Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 (16 page)

 

Chapter Thirty-­Nine

T
HE BRIEF TEXT
arrived an hour later
:
“
All OK
.”

The thudding of the rain increased through the remainder of the evening, the windows shuddering in the frames, both with the thick buffeting of the wind and the occasional reverberations of thunder.

Lucy went to bed early, then slept fitfully, waking before 1 a.m. The thin material of the curtains did little to hide the regular flashes of lightning. The rain had increased, both in tempo and ferocity. She had been thinking about Robbie's proposition. Since her father had been committed to Gransha, his house,
this
house, had not changed. It was almost as if she had been holding her breath, waiting for him to come back. But she knew, even before the conversation with her mother, that her father would never be coming back and that she felt she had reached a liminal point. Either she had to make this house her own, or else leave it and, perhaps, move in with Robbie. Yet the thought of the latter made her feel like she could not quite catch her breath.

She thought of all the others she'd recently encountered who lived alone: Terry Haynes opening his doors first to Tom Fleming and, more recently, Kamil Krawiec; Doreen Jeffries welcoming Helen Dexter into her home. Lucy could not decide whether their reasons had been altruistic or an attempt to avoid the loneliness of single living. Or, in Haynes's case, something more sinister still.

Unbidden, too, she thought of the girl, Grace. The bank building in Waterloo Place had been sealed off as a crime scene, meaning she would not be able to shelter from the storm in there. She might have nowhere else to go.

She reached across the bedside cabinet, feeling her way to her phone, then picked it up and dialed.

It rang four times before it was answered.

“Who is this?” the girl asked, without preamble.

“Grace? It's Lucy Black. DS Black. Where are you?”

“What do you want?” the girl asked.

There was another flash of lightning outside, followed almost instantaneously by a peal of thunder, which Lucy heard echoed in the girl's phone a second later.

“Are you outside in that?” Lucy asked.

“Why?”

“You'll get soaked.”

“I already am soaked. What do you want? Is it about the money?”

“You'll get more—­What money?”

“I took from your boss. The guy waiting outside the bank.”

Lucy remembered now that the girl had taken payment for the tip-­off about the scene of Krawiec's killing from both her and Tom Fleming. “No. It's not about the money. I was worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you're a teenager sleeping outside in a thunderstorm,” Lucy snapped. “Where are you? I'll come and get you.”

“The railway,” she muttered, then hung up.

L
UCY GUESSED THAT
she meant the railway museum, beneath the bridge, rather than the city's proper railway station. When she arrived and sprinted round onto the platform at the back, holding onto the edge of her umbrella to stop the wind pulling it inside out, the girl was waiting for her.

She was sitting alone, her back against the metal shutters of the rear doors. The rest of the platform was deserted. The overhanging roof provided little shelter, the direction of the wind running down the river valley carrying the rain in beneath its cover.

Lucy looked at the girl, sitting on the ground, her face slick with rainwater, her hair hanging in strangled curls over her face. Lightning flashed overhead and, in its momentary light, Lucy noticed something below the girl's eye.

“Are you coming?” Lucy said. “I'm getting soaked.”

T
HE BRUISE BLUSHED
her left cheek, its lower edge ending in a small cut which had started to scab over.

“What happened you?” Lucy asked, turning off the light in the car again following the girl's protests at Lucy's examination of her face.

“Someone smacked me,” she said.

“Who?”

“A customer.”

“A
customer?
”

“He haggled on the price and I made up the shortfall by lifting his wallet. He realized and came after me.”

“He punched you?” Lucy asked, keeping her voice even.

“It happens,” Grace said, dismissively.

“What did he look like?”

“Balding. Middle-­aged. Just the usual.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I don't ask if they don't tell. I don't really want to know anyway. As if it matters what they're called.” She sat in silence for a moment, then added, quietly. “They'd probably just lie about it anyway.”

Lucy turned up the heat a little, causing the windows to mist, then immediately changed the airflow back to cold.

“So, where are you putting me? I'm not an alcoholic, so none of those places will take me.”

“There must be someone you can stay with?”

The girl considered the statement. “Put it like this,” she decided, “I've shat in too many nests.”

“Really? You shock me,” Lucy said, earning a smile of pride from the girl. “That's not a good thing, by the way. Shitting in nests.”

Grace raised her head a little, as if balancing something on her chin, then turned and looked out the window. “So, where
are
we going?”

“You can kip over at mine till the rain passes,” Lucy said.

G
RACE STOOD IN
the living room, surveying the furniture. She moved across to the TV, an old analogue set, to which Lucy had attached a Freeview receiver.

“No offense, but your house looks like it was decorated by an old man,” she said finally.

“It was. It's my father's house,” Lucy explained. “I've not had much time to change it.”

“When did he die?”

“He's not dead. He's in a home. He has Alzheimer's.”

“Near enough then,” Grace said, plumping down on one of the armchairs. “So, what's the deal?”

Lucy raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

“What do you want me to do?” Grace continued, pulling off her coat.

“Nothing,” Lucy said. “You're welcome to stay for the night. Get a shower if you need one. Get out of the rain. Eat in the morning.”

“Are you a lezzie?” Grace asked. “I don't mind,” she added. “I've done it before.”

“Jesus,” Lucy muttered. “It's pissing down outside, you're a kid sleeping rough. You can stay the night. I don't want anything in return.”

“Yeah, right,” Grace said. “Nobody doesn't want nothing.”

Lucy tried to unravel the logic among the multiple negatives. “
I
want nothing,” she said. “There are a few ground rules. No stealing, no drugs, no drinking.”

“I'm not a junkie,” Grace protested.

“I never said you were. I told you the rules of the house. I'll get you some towels and a change of clothes.”

S
HE PADDED DOWNSTAIRS
half an hour later, wearing Lucy's pyjama bottoms and a T-­shirt. The bottoms were too long for her, Lucy standing a few inches taller, and she'd rolled up the legs. She rubbed at her hair with the towel, scrunching it in her hand to encourage it to curl.

“Do you want tea?” Lucy asked.

The girl nodded. “I'll make it,” she said. “Where's all your stuff?”

They moved into the kitchen, Lucy laying the cups, tea bags, sugar, and milk out on the counter while Grace filled the kettle. “Milk, one sugar,” Lucy said, standing back, allowing the girl the gesture of contributing.

In the light of the kitchen, she could better see the bruising on her face.

“That looks sore,” she observed. “You sure you don't know who did it?”

“Why?” Grace said.

“Men don't hit women.”

Grace pantomimed an expression of stupidity. “Duh! Yes, they do,” she said, indicating her own face with her upraised hand.

“Not when I can help it,” Lucy said. “Who was it?”

“What're you going to do? I won't press charges. I'll be done as a prossie.”

“There are ways around everything,” Lucy said. “Your name won't come into it.”

The girl held her stare a moment, then turned and padded into the living room. She returned with her phone. She held it out to Lucy. The picture on the screen was of a black Audi, its registration plate just visible.

“That's his car,” Grace said. “I take pictures of the cars when they approach me. In case anything happens to me.”

“Who do you send them to?” Lucy asked, making a mental note of the registration number.

Grace looked at her quizzically. “No one.”

“What good will that do? If you're the only one with the picture of the car.”

“If I die. If they do something to me, your lot will find the phone with the car pictured on it.”

“And have no idea what it means,” Lucy said. “And you'd be dead. Fat lot of use that would be.”

“At least the bastard wouldn't get away with it. If you did your job properly, like.”

Lucy sighed, as the girl flipped the phone in her hand, weighing its heft. “I thought it was pretty smart,” she said.

 

Saturday, 21 July

 

Chapter Forty

A
T FIRST,
L
UCY
had begun to doubt the wisdom of letting the girl stay. She lay awake in bed, listening both to the storm assail the trees bordering the back garden, and for sounds of Grace moving around the house. Lucy had made sure her purse and phone were locked in the cabinet next to her bed.

Despite this, she must have drifted off at some point, for when the girl's shouting woke her, it was 6 a.m. She was out of bed before she even realized she was up and moved quickly into the girl's room, not sure what to expect. In the half light of the room, dawn light already spilling around the edges of the curtains, she could see that, though the girl was still asleep, her face was wet with tears, her arms flaying as she screamed. Lucy considered wakening her, trying to reason with her, and moved across, motioning to touch her. In the end, though, she moved back and closed the door quietly, leaving the girl to face alone whatever raged in her dreams.

“D
ID YOU HAVE
a nightmare?” Lucy asked her two hours later, as they ate tea and toast in the living room, the television playing quietly in the background. “You were screaming in your sleep.”

Grace shrugged as she tore the crust off her bread and laid it on the plate resting on the chair arm. “I don't remember,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

Lucy shook her head.

“I must have for you to know I was screaming.”

“I thought you were being attacked or something,” Lucy said. “It was fine.”

The girl chewed open-­mouthed. “So, what are you doing today?” she asked.

Lucy took the hint. “Looking for someone. A friend of Kamil's: Aaron Moore?”

Grace shook her head. “Never heard of him,” she said. “Is he a drinker?”

“I don't think so,” Lucy said. “He's . . . possibly vulnerable.”

“Aren't we all?” Grace observed. “What's he done?”

“He was involved in something with Kamil. We were hoping he might know what happened to him.”

Grace shrugged, lifted the remote, and flicked the channel. “They might have met at the soup kitchen,” Grace said. “I know Kamil went there to try it.”

“The Chris­tian one?” Lucy said. Tom Fleming was involved with a soup kitchen which operated at night in the city, as much for youths too intoxicated to find their way home as for the city's destitute.

Grace shook her head. “There's a different one. It started a few months back, running out of Great James Street. Sammy told me about it. He uses it, too.”

“I've not heard of it,” Lucy said. “I'll ask Fleming.”

“Is he your boss?” Grace asked.

Lucy nodded.

“He's a God botherer, isn't he?”

“He's a decent person,” Lucy said. “A good man.”

“He's in a minority, then,” the girl concluded.

L
UCY DROPPED THE
girl off at the Waterside end of the Craigavon Bridge, as she asked. As she opened the car door, she looked back at Lucy. “All right,” she offered, by way of thanks.

She got out and waved briefly. As Lucy drove away, she glanced in the rearview mirror at the girl, standing on the curbside, as if unsure where to go next.

Lucy called through to the Strand Road and asked the desk sergeant there to trace the registration number of the car that Grace had photographed; a moment later he informed her that it was registered to a Mrs. Bernadette Thompson, with an address in Eglinton. She was just jotting down the details and Thompson's phone number, the pages from Beaumont in her bag the only handy source of paper, when her mobile beeped, showing an incoming call. It was Tom Fleming.

Lucy ended the first call and answered Fleming's. “I'm on my way in,” Lucy said, assuming he was wondering where she was.

“Just to remind you to go to the Emergency Mental Health clinic,” Fleming asked. “CID have been at Aaron Moore's house in Pump Street several times now and are still getting no answer. Noleen Fagan might be able to help.”

T
HE
C
OMMUNITY
M
ENTAL
Health team was based in Rossdowney House in the Waterside. Lucy knew the psychiatrist there, Noleen Fagan. Fagan had once worked with a number of the teenagers in the residential unit until changes to the system meant that they were assigned to the children's unit. As a consequence, Lucy didn't see Noleen quite as often as once she had.

It was a surprise then, to see that her once long brown hair was now cropped, with patches of skin visible through the thinning.

“Lucy,” Fagan said, standing. “How are you?”

Lucy smiled. “Noleen,” she said. “Good to see you. You look good.”

“I look a mess,” the woman replied, lightly waving away Lucy's comment. “I developed alopecia a while back. Stress related apparently.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Lucy offered, sitting.

“No massive surprise, working here,” Fagan said, sitting herself. “And how are you? Still at PPU?”

“For now,” Lucy said.

“You're thinking of changing?”

Lucy shook her head. “Not unless they force me to,” she said. “It's beyond my control.”

“So, what can I do for you?”

“I'm trying to get some background on someone you might know: Aaron Moore?”

Fagan nodded. “I know Aaron. What about him?”

“We think he knew the guy who was found dead in the bin a few days back. We're looking for him in connection with a robbery. “

“Aaron Moore?” Fagan asked incredulously.

“You seem surprised.”

“I am; Aaron doesn't strike me as a thief.”

“We found his prints at the scene of a burglary.”

Noleen shrugged. “Fair enough. You should try his brother.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow.

“Moore and Co., Solicitors.”

“Seamus
Moore?” Lucy repeated.

“Yes, indeed.”

Seamus Moore ran one of the biggest law firms in the city, taking up a sizeable block of Clarendon Street. Lucy had met him only once, following a case in which he'd defended a youth who'd been arrested leaving the scene of a robbery, carrying items stolen from the property. Moore had claimed the youth had found the items on the street and was returning them to the burgled home. He won the case.

“Is Aaron Moore not essentially homeless?” Lucy asked, the implication in her question clear.

Noleen smiled mildly. “I believe he has a house which his brother paid for, in Pump Street. According to Aaron, having done that, Seamus has nothing more to do with him. He's a sad case, really.”

“Aaron or Seamus?” Lucy asked.

Noleen smiled, though avoided answering. “I know that Seamus is a key holder. Maybe you could phone him and ask him to let you into the house, see if Aaron's there. It's actually his house, so he can give you permission.”

“
If
he gives us permission,” Lucy corrected.

Noleen winked. “I'll call him and tell him Aaron has missed his last appointment, which is true. I'll say I'm worried about Aaron; that I've not been able to get in contact with him. Give me five minutes, then try calling him. He might be more amenable.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said, standing.

L
UCY LEFT THE
call until she'd made it down to the PPU Block in Maydown.

“What was your name again?” Seamus Moore asked, seconds after Lucy had introduced herself.

“DS Black,” Lucy said. “I'm calling about your brother, Aaron.”

“Why?” His tone was one of practiced boredom.

“We found his prints at the scene of a burglary,” Lucy began.

“I am not my brother's keeper, Miss Black,” Moore said.

“DS Black,” Lucy said. “You are, however, his key holder, I believe?”

“And who told you that?”

Lucy ignored the question. “We're concerned for your brother's safety, Mr. Moore. We need to locate him as quickly as possible. We've not been able to find him.”

“You're not the only one,” Moore muttered, which Lucy took to mean Noleen Fagan had kept her word and had contacted him. “I thought you said you were looking for him in connection with a burglary? That's not really out of concern for his welfare.”

“We found two sets of prints at the scene of a recent break in; one from your brother and one from another man called Kamil Krawiec. The latter was beaten almost to death and dumped in a bin. He was crushed in the compactor before anyone knew he was there. Your brother has now also vanished. I think he might know something about who attacked Kamil Krawiec and that, perhaps, he is at risk of harm for possessing that knowledge. I'm with the Public Protection Unit and I promise you, our foremost concern is for Aaron's safety. We need to check his house.”

Moore did not speak for a moment. Finally, he said, “Someone will be up at his house in twenty minutes,” then hung up the phone before Lucy could speak again.