Streetwise (33 page)

Silver Delaney was getting jumpy and agitated. She paced alongside the table, muttering to herself and shifting the gun from one hand to the other as if she was tired of holding it but didn’t dare put it down. Ava’s fear was starting to escalate. Whatever the girl had taken was beginning to wear off and soon she’d need another fix. Except she couldn’t get what she needed here. If she wanted more gear, she’d have to leave Beast. And if she was going to leave the building, she had some unfinished business to deal with first.

‘Why don’t we go to my flat?’ Ava suggested. ‘I’ve got some stuff. We could have a smoke.’

Silver stared at her, her eyes full of suspicion. ‘Ava’s not allowed to leave.’

‘Don’t you fancy a smoke? I could certainly do with one. And then we could… we could have a chat about things.’

Silver began playing with the tools on the table, using her free hand to pick up the sharp-bladed scalpels and put them down again. ‘You have to take the fur off first,’ she said, glancing up. ‘Or the skin. You have to peel it away so you can chuck away the shit inside – the guts and everything. You want to keep the skeleton, though. You need to keep the bones.’

‘Right.’

‘Morton told me all about it, you see. He liked to talk about it. Not when Danny was around, of course, but other times… when it was just the two of us.’ She picked out a small bleached skull and held it up for Ava to see. ‘What do you think this is?’

‘I don’t know. A rat, maybe? Something like that.’

‘A rat,’ Silver murmured. ‘Someone sent a rat to Terry.’ She gave a giggle. ‘Trojan tried to eat it. He ran round and round the office and ripped its stupid little head off.’

‘Did he?’

‘Chris doesn’t like rats. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ Ava said.

‘He’s scared of them. They give him goosebumps. They make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.’ Silver gave her a sly look. ‘What are you afraid of, Ava?’

Ava gazed back at her, trying to think of an answer that didn’t involve a crazed female wielding a gun. ‘Spiders,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t like the way they scuttle.’

Silver’s mouth slid open, revealing her small white teeth. ‘Imagine someone putting a big black spider on your face when you’re fast asleep.’

Ava gave an involuntary shudder. ‘I’d rather not.’

Silver stood up straight again. She looked first at the gun and then at her two hostages. ‘This is getting boring now. Where’s Danny? Do you know where Danny is?’

Ava, sensing a gap in Silver’s sense of reality, grasped the opportunity with both hands. ‘He’s at Market Square. He’s at the flat.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘He’s waiting for you… for
us
. We should get going. He’ll get the hump if we keep him hanging around.’

‘Who cares? I don’t give a fuck.’

Ava felt a stab of dismay, but she wasn’t giving up just yet. ‘Course you don’t. Why should you? But he’s got the stuff, hasn’t he? He’s got the gear.’ She was taking a calculated risk – Silver might decide to shoot her there and then – but with few other options she reckoned it was a gamble worth taking.

Silver considered this for a moment, her desire for a fix glistening in her eyes. ‘What about him?’ she asked, glaring at Carlisle.

‘What about him?’ said Ava, making her voice sound suitably callous. ‘Leave him here. Lock the door. No one’s going to find him until it’s too late.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah, or you can come back later if you want. We can both come back.’

There was a long silence in the room. Ava could feel her heart beating in her chest, a heavy thump that grew stronger by the second. She thought she felt Carlisle move beside her, but didn’t dare look at him. Slowly, very slowly, she rose to her feet. ‘You ready, then?’

Silver frowned, her hand tightening around the gun again. ‘You’re not supposed to leave,’ she said. ‘Daddy won’t like it.’

‘Then I’ll come back. I’ll come back after we’ve been to see Danny. Your dad won’t even know that I’ve been gone.’

Silver put her thumb in her mouth and stared at her.

‘I promise,’ Ava said. ‘I won’t tell him if you don’t.’

Eventually, Silver gave a nod.

Ava walked slowly up the steps, overly aware of the girl’s presence behind her. She knew that at any second her life could end. All it would take was one slight squeeze of that trigger. Her legs were trembling, a cold knot forming in her stomach. She found herself thinking about her mum and dad, about how they would cope if she died in this place. A lump lodged in her throat. She thought about everything she’d been through today, how many lines she’d crossed and how much she’d got away with. Everybody’s luck ran out eventually.

Five steps to go. Four, three, two, one. When she reached the top, Ava breathed a sigh of relief. The worst part was over. She was sure it was. She reckoned she was strong enough to overpower Silver, to wrench the gun from her, but she wasn’t about to do anything rash. She had to keep cool, stay calm and choose exactly the right moment.

Ava kept on walking towards the door. The broken glass crunched beneath her feet.
Be patient. Be smart.
She reached up and slid back the bolt. Then she turned to look at Silver. ‘You’d better put the gun away. Someone might see it.’

‘It’s dark,’ Silver said. ‘No one’s going to notice.’

Ava decided not to argue with her. She’d come this far, she didn’t want to blow it now. At some point Silver would drop her guard and when she did, that would be the time to pounce. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Whatever you think.’ As she opened the door and stepped out on to the street, she felt a second even greater wave of relief. Greedily, she gulped in the cold evening air. A steady rain was falling and she raised her face to the sky, grateful to be free again.

Silver closed the door behind them. Perhaps she sensed that something was wrong because she instantly flinched, a thin hissing sound escaping from her lips.

Suddenly, Ava found herself blinded by a strong white light. It seemed to fall all around her, wrapping her in its glare, pinning her to the spot. Immediately, she raised her hands to her eyes.

‘Don’t move! This is the police. Stay where you are!’

Ava froze, but Silver didn’t. Perhaps Silver’s response was automatic, instinctive, but her hand jerked up and the gun came with it. There was one loud bang and the next thing Ava knew she was spinning backwards, a blinding pain running through her body. She was vaguely aware of a volley of different sounding shots, of a cry, a series of shouts, of her own sense of falling before she crashed against the glass of the door. She wondered if she was dying, if this was it, the end, the grand finale. And then all her thoughts splintered… and then there was nothing.

DI Valerie Middleton sat in the hospital corridor, her heart as heavy as stone. There had been no choice – she knew there hadn’t – but shooting dead a nineteen-year-old girl wasn’t any copper’s idea of a job well done. If there had been another way, she would have taken it, but it had come down to whether Ava Gold would live or die.

Oblivious to the activity around her, she sank into a morass of self-examination and self-doubt. Had she been too quick to judge, to jump to the wrong conclusions? Now that she knew the truth, it was all too easy to see the mistakes that had been made. She had wanted to believe that Chris Street was guilty of murder and that belief had coloured the whole investigation.

Valerie sighed as she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. It was ten o’clock and the day wasn’t over yet. The long interview with Noah Clark had exhausted her and left a bad taste in her mouth. Everything she’d thought had been true had been turned on its head. She’d got most of it wrong and was still trying to come to terms with it.

Morton Carlisle, once he’d come out of surgery and recovered enough to talk, had been keen to give his version of events. They had at least got it right about the blackmail scam. Danny Street and Silver Delaney had targeted half a dozen men, including Squires, names passed on to them by Carlisle. He was pleading coercion, that he’d been forced into doing it, but it would be up to a jury to decide whether he was telling the truth or not.

And then there was Danny Street. They’d picked him up a couple of hours ago. He was pleading ignorance, of course, claiming that he knew nothing. Would they be able to gather enough evidence to convict him? It would depend, she thought, on whether any other blackmail victims would come forward.

Sensing a movement, Valerie blinked open her eyes. Jeff Butler was standing in front of her. He thrust a takeaway cup of coffee into her hand and sat down. ‘You okay?’

‘I’ve been better.’

‘It was a tough call, but you did the right thing.’

‘Did I?’

Butler placed a hand gently on her arm and nodded. ‘Of course you did. If you hadn’t ordered them to shoot, Ava Gold would be lying in the morgue right now.’

‘But it’s not just about this evening, is it? It’s about everything else, all the other stuff that led up to it.’

‘You played it by the book, Val. This whole investigation has been… Jesus, you know what’s it’s been like. Two murders, one gun, a whole bloody spider’s web of lies and contradictions. Even Einstein couldn’t have figured this one out.’

Valerie opened the lid on the coffee and took a sip. ‘Noah Clark,’ she murmured.

Butler huffed out a breath. ‘You want to explain it to me? I’ve got a grasp on the basics, but the detail’s still eluding me.’

‘He killed her. He killed Jenna Dean.’

‘But why?’

Valerie gazed up at the ceiling before she slowly lowered her gaze again. ‘The things we do for love.’

‘What? He was in love with Jenna Dean?’

‘No, not Jenna,’ she said, slowly shaking her head. ‘Guy.’

Butler’s eyebrows shot up. ‘So he was… they were…’

‘Apparently so.’

‘Oh.’

‘But that’s not why he murdered her. I mean, it wasn’t jealousy that made him do it. He knew that Guy was only sleeping with her to goad Chris Street. No, what scared him was the thought that Guy had gone too far this time and that Street wasn’t going to settle for idle threats.’

‘And the only way to protect Guy Wilder was to kill Jenna?’

‘Yes, if he could frame Street at the same time.’ Valerie thought back to the interview room, to Noah Clark’s dark eyes full of pain. ‘I don’t think he planned it. He saw an opportunity and took his chance. Guy didn’t know whether Jenna was coming to the bar on Monday night or not, but Noah saw her drive past about ten twenty-five – that pink Jeep of hers was pretty distinctive – and knew that she’d be parking in her usual place up by the green.’

‘So he followed her there.’

Valerie, taking another large sip of coffee, was grateful for the caffeine rush. It gave her a lift, relieving some of her fatigue. ‘He ran upstairs, got the gun and some gloves, and then went out the back door. By the time he got to the green, she was just getting out of the car. She must have spent a few minutes checking her make-up, that sort of thing. He told her that Guy had had an accident at a friend’s house in Barley Road, a fall, and that he was on his way to see him. Barley Road runs parallel to the high street, along the far side of the green, so the quickest way to get there was to walk straight across.’

‘And she believed him – about the accident, I mean?’

‘Sure. Why wouldn’t she? He was Guy’s friend. He was good old reliable Noah.’

Butler raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘So the two of them hurry across the green, Noah grabs her, pushes her into some bushes and shoots her. Then he sends the text from her phone to Chris Street, telling him to come over and meet her, thereby putting him at the right place at more or less the right time.’

‘That’s pretty much the gist of it.’

‘A bit risky, wasn’t it? Anyone could have heard that gun go off.’

‘Except you don’t think it’s a gun, do you? It’s not the first thing that springs to mind. You presume it’s a car backfiring, something like that.’

‘And the gun?’

‘He says it belonged to Lydia Hall, that she turned up in a state late on Saturday night, looking for Guy and saying that she’d shot Jeremy Squires. Noah says he took the gun off her, that he was worried she might hurt someone else or herself. He also claims that Guy was asleep, that he didn’t know anything about it. Personally, I don’t believe him, but that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.’

‘So Lydia did kill Squires.’

‘Yes, but she didn’t mean to. According to Noah, she was obsessed with what Terry Street had done to her family. And I’m reading between the lines here, but I get the impression that Guy had been egging her on. He wanted her to hate the Streets as much as he did.’ Valerie paused for a moment, glancing along the long hospital corridor. ‘Anyway, she went to Belles and when she reached the gates she saw Danny Street coming out of the main entrance with a smaller grey-haired man who she mistakenly thought was Terry. The light wasn’t good and she only got a fleeting glance.’

‘But she decided to shoot him anyway.’

‘She decided it had to be him because he was with Danny.’

‘Jesus,’ Butler said.

‘Exactly.’

They were both quiet for a moment. The night-time sounds of the hospital flowed over and around them, the click of footsteps on lino, the rattle of a trolley, the gentle snoring of one of the patients from a ward nearby.

Jeff Butler was the first to speak again. ‘So, Noah Clark – why the big confession? It wasn’t as if we were banging on the door.’

‘We pulled Guy Wilder in for questioning again this afternoon. A couple of customers had claimed that on Monday night he’d left the bar before closing and was missing for about ten minutes. I think he probably realised that Noah wasn’t there and went outside to look for him. But anyway, before he could be interviewed, the whole Beast thing happened and Wilder was left kicking his heels at Cowan Road. Of course, Noah started to worry – he didn’t know what was going on – and then someone came into the bar and told him that Guy had been charged with the murder of Jenna Dean.’

‘And he believed them?’

‘He couldn’t see why else Guy would have been gone so long. Of course a simple phone call would have told him all he needed to know, but he’d had a few drinks and wasn’t really thinking straight. He panicked, reckoned Guy was going down for murder and came rushing to the rescue.’

‘The things we do for love,’ said Butler, echoing her earlier sentiment.

Valerie glanced at him. ‘You don’t have to stay, you know. I’m fine. I’m going to talk to Ava Gold and then I’m heading off.’

‘I’m not doing anything else. Might as well keep you company.’ Butler gave a shrug. ‘I was working on a murder inquiry, but it appears to have been solved.’

‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’

‘At the moment? No, not much of one.’

Valerie remembered what Higgs had told her about Jeff Butler and his wife. ‘I know what it feels like,’ she said softly. ‘When I split up from Harry, I couldn’t stand all the gossip. It drove me crazy.’

Butler gave a wry smile. ‘Ah, so you’ve heard.’

‘The rumour mill continues to turn. Try not to let it get to you. At the time I felt like the whole station was talking about me. It passes, though. People forget, things move on.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘In the meantime, you just have to grin and bear it.’ Valerie put her empty cup down on the seat beside her. ‘But if you’re still up for that drink, I wouldn’t say no. I need one after the day I’ve had.’