Crack Down (6 page)

“Did you do a number on anybody about the car?”

“I didn't mention it to a soul. I'd just have looked a dickhead next week, back with my usual wheels,” he said, with rare insight.

“I don't suppose you know who's doing the heavy-duty stuff round town these days?”

Richard leaned forward and stared into my eyes. I could feel his fear. “I've got no interest,” he said, his face tense. “I bend over backwards to avoid taking any interest. Look, you know how much time I spend in the Moss and Cheetham Hill with new bands. Everybody knows I'm a journo. If I showed the slightest interest in the gangs and the drugs, I'd be a dead man, blown away on the steps of some newspaper office as a warning to other hacks not to get any daft ideas in their heads about running a campaign to clean up Manchester. You ask Alexis. She's supposed to be the crime correspondent. You ask her the last time there was a heavy incident in Moss Side or Cheetham Hill where she did anything more than toddle along to the police press conference! Believe me, if I thought for one minute that the gang that owns these drugs knows it was me that drove off with them, I'd be begging for protective custody a long, long way from Manchester. No, Brannigan, I do not know who's doing the heavy stuff, and for the sake of both our healths, I suggest that you remain in the same blissful state.”

I shrugged. “You want to walk away from this? The only way you're going to do that is if we give them a body to trade.” I turned to Ruth. “Am I right?”

“Regardless of that, you're probably going to have to spend another few days in police custody,” Ruth warned him.

Richard's face fell. “Is there no way you can get me out sooner? I've got to get out of here, double urgent,” he said.

“Richard, in my opinion, the police will charge you with possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, which is not a charge on which magistrates are inclined to allow bail. I'll do my best, but the chances are heavily stacked against us. Sorry about that, but there we go.” Ruth paused to savor a last mouthful of smoke before regretfully stubbing out her cigarette.

“Oh, shit,” Richard said. He took off his glasses and carefully polished them on his paisley silk shirt. He sighed. “I suppose I'll have to go for it. But there's one slight problem I haven't mentioned that Brannigan seems to have forgotten about,” he said sheepishly, looking short-sightedly in my direction.

My turn to sigh. “Give,” I said.

“Davy's due on the seven o'clock shuttle tonight. Remember? Half-term?”

As his words sank in, I got to my feet, shaking my head. “Oh no, no way. Not me.”

“Please,” Richard said. “You know how much it means to me.”

“There isn't that much dosh in the world,” I said, panicking.

“Please, Kate. That bitch is just looking for an excuse to shut me out,” he pleaded.

“That's no way to talk about the woman you married, the mother of your child, the former joy of your existence and fire of your loins,” I said, slipping defensively into our routine banter. It was no use. I knew as I looked down at the poor sod that I'd already given in. A dozen years of efficient contraception, and what does it get you? Someone else's kid, that's what.

I had to sit through the whole tale a second time for the CID's preliminary taped interview with Richard. Ruth had instructed him to co-operate fully, in the hope that it might predispose them towards letting his bail application go through. Looking at their faces as they listened to Richard's admittedly unlikely story, I didn't rate his chances of seeing daylight for a while.

After the interview, Ruth and I went into a brief huddle. “Look, Kate, realistically, he's not going to get bail tomorrow. The best chance we have of getting him out is if you can come up with evidence that supports his story and points to the real criminals.” I held my tongue; Ruth is one of the few people I allow to tell me how to suck eggs.

“The crucial thing, given the amount of drugs involved, is that we keep him out of the mainstream prison system so he's not in contact with criminals who have connections into the drug scene. What I'm going to suggest to the CID is that they use the excuse of the ‘stolen' car and the possibly pornographic photograph to exploit paragraph five of the Bail Act,” she went on.

I must have looked as blank as I felt, for she deigned to explain. “If the suspect's been arrested for one offense and the police have evidence of his implication in another, they can ask for what we call a lie-down. In other words, he remains in police custody for up to three days for the other matters to be investigated. That'll give us a bit of leeway, since the meter doesn't start running till the day after the initial hearing. That gives us Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He'll appear in court again on Wednesday, by which time you might have made enough headway for me to be able to argue that he should be let out.”

“Oh whoopee,” I said. “A schedule so tight I'll be singing soprano and an eight-year-old too. Go for it, Ruth.”

I left Ruth to her wheeling and dealing with the CID just after half past four and drove into the city center. Chinatown was still lively, the late-night trade losing their shirts in the casinos and drunkenly scoffing Chinese meals after the clubs had closed. Less than a mile away, in the gay village round Chorlton Street bus station, the only sign of life was a few rent boys and hookers, hanging around the early-morning street corners in a triumph of hope over experience. I cruised slowly along Canal Street, the blank windows of Manto's reflecting nothing but my Peugeot. I didn't even spot anyone sleeping rough till I turned down Minshull Street towards UMIST.

The street was still. I pulled up in an empty parking meter bay. There were only three other cars in the street, one of them Richard's Beetle. I'd have to come back in the morning and collect it before some officious traffic warden had it ticketed and clamped. At least its presence supported Richard's story, if the police were inclined to check it out. I took my pocket Nikon out of my glove box, checked the date stamp was switched on and took a couple of shots of the Beetle as insurance.

Slowly, I walked round to Sackville Street, checking doorways and litter bins for the trade plates. I didn't hold out much hope. They were too good a prize for any passing criminal, never mind the guys who had stuck them on the coupé in the first place. As I'd expected, the streets were clear. On the off chance, I walked round into the little square of garden in Sackville Street and searched along the wall and in the bushes, being careful to avoid touching the unpleasant crop of used condoms. No joy. Stumbling with exhaustion, I walked back to my car and drove home. The prospect of having to take care of Davy weighed heavily on me, and I desperately wanted to crack on and make some progress towards clearing Richard. But the sensible part of me knew there was nothing I could do in the middle of the night. And if I didn't get some sleep soon, I wouldn't be fit to do what had to be done come daylight.

I set my alarm for half past eight, switched off the phones and
turned down the volume on the answering machine. Unfortunately, I couldn't do the same thing with my brain. I tossed and turned, my head full of worries that wouldn't lie down and leave me in peace. I prayed Ruth's stratagem would work. While he was still in police custody, Richard was fairly safe. But as soon as he was charged and remanded to prison, the odds would turn against him. No matter how much the police tried to keep the lid on this business, it wouldn't take long in the leaky sieve of prison before the wrong people learned what he was in for. And if the drugs belonged to one of the Manchester gangs, some warlord somewhere would decide that Richard needed to be punished in ways the law has long since ceased to contemplate.

We'd both gone into this relationship with damage from past encounters. From the start, we'd been honest about our pain and our fears. As a result, we'd always kept it light, by tacit agreement. Somewhere round about dawn, I acknowledged that I couldn't live with myself if I let anything happen to him. It's a real bastard, love.

 

I was only dozing when the alarm went off. The first thing I did was check the answering machine. Its friendly red light was flashing, so I hit the replay button. “Hello, Kate, it's Ruth.” Her voice was friendlier than I deserved. “It's just before six, and I thought you'd be pleased to hear that I've manged to persuade the divisional superintendent that he has most chance of obtaining convictions from this situation if he keeps Richard's arrest under wraps. So he's agreed, very reluctantly, not to hold a press conference announcing a major drugs haul. He's not keen, but there we go. Was I put on earth to keep policemen happy? He's also receptive to the idea of a lie-down, but he wants to hang on till later in the day before he makes a final decision. Anyway, I hope you're managing some sleep, since working yourself to the point of exhaustion will not serve the interests of my client. Why don't you give me a call towards the end of the afternoon, by which time we both might have some information? Speak to you soon, darling. It'll be all right.” I wished I could share her breezy confidence.

As the coffee brewed, I called my local friendly mechanic and asked him to collect Richard's Beetle, promising to leave a set of
keys under the kitchen window box. I also phoned in to the office and told Shelley what had happened. Of course, it was Richard who got the sympathy. Never mind that I'd been deprived of my sleep and landed with a task that might have caused even Clint Eastwood a few nervous moments. Oh no, that was my job, Shelley reminded me. “You do what you've got to do to get that poor boy out of jail,” she said sternly. “It makes me feel ill, just thinking of Richard locked up in a stinking cell with the dregs of humanity.”

“Yes, boss,” I muttered rebelliously. Shelley always makes me feel like a bloody-minded teenager when she goes into Mother Hen mode. God knows what effect it has on her own two adolescents. “Just tell Bill what I'm doing. I'll be on my mobile if you need me urgently,” I added.

I washed two thick slices of toast down with a couple of mugs of scalding coffee. The toast because I needed carbohydrate, the coffee because it was a more attractive option than surgery to get my eyes open. I pulled on jogging pants and a sweatshirt without showering and drove over to the Thai boxing gym in South Manchester where I punish my body on as regular a basis as my career in crime prevention allows. It might not be the Hilton, but it meets my needs. It's clean, it's cheap, the equipment is well maintained and it's mercifully free of muscle-bound macho men who think they've got the body and charm of Sylvester Stallone when in reality they don't even have the punch-drunk brains of Rocky.

I wasn't the only person working out on the weights that morning. The air was already heavy with the smell of sweat as half a dozen men and a couple of women struggled to keep time's winged chariot in the service bay. As I'd hoped, my old buddy Dennis O'Brien, burglar of this parish, was welded to the pec deck, moving more metal than the average Nissan Micra contains. He was barely breaking sweat. The bench next to him was free, so I picked up a set of dumbbells and lay back to do some tricep curls. “Hiya, kid,” Dennis said on his next outgoing breath. “What's the world been doing to you?”

“Don't ask. How about you?”

He grinned like a Disney wolf. “Still doing the police's job for them,” he said. “Got a real result last night.”

“Glad somebody did,” I said, enjoying the sensation of my flabby muscles tightening as I raised and lowered the weights.

“Fourteen grand I took off him,” Dennis told me. “Now that's what I call a proper victim.”

He was clearly desperate to tell the tale, so I gave him the tiny spur of encouragement that was all he needed. “Sounds like a good'un. How d'you manage that?”

“I hear this firm from out of town are looking for a parcel of trainers. So I arrange to meet them, and I tell them I can lay my hands on an entire wagonload of Reeboks, don't I? A couple of nights later, we meet again and I show him a sample pair from this truck I'm supposed to have nicked, right? Only, I haven't nicked them, have I? I've just gone down the wholesaler's and bought them.” As he got into his story, Dennis paused in his work-out. He's physically incapable of telling a tale without his hands.

“So of course, they fall for it. Anyway, we arrange the meet for last night, out on the motorway services at Sandbach. My mate Andy and me, we get there a couple of hours before the meet and suss the place out. When these two bozos arrive, Andy's stood hiding behind a truck right the far side of the lorry park, and when the bozos park up beside my car, I make sure they see me giving him the signal, and he comes over to us, making out like he's just come out of the wagon, keys in his hand, the full monte.” Dennis was giggling between his sentences like a little lad outlining some playground scam.

I sat up and said, “So what happens next?”

“I say to these two dummies, ‘Let's see the money, then. You hand over the money, and my mate'll hand over the keys to the wagon.' And they do no more than hand over their fourteen grand like lambs. I'm counting the money, and when I've done, I give Andy the nod and he tosses them the keys. We jump into the motor and shoot straight off. I tell you, the last thing I see is the pair of them schmucks jumping up and down beside that wagon, their mouths opening and shutting like a pair of goldfish.” By the end of his tale, Dennis was doubled over with laughter. “You should've seen them, Kate,” he wheezed. “The Dennis O'Brien crime prevention program scores another major success.”

The first time he said that to me, I'd been a bit baffled. I didn't see how ripping someone off to the tune of several grand could prevent crime. So Dennis had explained. The people he was cheating had a large sum of money that they were prepared to spend on stolen goods. So some thief would have to steal something for them to buy. But if Dennis relieved them of their wad, they wouldn't have any money to spend on stolen goods, therefore the robbery that would have had to take place was no longer necessary. Crime prevention, QED.