the spiky-haired girl, but there was no one there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tuesday
Sean looked at his phone and read a text from Chloe. Would it be all right if he popped over to the hospital to see Jack? She couldn’t make it this evening. Sean sighed. It wasn’t really all right. DI Khan had stormed into the ops room and reallocated half the team to help search for Xavier Velasquez in the woodland beyond the Chasebridge bypass. The theory was that he’d ditched the van, intending to take his own life. He’d been on suicide watch while he was on remand. But Sean wasn’t so sure. He’d seen him in his mother’s arms as he left the court. His family supported him; his dad had given him his old job back straight away. Sean raised his hand and asked if it could be a hijacking gone wrong, but that had caused laughter amongst his colleagues and a few comments about the sorry state of things if Chasebridge residents had resorted to hijacking bread vans.
Sean and DS Knowles were part of a reduced team on the school murder case.
Abbas was already slipping as a priority as manpower dwindled. Just a rough sleeper, a refugee at that, with no family to demand justice on his behalf. He’d been overtaken by a suspected rapist from a respectable family.
‘Give yourself an hour, then update me,’ Ivan Knowles said. ‘Cover the town centre as systematically as you can and speak to anyone you recognise. And remember, Mary Dobbs is the priority. I need to sit through a few more thrilling episodes of the race track CCTV show.’
Sean criss-crossed the centre of town, talking to Big Issue sellers and buskers, even an old man reading the paper in the library, but nobody knew anything. Finally he made his way towards the market. Some of the food stalls on the outdoor market were already closing and there were rich pickings for anyone who wasn’t too proud to pick up a few discarded oranges or cabbages.
He checked his watch. Only forty-five minutes of hospital visiting time left. He was ready to give up, and slip away to see Jack, when he spotted a couple who might be able to help him. An older man, red-faced and filthy, was pushing a supermarket trolley between the rapidly emptying stalls. There was a woman with him, younger, with lank brown hair tied in a ponytail. One of the stall holders chucked an orange into the trolley as they passed, but mostly they were ignored. Sean rang PC Gav Wentworth on his mobile.
‘All right, mate?’ Gav answered straight away.
‘That couple you met on Friday night, leaving the Chasebridge estate with a supermarket trolley, was he older, red in the face and her, straight brown hair, possibly pulled back in a ponytail?’
‘Aye,’ Gav said. ‘And the trolley was from Sainsbury’s, if that helps.’
‘Bingo,’ Sean said. ‘Thanks. It does.’
He was parallel with the couple. A long table, piled with men’s hats, stood between them. He rounded the end of it and blocked their path.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘What for?’ said the man, trying to steer around Sean.
The orange Sainsbury’s logo on the front was chipped and muddied, but still legible.
‘You spoke to my colleague on Friday night. PC Wentworth? Do you remember?’ Sean said, showing his warrant card. ‘I’m wondering if you can help us piece together what happened that evening.’
The woman let out a hard, humourless laugh.
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know what I was doing on Friday? I can’t bloody remember what I was doing last night. Neither can he. Fuck off, copper. We’ve got our shopping to do.’
The reek of spirits on her breath confirmed that she was probably telling the truth.
‘Where are you sleeping?’ Sean said.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘And before that?’
‘Funny,’ she said.
‘Was it the old Chasebridge School? Do remember being there?’
She looked wary now, but the old guy was nodding slowly.
‘Aye.’
‘Why did you leave? Can you remember?’
‘There was a bit of trouble.’ He nodded slowly again, as if searching in his damaged memory for some detail. ‘Bad lads, I reckon, fighting.’
‘Do you remember anything about them, anything unusual?’
‘I didn’t see nothing,’ the woman said quickly.
‘So why did you leave?’
‘Because he said, didn’t you Jonno? You said we had to go.’
‘Jonno makes the decisions, does he?’ Sean said, and she just shrugged.
The old man smiled, and Sean saw he only had three blackened teeth, two up and one down, hanging in his soft gums. He looked ancient, but Sean knew better. The drinking had aged him, just like it had with his dad. At least his dad still had a roof over his head. He’d never thought he’d say it, but Jack had been lucky; there was always someone worse off. The nagging guilt about his father lying alone in the hospital came back to him. There was still time, as soon as he finished here.
‘I didn’t see any faces,’ Jonno said slowly, ‘because they had masks, like Halloween.’
‘They? How many people?’
‘There’s two of them. There’s always two of them.’
‘So they’ve been before?’
The woman was becoming agitated and began to move the trolley away. ‘We’re not grasses. Leave us alone.’
‘Do you know someone called Mary Dobbs? She was in the school. I’d like to talk to her. If I can find her, I won’t need to bother you with any more questions.’
The woman looked at Sean for a moment, pupils wide and struggling to focus.
‘Of course I know who she is, she’s my fucking sister.’
‘Okay,’ Sean said and waited.
The woman lost the staring match that was going on between them, and broke her gaze.
‘She’s at The Limes,’ she said. ‘Don’t cause her no bother, she’s getting help there.’
‘Thank you,’ Sean said. ‘Can I get either of you a cup of tea to say thank you?’
She laughed the hard laugh again. ‘I won’t be bought, copper! Not for all the tea in China, neither will Jonno.’
Jonno smiled his soft smile, the jagged teeth like bins in the mouth of a dank alley.
He watched them go and wondered where they would spend the night. It was going to be another warm one, so they might prefer to be out in the open, or in a doorway. He shuddered at how vulnerable that would make them.
He put in a call to Knowles and arranged to meet him at The Limes. It was a project off Nether Hall Road, set up to help women sex workers. Knowles said to give him an hour and, yes, it was all right to visit his dad in the meantime, if he was quick. That suited Sean – ‘quick’ was as much as either of them could tolerate.
In the hospital shop Sean looked across the shelves and picked out a motor racing magazine. Watching the Grand Prix on TV was one of the few times he and his dad were close. Perhaps Jack would remember it too, one of those long summer days when Sean was a little boy, with the curtains shut to keep the light out, his mum at one end of the settee and his dad at the other, Sean in the middle, eating a bag of crisps. It blurred into another memory, messier, sadder, after his mum was dead. Another Grand Prix, his dad asleep and missing the race, a bottle beside him on the floor, the air bitter with whisky fumes.
He took the magazine to the till. The photograph on the cover showed a shiny red Mercedes on a blurred background. Sean queued up behind an elderly woman with a walking frame, legs wrapped in bandages. He wished they could get a move on, he didn’t have long before he was supposed to be at The Limes.
On the ward, Jack was sitting up in bed. His hair had been combed neatly over his scalp with a side parting that made him look like a businessman. Sean couldn’t help smiling at the irony. Jack smiled back. When he spoke, his voice was slow and slurred.
‘Hey up, lad, what have you got for me?’
‘Car magazine,’ Sean offered it to him.
Jack lifted an arm slowly, as if every movement required conscious thought.
‘Ta.’ He ran the thumb of his twisted hand over the cover. ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she? What speed do you reckon she could go?’
‘A hundred and eighty, tops, I should think.’
Sean sat carefully on the side of the bed.
Jack looked slowly up from the picture to his son.
‘What about you?’ he said.
Sean waited.
‘What about you?’ Jack repeated, concentrating on every word, as if he was learning a new language. ‘Have they let you drive any fast cars in that job you do?’
Sean considered telling him the truth about the clapped-out old squad cars on the response unit, but he decided to reward Jack’s rare show of interest with something more juicy.
‘When I did a stint in traffic, we topped a hundred and thirty on the motorway, blues and twos going all the way.’
Jack wheezed half a laugh. ‘Cops and robbers!’
‘Something like that. A sixteen-year-old with no licence who broke into a house and took the keys for a BMW parked on the drive.’
‘I bet he had the time of his life.’ The wheeze broke into a cackle.
‘The owner wasn’t very pleased.’
‘Bet he wasn’t.’ Jack shook his head, his mouth slackening in to a soft grin. ‘Almost feel sorry for him myself.’
‘The lad only stopped when he hit a fence, coming off the slip road. Lucky to be alive.’
‘Aye,’ Jack nodded thoughtfully. ‘You only live once.’
He was looking at the car on the magazine cover and his eyes filled with tears. Sean looked away. His father cleared his throat.
‘Is Chloe coming today?’ Jack said. ‘I thought she was, but I haven’t seen her.’
Sean glanced out of the window. The vapour trail of a jet plane smudged a line across the sky.
‘Something came up.’
‘Bless her,’ Jack said. ‘She’s a miracle, that one. When I think of all the lost years, though, the years I never knew her, it’s a bloody crime! That’s what it is!’
‘All right, Dad, don’t get worked up.’ Sean could see how quickly Jack’s mood changed.
‘They stole her from me!’
‘You’re getting mixed up, Dad …’
‘Don’t you tell me, you bloody bastard!’ Jack lurched forward and the magazine slipped to the floor. A nursing assistant came hurrying into the bay.
‘What’s all this about, Mr Denton? We don’t want you getting overexcited.’
‘Fuck off, I don’t want any fucking darkies touching me!’
