Cry for Help (19 page)

Currie nodded. Still, he couldn't resist looking back as they left the front room. He wanted to clarify his reaction to what had been done here.

Nobody deserves this.

Currie tried that thought on for size. It wasn't quite right, but it was close enough, and that was something: almost a relief. For a long time, he'd been worried he might never fit inside such ideas again at all.

Out front, things were threatening to get ugly.

He picked out Choc's men straight away. There were only five or six of them, but they were big guys, very handy-looking, and they were spreading themselves around and making their presence felt: two to an officer, arms spread, gesticulating. A pack hunting for the weak spots in the chain. They wanted in. Their friend was dead in there, and this was their territory. Unaccustomed to police involvement, they had no respect or use for it.

No fear, either. Only a sliver of common sense was stopping them barging straight through. Their outrage seemed as much at the imposition as anything else. Who did the fucking police think they were?

We're a minute away from chaos here.

'We need to get this under control,' Swann said.

Currie nodded.

'Call it in. I'll go talk to Drake. See if I can calm this down.'

'You going to be nice to him, I hope?'

'Yeah,' Currie said. 'Maybe.'

He walked across the car park. Charlie Drake wasn't talking to anyone or causing a scene; he was leaning against his car, one foot over the other, chewing at a fingernail. Almost relaxed, but not quite - he was staring too intently at the tower block for that, as though he was concentrating on knocking it down with his thoughts.

Currie had met him a few times before, and always had the same reaction upon seeing him. If you didn't know what Drake did for a living, you'd never have guessed it. He wore old suit trousers and an expensive white shirt, which was untucked and a little dirty. If you blurred your eyes, he might have been a sixth-former, bunking off school. Like the bare interior of Cardall's flat, he belied the image of suited, booted, jewelled-up charisma the public probably associated with people high up the drugs chain.

Currie stopped in front of him, nodded once.

'Charlie.'

Drake looked at him. It was only in his eyes that you caught sight of what had taken him so far in this life - if you could call it that. Right there, you knew he was the kind of man who could kill someone and barely even think about it afterwards. Once someone had that, the rest of it was just supply and shipping.

Currie stared right back.

'I remember you,' Drake said.

'Yeah. You knew my son.'

'Neil.'

'That's right. Good customer of yours.'

Drake looked at him for a few more seconds, then returned his gaze to the block of flats.

'My boy's in there, isn't he?'

'Yes.' He surprised himself. 'I'm sorry.'

Drake tutted. 'You're all fucking dancing over this.'

Currie watched the scene, said nothing.

'Especially you.'

'No, you're wrong about that. This will probably get transferred. If it doesn't, I'll do everything I can to find the person who killed Alex. Nobody deserves what happened to him.'

'Don't worry yourself. It's nothing to do with you.'

'It's a police matter, Charlie. Whether you like it or not. We'll be the ones handling this.'

Drake smiled without humour. Yeah. We'll see about that.

'Can you think of anyone who'd want to hurt Alex?'

'Maybe.'

But to Currie, that seemed more like bravado than anything else. Beneath Drake's studied calm, he sensed the same human emotions that anyone would feel. Grief and anger. Confusion, too. As though he'd already scanned through a list of enemies and come up empty for this one. The man was hurt, and doing what a predator always did in those circumstances: hiding it.

'Were you with Alex last night?'

'Yeah. He dropped me home around eleven.'

'Where were you before that?'

Drake didn't reply.

Currie eased away from the car and moved to stand in front of him. Kept his hands in his pockets. Deliberately blocking his view of the flats, but also blocking Drake from the view of everyone else.

'You're going to talk to someone,' he said quietly.

'Is that right?'

'It depends how you want it.' He nodded back towards the tower block. 'We'll go through every single associate, every single property, every drawer and every cupboard.'

Drake glared at him, but Currie shook his head.

'And don't think you intimidate me, Charlie, because you don't. If your boys keep causing trouble back there, you're all going in. Nobody can see you right now, and nobody can hear, so I'm going to ask you again. Where were you last night?'

If looks could kill.

But Drake was a smart man. He might have laughed another officer off, but he remembered Neil. He knew Currie hated him. Even if he didn't know how far Currie had nearly taken that, he would know he'd carry out his threat, no matter what the consequences.

He looked off to one side. 'We were in The Wheatfield.'

Currie almost laughed. Throughout the department, officers who'd ever had dealings with Drake and his crew used 'The Wheatfield' as short-hand for any dubious alibi. It was a small pocket of the city where the usual rules of morality didn't seem to apply - a little like the confessional box in a church: you went in full of sin, then emerged with it miraculously lifted from you. 'He was in The Wheatfield' meant someone had stepped outside of society for a moment, into a place where nothing you did was required to have consequences. Where you could take time out from notions of guilt or responsibility. Currie despised the place.

'All night?' he said. 'Don't lie to me, Charlie. I doubt you've had time to organise that with the landlord, and I'll go through every camera in the city--'

'We left about ten.'

'That's an hour missing.'

'We like to obey the speed limit, officer.'

'Don't fuck with me. Where did you go?'

Drake weighed it up. 'We called in on an acquaintance.'

'Who?'

'Guy named Dave Lewis.'

Currie managed to confine the shock he felt to a single blink. It was a Herculean effort. How the hell did those two know each other?

'Oh yeah? You have stuff to talk about?'

'Just catching up. Chatting about mutual friends. You know how it is.'

'Mutual friends.' Currie thought about it and took a guess. 'Tori Edmonds?'

'Yeah. Tori.'

'I remember her. How's she doing?'

'She's fine. Dave - he was worried about her. Said he hadn't heard from her in a while. Just bothering over nothing.'

Behind him, Currie could hear that the commotion was continuing - raised voices, feet scuffing at the tarmac in frustration - but he tuned it out. Thinking.

Dave Lewis. Tori Edmonds. Julie Sadler.

He hadn't heard from her in a while.

'What about you?' he said. 'Have you heard from her?'

'Yeah. I texted her last night. Got one back.'

'Show me.'

Drake frowned. 'What?'

'Show me your fucking phone.'

'All right, all right.' He muttered to himself, digging into his baggy suit pockets. When he got the mobile out, Currie noticed it was a nice one: a single nod to the lifestyle. Drake clicked through, then held it face out towards him.

'Here. Don't be looking at anything else though.'

'Yeah, like I want to look through your dirt.'

Currie peered at the screen, and read the text.

Hey there. Sorry for silence. Am fine, just busy. Hope u r too. Maybe catch up sometime soon. Tori

The exact same wording as the texts sent from Julie Sadler's phone. And those of the other victims. Christ. Everything had just flipped, and it felt like the pieces in his head had scattered accordingly.

He turned his attention back to Drake.

'I'm sorry, Charlie,' he said. 'I think we might need to take a closer look at your dirt, after all.'

Chapter Eighteen

Friday 2nd September

Tori lived in the north of town, and I had to drive out and around to avoid the early-afternoon traffic in the city centre. It was after two when I finally pulled up on her street. The first thing I did after I parked was check my mobile again.

No messages. No missed calls.

I put the phone on the passenger seat, then folded my arms and rested them on the steering wheel.

Tori's house was just up the road from me. It was a tall, cramped back-to-back in one of the cheaper areas of the city. The buildings here all had their stomachs sucked in and shoulders hunched, their belts tightened. They had character, though: all painted differently, in whites and greys, so that no single one seemed to fit with its neighbour. The skyline was like a row of dodgy teeth. Her house had windows that seemed to have been squeezed from the side to fit them in. Right now, all the curtains - hippy-purple in the bedroom, I remembered, dotted with yellow stars and moons - were closed.

A network of pipes ran all the way down from the gutter to a grate beside the steps to the front door. The morning after we broke up, I'd stood at the top of those steps, smoking a cigarette, listening to the roar of the boiler in the kitchen behind me and smelling Tori's shower lotion as it swirled and foamed in the drain below. It was blocked by leaves, so the water filled up and then spilled in fingers across the path.

If you ever need me, I'll be there for you. No matter what.

It was an easy promise to make. But when the landscape of a relationship shifts, you have to forge new paths across it. Rob had a point when he'd talked about stalking. I wasn't her boyfriend anymore, and I had no real right to be here. I'd pestered her with texts and calls all day, phoned her work - even the hospital - and now turned up at her house. All based on . . . nothing. When she answered the door, what was she going to think?

Well, why don't you find out?

I locked the car, walked up the street and knocked on her door.

There was no answer. No sense of movement inside.

I waited a minute, then knocked again.

Nothing.

It was an anti-climax. The frustration built up, and I tried the door handle. Even as I was asking myself what the fuck I thought I was doing, the handle turned and the door swung open into the kitchen, creaking twice on its way to the wall.

I leaned inside. It all felt dark and quiet.

'Tori? It's Dave.'

I stepped into the kitchen and called out again. If she was here - which she had to be - I didn't want there to be any confusion about my intentions. I certainly didn't want to walk in on her in bed with someone.

'Hello?'

Just concerned. There was no answer, and the door was ajar.

I listened carefully, and heard nothing but the full, silent sound of an empty house.

I closed the front door, revealing a small spread of post across the kitchen floor behind it, like you get when you return home after a weekend away. I knelt down and gathered it together, then flicked through the pile. A hand-written envelope, a gas bill and what looked like a bank statement. Not a lot, in other words, but it wasn't like Tori to leave stuff lying around.

I wrinkled my nose. It was stuffy in here too. There was a plate on the side, covered with crumbs and a few dry swirls of what looked like tomato sauce. It looked old.

Perhaps she's gone away, I thought.

And left the front door unlocked?

I moved through to the pitch-black lounge, found the light switch, and the front room came to warm, yellow life. The sight of it brought a flood of memories back. When we'd been together, we'd spent a fair amount of time slouched about in here. There were little differences, but it was still mostly as I remembered: the rich yellow of the walls; the orange throws over the settees; knick-knacks on the shelves. And there were books everywhere. She kept them close, like friends, as though she might need one at any moment and had to have at least a few within reach.

'Tori?'

I went through. The back door was locked, at least, with the key on the inside. At the bottom of the stairs I hesitated, looking at the dark landing above. I could imagine what Rob would say if he saw me now. This was bona-fide, A-grade stalking. But then I thought about Julie, restrained in her home. Nobody coming.

The door was wide open and there was no answer.

Up on the landing, I stood and listened, but everything was quiet. The bedroom door was closed. I tapped gently and got no answer - but even if she'd been asleep, she'd have heard me by now. I reached out and pushed the door, expecting the room to be empty.

And it was.

Immediately, it felt like cold water rushed down from my head to my feet, washing a layer of tension away with it. I leaned against the doorframe and took a deep breath. A part of me had genuinely believed something had happened to her. Something like Julie.

Moron.

Her bed was unmade. The thick, white duvet was twisted like candy, the pillow crumpled with an old indent of her head. The other pillow was full, I noticed. The last time she'd slept here, it had been alone . . .

And then I realised what I was doing, and it just felt wrong.

Above the bed, there was a shelf full of books. Night-time reading. I remembered lying there one night while she was in the bathroom, and I'd taken a book down to flick through. It turned out to be a gift from an old boyfriend; he'd written a note on the title page. I'd replaced it quickly. Seeing it had been like sneaking an illicit glimpse into her private world - a time of her life where I didn't belong. And that was exactly what I was doing right now.

I was about to turn and head downstairs when I noticed it.

A white envelope.

It was tucked slightly beneath the pillow. There was handwriting on the front. Small, neat, black letters.

Dave Lewis.

I walked slowly across to the bed and picked it out, gripping the corner lightly between my finger and thumb. The paper made a scratching sound as I hooked my thumb in and tore it open.