The Judas Sheep (6 page)

Bell sat back in his bentwood chair, head nodding slowly. Fifty million sounded better. Much better. This was what he’d been waiting for. ‘So when do we start?’ he asked.

Norris had read his man correctly: make the numbers obscene enough and you could hook anyone. He said: ‘Welcome aboard, Frank. We won’t shake on it, here in the pub. Look too conspicuous. The two thousand in the envelope was for immediate running expenses. As you can imagine, raising money like that isn’t easy – I
have accountants and auditors to deal with. If you need any more I can advise you on a simple way of stealing a certain highly marketable commodity. I’m insured, so it’ll be no skin off my ass.’

Bell had been struggling to suppress his elation, but was suddenly looking grave. ‘There’s just one point, Mr Norris,’ he said. ‘Your wife, Mrs Norris. Shawn was a bit rough with her. She’s all right, but can we be sure, when we bring her back, that—’

Norris raised a hand, silencing him. ‘Sorry, Frank,’ he interrupted. ‘Did I forget to mention that? Part of the deal is that Mrs Norris doesn’t come back. Let’s call it a gesture of seriousness of intent. Oh, and I’d prefer it if there wasn’t a body. I won’t be in a hurry to marry again, and I hate funerals. Give me a ring when it’s all over, then we’ll do some serious planning.’

He stood up and walked out, back to his
chauffeur-driven
limousine, and Shenandoah Inc., and his big, quiet house in Lymm.

I’d fallen into the juggling act again. Private life and work were up in the air, with me wondering which to catch and hold on to. Last night Annabelle had been her usual understanding self, and that made me feel a hundred times worse. She’d cooked spring chicken bonne femme, with new potatoes. In January! The fish and chips had blunted my appetite, and I struggled with it, even though it was one of the best meals I’d had in years and I refused a helping of apple pie for the first
time in my life. Annabelle hid her disappointment, but I could sense it.

A quick result would solve my problems, but it was looking doubtful. Nigel was over in Liverpool, trying to arrange a reconstruction of Hurst’s last movements, using Norris’s Roller. Maybe somebody’s memory would be jogged. After that he was visiting the widow. At this end of the enquiry we were still knocking on doors. Heads were being shaken and lines drawn through lists of addresses. Nobody had noticed a luxury limousine being driven up a cart-track, and mud-spattered Rolls-Royces are as common as pink flamingos around Heckley. Maybe we’d have better luck at the Burtonwood services on Friday, but I doubted it.

Poor Harold Hurst’s death had all the hallmarks of a gangland killing, but we couldn’t find the links. His lifestyle was modest and his friends few. Nobody knew much about him and fewer cared. Maybe he saw or heard something while he was driving Norris around. Something to do with the disappearance of Mrs Norris. I was certain that our investigations should be concentrated around Bradley T. Norris, and Shenandoah Incorporated, until Gilbert walked into the office like Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper.

It was a fax from our ballistics boffins in Huntingdon. The bullet that passed through Hurst’s head had travelled down the barrel of an AK47 Kalashnikov, as we thought. The news was that it was a decent match
with a similar one that had dispatched a suspected IRA informer to the big shindig in the sky, in Belfast in 1988. A sudden piece of information like that is usually just the breakthrough you have been waiting for. Our euphoria didn’t last long, though. We soon realised that it only heaped confusion upon confusion. Gilbert rang Special Branch and I decided to have a relapse.

Like ten million prisoners before her, Marina Norris made another mark on the wall with the heel of her shoe. She’d felt stupid when she did it for the first time, but quickly realised it was the only way she could measure the passing of the days. She counted the marks, touching each with the tip of a chipped enamel fingernail. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. They’d said she might be freed Tuesday, if her husband played ball.

She’d nearly choked to death in the boot of the Sierra. Each time the car had accelerated or braked she’d rolled one way or the other, unable to brace herself with her hands and legs pinioned. She was certain Harold was dead, and that she soon would be.

Eventually they’d arrived, and she was dragged and carried into a building with linoleum on the floor and smelling like a house from her childhood. A dirty, unpleasant house. They went through another door and down some stone steps.

She’d felt a blow, not fierce this time, and fallen backwards into a soft armchair. They’d unfastened her hands and ripped off the gag. There were two of
them, and they were wearing masks – balaclavas – with holes to see through. Marina had seen similar ones on television, worn by terrorists and protestors and bank robbers in second-rate films. If they don’t want me to see them, she’d thought, they mustn’t intend to kill me; and she’d begun sobbing, partly from fear of what their intentions might be, partly from relief.

As they’d turned to leave her, the door at the top of the stairs had opened and she’d seen the third member of the gang standing there. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and she recognised him as the man with the ugly face who had kidnapped her. He threw her shoes down into the cellar and held the door open for the other two. A key turned and bolts slid across. She’d stared down at the shoes with their four-and-a-half inch heels, and was for the first time struck by their ridiculousness.

They fed her ham sandwiches, which she hardly touched, and sweet milky tea. The cellar was large, with newly whitened walls, and reminded her of the one at her grandma’s in Croydon, where she’d lived for a year after her mother died. She’d escaped from that prison, she told herself, but this one was different. There was nobody here to help her; these men were looking for different rewards.

On the second day she’d had to use the Elsan toilet, and had dragged it under the stairs, where she couldn’t be watched through the peephole in the door. The two in the masks were relatively OK, and she’d even struck up a rapport with the thin one, who was definitely
number three in the pecking order. She’d asked him for another blanket and a towel, and he’d brought them. But the ugly one scared her. Each time the door opened and she saw it was him something inside her would turn to ice. He’d put the food on the dirty little coffee table and stand looking at her, wet-lipped and
slack-mouthed
. She’d feel his eyes fumbling with the buttons of her blouse, then with her bra strap, and item by item her clothes would drop to the floor. Then he’d give a little smile and walk awkwardly back to the stairs.

According to her wristwatch, matching partner to her husband’s, it was ten o’clock Tuesday morning. She washed in bottled water and rinsed her underwear as best she was able to. She was curled up on the sagging settee that was the only other item of furniture, waiting for her body heat to dry her clothes, when the door opened. It was the thin one, thank God. She straightened her legs and sat up.

‘Ham again,’ he told her, apologetically.

Thank you.’

He picked up her plate from last night and turned to go. Mrs Norris said: ‘They said I might be released today. Do you know if I’m going to be?’

‘Dunno. Might be.’

‘When will you know?’

‘When they come back.’

‘The other two?’

‘Yeah. They’re, er, negotiating, like.’

‘With my husband?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So I could be released today?’

‘Could be.’

‘Oh, thank God for that.’

She tried talking some more to him, but he was cagey, and sensed that he’d said too much already. Marina ate one piece of bread from the sandwich and drank the tea. For years she’d taken her tea without either milk or sugar, but there was something strangely comforting in the sickly brew she’d been given.

It was just after eight p.m. when the bolts on the door were slammed back, startling her from her torpor. It was the ugly one, and he meant business. Marina struggled to control her bladder.

‘C’mon, on yer feet,’ he ordered.

She pulled on her high heels and teetered unsteadily across the floor and up the steps towards him. ‘About time,’ she said defiantly.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and steered her through a big farmhouse kitchen and outside into the frosty night. He pulled so tightly she could feel her skin stretching in the corners of her eyes. ‘You’re … hurting … me,’ she protested to his indifferent ears.

She was bundled into the boot of the Sierra, bashing her shins and finishing off what remained of her tights. The big one, who she had decided was the leader, was holding the boot-lid open, but this time he wasn’t wearing a mask. The cataract of thoughts cascading through her head concluded that they must have come
to some sort of arrangement with her husband. At least they hadn’t tied her up for this journey.

It was a fast trip, all hard braking and tyres squealing round the corners. Soon she realised they were on a bumpy dirt-track, like last time. They were doing things in reverse, unwinding the nightmare – maybe her next ride would be in the Rolls-Royce. They stopped. She heard the two front doors slam shut and a few seconds later the boot-lid lifted.

The rear lights were still on, and she saw her two kidnappers standing over her, illuminated by the scarlet glow, like figures from the Inquisition. Behind them the branches of the trees were etched against the starry sky, and Shawn was holding the big gun that she was sure he’d shot Harold with.

They weren’t taking her home. They were going to kill her.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No! No!’

Bell tried to grab her legs but she was kicking them wildly, and punching at Parrott with her feeble fists. Bell hung on to one leg but couldn’t get the other within his grasp. Mrs Norris’s short skirt rode up over her hips as she twisted and fought with them.

‘Cor! What a waste,’ Parrott grinned, the Kalashnikov in one hand as he wrestled her with the other.

‘Grab her!’ Bell hissed.

Parrott brushed aside Mrs Norris’s death struggles as if he were dealing with a stroppy toddler, and his big mechanical-grab of a hand closed round her throat.

She kicked, and then twitched, for nearly a minute, with Parrott holding her down one-handed as effortlessly as restraining a playful puppy; the big Russian-made gun in his other hand, its butt languishing on his hip.

When she was still, and the spark had gone from her bulging eyes, he let go and straightened up. His own eyes were glistening with excitement; she was dead, but he’d never, ever, felt more alive.

He gazed, panting for breath and flexing the fingers of his right hand, at the pale limbs draped across the back of the car, like a broken swastika. ‘I still say it’s a fuckin’ waste,’ he mumbled.

Bell slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I know, old pal. But we don’t work like that. I’ll get the carpet.’

Parrott grasped her wrists to pull her from the car and his fingers brushed over the watch she wore, partner to her husband’s. Bet that’s worth a bob or two, he thought, and slipped the expanding bracelet over her hand. He dropped the watch into one of his jacket pockets and buttoned down the flap.

They were on the edge of a municipal landfill site. Every day a procession of lorries brought a city’s rubbish here, where it was tipped into a disused quarry and bulldozed and compressed back into the earth from whence all things come. They rolled the body of Mrs Marina Norris, born Miriam Scully, into an old carpet, and one-two-three-heaved her into the quarry. One day, in the distant future, she would briefly warm someone’s life again, as a couple of therms of methane gas. 

I needed a haircut, a new pair of shoes and a talk with Marina Norris’s boyfriend. The first two could wait. After the morning meeting I drove over to Northwich and tucked myself into a corner of the Royal Cheshire’s car park. It had been a frosty night, and as I drove over the Tops the sun was driving the last of the mist away. The moors were etched like crystal, poking up through wraiths of cloud in the valleys, and I’d much rather have been tramping across them.

I was early, so could observe the build-up of the hotel’s lunchtime trade. The guests appeared two-
by-two
, like the animals entering the Ark. Often it was an overweight gentleman in a suit accompanied by an attractive young lady with an infatuated, if slightly embarrassed, smile. The driving force was the same
as that exploited by Noah: ‘Mummy, what does a girl have to do to get a mink?’

‘The same as a mink has to do.’ I had that unhappy feeling that one day, when I look back on my life, I’ll see a big hollow. It’s called jealousy. I amused myself by ringing their numbers through to Heckley nick and checking them against the PNC, and soon had a list of potential blackmail victims as long as the Latvian national anthem. Maybe I could afford to retire, after all.

The Daimler swished into the car park just after noon. He drove round a couple of times, as if looking for someone, then created an extra parking place for himself nearer to the front entrance than anyone else. That’s when I decided I didn’t like him.

He sat waiting for over half an hour. I saw his shoulders hunch, and thought he was about to get out, but the car’s reversing lights came on and it began to move backwards. He’d realised she wasn’t coming. I started my engine and streaked down the car park, wincing as gravel rattled under the wings. I reached the exit before he did and swerved across it, blocking it off. He stopped, and I walked over to him.

The police computer had confirmed that he hadn’t lied about his name in the hotel register, but had given a false address. I showed him my warrant card and said: ‘DI Priest, East Pennine Police. Are you Reginald Arthur Smith?’

He was probably in his late thirties, already podgy around the jowls, with two days’ growth of beard and a
pair of dark glasses. He looked like Yasser Arafat after an all-nighter.

‘Er, that’s right,’ he replied, shaken.

‘I’d like a word with you. Could you please park your car over there.’

I parked alongside him and told him to get into my passenger seat. By now he’d gathered his wits and started saying that he was in a hurry and would this nonsense take long?

‘Why did you come to the Royal Cheshire today?’ I asked.

‘I had a business appointment,’ he replied.

‘Who with?’

‘I can’t tell you that. It’s a commercial secret.’

‘Was it the same person you saw last Wednesday, and all the Wednesdays before that?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I turned on him. ‘Listen, Mr Smith,’ I told him, my face close to his. ‘I’m investigating a serious crime. I’m not from the morality police and I don’t give a toss about your little peccadilloes. I could take you down to the nearest nick and do a taped interview, and I could ask the bar staff at this overpriced knocking shop if they recognise you. Alternatively, you could give me some answers right here, then maybe we could both go home. So who are you supposed to be meeting?’

His suit was a fashionable three sizes too large for him and his shirt didn’t have a collar. He put a hand inside his jacket and scratched his armpit. ‘A
woman,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you her name.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘I’ve driven fifty miles to meet you, Mr Smith. Do you think I don’t know her name? I’d just rather have you tell me first and not me ask you to confirm it. So would I be right in saying her initials are MN?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So tell me. Mar … Mar … Maree …’ I prompted.

He nodded. ‘OK, you obviously know who she is. Mrs Norris – Marina.’

‘Thank you. How long have you known her?’

He shuffled about uncomfortably and asked: ‘Is this to do with her chauffeur?’

‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘Just what I read in the papers. I never met him.’

‘Did Mrs Norris ever mention him?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘So how long have you known Marina?’

He let out a long sigh. ‘Do you know who I am, Officer?’ he asked.

‘Reginald Arthur Smith?’ I suggested. I was supposed to be asking the questions.

‘Have you ever heard of Rats?’

‘Rats?’

‘Yes, Rats. I am Rats, the photographer. If you’d ever opened a newspaper loftier than the UK News you would be familiar with my work. I’ve photographed collections for all the big fashion houses, and taken several Royal birthday portraits.’

‘You’re a fashion photographer?’

‘I do fashion work, yes.’

I’d heard of him, but not for a long time. The last time he’d merited a brief mention in the gossip columns was when he’d been outed as a bisexual. ‘I’m afraid I usually ignore the fashion pages,’ I confessed.

His eyes flickered over my jacket, slacks and rather nice Marks & Spencer’s shirt in a blue lumberjack check. ‘Yes,’ he sighed.

‘So how long have you known Mrs Norris?’

‘A long time. Thanks to me, Marina was once the Face of the Year. I discovered her. She was only fifteen at the time, still at school. I’d just finished college. Girls with the right looks are ten-a-penny at that age, but to get to the top they need three things: ambition, dedication, and, above all, a sympathetic photographer. One who can see the real woman within, unlock the sexual creature waiting to blossom into—’

‘OK, I get the message,’ I interrupted. ‘So you unlocked this sexual creature and she became famous and married a millionaire. When did your latest affair with her start?’

‘You’re pathetic!’ The words exploded on me like one of those old-fashioned flashguns going off. ‘You rub your nose in your grubby little world and think everybody is like you. You couldn’t begin to understand how it was between Marina and me.’

‘Then tell me.’ I resisted mentioning that I’d been an art student myself – in the sixties. That would’ve rocked him.

‘I’ve told you enough. Can I go now?’

I ignored the question, and decided some goading might provoke a reaction. I’d remembered something Nigel had written in his reports. ‘Did Mr Norris know you were screwing his wife?’ I asked.

The contempt overflowed. ‘That’s all you can imagine, isn’t it, Officer. Two people meet, they screw. It’s all you are capable of understanding.’

Nigel had called at Norris’s home in Lymm, on the off-chance of not catching him there. He’d had a word with his domestic staff and was surprised to learn that the gardener knew all about Mrs Norris’s assignations at the Royal Cheshire. He’d related in vivid detail Harold Hurst’s account of rescuing her the previous week. Her eyes, Hurst had told the gardener, were black and sparkling, and she’d chatted all the way home.

‘Seems reasonable to me,’ I admitted. ‘So what else did you get up to?’

‘I’m not saying any more.’ He folded his arms like a defiant Just William.

‘Mr Smith,’ I said, ‘Mr Norris’s chauffeur was murdered in a particularly brutal way. Mrs Norris vanished on the same day, hasn’t been seen since. Have you any idea where she might be?’

‘She’s vanished?’ He looked shocked.

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Of course not, how could I? I wouldn’t have come here today if I’d known.’

‘Didn’t you try to ring her?’

‘No. We only talk on the phone if we can’t make it.’

‘So you were expecting to see her today?’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious.’

‘Quite. So maybe now you’ll tell me if Norris knew you were having an affair with his wife.’

‘I resent your assumption, Officer, that I was having, as you so quaintly put it, an affair with Mrs Norris.’

‘So what did you get up to, all afternoon?’

‘You’ve a mind like a bloody cesspit!’

He was swearing now. That proved he was angry. Soon he’d be stamping a foot. I had an appointment to keep, so I cut it short. I said: ‘Reginald Arthur Smith, also known, appropriately, as Rats, I’m arresting you on suspicions of carrying drugs. You don’t have to say anything, however, it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’ I assumed that his open mouth and bulging eyes indicated the affirmative. ‘Give me your car keys,’ I told him. ‘I’m taking you to the local station for an interview.’

‘You … you … I want to ring my solicitor,’ he gasped.

‘You can do that from the station. And if you’re a good boy, answer all our questions, tell us where you get your goodies from, I might be very kind and not charge you with having sex with a child. Put your seat belt on.’

He was carrying four spliffs and a couple of grammes of heroin. Mrs Norris’s behaviour with Hurst had given him away. Once he realised we couldn’t do him for
indecent assault without a complaint from Mrs Norris he reverted to his normal uncooperative self, but it was all an act. The big investigation hadn’t moved forward, but it was good to have an arrest, even if I did arrive home too late to keep my appointment with Doc Evans.

The little girl, nearly nine years old, sat on the edge of the bed, engrossed in watching her mother apply her make-up.

‘Me, please,’ she demanded, puckering her lips.

Mother reached across and with three deft strokes converted the tight little rosebud into a gaudy dahlia. She blinked the surplus mascara from her eyes, checked that her false eyelashes weren’t dislodged, and smoothed her short leather skirt.

‘Will Uncle John be coming home with you?’ the little girl asked.

‘I don’t know. But if he does I want you to stay in bed. Otherwise he won’t leave you any sweeties. Understand?’

The little girl nodded gravely. She’d never met Uncle John, but he was very generous with the sweeties. She thought she would have liked him.

Mother did a twirl, arms outstretched. ‘Ta da! How do I look?’ she asked.

‘Beautiful!’ her daughter confirmed enthusiastically.

She pulled on a denim jacket that had a sequinned guitar and the word Elvis on the back. Woven into the pattern were several tiny light-emitting diodes that used
to sparkle at random, but they had long since ceased to work.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now I want you to be in bed by half past nine. No later, or it’s no sweeties. And if little Joshua wakes up or starts to cry, dip his dummy in the sugar. All right, darling?’

The little girl nodded. All of a sudden she didn’t want her mummy to go out and leave her; she stood with her head bowed.

Mother bent down and pecked her on the cheek. ‘And turn the telly off before you go to bed,’ were her last words.

Outside, she click-clacked on her highest heels along the concrete corridor and down the stairs of the block of flats. Five minutes later she was on the bus into town.

The pub where she began her evening’s trade was nearly deserted. ‘Match on,’ the barman explained. ‘Replay. Be packed later.’ He gave her a half of lager and she dropped a pound coin into his hand. At the till he pressed the No Sale button and whanged the drawer back home. She reached out her painted fingers and he gave her the same pound coin back. A free drink brought the toms in, toms brought the punters in.

‘Ta, love,’ she said, and went to sit with the only other woman in the place.

The other woman was eight years older than her, but looked more like her mother. She confirmed what the barman had said about a football match. ‘Thank God I’ve got a regular on Tuesdays,’ she said. ‘I warn you – don’t
get mixed up with any football ’ooligan. He’ll probably ’ave ten mates waiting in a Transit van somewhere. Gang bangs is all right if they pay the going rate, but they’ll just dump you on the motorway. It’s all a joke to them.’

The first woman, who became Danielle as soon as she stepped across the threshold of her flat, shuddered. ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ she confessed.

They made their drinks last for over an hour. ‘’Ere’s my regular,’ the older woman told her as a little man came in. He was wearing a flat cap and a cardigan under his jacket. Danielle thought that he probably had something going with his meals-on-wheels lady and giggled at the thought.

The other woman read her mind and smiled. ‘He’s a good payer, love, and that’s all I ask.’ She stood up to leave, then leant across and said: ‘Mark my words about what I said. No football ’ooligans.’ She nodded towards the bar. ‘’Ow about ’im in the Army jacket? ’E’s interested, if you ask me. Seen ’im looking at you. Tara, love.’

Danielle had seen him too, and noted how ugly he looked. You didn’t have to kiss them, though. Kissing was for friends, kissing was intimate. She went to the ladies’ for a pee and to replenish her Youth Dew. She straightened her skirt, checked her image in the tarnished mirror, lifted her chin high and walked back out through the bar.

‘Good night, Danielle,’ the barman called after her, drawing the attention of the few men in the pub. If she
pulled a trick he was in it for a fiver. If she didn’t, and it was still raining at closing time, he might get a freebie in exchange for a lift home.

‘Night, George,’ she replied, and stepped out into the darkness.

The rain had turned to snow, but she’d only walked about two hundred yards when a red Sierra pulled alongside. The driver leant across and the door swung open. It was him.

‘It’s twenty-five quid,’ she said, settling beside him and pulling the door shut.

‘’Ow much without a rubber?’ Shawn Parrott asked.

‘I don’t do it without no rubber.’

He nodded. ‘Fair enough. You got a place?’

She made an instant decision. You have to, in her trade. ‘No. Old man’s at home. Do you know the glassworks?’

‘I know it.’

‘Go there. It’s dead quiet.’

They parked in the deep shadows at the back of the abandoned factory. A thin film of snow was beginning to settle on the dereliction, muffling the roar of the traffic at the other side of the wall. Danielle stroked the back of his neck and raised one leg so that her foot was against the dashboard. ‘Doesn’t the snow look lovely,’ she whispered, trying to inject some romance into the transaction.