Crack Down (13 page)

I took the lift up to the editorial floor. Things were fairly peaceful. Most of the sports staff hadn't come in yet, and Saturdays are such quiet news days that there's only ever a skeleton team in
the newsroom. Alexis sat hunched over her keyboard in a quiet corner cut off from the rest of the room by a dense thicket of various interesting green things. I recognized the devil's ivy and the sweetheart plant. I've killed cuttings from both of them. I edged round the plants. Alexis flapped a hand at me, indicating I should sit down and shut up. I did.

With a flurry of fingers over the keyboard, Alexis reached the end of her train of thought, leaned back, narrowed her eyes and re-read her last paragraph, absently reaching out for the cigarette in her ashtray. It had already burned down to the tip, and she looked at it in astonishment. Only then did I merit any attention. “All right?” she asked.

“As predicted. Remanded till Wednesday to allow for further police inquiries relating to other serious crimes. And unless the court agency has taken to hiring the Invisible Man for Saturday shifts, we're clear there too.”

“It's only a matter of time before somebody gets a whisper,” Alexis warned. “It's too good a story for the Old Bill to sit on. It's not every day they capture a parcel that size.”

“So let's get a move on,” I said.

“What's with the ‘us'? Isn't unpaid childminding enough?”

“That's only the start. I need to look at your copy of the electoral roll.”

Alexis nodded and tipped back dangerously in her chair till she could reach the filing cabinet behind her. She pulled out the bottom drawer. “Help yourself,” she said. I don't know exactly where she gets it from, but Alexis always has an up-to-date copy of the city voters' list. She keeps it next to another interesting document which fell off the back of a British Telecom lorry, a list of Greater Manchester names and addresses sorted by phone number. In other words, if you've got the number, you can look up the address and name of the subscriber. Very handy, especially when you're dealing with the kind of dodgy customer Alexis and I are always running up against.

I looked up the relevant street in the electoral roll and discovered the occupant was listed as Terence Fitzgerald. The phone book revealed no listing for Terence Fitzgerald, but I checked
Directory Inquiries on my mobile phone and discovered there was a mobile listed for him.

“Find what you wanted?” Alexis asked.

“Maybe,” I said. I had a way to go before I could be sure that the car thief and Terence Fitzgerald were one and the same. Thanks to the poll tax fiasco, the electoral roll has ceased to be an accurate guide to who actually lives at any particular address.

“Time for a coffee?” Alexis asked.

I shook my head. “Places to go, people to see. Thanks all the same.”

For the briefest possible time, she looked concerned. “Take care of yourself, KB.”

“I'll be fine,” I lied. I waved goodbye and headed for the lifts. As I drove out of the car park, I stared up at the grim concrete façade of the court building and tried not to think about Richard sitting in a windowless cell, nothing to do but stare at the walls and sweat with fear. I'd once been behind the heavy iron bars of the CDC, while I'd still thought that being a lawyer was a fit and proper job for a grown-up. A criminal solicitor friend had let me shadow him for a day's duty. I'd woken up sweating for weeks afterwards.

Luckily, fighting with the city traffic didn't give me much opportunity to brood. It was just after eleven when I tucked myself into the little parking bay that gave me a perfect view of Terence Fitzgerald's town house. The black Supra was still sitting on the drive, and the bedroom curtains were still shut.

I took my Nikon out of the glove box and fitted a stubby telephoto lens to it. Then I settled back to wait and watch. God knows, it was a thin enough lead. But it was all I had. I'd give it today and see what turned up. If nothing did, it looked like a bit of breaking and entering might be on the agenda.

I have friends who believe we can transmit psychic energy that reaches out and touches other people, impelling them to follow certain courses of action. They'd reckon their theory gained credibility when Terence Fitzgerald's bedroom curtains opened five minutes after I took up station outside his house. Me, I think it probably had more to do with Terence's alarm clock than the waves of anxiety and urgency I was generating.

Twenty minutes later, Terence emerged, hair still damp from the shower. He wore a chocolate leather blouson over baggy brown trousers, cream shirt and splashy tie. I banged off a couple of shots as he got into the car, then I started my engine. He passed me without a second glance, and I tucked into the traffic a couple of cars behind him as we hit the main road. He headed towards town, turning off at the big new Harry Ramsden's fish and chip shop at Castlefield, an area on the edge of the city center which the powers that be are desperately trying to transform from post-industrial desert into tourist attraction. So far they've got the chippie, a couple of museums and Granadaland, Manchester's dusty answer to Disneyland and Universal Studios. And, of course, the expensive hotels that British tourists can't actually afford.

I pulled into the garage just beyond Harry Ramsden's and pretended to check my tire pressures while I kept watch. He came out of the takeaway section a few minutes later with an open package which he carefully laid on the passenger seat as he got back into the car. Just the thought of the fish and chips had me salivating.

He shot back into the traffic again, and we were soon belting down the Hyde Road. No granddad driving today. The only time my speedo dropped below forty-five was at the traffic lights. I nearly
lost him when he went through an amber as it turned to red but I put my foot down and caught him at the next set of lights, just before the motorway. It looked like we were heading over the Woodhead Pass to Sheffield. There was no chance to take in the magnificent scenery today. I was too busy concentrating on keeping the car on the road as I powered round the bends and up the long moorland inclines in the wake of the Supra. We hit the outskirts of Sheffield around one, and Terence slowed down, clearly less familiar with the steel city than he was with Manchester.

We skirted Hillsborough, driving more carefully now since the police were already out in force for a Sheffield Wednesday home game. I can't understand how anybody can bear to go there to watch football these days. I know
I'll
never forget those newspaper photographs of dying Liverpool fans, nearly a hundred of them, crushed to death on a sunny spring afternoon just like this one. I tried to clear the morbid memories by focusing on the Supra's rear end, twitching now-you-see-it-now-you-don't round the next corner like a rabbit's tail.

We cut through backstreets lined with blank, silent buildings, monuments to an industry that once employed a city and made Sheffield steel world-famous. The captains of industry tell us that Sheffield produces more steel than ever before, and with a quarter of the old workforce. It just doesn't feel like it, driving through what appears to be an industrial graveyard.

Beyond the mills, we climbed steeply. Like Rome, Sheffield's a city built on seven hills. Difference is, you get better pizzas in Sheffield. Soon, we were engulfed by a sprawling council estate, sixties terraces and low-rise maisonette blocks as far as the eye could see. Terence seemed to know where he was now, for he speeded up again, scattering mongrels as he went. It was becoming more difficult to maintain an unobtrusive tail, since virtually every car in sight looked like it had at least one wheel in the grave.

The Supra signaled a right turn as it approached a large asphalted area beside a low, square building. I carried straight on, turning into the first side-street. I gave it a few minutes, then I headed back the way I'd come. A couple of hundred yards from the building, I
parked the car, made sure the alarm was on, and walked the rest of the way on foot. As I got closer, I could see a battered sign which told me that Suzane was a slag, that Wayne shags great and that Fairwood Community Center had been opened in 1969. All the casual visitor needed to know, really.

There was a blackboard outside the center, surrounded by a knot of teenagers who looked like Sheffield's entry for the Wasted Youth of the Year contest. I'd have felt threatened if I didn't know I could kick the feet out from under any of them. As it was, I was wary, avoiding eye contact as I glanced at the blackboard. On it was written in sprawling capitals, “Q Here 4 Sale. 3pm and 6pm. Bargins Galore.” Stapled to the corner was a bundle of flyers. I detached one as I walked on by and stuffed it into my pocket.

I rounded the corner of the community center to the sound of a wolf whistle and a couple of suggestions as to what the youth of Sheffield would like to do to me. In the car park, as well as the Supra, there was a Cavalier and a three-ton truck. The truck was reversed hard up against the hall, its doors opened back parallel with the wall. I crouched down to tie my shoelace and sneaked a look under the van. Beyond it, the double doors of what was obviously the hall's fire exit were open. Short of crawling under the truck and into the hall, there was no way I could see what was in either of them.

I was about to walk back to the car when my phone chirruped. I felt incredibly exposed, answering a mobile phone right there, so I hurried round to the far side of the truck. At least I was out of sight from the road now. Irritated with myself for not having the sense to remember to leave the phone in the car, I barked, “Brannigan,” into the phone.

“Kate? Where are you? Are you near home?” It was Alexis, but Alexis as I'd never heard her before. Even in those few words, I could hear panic. And panic meant only one thing.

“Davy?” I said, my fear rising instantly to equal hers.

“Kate, can you get home? Now?”

“What's happened?” I was already skirting round the back of the community center, crossing a scrubby playing field and heading back to the car. “He's not … gone missing?” My immediate terror
was that, somehow, someone had discovered who had driven off with the drugs and that Davy was either a hostage or the potential victim of a vicious reprisal.

“No, nothing like that. It's just …”

I could hear Chris's voice saying in the background, “For God's sake, Alex, give me the phone, you're only winding her up.” Then Chris's voice replaced Alexis's. “Don't panic,” she said. “Davy's come back to the house and he's in a bit of a state, like he's high on something. I think he might have been given drugs or something, and I think we ought to take him to hospital. How long will it take you to get home?”

I was at the car, switching the alarm off, shoving the key in the ignition, all on automatic pilot while I digested what Chris was saying. I felt as if I'd been punched in the stomach. Taking Davy to hospital was the nightmare scenario. There was no way we could do it without everything coming on top. Angie would discover that not only was her ex-husband in jail but her son had been put at risk by said ex-husband's fancy woman and her lesbian friends. The chances of Richard ever seeing his son again without a social worker shrank to the size of a terrorist's conscience.

Chris cut into my racing thoughts. “Hello? Kate? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I'm here,” I said, powering down the street and heading back towards the Manchester road. “Look, you can't take him to hospital. Oh shit, this is the worst possible thing … Give me a minute.” I thought furiously. On the other hand, if he was really ill, we couldn't
not
take him to hospital. The one thing Richard would never forgive was if I let anything happen to Davy. Come to that, I'd have a hard job forgiving myself. “How bad is he?” I asked.

“One minute he's shivering, the next he's sweating. He keeps going off into crazy giggling fits and he keeps pointing at nothing really and giggling and then cuddling up to us,” Chris said. There was a note of desperation in her carefully controlled voice.

My brain had finally accessed the relevant information. “Give me five minutes, Chris,” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “He's not at all well, Kate.”

“Please. Five minutes, max.” I cut off the connection before Chris
could argue any more. I pulled up with a screech of rubber and the blast of a horn from the car behind. I flipped open my Filofax and found the number I was looking for. I punched the number into the phone and moved back into the traffic. Sinful, I know, but getting to Davy was a greater imperative than the interests of other road users.

If anyone could help me, it was Dr. Beth Taylor. Beth divides her time between an inner-city group practice and a part-time lectureship at the university in medical ethics. A few years ago, she had a fling with Bill which lasted about three months, which is probably a record for my business partner. Now, she's Mortensen and Brannigan's first port of call whenever we're investigating medical insurance claims. She also repairs broken bits of Brannigan from time to time.

The phone answered on the second ring. “This is Beth,” the distant voice said. “I'm not here right now, but if you want me to call you back you can leave a message after the tone. If it's urgent, you can try me on my mobile, which is …” I keyed the number into the phone as she recited it, then ended the call and dialled her mobile, praying to God she not only had it with her but was also in a decent reception area.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. “Hello, Beth Taylor.” I'd never heard a more welcome sound.

“Beth? It's Kate Brannigan.”

“Hi, Kate! Long time no see. Which I suppose is a good thing, in your case. Is this a professional call? Only, I'm on my way to play hockey.”