Bones in the Nest (24 page)

Chloe’s been running since she got off the bus. The grass of the rec is a relief, softer under her feet. She thinks she saw the car as she crossed the road by the shops, but she’s still ahead. There are police cars at Eagle Mount Two. Jay’s block. Where his brother watched from the window and saw him wave. Not now. She doesn’t want to think about that now. She must push it down, keep it back. That was then and this is now. She crosses the top road and throws open the front door of Eagle Mount Four.

In the sun-filled lobby, ten years vanish. The smells and the colours, the sounds – distant voices, doors closing, resonating along concrete floors and metal pipes – are all exactly as they were. She’s back. Marilyn Nelson, Linnie, her Jay calls her. They’re back here together and this time she’s going to get it right.

The lift is out of order. By the time she’s half-walked, half-run to the top, her legs are shaking. She pulls herself up through the service hatch. On the roof her footsteps sound
unnaturally loud, slapping down on the asphalt where it’s bubbled and blistered. She stops at the edge, watching over the town. She remembers how her fingers brushed his sleeve and the brittle edges of her chewed nails caught the wool of his old army trench coat. She wished she’d worn something warmer. She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and stood close, so that his body sheltered hers. Traffic and children’s voices floated up to meet them.

She wanted to know if he was afraid, but his hair whipped round his face and she couldn’t see his eyes. At the corner of the railing a crow perched, watching them, feathers ruffled by the wind. She want to say a prayer, but she didn’t know any, just fragments remembered from primary school and nothing about being ready to die. She squeezed his elbow and they stepped up onto the wall. He raised his arm and waved to someone below. Then her hand was empty, reaching into nothing. He was meant to hold her hand, but he let go. The crow took off, hovered for a moment in the updraught; staring back at her with hard, shining eyes.

‘Linnie.’

His voice is behind her. She turns and sees he’s cut his hair short. He’s put on weight. There are spots behind her eyes again, the image blurs and her mouth fills with saliva.

‘Fuck you. You little bitch. I’ve got you now.’ Blue eyes, red-rimmed, he’s crossing the roof towards her. ‘And I’m going to make you suffer.’

That was then. This is now. It’s not Jay.

‘Hello, Terry.’

She leans back against the railing. Above her the sky is blue and cloudless.

‘You can’t catch me, Terry,’ she lets her weight take her, feels her chest open and throws her arms wide. ‘And who’s going to believe you didn’t push me over?’

‘Don’t you fucking dare!’

‘You killed him, Terry, with what you did to him. Made him hate himself enough to want to die.’

‘Oi!’ Another voice and footsteps across the roof, boots slapping down on the asphalt, but it’s all too slow, she’s falling back.

‘I’ve got him,’ a voice she knows, dark eyes and a black beard. ‘Sean! Catch her!’

A scuff of sound, muffled, and the hard bar of the railing against her shoulder blades. Her head snaps back and it’s all sky.

Sean dived for her legs, his fingers closing round the bones of her ankles as he fell face down on the sandpaper surface of the roof. He thought he’d lost her, the weight of her upper body carrying her over the rusting, broken rail, but at the last moment she tipped forward and slumped down next to him. She looked unconscious.

From a few feet away he could hear Khan giving Terry Starkey the standard warning, like a chant at a church service.

‘Anything you do say may be used in evidence …’

Sean was breathing heavily, his fingers feeling for a pulse in her neck.

‘Look at me, Chloe,’ Sean said. ‘Chloe? Marilyn? Open your eyes and look at me.’

Her eyes flickered.

‘Hello, Terry. I knew you’d come.’

‘What’s that?’ Sean leant in closer. ‘Terry’s not going to hurt you now.’

‘Jay made me promise,’ she said. ‘He made me promise not to tell anyone what you were doing to him. What you’d been doing to him for years, from before he even knew the words for it.’

Her voice was so quiet, Sean had to strain to listen, as the words tumbled out.

‘Until he couldn’t live with himself. Until he wanted to fly away and I promised I’d fly away with him, but he let go, Terry, he left me, and I couldn’t do it on my own. You want me dead. Go on, let me go.’

‘Terry’s not going to hurt you now. You’re safe.’ His hand was still on her neck, the pulse pushing softly against his fingertips. ‘My name’s Police Constable Denton, but you can call me Sean.’

Khan was cuffing Starkey, face down on the ground. Sean couldn’t believe the girl had mistaken him for Terry Starkey; she was delirious and wasn’t focusing. It didn’t mean a thing. When Starkey turned his head, Sean searched his features for any evidence that he and Terry could be related and that his dad wasn’t making stuff up. Terry definitely looked like the boy in Bernadette Armley’s photo frame, the one who really was his half-brother, James, or Jay, the girl called him. Sean tried to understand what she’d just said about Terry and his younger brother, and it made him feel sick. He stroked her cheek and she opened her eyes as he reached for his radio. He called for an ambulance.

‘And can you radio a couple of officers to come up for a suspect under arrest?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Khan said, ‘I’ll be very happy to give our
lads a hand with Mr Starkey. In the middle of his back, in case he needs a bit of a push.’

‘Fuck off, copper. You can’t threaten me.’

‘Did anyone hear any threats?’ Khan twisted the cuffs hard.

‘Didn’t hear a thing, sir,’ Sean said. ‘Only a crow making a racket up there on the satellite dish.’

Gavin Wentworth appeared at Sean’s elbow as he queued in the canteen.

‘Hi, Gav, sorry I lost you. I got pulled onto a job with Khan.’

‘So I heard. You really must stop hanging around on the tops of tower blocks.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Sean reached for a plate of hot food and asked for extra peas. It was about time he started eating more healthily.

‘At least you had your clothes on this time. Can I join you?’

‘Sure, I’m over there with Carly.’

Sean sat down and tucked into his food. Carly was looking at him with a big grin and eventually he asked her what she was looking so pleased about.

‘You, you daft bugger. I turn my back for five minutes and the next thing I know you’re trying for a gallantry medal.’

He shook his head. ‘Doubt it. Just there at the right time and lucky, I suppose.’

She took a breath, as if she was about to sing.

‘Don’t!’ He waved his fork at her, complete with a pea that threatened to fly off. ‘Please! Not the song.’

‘What song’s that?’ Gav put his tray down and sat next to Carly. ‘We need to sort out a new playlist for when, and if, we ever get this lad back on a normal shift.’

‘Make sure it’s got a bit of Kylie Minogue on,’ Carly said. ‘He loves that.’

Sean had his mouth too full of food to argue. Eventually he managed to speak.

‘Sorry if I’m being antisocial, but I need to eat this and get upstairs. Khan’s got Terry Starkey in interview room two with Rick, and Dawn’s got Kamran Ahmed, the victim’s brother, in room three. He wants me up there as an extra pair of hands.’

‘Dawn? First name terms, is it now?’ Gav said. ‘Thought you couldn’t stick her.’

‘Can’t,’ he said through a mouth full of mashed potato, ‘but I’ve still got to work with her.’

He cleared his plate and got up to go. Gavin leant over to Carly and Sean could hear him clearly as he walked away.

‘I’m going to be looking for a new partner, if you ask me, this temporary secondment business has the whiff of something more permanent.’

Sean wasn’t so sure. He would miss Gavin’s terrible sense of humour for a start and all this excitement was starting to give him indigestion. Once he got upstairs, he was told to sit in on each interview alternately, to allow Khan to swap between the two. Rick Houghton was in the room with Starkey when he got there.

‘For the benefit of the recording, PC Denton has entered the room and DCI Khan has left,’ Rick said.

Rick was showing Starkey the photos from the crowd outside the burning shop and asking about Gary MacDonald.

‘He was in HMP Lindholme with you, towards the end of your sentence.’

‘If you say so.’

Terry refused to make eye contact.

‘I do say so. The prison has confirmed you worked in the gardens on the same team.’

Terry shrugged. ‘So, that’s not a crime, is it?’

‘What was he doing in Chasebridge? He’s from over Stockport way, isn’t he?’

‘Helping out. Volunteering.’

‘Helping you, Terry? In a number of different schemes?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘We have information that Gary was supplying class B drugs,’ Rick said, ‘via the snooker hall.’

It was Sean’s turn to look away. He didn’t want to catch Terry’s eye.

‘What did you have against Mohammad Asaf?’ Rick persisted. ‘Was he on your patch?’

Terry shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

‘Or was it a commercial job?’ Rick continued in a level tone. ‘Cash on delivery? Whose idea was the half-hearted attempt at castration? Would you get paid more if you could deliver the goods, so to speak?’

‘Fuck off. I’m not a fucking pervert!’ Terry slammed his fist on the table.

Sean looked at him. Up on the roof of Eagle Mount Four, Chloe had spoken so quietly Starkey couldn’t have heard her, but she what she said was pretty clear to Sean.

‘Who’s saying you are, Terry?’ Sean said. ‘That’s a nasty thing to say about anyone and I’m sure DI Houghton didn’t mean to offend you.’

Terry nodded, hooked by Sean’s sympathy, but Sean hadn’t finished.

‘The thing is though, how would it look if we had intelligence about abuse, historic abuse, perpetrated by yourself?’

The colour drained from Terry’s face. He wasn’t the hard man any more.

‘Sean, bro, what are you saying?’

‘Call me PC Denton, please. I’m saying if you had a sexual offence added to your record, it would make your next stay inside very uncomfortable, wouldn’t it?’

Rick waited for Sean to finish.

‘Excuse us a minute, Mr Starkey.’ Rick nodded to Sean to step outside. ‘DI Houghton and PC Denton are leaving the room and I am pausing the recording.’

Out in the corridor Rick faced Sean. ‘What was that about?’

‘I was just pointing something out,’ he said. ‘Chloe, or Marilyn, said he’d been abusing Jay, his half-brother, for years. Jay was suicidal. I’m sure we could get her to testify.’

‘Slow down, mate. Get him rattled, that’s fine. But keep it under your hat for now.’

‘But he is a fucking pervert!’

‘Calm down, Sean,’ Rick gripped his shoulder. ‘Listen. If
it is true, and if there’s a chance of the girl having a retrial, don’t waste it here.’

‘Have you got enough to charge him with Asaf’s murder?’ Sean said.

‘Not yet, but we’ve got time,’ Rick said. ‘And Sean, I don’t like him being so pally with you.’

Neither do I
, Sean thought to himself,
neither do I
. A door opened along the corridor and Khan put his head out.

‘Sean? I want you in here for a minute, I’ll do a swap.’

As they passed in the corridor, Khan muttered to him: ‘If I have to spend another minute in that room with that sanctimonious little shite, I might ring his neck.’

‘I’m not sure what that word means, sir, but I think I feel the same about Starkey.’

He was opening the door when Sandy Schofield came bustling down the corridor.

‘You got a Kamran Ahmed in there?’

Sean nodded.

‘This message just came. You may want to pass it on yourself.’

‘Thanks.’

She handed it over and disappeared back up the corridor.

In the second interview room, the smell of expensive cologne hit Sean immediately. Kamran Ahmed was wearing designer threads to match the fragrance. If they were genuine, Sean totted up at least six hundred quid, from shoes to collar.

‘As I said to your colleague,’ Kamran said, with a polite nod, ‘I really have nothing to say until my solicitor gets here.’

‘That would be your father’s solicitor?’ DS Simkins said, looking at her notes. ‘A Mr Sadiq?’

‘Yeah, that’s him.’

‘DS Simkins?’ Sean cleared his throat. ‘There’s a message.’

He handed the piece of paper to Dawn Simkins and as she read it, another rare smile forced her mouth up at the corners.

‘It says here that Mr Sadiq is unable to act on your behalf in this instance.’ She and Sean both watched as Kamran’s soft bottom lip hung open. ‘The message is from your father,’ Simkins continued. ‘He’s sorry, but that’s all he says. For the tape, I’m handing the message to Mr Ahmed to read for himself. Would you like us to contact the duty solicitor?’

Kamran Ahmed shook his head. He sat in silence for a moment and when he spoke, his voice was controlled.

‘I can look after myself. This is all a mistake. It’s Terry Starkey you should be talking to, not me. Starkey is a known criminal. This has nothing to do with me.’

‘But you know him?’

‘I’ve … I’ve met him.’

‘So do you know him well?’ DS Simkins said. ‘Are you friends?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So why is he driving your car?’

‘I’ve no idea. He must have stolen it.’

Kamran rested his hands on the table. His calmness was almost soothing, but the veins on the backs of his hands stood up.

‘And you’ve reported it stolen, have you?’

‘I haven’t got round to it.’

Sean saw now why she was called ‘the Rottweiler’. Her interview technique was persistent, she wasn’t letting go.
Like Rick, she was playing as if they had all the time in the world. He could have sat for hours watching, but the door opened and Khan came back in.

‘Denton? Can you sort out the tea run for DI Houghton and then come back here and do the same? It may be a long night.’

‘DCI Khan has entered the interview room and PC Denton has left.’

He was back to being the tea boy, just when it was getting interesting. Sean sighed. He knew this could go on for a long while, but wished he could be there when Starkey broke. He knocked on the door of the first room and asked Rick what he and his interviewee wanted to drink. Starkey asked for tea with two sugars, if it wasn’t too much bother. Sean thought he’d have to resist the urge to spit in it, but he kept his face set to neutral.

When he brought the drinks back, Rick was asking Starkey about gardening tools.

‘If we found a knife a bit like this one, whose prints do you think we’d find on it?’

‘No idea.’

‘No idea, or nobody’s prints?’

Starkey shrugged.

‘No comment.’

‘What would we find, Terry? Come on, we know you’re familiar with the tool shed at Halsworth Grange, about what came in and out of it. We know that Taheera Ahmed was killed with a knife that had never been used for gardening. Are you sure you didn’t help yourself to a fresh delivery when it arrived from the Garden Centre?’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’ Terry shouted. ‘I didn’t do the girl and you can’t say I did.’

There was a moment when no one spoke.

‘Who did you “do”, Terry? The young man, Mohammad?’ Rick said. ‘Or did you do the neat little warning cut on his younger cousin, Saleem? If not the girl, then who? They were all neat, sharp jobs, the work of someone who knows what he’s doing with a knife. Is that you, Terry? Or have you got your own apprentices now?’

‘Fuck off. I’m saying nowt. You’re trying to mess with my head. No comment.’

It was getting late and Rick decided to transfer Starkey to the cells. Khan wanted to keep Ahmed going for a bit longer. Sean met him in the corridor.

‘I just need one of them to say enough to tie it in with your recording,’ Khan said, ‘but at the moment, all we’ve got is one pack of lies against another. I don’t understand why Ahmed’s protecting Starkey, and until we get Lizzie’s DNA tests on Taheera, we haven’t got enough to prove anything.’

Sean stifled a yawn and Khan took the hint.

‘You’d better get off. You’ve had a long day.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘And take tomorrow off. We owe you that.’

‘OK,’ Sean said, but his heart sank, he wanted to be part of it, see it through to the end. Khan was waiting for a response. Sean forced a smile. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Nan was waiting up for him. She had something to show him. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but news had already filtered down from the Chasebridge estate to The Groves.

‘I’m so proud of you for saving that girl! At first I wasn’t sure about her, but I went up to the library and did a bit of research. I always knew there was something about that case that didn’t fit. That lass was peculiar all right, dragged up in the pub half her life, but I never had her pegged as a killer. But what about Bernadette Armley? Is it true she got carried off in an ambulance? Bit too convenient, that. I know you don’t have to tell me, but I reckon that son of hers has something to do with all this, and she’s been covering his back.’

He didn’t have the energy to remind her what she’d originally said about Marilyn Nelson and he wasn’t going to be led on the subject of Terry Starkey, he just shrugged and let her show him the printouts she’d made. He listened to her forming a campaign to get a pardon for Marilyn, until his eyes were closing. Before he went to bed, he sent Lizzie Morrison a text, but he couldn’t stay awake long enough to wait for the reply.