Justice for the Damned (16 page)

Reece gave a sharp laugh. ‘Try it. I’m a policeman with seven years’ service. You’re a scumbag pimp and dealer with a string of convictions. Who do you think they’re going to believe?’

Wayne writhed against Reece’s grip. ‘You motherfucker.’

‘Calm down, Wayne. I’d say there’s less than five grams of heroin here. Which means you’re only looking at two to five years. That should be just long enough for you to figure out whether it was worth your while not coughing up your dues.’

Wayne stopped struggling. His head dropped. ‘Alright.’

‘Alright what?’

‘Alright, Detective Geary, uncuff me and I’ll get it for you.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Close by.’

‘Show me.’

Wayne motioned with his chin towards a rusty grating at the foot of the wall. Stooping, Reece pulled it loose and reached inside the aperture. He withdrew a plastic bag with a roll of cash inside it. ‘It’s all there,’ said Wayne, his mean little mouth spreading into a smile of false bravado. ‘I meant to pay up all along. I was just fucking with you for fucking with me and what’s mine.’

Reece pocketed the cash, then released Wayne. The pimp rubbed his wrists. There were red marks where the cuffs had bitten into them. Reece gave him a steady, hard look. ‘If you fuck with me again, money or no money, you’re going down. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Crystal.’ As Reece turned towards his car, Wayne muttered sarcastically, ‘You’re a real credit to your job, Mr Policeman. With you around, the people of this city can sleep soundly.’

The pimp’s words pushed the thorn of shame deeper. Wincing, Reece ducked into the car. As he drove, he dialled Doug and said, ‘I’ve got it.’

‘Good work, Reece. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.’

Good work! What’s good about it?
Reece felt like spitting back. ‘Where do you want to meet?’ His monotone voice gave away nothing of what he was feeling.

‘Nowhere tonight. There’s no rush. I’ll drop by your place in the morning.’

Reece’s mouth compressed into a thin line.
If there’s no rush, why the fuck couldn’t this have waited?
He kept the thought to himself. He knew Doug was just needling him for failing to collect on time. ‘See you then.’

He tossed his phone aside as if it disgusted him. Not for the first time recently, he found himself thinking,
How the fuck did it ever come to this?
He slowed down alongside a prostitute, lowered his window and asked, ‘Have you seen Staci?’

‘She’s not working tonight. I don’t think she’s feeling very well.’

Reece thanked the girl and, face creased with concern, headed for the tiny terraced house where Staci rented a room from Wayne. Her bedroom light was on. He knocked on the front door. One of the girls who lived with Staci opened it. ‘Is Staci in?’ he asked.

‘She’s ill.’

‘What’s up with her?’

‘Not sure. Stomach bug, I think.’

Reece looked intently at the girl. She stared back at him, po-faced. His cop’s nose smelled a lie. It occurred to him with a growing sense of unease that seeing as Wayne had decided to teach him a lesson, maybe he’d taught Staci one too. ‘Can I go up and see her?’

‘She’s sleeping.’

‘So why is her bedroom light on?’

Without waiting for the girl’s response, Reece pushed past her and headed upstairs. Staci was lying in bed with the duvet pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were closed as if she was sleeping. But when Reece padded forwards and tried to peel the duvet off her, she clutched it to herself and said, ‘Don’t.’

Reece gently but unyieldingly continued to pull the duvet down. His face contorted with rage at the sight that greeted him. Staci’s arms and legs were a welter of faint truncheon-shaped marks. He stared at them a moment. Then, like an irresistible tide, his anger turned him around and swept him downstairs. Staci’s shrill voice followed him. ‘Please don’t, Reece. You’ll only make things worse.’

Staci’s appeal didn’t stop Reece. Nothing short of being cuffed and locked up could have stopped him. Tyres squealing, he accelerated away from the house. As he raced back towards Burton Road, his powerful hands flexed on the steering wheel with convulsive intent. He mounted the kerb, screeching to a halt in front of the startled pimp. The instant Wayne saw the look in Reece’s eyes, he knew what was coming. He turned to flee as Reece leapt out of his car. But his junkie’s lungs were no match for the policeman’s muscular athleticism. Reece caught up with him by Burton Weir. Wayne was by no means a small man, but Reece picked him up and slammed him into the railings as easily as if he were a rag doll. As the weir roared dully beneath them, he drove his fists over and over again into the pimp. At first, Wayne attempted to defend himself with little success. After a while, though, his hands dropped limply to his sides. Wayne’s lips split like rotten fruit, blood gushed from his nose, his ribs cracked audibly, but still Reece kept on pummelling him.

‘Stop!’ The word was screamed so loudly that it pierced Reece’s rage. Glancing around, he saw Staci dashing towards him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Reece, you’ll kill him!’

‘So what if I do?’ Reece retorted, breathing hard. ‘At least then you’d be free.’

‘But you wouldn’t be. Please, Reece, this isn’t you. This
isn’t
you,’ Staci repeated, as if trying to convince herself her words were true. Reece saw fear in her eyes. Not of Wayne, but of him. Horrified, he released the pimp. Wayne slumped down against the railings, eyelids flickering, breath wheezing through his mashed lips.

Reece turned away from Staci and started to head for his car, but she caught hold of his arm. ‘Come back to the house,’ she said.

Reece stared at the pavement, his expression dazed, like someone who’d been shaken out of a deep sleep.

‘You’d better get him out of here,’ said the girl who’d answered the door to Reece. ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’

Staci led Reece to his car. She started to get behind the wheel, but he said, ‘I’ll drive.’

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. They drove to the house in silence. Reece dropped heavily onto the bed. His chin dropped heavily onto his chest. ‘Let me see your knuckles,’ said Staci. He turned his hands over. His knuckles were smeared with blood – mostly Wayne’s, but his own too from where his skin had split. Staci pulled a tin with a red cross on top from under the bed. ‘In my line of work it pays to keep a first-aid box handy,’ she explained, tearing open an antiseptic wipe.

‘How did things get so twisted around?’ Reece said, more wondering out loud than really asking. ‘I joined the police to protect people.’ He held up his bloody hands. ‘Now look at me. How did I get like this? Did something make me this way, or have I always been this way and just didn’t know it? Doug knew it. He knew the first time he looked in my eyes that I was someone he could use to do his dirty work.’

‘You know what I see when I look in your eyes,’ Staci said gently. ‘Someone who’s willing to do anything for the people he loves.’

‘You don’t understand: I swore an oath.’

‘And I let social services take away my Amelia.’ Staci’s voice was suddenly angry. ‘So don’t tell me I don’t fucking understand.’ Sighing, she went on more quietly, ‘We all have things we wish we could take back in our lives, Reece. No one’s perfect. So your hands are a bit dirty. So what? Whose aren’t, these days?’

‘Jim Monahan’s.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Someone I used to work with.’

‘What do you mean used to?’

‘If Wayne reports this my career will be over.’

‘Don’t talk daft, Reece. Wayne won’t breathe a word.’

Reece knew Staci was right, but he half wished otherwise. At least that way he wouldn’t have to walk around feeling like a fraud any more. He met Staci’s gaze for the first time since they’d been in the house. Her battered face made him think about his mother, about the way she used to look after his father had worked her over. Why had she stayed with him? It was a question Reece had asked himself countless times without ever coming up with an answer. ‘I’m no good for you,’ he said.

‘Yes you are.’

Reece shook his head. ‘What if… what if I do the same to you one day?’

‘You won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I just do.’

Reece opened his mouth to say something else, but Staci softly shushed him. She cleaned his knuckles and applied plasters to the cuts. Then she drew him into her arms, holding him tight. He closed his eyes and gradually drifted off with the dull, meaty sound of his fists thudding into Wayne still seeming to echo in his ears.

Someday I’ll have a place like that
, thought Stan Lockwood, as his eyes greedily surveyed Edward Forester’s moonlit house. He particularly liked the way it stood alone, miles from anywhere. A man would really be able to be himself in a house like that, without fear of interference. It would be like having your own little kingdom. He sipped warming brandy from a hipflask – a habit he’d acquired during long, tedious stints of surveillance back when he was on the force – as he daydreamed about how he’d rule his kingdom.

He stopped drinking as a white van passed his car. He’d been careful to pull off the lane behind some bushes, so the driver didn’t see him. The van slowed almost to a halt outside the politician’s house, then accelerated for two hundred metres or so, before turning into the trees on the opposite side of the road.

Uncertainty wrinkled Stan’s jowly florid face. Should he call Tyler for back-up? He decided against it. Tyler wouldn’t be best pleased if he dragged him away from the farm for no good reason. It was probably just a poacher. It was hunting season, after all, and the woods around here were full of pheasants. Still, it needed checking out. Stan opened a compartment in the dashboard and took out a torch and a Glock pistol.

Shivering at the touch of the night air, Stan got out of the Range Rover and cautiously made his way towards where the van had turned off. A few metres from the edge of the trees there was a wire gate about two and a half metres high. A sign with bold red lettering read ‘PRIVATE LAND. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED’. A fence stretched out to either side of the gate. Beyond it a dirt track descended gently into the woods. Stan squinted into the deeper darkness beneath the trees. There was no sign of the van. His gaze returned to the gate. It was bolted and padlocked. That probably meant the van was there on legitimate business. Probably, but not definitely. Padlocks could be picked easily enough. Besides, he’d learned the hard way that it was always the suspect you didn’t check out or the lead you didn’t follow up that came back to bite you on the arse.

Pocketing the torch and gun, Stan took hold of the wire fence. With surprising agility for a big man, he heaved himself upwards and threw a leg over the top of the fence. There was a sound of ripping material as his body followed. He swore softly to himself, fingering a tear in the crotch of his trousers. Gun in hand, he advanced along the track. Barely enough moonlight penetrated the trees for him to see where he was going, but he was reluctant to use the torch for fear of giving himself away. It had rained recently, and his feet squelched on the muddy ground. Cold water seeped through his trainers. He scowled at the darkness, thinking:
Whoever’s driving that fucking van better have an innocent reason to be here, otherwise I’m going to take great pleasure in putting a bullet in them.

After maybe four or five hundred metres, the track terminated at a roughly circular clearing. The van was parked at the centre of the clearing in front of a flat-roofed, one-storeyed, rectangular building. From behind a tree, Stan watched for several minutes. There was no sign of movement. He circled around to the back of the building, then crept towards it. He tripped and fell into a shallow trench hidden by long, crackly dead grass. A harsh caustic smell stung his nostrils. Lye. His grandmother used to make soap out of the stuff to clean clothes. But there was, he knew, another use for lye – bury a body in it and that body would dissolve into a brownish jelly, not overnight but in a surprisingly short time. Tears burning his eyes, he clambered out of the trench. It was about half a metre wide and maybe a couple of metres long. His brow furrowed. Could this be an open grave waiting to be filled? Or was someone simply using it to dispose of hazardous waste?

Gun raised and ready, Stan continued towards the building. As he drew closer, he saw that it had windowless concrete walls and, at the side facing the clearing’s entrance, an iron door that no light or sound penetrated. What the hell was this place? An old bomb shelter? Whatever it was, someone had obviously found a use for it. Whether that use was legal or not, he couldn’t have cared less. Just so long as it didn’t put Edward Forester in danger.

Stan peered into the van. Empty. He risked briefly switching on the torch, figuring that if he couldn’t see into the building, whoever – if anyone – was inside it, likewise couldn’t see out. He jotted down the reg, then retreated to the cover of the encircling trees. His mobile phone palely illuminated his face as he dialled a number. A man’s voice groggy with sleep answered, ‘Christ, Stan, what the hell are you doing calling me at this time?’

‘I need you to run a reg for me.’

‘Has someone turned up at Forester’s place?’

‘Not exactly.’ Stan quickly explained the situation. ‘It’s probably nothing, but it’ll put my mind at rest to know who the van belongs to.’

‘OK. Call me back in five.’

The required minutes ticked by. Stan redialled. This time his call was answered on the first ring. ‘Are you sure about that reg, Stan?’ The voice on the other end of the line no longer sounded sleepy, it sounded apprehensive.

‘Positive. Why? Does it belong to one of Reynolds’s goons?’

‘No.’

‘So why do you sound so worried?’

‘Does the name Freddie Harding mean anything to you?’

‘Freddie Harding,’ repeated Stan, searching his memory. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well it should do. You were working in CID when he was arrested back in 2001.’

Stan’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Now you say it, I do remember. He raped a prostitute, didn’t he?’