Dead To Me Read online

  20

  THE ATMOSPHERE IN the room had changed up a gear with the developments and Rachel enjoyed being part of it. Mitch was recounting the scene in the gaming parlour when Gill returned, crackling with energy and barking instructions and questions. ‘Statement the girl now. Janet, how much more time to prep? Hold back on Benny Broughton till we’ve arrested Sean. We have the DNA profile through from traces on the body, matching Sean Broughton as anticipated – after all, he had slept with Lisa the previous night, and covered her with the duvet at the very least. Toxicology just in: heroin present, modest level, non fatal – suggests that Lisa partook shortly before her death.’

  ‘Must have been after she got home,’ Rachel said. ‘There’s no point in the shopping trip when she had an opportunity to take drugs.’

  ‘Is that why she put off Sean coming round sooner?’ Janet said. ‘Hogging it?’

  ‘Or sharing it with someone else? Her dealer?’ said Pete.

  ‘She had sex with someone,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Or was raped,’ said Rachel. Still wanting to factor in the Ryelands link, even if only in her own head as yet. That won her a look from Janet.

  ‘We’ve not got Sean supplying, as such,’ Pete said.

  ‘So who was?’ Janet said.

  Gill’s phone went and she took the call. Held up a hand to quieten the room. ‘Andy?’ she listened, eyes alert, raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that’s one for the mix!’ She ended the call, looked at them. ‘Neighbour opposite swears blind that there were no shopping bags when Lisa got out of the cab. How does that work?’

  ‘She made a detour en route, visited a fence,’ said Janet.

  ‘Then the cabbie’s lying,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Was he a scrote?’ Gill asked Janet.

  ‘Not on first impressions – regular bloke. But if the neighbour’s right,’ Janet went on, ‘Sean’s telling us he left the flat with non-existent shopping.’

  ‘OK,’ Gill said quickly, ‘when would someone admit to a crime they didn’t commit?’

  ‘Cover up something else,’ Janet said.

  Like murder, thought Rachel.

  ‘Misdirect us,’ said Pete.

  ‘Protect someone else,’ Lee said.

  ‘Now I really need some more time,’ Janet said.

  ‘Too right,’ Gill said. ‘And our rodent friend has described Sean Broughton selling the phone, so you can chuck that into the mix. OK? I’ll get busy on an arrest strategy.’

  * * *

  Gill sought Janet out. ‘For all he’s yanking us about, we’ve still no physical evidence tying Sean Broughton to the murder itself. We’ve found him present and correct all over the body, but he can still argue innocence. They were a couple. The lubricant, the condom …’ Gill said, something she’d been musing over. ‘Suppose Lisa did have someone else in the flat. She puts Sean off, shags mystery man, who leaves, then Sean rolls up, puts it together, kills her in a jealous rage …’ She waited for Janet to raise objections.

  ‘If she fenced the shopping, we can assume that’s to buy drugs.’

  ‘Likely,’ said Gill.

  ‘Lover boy may have been her dealer – or it was another way to make some dosh,’ said Janet.

  ‘She’d gone on the game?’

  ‘Would he care?’ Janet said. ‘If they could buy gear as a result, he wouldn’t really mind, would he?’

  ‘Find out,’ Gill said. Hard to know. A lot of lowlifes pimped out their girlfriends. Sex being the only currency they had. Those without a girl to hand would sell themselves if they got desperate enough. Sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll – nothing glamorous about the scene in north Manchester. Gill checked her watch. ‘If we do go for an arrest, then we go early doors tomorrow.’

  Janet said, ‘Dawn raid in December, eh?’

  ‘Wear your thermals,’ Gill said. ‘Hey, when things are less frantic, we should get out, make a night of it.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Janet said.

  ‘Work round any plans you and Ade have.’

  ‘No plans,’ Janet said, sounding a bit flat. ‘Can’t remember when we last had plans – least not plans that weren’t about school concerts and dental check-ups.’

  ‘You do need to get out,’ Gill said, surprised at the tone in Janet’s voice. Janet and Ade had been together for ever, high school sweethearts. And though, in later years, Janet sometimes joked about how mundane her homelife was, it was done in good humour; disparaging, but with affection. Now, there was a bitter edge.

  Gill remembered her first meeting with Janet. Janet was in shock. Full-blown shock. The sort that sent the body into physiological protection mode. Gill only had to look at Janet to see: face white as flour, lips tinged blue, the body channelling all available resources to preserve the most basic functions – the beating heart, the blood flow to the brain, the central nervous system. Janet’s pupils were dark as pitch, so that there was only a ring of bright blue iris visible. Her skin, when Gill touched her hand, was clammy, fingers waxen.

  When Gill had arrived she was still trying to revive the baby. Kneeling on the floor, the baby on the bed, blowing soft breaths into his mouth and nose. Massaging his chest with the tips of her fingers. Standard first aid.

  The doctor was there and a paramedic, but it was finally Gill whose words seemed to reach her. ‘The doctor needs to check Joshua now, Janet, see if anything can be done.’ They all knew it was too late; Janet herself probably did, but Gill saw that so long as she acted as if salvation was possible she did not have to admit the terrible, terrible truth.

  Janet had paused in her efforts, turned her stark face, bottomless eyes, to Gill and given the fraction of a nod.

  The doctor had calmly assessed the baby, ensuring there was no blockage in the airways, listening for the heartbeat, checking the pulse, conferred quietly with the paramedic for a moment, who then left the room.

  ‘I am so sorry, Janet, Adrian,’ the doctor said. Ade stood against the wall, his face a mask of pain. He didn’t need telling. ‘But Joshua is dead.’

  Janet had closed her eyes, rocked back on her heels.

  ‘We’ll give you a little time together,’ Gill said.

  Janet had climbed up on to the bed and scooped the infant up, one hand behind the boy’s head, the other under his bottom. His limbs were floppy, offering no resistance as she moulded him to herself.

  Gill had insisted on medical help, understanding immediately that the needs of the police inquiry were secondary to the safety and the well-being of the young couple.

  Gill had not had any children herself back then. It was another four years before Sammy had been born. But she understood Janet’s visceral grief. She’d had no idea Janet was a fellow officer when they first met, Gill responding to the report of a sudden unexplained death, twelve-month-old boy. The death was judged to be due to SIDS. A catch-all for deaths of infants where there was no discernible cause.

  Gill was soon working on other jobs, but she kept in contact with Janet, dropping in on her way home from work, imagining the evenings must be hardest. All those hours without the demands of feeding and bedtime and the long, bleak nights when once you would have prayed not to be disturbed, prayed that the child would sleep through.

  It was Gill who brought with her tales of police work that permeated the barrier of Janet’s indifference. Only a year apart in age, the women shared the experience of being young female coppers in the 1980s when it was still very much a macho zone.

  Ade always welcomed Gill warmly. ‘It really helps,’ he told her one time, ‘you coming.’

  As their friendship grew, Janet sometimes opened up to Gill about the impact of losing the baby. ‘My greatest fear was always losing my mind,’ she said once in that plain, quiet way of hers, ‘but this has been worse. What puzzles me is why didn’t it drive me mad? Why haven’t I ended up in the loony bin?’

  Gill hadn’t had any slick answers to that. But as she learned about what Janet had been through as a teenager, she though
t perhaps the breakdown had left her stronger. It was Gill who coaxed Janet back to work, arguing with her when she questioned whether she was still cut out to be a police officer. ‘I’d say this will only make you better at the job,’ Gill said.

  ‘You know I never put it on my application form – that I’d been in a psychiatric hospital.’

  Gill had paused. That sort of misrepresentation could lead to a charge of misconduct, a termination of employment. She wished Janet hadn’t told her, but knew already that she’d honour the confidence.

  ‘There was so much prejudice,’ Janet said, ‘still is. I wouldn’t have got the job.’

  ‘Maybe so. But think about coming back. We need you, people like you, women – women with brains.’

  And Janet had returned. Their career paths diverged, Gill moved into CID before Sammy was born and then to the crime faculty when he was four. Janet still on Division. But in 2004, once Taisie started school, Janet joined an MIT.

  Now Gill was her boss as well as her friend. Janet had been there for Gill in the wake of the Dave debacle. And Gill would do the same if Janet’s marriage fell apart. But it was hard to imagine, after all that Janet and Ade had been through together, and Ade being such a good dad, happy to do all the parenting stuff when Janet had overtime or was working in the school holidays, that they wouldn’t find a way to get things back on an even keel. Or maybe that’s the problem, Gill thought, as she began checking through the mountain of paperwork that the case was generating. Maybe it’s been on an even keel for too long. Maybe it’s all got stale and boring. Whatever. Janet would tell her when she was good and ready.

  21

  RACHEL GRABBED HER coat and checked the time.

  ‘You off?’ Janet was surrounded by reams of paper, still working out Sean’s next interview, when he’d be under arrest.

  ‘Speedy Cabs,’ Rachel said.

  ‘The case of the disappearing shopping,’ Janet said drily. ‘It’d be handy to have that sorted to include in this’, she gestured to the papers. ‘The more I’ve got pinned down, the less his wiggle room. I’m going round in circles now, though.’

  ‘Come with us, if you like,’ Rachel offered. She hadn’t expected Janet to agree, but she did.

  It was dark again and wet, heavy rain that drummed on the roof of the car and streamed down the windscreen.

  Rachel parked by the arches and dashed across the cobbles. It was a different dispatcher, an old bloke with a beard you could knit Brillo pads from. He said Kasim had just done a run to Ashton and should be returning soon.

  She ran back to sit with Janet in the car. ‘If he took Lisa to flog the shopping on the way home, it’d have to be somewhere nearby,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Shifting all the time, though, isn’t it? Stuff changing hands, one week it’s so-and-so that’s the man to see, next week it’s the next-door neighbour, or the lad round the corner,’ Janet said.

  ‘Say she flogs the stuff, makes some money, scores – maybe that’s what Sean took, along with the phone?’ Rachel said. ‘He wouldn’t want to tell us that, would he; he’d be worried about being done for possession.’ Up to seven years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

  ‘He should be worried about being done for murder,’ Janet said.

  Maybe, as Andy said, the gear was at Sean’s gaff, along with the knife and bloodstained clothing, and Sean had been playing for time.

  ‘I asked at Ryelands,’ Janet said. ‘They didn’t know Sean.’

  Rachel wondered whether to say anything about Martin Dalbeattie being responsible for both girls, but at that moment a cab, its sign illuminated, headlights capturing the rain, drove along the cobbles. As the car came to a halt beneath the street light, Rachel recognized Kasim. ‘There he is.’ She turned to open the door.

  ‘Ask him to come over here,’ Janet said, then groaned. ‘This weather!’

  Rachel stepped out of their car at the same time as Kasim got out of his. She saw him glance her way, then his face altered, an expression of alarm as he realized who she was. He ducked back into the cab and gunned the engine.

  Rachel leapt into the car and turned the ignition. Repeating his car reg out loud.

  ‘What on earth’s he …?’ Janet said.

  Kasim reversed at speed up the narrow street, the beams of his lights jouncing over the wet stones and brick walls.

  Rachel stamped on the accelerator and swept up the road after him. At the junction, Kasim backed out into the main road and sped off, his engine screeching.

  Rachel’s heart was thumping. Janet ferreted in her bag for the radio and began calling for backup, asking uniformed patrols and Traffic to stop the taxi.

  Kasim raced along Hyde Road and Rachel kept pace, eyes alert to any hazards ahead. She had done the advanced driving course and was confident she could handle the vehicle. But the rain didn’t help, a slew of water across the windscreen, wipers going full speed, moments of road blindness before the next sweep of the blades.

  ‘He’s taking a left,’ Janet said, ‘April Place,’ having to raise her voice over the noise of the car.

  Rachel swerved on the turn, felt the back wheels spin, the sideways slide. Corrected well. Pressed the accelerator to the floor.

  ‘And right, into Moby Street,’ Janet said over the airwaves. Then, staring at Rachel: ‘You’re enjoying this.’

  ‘Beats Alton Towers, any day,’ Rachel said. Eyes locked on the rear lights of the taxi, red coals in the dark.

  The car jolted over a manhole cover and they both jumped in their seats.

  ‘Christ! Slow down!’ Janet yelled. ‘Another right, Logan Street,’ she read the road name. ‘Where the hell’s he taking us?’

  Rachel kept her foot down, thanking God it was night-time and there were few pedestrians about. They were approaching a small industrial estate. Half a dozen or so units, roller-shutter doors and corrugated roofs. And beyond them Rachel knew was a road that led to the motorway.

  ‘Slow down,’ Janet screamed. ‘Rachel, stop – let patrol take it.’

  ‘We can’t let him get to the slip road,’ she shouted above the howl of the engine. ‘Hold tight.’

  ‘You’ll fucking kill us!’

  Rachel knew she could wring a bit more speed from the car and she was practically on his bumper. She kept the accelerator on the floor and roared closer. Gripping the wheel, she slung the car out and to the right to overtake, then nosed back in towards the cab. Almost level, she was dimly aware of Janet shouting next to her, ‘You’re too close, too close, stop!’ and voices coming over the radio. A final spurt, but then he slammed on his brakes and there was no chance to avoid him. A scream of metal and the impact shunting them back in their seats, activating the airbags and forcing the cab into the wall of one of the units. The cars travelled together for several metres. Rachel saw sparks flying as the metal of the taxi’s nearside scraped along the breeze blocks, then both cars ground to a halt. The cab parallel to the building, their car at an angle, its front end pressed against the offside rear door.

  ‘Fuck!’ said Janet, fighting from behind her airbag. ‘You bloody idiot! What the hell are you playing at!’

  ‘He’s off!’ Rachel yelled.

  Kasim was out of the cab, and running. Rachel shoved her way past the airbag and hared after him.

  He ran along the edge of the units. Triggering security lights. He was fast. But I’m faster, pal. Rachel ran, hard, powerful strikes, arms pumping. Breathing heavily. Not for nothing had she been top of her intake with the bleep test. Running back and forth to beat the bleep, the intervals growing shorter each time. She was fast and she was strong. She made a point of visiting the gym at least twice a week. And she’d run a marathon last year. So some scumbag cabbie tosspot was not going to get away from her.

  Arms going like pistons, her windpipe aching, sweat breaking out on her back and her chest, she increased her pace, the rain soaking her hair, her face, blinking continuously to clear her vision. Closer now.

  Kasim div
ed into an opening between two of the buildings and Rachel followed, she could see his speed slowing, his legs letting him down. She made out chain-link ahead. He went left along the rear of the building, stumbling once, allowing her to narrow the gap between them. She didn’t yell, saved her breath. Her muscles were burning in her legs, clamouring for oxygen, her face on fire. Panting now, rapid and harsh.

  Kasim veered left again, heading along the other side of the unit towards the central area where the cars were. Ahead, the flicker of blue lights, the wail of sirens. Patrols arriving. He’d be harder to corner there and she was so close. She willed herself on, her heart pounding in her chest, breath raw in her throat, lungs screaming, and as they rounded the corner into the open space, in view of her car and the cab, Rachel lunged. She caught his jacket, held on, he strained forward but she pulled on his shoulder, got purchase, then she was on him, knocking him over. Sat on his back, yanked his wrists behind him, fishing the cuffs from her pocket and snapping them on, gasping, ‘You are nicked.’

  Janet was at her side, hands on hips, a peculiar look on her face. ‘You mad bitch!’ she spat the words. Her face was wide with anger, or maybe fear. She was pissed off, whichever. ‘You could have killed us both. You stupid cow.’

  ‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’ Rachel peered up at her. ‘Nothing broken.’

  Janet shook her head in disgust, walked a few steps away, then swung back. ‘That was dangerous driving.’

  ‘Nobody died.’

  ‘Screw you. Next time I’ll take the bus,’ Janet said, still furious.

  Rachel blew out, winded, got to her feet, dizzy now and her calf muscles cramping. ‘How’s the car?’ she said.

  ‘Buggered. They’ll want a proper look at everything.’ Janet gestured to the patrols. The collision would have to be investigated. The cars examined. They would both be breathalysed – standard practice in any collision involving an officer. Rachel was sure she’d be clear.

  ‘I know. Need my bag, though,’ Rachel said. ‘Watch him, will you.’

  ‘You really don’t give a shit, do you?’ Janet said. Rachel didn’t reply. ‘Where’d you learn to run like that, anyroad?’