Nick's Blues (11 page)

“Hundreds and thousands.”

“Ketchup.”

“Tomato sauce.”

Nick reached for the joint. “You think it could be true?” he said. “Melanie being pregnant?”

“Who knows?” Christopher said.

“Who cares?” said Scott.

Nick took another hit. When he closed his eyes he could still see Melanie's face as she turned away, swollen and sore.

***

“You sure about this, Steve?”

“Just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

“Doin' it ourselves, I mean.”

“What you scared of?”

“I'm not scared.“

“Then shut up.”

“I just thought we should tell, Ross, that's all.”

“What'cha wanna tell Ross for?”

“You know.”

“No, I don't know. Now shut it.”

They were shadowed by the overhang of the railway arch, Steve Rawlings and the three that hung with him most: Josh, Casper and Harry. Cans of cheap lager and the glow of cigarettes in the dark. Rawlings feeling sharp in his new D & G Basics top, the one with the blue and green stripes around the neck, the green stripe on the sleeve.

Not so many people used the cut-through now, not after the hoo-hah about muggings in the local press, but there were still a few. Suits late back from the City, men who'd stopped off for a drink or two or spent an hour in the gym, working out. Women too.

“Here,” Casper hissed. “How 'bout this one now?”

The click of heels fast along the paving slabs. Someone hurrying home after a busy day, looking forward to a gin and tonic and a warm bath.

“Yeah,” Rawlings said. “Tasty. She'll do.”

He waited until she was almost level before stepping clear.

“Excuse me, miss.”

The woman gasped, startled. Brown hair, expensively cut; pale grey suit, leather bag over one shoulder, laptop in its case in her left hand.

“Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you.”

“No, it's not that.”

“You haven't got a light?”

“Yes, I think so…”

Hearing a movement behind her, she turned, and darting forward Josh seized the strap of her shoulder bag and pulled it from her arm; a moment later, Harry barged into her back and Casper grabbed the laptop and wrenched it free.

Still in front of her, Rawlings reached towards the gold chain at her neck and she seized his arm with both hands.

“Leggo, you stupid bitch!”

Digging her nails into the flesh of his arm, bare above the wrist, she kicked him hard in the shins.

“Steve! Come on, come on!”

While Steve hesitated, Josh and Casper had already broken into a run.

The woman started to scream and the knife came out of Rawlings' pocket as if with a will of its own, thumb flicking the blade free as it swung past her face and sank into her arm. As the metal sliced through wool and silk and skin the scream changed pitch, accelerating with fear and pain.

Rawlings tore himself away, pushing her as she stumbled back, fingers fastening round the chain and pulling it hard enough to break the clasp.

“Bitch!” he said once more and spat down into her face, before legging it away. Stupid bitch, grabbing at him like that, serve her right.

Jackie Ferris had been anticipating a relatively easy day: a meeting with representatives of the local traders' group at ten, lunch with an old colleague who'd retired to the Isle of Wight, a session with the planning committee at three. Relax and leave the hard policing to the troops.

No way.

Before nine she was standing in the superintendent's office, smarting as he outlined the extent of her inadequacies. Arrest rates were a joke. Home Office targets relating to street crime were in jeopardy. There was talk about no-go areas in the press and on the local news. Public confidence was in danger of being irrevocably lost.

The superintendent's tirade was a colourful mixture of foul language and management jargon which left little room for doubt: if things didn't improve and fast, if arrests weren't made and the current spate of robberies stopped — if, in short, the detective inspector and her team didn't get some results and fast — she would spend the rest of her career sharpening pencils and helping old biddies across the road.

“Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because I've already had the Deputy Assistant Commissioner on the phone this morning, offering to hang my balls out to dry.”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“And before that happens to me, I'll make good and sure something similar happens to you, by means of whatever appendage is convenient. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Now get out of here and get it sorted.”

***

The name of the woman who had been attacked and robbed was Victoria Coleman. Despite her injuries, she had managed to get back on to the main road and wave down a passing car; the driver had called 999 on his mobile and instead of driving her to Accident and Emergency himself, he'd elected to wait with her for the ambulance. Possibly he was worried about the blood on his upholstery.

At the Royal Free, she'd been treated for wounds and shock and kept in overnight. Jackie Ferris's first priority was to check how the incident had been dealt with.

The control room — computer-aided-despatch room, to give it it's proper title — was on the first floor and when Ferris entered there were three civilian staff, headsets in place, busily answering calls while Magic 105.4 played gently in the background.

A man was prancing naked around the tennis courts on Parliament Hill Fields and refusing either to cover up or leave; a shoplifter had been detained in Somerfield's, two bunches of bananas, one free-range chicken and a large mango and vanilla organic yoghurt about her person — obviously a shoplifter concerned with her bodily well-being — and a lorry-mounted crane had been in collision with an ambulance at the corner of York Rise and Chetwynd Road, blocking traffic in all four directions.

“E, S and I,” announced Jeff Parks, the officer in charge. “In that order.”

Ferris knew these were ways of prioritising calls. I stood for Immediate, S for Soon and E for Extended. An I-grade call should be dealt with inside twelve minutes, an S grade in an hour. At that rate the man on the tennis courts would be entertaining pre-school kids and their au-pairs for some time to come.

“Jackie,” Jeff Parks said. “How's it going?”

When she had transferred to the station as a uniform sergeant some years before, Parks had been her supervising officer. Now, with a gammy leg and a photograph of his first grandchild in his back pocket, he ran the control room.

“Been better,” Ferris said.

“Last night? Aggravated burglary?”

“Yes.”

Parks brought up the information on his computer.

“Call came in at 21.17, designated Immediate. It was assigned five minutes later, PCs Lamont and Handley, they'd been dealing with a disturbance at Prince of Wales Road, outside Pizza Express. Arrived at the scene 21.26. Approximately five minutes ahead of the ambulance.” Parks smiled. “Well inside the target.”

Ferris nodded. Three minutes inside. “Okay, Jeff,” she said. “Thanks, keep up the good work.”

As she left the radio was playing Joan Armatrading: ‘Love and Affection'.

***

Adam Lamont was young, keen, armed with a degree in Social Politics from London Metropolitan University; Diane Handley was older and more streetwise, for all that she had left school at sixteen with three grade Cs and a D. Which one, Jackie Ferris wondered, was going to make it up the ladder first? She caught up with them in the canteen, about to begin their first shift.

“Tea, ma'am?” Lamont asked, half out of his seat as he saw her approach. “Coffee?”

“Neither, thanks.”

Lamont sat back down.

“Last night,” Ferris said, “Victoria Coleman, you took the call.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Lamont said. “Laptop stolen, credit cards, mobile phone, close to a hundred and twenty pounds in cash — she'd stopped off at the cash point on her way from the station — and a gold chain from round her neck.”

“She had a nasty cut on her arm,” Handley said. “Obviously pretty shaken up.”

“You got a chance to talk to her?”

“I rode with her in the ambulance,” Handley said. “Thought it might be a good time. She says there were three attacked her for certain, maybe four. She thinks they'd been hiding under the railway bridge, waiting. One of them stopped her to ask for a light and the others jumped her from behind.”

“What on earth was she doing walking that way alone anyway?”

“Short cut home, ma'am. Maisonette on Croftdown Road.”

Jackie Ferris shook her head. “Descriptions?”

“The one who spoke to her, yes. Young, she says. Fifteen, sixteen. Five-seven or eight. Jeans, lightish coloured long-sleeved top. Woollen hat on his head, dark, pulled down towards his eyes.”

“Race?”

“White.”

“Could be half a hundred kids. Anything on the others?”

“Not really, no. She didn't get a good look at any of them.”

“But the one she saw, he was the one that stabbed her?”

“Yes.”

“After the ambulance had left, I searched the immediate area,” Lamont said. “No sign of a weapon.”

“Okay. Good work,” Ferris said. She was back on her feet. She needed to get her team out and about, asking questions, calling in favours, knocking on doors. And she had to call the hospital and find out if Victoria Coleman had been released.

***

The first thing Jackie Ferris noticed, almost everything in the room was grey or white — the covers on the chairs, the rug, the paint upon the walls. Victoria Coleman had only let the inspector in after scrutinizing her warrant card through the fish eye peephole in the door. Her skin seemed unnaturally pale and her right arm was in a sling.

“If you want coffee,” she said, “you'd best give me a hand. Otherwise it's likely to end up on the floor.”

They sat in the bay-fronted window, trees in leaf in the street outside.

“I hope you haven't come to tell me how stupid I was.”

Ferris shook her head.

“You never think it's going to happen to you.”

The inspector didn't know if that were true. Lots of people, older ones especially, were too frightened to venture out after six at night. Victoria Coleman wasn't one of those. She was young, bright, well-dressed and well-paid and worked out in the gym three times a week.

“My friends tell me, carry an alarm, get some — what is it? — mace.”

“Do you think they would have helped?”

“Probably not.”

“I know you gave a description to the officers at the scene, I wonder if you'd mind going through it again?”

The inspector listened carefully but learned nothing new. “The youth who attacked you, do you think you'd recognise him again?”

The reply was slow in coming. “I want to say yes, of course I do. I lay half the night in that hospital bed, trying to picture him in my mind. You know, get it clear. Exactly what he looked like. But, in truth, I'm not sure I can.” She lowered her eyes. “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay,” Jackie Ferris said, disappointed.

“There is one thing…”

“Yes.”

“Before they ran off, I think one of them used a name. Steve. 'Steve, come on,' that's what he said.”

Nick took the guitar out of its case and sat on the edge of the bed, the instrument resting on his knee. Left hand holding the neck, he pressed the thumb of his right hand uncertainly against the top string. Pulled and released, the sound flat and unsatisfying. He tried again, the first then all the other strings, six in all. Bass to treble, low to high. Slow then fast, fast and then slow. When he tried simultaneously pressing his fingertips down on the strings higher up, it altered the sound, not necessarily for the better.

Truth was, he didn't have a clue what he was doing, not a clue.

“Hey, Django,” came his mother's voice from the hall, “how about some breakfast?”

Nick could smell toast and surely that wasn't bacon? He gave the guitar a final strum before laying it aside.

“How come you're not at work?” he asked, entering the kitchen.

Wearing track pants and a grey cotton top, hair pulled back, Dawn was breaking eggs into a bowl. “They asked me if I'd switch shifts, just the next few days.” Balancing the egg shells in the palm of one hand, she dumped them in the bin beneath the sink. “It means I could come with you when you have your stitches out.”

“They asked you to switch, or you asked them?”

“Don't you want me to come with you?”

“Not specially.”

Dawn pushed a loose hair away from her face, one that had slipped free. “Scrambled eggs okay? Bacon?”

“Somebody's birthday, is it?”

“Don't be so cheeky.” She added a splash of milk and continued beating the eggs with a fork. “Your dad used to say I made the best scrambled eggs he'd ever had.”

“He would, wouldn't he?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Charlie said he could charm the birds down out of the trees if he wanted.”

“Charlie said.”

“Yes.”

“She should know.”

“Meaning?”

“It doesn't matter.”

Pulling out the grill pan, Dawn licked her fingers and quickly turned the bacon, then turned up the heat under the saucepan.

“Butter that toast for me, will you?”

She emptied the egg mixture into the melting butter and began to stir it round.

“She should know,” Nick repeated. “What did you mean?”

“It doesn't matter, I said.”

“Were they… you know, my dad and Charlie?”

“It's all a long time ago.”

“But were they?”