Gallowstree Lane E-Book

Kate London

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Tower
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 466

Beschreibung

Book Three of The Tower - now a major ITV drama 'Utterly authentic' Daily Mail Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw is not interested in the infantry. He likes the proper criminals, the ones who can plan things. As head of Operation Perseus - a covert police investigation into a powerful criminal network - Shaw is about to make the arrests of his career. But then the brutal murder of a teenager sends a shockwave through the very organization he has been targeting, threatening not only Shaw's case, but everyone with a connection to the boy who was killed on Gallowstree Lane... 'An authentic depiction of gang life and police politics with first class writing.' Sunday Express

Leseprobe

Also by Kate London

Post Mortem

Death Message

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2019 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

This edition published in 2020.

Copyright © Kate London, 2019

The moral right of Kate London to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 34 08E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 339 2

Printed in Great Britain

CorvusAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

For D & Y

Author’s Note

Special thanks to Sheldon and Michelle Thomas from the charity Gangsline, who shared their experience, understanding and passion so generously.

AFTERWARDS

FRIDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2016

Detective Inspector Sarah Collins had set off before dawn, whipping round London’s arterial roads, thundering along the motorway and then winding down country lanes to the Saxon church that lay, through a gate and along a path, on the brow of a small hill. The hedgerows and trees were flaming with late colour.

More than thirty minutes remained before the funeral. She slid the car seat back and drank her flask of tea. Caroline had offered to come with her, but it felt wrong to be so intimately together so soon after they had separated. She sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The only sound now was birdsong.

When she was only sixteen, Sarah’s sister had died. Susie’s boyfriend, Patrick, had been driving too fast and lost control on a sharp bend. It was no more than a moment’s misjudgement, a youthful thrill at the power of the car he had borrowed for the day, but in an instant her sister was as dead as if Patrick had taken a knife and killed her.

Sarah sighed again. It was tiresome to think of this so many years later and at such a very different funeral. But you can’t control what comes into your mind. Perhaps it was Susie’s youth when she died, or perhaps it was the vast sadness that Sarah felt now, expanding inside her like air.

The body is not a fairy tale. Sometimes it does not survive an impact or a stab wound or the bullet from a gun.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and tidied her flask away. Into her mind had stepped the children who would follow the hearse today. There was no remedy for the loss of a parent: that was the thing she could not handle. When she was at work, Sarah could do her best to deliver justice, but today what could she contribute? She would sit alone at the back of the church. Pay her respects. Bother no one.

Other cars had started to arrive. They bounced up the bank and parked and spilled their occupants onto the verges. The funeral today was for a police officer, and so many of the mourners were also police. They were easy to recognize from their best-behaviour attitude and their smart clothes and the assessing way they met your eye.

There were children too, populating the graveyard as they spread out on their way to the church. Sarah smiled as she watched them. A chubby boy of about four in matching blazer and trousers. A slightly older girl in an apricot taffeta dress and dark cardigan – dressed more for a wedding than a funeral. Teenage girls in tight dresses and spike heels that sank into the path or wobbled beneath them. And teenage boys with gelled hair and outsized Adam’s apples, squeezed into horrible suits in tribute to the baffling adult world that couldn’t today be gainsaid.

Sarah’s heart went out to them in their poorly concealed vulnerability, their sensitivity to any slight, their hastily made mistakes and their painful, long-drawn-out regrets. As she watched the adults gathering in their offspring with varying degrees of patience, she knew that for all the push and pull of parenthood, these children were the lucky ones. Mum and Dad cajoling them towards their emergence from this desperate and grandiose and ridiculous time when even a haircut felt like a life-or-death event.

And as she left the car and walked through the gate towards the church, her thoughts travelled to those other teenage boys, on their bikes, stealing phones and slipping drugs hand to hand on the streets of London. Into her mind came Peter Pan’s lost boys roaming free, and Neverland, where to die was an awfully big adventure and where pirate Smee wiped his glasses before he cleaned his sword, and her gaze turned to the far edge of the churchyard, where, by a fence that separated the consecrated ground from a field of horses, the deep grave waited.

A PROMISINGFOOTBALLER

SUNDAY 9 OCTOBER 2016

1

Please don’t let me die.

The first time, Owen wasn’t sure he’d heard the words correctly. And he couldn’t see properly either. The street light wasn’t working. The big old park that ran alongside the pavement was pitch dark, and his eyes were still filled with the brightness of the shop where he had just been. At first, the only thing visible was a shifting in the shadows. Then, as his irises expanded, he made out two teenage boys standing with their backs against the railings.

Gallowstree Lane was too wide, too dark, and life had taught Owen the hard way never to take anything at face value. Perhaps these boys were going to rob him. But the boy who had spoken stepped forward, and Owen saw he was gripping the inside of his leg. A dark, sticky lake was spreading around his feet, and he said it again.

‘Please don’t let me die.’

Owen had only popped out to buy some fags from the corner shop before it closed. He had a boy of his own at home, a boy he had only ten minutes ago told to switch the lights out but who was probably still wide awake glued to his Xbox. He’d flick the lights off at his father’s return and pretend to be asleep. It always made Owen smile, and thinking of it stopped his breath for a second, because although his boy was all the things you’d expect of a teenager – lazy, messy, disorganized – Owen loved him so hard he knew he’d die for him.

The boy in front of him was, he guessed, about the same age as his own son. Fifteen. He tried not to let the thought of that paralyse him or make him leap to the outcome that the growing pool of blood suggested. He’d been trained not to give up, not just by the army, but by life too. He’d seen stuff. A soldier stepping on an IED. A suicide attack on a market. He was right back there and the familiar reaction – a certain cold sweatiness – was counteracted by the equally familiar instruction to himself. Do what you can. Don’t stop to think about outcomes.

He called out to the other boy, the one who seemed unharmed, and he stepped forward. Unremarkable: a London kid with the usual uniform of dark hoody and dark tracksuit trousers.

Owen said, ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

The boy shook his head. ‘Haven’t got a phone.’

‘You haven’t got a phone?’ Even in this moment of peril, Owen disbelieved. Surely every teenager had a phone? He glanced at the boy again. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the thin light and he took in a bit more detail. Pale skin for a black lad, wide mouth, a line shaved in his left eyebrow. Superdry logo across the front of his hoody. The boy was probably shocked. In these situations you had to take charge, give clear instructions. He reached his own phone – an iPhone 6 – out of his pocket and handed it over.

‘My code’s 634655. Call 999.’

The boy fumbled anxiously with the phone. ‘Fucking hell! There’s no signal.’

‘Find a signal. Tell them there’s an off-duty paramedic on scene. The patient’s conscious and breathing but there’s a suspected arterial bleed. Have you got that?’

‘Suspected arterial bleed, yes.’

‘Tell them we need HEMS. You got that? HEMS. It’s the air ambulance.’

‘HEMS, yes.’

‘Tell them it’s life-threatening.’

The boy was still fumbling with the phone. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said again.

‘What’s your name?’

The boy shook his head – whether at the phone or refusing his name, it wasn’t clear.

‘OK. Whatever your name is, stop panicking. Find a signal. Make the call, then come back and help.’

He turned back to the wounded boy and said, ‘You need to lie down.’ But the boy was confused. He had started to take off his clothes, and as Owen approached, he tried to push him away.

He looked around and said it again, this time with rage and fear.

‘Don’t let me die.’

Two other people were passing. Young white kids, a boy and a girl. About twenty, maybe. Their steps faltered.

The boy said, ‘Is there a problem?’ He had one of those good-schools accents: out of place on this street. There was fear in his voice, and his eyes flickered to the pool of blood.

Owen was catching the victim as he began to lose control of his body, lying him down on the street even as he resisted like a fluttering bird. Looking up, he said to the kids, ‘This fella’s in trouble. Can you help me?’

‘What can we do?’

‘Put pressure on his leg.’

The boy knelt, put his two hands on the leg, pressing his thumbs. Owen said, ‘No. Much more force. Stand up. Put your foot in his groin, here. That’s right, use your weight. Don’t be afraid.’

He gestured to the girl. ‘You, darling. What’s your name?’

‘Fiona.’

Her skin was white as birch in the dark street, her eyes wide. She had long straight hair. He smiled and tried to sound encouraging.

‘Right, Fiona. Kneel down and rest his foot on your shoulder. Lift the leg. That’s right. Get it high up. We’re trying to slow the bleed.’

He knelt by the patient. ‘My name’s Owen, fella. What’s yours?’

The boy just groaned. Owen started searching for other wounds. The skin was already clammy. With the darkness and the blood it was hard to see the necessary detail. He didn’t have a torch, no dressings, no defib. Nothing.

He said, ‘What happened? Have you been stabbed more than once?’

‘Don’t know.’

Another woman had joined them. A fat black woman, fifties maybe. She had a steadiness about her and the light gleamed off her skin as if she was highly polished stone.

She said, ‘What can I do?’

The clothes the boy had taken off were on the pavement, and Owen gestured towards them. ‘Look through those. See if you can see other cuts.’

Studiously she began, holding the clothes up to catch what light there was.

The girl was wearing a scarf, and Owen asked her to give it to him. She surrendered it immediately. It might well be pointless but what else could he do? He wrapped the scarf tightly round the top of the thigh. The boy was losing consciousness. He had no blood to give him, no oxygen. He put his face towards the boy’s mouth. There was still breath. There was still hope. The police were here, already pulling on their plastic gloves, asking what they could do. Owen turned and looked over his shoulder. There was no sign of the boy he had told to call for help.

2

At first Ryan had been in a daze. He had stood for an aching while, watching the guy working on his friend. He was a black guy, buzz cut, jeans. Other people had gathered and the guy had shouted instructions. He seemed to know what he was doing. Everything would be OK. After all, lots of people do fine after they’ve been cut. That was true. That was true! He’d seen it.

Good scars they were: shown like trophies. A trouser leg pulled up: a patch where the knife had entered and the hair on the leg gone forever. Jeans pulled down: an ivory cord drawn tight and hard through the soft, warm skin of a thigh or a buttock. A shirt unbuttoned: silver lines like staples across a toughened line of tissue. These were the good scars: neat, professional. But sometimes too – because the medics always go to the cops – no criss-crosses. So instead a raised angrier band where a friend has helped and traced a streak of superglue along the line of the cut. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s what everyone says, isn’t it?

Ryan had been lost in his hopes, but the focus of his gaze had returned to his friend, Spencer, lying floppy on the street. For a bit he had struggled, almost resisted the guy who was trying to help him, but then he had seemed to stop caring. He’d begun to wander around; the guy had held him. Then he’d lain down. There was a lot of blood. That was worrying. But they had all kinds of shit nowadays that could save a life. Loads of people get stabbed. Ryan had known he should leave, but Spence was his friend. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been his mate. He just couldn’t make his legs turn and carry him away.

Some of the blood had been seeping into a storm drain. Ryan had watched that for a while, his friend’s blood spilling into London’s sewer system, making its way through those dirty tunnels towards the river. He felt his own blood as if it was pooling into his feet. His face rigid, his bottom jaw pressing against his top teeth, his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth. He’d dialled 999, like the guy had told him, and the voice at the other end of the phone was still asking questions. He could hear the voice rattling away but he was no longer holding the phone to his ear. They had everything they needed to know. He lifted the phone to his ear and said it out loud.

‘Just fucking get here.’

One of the bystanders, a young white woman, turned and glanced over her shoulder at him with a briefly curious expression.

The red helicopter swung into the sky above them, hanging in the air as if swinging on a wire and then descending with a rush of wind. A roar like a movie sound system. Ryan’s chest filled with the vibrations.

The street was filling with people, uniforms, bystanders. Traffic was slowing to watch. A fat white bloke leant out of a car, side window down, and said, ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ Ryan said, ‘I don’t know, mate.’ The fat bloke said, ‘Wannabe gangster. I hope he dies.’ He drove off. There were two paramedic cars now. The street was noisy, and bright too with flashing lights, like a fun fair.

Then the first cop car arrived. A young female officer got out and moved towards Spencer and the paramedics. Luckily she hadn’t thought to look around her. That was what finally got Ryan moving. He didn’t want to leave his friend, but he had to.

3

By the time Sarah arrived, Gallowstree Lane was already closed to traffic and a two-hundred-metre section of the road had been cordoned off with blue and white plastic tape. Portable lights had been brought in, and beyond the tape, the crime scene blazed brightly white against the dark backdrop of the park. Life had been pronounced extinct at the scene and so the body had not been removed. The tent that held the boy was pitched a few yards down from a uniformed officer who stood at the shadowy cordon line, cold and bored, scene log clutched in his gloved hand.

Sarah put her logbook on the dashboard of the car and stepped out onto the pavement.

Gallowstree Lane was a road that took you from east to west, not a main thoroughfare but not residential either. There were AstroTurf pitches at one end, in the middle a lonely shop, and at the end, a scary-looking Victorian pub. There was a vacancy about the place, an absence. Sarah had driven through it many times on the way to somewhere else and it had always given her the creeps. Was it the dimensions – too wide, too open? Was it the sombre, uninviting park with the railings? Someone had told her once that farmers used to drive their sheep into London to sell them here. Sheep markets and hangings: what a day out it must have been. There was another piece of folklore – that the sheep had got anthrax and were buried beneath the park, and that this was what had preserved the road’s undeveloped character, its open spaces. The strange emptiness offered the inevitable opportunities. Gallowstree Lane was both busy with crime – drug dealing and prostitution and fights – and yet also deserted. It was a good place to hurt someone and get away with it.

She opened the boot of her car and split the cellophane wrapper on a white forensic suit. As she began to put it on – legs in the suit, hitching it up, arms in the sleeves, careful not to snag the zip – she watched the specialist search team combing the street, moving in a silent, patient line in their own white suits and blue plastic overshoes, and it seemed to her that perhaps a secular liturgy was occurring. It was a sacrament she held close. In this huge and various city, no murder should go undetected.

Although each detail of the scene was a little different from the last, a bleak familiarity nevertheless washed across the street like an urban watercolour. So many young men dead nowadays that the officers who worked London’s streets knew by heart the established order that followed.

The park would be searched. The prostitutes who worked the road would be spoken to. The CCTV trawl, Sarah noticed, had already begun. The little shop, Yilmaz, metal blinds drawn firmly against the night, had a camera pointing in the direction of the murder, and two officers were knocking on the wooden residential door that was set into the blind side of the shop. A light came on in an upstairs window.

Sarah pulled the shoe protectors on, took the decision log out of the car, scribbled.

9 October 2016. 23:22 hours. Gallowstree Lane.

The forensic team was on its way, bringing a pathologist with them for an initial investigation before the post-mortem. Sarah would wait for them before looking in on the poor boy, cold and lonely in his tent.

She approached the PC on the cordon and showed her warrant card. He called her ma’am and she smiled and said, ‘Sarah, please.’ Fat Elaine was standing at the far end of the cordon arguing with a uniformed sergeant. While the PC copied her details into the log, Sarah watched Elaine, enjoying her bad manners that leavened this sad road with its familiar procedure, its usual constraints and its teenage death.

Instead of her usual capacious dress, Elaine was in trousers – a concession perhaps to the practicalities of being part of the night-duty homicide assessment team. Pulled tightly around the vague area of her waist, they were a bit too short in the leg and showed her canvas lace-ups.

Sarah took back her warrant card and walked towards her, watching with some amusement the sergeant’s protests. He towered above Elaine but his face still brought to mind a carp out of water, gulping for air.

‘We’ve got three outstanding I grades on the box,’ Sarah heard him saying. ‘A rape scene and a shooting. I need to free up these officers.’

Elaine’s hands were on her hips. ‘Well, Sergeant, the Met’s not so fucked that you can’t provide cordon officers for a murder. And while you’re at it, I need you to get the first-on-scene back here so I can debrief them.’

Sarah interrupted, offering her hand. ‘Sarah Collins, I’m the SIO. Thanks for your help. I can see you’re stretched …’

Taking a minute to negotiate the difficulties of insisting he stretch his team still further, she moved on to her next priority.

‘I’ve got a moment before Forensics get here. Can you point me in the direction of the off-duty paramedic who came across the victim? Owen Pierce, I think that’s his name.’

Owen Pierce was outside the cordon, sitting on the steps of an ambulance, smoking. A thin black man, late thirties probably, with a buzz cut. His clothes were drenched in blood and he had blood on his face too, where he’d wiped it.

She offered her hand. ‘Sarah, I’m the detective inspector.’

He nodded. ‘Owen, yeah.’

He looked dog tired. She said, ‘Well tried. It can’t have been easy.’

‘He asked me not to let him die.’ He managed, just about, to get the next words out. ‘I’ve got one the same age at home.’

The comment rippled through her. She had no children of her own. Did that disqualify her from the pain he felt? It was a familiar moment of alienation, as though he had unwittingly suggested that she was only really watching life on earth and not participating in it. In any case, she certainly knew how it felt when a job went wrong.

She said, ‘I’m sorry.’

He nodded, drew his hand across his face.

He looked terrible. Off duty, just popping to the shop, the boy’s terror catching him unprepared: clearly it had been a bad one. All the usual expressions crowded in, clamouring to be said out loud – you did your best, nothing would have saved him, at least he was being looked after when he died – but experience told her not to voice them. Such utterances served only to make the speaker feel better. As for Owen, he would have to pull himself together and be polite and say something positive he didn’t feel. Yes, or I suppose so. So she said nothing further but instead caught his eye.

‘Yeah,’ he said, understanding her expression. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’ Then, after a moment, he added, ‘You needed to ask me something?’

‘I’m sorry to ask you right now …’

‘No, that’s fine. Do your job. Catch the bastards.’

That was right. Justice was all she had to offer him, and here on the streets of London, into her mind came the scripture of her childhood. If a slain person is found lying in the open country …

‘There was another boy with him?’

‘Yes, he stole my phone. Can you believe it?’

‘How did that happen?’

‘He said he didn’t have one to call the ambulance, so I gave him mine. I was working on his friend, turned around and he’d buggered off with it.’

Sarah gave that a moment to sink in. So doing a subscriber’s check on the phone wasn’t going to tell her anything about the witness who had called the ambulance and named the victim, because he hadn’t used his own phone to dial 999.

‘You said he was the victim’s friend. What gave you that impression?’

‘I don’t know exactly. They were together, of course. But it was also his manner. He was so … anxious. He was black, but he was still white as a sheet, if you know what I mean.’

‘Did he give you his name?’

‘No. I asked but he didn’t say.’

4

As if he was a stranger in his own streets Ryan walked, seeing what had happened in flashes: the boys taking his stash; Spencer stepping forward to try to stop them; the silver flash of the knife in the street light, clearer and colder about what it was up to than any of the boys.

Spencer moving back, suddenly afraid. ‘Please, don’t.’

And the tall, thin boy with the tattoo had stepped forward, as if in reply, as if Spencer and he were partnering each other in one of those funky line dances from the seventies. Then it was a one-two movement – very quick – the knife darting forward with a jabbing life of its own. A gasp: breath expelled like a punch. Haah. Almost like Spence was agreeing to something. Then he had sort of staggered backwards and put his hand to his thigh, the blood spurting from between his fingers. Who would have thought we had such fountains inside us? Spencer had looked at him, terrified and puzzled.

‘Ry, what’s happening to me?’

The two other boys turned and ran. They probably had wheels nearby, because Ryan heard a squeal of tyres and the grinding roar of a car being driven too fast in a low gear. As he watched his friend’s growing confusion, he thought: Fuck, man. They planned this. They must have planned this.

He realized he had stopped walking. His thoughts had overpowered him. He opened his eyes and, through a wave of dizziness, saw the present. The street was cobbled. Low houses, nice cars. A Porsche and an old red sports Mercedes. Rich people. He squatted, his back against a wall. There was a sticky wetness on his hands and on the sleeves of his jacket. Had he been cut too? He pulled his hoody over his head, lifted his T-shirt – his torso bare, reassuringly healthy in the night. But as he checked his chest, he hand-printed the shine of his skin with sticky darkness. Spencer’s blood: he realized now that that was what it was. When he’d moved forward and held his friend, he’d covered himself in his blood. His head was spinning with it. He wasn’t coping. He looked up and saw a face staring down at him from one of the houses opposite. The man pulled up the window and shouted across at him.

‘What are you doing here? Clear off!’

Ryan got up and pulled his hoody back on over his head, then began to walk quickly away down the cobbles. That guy was the kind who’d probably call the feds just because he’d seen a brother in his street. The blood on his clothing: any fed who saw him would stop him. It would be a quick chat on the radio before he got nicked. He didn’t know what to do but he knew he had to work that out. He drew the strings of his hoody tight. A beat of blades above him, thumping the air. He looked up. It wasn’t the good guys’ oversized red dragonfly. No, it was the blue and yellow watcher, hovering high, swinging round and scanning the streets.

Ryan dreaded the secret power of those police eyes in the sky and their radios telling the ants on the ground where to go. An invisible net was being thrown over the streets. He resisted the impulse to run. That would be sure to draw attention. Instead he weaved on through the back streets. He’d take the cut-through down to the canal. There were no cameras down there and there was a bridge he could shelter under away from the helicopter.

His heart was racing. He wished he had his bike. Bloody Spence. His had had a puncture. On foot Ryan felt slow, out of his element. The route wasn’t direct. There was a railway line parallel to the canal and the streets kept ending in high walls. He was fenced in, trapped in the streets of the comfortable people. Little brick terraces. Front gardens. One with big stones in it and tall grasses. Through the window of another a flat piano with its massive lid lifted up.

Any cop car doing a drive-around would be sure to be interested in him. But he had an advantage because these were his ends. The feds would never know the twists and turns like he did.

At last he was there: barely a gap in the wall just before a little hump-backed bridge. It was a slipway down to the towpath, confined and damp-smelling. As he turned down towards the dark, oily water, a brief picture came to him of those flat-capped folk of hundreds of years ago on their own errands. No different then, he reckoned. Cutthroughs and hideaways and knives. A young man sped past him on a racer but barely clocked him. Bright lights, fluorescent jacket, the cyclist was locked into a different game and had all the gear: the wrap-around glasses, the stretch Lycra, the computer measuring his speed and heart rate. The helicopter was circling overhead. The cloth-capped guys of a hundred years ago hadn’t had to contend with that. Ryan felt utterly alone. He didn’t dare go home with his bloodstained clothes. What if the feds were waiting for him?

He sheltered beneath the bridge, blinded by the image of Spencer lying there in the street, his blood seeping down the drain. Then a sudden flash of a different memory: running down the wing waiting for Spence to pass to him. Always went on about how he’d had a trial for Tottenham, but he was a rubbish footballer. Never passed the ball. He couldn’t die, could he? Course not. Christ, Ryan’d give him some shit about this when it was all over! He heard his friend’s words again, just before it happened. It was nothing like the videos on YouTube. Please, he’d said. It had sounded like forever. Please. How long was that damn word? But also like every childish thing that had ever happened to you. Please. Like every moment you had felt small and alone and not man enough. Please. And then just the other word: don’t. Don’t: one word somehow able to hold within itself the seriousness of what was about to happen.

The helicopter was above. His hand hovered over the phone he had taken from the paramedic. He could remember Shakiel’s number. He wouldn’t be happy but he was just about the only person who would know what to do, who wouldn’t be a bullshitter, who wouldn’t be out of his depth.

Shakiel picked up after two rings. ‘Wagwan?’

‘It’s Ryan, Shaks. Spencer. He’s been stabbed.’

A brief, thinking silence on the other end of the phone. Then Shak’s voice. ‘He all right?’

‘I dunno.’ Ryan had to swallow back a flood of tears that fought to break out. ‘I had to leave him. There was medics, the helicopter, everything.’

‘How’d he look?’

‘Not good.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘There was blood everywhere. He was, like, completely flat out. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to …’

Die.

The word loomed at him and he stopped himself saying it out loud just in time. If he said it then it would happen. And he wasn’t going to die because that wouldn’t be possible. Not Spence.

Panic had poured uncontrollably into his voice too. He could hear it, like he’d inhaled helium from a stupid balloon, for fuck’s sake. He had to just stop saying so much, wait for Shakiel to tell him what to do.

There was a pause.

Shakiel spoke again. ‘How’d it happen?’

‘It was Lexi. She didn’t show. Soon as I saw them I knew it was Soldiers.’

Another silence. It seemed to last an eternity.

Then Shakiel said, ‘Neither of you had phones on you, like I told you?’

‘I didn’t have no phone. Don’t know about Spence.’

‘What phone you using now?’

‘I nicked it.’

‘Who you nick it off?’

‘The paramedic.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Ryan. What you thinking? You’re calling me on a phone stolen from the fucking paramedic.’

Ryan waited. Tears were threatening again. When Shakiel didn’t speak, he said, ‘I’m really sorry about that, Shaks. I didn’t know what to do. I daren’t go home. I’m covered in blood and I got nothing to change into.’

‘Where you now?’

‘The canal.’

There was a pause. Then – at last! – Shakiel took charge.

‘Take the SIM out the phone and split it. Throw it in the canal. Chuck the phone too while you’re at it. Do it under a bridge. Take your hoody off and throw that in. I’ll get someone to the slip, up by the Deakin, against the wall. I’ll get a change to you. Wait on the canal until it gets there, however long it takes. Put the top on at least before you leave the canal. You wanna look different on the cameras. You got cash?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, go to a pound shop. Get nail scissors, shampoo. Go to the gym. Have a wash, a good one. Cut your nails in the shower. Scrub underneath. Throw the scissors away. When you get home, throw your own phone. Don’t turn it on, nothing. Just get rid, properly, mind. Don’t talk to no one. I’ll have to chuck this burner, but I’ll be in touch.’

IMMEDIATE RESPONSE

MONDAY 10 OCTOBER

5

Lizzie was running through woodland. The ground fell and rose. Her breathing stabilized to the point where she could enjoy the light streaming through the trees and the action of her strong feet flexing and pronating, adjusting to the dips and rises. It was so good to run. The elation of it. The power of her body. Indefatigable. It was a lifetime since she had been free to run like this. But there was a noise distracting her, something on the periphery of her vision. She turned towards a leaf-strewn bank and climbed, pushing harder, losing herself in the movement. But the insistent noise continued, calling her to the surface of consciousness. She opened her eyes, reached out and hit the alarm.

DC Lizzie Griffiths pulled the covers over her head. It was too hard to abandon the warmth and comfort of the duvet. She felt she had become both donkey and master, constantly having to beat herself to keep turning the millstone.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers tracing unconsciously for a moment the raised scar down the back of her left ribs. More than two years later, the ache from the stab wound had faded but the shock of the violence and the sense of her own vulnerability still lingered.

Lizzie roused herself, pulled on tracksuit pants and a T-shirt. Her mother was in the kitchen already, brusquely tidying, wiping down worktops. Her trolley bag was by the door, packed and ready to go. Connor’s high chair stood empty, its plastic tray smeared with breakfast – yoghurt and something orange. Connor himself was playing on the rug in the sitting area. He was – absurdly for such a small person – wearing worker’s denim dungarees over a soft stripy top. On his feet were soft grey leather baby shoes, perfect for someone who was mastering walking. He played with concentration, arranging his elephants with great solemnity, some in lines, some raised on painted wooden bricks. Lizzie watched the turn of his ankle, the supple softness of his body, the placing of his foot as he spiralled thoughtfully, moving between all fours and a sitting that was as perfect and poised as Buddha.

Lizzie’s mother passed her a coffee. ‘I’ve done the best I can, but I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my train.’

Connor, perhaps sensing the change of energy in the room, reached his arms to be picked up. ‘Mummy.’ Lizzie lifted him and he placed his hand on her mouth with the softest pressure. She put her hand on Connor’s tiny one and curled her fingers round it. He smiled.

Her mother’s hands were clasped tightly together. ‘Will you be all right?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Thanks, Mum.’

It wasn’t exactly the truth. It would be easier if her mum stayed and helped her sort things out, but she had no right to ask her. She’d been very supportive: more supportive than Lizzie had had a right to expect. It was her own bed; she’d made it, she’d have to lie in it. Connor’s father, Detective Inspector Kieran Shaw, hadn’t exactly been keen on her having the baby. He was married, already had a child, a girl, Samantha. Lizzie had known the score.

Her mother smoothed her hair. ‘Well then.’

‘I’ll see you out.’

Still holding Connor, she followed her mum down the hall, kissed her on the cheek at the front door.

‘Bye, Mum. Thanks.’

‘Bye, darling. You take care.’

Connor leaned out of Lizzie’s arms – Grammy – and Lizzie’s mum smiled and kissed him.

‘See you soon, sweetheart.’

Lizzie watched her mum, the irreproachable widow, as she moved quickly down the drive. She walked briskly, then turned for an instant and waved. She had the look nailed – the wedding ring on the right hand, the slightly short navy linen trousers, the spotless pumps, the cotton shirt, the big shell necklace. She was trim, young for her age but not trying too hard for that; she had made what she would consider to be the appropriate concessions to the fading of oestrogen. Lizzie had seen the men extending their courtesies to her – offering help with her bags at the station, opening a door – and seen her mother’s responses too: amiable, good-humoured, something knowing but not conceding in her smile.

She shut the door filled with sensations of her own childhood: her mother and father’s seething but outwardly correct marriage. She tried to dismiss the annoyance she felt, reminded herself that she had long since ceded the right to judge her mother. She popped Connor back by his elephants and tried quickly to clear the breakfast into the dishwasher. But Connor wasn’t having any of it. The haven had been disturbed and he cried out to be held. Time was hurrying Lizzie on. She picked him up and grabbed her phone for him to play with. She put him on the floor of the bathroom while she showered quickly and brushed her teeth.

Her mother had stood by her, always. Actions, not words: surely that was what mattered. Not feelings. Not a lack of ease. Such things were quibbles, not available to her any more.

In the first days after Lizzie had been stabbed, as she had passed in and out of consciousness in the hospital, she’d been aware of her mother sitting beside her. Reading. Worrying. The nearness of death had created some kind of unspoken resolve between them. It was the dodged-a-bullet thing; they had been given a second chance. They would be better. Kinder. They would try harder.

It was in this golden capsule of time that she had told her mother she was pregnant. There had been no recriminations, no real hesitation. ‘OK, I’ll try to help,’ her mother had said.

The plan had been that she would buy a small flat near her daughter. But the family house didn’t sell and it was a miracle really that as the reality of helping Lizzie had emerged – endless train rides and a fold-out bed in the living room – she had stuck to her promise without complaint.

But Lizzie’s sister, Natty, had been less obliging. Lizzie would not forget the revelation of her feelings.

Congregated in the unsold family home, Natty and Lizzie had been clearing away in the kitchen. Through the conservatory windows came the sights and sounds of the three cousins playing in a paddling pool, watched over by their grandma in slacks and a stripy T-shirt. There was a smell of hot laundry. Unstacking the dishwasher and still in the glow of early motherhood, Lizzie had mumbled something – complacent, probably, not thought out, yes, definitely – about being grateful to Natty and Mum and all that, and her sister, bent down in homage to the tumble dryer, had slammed the door shut and stood up, her arms full of T-shirts and pants and babygros.

‘Christ. You really have no idea, do you?’

‘What—’

‘You’re so bloody selfish!’

‘Natty, please. I just need help. I didn’t plan any of this.’

‘Plan it? God forbid you should ever plan anything!’

Lizzie was just starting off with the ‘it’s not my fault’ speech when Natty interrupted, each fold she made in a child’s shirt or vest delineating her anger.

‘God, Lizzie. What are you thinking? Mum, moving to London now?’ A babygro added firmly to the neat stack. Another taken from the warm intermeshed pile on the table, crackling and submitting beneath Natty’s angry hands. ‘After all those years looking after Dad. Don’t you think she deserves a break? This is her last chance to start again. Have you ever given that a second’s thought? Have you ever thought what might be good for her? You never ever think of anyone but yourself.’

Tears were pricking behind Lizzie’s eyes, but to give way to them would be selfish too. Luckily there was a loud howl from the garden. The sisters turned to the window. Natty’s daughter, Lauren, was struggling to her feet in the water, red-faced and crying. Her brother, Sebastian, gave her what was clearly another shove in the chest, and she fell back and howled again.

‘Bloody hell.’ Natty threw down her daughter’s tiny blue pedal-pushers and stomped out.

Lizzie watched her sister, now squatting in front of Sebastian, holding him by the upper arm and talking firmly. Lauren watched too, tear-stained but definitely pleased with how things were going. And Lizzie’s mum? In a world of her own, drinking her coffee while Connor poured water endlessly down a red plastic water mill. Her tummy had the curve and spread that came from pregnancies and the menopause. The skin on her well-kept hands was thin and inelastic.

It had been like seeing her mother for the first time. Lizzie had felt remorse, resolved again to do better, to be better.

Now she carried Connor back into the kitchen and looked briefly at the dirty high chair and the unwashed breakfast things. She’d be all right. She’d get Connor to the childminder and be in time for work. The tidying could wait until she got home.

6

An hour later and DC Lizzie Griffiths, now smartly dressed, logged onto her computer. Kirk and Jason, the other DCs on duty from her team, were pulling their jackets off the backs of their chairs and heading to the local café.

Ash, the team’s acting detective sergeant, said, ‘Come on! It’ll all still be here when you get back.’

Lizzie smiled and lied. ‘No thanks. I’ve already had breakfast.’

Ash was wearing his charity shop suit. He proudly left the brown shop label – Sue Ryder, £7 – safety-pinned to the inside pocket so that he could show it to any detective fool enough to display the alarming symptoms of personal ambition.

He tutted. ‘All work and no play …’

She fiddled in her warrant card and produced a five-pound note. ‘Bring me back a flat white, would you?’

She smiled and disciplined herself not to look at her screen until they were through the door, chattering and joking as they made their way along the corridor towards the back door. Once she would have been one of them – a fun member of the team who could work into the night with no consequences. Now she had to battle to stay on top of her workload. It was as if, with the birth of Connor, she had woken up a different person. She had become the one who ate sandwiches at her desk, the one who continued to work while the others competed to see how many biscuits they could get into their mouths.

She picked up sometimes on the conversations – always about the other girls, of course. The annoyance that they didn’t take up the overtime. The moaning about their shift patterns. Not you, of course, they’d say when they caught her listening and remembered that she was a mother too, struggling to raise a child by herself. She still had status from her reputation pre-Connor. She’d been a foot-chaser and an officer who stuck by her colleagues. Then she’d been stabbed by a suspect and her stature had been elevated: she was the female detective who’d risked her own life to save the life of a child. She wanted to hang onto that reputation: fearless, determined, single-minded. An athlete, for fuck’s sake.

She had no photo of Connor on her desk. She’d made it a principle to work every shift that everyone else worked: lates, night duties, weekends. She never said she couldn’t. She stayed to the end and finished every job even though the childcare costs wiped out the overtime. She smiled and kept a positive expression. She knew the rules. No one likes a moaner.

Now she logged onto the crime reporting system.

Her work file was full of updates: tiny dark heartless fonts. This was local volume crime – violence, robbery, drug dealing, fraud. Sometimes they’d throw in a missing person or a sex offence. Sometimes a non-suspicious death that needed a file for the coroner. Lizzie had three new crime reports to read and memos on her seventeen live investigations. The computer fan was whirring loudly as if sharing the panic and resistance that was rising inside her. It made her think of the long-distance runner’s wall, the moment when every footfall makes itself felt, too small, too paltry against the distance ahead. A runner’s T-shirt she had seen: There is no finish line. The words had been intended, she guessed, to hint at the ecstasy of the runner’s high – that moment when you fly instead of running, when you feel invincible. But there was a different take on it – that the pain of the wall would be unending and you’d have no choice but to keep on running.

One of her crimes – a GBH that she’d been handed by the night duty on Saturday morning – showed a suspect had been identified. The borough had a twenty-four-hour arrest policy on named suspects; she’d have to try to get whoever it was nicked and dealt with today. She felt a familiar clutch of anxiety at the usual impossible calculation that had popped instantly into her head. Would she get off in time to pick up Connor from the nursery? Should she ring the childminder now to be safe? But no, best to do the research first. If she cancelled, she’d still have to pay, and that would be money down the drain. She flicked through the update. A local officer had identified the suspect from the CCTV. An identification statement was already in her in-tray and included a comparison between the most recent custody image of the boy and the CCTV still. She looked at the two images: both a young-looking, light-skinned black boy with a line shaved into his left eyebrow. It was a good shout, but by itself, the identification would never be enough.

Arrest, interview, identification procedure … the work rolled out. Lizzie fished the CCTV download from her drawer and went through to the video suite.

She sat at a computer, tapping her biro on the desk while she reviewed the footage. It was the crowd outside a grime gig, hanging out in the fake marble of the local shopping centre. Multiple cameras, colour footage, no audio. CCTV from the council of the street outside, running out of sync with the shopping centre CCTV. Probably four or five hours of footage, which she should study carefully, replaying to find out if she could identify any narrative. But when would she ever have time to do that properly?

She fast-forwarded through the young people doing their thing. The boys standing together. The girls walking past in groups, stopping and talking. Not much happening; everything happening. Lots of surprisingly formal greetings: the boys shaking hands with each other or doing rituals of fist bumps. Everything was cool. A pale-skinned black lad – dark hoody with a Superdry logo across the chest – crossed the atrium towards another and high-fived him. And then, without warning, Superdry punched the other boy in the face.

The victim momentarily lost his footing. Then everything speeded up with no clear sense to it. Like a pack of wild dogs, young men were running across the marble hall and down the escalators two steps at a time. It was a wildlife documentary. The victim was on his feet for only seconds, quickly overwhelmed by a wave of attackers, who swept over him. The boys seemed almost to compete with each other to get close enough to harm him. The body on the floor was hidden now, masked by a throng of urgent kicking that was repetitive, almost mechanical. Then, just as suddenly, it was over. Other boys were pulling the attackers off. The victim was visible again, curled up on the floor, his elbows crooked, both hands still trying to protect his head. The boys were dispersing quickly, pulling up their hoods, checking around them. Someone was helping the victim to his feet and then walking with him towards the exit, supporting him. One of the attackers had knelt down by the escalator and was quickly brushing off his shoes. The victim and his helper were picked up by another camera near the exit: blood down the victim’s face and the front of his hoody.

Back at the escalator, where the attack had happened, the atrium was now a virtually empty space, with only a few young people passing through, approaching each other, stopping in brief huddles of conversation. Uniformed police started to arrive and the remaining youngsters dispersed. The police looked around, transmitted into their radios.

Lizzie checked the identification again, glanced at the custody image of the suspect.

Ryan Kennedy. Fifteen years old.

She replayed the video. Superdry – the boy identified as Ryan Kennedy – had thrown the first punch but had then just walked off as if no longer interested.

The victim hadn’t reported the assault. It was the local Accident and Emergency who had notified police of his identity. He had a facial fracture, a broken collarbone, two fractured ribs. He didn’t know why he’d been attacked. He didn’t know the boy who’d started it.

Lizzie ran the victim’s details through the intelligence systems. Robert Nelson, 04/02/1999 … Sure enough, he was well known to police. A caution for possession of Class A; three arrests for robbery that had not led to charges; two arrests for possession with intent to supply that had been downgraded to simple possession only charges.

Nelson knew well enough who had attacked him. He just didn’t want to involve the police. The boys would be intending to settle whatever the beef was among themselves.

Ash managed to rustle up two unmarked cars. They parked round the corner from the flat and walked, leaving Kirk and Jason at the back in case Ryan made a run for it.

The door was lopsided on its hinges with a cracked frosted pane at the top. The woman who opened it had a wig on sideways and Lizzie imagined the whole house as if at an angle. She had black features but was white-complexioned. Dark acne scars lingered beneath the pale translucence of her skin. She was skinny, too skinny. Grey tracksuit bottoms hung off her bony arse. A strappy T-shirt showed the skin of her upper arms hanging loosely. It was hard to tell her age. She might be thirty, she might be fifty. She nodded at their offered warrant cards with no particular emotion.

‘Ryan, is it?’ she said.

Lizzie nodded. ‘You his mum?’

‘That’s right. Loretta.’

She opened the door to let them enter. Sticky laminate floor. Dark grey dust bunnies resting against the skirting boards. The internal stairs were carpeted with something that had probably once been beige but was now grey, darker at the edges and stained down the threadbare treads.

Lizzie said, ‘You going to be all right to come down to the station with Ryan?’

Loretta nodded and called up, ‘Ryan. Someone for you.’

Ryan appeared at the top of the stairs. He seemed younger than his fifteen years, slight of stature, not tall, not short. Good-looking. Regulation line shaved into his left eyebrow. Brand-new white trainers that looked too big. A black hoody with white trim and white cords. Black jogging pants that hung down showing the waistband of his Guccis. Unusually, the hoody and trainers carried no logo. These boys, usually there was some sort of code that meant you had to wear a particular brand – Adidas or Puma or Nike. The hoody still had the sheen that suggested it hadn’t yet been washed. Lizzie’s heart went out to him, but she didn’t know why. The clothes were too big. Perhaps that was it.

He said, ‘You the feds?’

Ash put on his campest voice. ‘No. We’re from Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police Service.’

Loretta snorted appreciatively. ‘That’s right.’

Ryan looked between them, assessing, gathering himself together. ‘What you want then, Metropolitan Police Service?’

Lizzie said, ‘Can you come downstairs?’

Lizzie made the arrest. Ryan shrugged and made no comment. She cuffed him to the front, checked the cuffs weren’t too tight. ‘Sorry to do this, but you’re probably a bit quick on your feet.’

‘I’m not gonna run, am I? That would be stupid.’

Ash said, ‘Stupid never stopped anyone trying.’

Lizzie called up Kirk and Jason to help with the search of the flat. Ash patted Ryan down, checking the waistband of his trousers. Ryan bore it stoically. Ash said, ‘I’m looking for—’

‘Anything that might hurt you or me.’

Ash laughed. He squatted down and felt Ryan’s calves. ‘Been through this before?’

But Ryan sounded angry now. ‘I’m hardly going to be carrying indoors.’

‘You never know.’

A check of his pockets produced a fifty-pound note and a handful of coins. Lizzie, holding out an evidence bag for Ash to drop them into, said, ‘You got a paper round then?’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

Ash ran his fingers under the thick gold chain round Ryan’s neck. ‘How did you afford this?’

‘Present, wasn’t it?’

‘You remember who gave it to you?’

Ryan sucked his teeth. Lizzie held out another evidence bag and Ash unclipped the chain.

Ryan said, ‘Hang on. I can just leave it here.’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, I’m seizing it.’

‘It’s mine.’

‘Yeah. You’ll get it back.’

‘You’ve no right to take it.’

‘I have—’

Loretta intervened. ‘No point, Ryan.’