The Dying Place (22 page)

Maybe he’d just been harder than Goldie. More aware of himself. Goldie shook the thought away. The lad was thick as shit. Goldie knew there was only one way out of there, and that was to do as he was told. To hope against hope that he’d change enough for them to let him go. They’d always been careful – balaclavas over their faces the whole time. Full uniform to cover themselves. He knew one of them was a woman, but that wouldn’t matter. The only time the lads saw them together was when three of them came to remove them from the room. One of them would have done the job just as well, considering they came tooled-up. A sawn-off shotgun in one hand, handcuffs thrown at them to bind themselves.

None of the lads were harder than a sawn-off shotgun.

Goldie had asked the man called Alpha repeatedly, endlessly, why he’d been taken. One time he’d actually given an answer other than
you deserve it.

‘Ever hear about National Service?’

‘No … what’s that?’

‘Every lad used to have to do it. You’d reach seventeen and have to do eighteen months of military service. Didn’t do it myself – bit before my time – but it worked. Gave people a sense of respect, of worthiness. Stopped being mandatory in 1960. No sign of it being brought back, so we’re doing the next best thing.’

Goldie had received his worst beating since being in there for laughing in response. He hadn’t meant to, sticking to his idea of keeping his head down and getting on with it, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.

It was bollocks. This was far from National Service or whatever the fuck they wanted to call it.

This was torture.

The Norris Green lad being killed showed he was right to laugh back then. Because he’d got it spot on. There was no plan to set them free. Make them better. He no longer believed the lies. He no longer believed one lad had already been let go. He knew the truth now. Torture and death. Goldie had never been more sure of anything in his life. That lad was gone.

Two lads dead. And he wasn’t getting out of there any different than them.

Things were happening though. He’d heard arguments. Raised voices outside, drifting into the barn as the wind swirled around the place at night.

All wasn’t well.

Maybe he had a chance after all.

19

Rossi squinted into the sun as she watched Murphy walk away towards town and his lunch with Jess. The thought of the office canteen being the only thing on offer turned her stomach. She had to eat though, had to keep her strength up in the face of the seemingly endless days and nights on the horizon.

Not for the first time, she wondered how she’d got herself into this mess of a career.

She grabbed a sandwich and some fruit from the canteen on her way back up to the office, pausing to add two energy drinks from the vending machine outside the incident room. A balanced diet. Not for the first time that week, she thought of going to her parents’ house for a proper meal. Proper food.

Pushing her way into the incident room, she stuck her head down, hoping to make her way to the poky little office at the back without being stopped. There wasn’t much noise around her, everyone ostensibly getting their heads down and working hard. Others out there knocking on doors. Working their own cases. They covered such a vast area that a murder enquiry didn’t really take as high a profile as it would have in the past. Especially the murder of someone young with a troubled record.

Rossi guessed she should feel sad or disappointed by the fact a gang of idiots driving into cash machines and robbing them should take a higher priority than a teenager’s murder, but she knew the score now. Back when she’d first started – fresh out of uni with a sociology degree and a Marx-sized chip on her shoulder – she’d felt different. Fast-tracked within a few years into CID, the hope was to change the system from within. Three years on, all those thoughts of fighting against the system had gone. Now she was deeply embedded within it. Making excuses, justifying her decisions.

Rossi made it all the way across without interruption. She opened the office door, cringing at the sound of the creak in the hinges, just as every other time. For once, it was empty. No DC Harris. No Murphy opposite her. No Tony Brannon leering at her.

Bliss.

She sat down at her desk, removing her notepad and flipping over to a blank page. Opened the sandwich and ate with one hand, the other making notes.

If Murphy was going to bugger off for God knows how long in the middle of the day, it didn’t mean she had to slack off as well.

She liked the process of making notes. Looking for something they’d missed, some hidden gem amongst the dirt.

So far, it had never happened, but there was always a first time. As her papa would say,
Chi non risica, non rosica.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Rossi plotted out what they’d learnt so far. The information didn’t exactly fill her notebook. The next step was logical. Find the man from the youth club.

She finished her sandwich and switched on her computer and waited less than a minute for it to boot up.

Dragging her mouse across, Rossi clicked on the database which would hopefully give her more information about Alan Bimpson. It would be difficult. They had a name and a rough age, but that was about it.

She searched for his name first, getting results from all around the country before narrowing her search to Merseyside. Three results. Unfortunately, it was three that could be disregarded instantly as being either too old – eighty-one and seventy-eight – or too young. Three years old. Rossi shook her head, thinking of a child called Alan.

Now that was evil.

Rossi turned to property records instead, finding two more matches. One thirty-two-year-old, which would be a little younger than they’d been told was the case but could be the guy. The other, fifty-two years old, born 1962. Last known address in Litherland, Quartz Way, which was on one of those new-build housing estates near Moss Lane, if Rossi was remembering right. Not bad, but nothing special – especially for a property developer, if Kevin Thornhill from the youth club was to be believed.

The door opened behind her, Rossi rolling her eyes at the break in her peace and quiet. She turned and raised a hand in greeting as DC Harris shuffled his way in to sit down at what was rapidly becoming his own desk. There’d been such a high turnover of different constables over the previous months that she’d given up even trying to build something resembling a good working relationship with any of them. Graham Harris seemed to be the exception, and had ingratiated himself into the dynamic Murphy and Rossi had created. He was quiet enough for it not to be a problem.

Didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eye.

‘Anything to report?’ she said, swivelling her chair around to face him.

‘Nothing useful. Gave up on the phone call. Couldn’t make out anything really. Started ringing the number every half an hour instead.’

‘Well … you never know. Suppose it can’t hurt. My guess is that he’s switched it off and thrown it by now.’

Harris shrugged, turning back around and dialling the number on his phone. Rossi watched as he dialled from memory before turning back to her screen, focussing on the latter Alan Bimpson.

Checking the land registry records was a first step. See if Mr Bimpson owned any farms maybe. Google his name, see if anything jumped out.

She went over her notes again. The narrative had been so different until the mysterious Ian had phoned the previous day. Yes, he’d known things about the way in which Dean Hughes had died. Details which hadn’t been released. But the story he told seemed too fantastical. Five murderers. A strange farm where they were holding teenagers … it was all starting to sound ridiculous.

Then she thought of the events the previous year and realised that people resided in Liverpool, her city, who weren’t the normal, everyday sort of killers; not the domestics, the druggies, the violent thugs who got unlucky with a single punch in town.

No, last year a serial killer had hit at the heart of the city and brought out the darkness which lay within … almost taking the life of her absent detective inspector.

‘How long are land registry taking at the moment?’ Rossi said, startling the detective constable from his staring competition with the wall.

‘Not sure. Few hours, a day. Depends who’s asking, usually.’

‘I bet we could hurry that along.’

Harris turned his chair towards her. ‘I’ve just been using Google. Takes less time and tends to give you the same info.’

Rossi nodded, ‘Good thinking.’ She switched to the search engine and typed in Alan Bimpson’s name.

Thirty-odd thousand results.

She added more details to try and narrow down the results. She heard the dial tone from Harris’s phone and the dialling of a number, but tried to ignore it. Read the top results and clicked on a few. A couple of newspaper articles which mentioned the local businessman and his donation to the local youth club, buried amongst much bigger articles about Kevin Thornhill and his hope to create a place for disenfranchised youths.

Rossi returned to the list of results, ignoring the youth club articles and attempting to find something else.

She found what she was looking for, just as a voice echoed around the office which didn’t belong to either her or DC Harris.

The Farm

Yesterday

It had felt like things were going back to normal. The little lessons had started again. The food being delivered wasn’t an afterthought. They still looked like they were on edge when they came in to deal with them, but was bearable. The lads had begun to calm down, getting used to life in the Dorm again.

Goldie’s patience had almost gone. Definitely with the lad from Toxteth. Introduced himself constantly as ‘Holty’, like in the third person or whatever. Not Tyler, as he had at the start, now it was all ‘Holty’, like they was mates or something.

Non-stop talking.
Holty reckons this is bollocks
or
I won’t be doing any pervy shit, Holty doesn’t do shite like that for anyone
. Goldie would just roll his eyes and – when he felt like a laugh – pretend to go for him. Just to watch him flinch back like a little rat.

The noise had started an hour before the other lads had begun to take notice. Goldie had sat up in the bed as soon as he’d heard the first voice. He knew the difference in the way the sounds from the voices carried over. He’d heard them shouting before, but this time it had been different. The low voices building over time. The occasional loud shout which emphasised a word or parts of sentences.

No … Can’t do this … Not why … Don’t get it … Listen … No …

The four lads crowded around the door eventually, straining to hear more, pushing and shoving each other. While the wood was solid, there were small gaps which let in some noise. None big enough to prise open though; Goldie had spent hours scrabbling around the edges trying to force it open, to no avail.

Still, you could hear them out there sometimes. Trampling around outside, watching them, perhaps. Not that Goldie knew for sure, there being no windows in the Dorm.

He shushed the others as he strained to hear more. The noise – argument, he now realised – had grown louder. Now they could hear whole sentences being blared out. From inside the farm.

‘They’re going mad. What they did to Dean is sending them bonkers,’ Tyler said.

‘Shut it and listen.’

‘Holty was just saying, lad. No need.’

Goldie turned and looked at him, getting what he wanted as Tyler averted his eyes.

‘This is our chance,’ Goldie said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. ‘We all have to be on the same side here, understand?’

The other lads just looked towards him, their expressions blank.

‘Listen. This is what we’re going to do …’

Gamma had started it. All of them together for the first time in days, wanting to air her
grievances
, as she’d put it. Like she would know what that word fucking meant, the daft bitch. Alpha knew who had put her up to it. Fucking Delta and his word-of-the-day bog roll. The wanker. Her husband, Tango, would go along with anything she said. Under the fucking thumb.

‘We need to do something. I can’t go on like this,’ she’d said eventually, when they’d all settled down around the table. ‘I can’t get his face out of my head. It’s always there, just needling me. Those little shits in there aren’t helping either. I want out. I can’t deal with all this any more.’

Alpha had tried to calm her down, but it hadn’t been working. Not with everyone else suddenly piping up. If they’d just let him get on with things, everything would have been fine. It had gone downhill from there though. All of them getting on their high horses.

‘I don’t remember any of you saying any of this last Thursday,’ Alpha said.

‘Well, we were all in shock I suppose,’ Tango said, fiddling with a lighter as he spoke. ‘We kind of knew things like that could have happened, but when it’s in front of you like that … it’s different. I’m sure you felt the same.’

Alpha had slammed his fist on the table then, causing the others around it to flinch. ‘No I fucking didn’t. The kid wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t learn. You all know that. He was given enough chances. He had to be dealt with.’

‘He wasn’t an animal, Alan,’ Gamma said then, making Alpha sit back as she used his real name.

‘I haven’t been sleeping since it happened,’ a small voice cut in. Omega, speaking for the first time. ‘I know I said it was for the best, but it doesn’t help. I keep praying, but it’s no use. I keep seeing him, lying there …’

‘You’ve … you’ve got to put that out of your head,’ Alpha replied, brushing his hair back with his fingers. ‘Remember what I said? Remember what the Bible says? What happened was unavoidable. They know the rules. We’re making them better.’

‘Would the auld fella agree, do you think?’ Gamma said again, not letting it rest.

‘He knew the score. This whole thing was his idea, remember.’

‘That’s what you say.’ Gamma was on her feet by now, pointing at Alpha. ‘But we’ve only got your word that he planned for this. Maybe he never wanted us to go this far. How do we know?’