Howard Linskey - The Dead

‘I saw her on the Friday night,’ he confirmed, ‘down at Cachet. I remember that and I remember her. She was a hottie and she knew the score. We had a couple of bottles of the good stuff in the VIP bar then I took her and her mate back to mine for the party. In the end I chose her. Her mate wasn’t too chuffed about that but I doubt she’d have killed her over it.’ At least his ego didn’t extend quite that far, ‘I mean there are always plenty of lasses around but I figured this one was worth the effort.’

The effort? He probably only had to beckon her to his table and he was halfway there. These young, local lasses would arrive at his house with eyes like saucers, not realising it wouldn’t actually gain them much, except a few minutes of Golden Boots grunting and sweating on top of them, before he got them a lift home and never saw them again.

‘So you slept with her?’ I asked.

‘Not slept with, no,’ he answered. ‘I shagged her, but she didn’t stay the night.’ He meant he wouldn’t have allowed it. ‘I got one of my lads to run her home.’

‘One of my lads’ meant a member of his increasing entourage, a bunch of blaggers and hangers-on who ‘looked after him’ as he put it.

‘Did you see her the next night?’ I asked pointedly, ‘the night she died?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I had another party but she didn’t turn up. At least I didn’t see her, but there were a lot of people here, so she could have been around.’

‘Then someone might have seen her?’

‘I s’pose,’ he conceded, ‘but no, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t here.’

I didn’t think he was the most reliable witness, not these days. He was using more coke and booze than before and I reckoned a girl he’d shagged could walk right past him and he might not notice her.

‘Speak to your lads,’ I instructed him, ‘ask them if they know anything about her, including whether she stopped by on the night she died, even if it was only for a while and you didn’t see her. Maybe someone gave her a lift home. Hey, maybe she wasn’t there at all. Perhaps she was over you by then.’ He just stared blankly at me. ‘This is important. We need to know what happened to this lass, understand?’

‘Because she’s a copper’s daughter?’ he asked.

‘You’ve read that much in your comic then? Yeah, there’s a lot of heat on this one. Until it’s resolved nobody will be able to do any business. Have the law been to see you about her yet?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘They will,’ but I didn’t tell him it was me that would be grassing up his intimate knowledge of Gemma Carlton to the police. I needed to give them something and this was all I had, for now.

‘That’s all I need,’ he said, ‘the law sniffing around me.’

‘Welcome to my world,’ I told him.

When we left Kinane asked, ‘Why didn’t you let me sweat him a little. He’d have spilled.’

‘Because there’s nothing to spill,’ I answered, ‘Golden Boots is a terrible liar. We can spot it a mile off when he’s hiding something and he’s terrified of you. He knew the girl, he shagged the girl, end of. Maybe his lads will tell him something, but I doubt he’ll ask them properly, so we’ll get your Kevin to have a word with them instead, shall we?’

It had been a few days since my meeting with Jinky Smith and I was driving through the city when I took a call.

‘Is that David Blake?’

‘Yes,’ I waited for the next words and when none came, asked, ‘who’s that.’

‘Never mind,’ his breathing was audible, as if the speaker had damaged his lungs and every breath was a struggle, ‘I hear you’re after information about your fatha.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Jinky passed us the word.’

‘And you have some?’ I asked, ‘let’s hear it then.’

‘It’d be better face to face. I could meet you,’ another raspy breath and he added, ‘Jinky said there was some money in it like.’

‘There might be, if what you’re peddling is worth it.’

‘I think it is.’

‘Then come and see me,’ I told him, ‘you know the Cauldron?’

And the breathy rasp turned into a choked chuckle. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll not see you behind closed doors, no offence, but I’ll meet you out in the open.’

‘Where then?’

‘On the Blinky Eye Bridge.’

‘When?’ I asked, worried it might be a set up.

‘Tomorrow lunchtime. Twelve o’clock.’

I hesitated, but only for a second. I didn’t think anybody would be daft enough to try to shoot me there on a lunchtime, and this fella sounded old and tubercular.

‘Alright,’ I said, ‘I assume you know what I look like. How will I know you?’

‘I know you alright,’ he wheezed, ‘and you’ll know me when I come up and start talking to you.’

‘Okay, but I hope you’re not a time waster.’

‘Oh no, divvent worry about that. What I’ve got to tell you is gold.’

The Blinky Eye Bridge stretches across the River Tyne, linking Newcastle’s Quayside to Gateshead’s posh end; the bit with the Baltic contemporary arts centre and the seventy-million-pound Sage building. The Blinky Eye is designed for pedestrians and its official name is the Millennium Bridge. The kid in me still thinks it looks like the jaw bone of a giant whale with one bit sticking up and the other half resting on the ground. It gets its nickname because the top half can fall back and the lower bit flip up, so that both parts are out of the way when ships want to pass through it. Then it drops neatly back down again to let the common folk walk over it once more. Since it weighs more than eight hundred tonnes, that is no mean feat of engineering.

Because the bridge is more than a hundred metres, from one side of the river to the other, the mystery man couldn’t have picked a more out-in-the-open location to meet me than this one. He was late though, and I spent my time scanning passers-by to see if I could clock him. Palmer watched over me from the Newcastle side of the bridge, just in case.

From his wheezy voice and the fact that he was likely to be a contemporary of Jinky’s, I was expecting an older man and that’s exactly what I got. I spotted him a mile off and immediately relaxed. His progress across the bridge was spectacularly slow, each step measured, like a child pacing out a treasure map. He straightened when he finally reached me and I let him catch his breath. I was no doctor but I reckoned he had a year, at best.

‘Fags,’ he said and, for a second, that looked like all the explanation I was going to get, ‘fucked me lungs up,’ he added. ‘I’m only bloody sixty.’ He looked like he was having trouble dealing with what he knew was inevitably coming his way.

‘If they don’t get you, the booze and the birds will,’ I said and he let out a grim laugh at that.

‘True enough.’

‘You’ve got some information for me,’ I reminded him, ‘we can start with your name, if you want paying that is?’

‘Alreet,’ I could tell he was reluctant to concede even that, ‘it’s Paul Armstrong.’

‘Sit yourself down man,’ I told him and he sank gratefully into one of the metal bench seats on the bridge.

‘So, what do you know?’

‘I worked for your old mate, Mickey Hunter, when he had the garage, the one he peddled his used motors out of.’ Every few words he took a breath and I could tell each one hurt him, so he was economical with them.

I nodded, not because I knew the place but I was aware of Hunter’s dealership. The cars were so hot they virtually drove themselves out of there. He had it for years and it was a classic front for all of his other business, but it was gone by the time I really knew the lads in the firm, replaced by the old body shop he kept underneath the railway arches that knocked dents out of cars and acted as a front for his real role as quartermaster to our firm. After Hunter was killed we never left the job of supplying our weaponry to just one man any more. It was another area of security we had tightened up. I couldn’t run the risk of one guy knowing everything we’d been up to.