Race to the Kill E-Book

Helen Cadbury

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Sean Denton
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 427

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

It is the middle of a long night shift for PC Sean Denton and his partner PC Gavin Wentworth when they are approached by a dishevelled-looking woman desperate that they follow her. She leads them to the old Chasebridge High School where they find the dead body of a Syrian refugee. The investigation which points to the neighbouring greyhound stadium finds Denton caught up in a world of immigration, drugs and sexual abuse, and one in which his private life becomes increasingly entwined.

Leseprobe

Race to the Kill

HELEN CADBURY

Dedicated to the memory of Sue Matthews friend, musician, librarian

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONPROLOGUECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVECHAPTER TWENTY-SIXCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTCHAPTER TWENTY-NINECHAPTER THIRTYCHAPTER THIRTY-ONECHAPTER THIRTY-TWOCHAPTER THIRTY-THREECHAPTER THIRTY-FOURCHAPTER THIRTY-FIVECHAPTER THIRTY-SIXCHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENCHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTCHAPTER THIRTY-NINECHAPTER FORTYCHAPTER FORTY-ONECHAPTER FORTY-TWOCHAPTER FORTY-THREECHAPTER FORTY-FOURCHAPTER FORTY-FIVECHAPTER FORTY-SIXCHAPTER FORTY-SEVENCHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT THE AUTHORBY HELEN CADBURYCOPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

Sarah

The smell of newly laid tarmac gets stronger as she gets closer, until it eliminates all the other scents of late afternoon on a hot June day. She carries a bottle of water, straight from the fridge. Beads of water coat the plastic and run over her fingers. The lazy turn of the concrete mixer, grit hurling against its sides, slows and stops. He’s seen her coming. He wipes his hands on the back of his trousers and his eyes dance with a smile. She hesitates, unsure whether she should cross the trench, lined with orange and yellow cables. She holds out the bottle, but he won’t be able to reach it from the other side. She is watching a bead of sweat run down his neck from behind his ear. It trickles along his clavicle and down the centre of his chest where it soaks into a stain on his vest.

He steps over the trench, his legs longer than hers, and lands right in front of her, teetering on her side, right on the edge. She can smell him now, see the thin red blood vessels lining the whites of his eyes. He’s too close. She holds the bottle of water against her chest, as if it will protect her. His mouth is open, showing his broken teeth. The muscles along his arms are taut as he reaches his sinewy hands out, like a hawk’s talons.

Half a second before he touches her shoulders, she screams, and the sound bounces off the breeze-block wall beyond the trench. It echoes off the solid mass of the building behind her. His face changes and his grip tightens, as if he’s going to shake her. A door opens, and she hears feet at the top of the metal fire escape. She is still screaming, trying to push him off, but she is not strong enough. This time, though, someone is coming to rescue her.

CHAPTER ONE

Friday night

The petrol gauge had been nudging red for nearly an hour when PC Sean Denton finally persuaded his partner, PC Gavin Wentworth, to pull into the petrol station close to the Chasebridge estate. Gav stayed behind the wheel, while Sean got out to fill the car. Beyond the spot-lit petrol pumps the woods loomed in the dark. It was just after midnight. Fuel glugged into the empty tank and an owl hooted somewhere over the rough fields. The heat of the day had evaporated and Sean wished he’d put his jacket on.

He returned the nozzle to the pump and went to pay at the window. He asked the young lad on duty to get him a couple of bags of crisps and a can of pop. Pocketing the receipt for the petrol, he handed over a five pound note for the snacks. The cashier’s eyes darted up from the money, over Sean’s shoulder. A flicker of white in the reinforced glass was enough to make Sean spin round, one hand on his baton. But it was just a woman, dishevelled and pinch-faced, with greasy bobbed hair. Probably no more than thirty, but looking fifty. She took a step back, startled. She’d have to be desperate to try and rob a police officer in full view of the cashier and a police vehicle, so what was her game? She covered her open mouth with the sleeve of her dirty-brown jumper and began to cry.

‘All right,’ Sean said. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’

She gulped a breath.

‘You’ve got to come,’ she said.

She reached out and grabbed his wrist. He could have broken her hold, but he didn’t want to drop the crisps and the can of pop. Besides, there was no strength in her fingers.

‘Everything all right?’ Gav was out of the car and walking towards them.

He felt her grip loosen as Gav approached and pulled his arm away, but she wasn’t going to let him go that easily. Her fingers darted out and grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.

‘You’ve got to come with me!’

Her voice cracked, the volume out of proportion with how close they were standing.

‘Now then, why don’t you let go of my colleague, love, and we’ll see how we can help you?’ Gav said.

She took no notice and tried to drag Sean towards the road.

‘You have to come!’

Gav didn’t try to talk her round a second time. He might have been pushing for retirement, but he still had the moves. Before she knew what had happened, the woman had lost her grip on Sean and found herself up against the window of the garage shop, Gav’s hands firmly on her shoulders.

‘Now, if you have something to tell us,’ he said, ‘I suggest you spit it out, and then we can all go about our business. But if you lay one more filthy little finger on my colleague, I will arrest you for assaulting a police officer.’

She looked at Sean for support.

‘What’s your name?’ Sean said.

‘Mary.’

‘Mary what?’

‘Just Mary.’

‘Okay, Mary, why don’t you come and sit in the back of the car and tell us what the problem is?’

She shook her head violently and a gobbet of snot dislodged from her runny nose. Gav stepped back to avoid catching it in the face, and Mary seized the opportunity to pull away from him. She ran to the edge of the garage forecourt, but hovered there, unwilling to leave.

‘Well?’ Gav said. ‘Are you going after her or shall I?’

Sean sighed. ‘Can we get her in the car?’

‘Do we have to? She stinks.’

‘What do you suggest?’ Sean said.

‘She wants you, Sean. She wants you bad.’

‘Knock it off.’

‘Well, maybe you should go with her,’ Gav said, ‘and see what’s up?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘I’ll follow in the car. Go on.’

Sean looked at Mary, standing there, dark eyes watching him under her greasy fringe.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let me find out where we’re going first.’

He walked over to her, while Gav hung back by the kiosk window.

He heard the cashier say: ‘Does your mate want his change?’ and looked back to see Gav pocketing the money. Nice one. He’d have to remember to get it off him later.

‘Where are we going, Mary?’

‘The old school.’

She turned away, setting off across the dual carriageway with a limping gait that didn’t appear to slow her down.

‘Gav!’ Sean called. ‘Chasebridge School, the old site, not the Academy.’

‘I’ll be right behind you.’

Sean knew that wouldn’t be entirely true. Gavin would have to drive to the next roundabout and double back, then he’d be restricted to the vehicle access to the estate, while he and Mary would be taking the shorter, pedestrian route, between the flats, on cracked paved paths studded with bollards.

‘I’ll be on the radio,’ Sean said.

‘Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you.’

Gav waved him off and went back to the car.

Sean had to run to catch up with Mary. He tried to get her to talk, but she walked on, head down against the light rain that had begun to fall. They came to the four tower blocks at the top of the estate. Out of habit Sean glanced up to the second floor of Eagle Mount One, where his father lived. The windows of Jack Denton’s flat were all but dark. Just a light in the kitchen. Maybe Chloe, his half-sister, was still awake. Sean felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t been to see his dad for nearly two weeks. The old man had been in and out of hospital since Easter and although there was no love lost between them, Sean still felt he should do the right thing and go round occasionally.

‘Shit!’ He’d trodden in a deep puddle, caused by a faulty pipe on the corner of Eagle Mount Two. The muddy water seeped over the top his boot and into his sock. After the run of hot days they’d had, he could only imagine where this water had come from. It definitely wasn’t rainwater.

Mary turned to check he was still following.

‘It’s all right. I’m still here,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you want to tell me what’s happening, do you? I could have some backup ready, if I had a clue what we’re actually doing.’

‘I ran out when it started,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see.’

‘What started?’

She looked away and carried on walking.

‘Something started in the old school?’ He said. ‘Is that where you’ve been living?’

Her pace slowed and he came alongside her. The warmth of her body gave off the gagging scent of unwashed skin, tobacco and alcohol: the cocktail odour of the rough sleeper.

‘Mary, you need to tell me. Is someone in danger?’

‘If you’re quick you can run.’

‘And if you’re not?’

She winced at the question. ‘You have to pay.’

He reached for his radio.

‘Victor Charlie Four Three.’

‘Go ahead, Four Three.’

‘I’m heading for the site of the old Chasebridge School, Disraeli Road. We’ve been stopped by a member of the public. Possible incident, risk to persons sleeping rough in the school premises. Proceeding on foot, with the informant. Victor Charlie Three One is en route, via the main entrance. We may need backup.’

‘Yes, received, Victor Charlie Four Three,’ the call-handler’s voice crackled out of the radio.

He saw the face that went with it. Lisa-Marie, dark hair, big brown eyes. They’d had a quick cuddle at an office party when he was still a PCSO. It came back to him, with a blush, every time he heard her voice.

‘I’ll update when I’m closer,’ he said, forcing his mind back on the job.

‘Other patrols are committed, Victor Charlie Four Three. There’s a big fight in town. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

Great, Sean thought. We’re on our own.

CHAPTER TWO

Friday night

Chloe had no memory of her father as a child. She might have seen him a hundred times and never realised it. He was one of many men who drank in the pub on the estate, one of several who’d been her mother’s boyfriend over the years. She sometimes wondered if her mother even knew which one of the men she served drinks to in the Chasebridge Tavern had got her pregnant. Chloe used to ask her often enough, but she always got a different answer. Her mum liked to tell Chloe that her father was a sailor, or sometimes a soldier. Once he was a travelling salesman, and on another day, a fairground worker. By the time she was in secondary school, Chloe knew these were just stories, but she never understood why her mother made them up. Now Jack Denton was real, and her mother long dead, it occurred to Chloe that her mother had known all along, but wouldn’t have wished the real Jack on her daughter. Not that he was a bad person; he was just a drunk. Had been a drunk, she mentally corrected herself. Jack was sober now. He was also seriously ill with cirrhosis of the liver.

Chloe fumbled for the bedside lamp, trying not to knock it off the suitcase that stood in for a table. The first time she’d suggested to Jack she might occasionally stay over, this room had been so full of junk that she hadn’t realised there was a bed in it. He’d grudgingly let her clear enough space to reveal the old bed-base, which once belonged to her half-brother. It was so narrow she’d struggled to find a mattress to fit it, until one of the girls at work gave her a child’s mattress she was throwing out. Chloe’s feet already hung over the end if she stretched full length, but after a while, she’d decided it wasn’t worth paying rent anywhere else, so she’d given up her own flat and moved her few possessions in here.

It was 2 a.m. and she wondered what had woken her. She lay back on the pillow and listened. Jack coughed in his room across the narrow hallway. The cough came again and tailed off into a chesty, wheezing moan. Chloe sat up. This time the cough and the moan were followed by another sound, a high-pitched whine like a child’s cry.

She got out of bed, pushing open the door of Jack’s room, and let the light from the hallway spill across the floor to his bed. She’d left him propped up on the pillows, the way the community nurses had shown her, but he’d slipped sideways and lay bent over, crooked, his head tipped towards the edge of the bed, knees drawn up. His face was wet with tears.

‘Aagh!’ He clutched at the edge of the duvet with his good hand, while the twisted fist of his old injury flailed in the air.

‘Where are your tablets?’ she said, turning on the overhead light.

She could see now what had woken her. In his pain, he’d swiped everything off the top of the bedside cabinet. The water glass was shattered, shards spread over the carpet, and the cardboard packet of painkillers lay in a pool of water.

She didn’t know what to do first. The fog of sleep was still with her, slowing her movements, until he cried out again and she snapped into action.

‘Come on, now,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you back up on those pillows. This must be the stomach acid the nurse talked about. You need to be sitting up.’

She lifted him under his arms. Even though his body was tense, Chloe was strong, and it required very little effort to move him. She settled him back on the pillows and stroked the back of his hand. His breathing came in fast, sudden gasps.

‘I’m going to get you another glass of water and then you can have a tablet. Will you be all right?’

He gave an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes were closed and his jaw was tight. She knew he hated to show how much it hurt, and would be ashamed of his tears. She picked up a box of tissues from where they had fallen and placed one in his clenched fist.

‘Back in a moment,’ she said.

She took the soggy packet of tablets into the kitchen, found a tea towel to pat them dry, and reached under the sink for the dustpan and brush.

A terrible shout from the bedroom startled her and she ran out of the kitchen, dustpan and brush in hand.

Jack was lying on the floor, next to the bed, clutching his stomach.

‘Jack!’ she cried.

She reached under his armpits to lift him, but it was harder this time. He was struggling against the pain and against her. Her hand slipped underneath him to get a better hold and she felt a sharp sting. Broken glass in the side of her hand. Crouching over him, she managed to get him up, onto the edge of the bed, and dragged him back towards the pillows. There was something under her foot and she pulled away, just before the glass punctured the sole of her foot. She realised Jack hadn’t been so lucky. A thin line of red on his arm swelled with fresh blood, pulsing to the surface. There was more blood on the duvet cover, but she couldn’t tell if it was his or hers.

‘I’m going to call an ambulance, Jack, can you hear me? I need you to hold on, try not to move.’

His eyes were no longer focusing and his head lolled back.

‘Stay with me, Jack, don’t pass out on me. Jack? Dad?’

A flicker of his eyelashes. Call me Dad, he’d said, the first time they’d met, and she’d struggled with it, pretending she hadn’t heard. She’d called him by his name ever since, and although in her head she thought ‘my dad’ or ‘my father’, whenever she opened her mouth it was always Jack. His eyes closed.

‘Dad?’ she said.

His body went slack, but the eyes flickered open again. They stayed open, red-rimmed and watery, but looking at her, focusing. He was still there.

‘Lie still, okay? I’m going to get my phone from my bag, then I’m going to sit here and call the ambulance. I’m going to stay right by your side until it comes.’

‘Say it again,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘Call me Dad.’

CHAPTER THREE

Friday night, Saturday morning

The playing fields had been sold off as soon as the school roll dropped below five hundred. There’d been a bit of a protest, but the local authority said it had no choice. A new housing development was built where two-thirds of the football pitch used to be. Private houses, with their backs turned away from the main part of the Chasebridge estate, clustered around closes and cul-de-sacs. A high fence was built on the boundary. Three years later, the school closed for good, and the remaining staff and pupils reluctantly joined the new Academy, on the other side of The Groves. More fencing appeared, and the ground-floor windows were boarded up. Sean had hated most of his lessons here, but he’d had some good times too. Like everyone who’d grown up in the area, he felt a belated sense of loyalty to Chasebridge Community High School, now it was falling to pieces and awaiting demolition.

Mary hesitated on the edge of the school site, where a row of plywood boards were attached to the metal fence.

‘I’ll show you where to get in,’ she said.

‘Wait a minute.’

He wasn’t going in without Gav. He looked along the road. There was no sign of a vehicle, but there was something else moving towards them in the shadows. It was a man with a large dog. He was walking close to the high fence bordering the back of the new houses in Springfield Gardens. He stopped and bent down to the dog, unclipping its leash. The dog rushed forwards, barking furiously.

‘Police!’ Sean shouted, reaching for his baton. ‘Get your dog under control!’

Mary screamed and began to run, which gave the dog something to run after. Sean raised his baton, ready to knock the dog back when it drew level with him.

‘Mosley! Here boy!’ the man called, and the dog skidded to a halt, ears flicking back towards its owner, eyes still on Sean. It was a German shepherd with a mouth full of very sharp-looking teeth. For several seconds it held Sean’s gaze, as if trying to decide whether to obey its master, or sink its fangs into Sean’s face.

‘Mosley. Here!’

It was enough to break the spell. The dog sloped back to its owner and Sean lowered his baton. He looked around, but Mary had disappeared.

‘Sorry about that, mate,’ the man said. ‘Didn’t see your uniform.’

He was in his mid-thirties, Sean guessed, a tousled look to his receding hair, which may have been a styling choice, or simply because it was the middle of the night. Sean resisted the urge to point out that he was not the man’s mate and wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing his baton down on the dog’s skull, had it got close enough to bite.

‘Bit late for dog walking,’ he said.

‘Just doing my bit for the community,’ the man said.

‘By walking your dog?’

‘Keeping an eye on things, you know.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Sean said.

‘Isn’t that why you’re here? We keep phoning the police, it’s getting ridiculous. There was a load of them earlier, swarming out into the road, like fucking zombies.’

‘When was this?’

‘Twenty minutes, half an hour ago, tops.’

Enough time for Mary to have made her way to the petrol station. Perhaps she was one of his zombies.

‘Did you see them yourself?’ Sean said.

‘Aye. A load of junkies and fucking immigrants. They’ve been using the school as a squat. I won’t let my kids come down here.’

‘I’ll need to take some details, and we’ll look into it. Can I have your name and address?’

‘John Davies, 39 Springfield Gardens.’

Sean pulled out his phone and made a voice recording, saving it with the date and time. John Davies gave him an odd look, but Sean wasn’t about to explain why this was his preferred method of making notes that weren’t scrambled by his dyslexia.

‘Are you going to do something about that place?’ Davies said. ‘It wants burning down.’

‘I can pass on your concern, but at this precise moment, I’m waiting for my colleague.’

‘That woman?’

‘Eh? Oh, no, she was …’

Sean wasn’t sure what Mary was. A civilian, just like the dog-owner, worried about what was going on in the disused buildings? Only not like him at all. A different tribe. But she’d wanted him to help her. He thought of her summoning up the courage to speak to him at the petrol station, shivering in her thin, baggy jumper.

‘It’s a bloody disgrace,’ Davies was saying. ‘Been boarded up all this time and the security’s no use. That lot have been dossing in there for months.’

‘You saw a group of them?’

‘Some running, the rest sort of milling about. I thought it was a fire or something, but there wasn’t any smoke. They spread out and some of them headed up this way towards Springfield Gardens. They better not be dossing down in my fucking shed, or I’ll set the dog on them.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, sir. You’re legally obliged to keep your dog under control.’

John Davies looked as if he was about to object, when Gav pulled up in the squad car. Sean opened the door on the passenger side.

‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Davies, and thank you,’ he said.

Sean got into the car and slammed the door shut.

‘Neighbourhood watch?’ Gav asked.

‘With vigilante tendencies. Arsehole. What took you so long?’

‘Stopped at the top of the road for a chat with a couple who were pushing their worldly goods along in a supermarket trolley. I thought it was odd for this time of night, and sure enough, they’d come from the school, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Someone or something scared them off.’

Sean told him what Davies had seen.

‘We’d better take a look,’ Gav said. ‘Nobody leaves home in the middle of the night unless they have to. Where’s Hairy Mary?’

‘Disappeared when our friend turned up.’

Gav called in to say where they were.

‘Another unit’s on its way,’ the call-handler said. ‘Sarge says to proceed with caution.’

From the rear-view mirror, Sean watched John Davies and his dog making their way back to Springfield Gardens.

‘Received,’ Gav said. ‘We’ll take a look.’

‘It seems quiet enough,’ Sean said, getting out of the car, ‘and we won’t be on our own for long.’

‘I’m right behind you, Scooby-Doo.’

Sean ran his torch across the boards that were lashed to the steel fence and quickly found the unofficial entrance to the site. One section of plywood had been detached and then leant back into place. When Sean lifted it aside, he could see two sections of metal fencing behind it. They’d been forced apart and by stepping sideways into the gap, he could squeeze himself through.

‘Come on, Gav, suck your belly in, and you should just fit.’

‘There must be an easier way,’ Gav said. ‘I can’t see a shopping trolley getting through that.’

He moved further down the pavement and Sean could hear him testing the boards for movement, until he reached a gap.

‘That’s more like it,’ Gav called and Sean saw him step through on to what had once been a flower bed, but now was just a patch of dry earth.

The front entrance was fully boarded up, but as a pupil Sean had hardly ever used that door. There was another entrance round the side, which was ramped. It used to lead to the special needs classroom. It was closest to the car park, but furthest from the lights of the new housing development. Sean had a hunch that residents leaving with their possessions in a supermarket trolley might also prefer ramped access.

‘This way,’ he said.

Sure enough, as he came round the building, a door stood open. A metal grille lay discarded on the grass a few feet away. Sean shone his torch into the entrance and went inside. The smell was unmistakable: human waste, backed up in toilets after the water had been turned off, or just left wherever people had the urge. Very little light made its way through the boarded-up windows. Sean and Gav stood in the dark corridor and listened. It was quiet, except for the dripping of water nearby.

The beam of his torch played across the doors to abandoned classrooms. The tangled hieroglyphs of graffiti tags covered the walls, impossible to read.

‘Doesn’t sound like there’s anyone about,’ Gav said. ‘Did she give you any clues about what she thought had happened? I mean, beyond some people walking away, which frankly I don’t blame them, what are we actually investigating here?’

‘She said something started. I assumed she meant something kicked off. A fight of some kind.’

‘Why don’t we get Marshall’s, the security firm, down here, get the place secured and then leave it for the morning? Report a break-in to the owners and threaten them with legal action for allowing a public health hazard on their property. I’m telling you, there’s no one here.’

Sean knew he had a point, but there was something in Mary’s fear that made him want to look further. He flicked his torch up the stairs. From outside he’d noticed that some of the first-floor windows still had glass in them. He wondered if that would make it a more comfortable place to sleep.

‘I’m going to start up here,’ he said. ‘We can work our way along the top corridor, then come back down the stairs at the bottom end.’

‘Hang on,’ Gav said. ‘Let’s keep control informed. There’s still no sign of any backup. Maybe we should wait?’

‘What for?’ Sean said. ‘You said it yourself, there’s no one here.’

He started up the stairs, craning to hear any sounds, but there was only Gav’s voice and the response on the radio, echoing off the concrete. Another unit would be with them in ten minutes, if required, meanwhile they should investigate and report back.

The upstairs corridor was empty, except for the puddles that punctuated the peeling linoleum. The roof had always leaked, even when the school was still open, but now the buckets to catch the drips had gone and the water had pooled in interconnecting lakes. Sean tried a classroom door, but it was locked. Further along another door stood open. There were blankets and clothes piled on the floor, a half-eaten packet of biscuits and some empty beer cans. There was no furniture left.

Gav carried on up the corridor, picking his way between the puddles.

‘No one around,’ he said.

The next room had more piles of clothes and plastic bags, odd shoes and discarded newspapers.

‘Look at that,’ Sean said. ‘Someone’s left a decent-looking radio.’

‘Must have been the last one out, or one of the junkies would have had it.’

‘I’m not sure they’re all junkies, Gav. Mr Davies said something about refugees.’

‘Well, whoever it was, they left in a hurry.’

They came to a junction where a second flight of stairs led down to the ground floor, while the upper corridor split along two wings.

‘Which way?’ Sean said.

They listened, but there were no clues in the silent building.

‘What’s down here?’ Gav said.

‘The main hall, then beyond that there’s more classrooms and the gym. The science labs are on this level,’ Sean said, ‘and there’s another flight of stairs at the far end.’

‘Okay, we’ll go down and check out the hall and beyond, then up the far stairs and back along this way.’

‘What about the toilet corridor?’ Sean said.

‘We’ll wait and see if anyone comes to join us, and let them do that.’

‘Good plan.’

Gav lead the way down the stairs and they were back in the gloom of the ground floor, lit only by their torches and pale slivers of light from the boarded-up windows. Gav opened the door of the hall. A line of windows, just below the ceiling, let in a little more light. Looking up, Sean could see the clouds had cleared and the moon was almost full. For a moment, he saw the school hall as it used to be: red velvet curtains gathered in swags at either side of the stage and the headmaster at the lectern, trying his best to inspire the kids of the Chasebridge estate to make something of their lives. Sean blinked and focused on reality.

His torch picked out burnt patches on the parquet floor and he could see that the stage curtains had been ripped down and used by the new residents as bedding. A bundle in the centre of the room caught his eye, a pool of water spread round it. He trained his torch at the ceiling, but there was no sign of water damage. He shone the light across the rest of the floor. It was all dry. He went closer, the light from his torch more intense as the beam shortened. The bundle was a human shape, cocooned in a sleeping bag, and the water wasn’t water at all. It was blood.

CHAPTER FOUR

Early Saturday morning

‘It’s been boarded up for three years, awaiting demolition,’ a female voice rang out from the far end of the corridor.

Sean watched his girlfriend, Crime Scene Manager Lizzie Morrison, adjust her bag on her shoulder and pick her way between the puddles, followed by her colleague, Janet Wheeler. Lizzie was now the senior Crime Scene Manager for the Division and Janet had been appointed Exhibits Officer. Together they made a powerful team.

‘Christ, what a stench!’ Janet’s Edinburgh accent seemed even stronger than usual as she pinched her nose.

He opened the door of the school hall for them.

‘Different smell in here,’ he said.

Lizzie stopped to put on her shoe covers.

‘Thanks,’ she said. She caught Sean’s eye for a moment. ‘CID are on their way.’

They seldom worked the same job, but when they did, they followed the rules, both written and unwritten, tried to keep it professional and leave the relationship at home.

Sean stood just inside the door watching Lizzie and Janet assess the scene, while Gav sat on the bottom of the stairs, outside the hall, filling in the incident report.

‘He wouldn’t have stood a chance,’ Lizzie was saying to Janet. ‘His forehead and nose are completely caved in. The pathologist might be able to work out if he’d been awake at the time of the attack, but I hope for his sake he wasn’t.’

Janet was taking photos from every angle, while Lizzie began to mark out the blood pattern. Sean was confident that he and Gav had done a good job of keeping their feet out of it.

‘Janet, can you just get a shot here?’ Lizzie said. ‘I think the suspect must have been standing behind his head. There’s a break in the spatters.’

She took out a tape measure and made a note of the point at which the pattern appeared to split. She stood up and looked around the room.

‘What a place to live,’ she said, and whistled through her teeth.

Or die, thought Sean.

‘I suppose they prefer to come here rather than a hostel,’ Janet Wheeler said. ‘More space and freedom, but also more risky.’

‘If they can get into a hostel,’ Lizzie said. ‘I know Saint Bernadette’s won’t take them if they’re still on drink or drugs.’

‘Poor guy,’ Janet sighed.

Sean was thinking about what it took to slip into this life, sleeping rough, always in danger. Not much, if you started in the wrong place.

‘Sean?’ Gav opened the door a crack. ‘Khan’s here. I don’t think he ever sleeps. Ask your missus if she’s ready for him.’

‘She’s not my missus.’

‘Whatever.’

‘The boss’s here,’ he called to Lizzie.

‘He’s early,’ she said. ‘Okay, let him in.’

DI Sam Nasir Khan liked to put in the legwork, even when the job threatened to keep him chained to his desk, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d turned up as Senior Investigating Officer three hours before he needed to. He’d accepted the permanent role of DI on the Major Crimes Team, instead of going back to Sheffield as a DCI, precisely because he missed the operational side of the job.

Sean stood up straight, holding the door open, a rush of awkwardness as he tried not to catch Khan’s eye. Lizzie took one more measurement and marked the area with a yellow numbered cone. Khan stood in the doorway in full protective gear, taking in the scene. He turned to Sean for a moment and his eyes smiled above the face mask.

‘Good to see you,’ he said quietly. ‘You did a good job on Wednesday.’

Sean nodded, his mouth too dry to speak. Khan let the hall door close behind him and left Sean in the corridor with Gav.

‘What was that about?’ Gav said. ‘I thought you were at the dentist’s on Wednesday.’

Sean decided not to answer and followed Khan back into the hall. He wanted to be there, to listen, watch and learn. What he hadn’t told Gav, or even Lizzie, was that he’d had an interview on Wednesday, with Khan and the Chief Superintendent. An interview for CID. A letter would be in the post by the end of the week, they’d said. And now Khan was smiling, telling him he’d done a good job. He didn’t want to hope too much. He had to wait to see it in black and white, but all the same, he felt a little surge of excitement.

‘We’ve got a severe facial injury, impact from a heavy blunt instrument and good markings indicating the direction of assault,’ Lizzie said, looking over her shoulder at the DI. ‘No sign of self-defence. His arms were still in his sleeping bag. As far as I can tell, he’s male, under six foot, south Asian or Middle-Eastern, olive skin, brown eyes, but that’s about all I can say for now.’

Khan nodded, taking in the room with a slow, sweeping gaze, the blackened marks on the floor, the abandoned bedding, the plastic bags and newspapers.

‘Hotel California,’ he said.

‘Something like that,’ Lizzie said.

‘Right,’ Khan turned to Sean. ‘I need a full search of the premises. See if anyone’s still here. Another unit’s just arrived and they’re checking the grounds. If you find anyone, I want a name for the victim, last fixed address, anyone who knew him.’

This meant Sean and Gav would have to cover the reeking toilets after all.

‘There’s a couple of old dossers hanging around by the door,’ Khan continued. ‘PCSO Jayson is down there. She’s asked them to wait. Get their statements.’

Sean led the way down the corridor. The sound of water dripping from the roof was soon accompanied by Gav muttering behind him.

‘Manners cost nothing. Please. Thank you,’ Gav said. ‘Never mind that I’ve spent twenty minutes writing up an incident report, which he hasn’t even looked at.’

Sean decided to ignore him.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Upstairs. Let’s cover the bit we didn’t get to earlier, and leave the worst till last.’

The stairs up to the first floor were faintly illuminated by the moon, shining through a broken window. Sean was hit by another memory of his time here, the crush at change of lessons, with one class trying to get up the stairs and another trying to get down. It was never a very large school, anyone who had a choice went somewhere else, but it always seemed crowded enough in the narrow corridors and staircases, especially if you were trying to avoid the random kicks or punches from the school bullies. Sean stood still. For a moment it was as if he could still hear the clatter of feet.

‘Are we going up or what?’ Gav said.

‘Coming,’ Sean said, and the ghosts vanished.

They climbed the stairs together, stepping over piles of rubbish, their torches picking out needles and bloodied tissues.

Along the top corridor they forked left and stood in the doorway of one of the science labs, torches playing across wooden benches scarred by generations of students’ initials and battered by a haphazard attempt to break them up for firewood.

‘Hello!’ Gavin called into the dark room, but no one answered.

‘How many people have been living here?’ Sean said.

Gav shrugged. ‘Hard to say, there are bits and pieces left behind in virtually every classroom.’

But not their owners, Sean thought. The place was as quiet as the grave.

An old map of Europe was still hanging in the geography classroom. One corner had come away from the wall and was drooping over to hide Poland and half of Germany. More evidence of people’s lives: sleeping bags, plastic shopping bags, milk and orange juice cartons. It looked as if everyone had left in a hurry.

‘Bloody hell!’ Gav’s voice came from across the corridor, from what Sean remembered as a domestic science classroom. ‘Looks like they’ve had the plumbers in.’

The old classroom had been wrecked, sink units torn from the walls, and more gaps where there had once been cookers and fridges.

‘House clearance more like,’ Sean said.

‘Or someone with a taste in copper piping.’

‘Hardly surprising. Whoever’s been in charge of security on this site has done bugger all.’

‘Or turned a blind eye,’ Gav said. ‘It explains all the water in the downstairs corridor, any road.’

‘Wait,’ Sean said. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like someone was stifling a cough in a room close by. ‘Listen.’

Apart from the gritty scrape of Gav’s shoes moving back towards the door, there was no other sound. Then it came again, a stifled cough. Gav and Sean moved together towards the next classroom, their torches picking out the sign, History, on the closed door.

‘Hello,’ Gavin said. ‘Anyone in there?’

There was no reply, and nothing seemed to move beyond the door. There was a narrow window at eye height. Sean trained the beam of his torch on more rubbish and personal possessions strewn across the floor, the chairs and tables long gone. Whoever was inside was keeping themselves out of sight. He nudged the door open with his foot.

‘Police. Show yourself!’ Sean said, but there was no reply.

He could feel Gav’s breath on his neck and took a step forward, edging the door open with his elbow. Something flickered in his peripheral vision and he felt a sharp shove in the middle of his back. He stumbled forward. Glass smashed on the floor at his heels. Regaining his balance, he turned to see Gav jumping away from the fragments of a broken bottle, bouncing across the floor. Behind the door was a thin, dark-haired man, with light-brown skin. His raised hand was empty, his face aghast.

‘You can thank me for saving your life later,’ Gav said to Sean. ‘First we need to make an arrest.’

Sean reached for his cuffs and the man began to sob.

‘Sorry, sorry, please,’ he raised his hands in supplication.

‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempted assault on a police officer,’ Sean said.

The second response unit had come with a cub van. It was parked in what remained of the school car park. Gav and Sean led the man outside and opened the cage in the back of the van.

‘Don’t take me to police station,’ he said, and looked Sean in the eye for the first time. ‘I am afraid of police. In my country, they are murderers.’

‘Oh, so you do speak English,’ Gav said.

‘What’s your name?’ Sean said. ‘You can tell us, then we can help you. This is the British police you’re dealing with, we’re not so bad.’

The man looked at him for a moment. Sean tried to read his expression, but all he saw was defeat.

‘My name is Elyas Homsi,’ the man said. ‘I am from Syria, where I was a teacher in a secondary school.’

‘And now you’re living in one!’ Gav laughed at his own joke, but Elyas Homsi didn’t smile. ‘Right, have you got any sharp objects about your person? We’ll need to search you before you get in the van.’

Sean put on a pair of purple latex gloves and patted Homsi down. He was thin under his cotton bomber jacket and loose T-shirt. The pockets of his tracksuit trousers were empty, but from an inside pocket in his jacket, Sean pulled a folded piece of paper.

‘My letter. Please don’t take it. This explains who I am. It says I can stay here.’

There were dark smudges on the paper, which might be blood.

‘Gav, get us an evidence bag, will you?’

The man’s face was hollow and his dark eyes were underscored with heavy shadows.

‘What’s that on your hands, sir?’ Sean said.

Homsi looked at his hands as if he had only just noticed them.

‘My friend is hurt, badly hurt.’

‘Did you see what happened?’

Homsi shook his head. ‘Bad men came. I was too late to help him.’

Sean bagged the letter, while Gav helped Homsi into the cage.

‘My paper,’ the man cried. ‘Will I get it back?’

‘Don’t worry, sir, it’ll be logged and kept for you at the station.’

Homsi said nothing. He sat back on the bench and let his head drop onto his chest, all the energy in his body melting away.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Sean said, when he and Gav were out of earshot. ‘The whole place is deserted apart from a dead body and him. Everyone else did a runner, but for some reason he hid.’

‘Maybe he just didn’t get out in time.’

‘Or maybe he had nowhere else to go.’

‘Or maybe,’ Gav said, ‘he’s the killer. Fortunately, we don’t have to make that call. You go and tell the boss we’ve got someone and a CSI needs to check him over, see whose blood he’s got on his hands.’

As Sean walked back towards the side entrance, he noticed two men huddled under the splintered, plastic porch. A female PCSO was barring their way into the building.

‘All right, Carly? Are this lot residents?’ he asked.

PCSO Carly Jayson gave him a smile. They’d known each other ever since he’d worn the same blue uniform as her, partners as community support officers on the Chasebridge estate.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They were just hanging around when I got here.’

The two old men, drinkers by the look of them, shuffled forwards as Sean opened the door.

‘Did you see what happened?’ Sean asked them.

‘No, nothing,’ one of the men said. His friend shook his head in agreement.

‘Someone banging on the doors and telling us to get out. We’ve been sheltering under there. I thought it was going to rain.’ He pointed a shaking finger at the corrugated lean-to that had once been an area for cycle parking. ‘I said, didn’t I? It’s going to rain. Can we go back inside yet?’

‘Sorry,’ Sean said, ‘you’ll have to wait out here, and it’s not going to rain. See, the sky’s clear.’

‘Go on, copper, we won’t get in your way, just need somewhere to kip in the warm.’

‘In case you’ve missed the news,’ Carly said, ‘this is a murder enquiry, now you can either help by giving us a statement, or you can get lost.’

Sean left her to it and made his way back along the corridor, careful not to breathe through his nose as he passed the toilets. He knocked on the door of the hall and opened it. DI Khan was crouched over the body, carefully unzipping the sleeping bag. Lizzie matched his position on the opposite side of the victim.

‘Yes, what is it?’ Khan said, without looking up.

‘We’ve got a guy in the back of the van, we found him hiding upstairs.’

‘What’s he doing in the back of the van?’ Khan still didn’t turn round.

‘Gav, I mean PC Wentworth, has just arrested him for attempting to assault a police officer.’

‘Really?’ Khan sighed. ‘I’ll leave this one to you,’ he said to Lizzie, and stood up. ‘The pathologist is on his way.’

‘We need a CSI to take a look at him,’ Sean said. ‘He’s got blood on his hands. No sign of a wound on his body.’

‘Janet?’ Lizzie said, without looking up.

Janet Wheeler picked up her bag.

‘Denton, take Miss Wheeler out to the van. The rest of my team are on the way. You and PC Wentworth are well over the end of your shift, so get back to the station and we’ll take it from here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sean glanced over at Lizzie, but she was focusing on the victim.

He’d like to see the job through, but he knew Khan was right. It wasn’t his business any more, and their shift should have ended an hour ago. The flutter of excitement he’d felt earlier was fading, he wasn’t part of CID, not even close. Get back in your box, Denton. There would be more paperwork when they got back to the police station, but they weren’t needed here.

‘The guy in the van,’ he said, as he stood in the doorway. ‘He’s Syrian, a refugee.’

‘Much obliged,’ Khan said, but he wasn’t looking at Sean, he was focused on the blood pattern on the floor.

Sean let the door shut behind him.

‘Come on, son,’ Gav said, as they got into the car. ‘I’ll log this back at the station and check on our prisoner. I’ll drop you off at your place on the way past.’

Sean was going to protest, but found he didn’t have the energy.

‘Thanks.’

Before Gav turned the engine on, a black Ford Mondeo pulled up next to them and a tall, slim man in a grey suit got out.

‘Who’s that?’ Sean said.

‘New DS up from London. Ivan Knowles. He’s only been here three days and he’s already got two nicknames, let’s see which one sticks.’

‘Go on?’

‘Ivor Biggun, or Ivan Know-It-All.’

‘You’re slipping, Gav,’ Sean said, ‘if that’s the best you can do.’

Gav put the car into gear and began to turn it round. ‘Who said I instigated them?’

‘Who else?’

Gav chuckled.

‘Hang on,’ Sean said. ‘Let’s go back through the estate.’

‘What for?’

‘It’s not much of a detour.’

‘I know that,’ Gav said, ‘but why?’

‘I just want to see if there’s anyone unusual hanging about. Anyone from the school who we might have missed. There must have been twenty or thirty people living there by the look of it. They can’t all have vanished.’

‘Have it your own way.’

Gav put the car into reverse, with a grind of the gears, and pulled left into the one-way section of Disraeli Road. They passed the post-war semis with their lights out and curtains closed. He made an illegal turn and drove the car up on to the pavement and back down, until they were on the access road for the low-rise, four-storey maisonettes, which ringed the centre of the estate.

Gav swung the car right, past the playground. The moon cast shadows from the swings across the cracked asphalt.

‘Someone’s about,’ Gav said.

Sean saw it too, an ambulance parked up on the pavement in front of the main entrance to Eagle Mount One. Instinctively he looked up to the first floor of the block, to the corner flat where his father lived. The lights were on in every room.

‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Pull over.’

‘What is it?’

‘My dad. That’s his place. Lit up like a bloody Christmas tree.’

Gav accelerated round the corner, mounted the kerb and jammed on the brakes. They came to a sharp stop directly behind the ambulance. Sean jumped out. Jack Denton had been ill for years, as long as Sean could remember, although in his childhood it didn’t seem like an illness, just a collection of bad habits. An injury during the miner’s strike, before Sean was even born, had damaged Jack’s hand, put him out of work and led to the drinking that was finally claiming his liver. Things had never been easy between father and son but, deep down, Sean still cared for the old bastard.

He pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the lobby of Eagle Mount One. The smell never got any better. Piss and rancid fat. He could hear voices from inside the lift shaft and the lift doors opened to reveal a group, frozen like a framed picture, looking out at him: a shrunken man, yellow-skinned and wrapped in a blanket, strapped to an evacuation chair, a paramedic on either side of him, and behind him, the pale, drawn figure of Sean’s half-sister, Chloe, pressing a bloodied tissue against her hand.

‘Sean!’ she said, as the group poured out towards him. ‘That was quick!’

‘I was in the area,’ he said, guessing that he’d missed a text or a phone call somewhere along the way.

He turned back towards the front door and held it open for Jack to be wheeled outside. The old man had barely been discharged from hospital a fortnight, and here he was going back in again.

‘His breathing was terrible,’ Chloe said. ‘Then he woke up in so much pain.’

‘What happened to your hand?’

‘He dropped his water glass. It smashed on the floor.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine, it’s just a scratch.’

‘Sure? He didn’t … ?’

‘What are you saying, Sean?’ She looked surprised. ‘He wouldn’t lay a finger on me.’

Lucky you, Sean thought. Jack Denton’s violence had escalated when Sean’s mother died. Not long after that, at the age of twelve, he’d packed a bag and gone to live with his grandmother.