Riot Act (30 page)

As we turned onto the final half-landing, Sean suddenly stopped dead. I pulled up short and followed his gaze. The CBR rider had removed his helmet, and was walking across the grass towards the stairwell, with his face clearly visible.

This time, Sean didn’t make the mistake of yelling his brother’s name. He didn’t bother with the rest of the stairs, either. He just put both hands on the railing, and vaulted straight over it, coat flying. Ursula let out a strangled cry as he dropped out of sight.

Roger had frozen at her cry. It was only when Sean started heading for him at speed that he sprang into action.

He panicked completely then. He threw the helmet he was carrying at Sean, who swiped it to one side without breaking stride, as though it had no substance. The expensive lid smacked onto the rough ground of the parking area, bounced a couple of times, and finally rolled into the gutter, the gelcoat cracked and useless.

Roger managed to get to the Honda first, but fumbled getting the key into the ignition. I almost thought Sean had him, when the boy managed to get his thumb on the starter and the motor fired up. He snatched the Honda off its stand and kicked it clumsily into gear with the throttle already halfway open.

The effect was electric. The rear wheel ripped free of the road surface, spinning wildly, and churning up clouds of grey smoke as the transmission tried its best to bring the bike’s substantial horsepower into play.

Sean leapt clear as the rear end started to crab towards him. Finally, it dug in and bit, launching the Honda forwards with a lethal shimmy. Roger must have gone fifty yards in the blink of an eye, before he backed off the throttle enough to stay upright.

It was only a momentary ebb, then he was viciously back on the power. He laid down a haze of rubber right to the end of the street.

I headed straight for the Cherokee, practically towing Ursula along behind me. By the time I got her there Sean already had the doors unlocked and was in the driver’s seat. I bundled her into the back with a short instruction for her to buckle up, and jumped for the front seat just as Sean twisted the key and slammed the gear lever into reverse.

He set off out of the small car park and into the road with a squeal of protest from the tyres, and another from his sister.

“Sean,” I said, loud over the howl of the engine. “He’s on a CBR, with a head start. We don’t stand a hope in hell of catching him in this.”

“I know.” Sean’s face was grim as he accelerated down the narrow street, swerving the Jeep into a gap between the parked cars to miss an oncoming delivery van by a less than I’d like to think about. “But I’ve got to try.”

In fact, his pursuit lasted longer than I would have expected. Roger made a frenetic series of turns through the back streets. He was riding increasingly wildly, showing an obvious lack of skill and familiarity with the sheer bulk of the Honda.

The boy tried to go far too fast into one junction, locked the rear wheel at the last moment, and couldn’t make the turn in. He over-shot, cannoning off a parked car on the far side of the road.

Ursula let out a short scream, and I held my breath, waiting for the crash. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet now, so it was probably going to be messy, and it was definitely going to hurt, but the accident never happened. Just when I thought he’d lost it altogether, Roger somehow managed to cling on to control.

How in the name of hell, I wondered as Sean sent the Grand Cherokee thundering after his brother, did a fourteen-year old get his hands on a sub-superbike?

The answer didn’t so much form inside my head, as it just arrived, fully grown, as though it had always been there. I twisted in my seat to face Ursula.

“Is that Nasir’s bike he’s on?” I demanded.

She looked at me as though I’d gone out of my mind.

“What are you talking about?” she said, distracted, trying to see over her brother’s shoulder. “Nas doesn’t
have
a motorbike.”

I turned back, catching Sean’s eye as I did so. “Remember the reg number,” he said, “I’ll get Madeleine to check it.”

But we both knew instinctively whose name would be spat out as the registered keeper when Madeleine finessed the DVLA computer.

I realised briefly that Nasir’s age should have meant that the CBR’s power output had been restricted down to 33bhp for him to legally ride it. It soon became pretty obvious that it wasn’t.

Now, Roger kept on riding as though his life depended on it. At first, I thought he was just fleeing in a blind panic, but it soon became apparent there was method to his seemingly chaotic flips and turns.

“He’s heading for the escape road,” Sean said tightly as he drifted the four-by-four through another corner. “We won’t catch him if he makes it that far.”

The escape road out of Heysham wasn’t dual carriageway, but it was so wide that it might as well have been. Roger would be able to give the CBR its head and that would be it.

“What are you suggesting?” I demanded sharply, “that you run him off the road before he gets there?”

Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel, and he said nothing, but I didn’t like the sound of his thoughts.

In the end, we didn’t get the chance for drastic action. Sean hit congestion on the approach to a roundabout, and Roger nipped away from us up the inside of an artic, coming within a hair’s breadth of putting himself under the rear wheels of the trailer in the process.

Then he was away, throwing the power on in great handfuls, rocketing straight down the white line. As soon as we were clear of the roundabout Sean swung out to overtake the truck, but the driver had clearly decided we were lunatics. He did his best to make his rig even wider and longer. It seemed to take a painfully extended few seconds before Sean managed to carve past him. We could still just about see the Honda up ahead.

Sean planted the accelerator, and the jeep squatted down and ran under us. It had pace that amazed me for such a big, unwieldy vehicle, but with the best will in the world it wasn’t built for sheer speed.

Besides, the escape road was raised above the marshy farm land around it, dreadfully exposed to the wind as I well knew from the bike. As we hit a hundred miles an hour a savage gust whipped under the body, almost seeming to lift the Grand Cherokee right off the surface of the road.

We strayed over the white line as Sean fought with the steering. The inoffensive Peugeot coming the other way locked all its wheels up as the driver desperately attempted to avoid a head-on.

Blenched white, Sean managed to rescue that one, and still he kept his foot hard in.

Finally, it was Ursula, bracing herself into a corner of the back seat, whose nerve broke. “Stop, Sean, please! You’re going to kill us all,” she cried. “Why are you chasing him like this? What’s he running from?”

It was a good question. After only a moment’s hesitation, with a muttered curse, Sean lifted off the throttle. We coasted down to a more legal speed while we watched the Honda’s rear numberplate grow ever smaller in the distance.

He didn’t answer Ursula’s question, but he caught my eye again, and the bleakness was back in his features. I knew then that he’d reached the same terrible conclusion as I had, back there listening to Leanne recounting her story in that dingy hallway.

I couldn’t get around the fact there was no way Roger should have known that Nasir had been killed at midnight on the night the two of them had attacked me at the gym. According to the official line, Nas’s body wasn’t discovered until the following morning.

Which begged the question, how did Roger know his friend was dead? And for what, exactly, was he so sorry?

***

Sean dropped me off at my flat on St George’s Quay, helped a subdued Ursula into the front passenger seat, and left with a tight-lipped smile. I retrieved the Suzuki and headed back to Pauline’s, feeling guilty at having abandoned her so completely on her first day home.

I should have known it wasn’t over yet. When I turned in to the end of Kirby Street the first thing I saw was the dark blue Vauxhall police car sitting right outside Pauline’s house.

It was an unmarked, but it had that official look to it, nevertheless, and the usual giveaway of no dealer stickers in the rear window. There was a single occupant, sitting in the driver’s seat. I saw him duck his head when he heard the Suzuki’s distinctive two-stroke exhaust note, checking me out in the door mirror. I glanced in as I wheeled past, but didn’t recognise the face, and wasn’t inclined to wait for an introduction.

Someone else must have recognised the vehicle for what it was, too. There was an ugly dent in the Vauxhall’s front wing, extending halfway across the bonnet, and the windscreen was cracked. The damage had to be very recent, if the complete lack of rust on the exposed metal was anything to go by. I wondered if they’d collected it on the way in.

I rolled straight down the side of the house to the back without stopping, putting the bike away in the shed and then letting myself in through the kitchen door. I paused, and heard voices from the living room. Pauline’s, and a man’s deeper, slightly clipped tones. With a sinking heart, I pushed open the door.

“Ah, Charlie, there you are, dear,” Pauline said. “We were just waiting for you to get back. Look who’s come to see you.”

MacMillan was sitting on Pauline’s sofa, drinking tea with the lady of the house, and looking very much at home. She’d even brought out one of her best ornamental teapots in honour of the occasion.

Friday, some guard dog, was lying at the policeman’s feet with his head across one polished shoe. I took a certain amount of dark satisfaction to note that at least he’d slobbered over it.

“Hello Superintendent,” I said, instantly cautious, dumping my helmet and gloves on the back of a chair. “What can I do for you?”

MacMillan took one look at me and sighed. He put his cup and saucer down carefully on the side table next to him and sat forwards.

The movement jerked Friday out of sleep. The dog clambered to his feet, ambling off into the kitchen.

Pauline’s bright eyes flicked backwards and forwards between the two of us like we were playing a tactical game of tennis.

After a moment or two she stood up. “I think I’ll just freshen up this pot,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me?”

When she’d followed Friday into the kitchen, and pulled the door to – but not all the way shut, I noticed – behind her, I raised my eyebrow in MacMillan’s direction.

“Well?” I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “What do you want?”

The Superintendent shot a cuff, straightened up one of his cufflinks. He regarded me carefully for a moment, and then he dropped it on me.

“I want you to tell me all about Sean Meyer,” he said.

I felt the involuntary stiffening of my spine, like it had just been scaled by a fast-moving frost. “Well, what you’re going to get,” I said, managing to keep my voice level, “is me telling you to go to hell.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “I wasn’t referring to your past – association with him,” he said, choosing his words with care. “I’m talking about now. The last few weeks.”

I knew I should relax, come off the defensive, but I couldn’t help it. I just glared at him.

After a few moments the Superintendent sighed. “Look, Charlie, I’m not your enemy,” he said, spreading his hands. “When are you going to start trusting me?”

Probably never
. I didn’t speak the words out loud, but judging by his face I might as well have done. “Why are you suddenly so interested in Sean?”

“Because the boy we arrested for his part in the assault on one of your neighbours was Meyer’s younger brother, Roger, as I’m sure you’re aware,” he pointed out mildly. “Because it would appear that Nasir Gadatra was a known associate of Roger, and was possibly the one who was leading him into trouble. And because Nasir is now dead.”

“And you think Sean killed him?” I asked. It wasn’t such a leap in the dark, I suppose. I’d jumped to much the same conclusion myself. Still, I had to try my best. “That’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it? Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Not really. There are certain people in the local community who
are
prepared to talk to us,” he said coyly, “and the information we’ve received strongly suggests Meyer’s involvement in the killing.”

I digested that one in silence. It would seem that whoever had put Jav up to dishing the dirt to me about Sean now had a more ambitious agenda. I wondered briefly if Langford really could be behind it all. If only Madeleine hadn’t put it to Jav like that. If only we could be sure . . .

I glanced up at the Superintendent, swallowed, and said, “Sean can’t have been involved, because the night Nasir was shot, he was with me.”

I saw the look on his face and added quickly, “I was at the gym working late and he called in to see me there, that’s all, but we had a break-in and I had to call the boss out. And before you ask, no we didn’t ring the police – it was just kids breaking windows – but Attila did call a glazier, so they should have some record, if you want to check.”