Bad Music 3
Hell is round the corner.
He opened the front door and stood aside to let Chess run in, picked up the mail that had been waiting for him for a fortnight and he’d ignored when he arrived home late the night before. Adverts for pizza parlours, 0% credit cards, another letter from the TV licence people. He didn’t want pizza delivered to his door, didn’t use a personal credit card, hadn’t owned had a television in seven years. Chess watched from the doorway as he went outside again and dumped the letters and flyers into the green waste bin.
Back indoors, he went into the kitchen, opened a bag of kibbles and fed Chess, switched on the gas boiler, heard the whoosh of the flame and hoped it would take the edge off the cold. He boiled up coffee and placed bread in the toaster. Stood waiting. Thinking.
Angus was in trouble again. And every time, the trouble was a little worse than the last. But this was a lot worse. It wasn’t naughty boy stuff. At best, it meant serious jail time. At worst. He didn’t want to think of the worst.
He remembered a story his dad told him about a great uncle who had gone walking in the hills up by Ericstane. A fog had dropped, so thick he could not see his feet, so he’d hunkered down, wrapped himself up, stayed as warm as he could, drank the tea in his flask, and waited. The fog took an entire day and a night to lift, and though he did not know exactly where he was, he knew the land was treacherous, so he sat it out. Finally, when the fog drifted away, the great uncle saw that he was on a ledge, a yard away from a vertical drop of about eighty feet. There were times to stride on and there were times to wait it out, his dad said. The trick was knowing which was which. He took out his phone, dialled a number, and when it picked up he said, ‘Hey sis.’
‘Dom, how’s life on the Fell?’
‘The usual,’ he said. He could hear family sounds in the background. ‘You busy?’
‘Always. What’s up?’
‘Have you seen Angus?’
A click as the phone was put down followed by a moment of dead air. He could hear her speaking to a child. She picked up the phone, ‘Not in a couple of months. He turned up, just before Christmas, brought a lovely card, presents for the kids. I made his tea, he spent an hour chatting with John, then he went.’
‘You made his tea?’
‘I make everyone’s tea. I’m not a human being, I’m a fully automated cooking and cleaning machine. I thought he might have turned up for Christmas dinner. I thought you might have.’
‘I went to Matthew’s.’
‘Oh, that’s good. Was Angus there?’
‘No.’ He still had Angus’ Christmas card and present in a drawer.
‘Come over some time, soon, she said. ‘We can set the world to rights. I had as kid brother just like Angus, d’you remember?’
‘I straightened out.’
‘You got ran out of town, as I recall.’
‘Came home with a wife.’
‘You did. A lovely girl who gave you two beautiful sons.’ She sighed. ‘Come visit your nieces and nephews. Bring your wayward son if you find him.’
‘Will do, sis. If you hear from him, tell him to get in touch.’
‘Is he in trouble, Dom?’ Her voice was serious now.
‘Might be.’
‘Are you going to speak to Faith?’
‘I am.’
She laughed like it wasn’t funny. ‘You’d better wear your flak vest.’
‘I’ll dig it out,’ he said.
There were more noises in the background. ‘Got to go. See ya, bruv.’
‘See ya, sis.’
He closed the call just as the toast popped up. He took out the slices, buttered them, added marmalade, took them into the dining room. He went back and poured out a mug of coffee. He sat down at the table and ate his breakfast. He had some people to visit if he was going to try and find Angus. Calls wouldn’t do it for most of them, they’d lie to protect him, even from Dominic. He was tired, checked his watch, almost ten. Hadn’t slept at all last night. Too wired up. The job he’d just returned from paid well, but in turn it charged a toll.
He wanted to stop.
He wanted to be at home, look out for his children, see his grandkids. He wanted to wind back the clock. He wanted to have never worked away. To have never left his family alone. The older he got the more he ached to have that time back.
Detective Inspector Khatter walked into the briefing room. ‘Update,’ she said. ‘We’re confident that the drop did happen, only it happened twenty-five miles south of where we were told.’ She pointed to the map of the coast. ‘Here. Low Hauxley. We conjecture further that the two extremely respectable young men who presented themselves at Newcastle General Casualty Department with various concussive injuries were the buyers of said product and were robbed of it before they even got back to their car. We found a BMW belonging to a brother of this character’ - she turned and pointed at one of the many mugshots on the whiteboard - ‘with its tyres slashed, up on the coastal path near Hauxley.’
‘Any info on possible suspects who robbed them?’ one detective asked.
‘It’s quite possible that Lala’s crew did the dirty. Currently they’ve got a non-aggression pact with Ropers, with the river as the DMZ, but five kilos of uncut Columbian finest will test the strength of any business relationship. If that is the case, we could be looking at an all-out war. Much as I’d like to see both parties wipe each other out, it brings bad publicity down on the Chief, so we’re expected to nip it in the bud.’
‘Did we search the trawler?’ A female detective asked.
‘The Government doesn’t want to upset the Spanish, especially when we’re hoping to slide back into the EU without anyone noticing, so no.’
‘Not even when they’re in British waters?’
‘Soon to be EU waters,’ Khatter said. ’So again, no, not unless we find a TikTok video of the El Capitano doing a dance while rapping about a dropping off a drugs shipment, and even then the Chief would probably slap a D Notice on it.’
‘On what grounds?’ the same detective asked, smiling a little.
‘On the grounds that we’re all one big happy European family and there’s nothing to see here.’
‘Did we check the FRCs*?’ another detective asked. ‘There must be two hundred between Hauxley and town.’
Khatter looked to Minto, who stepped forward. ‘For the timescale, nothing on the main roads. But we do have this.’ He pinned a photograph of a Ford Ranger with two faces visible through the windscreen. ‘Too blurred for FR, and the reg is fake, but this truck was driving west, close to where the action took place, and within the timescale. We did get lucky, however. One of the desk sergeants recognised the blonde kid in the picture.’ He blu-tacked a fresh mugshot to the whiteboard.
Khatter began talking again. ‘William Armstrong. Aka Little Wull. Scion of William Armstrong senior, aka Little Will aka Ill-Will, father of five sons, all of them short and verminous, of which Little Wull is the shortest, the youngest and the most resembling a sewer rat. Details on your handout.’ At this, Minto began handing out information sheets. ‘Little Wull’s current best friend is Angus Kerr, who we think is the other person in the photograph.’ She stuck a mugshot of another face, this one pleasant looking with reddish-brown hair. ‘Details also on the sheet. Both of these young men are well known to local plod. I plan to go and speak to Armstrong senior rattle his cage. Can’t see him giving me a straight answer, never mind giving up his son, but he might let something slip. I spoke to Kerr’s father an hour ago, and Angus is nowhere to be seen.’
Someone laughed.
‘I tend to believe him,’ Khatter said. ‘Kerr senior is a civilian. He’s some sort of management consultant. There’s another son who is legit, happily married, kids, proper job. Looks like Angus is the proverbial bad seed.’
‘Whereas the Armstrong clan are an entire bad harvest,’ someone said.
‘Locusts, famine and pestilence combined,’ Khatter said.
‘But are they mad enough to take on our friends north the river?’
‘I doubt the Armstrong clan are looking for a war. They deal in property, dope and extortion, not cocaine, and all of it located on the coast. They’ve got all the business they can handle. But Little Wull is a loose cannon,’ she said. ‘North of the river. South. Standing on the swing bridge in the middle of the river, I doubt he cares. As the desk Sergeant put it, Little Wull was born to hang.’
‘Why’re you going out and interviewing people, boss?’ a detective asked. ‘DIs usually lead from behind a desk.’
The met with soft laughter.
‘The chief wants a brown person leading the charge,’ Khatter said. ‘That way, if all goes well, I can stand beside him at the press conference while he takes the glory, and if it goes tits up, he can disown me while not being accused racism for picking on poor unfortunate drug dealers of Albanian and Pakistani descent.’
‘That’s why he’s chief,’ someone said.
‘That is indeed why he gets the big bucks,’ Khatter said. ‘Right, on the subject of interviews and such, Minto has a list for who’s doing what for the next few days. I want to know the thoughts, the plans, the friendships, the spending habits, the sexual partners, the breakfasts, the banter and the bowel movements of everyone on that board. If Lala’s crew stole the gear, they’ll be taking to the mattresses. If they didn’t, they’ll be looking for whoever did, and either way they’ll be tooled up. Hassan’s mob meanwhile, will be looking to extract retribution on the fools who ripped them off. Their pride is hurt and their income will be suffering as a result of yesterday’s fracas up on the coast, so they’ll be tooled up as well. Hell is round the corner, chaps, and I hope to postpone its arrival, so put the screws on your CIs, give me a demonstration of the full range of your famous detecting abilities, and let’s hope we can give a body-swerve to the wholescale slaughter of the less than innocent. I want the drugs off the streets,’ she turned and pointed to the whiteboard, ‘and all of these crims banged up.’
‘Is that all?’ someone asked.
‘I know. I dream the impossible dream,’ these last words sung, badly. ‘And keep me posted,’ she added, yawning, checking her watch. ‘But not for the next twelve hours, unless it’s really important. I’m going home to see my kids.’ She turned to go.
‘Any overtime?’
‘Not unless someone dies.’ Khatter, paused at the door and tapped the desk superstitiously with her fingertips.
‘The wood’s fake,’ someone said.
‘So’s my concern,’ she said, walking out.
Dominic showered and shaved, dressed in fresh clothing and walked downstairs. Chess was curled up asleep on his chair. He cleared the empty plate and cup, washed up. Drying his fingers, he walked back into the dining room he looked at the piano. He went over to it, opened the lid, sat down at the stool, closed his eyes and fingered some chords, played variants on the circle of fifths, reversed it to the circle of fourths, adding thirds, seeing where it took him. The sounds, assonant, dissonant, melodic, jagged, they all pleased him. He played for half an hour without even thinking, no distance between his thoughts and the music, time passing in a single moment of bliss. Then he stopped. Closed the lid, went into the living room, opened his WhatsApp account and messaged Terri at the Station Hotel, let her know he was home if she wanted him. She usually did. He had the skill to play music that was pleasing to the patrons at the bar, and he could play any tune he’d ever heard, by ear, and the tunes he hadn’t heard he could look up on his iPad. When he played, the bar made more money. Terri told him one time that he was almost worth what she paid him. In return, he didn’t tell her that he would have played for nothing. Music was his thing.
Fifteen minutes later, the aftertaste of the music still playing in his head, he left the house. His smile faded as he thought of the task ahead.
He had people to speak to.
He had a wayward son to retrieve.
Chapter 2 of Bad Music is here.
*FRC - facial recognition camera.
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