Killing the Beasts (32 page)

McCloughlin looked up at the Urban Living flats and said, 'A bit upmarket for our little toe-rag don't you think?'

They buzzed the manager of the complex to be let in and less than thirty seconds later eight plain-clothes officers were standing in Ashley Charlton's flat.

Surveying the room, McCloughlin's eyes settled on the tarantula's vivarium. 'Never mind bringing in national ID cards, if we could keep tabs on every misfit who keeps snakes and spiders, there'd be a lot less crime committed. Right, specifically, we're looking for packs of X-treme chewing gum, but shout if you see anything else.'

Seven of them began rummaging through the flat while the last officer started sweeping all the electrical items and ornaments with a UV light. At the same instant he announced, 'Boss', another officer in the kitchen said, 'Got something here.'

McCloughlin called towards the kitchen, 'What's in there?' 'One box of X-treme chewing gum. Limited edition citrus with energy-giving guarana. Thirty-six packs originally inside, now about a dozen left.'

'Bag it,' said McCloughlin, turning to the officer with the UV torch. 'You?'

He turned the art deco lamp to the side so McCloughlin could see its base. Shining purple in the invisible glow of the torch was a series of numbers and letters. 'Postcode. Looks like Altrincham, sir.'

'Excellent. Get the address so we can phone the house owner immediately.'

As the officer got his mobile phone out to make the call, another officer standing at the coat pegs by the door spoke up. 'Boss, take a look at this.' He was holding up a garden cane with a hook on the end.

McCloughlin rubbed his hands. 'This guy is so screwed. Anything else, people?'

Jon turned round. 'Interesting stash here.'

McCloughlin looked down into the wooden box Jon had opened up.

Inside was a couple of packets of cigarette papers, a lump of cannabis resin and a small plastic bag containing a couple of teaspoons of white powder.

'What do you reckon that is? Speed?' asked McCloughlin.

Jon turned it over with the end of a gloved finger. 'Probably, but I'm not volunteering to taste it.'

McCloughlin laughed. 'You know what, Jon? When you blurted out your theory that these killings were being carried out by some rogue member of a car-theft gang, I had serious doubts. Now I think you might be right.'

Jon smiled, but he didn't feel the same certainty as his senior officer.

An hour later they were all back at Longsight station and Sly had been hauled out of his cell and into an interview room. Having been told which investigation his client was a suspect in, a very nervous member from the local twenty-four-hour solicitor's was sitting next to Sly.

'So, you've been a very busy man,' opened McCloughlin.

'That bastard chipped my tooth,' said Sly, jabbing a finger at Jon. Across the table McCloughlin shrugged. 'You were resisting arrest. We have several witnesses who will attest to that.'

Sly lit a cigarette and stared back with narrowed eyes. Wisps of smoke carried across the table into Jon's face.

'The car stereos. Where did you get them?' McCloughlin continued.

Sly looked away. 'No comment.'

McCloughlin nodded, like he'd been expecting that response. 'Your bad-boy mates been telling you how to play it in an interview? Well, I'll tell you something. They came from two Mercedes, both reported as stolen last week. One from a house in Alderley Edge, one from a house in Altrincham. The owners believe the keys were hooked out of their house through the letterbox. Probably by an implement very similar to the one we found in your flat. Nice pad, by the way. Were you left an inheritance? It's just that I can't work out how you could afford it. You being out of work at the moment.'

Sly shot a glance to his solicitor, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. 'No comment,' came the answer again.

'We'll move on,' said McCloughlin with a smile. 'We also found a rather nice art deco lamp in your flat.'

The same uninterested look remained on Sly's face and he blew out a stream of smoke. Jon breathed some of it in, noting that it was weaker after being filtered by the other man's lungs.

'Where did you find that? A car boot sale?' McCloughlin asked.

'No comment.'

McCloughlin nodded. 'Of course. However, the lamp had a postcode written on it with a special pen that fluoresces under UV light. The owner of the lamp is en route to this police station as we speak. But before setting off, she informed us that the person who took it also took her BMW A5, stating that he would kill her if she didn't provide him with the keys.'

The room was silent as McCloughlin and Jon stared at Sly who, apart from jiggling one knee up and down, remained slouched in his seat.

McCloughlin whispered, 'Do you think, Ashley – or should we call you Sly? It suits you – when she hears your voice on this interview tape, she'll remember it as the one from her hallway that night?' Sly kept his eyes on the floor. 'No comment,' he mumbled again.

The sense of calm that had descended on the room was suddenly shattered by Jon slamming his fist on to the table. The solicitor nearly fell off his chair in fright and Sly flinched away.

'Do you think,' Jon roared, 'that saying “no comment” will get you out of this? We haven't even started on the fact we've recovered the same type of chewing gum from your flat and the flats of three murder victims. All had nice flashy cars parked right outside their properties. The type of car, in fact, you like to steal.'

Finally the look of boredom was wiped from Sly's face. Sitting up, he began to say, 'No, no, no, no man. You're not pinning that on me.'

'We'll not be doing any pinning, my friend,' answered Jon. 'I noticed there were some expensive suits in your flat. One was an Armani. Pure wool, pale green colour? Just like some fibres we've lifted from the victims' properties.'

Sly looked at his solicitor again, who just stared back at him like a frightened rabbit.

A knock sounded on the door and an officer poked his head into the room. 'Boss, the lady from Altrincham is here.'

McCloughlin nodded. 'OK, interview suspended at,' he glanced at the clock on the wall, 'seventeen forty-eight. 'He turned the cassette recorder off.

Jon stood up, leaned across the table and brought his face to within butting distance of Sly's nose. Quietly, he said, 'All it takes is for the threads we've picked up from those crime scenes to match your suit and you're going down. High profile case like this? Someone always goes down, and you're our best bet. By a long way.' He then looked at the wide-eyed solicitor. 'Maybe you should explain to your buck-toothed scum of a client here how plenty of people are currently serving life sentences for far less evidence than we've got on him already.'

Anxious to catch up with McCloughlin, Jon stepped quickly out of the interview room. His senior officer was waiting for him, face bright with anger.

'In here,' he said, opening a spare interview room.

Surprised, Jon stepped through the door and heard it shut behind him. 'I can't believe the state of that guy's face,' McCloughlin spat.

'Sir?'

'You started smacking him around in front of members of the public. Half a bloody tooth was left on the steps in the Arndale. What the fuck were you playing at?'

Jon was caught completely by surprise. 'He was resisting arrest, sir, like you said.'

'He was struggling a bit,' McCloughlin corrected him. 'I've got more members of the public complaining about your rough methods than I have agreeing that he was resisting arrest. I just hope that solicitor is as incompetent as he looks.'

McCloughlin rubbed the palms of his hands up and down his cheeks, the skin around his eyes bunching up and stretching out as he did so. He let out a big breath. 'Jon, when I recommended you for promotion, I did so with one reservation in mind. And that's your propensity for getting so obsessed with a case you lose control. It's one thing to dish it out a bit in the cells or the back of a police van, but you never do it in front of the public. They'll start up about human rights quick as a flash, no matter what sort of a pondlife it is. Your aggression must be controlled. And what do you do next? Nearly smash the interview table in half with your fist.'

Jon was silent as McCloughlin looked at his watch. 'Nearly six o'clock. Why don't you call it a day? Go to the gym and blow off some steam. I'll finish the interview in a bit.'

Jon stood, but he couldn't go without saying something. 'I caught him, sir. You can't cut me out of the investigation like this.'

McCloughlin kept his eyes on the wall to Jon's side. 'You'll be back on the case tomorrow, once you've cooled down. In your present state, you're of no use to me.'

Jon slammed the door shut, marched from the building and kept going straight down the road. He walked without purpose, anger blinkering his view. He needed a pub, somewhere dimly lit and deserted where he could sit and drink.

Looking around, he saw a soulless-looking place on the opposite side of the road. He crossed over and went inside. As he started to ask for a pint of bitter, he stopped and said instead, 'A pint of Stella, and a double Talisker, cheers.'

No one else was at the bar, so he took a corner stool, hung his jacket over his knee and rolled up his sleeves. The whisky came first and he rolled the liquid around in his mouth before swallowing it in a single gulp. Immediately he breathed in through his lips, the fiery fumes in his mouth mixing with the air and causing his gums to contract. The barman placed a pint of Stella before him and Jon pushed the whisky tumbler across the bar in return. 'Another double in there. Can you run me a tab?'

'Bad day at the office?'

'You guessed it.' He loosened his tie and picked up the lager, studying the streams of tiny bubbles as they spiralled magically from the bottom of the glass. The first gulp washed away the heat of the Talisker, seeming to return his throat to normal. The second gulp was uncomfortably cold, and by the third and fourth his throat was completely numb.

Later he jammed a cigarette out in the ashtray before him, coins spread across the bar from when he'd changed a tenner for the vending machine. His head was thick with alcohol, his chest tight from smoking. Slowly he rotated his pint through quarter turns, brushing off the condensation clinging to the glass as he did so. He replayed McCloughlin's words in his head again and again:'... your propensity for getting so obsessed with a case you lose control.'

He thought back to their earlier conversation. 'You're not a Mountie, always getting your man.'

Then he thought of the comment Tom had made after they had visited the compound for stolen cars. Something about his role on the rugby pitch being to hunt down and take out members from the opposite team.

Even as he tried to dismiss the comment, the words of the old guy in the blazer at the Cheshire Sevens rang in his mind. 'Saw this man taking apart more than a few players when he ran out for Stockport.'

Spicer the Slicer. That was what they called him at the rugby club.

Jon stared at his knuckles, reasoning that he always played within the rules. And in his role as a police officer, he only used the required level of force. He lit another cigarette and wondered how true that was. Did he get away with using violence in his job just because he was a police officer? What if he had failed the entry exam? Would he still be dealing out his form of justice to whoever crossed his path?

The air in the pub was making his eyes sore. After draining his pint, he tried to catch the barman's attention by waving a finger and watched with confusion as his entire hand flapped to and fro. He settled his bill and stood up, feet wide apart as he shrugged his jacket back on. Out on the street, car lights floated past, leaving trails in the air before him. He started walking, hand out at his side, hoping for a cab. But the thrill of catching Sly couldn't be ignored, and neither could the burst of sheer pleasure he felt when his fist connected with the man's head.

Finally he faced up to the thought he'd been hiding from all night. He'd wanted to carry on at that point. The man's hair was grasped in both of his hands and it was only Nikki crying out that had stopped him from...

He stumbled into a doorway and fumbled for his phone, needing contact with someone not connected with violence.

'Hi there,' he said, confident he'd got the words out clearly.

'Bloody hell, how many have you had?' Alice replied.

'A few. I mean, a few too many,' he corrected himself.

'Where are you?'

Unsure, Jon looked around. 'Near the nick.'

'You sound tired as well as pissed.'

'I feel like shit, but I think we're close to cracking it.'

'I hope so. It's in all the news, Jon. It sounds horrible.'

Jon's head hung a bit lower. 'Don't believe all the details, Ali. Half of it's made up.'

'Is it true they were all posing for nude photographs? The paper said one victim had got an advert in some seedy contact magazine.'

Jon couldn't believe how details like that got out; some bastard on the investigation had sold that snippet of information for the price of a family holiday. Now the families of all the victims were suffering.

'No. We think one of them was. Anyway, how are you?'

'So so,' Alice answered. 'To be honest, I can't get away from the case. It's all everyone wants to talk about – the salon, my tae kwon do class, everywhere I go.'

'Well, let's hope something more worthwhile crops up and takes the pressure off.'

'You're right,' said Alice. 'Oh, I forgot to ask. What happened at Tom's office? Did you speak to that guy who works late?'

Jon closed his eyes, 'No, it was shut. Boarded up like it had gone out of business.'

'So he has lost his job.'

He couldn't face getting in to the Tom thing again. 'Not necessarily. Who knows what happened? Listen Ali, I'm sure everything is fine with Tom. In fact, I bet I'll get a postcard from him one of these days. It'll say he's got his cafe in Cornwall and he's given up on phones, mobiles and e-mail.'