He hadn’t slept last night and was feeling pretty shattered, so he wanted to get a few hours’ sleep this afternoon, then walk on through the night. He’d be safer that way, especially if there were gangs about. Tomorrow he would be a day nearer to being with Chantelle. He planned to knock at the stage school. He would have to hope the woman who owned the gaff was around on a Sunday. He liked her; she had helped him before, filled in the application form for him when he told her he couldn’t write properly. He’d been well embarrassed, but she’d said that with talent like his, writing wasn’t important. He might ask if there was somewhere he could have a wash too; he was going to ask the family he was to stay with if he could come a bit earlier, and he didn’t want to stink and put them off.
His phone trilled and Luanne’s name came up on the display. ‘Hey, babe . . .’
But after a few seconds he was trembling as if an electric current had run through his whole body. Chantelle was in a bad way, Luanne told him, but an ambulance had come and she was in good hands. She was going to the hospital herself as soon as she found Alysha, who had run off when the Brotherhood attacked them.
Luanne cried as she told him what had happened. She had tried to pull Boot Ripley away from Chantelle, but Mince Delahaye had twisted her arm up her back so hard she thought it might be broken, then punched her in the face. That was when she told Alysha to leg it.
Jason was shaking with fury. ‘How bad is Chantelle?’
‘She’s taken a hard beating.’
‘Boot and Mince, you say? I’m coming back.’
‘Jason, no! It’s not safe. The estate is swarming with Feds, and they’re looking for you.’
‘I need a gun. Can you get me a gun?’
There was a pause. ‘I don’t think that’s wise, man. There’s Feds everywhere. If you get caught . . .’
Jason gritted his teeth. ‘This is Chantelle we’re talking about. And they’ve hurt you, and Alysha. I ain’t having that. Help me out here, Luanne. Get me a gun. I’ll be there in less than an hour.’
There was a beat.
‘Luanne?’
He heard her sigh. ‘OK. But I ain’t happy about it, and it may take a while. The Feds are everywhere.’
‘Where shall we meet? Where’s safe?’
Another pause. ‘In the shed at the end of your gran’s estate. It’s not on Brotherhood turf, and there are less Feds around there. If I can get you a gun, I’ll leave it in the shed, wrapped in newspaper. Or in the rubbish dump there.’
‘Make sure to get poppers to go with it.’
‘Are you going to the hospital first?’
‘Yes, I’m on my way now. Then I’m sorting this.’
‘Be careful. The place will be surrounded with Feds, and they’re looking for you. I have to find Alysha, and I have to get myself there. My arm hurts like hell. I’ll try and call you again.’
‘They’ll pay for this, I promise.’
‘Yeah. I was afraid you’d say that.’
TEN
‘
T
here’s exits everywhere,’ the bespectacled female constable told David Dawes. ‘Three fire escapes, a stairway to the upper floor, another up to the roof, and then there’s the lift. They could have used any of them to get off the estate. None of us saw anybody running.’
‘I’ll bet none of the residents will have seen anything either,’ the other uniformed officer added, a slight edge of hysteria creeping into his voice.
Dawes said nothing. He didn’t trust himself not to lose his temper. He knew it wasn’t their fault; the station was short of manpower, and they’d been doing as they were told and searching for the weapon that killed Haley Gulati. At the end of the day it was CID, not uniform, who were to blame; they should have known the girls could be in danger.
Hank Peacock was still loitering on the walkway. ‘Get a forensic team up here,’ Dawes told him.
‘I’m very sorry, guv,’ the WPC continued. ‘We were told to search . . .’
Dawes cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘Luanne Akhter and her sister Alysha are hurt and frightened. They won’t have gone far. See if you can find them.’
He turned his back on her and leaned over the balcony, peering down at the routes in and out of the estate. He felt both guilty and angry. Those vulnerable young witnesses shouldn’t have been left unprotected after they had been brave enough to speak out. This would do further harm to the fragile relationship the police already had with the terrified residents.
He spotted a van below with the RSPCA’s logo on its side. A huge man came out of the flats and walked towards it. It was impossible to mistake Yo-Yo Reilly. No one else around here was that big. Even from thirteen floors up, Dawes was aware Reilly was looking up at him.
There was no doubt in Dawes’s mind that Reilly was responsible for what had happened here.
Two dogs jumped out of the RSPCA animal welfare van, and the uniformed dog warden holding their chains handed them over to Reilly. According to Georgia Johnson, a so-called dog expert had declared they weren’t pure-bred pit bulls, so now Reilly had them back. The dog expert, Georgia had told him, was Michael O’Flannery. He was known to the police as Manic Mickey; he had a heroin habit and Reilly was his supplier. Something else the police knew but couldn’t prove. Reilly had got Mickey hooked on smack, then put him on the payroll; Mickey looked out for him, and kept his dangerous dogs legal. There was a tattoo of a knife on the inside of his middle finger, a sign of an associate member the Brotherhood.
Mickey himself had been a breeder of pit bulls, but had gone out of business when the ban came in. He was a qualified vet, which earned him some respect in the animal world, and was acknowledged as an expert on pit bulls. Reilly could afford to be cocky and confident when his dogs were confiscated; Mickey would make sure he got them back. Other pit bull experts around London had been bought by Reilly, too: something else the police knew about, but hadn’t enough proof to expose.
Now the savage dogs were back in Reilly’s care. Both the RSPCA and the police knew ‘care’ was a joke; Reilly mistreated them and often left them hungry. If not much else was happening, the Brotherhood would kick their dogs until their underbellies were torn and bleeding, then let them take their pain, misery and hunger out on each other – all for a bit of a laugh. If a dog lost an ear or an eye, it wasn’t the end of the world; Manic Mickey would patch it up or put it down.
Dawes was angry. Not only had the fat bastard escaped a murder charge; he had his dogs back, and since he was in police custody at the time he also had a perfect alibi for his whereabouts when the girls were being beaten up. Just as well he couldn’t see Reilly’s face from up here, Dawes thought; the toerag would be beaming with pride at having got one over on the police yet again. Well, not for long, if Dawes had anything to do with it.
He watched Reilly prod the dog with a long stick. The dog cowered and snarled, and the RSPCA officer seemed to be issuing a warning. Reilly’s body language was easy to read; he pointed the officer towards his van, obviously telling him where to stuff his advice.
Whatever had passed between them, the animal welfare officer chose to ignore the finger Reilly poked up at him. He climbed quickly into the van alongside his colleague, and the van accelerated out of the estate.
The dog stood obediently beside Reilly until the van had disappeared. Then Reilly drew his boot back and kicked the animal until it lay on its stomach and yelped in agony.
Dawes turned away, sickened.
‘Reilly’s been released,’ he told Hank Peacock. ‘He’s down there, and his dogs have just been brought back. I’d bet serious money that word about these women got to him while he was in custody.’
Peacock looked dubious. ‘But he only had one call, and that was to his solicitor.’
‘There you are then.’ No one that naïve should be in CID Dawes thought.
‘You mean . . . Reilly got a message out through the solicitor?’
Dawes pursed his lips. ‘Bet your life.’
‘Now one’s in hospital unconscious, one’s run away terrified and the other’s out looking for her. And when we find them they’ll be too scared to say a word.’
Give the boy a gold star. ‘You got it.’
‘Do you think the girls know their attackers?’
‘Don’t you?’
Hank nodded slowly. ‘The top dogs run this land, and I’m beginning to think that that’s not us.’
Dawes suddenly felt sorry for the lad. Everyone started out like that, full of faith and ideals. ‘Don’t get disheartened, mate. You’re only a trainee. Think of it this way: there are some big gangs in London, but we’re the biggest. This is just history repeating itself.’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘A few years ago, before Reilly took over the patch, the so-called top gang around here was the Buzzards. Jason Young was cock of the walk then. We got Jason eventually, and as for the Buzzards, some are dead – gunshots, stabbings, overdoses, the usual. Young’s out again, but not for long – we’ve got evidence now to put him away again for murder.’ Dawes took a deep breath. ‘And Reilly’s day isn’t far off either, mark my words.’
The bloodied sweatshirt had gone to forensics, and Georgia and Stephanie were back in Georgia’s office, grabbing a late lunch and reading Jason Young’s prison reports. A large cardboard Starbucks cup stood on Georgia’s shiny desk; a chocolate bar broken into little pieces lay on a serviette, and a paper plate served to catch any drips from her cappuccino.
She forced herself to ignore the tomato pips spilling out of Stephanie’s sandwich on to the warm, newly faxed papers. Stephanie must have read her thoughts; she flicked a couple of pips off the papers on to the floor. Georgia said nothing, aware that the irritation was two-way; her neatness irritated Stephanie as much as Stephanie’s mess exasperated her. But over the past five years they had bonded, and helped each other out of many a scrape. Be glad it’s only a sandwich, she chided herself. Last time they had lunched together in Georgia’s office, Stephanie had brought saveloy, chips and a gherkin. The smell had clung for days, impervious to air freshener.
All the same, Stephanie was the only member of the squad whose company Georgia ever sought out; she liked and trusted her, even though they were chalk and cheese.
Stephanie usually made the morning meetings by the skin of her teeth, face devoid of make-up, hair uncombed. Mornings were bound to be fraught for a single mum; and, as Steph had explained, given the long hours they worked when they had a case like this one, giving her kids breakfast before school in the morning might be the only time she saw them all day.
Georgia would probably have felt the same, if she’d been lucky enough to have kids. She had freedom instead, she told herself. She could be in the office as early as she chose, usually long before the morning meeting. Stephanie, on the other hand, sat there holding a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows floating on top in one hand and a pen in the other to make catch-up notes; but Georgia never doubted that her brain was fully engaged and she’d taken everything in. Stephanie was as sharp as a butcher’s knife, and her memory could challenge an elephant’s. What Georgia admired most about her was her openness and honesty. Her reputation for never refusing sex went before her; rumour had that she had slept with half of the Met. But she stayed friends with all her conquests, and could be relied on to call in a favour when it was needed. She seemed to know someone in every department, whereas Georgia never let any man get close to her. Stephanie often tried to persuade her to go for a night of lust; good for the stress count, she assured her with a warm, infectious laugh.
When Stephanie lifted her head from the prison report, she looked as if she had stepped out of a sauna. Steam from her mug of scalding black coffee had dampened her face, her nose shone, and strands of her fine, marmalade-streaked hair stuck to her rosy cheeks.
‘Interesting,’ she said, pulling a stray hair out of her mouth.
‘What does it say?’
‘He was sent to Wandsworth, but others in his gang served their sentences in Rochester. He was victimized in Wandsworth, but never fought back.’
‘That’s surprising, given his history of violence.’ Georgia popped a square of chocolate in her mouth.
‘Maybe that’s why he killed Haley Gulati – he’d bottled up the violence all that time.’ She read aloud from the report. ‘He became withdrawn and depressed toward the end of his sentence. He was befriended by his probation officer, who is now helping him pursue a career in dancing. By his release he had secured a scholarship with a leading stage school in central London.’
Georgia sipped from the paper cup and wiped a trace of froth from her mouth with the serviette. ‘My bet is he played the system. He intended to kill Haley Gulati all along, and used the stage school application as a way of getting an early release.’
Stephanie screwed up the paper sandwich bag into a ball and wiped her hands on her jeans.
‘What bothers me,’ Georgia said, ‘is that our new friend DI Dawes doesn’t think it’s likely that Young stabbed Haley. He feels sure he would have shot her.’ She paused before adding, ‘And Dawes is supposed to be the expert on South London gangs.’
‘We’ve got Jason Young’s DNA all over the victim, and in her blood on the wall of the Gulatis’ flat,’ Stephanie pointed out. ‘And he’s got strong motive. That’s enough for me, expert or not.’ She aimed the screwed-up sandwich bag at the waste bin, threw it and missed. ‘Forensics on the blood on the sweatshirt is just icing on the cake. Just as well – it’s going to be another twenty-four hours at least.’
‘Shame you haven’t got a
friend
in forensics,’ Georgia teased her.
‘I’ll keep looking,’ Stephanie laughed. ‘You know, if we found the murder weapon it would help. Reilly’s Brotherhood all use similar blades; if the one that killed Gulati is different . . .’
‘Yeah, well, we’ll just have to wait for that. Any luck with the trace on Young’s mobile?’