Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble

I cycled round to the Reporter office and dropped in my advert. A week on Saturday, they’d be beating a path to my door. I lived in hope.

Things were hotting up. Temperatures were in the eighties. Trouble in the air. The evening paper was full of it. ‘Heatwave – Crimewave,’ screamed the headline. ‘Brutal Violence Erupts In Night Of Terror.’ There’d been riots in Salford. Youths circling the police station, setting fire to the flats and shops. In Cheetham Hill, two teenagers had died in a gunfight and, further south, a young black man had been fished from the Mersey. Police were treating both these cases as part of the on-going drugs war, with rival teenage gangs competing for a share of the lucrative and expanding crack market.

I folded up the paper and chucked it on the grass. It was hot, wonderfully hot, though I didn’t think three days really rated as a heatwave. I relished every sweaty moment, every airless night. It couldn’t last.

Tom sat in the paddling pool, chortling and gasping for air, as Maddie doused him with buckets of water. I closed my eyes, seeing amber through my eyelids. Thoughts drifted past. What did Sharrocks, a married man and doer of good works, have in common with Fraser Mackinlay, who could afford an Aston Martin and had taken up with a homeless sixteen year old working as a rent boy? Did Fraser hand cash out to the Dandelion Trust? If Sharrocks was working to help children in need, wouldn’t the relationship between the wealthy Mackinlay and the poor teenager trouble his scruples just a little? Was I completely misreading it? Perhaps Fraser was a philanthropist, giving Martin the shelter he needed. But why deny knowing him, when I’d shown the photo? And if they were simply lovers, what about Martin’s fearful reaction at the nightclub?

Had Martin ever been told he was adopted? Did he know now? Had Janice reached him before death reached her? Maybe Fraser had shut her out, as he had me? She’d driven off; there’d been some trouble with the car, or something made her pull over on the motorway. The killer had struck. Any victim would do. But what if Martin had answered the door? Janice, distraught, had blurted out her story. My baby, my baby, I’m here now…Frightened, Martin had pushed her. She’d fallen…

Ray called me in to the phone. It was Nina Zaleski. ‘I just saw him, in the car.’

My guts clenched. This was it – back on the scent. He did exist. ‘Coming or going?’

‘Going. Fraser got back maybe an hour ago. I had to go collect something from the dry-cleaners, I was driving back and they went past.’ She was all excited, too.

‘You’re sure it was him?’

‘Small, young, dark hair. I’m looking at the photo now: If it ain’t him, it’s his brother.’

‘So he is still staying there,’ I said.

‘Well hidden. That boy has not been out of that house all week, not that I’ve seen. Fraser’s off to work every morning, then nothing. By the way, I asked Jack what Fraser’s company was called. I didn’t tell him why, of course. I told him we’d had some junk mail about computers and I wondered if it was the same set up? Anyway, Jack says it’s M.K. Communications or M.K.C. Now,’ she ran on, while I jotted the name down, ‘Jack and I are out to dinner tonight, so I won’t be able to keep an eye out here.’

‘Don’t worry. At least he’s still around. Now, I need to know the next time Fraser goes out. Ring me tomorrow when he leaves for work. Then I can get to see Martin on his own.’

‘Sure. Least you’ll be able to reassure his mom,’ she said.

‘Oh, yeah.’ I’d forgotten that Nina only knew an edited version of events. ‘Yeah, she’ll be, er, really pleased. Of course, I do need to actually see him myself.’

‘Okay.’ She was brisk, energised. ‘So I’ll call when he leaves for work tomorrow. He usually leaves about eight-thirty.’

I thanked her again.

‘Hey,’ she said before she hung up, ‘ain’t it just like Cagney and Lacey?’

At last. Confirmation that Martin was there, and a lead on Fraser. I was on the right track.

As soon as I got the dialling tone, I rang Harry’s. Bev answered. I felt a tinge of disappointment. He was out.

‘Down in Salford,’ she said. ‘He’s practically living there since the trouble. The Guardian Weekend want something from him and The Observer are making encouraging noises.’

We chatted about the children for a while and I agreed to call round on Saturday, anyway, with Maddie and Tom. Bev said she’d tell Harry I called.

Ray had made an assortment of salads. It was too hot to eat anything else. We ate in the garden, wafting the occasional wasp off the plates. I described to Ray the refurbishment job the Dobsons had done on my office, garden chairs and all.

‘I could make you a couple of nice chairs,’ he said, squinting into the sun.

‘For a price. Look, I can probably pick up something at a car-boot if I decide the white vinyl’s too…’

‘Frivolous?’

‘Yeah – as long as it’s wooden…’

‘No taste,’ he protested.

‘No money.’

‘Speaking of which, or whom, Clive gave me a cheque towards the rent.’

I widened my eyes. ‘How much?’

‘Ooh, you’re so mercenary.’

‘Ray! Anyway, it was materialistic, not mercenary.’

‘Two hundred,’ he said.

I groaned. It was a quarter of what was owing.

‘Better than nothing.’

‘We’re not the only ones he owes, you know. There’s this guy been ringing…’

‘Pete?’

‘Yes. It’s so embarrassing – he probably thinks we’re not passing messages on or we’re sheltering him, or something.’

Ray nodded. ‘Tom!’ His tone halted Tom in mid-swipe. The rake was inches from Maddie’s head. ‘Away, in the shed, you know you’re not to play with those.’

As the kids fought about who would put them away, I thought about Mrs Hobbs. How many times had she averted an accident, kissed Martin better, put a plaster on his knee? Protected him? The little boy she’d adopted. But when he suffered most, she couldn’t face it, too monstrous to accept. The phone bleated as I carried Maddie into the house. I put her down to answer it and she screeched hysterically. It was Diane. I said I’d ring her back.

It was an hour and a half later that I remembered. ‘Diane, how was it? When did you get back?’

‘Dreadful. Oh, Sal it was awful. We got back yesterday.’

‘Oh, no. So what’s, what about Ben and…’

‘It’s over,’ she said, ‘very definitely.’ She was speaking with clenched teeth.

‘Do you want me to come round?’ I prayed she’d say no. It was nearly ten.

‘No, I’m going to bed.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I offered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Your place or the pub?’

‘Here,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some duty-free. I’ll dig out my old Leonard Cohen.’

‘Oh, Diane. Oh, shit!’ I remembered the meeting with Clive. ‘Look, can we make it Saturday, or daytime tomorrow? I’m really sorry, but Ray’s set up the showdown with Clive.’

She was working Friday, away visiting her mum over the weekend. The first opportunity was going to be Monday night. We agreed on that.

In the fridge, there were still a couple of glasses of wine in the bottle that Ray had opened the previous night. I poured myself one and took it outside, along with the book by Loren D. Estleman. Detroit crime and low-life was comfortably distant from that of Manchester. Across the way, a Strimmer was screaming across someone’s lawn and someone was having fun with a high-speed drill. I drifted into my book. Next time I surfaced, the power tools had been turned off. There were a couple of minutes’ peace, then someone down the street flung wide their windows and treated the whole neighbourhood to repeat plays of their latest acquisition, with the bass turned up, ‘Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby’. Subtle. I read on, The words faded to dusk on the page. I stretched and drained my glass. All I could hear now was the spatting and caterwauling of a couple of cats, occasional traffic and a siren howling in the distance.