Cut To The Bone (47 page)

Fraser groaned. It had been bad enough hearing Frank Martin's name. Jarvis eyed him as the call ended.

"You checked them out," he reminded him, without any trace of gloating, then added, “The man from Maxim, eh?”

Not funny.

"Twice, yeah,” admitted Fraser. “But like Perelman, and half the London gangs I deal with, they've been too damned clever." Fraser knew Rita wouldn't be impressed by this failure either. "Let’s try top deck again," he said, then glanced at his watch. “You never know.”

*

He took the thin steps upwards three at a time towards the sky. Blue now, he noticed through the last grubby window, yet the sea although calm, seemed unusually dark. For a moment, he imagined being in it.

Aware of Jarvis' laboured breathing behind him, he pushed through a rusted door to the small deck whose slippery space was mostly taken up by the base of a huge, navy blue funnel.

Fumes from above bore sooty deposits on to every surface. But that wasn't all.

"Quick, man!” he yelled to Jarvis.

Next to the deck rail, two guys matching Mike Burrows' description, were locked so tightly together, neither could extricate himself. Fraser couldn't see any way of separating them without the risk of a weapon materialising. Jarvis beside him, cleared his throat.

"Gentlemen, please!" he shouted as Fraser stepped closer to the fight. The older, stubbled man with hollowed cheeks he guessed to be Frank Martin, was already winded. His breath coming in short, wheezy gasps.

"Cool it now, eh?" Fraser suggested, deliberately low-key. "It's too dangerous for this sort of thing up here."

"Who the fuck are ye?" The older one glanced his way, then bellowed in pain as the other's hand suddenly squeezed his balls.

"DI Fraser of the Met and DC Jarvis of Briar Bank CID. We know who you both are, so why not help us out?" He was about to radio the Portsmouth boys, when Frank Martin toppled against the deck rail, suddenly pale, dazed, clutching his groin. But before Fraser could reach him, his smaller, younger opponent had pulled him up by his collar and punched his jaw. The crunch of bone, and a fearful cry brought Fraser and Jarvis to his aid.

The victim tried spitting out the blood and teeth filling his mouth. “I gave ye a fuckin' grand yesterday,” he gargled to his foe.

"Not enough, mate. It’s two grand short. You wanna quit the job, so, it's gonna cost." He lunged again, but despite Fraser's yell to Jarvis to keep back, it was the detective constable who bore the brunt of O'Donnell's wiry strength.

Jarvis staggered to the deck floor and, in the split second it took his attacker to flee, the older guy had hauled himself up on to the rails, straddling the wooden bar at the top. Dark blood dangling from his chin.

"Hey, Frank!" Fraser yelled at him. "Get down!" There was nothing below to break any fall.

Hearing his name made the man hesitate. His wheezy chest heaving in and out. His big, rough hands beginning to slip.

Hadn’t Rita mentioned big, rough hands?

"You are Frank Martin, aren’t you?" Fraser shouted.

"Yeah. So what? I've 'ad it. Me wife don't want me and now this goon says ‘e’ll’ waste me..."

Fraser dug in his jacket pocket for the Mother's Day card Rita had given him. He held it up and for a moment, Martin seemed unsure of its significance.

"From your son Jez to his Mum," said Fraser, advancing with it. "Yes, he's dead. But is risking your life now going to help your wife or your other two kids?"

The man hesitated again as more drool hung from his open mouth. Then he snatched the card from Fraser's hand.

"Least this way I'll see me boy again." He kissed it, smearing the pretty cottage picture with skeins of his blood.

“Frank, just hand it over.”

“Why?”

"To nail his killer." Fraser's voice softened, now not even attempting to retrieve the card. "You've already helped us, in more ways than one. So, come on. Please."

He grabbed Frank’s arm again to pull him to safety, but a massive, unseen shove from O’Donnell felled him to the deck. While struggling back into position, Fraser saw sheer terror in the other man’s eyes as he toppled from his perch. With a scream Fraser would never forget, Rita’s husband tumbled out of sight beneath the deck, with his son's card and its handwritten message of love, fluttering after him.

*

O’Donnell had vanished and, all too aware of Jarvis trying to raise himself, Fraser radioed Burrows giving Frank Martin's possible place of entry in the water, and a description of that the dangerous co-driver who'd driven him to it. A thug who could be anywhere. Now every minute seemed an eternity and there wasn't a fucking lifebelt in sight.

"I don't think Frank Martin's a swimmer!" He yelled at the Detective Superintendent. "His teeth have gone and he’d be losing blood..."

Then, having covered a winded Jarvis with his donkey jacket, urged him to stay put as help was on its way. He decided against leaving him his Glock and cursed that there wasn't a single security guard around. And why were the Portsmouth adolescents taking so long to get there? Kayleigh and Freddie's Dad was out in that treacherous Channel and, whatever the man had done, he didn't deserve to drown.

"We'll get a lifeboat ready." Burrows radioed back, his voice distorted by interference.

"That'll take too long. You got a diver anywhere? Someone we could winch down?"

"A chopper from Ventnor would be quicker than from Thorney or even St Malo with all their red tape..."

Fraser let out a sigh of frustration. Torn between waiting or taking matters into his own hands. He knew that water would be freezing. Frank Martin was unfit and might not be able to swim.

“Leave it with me,” Burrows went on.” I’ve got contacts. Thumb squeezers, you know the kind of thing…”

Fraser didn't wait for him to finish, because he was making his way behind the funnel, busy trying to signal a nearby fishing boat, moving at speed with the incoming current. He fired a single shot into the air from his Glock then waved his handkerchief like a dumb schoolboy, wishing he’d brought his new LD torch with him. The two men on board yelled back, unsure what he wanted, and in that moment, he made up his mind.

71

Bright daylight suddenly hit Louis’ eyes, and for a scary few seconds he lost his bearings until realizing a porky man lay slumped in front of the huge, navy blue funnel's base. He peered closer, recognising Detective Constable Derek Jarvis despite his two donkey jackets and a black woollen hat askew on his dishevelled head. The fat pig was just conscious, he could tell. The zip at the top of his fly opened to reveal a scrap of brown underpants.

Louis bent over him, sensing his own dick begin to stir.

"Who's got the power now, eh?" he crowed, recalling how Jarvis had held court so impressively at that Meadow Hill Neighbourhood Watch meeting and the school nearly four years ago. Who'd later given him too much grief. "Thought you were so fucking clever didn't you? Yet you didn't even recognise me when I was staring you in the fucking face."

So, thought Louis, kneeling back on his heels and seeing the port of St Malo as clearly as if it was bang up close, why let an inadequate pig like him spoil the rest of his life? He wasn't worth it. A special goodbye kiss was called for - as the Yanks would say - for closure. He bent over Jarvis's prone body, and was poised to place his lips on his ruddy cheek before throttling him, when he realised someone else had joined the party. Someone calling him Pete Brown.

He twisted round, but all at once the eye-level sun again made him blind, this time to the tall, fair-haired man with a shiny black Glock aimed at his heart.

72

Fraser had recognised him immediately as that same tall, black-clad figure who’d lurked on that very deck earlier, before giving him the slip. This time, there’d be no mistakes, but he had to be quick. Should he kill or simply impede the target with one bullet? No, he told himself. This creep wasn’t worth getting banged up for. Not after everything that had happened so far, and with an image of Rita’s lovely face in his mind, ordered him to lie down with his arms outspread.

He stuffed the Glock deep in his jeans’ back pocket.

“Piss off, you!” Yelled the crop-haired teenager, scrambling to his feet. “Go and bully someone else. I was only trying to make the guy comfortable.” At this he lunged towards Fraser, grappling with his lapels. Their two black leather jackets collided, and all the while, Frank Martin was slipping further away from the boat, probably unconscious, if not dead already.

“You’re a real failure, aren’t you, Pete Brown?” sneered Fraser keeping a tight grip. “A cowardly failure. Blaming everyone else for the fact that your adoptive parents weren’t up to scratch. A man you tried to frame for serious crimes, and a woman who was scared of you…”

“Shut your face!” The sixteen year-old glared in ominous close-up. His grip strengthening. Eyes hard as rock with no visible dilation of their pupils. White, even teeth on full show. Hair chopped by a blind barber. “What d’you know about not having a proper Mum and Dad? People you could believe in? Trust? A stepfather shagging someone else? And the rest…”

He lashed out with his loafered foot and missed. Tried again, and got Fraser’s left shin. The pain of it juddered through him. But no way would this psychopath have the pleasure of seeing it. “That doesn’t excuse what you’ve done,” he countered, deliberately low-key while strengthening his hold. “How about an awareness of other people’s feelings, eh? Jez Martin and his sister would have been a start.”

Fraser then changed tack. Began to shake him, almost losing control, before Perelman pushed him free, to hurl himself towards the other side of the deck. The anger of wrongs suffered; the life he could have had with his real parents, then, unexpectedly, a flow of confessions faded into sea and sky.

“Come back you bloody idiot!” Fraser picked up speed on the slippery, slatted surface. “You won’t get away…”

“Go fuck yourself!”

With that, Louis Claus Perelman made a sudden detour, evading four beefy gendarmes and their big dogs who’d just arrived to give chase. But the teenager was quicker than them all, leaping up to the wooden deck rail and vaulting clear, legs tucked in, Vanishing from sight, without trace.

*

The four French officers craned over the rail where the murderer had jumped. Their dogs whining, keen to follow him, but never mind Perelman, Fraser told himself. He had Frank to think about. And Jarvis, still lying by that funnel in obvious pain.

Meanwhile, where was Burrows? The Portsmouth boys?

In reasonably good French, he urged the men to get his colleague to safety. How he’d share with them later what had happened. He then ran back down the steps through another lounge area full of cheaper upholstery, cheaper everything else, and once on the deck below, leapt up on to its top rail. Having steadied himself, he closed his eyes and pointed both hands in the prayer position at the greedy sea.

73

In order to contact Emma Dixon’s mum, Rita pretended she needed the loo, and Helen Dixon listened with mounting horror as she learnt of the morning’s news. How Kayleigh’s anonymous drawing of the psychopath might be in all the papers, and could she possibly be kept from seeing it?

“Is that too much to ask?” Rita added.

“Not at all, and please don’t worry,” Helen reassured her. “The girls have been out riding since eight, and Emma’s iPhone will stay on me even when they’re back. I can pretend it needs a repair and check what they watch on TV. I’ll also call you just before bringing Kayleigh over tomorrow morning. OK?”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Rita said, pulling the chain. “Thank God there are some saints among the sinners.”

*

Then, in an overall and rubber gloves, fuelled by relief, Rita began mopping the floor and washing down the walls of BEST PRESS'S reception area while Mr Waring stayed in his office at the rear of the shop, dealing with accounts and occasionally breaking into snatches of song.

He sounded a happy man, yet gradually, while unpacking the trade chemicals and cloths to wipe down both dry cleaning chambers, she dwelt solely on that deceitful teenager’s grisly crime and the fact that if he really was Pete Brown, he could soon be back in Mullion Road.
             

Instead of taking a lunch break at the shop, she re-organised the store of finished items to be collected, and immediately at two o'clock, once Mr Waring had left his desk for the golf course, tried to make contact with Tim Fraser.

“Number temporarily unavailable.”

Next, she punched in Sandra Gregory's number where, because there was no reply, she left a message on the woman's answerphone to let Freddie know she'd soon be collecting him. They'd probably gone to McDonalds in the Mall after the football, she reasoned. After all, he had a tenner to spend and, knowing him, it wouldn't stay long in his pocket.

However, once she’d began the journey home, her fleeting concern about him was overlaid by resentment at Frank's selfish agenda. Wasn't it typical that as better things were happening, namely the kids getting encouraging reports from school and an unselfish man had just shared her bed, along should come that waster? The Will he'd mentioned just another lie to get his toe in the door, and as for his ‘something for the kids,’ well, she thought, driving through Briar Bank's main street, being a full-time father might have been a start.