Nothing but Trouble (16 page)

Opening the book, he found, as expected, a hollowed-out centre. Nestled within this space were a .22 Ruger MKII, bullets and
a silencer.

‘Thank you, Munich,’ he said grimly.

He took the gun out and weighed it gently in his palm. He gazed down at the bright red logo on the pistol grip, the symbol
of a dragon with its wings outstretched. It looked rather like a phoenix rising from the flames. He took a moment to consider
the appropriateness of the symbol, his lips sliding into a wry smile, before returning the gun to its hiding place. He wrapped
the paper around the book, put the package in his suitcase, locked the suitcase and placed it in the back of the closet.

‘Soon,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘It will soon be over.’

As he walked back across the room, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked tired, almost haggard. There were bags
under his eyes and his skin was grey. For the last couple of nights he hadn’t slept well, and even when he had managed to
drop off his dreams had been full of fear and panic, of being trapped, of turning into blind alleys where there was no escape.

‘Don’t go there,’ he whispered into the silence of the room. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

He pushed back his shoulders, shrugged on his jacket and picked up the car keys for the Peugeot rental. He would spend most
of the day going over his route, checking out the back streets, the one-way systems, the traffic lights and CCTV cameras.
With a job like this, you couldn’t afford to leave anything to chance.

But first he had something else to do.

Fifteen minutes later, he was driving through the wide cemetery gates. He went slowly up the main thoroughfare, swung a left
by the majestic weeping willow and pulled the car neatly in to the side. He did not get out immediately, but sat hunched forward
with his hands on the wheel. He looked from side to side and gave a small nod. Yes, it was all exactly as he remembered it.

He glanced automatically at his watch even though he had nowhere to be, at least nowhere to be in a hurry. The cemetery, so
far as he could tell with so many trees and bushes in the way, was deserted. It was only him and the dead and a few grey squirrels.
He got out of the car and shut the door quietly even though there was no one to disturb.

With his hands deep in his pockets, he strolled up the gentle slope and started to head across the grass. Here, in the older
part of the cemetery, many of the graves were cracked and broken, tilted sideways, with weeds poking up through the gaps.
Thin rays of morning sunshine broke through the clouds, warming the back of his neck. They were not strong enough, however,
to prevent the growing chill in his bones.

When he came to the place he wanted, he stopped and quickly lit a cigarette. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, as if
it could provide some form of protection, a shield against his anger and disgust. Through the years he had trained himself
to feel nothing, to create a barrier to the past that could not be breached. But now a slow, steady drip of rage was leaking
down his spine.

He pondered on what it was that influenced a man the most. Nature or nurture? Had he been born as he was, his genes already
programmed, or had he been moulded? Not that it really mattered. His eyes blazed with hatred and contempt as he stared down
at the writing on the weathered grey headstone. Then, without another thought, he leaned forward and spat on the grave, before
turning his back and striding away.

Job done.

As he drove back towards the gates, he noticed a bright red Mini parked on the main thoroughfare. Glancing over to his right,
he saw a young woman in a faded denim jacket standing very still with a bunch of daffodils clutched to her breast. There was
something about her stance that touched him. He only caught a fleeting glimpse, a snapshot of pale brown hair, of wide eyes,
of curved and slightly parted lips. It wasn’t a beautiful face, but rather a pleasant, thoughtful one. It was the kind of
face, he thought, that you would like a daughter to have.

Daughter. He rolled the word around in his mouth, savouring it, tasting it. But its sweetness had a sour edge too. He’d had
a daughter once, but that had been a long time ago. She was gone. She was lost. At some point all the good things were taken
away. It was only a matter of time.

Jess lifted her eyes as the Peugeot passed smoothly by, surprised to find that she was not alone. Usually at this hour of
the day she had the cemetery to herself. She caught a glimpse of a grey-haired, middle-aged man wearing sunglasses behind
the wheel. He was there and then gone, so she thought no more about him.

She sighed into the daffodils as she gazed down at Len Curzon’s grave. It was four years now since he’d been murdered whilst
in pursuit of that great final scoop. She still thought about him, still missed him, despite all his dreadful habits. He’d
been more than a mentor to her; he’d been a friend and an inspiration. Even though his glory days had been behind him, the
good stories so thin on the ground as to be virtually invisible, he’d still had the old hack’s nose for a decent lead. He’d
taught her to follow her hunches, to be relentless, to hit the trail like a sniffer dog until it led to the truth. And now
here she was chasing another big exclusive.

‘So,’ she said out loud. ‘How am I doing? Am I on the right track?’

Kneeling down, she removed the papery dead flowers from the urn and laid them on the grass beside the headstone. There was
no sign of anyone else having been there since her last visit at Christmas. Len’s wife Jean had predeceased him, and the two
of them lay buried together. They’d had no kids to grieve for them, and she wondered if their childlessness had been a decision
or a disappointment. Maybe Len had focused all his attention on the job instead. There were a lot of questions she hadn’t
asked while he was alive, and now it was too late.

Jess emptied the stagnant water out on to the ground and filled the urn with fresh water from a bottle in her bag. Then she
took the cellophane off the daffodils, peeled off the elastic band at the base of the stems and arranged the flowers as nicely
as she could. As she placed the urn back in front of the headstone, she wondered if she’d got her own work/life balance right.
Sometimes it was all too easy to get caught up in the thrill of the chase and to forget about the people who really mattered.
Neil was a good man, an understanding man, but even he might run out of patience eventually.

After wrapping the dead flowers in the cellophane, she rose slowly to her feet. As she gazed down, she felt that familiar
pang of sorrow and loss. ‘Well, I can’t hang around here all day,’ she murmured. ‘People to see. Things to do.’ But still
she lingered for a while, drinking in the peace of the cemetery before returning to the faster pace of life outside the gates.

By 10.30, Jess was on the Mansfield Estate in search of Becky Hibbert. It was another nice day, so she’d left the Mini at
the Fox and strolled up the high street in the sunshine. She never parked on the estate if she could help it – you left a
decent car for five minutes and you’d come back to find it either stripped or gone. With its three bleak crumbling towers,
its dark passages and graffiti-covered walls, the estate was the local hotbed of
crime. There was nothing, so far as she could see, to recommend it. Dirt and despair seeped out from every corner.

She thought about the Chois and how they’d finally managed to escape, but not before the damage had already been done. Lynda
had teamed up with four other Mansfield kids, all of them bored and restless, with too much time on their hands. That single
summer’s day fourteen years ago had probably sealed her fate as well as Minnie Bright’s.

Jess frowned as she walked along the litter-strewn path. What could it have been that Lynda had remembered after all this
time? Something that had put the wind up Kirsten, that was for sure, and something worrying enough for her to persuade Paige
to unleash her thug of a boyfriend on the unsuspecting David Choi. But whatever it was, it must have happened before Minnie
Bright went into the house. By the time the poor kid had got through the window, Lynda and Sam had taken to their heels.

At the fork in the path Jess veered to the left, stopping outside the entrance to Haslow House and gazing up at the endless
rows of rusting balconies. Here and there, like tiny pinpricks of hope, lay a gleaming window or a freshly glossed front door,
but the majority of the occupants had long since ceased to care. Neither Becky nor Paige had travelled far from their roots.
They’d grown up on the Mansfield and lived there still.

She walked into the cool foyer, wrinkling her nose at the smell. It was a combination of bad odours, but the most pervasive
was the stink of urine. Jess had never understood why people chose to pollute their own environment. A kick against the lousy
cards they’d been dealt, or some kind of tomcat mentality that compelled them to mark their own territory? Or maybe they just
didn’t give a damn.

She found a lift that was working and stepped inside. The smell was even worse within the confines of the small metal
box, but she jabbed at the buttons anyway. Ten floors was a long way to walk, and Becky Hibbert might not even be in. Jess
knew that she worked the afternoon shift at the supermarket and was hoping to catch her before she went out.

The lift jerked slowly upwards, heaving and groaning like an old man with a sack of rocks on his back. Jess took short shallow
breaths, hoping to avoid the worst of the stench. To distract herself, she tried to figure out what she would say to Becky.
There were times when you only got a single shot, and this could be one of them. She couldn’t afford to waste the opportunity.
David Choi had given them a lead and it was up to her to exploit it.

When the lift finally reached the tenth floor, she stepped out with relief and took a few quick gulps of air. She went to
the corner and checked the arrows on the wall to see which direction she should be going, then set off in search of Becky’s
flat. It didn’t take her long to find it. Only five doors to the right and she was there.

There was no bell, and so Jess knocked on the door. She waited, but there was no response. After thirty seconds she banged
a little harder, but this yielded no result either. Leaning her head close to the door jamb, she listened for any sound coming
from inside. There was only silence. Was Becky really out or was she just ignoring her? For many of the residents on the Mansfield
Estate a knock on the door meant only one thing – the loan shark was here to collect his weekly interest.

There was a square window to the side of the door, but the curtains were three-quarters closed. Jess put her hands to the
grimy glass and peered through the remaining slice. She could see an untidy living room with a worn-looking sofa and toys
scattered across a threadbare carpet. But no sign of any life. ‘Sod it,’ she said under her breath. There was nothing worse
than
getting hyped up for an important meeting and then having the rug pulled from under your feet.

Should she wait, or would she just be wasting her time?

Turning around, Jess took a couple of steps forward and gazed down from the iron railings. From here she had a good view of
the estate, but there was no sign of Becky. Five minutes, she decided, and then she’d be off.

It was more like ten before her eyes finally made out the familiar figure plodding through the main gates. She was pushing
a pram with one hand and had a toddler attached to the other. Jess quickly took a step back in case Becky looked up and saw
her. With the kids and the pram she was bound to take the lift, and once she was on the tenth floor there was nowhere else
she could go in a hurry.

It was another few minutes before Jess heard a dull grinding noise coming from the shaft. Then the sound of doors creaking
open. Shortly after that, Becky appeared from around the corner. She was a short, heavyset girl with big boobs and hips. Strands
of lank brown hair, in need of a wash, hung limply around a plain, sullen face. She was wearing a pair of grey joggers and
her green hooded top had sweat stains under the arms. Preoccupied by the toddler’s whingeing, it wasn’t until she was almost
at the door that she glanced up and saw Jess standing there. Her brows crunched together in a full-on scowl.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve just got a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.’

That Becky did mind was perfectly clear from her expression. ‘I’ve got nothin’ to say to you. How many times do you need to
be told? I’m not gonna do it, right?’

The kid stopped snivelling and stared up at Jess, temporarily distracted by this sudden turn of events. A small ball of snot
nestled in his left nostril. Jess looked down at him, and then at the sleeping baby. It was at that very moment that she noticed
the two carrier bags attached to the arms of the pram. She thought at first that it was grocery shopping, but suddenly realised
that Becky had been indulging in a more expensive form of retail therapy.

‘Emily’s,’ Jess said, tilting her head to read the name on the front of the bags. ‘That’s a pricey kind of shop. Designer,
isn’t it? They must be paying well at the supermarket these days.’

She could see that Becky was flustered. Lying was probably second nature to her, but that didn’t mean she did it well.

‘I’ve been working extra shifts, ain’t I? Anyway, it’s none of your business what I spend me money on.’

‘It is if you’re being paid to keep quiet. The police take a dim view of people deliberately covering up a crime.’

‘And what crime would that be, then?’

‘Threats, criminal damage. I presume you’ve heard what’s been happening to Sam Kendall.’

Becky gave a shrug of her heavy shoulders. ‘I don’t know nothin’ about that.’

Jess decided that now was the moment to play her ace card. ‘But you do know about the phone calls Lynda made on the night
she killed herself. She called you, didn’t she? She was in a state and she wanted Paige’s number.’