Hurt (The Hurt Series) (28 page)

‘And they come here to buy the magazine, right?’

‘That’s right, which is why I’m surprised I don’t recognise your guy, and can’t figure out why he’s on Gavin’s pitch.’

‘Gavin?’

‘Gavin Miller. He’s been working that pitch for best part of a year. Good kid.’

‘What’s his story?’

Kyle folded thick arms across a modest belly and reclined in his chair. ‘Nothing unusual. Bad upbringing. Got into heroin when he was fifteen. Sought help two years ago after seeing one of his fellow addicts die from the stuff. Far as I know, he’s been clean for two years.’

Jessop made a mental note of this, asked. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

Kyle scratched his stubbly chin, his frown heavy and constant. ‘Yesterday morning, just after seven, as usual. He likes to get his batch early so as to get the jump on the morning commuters.’

So far, according to Davies, who was back monitoring the CCTV, neither Gavin Miller nor their suspect was on the pitch today. She had a feeling that would be the case. ‘You said “as usual”.’

‘That’s right. Far as I know, he hasn’t missed a day since he started with us.’

‘On that same pitch, on the corner of Lewis Street?’

‘And that’s what’s troubling me.’ Kyle picked up the picture Mason had left. He studied it closer, clucking his tongue.

She asked, ‘You don’t patrol the pitches?’

‘We have an understanding with the management of the premises our vendors are pitched by. If they receive any complaints about the vendor, that’s when we step in.’

Mason stepped back into the room and announced that none of the seven staff recognised their boy. Kyle’s thick shoulders sagged, and the frown grew heavier. ‘This is very embarrassing. We pride ourselves on our vendors’ good behaviour and their adherence to our strict code of conduct.’

‘Does the code state you can rent your pitch out to other people?’ Mason probed, reading Jessop’s mind.

Kyle fidgeted. ‘No. Listen, do you mind if I ask what this is about? I mean, I don’t have to tell you how delicate our reputation is.’

Jessop had a feeling that maybe this was not the first time Kyle had been visited by the police about complaints made against his vendors. This time, however, it was looking like it wasn’t one of his vendors they were after, and so Kyle had no business knowing the nature of their enquiry.

Ignoring the request, she asked if he knew where they might find Gavin Miller, and if he had a picture of him.

Quickly
forgetting about his ignored request for information, Kyle tapped on his PC’s keyboard, and a moment later Jessop had an address for a local hostel and a passport photo of Gavin Miller.

‘Don’t know if he’s still there. Our vendors tend to move around a lot.’

Jessop stood. ‘If you see him first, I’d appreciate you not mentioning our being here.’

Kyle nodded with quiet understanding. It was, she thought, a promise he was used to making.

Chapter
Seventy-four

Outside, Jessop lit a cigarette and inhaled deep while she listened to Mason talking to the hostel Kyle had said Gavin Miller stayed at. She knew what he’d be told before he’d even made the call.

She looked to the travel agent below the Big Issue offices. And at a poster stuck to the window advertising an unbeatable package break to Vegas.

‘Okay, thanks,’ came Mason’s voice from behind her. She turned to see her DI leaningheavy against the car. His slumped posture confirmed what she already knew as he cursed under his breath and dug his hands deep into his overcoat pockets. ‘Gavin hasn’t stayed there since August.’

‘That’s because he’s been our boy’s bitch since August. The cruel bastard probably kept Gavin obedient by getting him hooked on heroin again.’ She drew on the cigarette, exhaled into the rain scattered wind. ‘Now our boy can’t go back to the pitch, my guess is Gavin’s served his purpose. Probably find him lying in a ditch somewhere with his throat hanging out.’

‘And if he isn’t?’

‘I doubt he’ll roll over on the killer who’s been feeding his habit all this time.’

Mason cut her a look beneath a heavy brow. ‘You okay?’ His phone rang. She motioned to him to answer, turned back to the travel agent window and the Vegas poster.

Vegas, where in thirteen days time they were due to arrive after their excursion to The Grand Canyon

Vegas, where she and Ray were due to bankrupt the casinos with their combined cunning and knowledge of the Ocean’s 11 films.

Vegas, where they were going to kick back at The Bellagio with its famous dancing fountains and marvel at Cirque du Soleil performing their timeless production of “O”.

Vegas, where Vicky had enjoyed the best holiday of her life with her mother, the woman whose ex-husband was due to become her husband today.

She glanced at her watch. In three hours time to be exact.

Instead, he was sixty miles away, locked up for his own safety, dying because of the morals and compassion that made him the man she wanted to wed.

And she was here, standing in the rain surrounded by ghosts, one of whom was always one step ahead of her and proving impossible to catch.

So no, she was as far from okay as she could be.

‘Got a hit on our boy from the news.’

She peeled her eyes from the poster, turned back to Mason, who was looking in higher spirits than he was a moment ago. ‘Genuine?’

‘Sounds so. Caller’s pretty insistent.’

‘Where does this particular caller say they’ve seen him?’

‘You aint gonna believe me.’

‘Well, why don’t you try telling me first before I call you a liar?’

‘Afghanistan.’

Jessop took one last drag on the cigarette, flicked the butt into the wet gutter to swim alongside her fading spirits. ‘You’re right. I don’t believe you.’

Chapter
Seventy-five

Oh, but you will believe, Catherine. Because someone in the city did know him. Someone with a heart and a moral compass as big as Ray’s.

A compass that would compel him to pick up the phone and do his duty.

He didn’t blame him.

After all, Edwards had been there, too. He had the scars and had learned the lessons. Had endured the breaking of the shell of his understanding, and knew that to fear suffering you are already suffering from what you fear.

Yeah, Edwards knew all about him.

And very soon so would his hunter.

He adjusted the range finder on the Barska 6 -24x50 IR sniper scope. Although the 50 mm front lens was designed to gather light on dull days such as today, he switched the black dot reticle to illuminated green to compensate for the lack of light and get a better fix on his hunter.

He wanted to see her eyes. Because now he’d made sure Ray and the family was out of the way, it was just him and her.

‘School’s in, Detective.’

Chapter
Seventy-six

‘Corporal Phillip Chambers. Sniper Division.’ Lance Corporal Paul Edwards tapped strong fingers on the picture of their suspect. ‘That’s your boy. So what’s he done?’

‘We just need to speak to him regarding an ongoing investigation,’ Mason answered coolly.

Jessop stared at the man seated across the table from them sipping from a bottle of Budweiser. With coffee coloured skin, close cropped black hair, strong jaw, broad shoulders and a solid physique on which he wore a navy tracksuit, Edwards was good looking in a macho sort of way. At his trainer shod feet sat a gym bag.

They’d arranged to meet at The Retreat, a pub not far from the Big Issues offices, where its largely unemployed regulars would start supping its real ale when the doors opened at 10.00am. The time had just slipped past ten, and already those regulars were converging in the smoking area out front, unfazed by either the rain or the looks thrown their way by the passing tax payer working to pay for their beer and fags.

Edwards was neither a regular nor unemployed. He worked as a night security officer at an IT company around the corner. Catching the news just as he was leaving work this morning, he’d made the call, and had agreed this was the most convenient place for both parties to meet. After here, he was going for his morning workout before returning home and grabbing some serious shut eye.

Mason asked, ‘Did you serve with Chambers in Afghanistan?’

‘Nah. I met him in Camp Bastion infirmary back in November 2010. Spent near a month in the next bed to his. You think his face is messed up now? You should have seen it back then.’ Edwards shivered for effect. ‘Fucking gruesome, man.’

‘So what happened to him?

Edwards looked at his bottle, shaking his head. ‘He was hitching a ride on a supply truck out of Kandahar when a RPG hit ’em. The way he told it, he was trapped tight in the wreckage with his face hanging off for the best part of three hours before help came.’ Edwards took a long slug on his beer. ‘And if that weren’t bad enough, his spotter was there with him, but he weren’t so lucky.’

‘His spotter?’

‘Yeah. Every sniper has a spotter. The spotter helps with observation of the target and advises on the surrounding conditions and wind speed - shit like that. Phil and his man Olly had been partners for two tours. Tight as brothers they were, according to Phil.’

‘What happened to Olly?’ Jessop asked.

Edwards smiled, but she noticed there was no humour in it. It was a nervous reflex triggered by talking about the war and the horrors the twenty-seven-year-old ex marine must have witnessed. He talked tough and looked tough, and she had no doubt he had made a fine soldier. But the mental scars of combat ran deeper than the physical ones, and Edwards, like so many before and after him, would have to endure those scars for as long as he lived.

Edwards sipped from his beer and picked at the bottle’s label. ‘Olly took a bunch of shrapnel in the chest. But he didn’t buy it straight away. Phil lay with him the entire time, watching the poor son of a bitch bleed out with every beat of his dying heart.’

Jessop shared a knowing look with Mason.

‘Phil told me he held his hand the whole time. All in all, nearly five fucking hours before they were finally cut out of the wreckage. Even then he didn’t let go, because he swore he could
still
feel his man’s pulse even after he’d stopped breathing.’ Again the nervous smile.

Mason asked, ‘Did he ever speak about his background or family?’

Edwards licked his lips. ‘Oh yeah. He had this photo of his wife and his little girl which he kept under his pillow. Real stunners, the both of them. Hannah was his wife’s name, a yank from Georgia, I think. Man, Phil had her yank accent down pat. Used to crack me up.’

‘And his daughter?’ Jessop asked.

‘Bethany, sweet as an angle. She was seven when we were out there.’

Mason scribbled down the names in his note book. ‘Any idea where they lived?’

‘Uh-huh. Thirty-eight Falkirk Street.’

She caught Mason’s eye. 38 Falkirk Street, the squat where Chambers had attacked Wayne Thacker and killed his dog.

Edwards said, ‘Big footy fans, they were. Even little Beth. Phil used to boast she aint missed a match since the day she was born. Said it was because she was born the same day Reading beat Man United 5-1.’

‘I remember that,’ Mason said. ‘They aint been as good since.’

‘Yep.’ Edwards sat back and tapped the beer bottle against his lips, lost in a moment of quiet reverie. ‘Man, the hours we spent bitching about our home team.’

‘To be fair, they aint doing too badly so far this season,’ Mason said. ‘Fourth in the league.’

Edwards rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, for the time being. Chamber’s missus had this theory that the higher in the league they begin the season the lower they’ll finish. Pretty fucking insightful for a yank, right?’

Jessop said, ‘Sounds like you and Chambers were pretty close.’

A knowing nod. ‘Out there you’re close to all your fellow soldiers. They’re all your brothers and sisters. But yeah, me and Chambers were tight. I mean, there we were, yeah, two boys from the same ’hood, lying side by side in the middle of the same hell hole three and a half thousand miles away. Yeah, we had a lot in common.’

‘You mind me asking what happened to you?’ she asked.

Edwards smiled. The next thing she knew he had his right leg up on the table and was rolling his tracksuit leg back to reveal an artificial limb.

Jessop resisted the urge to look at Mason, who she felt was experiencing the same sense of bewilderment.

‘It’s still over there somewhere,’ Edwards joked. ‘I made a pact with myself that when the war’s over I’m going back there Rambo style to get it.’

The tension evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.

‘What about when you got back?’ Mason asked, once the prosthetic had been put away. ‘You and Chambers ever hook up?’

‘Couple of times last year. Phil was all fucked-up in the head, though. PTSD and all that.’

‘Post traumatic stress disorder, right?’ Jessop clarified.

‘Right. Just because you aint in some shit-hole foreign country being shelled twenty-four seven don’t mean your war is over, know what I’m saying?’

‘So what was he like?’

‘See, that’s the thing. Most PTSD’s I know turned to booze or drugs. Chambers sounded like he’d turned to God or something. Couldn’t have a decent conversation with him without him spouting some psycho-babble bullshit about finally finding the true meaning of life through suffering or something.’

Jessop and Mason shared another look.

‘It fucking freaked me out. Fucking freaked out his missus, too. Last I heard she’d taken Beth and skipped the country to go live with her folks back in the states.’

Mason
made a note of this. Jessop asked, ‘What about employment?’

‘Nothing when I knew him. He just stayed at home, lost in his own little world, living off the missus and his benefits.

‘Do you have any idea where he may be now? Any places he used to hang out if he left the house. Other friends in the city, maybe?’

Edwards was already shaking his head. ‘Like I said, that was over a year ago. Suppose you could try the Veterans Aid shelter. Other than that, I can’t help you, sorry.’