Face Down Page 3

  “Oh here’s a good one,” she said. “From a farmer in Kent.”

  Broadwick grunted.

  “He’s congratulating you on your latest column. He says ‘those who prey on the weak or the innocent should forfeit their right to live’.”

  “Good, good.”

  “Then he starts banging on about ‘pikies’. Odd name. Gulliver Stevens, says he’s a lay preacher. And this one is from an old dear who enjoyed you on Question Time and wants you to write about anti-English racism…Edie Piller, 73…”

  “Humph. Let me have the farmer’s letter, will you.”

  A passing van honked its horn and a driver gave him the thumbs up. “Good on yer Willie,” he shouted. “Attaboy! Keep sticking it to the reds.”

  8

  Bolton, Greater Manchester. Three hours later.

  The landlady of the Oak had a face like her Mulberry handbag: tanned, sagging and leathery, but obviously pricey and generally open. Today she was looking a bit on the glum side, though.

  “Don’t worry Ivy, you might have your dates wrong,” I said with a wink.

  “By a decade, love,” she said in an accent that could have been scraped straight off the walls of the Rovers Return and served up in one of Betty Turpin’s hotpots. “Me ovaries shut up shop years ago.”

  “Woah. Way too much information, darlin’.”

  I’d gone in there for Sunday lunch, or dinner as proper people still called it. A decent all you can eat roast beef carvery, or at least all you can balance on your plate. I didn’t mind the clientele, mostly Man City match boys mixed with some of life’s older malcontents, and the odd wannabe WAG with Disney Princess hair, that now bog-standard Satsuma glow, false eye-lashes and full-on make-up. There must have been battles fought in less time than it takes the silly tarts to get ready to pop out for a Sunday drink.

  “Fancy meeting you here!”

  A woman’s voice, a hand on my shoulder; I looked round apprehensively. Knockers!

  “It’s my hero,” she continued.

  “Ah, yeah. Katie, right. Katie from the kebab shop.”

  “You remembered.”

  She was pretty hard to forget. As well as the obvious, she was cute. 5ft 6, blue eyes, good legs, a low-cut white Kimono cotton top to show the wobble that meant real breasts, not stone-hard implants. The girl scrubbed up well, and the crowded Pandora bracelet on her right wrist said someone loved her. Better perfume today, too, Thierry Mugler Angel. I didn’t like coincidences, though.

  “What brings you around here?”

  “Me Dad and step-mum live round the corner, but she’s having a cow today so I thought I’d give them an hour or so to cool off. What are you drinking, chuck?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Come on, what kind of world would it be if a girl couldn’t reward her knight in shining armour with a pint? Greene King is it?”

  “Lager top as it’s a Sunday. Thanks.”

  “Up here, that’s a cocktail.”

  I laughed. We settled on a corner table. Katie ate olives and, uninvited, told me about her job in the bank and her life and how she’d broken up with her boyfriend after five years. I suffered in silence, while my eyes roved the pub and I calculated an escape route.

  “So what about you?” she said finally.

  “Not for me, thanks. I’m strictly a pork scratchings kind of guy.”

  “No. What do you do?”

  “Oh, this and that. I got a job with the Samaritans last week, tried to phone in sick this morning but the bastards talked me out of it.”

  “Seriously!” she protested.

  “Seriously? This and that. Bits and bobs.”

  “Ducking and diving?”

  “Are you with the Inland Revenue?”

  “NO!”

  “OK. Anything considered as long as it’s cash in hand. No income tax, no VAT. I don’t take from society so I don’t put anything back in the pot.”

  “That seems a bit anti-social.”

  “Not really. The whole system a con. Slaving your life away to pay for Lord Irvine’s wallpaper? No thanks.”

  “My Dad would probably agree with you.”

  “Besides, I had to leave my last job through illness.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The boss got sick of me.”

  “Ouch! That hurt, but I’ll let you off. I came here because I wanted to thank you. You were so brave with that druggie.”

  “Him? Junkies are nothing to worry about. The real nutters are the ones on steroids and anti-depressants.”

  “Interesting theory. Do you fancy eating, Harry, there’s a decent gastro pub down the road, better than here?”

  In my mind gastro wasn’t a word that should be associated with pubs, just enteritis. But I lied politely.

  “Look, I’m not being rude, I was going to go home, have a sarnie and watch the match.” I drained my pint.

  “Chelsea vs Bolton Wanderers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh can I come? I’m as Bolton as Dave Sutton’s barnet.”

  I hesitated. The wobbling wonders were weakening my resistance.

  “The place is a tip,” I said finally.

  “I know how men live, I’ve got brothers. What was it Rita Rudner said? ‘Men are like bears with furniture’.”

  “But...”

  “You sure you haven’t got a wife tucked away at home? I wouldn’t mind, it’s not like you’ve tried it on or anything.”

  “I’ve got one ex wife who hates me and another one who’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  She squeezed my hand. She was kind-hearted. And funny. More importantly, she was on the level. Not a threat.

  “OK,” I said. “But look, I’m warning you, it’s a proper shit-hole.”

  “Is that accent Essex?”

  “Kent,” I lied. “At least that’s what people shout at me in the street.”

  She got the gag after a beat and laughed. Her smile was wide and warm. Sexy. We never saw the match.

  9

  Surrey. An hour later.

  Jackie Sutton sat astride the horse Daddy had bought her for her 21st birthday, and circled the paddock once again for effect. She sat up straight in the saddle, aware that her ample charms bounced with the horse’s every step and that the stable owner’s teenage son and his friends couldn’t take their eyes off them.

  Ever since she was a child, Jackie had been able to wrap men around her little finger with her smile. At fifteen, der grossen Busen appeared and the smile became almost superfluous. The legs, the arse…physically she was perfect. The only thing that spoilt the package was that she knew it. Jackie had been spoilt rotten by her investment banker father, and her uncles, and her lovers, and the big-wigs at Conservative Party HQ. Everything she got, she wanted. And now she wanted William Broadwick.

  He wasn’t the most handsome man she’d ever been to bed with, nor the best endowed – no mighty oak would ever grow from the Broadwick acorn. He wasn’t even the best lover. But he had something Daddy’s money couldn’t buy: fame. Well, OK, infamy. The two were interchangeable these days. Broadwick’s stringent views had rewarded him with celebrity status, and Jackie wanted some of that – which meant that she had to wrest Willie away from wifey. Surely not a problem for a woman of her connections, beauty and persuasive powers?

  Jackie glanced over. The lads were still watching her. She circled again and rose in the saddle so they got a good look at her Pippa-perfect posterior before horse and rider left the paddock. Sweet dreams, boys, she thought. And make them wet ones.

  10

  Monday October 8th. Tunbridge Wells. 11am

  Mick Neale had never said much, but these days he said even less. He was used to death – he’d been a soldier and he’d been a cop – but finding Tim Brown’s corpse had given him nightmares. Thelma’s body had been the only one he’d been hoping to see that weekend.

  On the da
ys when he didn’t have his son, Mick would gravitate to the Toad Rock Retreat in Denny Bottom, which meant passing the murder scene. It made him shudder. Still, the first sip of Glenfiddich single-malt helped ease the pain. Something, some old cop instinct, intrigued him about the death. Not that the scumbag didn’t deserve to die. Interfere with kids and you should forfeit your right to life. But this wasn’t a crime of passion, and it certainly wasn’t accidental. Brown had been deliberately, ruthlessly assassinated. Gunned down. Rubbed out. Blown away...whatever way you said it, it was disturbing.

  It suddenly struck him that, in a cruelly ironic twist of fate, Toad Rock was in Harmony Lane...

  Thelma wasn’t on today, Len the landlord was behind the jump.

  Mick ordered a fry-up.

  “Two sausages, three rashers, two fried eggs and two toast…”

  “That’s bad for your heart, Mick.”

  “Yeah? Okay, make it three bangers, a fried slice and as much bacon as Lynn can fit on the plate. Hold the Holy Ghost.”

  “More people commit suicide with a fork than a gun.”

  “Fuck me, Leonard, who’s boiled your piss today?”

  Len nearly grinned. “It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going,” he said, as he took the order through to the kitchen.

  “Terrible business, this,” he said as he returned carrying a bottle of tomato sauce. “We had some DI in here today asking question. Gary Shaw. Know him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Londoner. He said he’d heard of you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did the Stevens girl know that other fella who got shot in Essex the same day, the one they’re calling Donkey Don in the papers?”

  “Donkey Don!”

  “Because he did animal porn, not cos he was hung like one. Did the Stevens girl know him?”

  “Charlie? Don’t think so, why?”

  “Only our Alice thought she’d seen them together at a bar in Brentwood the night before.”

  “Can’t see it, she’d have said. It’s not every day someone you know gets topped.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “And what would she have been doing in Essex? The old fella doesn’t like her drinking in the Pantiles, let alone over the water.”

  Mick did manual labour on a couple of local farms, including the Stevens one, so he knew the spiky curmudgeon about as well as anyone. The old man had a face like a depressed bloodhound and made the ancient Up Pompeii soothsayer seem like one of life’s eternal optimists. Mind you, those bat ears of his would make anyone grumpy.

  “It’s amazing she’s turned out so normal with the old man such an emotional cripple.”

  “Blimey Len, you need to knock Loose Women on the head.”

  “Ha. How is the old bastard, Mick? I saw him in town and he seemed a bit...disorientated. He told me the same story twice.”

  “Crankier than usual. He found a couple of pikies in the yard the other morning and fired off the 12-bore.”

  “He wants to watch that. The cops would sooner bang him up for defending his property than take on the gyppoes.”

  “That’s what I told him, but he’s spitting mad. They get away with murder.”

  “Different in your day, Michael.”

  “Everything was different in my day.”

  “Someone ought to teach them vermin a lesson.”

  11

  October 9th. Bolton, Greater Manchester. 3am.

  When I got tired of lying in bed watching Katie’s breasts heave, I got up to pour myself a G&T. You’ll be as pleased as I was to know that my initial impressions were bang on – they were all real and quite magnificent. Too many modern birds have bought into the fashion world lie that men go for a woman who looks like a thirteen-year-old boy in a training bra. Not so. Men who work in fashion go for that, but that is because they are largely pederasts. To men of my age and orientation, fake boobs are a cruel deception, a malicious con trick, like me strapping a king size cucumber down me pants. Not that I’d need to, I should add.

  Katie got up minutes later to join me, wearing one of my Longshanks shirts.

  “You’re right, this place is a tip,” she said, eyeing the boxes of stock in the living room like a disappointed school teacher.

  “I did warn you. Red?”

  “Go on then, just a small one.”

  I’d bought her a decent Fleurie instead of the £6 bottle of Bulgarian migraine she’d attempted to pick up in the offie.

  “So what’s your story, Harry?”

  Where could I start? My real story would have made her hair curl. I’d been an undercover cop for years, one of the best thief-takers the Met had ever seen. Harry Tyler was the name I used to infiltrate gangs. My real one was Harry Dean, and my best and biggest job was the taking down of a South London firm led by Johnny Baker, known as Johnny Too – as in ‘too handsome’ – but Johnny Too Bad, like The Slickers song says, or too smart would have worked just as well.

  “How d’you mean? I told you, I’m a trader.”

  She looked at the pictures on the wall of my two kids, Courtney Rose and little Alfie, named after Sir Alf Ramsay of course, a good Dagenham boy as well as being a bona fide football legend.

  “Tell me about your wives.”

  It’s a TV cliché that all detectives have their demons: the booze, the dead missus or the reckless infidelity. I had all three. I was married twice, but in reality, like all your favourite telly tecs, I was only really married to the job...until the job divorced me. My police career went tits up when I wiped out the Nelson brothers, the men who had driven my first wife, Dawn to suicide. MI5 set me up to be wiped out by the Provos in Dunleary, County Dublin, and if it hadn’t been for a Prod paramilitary it would have been Goodnight Vienna. Dear old Tommy. His network had got me back onto the mainland and into a safe-house in North Wales. But there’s only so much “No surrender” a boy from Colchester can take.

  Do I feel bitter, hurt, isolated and betrayed? Yeah, for about a minute every morning, then I eat me black pudding and get on with things. Life sucks, wear a seat-belt.

  I’ve been on me Jack for eight years now, living on my wits as a trader in black market goods up here in Phoenix Nights country. But what could I tell her? Dawn went over the side because I’m a nutter who can’t do a 9-5 job. Kara left me for the same reason. And I don’t see Courtney or Alfie for the simple reason that everyone who ever knew me – family, friends, former colleagues – thinks I’m dead; everyone except a couple of UDA boys, and no doubt British Military Intelligence.

  I had hangovers every day but they weren’t from drink, they were from memories.

  No one to blame but me though... I was living proof that when it came to those closest to them, a good cop could also be a pretty lousy person.

  “How about you,” I asked out of politeness. “Anyone special?”

  “There was one boy...”

  “The one you told me about?”

  “Yeah, the love of my life. But that’s all gone down the plughole. I’m free, Harry, free but I’m not cheap.” She smiled. “And if I seem to be channelling me dialogue from day-time soap operas, it’s your fault for plying me with wine.”

  I took that as a cue to get up and pour more drinks, and came back to find her looking through my small CD collection – I’m old-fashioned like that, I like things I can actually possess rather than theoretically own in cyber-space. The extent of my modern music collection was a measly four CDs: Missing Andy, Buster Shuffle, Green Day and the Stone Foundation. The rest was strictly retro: The Jam, Madness, Squeeze, the Cockney Rejects, The Beat, a bit of Oasis. My last bird swiped all the Leela James.

  Katie was examining All Mod Cons. “Before my time,” she said, like that was any excuse. “Although my Dad was a Mod, into Northern Soul...” She found the Missing Andy CD. “Oh I like these, I saw these on Sky.”

  She looked at the discarded copy of the Telegraph, open on the Announcements page, and then the books on the side caught her attention.<
br />
  “Do you read much, Katie?”

  “Yeah, I’m just reading Energy Secrets by Alla Svirinskaya. She’s an amazing healer and teaches you the secret of energy in the workplace and at home.”

  I did my best to hide my revulsion. “Dad’s got this,” she said, picking up a paperback edition of Littlejohn’s Britain. “I said you’d get on. He supports the EDL.”

  I grunted.

  “Y’know, English Defence League. What about you?”

  “I’m more EDF.”

  “EDF? What’s that?”

  “Like the EDL, but more...electric, more energy in the home.”

  She might laugh at that later, if she bothered to Google it.

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “Never!”

  Katie leaned forward, smiled coquettishly and pushed her breasts up and out in my direction.

  “Tit wank?” she asked innocently. Well what do you think? I was always taught it was rude to refuse a lady.

  12

  October 10. Tonbridge, Kent. 9.30am

  DI Shaw walked into the incident room to find Detective Sgt Wattsie Watts sipping his coffee while she and DC Woodward finished off his favourite crossword.

  “For fuck’s sake, Rhona, I haven’t read even that paper.”

  “You’ve not missed much, guv.”

  “Tart. Get the lads in will you?”

  The briefing was quick and depressing. There were no new leads on the Brown killing, forensics had thrown up nothing other than the weapon was a Browning Maxus and there was still no clue as to the motive.

  “Could it be a professional job?” Womble wondered aloud. “A hit-man, or a vigilante?”

  “What? In Tunbridge Wells?” sighed Gary Shaw, “I can’t see it, John. Five will get you ten that what we have here is a revenge shooting, so let’s carry on checking out the whereabouts of the families of his victims and those close to them, and keep working through the list of his disgustingly creepy friends.”