Gallowstree Lane Read online

  ‘Are you tasking us with this?’

  ‘I’m asking you what you know.’

  ‘I’ve told you what we know.’

  But into the back of his mind came the thought that perhaps there had been a recent spike in the tit-for-tat between the Soldiers and the Bluds. There’d been a fight after a gig, a cannabis factory had been set on fire, and now this stabbing.

  Kieran’s phone started to ring. He slipped it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. Lizzie.

  Again.

  Baillie said, ‘Do you need to take that?’

  Kieran pressed reject. ‘No. It can wait.’

  There was a brief silence. Then Baillie confirmed what he’d been thinking.

  ‘The stats show an increase in serious violence in the area covered by Perseus—’

  Kieran interrupted. ‘All the more reason to press on, make the arrests before a full-scale war breaks out.’

  Baillie tapped the desk and said nothing. Kieran guessed that the cop in him agreed but that the ambitious senior officer was working out the spread of risks and rewards. He said, ‘Do you know anything specifically about this murder? That’s a direct question and I’m making a note of it.’

  Kieran shook his head. ‘Boss, what’s going on is what’s always going on, sometimes more of it, sometimes less. You know as well as I do that Perseus isn’t capable of keeping track of all the slights, all the jilted girlfriends and bad deals going down in north London. We have in-depth information but only so far as it’s relevant to our targets. And that information’s good. We’re days, perhaps less, from a significant seizure. It’s always hard to wait for Christmas: the good news is, it’s coming early this year and I’ve asked Santa for a car boot full of automatic weapons. I’ve been really good this year, so I’m optimistic. I’m asking you, sir, to go back to the DAC and tell him we need to protect that. Once we start tasking our UCs to gather intelligence on specific crimes, the targets will quickly start wondering where that information is coming from. Remind the DAC that our top guy is trying to hit the big time. It’s not just Shakiel we’re after; it’s the Romanians who are offering to supply. They need sweeping up. You can kill an awful lot of people with a gun.’

  Kieran walked away from NSY. His mind was full of Perseus and the thought of it quickened his pace. Two years he’d been building the intelligence on Shakiel Oliver. Now was the time to pull it all together. It was clear too from the meeting that he wouldn’t be able to protect the operation from meddlers for too much longer. But – dammit! – there was his phone, buzzing again. He almost tutted. He knew who it would be without picking it up. Lizzie would need last-minute help with Connor. It was always happening. She was hopeless.

  It angered him. No, it worried him.

  Because Connor deserved better. He smiled, thinking of his son. Perhaps it was the dimples in his shoulders and below the discs of his chubby knees. Perhaps it was the wonder of the mysterious escapement inside the boy that was turning, triggering each new development. Connor was rolling onto his tummy, then sitting, then crawling, then finding his way to his feet in a moment of suspension, his head floating above his body, new sounds escaping him like bubbles through water.

  Dad-dy.

  Kieran’s steps had slowed. He gazed at the wide London road, solid with buses and taxis and vans. The air thick with exhaust fumes. This was no place and no way to raise a child – a single mother working shifts and living in a one-bedroom flat.

  And he thought of Connor again. He’d bought him some wooden animals from a street market stall and watched him arrange them and move them across the floor as if they were walking across the African plain.

  Just thinking practically now, thinking about what would be best for Connor …

  The more he turned it over, the more workable his wife Rachel’s idea actually did seem. When she’d first raised it, he’d dismissed it as completely unrealistic. And anyway, according to the rule book, wasn’t he the guilty party? How could he possibly suggest the one patently sensible thing that would work for everyone?

  But now he was having second thoughts.

  Perhaps there was a solution after all that would work for all of them – for him, for Lizzie and Rachel. For Connor and his half-sister Samantha too. He would talk to Lizzie. You have to be bold.

  10

  There was some new rule that officers weren’t allowed into the property cupboard. It was another log thrown into the already jammed flow of custody protocols. The detention officer was doing his half-hour checks and they waited – Ryan seated between his mum and Lizzie – as he moved slowly past them with the patience of a pilgrim, keys in his hand. From the bench they could hear the usual tunes of custody: the passage of feet on the plastic floor, a shouter at the wicket, the low-volume chatter of police radios; from the medical room the tinny speaker of the nurse’s iPhone playing ‘Sultans of Swing’. The rep – now that he knew Ryan was to be bailed – had already cut loose. Lizzie’s phone pinged with a voicemail, but she ignored it.

  Ryan, prompted out of his stupor, said, ‘So what did you do with your son in the end?’

  She turned to him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said the childminder couldn’t pick him up.’

  ‘Ah, that, yes. I’ve got a neighbour …’

  ‘You left him with a neighbour?’

  ‘Yes, we help each other out.’

  ‘Po-lice officer.’ It was said with derision. ‘You shoulda gone home to your son.’

  ‘Oh come on, Ryan. I can’t go home till you do.’

  ‘You should put your son first.’ He looked across at Loretta. ‘What kind of a mum d’you think you are?’

  Loretta met Lizzie’s eye with a sympathetic look.

  And then the detention officer was there at last with the plastic bag of Ryan’s property, and they were, finally, making their way through the airlock out into the station office. It was seven in the evening and the day had glided unnoticed into a rainy twilight.

  Lizzie turned back into the nick to pick up her voicemail. There was no signal in the windowless hallway, so, unlocking her phone and pressing the playback icon, she stepped back through the station office and out onto the street. Her phone to her ear, she noticed something interesting. Loretta was standing alone at a bus stop. Ryan was moving along the street towards a darkened car.

  The voicemail was playing. It was Kieran. He’d finally called her back, far too late. She only half listened to the too-predictable message – ‘Can’t get away. Tell your sergeant you’ve got childcare issues and go home’ – as she watched the passenger door of the car open from the inside and Ryan get in.

  Somebody had been waiting for him, and that interested her. In the normal run of things he didn’t merit that sort of treatment. He was a two-bit phone thief, a boy on a bike with a few bags of cannabis in his pocket. She put the phone in her back pocket and fished a biro from her jacket. As the car started to pull silently away, she wrote the registration on the back of her hand.

  11

  As Ryan left the nick with Loretta, a car across the street had flashed its lights. Without even thinking, Ryan knew who was inside.

  ‘I gotta go, Mum,’ he said, walking away quickly so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by her protests.

  The car was Shakiel all over; something discreet and classy. White, with a VW badge. A Touareg. Nice. The rear passenger door opened. Ryan got in and the car pulled away.

  He recognized the driver, Jarral, from his long neck and narrow head. The hair was just wrong: short on the sides, long on top, gelled upwards. On somebody else it might have looked good, but on Jarral it looked dumb. He wanted to say: Dude, just fix that, but he couldn’t. It didn’t feel right having to respect Jarral. He liked to throw his weight around but everyone knew he was really nothing, just someone else’s dog.

  The interior of the car was dark. Leather seats. Shakiel was in the front passenger seat. It was difficult to see him clearly. He was turned away, looking
through the window, and as they drove down the high road, his profile caught the street light, a shifting orange gleam on his deep black skin. He had a way of doing things slowly. It was one of the things that made him different.

  Over Shakiel’s shoulder Ryan watched the street passing – a couple of girls in heels, a late-night traffic warden. His eyes flicked back to Jarral, the driver. He was checking in his rear mirror. Without turning, Shakiel said, ‘We good?’ and Jarral said, ‘I reckon.’

  Shakiel flipped the mirror down on the sunshade and looked at Ryan. ‘You all right, bro?’

  ‘Yes, man.’

  ‘What they nick you for?’

  ‘That guy I punched, innit. At the gig.’

  ‘Oh, that thing.’

  Ryan felt like a shaken fizzy drink with the lid screwed tightly. He wanted to take the top off and let it all bubble out – Why d’you tell me to punch him, Shaks? Is that why Spencer’s dead, is it? – but he clamped his mouth shut. Someone who talked a lot here might have talked a lot somewhere else.

  Shakiel didn’t speak for a long time. Then he said, ‘What they got?’

  Ryan shrugged. ‘CCTV. They got me fighting.’

  ‘How they know it was you?’

  ‘Some fed IDed me.’

  ‘They got anything else?’

  ‘Dunno. Don’t think so.’

  ‘They got your clothing?’

  ‘No. I got rid this morning. I was wearing the jacket when Spence …’ He faltered.

  Shakiel reached back and put his hand on Ryan’s arm. ‘We’ll get to that.’ There was a pause; he took his hand away. ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘No comment.’ When no one responded, Ryan added, ‘I said no comment, innit?’

  Jarral said, ‘Did you snitch?’

  ‘I told you what I did.’

  Shakiel said, ‘Did they take you in a side room? Ask you to talk to them? Said they were your mate? That kind of thing?’

  Ryan shook his head, but he thought of Lizzie Griffiths standing in the yard of the identification suite offering him a cigarette. That had seemed pretty friendly. ‘No.’

  ‘You find out anything else?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When the feds interview you, you got to pay attention. You’re interviewing them too. Finding out what they got.’

  Ryan shrugged. ‘I dunno, Shakiel. They just asked me what I was doing at the gig. I said no comment.’

  Jarral looked in his driver’s mirror and said, ‘If you get charged, they’ll release the interview. We’ll find out everything that was said.’

  Prick.

  ‘I didn’t say nothing.’

  Shakiel nodded thoughtfully. ‘OK. Where you at now?’

  ‘Bail.’

  Shakiel looked at him. ‘What about Spence?’

  Ryan put his hand over his mouth. He wanted to tell, yes, but he didn’t know how to. And there was stuff he needed to know but didn’t dare ask. Shakiel was speaking anyway.

  ‘Main thing I need to know. Why’d you ring me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was in a panic.’

  ‘But the thing is, you can’t be calling me on no phone, bruv. Specially not one you’ve nicked off no fucking ambulance driver.’

  ‘I weren’t thinking.’

  ‘Now it’s a problem. You’ve put me in it.’

  Ryan couldn’t control it. Tears had filled his eyes. He tried to hide his face by leaning back into the shadows. He didn’t want Jarral to see.

  Shakiel said, ‘You’re lucky you’re family.’

  Ryan pulled his sleeve across his face.

  There was silence. Shakiel was thinking. Then he said, ‘Listen, lie low. No burners. That’s that.’

  ‘OK.’

  Jarral said, ‘So where’s the money, then?’

  Shakiel interrupted. ‘Shut the fuck, Jarral.’

  Ryan swallowed hard against the pain in his throat. Thank God Shakiel had told his dog to get back where he belonged. No way would he allow himself to get fucked over by that prick. Shakiel was different of course. Shakiel never needed to act the big man.

  He said, ‘Ryan, we go back, long way.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was true. Ryan had known Shakiel further back than he could remember. He’d learnt more about his dad from him than anyone – stories about how the two of them had grown together, just like him and Spence, hanging out as kids and getting up to stuff. Throwing water balloons at cars and setting off the fire alarm at school. Difference was Shakiel had never felt like he did now. Shakiel had known what to do. He hadn’t been trying not to cry in the back of a car.

  Shakiel said, ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘We went to meet Lexi, like you said. But it wasn’t her – it was two guys. One of them, he had a tat – a bird on his neck. They both had knives. We didn’t have nothing. Spence …’

  He stopped speaking. Jarral was watching him in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Yeah, so Spence. The boy with the tat stepped forward and shanked him.’ He had to say the rest in a flood, had to get it out quickly because he didn’t want Jarral to see him cry. ‘Shaks, I’ve known Spencer since school. We got to get them back—’

  Shakiel interrupted. ‘Ryan, I know we got to get them back. Don’t you know that about me yet?’

  Ryan felt a stillness passing over his face. Course he knew that.

  Shakiel said, ‘Nearly two years it took me to pay back for your dad, but I did it.’

  Unable to speak, Ryan only nodded.

  ‘We need to keep the heat off right now, just for a bit. Stuff’s happening. You gotta trust me on that. I’m never going to let them get away with this shit, but we gotta wait. You’re like a son to me. I know you’re hurting, but you got to bide your time.’

  ‘You know who did it?’

  ‘Trust me, Ryan. I’m on it. We’re gonna get those fuckers back big-time, but not just yet.’

  12

  A group of three men were standing together on a fire escape. It was hard to make out much identifying detail from the CCTV recording, but Lizzie could get a general picture. Two of them – a tall, heavy black guy and a thinner, paler guy with hair that stood up like a brush – were leaning against the wall. Their movement – or rather the lack of it – suggested they were older than the third figure, in the Superdry hoody, who was horsing about. Showing off: that was what it looked like to her. At one point he skipped across the landing like a boxer and made punching gestures with his hands.

  Ryan had been identified as the boy in the Superdry hoody and the more Lizzie watched the CCTV, the more convinced she became that the identification was correct. Not just the look of the boy, but his behaviour too. Watching the CCTV – even when the faces weren’t identifiable – she could use the hoody’s logo to track him and what had happened at the gig.

  Connor stirred in her arms and Lizzie froze the frame. She was sitting at her kitchen table, Connor on her lap. Bathed and in a fresh babygro, he had fallen asleep in her arms. She was tired but she was getting on top of the CCTV from the grime gig and she was doing well. She shouldn’t be doing it at home, but when else would she get the chance? She’d got these three guys arriving outside the venue in a car and a better image of them walking together through the shopping centre. Whenever she saw Ryan, he was always with the other two, except for that moment when he walked alone across the foyer and delivered the single unprovoked blow.

  She reached across Connor and made a note in her book of the time and the camera, but, squeezed beneath her stretching body, he wriggled and protested in his sleep. He had a weight about him, and she laughed to herself at his crossness. It was like cuddling an angry sandbag! She bent over and kissed him on the head and was overcome by a wave of something physical that she could not name. Like wanting to squeeze him hard. Or eat him perhaps. She chewed at his hand and he pulled it away, irritated by the disturbance to his sleep. She laughed again.

  ‘All right, grumpy. We’ll go to sleep.’<
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  She’d done well. It was time to give up.

  But there was her doorbell ringing. The clock at the top of her computer screen showed 21:30. For God’s sake. She hitched Connor onto her shoulder. He protested again, but she patted his back and he nuzzled into her collarbone. At the front door, tilting her hip to counterbalance his sleeping weight, she looked through the spyhole and got the long shot of Kieran waiting for her with more animation than seemed necessary.

  She opened the door.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. I want to talk. Can I come in?’

  She padded back towards the living area. Now that he was here, she saw, almost as if through his eyes, how changed her flat was from how it had been before Connor. Folded baby clothes and a purple Tommy Tippee drinking cup on the table. The high chair needed wiping down.

  Kieran said, ‘Shouldn’t Connor be in his cot?’

  Lizzie sighed. ‘Yes, he should, but when I tried to put him down, he cried.’ He seemed determined to show her every way in which she was failing. She didn’t say the other thing that protested inside her, because that would only give him more ammunition: that this was the first decent time she’d spent with Connor all day.

  Her screen saver was playing rotating images of their son. Sleeping in his cot, arms flat and crooked at the elbow like the letter H. On his back with an expression of deep concentration as he played with his baby gym. Then, over her shoulder, in an ecstasy of laughter as she blew raspberries onto his stomach.

  Kieran gestured towards the laptop.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She shrugged. He reached over and, without asking permission, moved the mouse. The computer wasn’t locked yet and he saw the image, blurred but unidentifiable and unmistakably CCTV. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  Lizzie kicked a chair out from the table and sat down. ‘When else am I supposed to view it?’