Truth or Dare (25 page)

M
oses hadn’t been able to sleep.

Tossing and turning all night, the events of the last few days screening before his eyes, over and over again. And then another set of days were replayed, days from a few years ago. Days involving the Chicken Shack Crew. The Handsworth Boys. Julian Wilson. The days before the peace. The days that led to the peace.

Eventually he had got up. No point in trying to sleep, lying there with his eyes tight shut, willing the dreams to go away, his mind to shut down, peace to come. He knew he was going to get none of that. So he had got up. Showered. Had a coffee. He had wanted to go somewhere, do something, but hadn’t known where, what.

His first thought had been Letisha. Go and see her. Talk to her. No. He couldn’t do that. Not yet. There were things that needed sorting out before that could happen again. If it could happen again. But that had been his first thought.
She
had been his first thought. He should have been surprised by that. But somehow he wasn’t. Somehow it felt right to think of her first. And that, he knew, could be dangerous.

No. He had to do something else. He knew what to do. Wasn’t looking forward to it.

He sat on the edge of his bed, looked around the room. This was his. All his. He liked to think he had taste, style. Had decorated his crib in a way that showed he was a successful young man. Not like what was expected, like all the other kids in the gang used to talk about. They would watch that show on MTV,
Cribs
. Watch rappers and sports stars show the cameras around their mansions. Be proud about what they had achieved. Fair enough, Moses had thought watching it, you can’t take that away from them. Most of them had started with nothing and made something of themselves. Something positive. Used their talent to further their lives. Good. That was the right thing to do. But some of them seemed to think that money brought them style. It didn’t. He could understand coming from the ghetto and wanting to show off, have a whole room panelled in gold and marble, but there were still such things as class, taste. And he liked to think he had both. When he used to watch that with the other gang members, they would all speak with reverence about what they saw. Then talk about their own plans, what they would have in their own cribs, feeding on each other’s fantasies, helping them grow.

He thought about where those boys were now. Some of them were still with him, one or two. A few had gone to prison; in and out at first but eventually settling down to life on the inside of the big, metal door. The rest were dead. Didn’t ever have the chance to realise their fantasies, tasteful and stylish or not. Street casualties. That was the biggest amount.

He stood up, checked his watch. Tiny would be there by now, at the studio. No point putting it off any longer.

Was the day overcast, dark clouds hanging heavily over the redbrick Victorian building, or was Moses just imagining it? He didn’t know, didn’t really care. The dark clouds were hanging over him and that was what mattered.

He locked his car, went inside. Walked down the corridor to the studio like he was a death-row prisoner facing his last day on earth. They always asked for ribs or chicken or burgers for their last breakfast. He’d had toast. Hardly seemed fitting.

He reached the studio. The green light was on. He pushed the door open, made to enter. He heard a sound behind him: sucking teeth. He turned. Tiny was already there.

‘Thought you’d show up.’

Moses ignored the disrespect, nodded. ‘Tiny.’

Tiny came nearer. ‘Fuck you playin’ at?’

Moses said nothing.

‘Eh? Fuck you playin’ at? Bringin’ that skank here?’

‘I didn’t bring her,’ Moses said, trying to keep his voice calm and reasonable.

‘No? Why she here, then?’

‘She wanted to see me.’

Tiny got even closer. ‘She wanted to see you.’ He nodded. ‘Nice. Wanted to see you. Good.’

Moses again said nothing. Waited.

Tiny moved in close. His voice dropped low, dangerous. ‘You fuckin’ her?’

‘Tiny…’

Tiny nodded. ‘You fuckin’ her. Jesus Christ. My dead brother’s girlfriend. His whore. How long this been goin’ on?’

‘Tiny, I’m not. She came to see me yesterday on something else entirely.’

Tiny came even closer, got right up in Moses’s face. ‘Yeah? Like what?’

Moses looked into Tiny’s eyes. Really looked. They were black, empty. He had seen that same look in some of the younger kids in the gang, the next generation. Like they had no empathy, no connection. As if they hadn’t been wired up properly. As if they could kill and not care.

It scared him, what was happening to the kids. Really scared him.

Tiny was nineteen.

‘The cops were talking to her. About her ex-boyfriend. His new girlfriend and kid got killed. You probably heard about it.’

Tiny gave no indication that he had.

‘They came to see me, remember? Pulled me in, thought I might have done it.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, man. Course not. Why would I?’

‘So why’d she come back to you?’

‘The police have been round to her again. She wanted me to get my brief to help her.’ It probably wasn’t a lie, if he thought about it. He tried to make it sound like the truth.

‘Didn’t sound like that when I heard you two talkin’ yesterday.’

Moses felt something snap inside. Anger, fear, he didn’t know what. But he was sick of being threatened by a teenager. Even one as unnerving as Tiny. ‘Then you heard wrong, didn’t you?’

Something sparked behind Tiny’s eyes. A fire was lit that Moses knew would be hard to put out. ‘You dissin’ me?’

‘No, Tiny, I’m not dissing you.’

‘Sounds like it to me.’

Moses didn’t reply.

‘That whore was with my brother when he got killed. She wouldn’t give up the shooter’s name. She got no respect round here, not wanted. She whorin’ herself out, last I heard. That true?’

‘So I hear.’

‘She found her level, man. Good. Hope she gets AIDS. Hope she fuckin’ dies screamin’. She might have killed my brother. Might have got someone to do it.’

‘We couldn’t prove anything,’ said Moses. ‘No one from my side did it. You know that. It was terrible what happened but it got us talking. Got us together. Brokered the peace. Remember?’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘We still got peace, bro.’

Tiny stared at him. ‘We had it, till you brought that whore round again.’

‘It was nothing to do with anything. You know that.’

Tiny stared right into Moses’s eyes. ‘You look scared, man. You scared?’

Moses swallowed hard. ‘No.’

‘Why you scared, man?’

‘I’m not scared.’

‘You fuckin’ her.’

‘Not a question this time, a statement.

‘I’m not fucking her.’

Tiny nodded slowly. Eventually he spoke. ‘Better get out of here, man. Got things to think about. You’re not welcome here today.’

Moses opened his mouth, made to argue, but realised there would be no point. Instead he turned, walked away.

Feeling like a target had just been put on his back.

P
hil stood in front of his team, silently repeating his newfound mantra to himself:
Don’t sound like a failure
…
Don’t sound like a failure
…

‘Thank you,’ he said to the assembled room. ‘Thank you for still being here.’ He scanned them, saw bleary, bloodshot eyes, overtired minds and bodies. He had to lead them, inspire them. Encourage them to renew their efforts, put in a proper shift. He couldn’t sound like a man who had let their prime suspect escape with his intended target and allowed one of his own to be injured in the process. He had to be the person who would lead the team on from that. Communicate his passion, the intensity he felt for finding the Lawgiver.

He noticed his hand was absently rubbing his chest once more, looking for signs of pain. He quickly took it away. That wasn’t helping anyone.

‘You all know what happened last night,’ he said. ‘Most of you were there when it happened. Detective Sergeant Sperring, Ian Sperring, is still in intensive care. The doctors are hopeful. They say he’s comfortable, not critical.’

Phil caught Nadish’s eye. The younger officer looked like he was distraught but trying to hide it. Or as best he could.

‘He’s stable,’ said Cotter, standing at Phil’s side. A show of support. ‘In good hands. With luck he’ll recover. Hopefully fully.’

‘Which is good news,’ said Phil. ‘But we mustn’t let the loss of one of our own deter us from what we have to do. Or cloud our judgement about how we go about it. We have to find the Lawgiver. Find him, bring him in. And find Glen Looker too. Before the Lawgiver can do anything to him.’

A ripple of unease ran round the room. Phil noticed the team weren’t totally on his side after those words.

‘Yes, I know most of you have had the somewhat dubious pleasure of crossing swords with Mr Looker but this is something different. He’s been taken into the hands of a maniac, one we still know next to nothing about but one who is lethal. And we have to do our best to find him, despite what we may think about Glen Looker. And who knows,’ added Phil, attempting a smile, ‘if we find him alive he might not sue.’

The laughter was polite but it broke the tension.

‘Right,’ said Phil, ploughing on while he still had the attention of the room, ‘we haven’t got much to go on, so with that in mind I had a preliminary psychological profile drawn up of our Lawgiver.’ He held up a piece of paper. ‘Here it is. Any comments, chip in.’ He began to read from it.

‘Lawgiver seems to be suffering from some kind of psychotic condition.’ He looked up. ‘Obviously, we’ll know more about that when we catch him.’ He kept reading. ‘This person is extremely focused. Single-minded, even, on a single project.’

‘Yeah,’ said Nadish, ‘we got that.’

‘He’s educated. Well educated, probably. But here’s the interesting thing. He’s probably experienced something traumatic in his life. This has caused his perception of the world to become warped. Through doing what he’s doing, he’s trying to regain his own balance and make sense of the world again.’

‘So how would you classify him?’ asked Imani. ‘Psychopath, sociopath, emotionally numb, what?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Phil. ‘That’s for us to discover. He wants us to see things his way. And he’s willing to do anything, even kill, to do that.’

‘So he’s a psycho then,’ said Nadish.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Phil.

‘So what are his weaknesses?’ asked Imani. ‘How are we going to catch him?’

‘He’s a planner,’ said Phil. ‘Meticulously so. But he’s also getting cocky. Think of last night. Had he planned that all along or did something happen to make him feel like he could get away with it? I don’t know. But if his plans are upset then he’ll start to unravel. And that’s how we’ll catch him.’

‘Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later,’ said Cotter.

‘Exactly,’ said Phil. He put the paper down on his desk, mentally thanked Marina for that. ‘Right. With all that in mind, what do we have so far?’

He turned to the murder board behind him. Instead of providing the links and clues that it usually would, it looked more like a puzzle that couldn’t be completed due to a lack of pieces. Pictures of the victims were up there, arrows linking them when possible. A photo of Moses Heap with a question mark beneath it next to a picture of Letisha Watson, a dotted line linking her to Darren Richards. A solid line linking Richards with Chloe Hannon. Then in another part of the board, a photo of John Wright. No lines linking him with anyone else on the board. And along from that, a photo of Glen Looker. Lines linked him to both Darren Richards and Moses Heap.

‘That’s it,’ said Phil. ‘That’s what we have. Victims but no perpetrator. Not even a picture, only a description. How does he find his victims? Does he know his victims?’

‘Maybe he just picks the ones that are high profile,’ said Imani, ‘in the case of John Wright, and researches them.’

‘That makes sense,’ replied Phil. ‘But what about the others? They’ve all got Looker as a connection.’

‘Maybe he started looking at Looker,’ said Nadish, ‘then found out about the others from him. Went after Darren Richards first because…’ He tailed off.

‘Because he could?’ suggested Imani. ‘Because he was nearest, because he was easiest, plenty of reasons. Start off with the simplest, build his way up.’

‘True,’ said Phil. ‘Or at least simplest in terms of access.’

‘Right,’ said Imani. ‘Maybe he went after him because Looker would be someone he would have to build up to? Especially the way he carried it out.’

‘Yeah,’ said Phil. ‘That makes sense. So if that’s the case, if Darren Richards was easiest and nearest, the opening one of the account, then have we anything on where he was picked up?’

‘Nothing,’ said Imani. ‘He was supposedly on his way to his friend’s house in Winson Green. He never turned up. Same with Chloe and Shannon Hannon. No one saw anything, heard anything.’

‘That kind of area,’ said Nadish.

‘Certainly is,’ said Phil. ‘So bearing in mind we’ve got nowhere with that line of enquiry, does the location of where he was found matter? That semi-demolished building? Does that mean something to him, the Lawgiver, d’you think? Nadish?’

Nadish checked his notes. ‘We’ve looked into the history of the building. Nothing. Been bought by a development company to knock down and replace with flats or something.’

‘Who owned the original building?’

‘A holding company. Nothing suspicious as far as we could make out. Got people looking into it but I reckon it’s a dead end. SOCOs are still going over it but they haven’t found anything. Jo Howe doubts they will.’

‘Post-mortems on the two victims?’

‘As we first suspected,’ said Imani. ‘Crossbow bolts. Nothing on them. Could have been bought at any sports or gun shop. Or even off the internet. It’s being followed up, but…’ She shrugged.

‘Okay. What about the door-to-door? That give up anything?’

Nadish paused before answering, is if weighing something up in his mind. ‘Nah, nothing.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ He nodded, almost to himself. ‘Yeah.’

Phil wasn’t wholly convinced by his reply but had no reason to question him further. ‘Fine. But if you think of anything or anyone who was acting out of turn, let me know, okay? It might come to you later. Let me know.’

Nadish straightened up. It looked like he was starting to feel victimised. Or at least embarrassed in front of his colleagues. ‘Yeah, course. But I know what I’m doing.’

‘I know,’ said Phil, aware of the effect his questioning was having. Don’t look desperate, he thought. Don’t grasp for something that isn’t there. Alienate the people you rely on. ‘I know you do. Right. Moving on. John Wright. What’s the state of play with him?’

Matt Trevor, a DS who had been seconded in from another department to help out spoke up. ‘Hotel’s been gone through. Clean.’

‘No sign of the Lawgiver having a room there?’ asked Phil. ‘Changing?’

‘We didn’t find one. But to be honest, that would be like looking for the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack. The rooms are cleaned as soon as the guests have gone.’

‘And nothing was left in any one?’

Trevor checked his notes. ‘Couldn’t find anything.’

‘Keep looking,’ said Phil. ‘Double check. Just in case. What about the victim’s injuries? How are they progressing?’

‘He lost a lot of blood,’ said Imani.

‘Not to mention fingers,’ said Nadish.

‘Thank you, Nadish,’ said Phil.

Imani nodded, continued. ‘There was talk about whether to attempt to reconnect them. I think they’re trying but what with the state the fingers and thumbs were found in, not to mention the overall state he was in, I don’t think they’re holding out much hope. But I’m sure he’ll be getting the best possible treatment that money can buy.’

‘If he’s got any left after the Lawgiver wiped out his accounts. Where are we with that?’

Another new face, DC Vicki Hazzard, looked up. She had been brought in for the investigation, a specialist in financial crimes. ‘He was very thorough,’ she said. ‘Very thorough. He knew his stuff, knew what he was doing. To take down accounts like he did and in that space of time shows some serious nous. He must have been planning that a while. Real financial hacktivist moves.’

‘Is that an avenue to look at?’ asked Phil. ‘Could he be with, I don’t know, Anonymous, a group like that?’

‘No,’ said Elli, speaking up for the first time. Everyone looked at her. She reddened, but continued. ‘I’ve already checked. I have some hacktivist contacts that I’ve spoken to. They all claim it’s nothing to do with them.’

‘Can we trust them?’ asked Cotter.

‘As much as we can trust anyone,’ said Elli. ‘The ones I spoke to said that while they might agree with his targets and his aims, they don’t agree with his methods.’

‘But presumably Anonymous is just that,’ said Phil. ‘An amorphous organisation. He could be one of them.’

‘He could be, yes,’ said Elli. ‘But given what I’ve heard from those I’ve talked to, I’d say it’s unlikely.’

Unlikely, thought Phil. But something niggled about that. He filed it away. There were more pressing matters to be dealt with.