Broken (15 page)

If Mary opened her mouth, she would kill the little bitch. But she trusted Mary enough to know that the girl wouldn’t put herself in it. Kerry stared around the cell. She had read all the graffiti and drunk her tea. She had smoked her last cigarette.

As she lay on the bunk she sighed deeply. Fear was weighing down on her. If they searched the flat, and she had a feeling they had done that already, the shit could hit the fan at any moment. Then she would be in double trouble.

She wished she had a joint to calm her nerves. The Valium from the duty doctor had not been enough for an habitual user like herself. It barely took the edge off.

Lenny Parkes would break her neck and that was just for starters. But if Mary used her loaf and they didn’t find the evidence, which she had hidden well, they might just scrape through this.

Maureen stormed back into her flat at 12.20 a.m. and she was fuming. Willy Gabney had only fucked off and left her in the middle of a bare knuckler in Rettenden, without a bleeding word!

She could not believe it!

She’d had him sussed as a gentleman and then he’d upped and left her in the middle of nowhere and expected her to get herself a lift home! She had had to blag a ride to the nearest station from a man with bad breath and an A-reg car!

If Willy Gabney had the front to ring her or come round here again she would smash his bleeding face in and tell him a few things as well. Who did he think he was!

She felt the sting of tears then. She had liked him. Really, really liked him. And he had treated her so well. She had thought she had fallen on her feet at last. But he turned out to be just like the rest of them.

A big, fat, untrustworthy ponce.

She made herself a strong drink and picked up the phone. Then she started calling all her friends and telling them what had befallen her. She needed sympathy, and she needed it now.

She was still on the phone when Patrick Kelly tried to get through at two-thirty in the morning. He’d guessed that something had happened to Willy, and his guess was confirmed. Someone had rung his mobile and told him Willy was being detained for a while but that he would be back soon with instructions for Mr Kelly.

But was he coming back dead or alive? And, more to the point, did his kidnappers know where Patrick was now?

He left the flat and got into his car. He wasn’t sure where to go, something that had never happened to him before. Patrick Kelly always knew what to do. At least that was how it had been before all this. But the Russian was scaring him, seriously scaring him, and Patrick admitted that to himself.

He was driving along a road in the middle of the night with no real destination in mind. If it hadn’t been for the fear inside him it would have been laughable. His world was upside down.

What was Kate’s saying of old?
Show me the company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are
. Never had a few words made so much sense to him, even though they were a bit late in sinking in.

He wished he could go to her, but even if she let him he would put her in danger. They had taken Willy and he was a hard nut to crack. If they could take him, they could take Kate. Patrick had better warn her and fast.

Fear was making him feel physically sick now. He finally admitted to himself he was in over his head.

It was just past 3 a.m. and Kate was tired out. Mary Parkes had given them nothing except denunciations of Kerry and what a bad mother she was and how Mary went round there to be the heroine of the hour. None of which rang remotely true. Mary was hiding something, and now the social worker had said enough was enough for the poor little girl and she was to be brought back at lunchtime the next day. Kate saw the smug expression on the eleven year old’s fat face and suppressed an urge to slap it hard.

Questioning her had been a waste of time. Mary insisted she had left the kids in the flat asleep as usual. Due to her own age it was impossible to press her harder as the law still regarded her as a child. Pity her parents hadn’t treated her like one, then she might not have been in the police station at all.

Kate had a strong feeling Mary Parkes would see the inside of a few more police stations before she was much older.

Still, she had spoken to Jenny Bartlett and faxed through everything about the case so far. The DI was hoping to join them in a day or two. At least Kate knew now that real help was on the way. Specialist back-up. Somehow she felt sure all these cases were linked. There was a common denominator, something she was missing. There had to be.

As she sipped her lukewarm coffee she saw WPC Joanna Hart tearing down the open-plan outer offices towards her. She rose as the girl pushed open the glass door to Kate’s office and said breathlessly, ‘Has Mary Parkes gone home yet?’

Kate nodded.

‘You’d better get her back then. Wait until you see what we found in Kerry’s bedroom!’

 

Willy opened his eyes to hazy darkness. He closed them again quickly. He was still in shock. He knew that whoever had him now, had followed him and was annoyed with himself for not being more careful. Whenever he was driving Pat, Willy kept a look-out from force of habit. It was being with Maureen that had made him careless. Thinking of her alarmed him. Did they have her too? Was she OK? Did they have Pat as well?

He tried to calm himself down. This had been a professional kidnap which meant he would be treated well enough until such time as he had outgrown his use. And in the meantime he had better decide what he was going to do if the opportunity to run presented itself. He needed to see where he was, try and work out how many of them were about if he did a runner, and whether he could gain access to some kind of transport.

On another level, he wondered if his cousin had won the fight. Willy never could keep his mind on one thing for long. It was the way he was made.

Tommy Broughton opened his front door and saw Patrick Kelly standing before him with a face like thunder and the outline of a gun visible through his jacket.

‘Hello, Tommy. On your own, are you?’

‘Yeah. The old woman’s away on holiday with the kids. What’s wrong, Pat?’

Patrick walked into his house univited and grinned at him nastily.

‘I was hoping you could tell me that, mate.’

Tommy’s face paled. ‘I don’t know nothing, Pat, except the Filth was at the club with a warrant for your arrest. I tried to get in touch but you weren’t available so I assumed you had done a poodle. I was waiting till you contacted me.’

‘Which I have, Tommy. Haven’t I? Personally like.’ He walked through to Tommy’s lounge and sat down heavily.

‘By the way, Harwick phoned and left a message for you,’ Tommy told him. ‘He’s still trying, whatever that means.’

Patrick nodded.

‘What’s that all about then, Pat?’

He looked at the man before him and sighed.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know? Give you something to talk about, would it?’ Then, taking the gun out of his jacket, he pointed it at his former friend and colleague. ‘You have exactly five minutes to tell me what is going on with Boris the Russian spider and Duggan and now me. Now think long and hard before you open your trap because I have guessed most of it, Tommy, and I want the whole truth, not the edited version. Are we both clear on that?’

Tommy nodded. He was in big trouble and he knew it. He had sent his wife and kids away for a holiday because he was scared, caught up in things that went right over his head. Now Patrick Kelly wanted answers and he had to give them. Either way he was a dead man.

Duggan had made it all sound so easy and so lucrative. Patrick had been the proverbial sleeping partner. He had known nothing of what was going on at the club. Now, though, he had woken up with a vengeance.

Tommy wondered briefly if Pat would kill him in his front room. His wife would go ballistic if he did. It had just been decorated.

 

Kate looked at the photographs and shook her head wonderingly. Kerry Alston must have been mad if she’d thought she could get away with this. She threw them on to her desk in disgust.

‘Get her out of the cell and into an interview room - now. And get her social worker back, and her brief. She’s going to need them.’

Kate had marvelled at a woman who could be so calm and collected while her small child was missing. But after looking at the photographs she wondered if Kerry had known exactly where her child was all along.

She pressed her eyes with her hands, rubbing at them viciously. Every day her job seemed to teach her a little bit more about the human ability to destroy whatever was good and innocent. It depressed her, and made her more determined to stamp out all the badness she could. But she had a feeling she was fighting a losing battle.

Mary Parkes was sitting with her father on the settee at home. She was feeling jubilant. She had talked herself out of trouble once more. As her mother eyed them sideways Mary ignored her as if she was beneath her notice.

‘Don’t you think it’s time she went to bed?’

Lenny looked at his wife in annoyance. ‘The kid’s had a stressful night, Trish. Give her a break.’

Trisha shook her head and sighed. When had she first realised that she didn’t like her daughter? Was it only recently? She knew it was a long time since the resentment of her had set in, and that it had stemmed from Lenny’s obsession with their younger child. Mary had always been a shrewd kid, out for the main chance. She was like her father in that way. But there was something else - something overtly sexual in her now and there had been for a while. Trisha had watched her with men. Mary liked them. Liked them too much.

Lenny had not understood the full significance of his daughter’s being round at Kerry’s flat when she should have been at school. He was unaware of their neighbour’s filthy reputation. Lenny only knew the heavy villains. For herself, Trisha couldn’t understand what made her daughter want to go round there in the first place. What was the attraction? Being able to smoke in peace? Have a drink? Mix with men? She had an idea it was all three.

It was all Lenny’s fault. He’d treated Mary like his girlfriend instead of a daughter. And this was the result.

There was a violent knocking at the front door. No one moved. As the door was banged on again, Trisha said a silent prayer. She’d had a feeling all along there was more to this than met the eye and she was being proved right. It gave her no satisfaction at all.

She heard her husband swearing and carrying on as the police poured into the lounge for the second time that night. Saw Mary’s eyes turn round as flying saucers as the policewoman said they had uncovered new evidence - photographs that needed to be explained. Noticed her husband’s face darken as he realised there was definitely something fishy going on with his little Mary.

The girl started screaming. She kept it up all the way to the police station while safely ensconced in her daddy’s arms.