Strangers (21 page)

Word of the latest atrocity had spread like wildfire. Lucy had only got home around midnight, having spent at least three hours getting her statement right, and by then it had already broken across the news networks.

Only because she was on her Ducati was she able to thread her way through this chaos to the personnel car park. It was bedlam indoors as well. Phones trilled, while staff, both police and civilian, dashed along corridors, carting essential paperwork from one office to the next. There seemed to be extra bodies everywhere, more TSGs having been called in to assist with fingertip searches, door-to-door enquiries and so forth.

From what Lucy could gather from the conversations she earwigged as she ascended the stairways, Jim Cavill and Priya Nehwal had already given two interviews that day, but the Assistant Chief Constable and the Crime Commissioner were now here to hold a conference themselves, so the press room on the ground floor was the main hub of activity. Conversely though, the MIR was largely deserted, the bulk of the team, Cavill and Nehwal included, back at Dedman Delph, assessing the new crime scene. One or two stalwart individuals remained to field communications, and that alone was keeping them busy. They didn’t look twice at Lucy, even though she’d been one of the two who’d discovered the new body; not even after she’d come back downstairs having fixed her hair and make-up in the locker-room, and changed from her motorbike leathers into a denim mini-skirt, high heeled shoes, and a sensible but attractive short-sleeved blouse in order to make the correct impression on her debut night at Sugababes.

When the Ripper Chicks had first started appearing in Robber’s Row dressed as tarts, there’d been the usual good-natured ribbing, wolf-whistling and ribald cheering. Lucy wasn’t exactly tarted up today, but she’d still dressed to eye-catch. However, it made no difference here. It wasn’t that the last vestige of good humour had drained out of the taskforce, it was just that those here didn’t even have time to notice her – apart from Slater, who showed up a minute later.

‘Hell of a bloody morning, this,’ he said, yanking at his tie-knot, which was clearly irritating him because he hadn’t yet shaved. He spotted her outfit. ‘You ready then?’

She nodded.

‘Okay … upstairs first. Let’s have a quick chat.’

Lucy followed him up.

‘That dickhead who fled the scene last night turned himself in first thing,’ he said as they climbed the stairs. ‘Name’s Gordon Worthing. Total plank, but he’s out of the frame. He was working overseas when two of the other murders were committed. Reckons he goes dogging down Dedman Delph every chance he gets. Says he never thought there’d be any danger … thought Jill the Ripper only whacks blokes who pay for it. Like psycho killers probably make that kind of distinction all the time. Worthing’s also given us a name for the old geezer. Mack Reynoldson. He owned the Fiesta. Real member of the dirty raincoat brigade. He’s been going down Dedman Delph longer than Worthing.’

‘What about the Bonfire Night stuff?’ Lucy wondered.

‘No sus circs there either.’ Slater walked into the Ripper Chicks’ office, Lucy following. ‘Belongs to the local Scout and Brownie troop, St Bede’s. They were only going to build their bommy on Thursday morning in case it rained before then.’ He glanced at the droplets streaming down the outside of the window and the turgid grey skies beyond. ‘Somewhat prophetic. But it seems they didn’t have the first clue about the normal nocturnal activities down there … not that I suspect there’ll be any more after this. Anyway, fuck all that. Whatever needs doing’s being done. We’ve got other fish to fry today.’

Slater had looked flustered as soon as he’d entered the building, which was hardly surprising. With each new death, the pressure on the team increased tenfold, and it didn’t ease one iota as they ran through the plan for that afternoon. There wasn’t much that Slater could do other than sit there and listen while Lucy outlined the way she expected it to go and her proposed solutions if problems arose, but at no stage did he look relaxed about it. Even though an undercover unit would park up as close to the SugaBabes
Club as feasibly possible, its response capability was going to be limited, especially as Lucy would most likely have her phone taken off her while she was working there. There was no point pretending otherwise; from the moment she left the station today she was going to be alone.

Slater’s brow furrowed as the full import of this dawned on him. It was almost as if, in the hectic aftermath of the latest slaying, he hadn’t had a chance to seriously contemplate today’s operation.

‘I need some air,’ he said when they’d wrapped up.

He left the office and walked down the passage to a fire-door at the far end, which the smokers in the team usually kept wedged open so that they could nip out for a drag on the top deck of the fire-escape. Thanks to the cold and the wet, there was no one else outside at present, so Slater and Lucy stood there alone.

‘I have to tell you, Lucy …’ He gazed distantly. ‘This is one of the most dangerous undercover ops that any officer in a team of mine has ever embarked on. You’re going to encounter an awesome degree of villainy.’

‘I’m just checking coats, sir … I’ll be fine.’

‘You see someone who might recognise you in that place, anyone at all … and you leave at the first opportunity, okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘I know you’re not a central Manchester native, Lucy. I know you’ve mainly worked in Crowley, but people travel. There are some scumbags who range all across this city. It’s not impossible that someone may spot you.’

‘I’ll only be there long enough to get to know the girls, sir. Just like on the East Lancs. Get them talking, see if I can identify this Lotta. By all accounts, I won’t be able to miss her.’

‘Don’t ask too many probing questions,’ he advised.

‘I won’t ask any questions. I’ll let the conversation take me where it does.’

‘Seriously, Lucy … the Crew are no joke. We’ve gone extra deep into the backgrounds of the Ripper victims so far, and none of them had any kind of connection with organised crime, not even those two goons fly-tipping. So our best guess is the Crew are
not
behind these murders – that was always unlikely anyway, to be honest. Like Priya said, these deaths aren’t their style. But SugaBabes is very much on their radar. They don’t just take their cut, two or three of their top men go there for recreation. Now these are bad guys by any standards. If they sense there’s a threat to them … any at all, they’ll rub you out without a qualm.’

‘I understand that.’

He looked round at her. ‘What time are you meeting Jayne McIvar?’

‘Three this afternoon.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Suppose you’d better get going.’

They walked down through the nick. Each floor was a scene of mayhem. Again, despite Lucy’s glammed-up look, she didn’t draw so much as a furtive glance.

‘Jayne McIvar’s an unknown quantity to a certain extent,’ Slater said. ‘She’s the brains behind the firm. She’s never been in half as much trouble as her sister. But she’s still a brothel-keeper, so she’s a lowlife despite her flash clothes and urbane attitude. But the point is, she’s clever. Much more than Suzy. Suzy’s the obvious one to be wary of, but watch Jayne too. I’ve a feeling she can be a whole lot of trouble.’

Lucy nodded. There was nothing more to be said as they left the building by the personnel door. They exchanged a terse ‘speak later’, and she walked away around the front of the nick, sidling unnoticed through the press pack and strolling to the nearest bus stop.

By early afternoon she was on board a tram, again bound for Queens Road. The weather had cleared a little, bright but cool sunlight filtering through breaking cloud. Commuters climbed on and off. Those with newspapers were dwelling on Jill the Ripper, perhaps unavoidably as it covered page after page. A succession of ghoulish headlines jumped out.

Madwoman still on prowl

Man-killer going for the record

Jill doesn’t just rip; she hacks, slashes, cuts

As before, Lucy walked north from Queens Road, circling around Queens Park to the coffee shop opposite the Victorian-era graveyard, arriving just around three o’clock. The Audi R8 was parked there again, but this time there was no bruiser inside it. Instead, Jayne McIvar sat behind the wheel. She flashed her headlights as Lucy approached, and leaned across to open the front passenger door.

‘You’re punctual,’ she said, as Lucy climbed in. ‘That’s good.’

She put the car in gear and hit the gas, heading north towards Crumpsall, which if Lucy’s recollection was correct, was not the direction in which SugaBabes lay.

‘So who are you, Hayley?’ Jayne asked. ‘What’s your background?’

Aware that she was being tested, Lucy again gave the prepared spiel, making sure she changed nothing from last time and trying not to be distracted by the unfamiliar territory they’d now entered. Rows of shops she didn’t recognise interchanged with residential districts she’d never visited before. She wasn’t overly familiar with north-central Manchester anyway, but she could read signposts, and each new one they passed indicated that they were still heading into Crumpsall, the opposite direction from Cheetham Hill.

She could only assume, or rather hope, that Jayne was taking them to the club by a deliberately circuitous route. But her muscles were already tensing. She wondered if it could ever be as easy to jump out of a speeding car as it was in the movies.

‘All very interesting,’ Jayne said, sounding archly sceptical. ‘Seems you were telling the truth about Bradby & Sons at least. I gave them a call. You
did
leave them rather abruptly. They weren’t terribly forthcoming about why, and I wouldn’t expect them to be. But I got the impression it was under a bit of a cloud. Last August, wasn’t it?’

Another test.

‘June actually,’ Lucy said, trying to memorise the route as they started making unexpected turns through ever more drab and depressed-looking neighbourhoods.

‘That’s right,’ Jayne said. ‘June. Funny thing though, eh? One minute you’re a secretary in a central Manchester firm, presumably pretty well paid. The next you’re a coat-check girl.’

‘We take what we can get, Miss McIvar.’

‘Very philosophical. If that was the height of your ambition, Hayley, I’d be surprised. But I don’t think it is … is it?’ Jayne made another sharp turn; the streets with shops and housing fell behind as they progressed into a completely run-down district of empty lots and boarded flats.

Lucy could feel her blood rushing. Her breathing slowly tightened. On all sides of them now lay acres of sordid dereliction; broken windows, the hulks of abandoned cars. There was nobody around. She made an almighty effort to at least look calm.

‘It’s not my, erm … my long-term plan,’ she agreed.

‘Give it a rest, Hayley. You’re not a coat-check girl.’ Jayne swung them sharp left again, this time onto a narrow, litter-strewn backstreet, the terraced housing on either side of which stood in rows of gutted shells. They drove along it at what felt like reckless speed. ‘I know what you’re
really
coming to us for.’

Lucy kept her mouth firmly shut.

‘You’re coming to us to lie on your back and make some real money.’

‘Miss McIvar … I told you I don’t want to do that anymore.’

‘Pull the other one, love. No one applies to work in a brothel as a barmaid or a coat-check girl.’

‘I’ve already said, I need to keep my head down …’

‘So you’ve got a badass ex-boyfriend. Big deal. Haven’t we all.’ Jayne spoke with an air of world-weary street smarts. ‘Jesus, Hayley, I can tell by the way you look, by the way you dress, by the way you carry yourself … you’re not dumb. So I surely don’t need to lay it on the line. You come to work inside an illegal operation, it’s got to be worth your while. And yet you’re happy to take a pittance?’

‘It’s my comfort-zone, Miss McIvar. It’s the life I’m already inside, and it seemed like an obvious step. And Tammy couldn’t speak highly enough of the way you treat your staff.’

Jayne snorted. ‘Was she sober at the time?’

‘Erm, well …’

‘And you think I should give you a job on the basis of a drunken slut’s recommendation?’

‘I thought you
had
done.’

Jayne focused on the road. ‘I’ll be honest, Hayley … I’ve taken you on because I’ve got ambitions to put you on the Talent Team.’

Lucy stiffened, feigning discomfort, though in truth feeling slightly happier than one minute ago, when she’d thought they might have worked out who she really was.

‘Look, Miss McIvar, if that’s the plan, you’d better stop the car now …’

‘Relax … no one’s going to force you.’ They sped through a pair of rusty iron gates hanging from rotted hinges. ‘But think about it. Our Talent Team’s the best-earning in the north of England. We’ve got the hottest girls and the richest clients. The tips alone are phenomenal. You’re seriously saying you don’t want to be part of that? You can’t have a total aversion to it, love … you used to sell yourself on the street.’

‘That experience wasn’t good.’

‘Well, put it behind you. This is a different ball game. But like I said, no one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to. You can issue cloakroom tickets for us all night, if you’d prefer. But I don’t think you’ll prefer it for long. A bod like yours needs putting to some real work.’ She applied the handbrake and they screeched to a halt.

They were on a cobbled cul-de-sac with a large building on their immediate left, a monstrous, shapeless heap of sooty red-brick. Its roof was steeply sloped and covered in heavy, moss-eaten slate, its piping and ironwork exclusively old and corroded. If it had ever possessed any windows, all were now solidly bricked over. It was impossible to tell what its original use might have been: something utilitarian, a factory or workshop perhaps, though for all Lucy knew it might even have been a legitimate nightclub or a bar. Even the non-industrial buildings in Manchester’s inner suburbs tended to have an industrial air. Glancing further afield, Lucy saw that it was only one of several such structures ranged in a horseshoe around the end of the cul-de-sac, warrens of dingy yards and alleys connecting them.