Justice for the Damned (15 page)

Philippa kissed Mabel too. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘Am I?’ Mabel shot back.

‘Yes. I must say, Mabel, you seem to look younger every time I see you.’

‘You’re looking well, too, dear. Have you done something different with your makeup?’

Philippa’s nostrils flared a fraction at the backhanded compliment, but her smile didn’t slip. ‘No.’

‘Well something’s different. Maybe it’s your hair.’

Philippa opened her mouth to reply that she hadn’t changed her hair either. But Mabel was already transferring her gaze to the real object of her interest. ‘You look tired, Edward.’

‘I’m fine, Mother.’

Mabel raised her eyebrows to indicate she didn’t believe that for a second. ‘Have you lost weight?’

Edward gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I wish.’

A smile softened Mabel’s face as a shaggy grey wolfhound came loping out of the living room. The dog nuzzled her, his head almost level with her shoulders. ‘Hello, old boy,’ she said, ruffling his fur. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ She took a bone-shaped chew out of her handbag and put it in the dog’s mouth. Tail wagging, Conall retreated to the lounge with his prize. At a gesture from Philippa, they followed the dog. Mabel seated herself in an armchair by the fireplace. Philippa settled onto a sofa opposite her. They sat stiffly, while Edward poured them each a glass of sherry. ‘How was your journey, Mother?’ he asked, settling onto the sofa, keeping a little distance between Philippa and himself.

‘Fine,’ she replied with a small yawn.

‘Are you tired? Would you like a lie down before dinner?’ asked Philippa.

‘I’m not tired in the slightest, dear.’ The implication was obvious – Mabel wasn’t interested in small talk.

They sipped their drinks in silence, Mabel studying her son like a doctor searching for signs of illness, Edward staring at his lap, Philippa’s gaze hovering between the two of them as if unsure where to land. The reason behind Mabel’s visit hung in the air between them like a bomb waiting to be detonated. Mabel finished her sherry and held out her glass for a refill. As Edward obliged, she said to Philippa, ‘Why don’t you go and check on how dinner’s coming along, dear.’ It wasn’t quite a command, but neither was it a question. This time Philippa’s smile faltered, not much, but enough to be noticeable. She glanced uncertainly at her husband. At a slight nod from him, she stood and left the room.

‘Close the door, will you?’ Mabel called after her. ‘There’s a terrible draught coming through it.’

Philippa closed the door just loudly enough to make her displeasure known. Mabel’s gaze returned to Edward. He sank back down onto the sofa, hanging his head like a guilty child. Mabel moved to sit next to him, so close their thighs touched. In a conspiratorially low voice, she said, ‘You can have the money—’

Edward jerked his head up, relief flooding his face. ‘Oh, thank you, Mummy! Thank you. Thank you.’

‘Hold on, Edward, you didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, you can have the money on two conditions. Firstly, when I ask you a question, I want the truth. Is that understood?’

Edward nodded.

‘Secondly, and more importantly, I want us to be close again.’ Mabel laid a bony hand speckled with liver spots over her son’s hands. ‘Like we used to be.’

Edward looked at his mother a moment. Then his eyes dropped away from hers, and swallowing as if he had something in his throat, he nodded again.

‘You’ve got no children,’ continued Mabel. ‘So you can’t know how much it’s hurt to feel you drifting away from me.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy.’

‘Well from now on you’re going to make time for me. And nothing and…’ Mabel shot a meaningful glance towards the door, ‘no one is going to get between us.’ She gently touched Edward’s cheek. ‘I’m going to take care of you, as only a mother can.’

He squeezed his mother’s hand, then kissed it. ‘No, Mother, this time I’m going to take care of you. We’re going to be a proper family again. I promise.’

‘Oh, Edward, it makes me so happy to hear you say that.’ Mabel drew her son’s head onto her shoulder, stroked his hair and murmured in his ear, ‘Now tell Mummy all about it.’

‘There’s a man. He knows about something I did. If it comes out I’ll be ruined.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I made an… error of judgement. It happened a long time ago. I always worried that one day it might come back to haunt me, and now it has.’

A knowing glint shone in Mabel’s bright blue eyes. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Grace Kirby.’

‘That name seems familiar.’

‘She killed… murdered some friends of mine.’

Mabel pushed her son’s head away, disgust curling her upper lip. Like a nail scratching on a blackboard, she hissed, ‘You mean the whore who’s been all over the news.’

Edward put a finger to his lips, glancing anxiously towards the door. ‘Please, Mother, keep your voice down.’

Mabel ignored his plea, continuing angrily, ‘Just like your father. He could never keep his hands off whores either.’

Now it was Edward’s turn to raise his voice. Another thing his mother never missed a chance to tell him was how much he put her in mind of his father, both in the way he acted and looked. From an early age he’d come to realise he was a constant bitter reminder of the man she more often than not referred to as simply ‘the bastard’. ‘I’m nothing like my father.’

‘How would you know? You were too young to remember when the bastard walked out on us for that slut.’

‘I know I’d never do anything like that. I know blood is the only thing you can trust. I know it because you taught me so. You made me what I am. Not him.’ Edward looked at his mother with an almost pathetic need in his eyes. ‘I love you, Mummy. I love you more than I’ll ever love anyone else.’

Edward’s words smoothed the lines of anger from Mabel’s face. Once more, she pulled him onto her shoulder. ‘I know you do, darling,’ she soothed. ‘Now tell me more about this man. Is he blackmailing you?’

‘It’s worse than that. He doesn’t want money, he wants to hurt me.’

‘Well you know what we do to people who want to hurt us, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Mummy. We hurt them first.’

‘We don’t just hurt them.’ Mabel’s voice dripped with vicious intent. ‘We destroy them and wipe out any trace that they ever existed.’

‘It might not only be him. There may be others.’

‘If there are, we’ll deal with them too.’

Edward pressed his face into his mother’s shoulder. His voice came muffled. ‘Oh God, I’ve made such a terrible mess of things.’

Mabel drew him down further, so that he was nestling against her bosom. ‘Shh, hush now. Mummy’s here, and Mummy will make everything better. Just like she always does.’

Freddie Harding’s house was a dour pebble-dashed little semi on an estate of such houses. The windows and door of the adjoining house were boarded up with metal grilles. The gardens of both houses were overgrown and strewn with litter. There were muddy wheel ruts where Freddie’s front lawn had been used as a driveway. Although it was dark, the curtains of his house weren’t drawn. A light glowed in the upstairs window. But Reece felt sure no one was in. He’d watched the house for most of the day now without seeing any sign of movement. The light had probably been left on to ward off burglars while Freddie was out. Not that a light would be much of a deterrent to some of the characters prowling the estate. Reece had already been checked out by several gangs of glowering, tracksuit-clad teenagers. They knew better than to do anything more than eyeball him, though. They’d been trained from birth to spot a copper from a mile away.

Reece glanced at the dashboard clock. Eight p.m. A crease appeared between his eyebrows. Why hadn’t his dad phoned from the hospital yet? Had something gone wrong with the chemo? Another thought quickly followed.
What the hell are you doing here when there are people elsewhere who need you? People you love.
His gaze dropped to the folders on the passenger seat. He picked up one and opened it. A grainy black and white mugshot of a chubby-faced young woman stared at him from the first page. Underneath it a brief bio read, ‘Roxanne Cole, 21 years old. Worked as a prostitute in the Wheatly area of Doncaster. Last seen alive on 20 February 1980. Reported missing on 26 February.’ He flipped the page and was greeted by a smiling girl with big eyes and boyishly short hair. His gaze skimmed over her bio. ‘Jennifer Barns, 19 years old. Doncaster prostitute. Last seen on Thorne Road on 12 July 1983.’ Another page. Another photo. A woman with sad, expectant eyes that seemed to suggest she knew what was coming to her. ‘Angela Riley, 22, Sheffield prostitute. Disappeared from Neepsend Lane, 18 November 1984…’ And so it continued. Page after page. Face after face. Name after name. The unloved, the damaged, the forgotten, the damned.
They
were why he was here.

Reece’s phone rang. A number he didn’t recognise flashed up. He answered it. ‘Am I speaking to Mr Reece Geary?’ enquired a man’s voice.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Doctor Meadows of Weston Park Hospital. I’m calling on behalf of your father—’

‘Is he OK?’ Reece cut in anxiously.

‘He had a strong reaction to the chemotherapy. We’re keeping him in overnight as a precaution. He should be fit to go home tomorrow morning.’

‘Can I see him?’

‘Visiting hours are over for today. Besides, it’s best if you just let him rest.’

Reece’s attention was attracted by a white Transit van pulling onto Freddie’s garden. ‘Thanks for letting me know, Doctor.’ Reece hung up as the man himself got out of the van. Freddie was wearing heavy-duty black shoes, navy blue trousers and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. He’d lost almost all of his hair since 2001. All that remained were some scruffy tufts at the sides of his head. He’d put on some weight too. His belly had grown paunchy and there was a puffiness to his face that hinted at a heavy drinking habit. But his small, closely spaced eyes had lost none of their weasel-like shiftiness. He lifted a bundle of parcels out of the back of the van and carried them into his house.
Maybe he’s a delivery driver
, reasoned Reece. Whatever, it made sense not to leave the parcels in the van, especially in an area like that. A downstairs light came on. Freddie appeared at the window and drew the curtains.

According to the plates, the van was four years old. So it couldn’t be the same vehicle one of the missing prostitutes had been seen getting into before Freddie’s 2001 arrest. Reece photographed the van with his phone, then leaned back against the headrest. His thoughts returned to his father. He released a heavy breath. It promised to be a long night.

As the hours crawled by, tiredness nibbled at the edges of Reece’s concentration. He kept himself alert by knocking back energy drinks. They tasted like shit, but did the trick. Shortly before midnight the downstairs light went off. Minutes later, Freddie emerged from the house. He’d changed into trainers, blue jeans and a black sweatshirt, so presumably he wasn’t working.
Where are you going at this time of night?
wondered Reece, as Freddie got into his van and reversed out of the makeshift driveway.

With Reece following at a discreet distance, Freddie headed west through the silent night-time streets and pulled onto the M1’s southbound carriageway just north of Sheffield. Reece fully expected him to turn off the motorway at Sheffield and head into the red-light district. But the van continued on past the city towards north Derbyshire.

Reece’s phone rang again. This time he recognised the caller’s number. Doug Brody. ‘Shit.’ The word whistled through his teeth as he remembered that he’d promised Doug he’d have Wayne Carson’s money for him by tonight. He put the phone to his ear. ‘Sorry, Doug, I haven’t got it yet,’ he said, getting straight down to business.

Doug’s voice came back at him gruffly. ‘Why the fuck not?’

‘You remember what we spoke about last night, well I’m following up on a lead I got—’

‘I don’t give a toss what you’re doing. Get your arse over to Burton Road right this second and collect what we’re owed.’

‘But I’m tailing—’

‘Are you deaf?’ Doug shut him down again. ‘I said right now. Fuck your lead. You know, Reece, I’m starting to suspect your heart’s not in this little business enterprise of ours.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then prove it.’

‘OK. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got it.’

Reece stared at Freddie’s van with a conflicted expression. The van passed a junction. With a reluctant twist of the steering wheel, Reece pulled onto the slip road. As he headed back towards Sheffield, something pricked at him, like a thorn working its way deeper into his flesh with every mile he put between himself and Freddie. It took him a while to work out what it was. Shame. He felt ashamed.
You’re doing this for Staci and Amelia. So that they can be a family again
, he told himself. But the feeling didn’t go away.

When he reached Burton Road, he found Wayne in his usual spot idly watching his girls work the street. As Reece jammed on the brakes in front of him, Wayne jerked away from the factory wall as if snapping to attention. Reece jumped out of his car and strode towards him. ‘Have you got it?’ he growled.

Wayne raised his hands with a shrug as if to say,
Got what?

‘Right, that’s fucking it.’ Reece grabbed Wayne’s arm and spun him around. ‘Hands against the wall.’ Kicking Wayne’s legs apart, he patted him down.

‘Go ahead. Search me,’ sneered the pimp. ‘I’m clean.’

Reece reached into Wayne’s jacket pocket and pulled out several foil wraps. ‘Oh really. So what’s this then?’ He opened one of the wraps, revealing a small, sticky black lump. ‘Looks like Mexican Mud to me.’

Wayne twisted around, the blue snake tattoo on his scalp rippling as if alive as his face contorted in outrage. ‘That’s not mine! You planted that shit.’

Reece seized Wayne’s arm and bent it up behind his back. He snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. ‘You’re under arrest for dealing drugs. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention—’

‘This is bullshit! You can’t do this. I’ll tell everyone what you did.’