Val McDermid - Crack Down

I slowed down as I entered the covered walkway that cuts into the ground floor of the building, and into the range of the video cameras. I didn’t want to look like I was storming the building. I pressed the door intercom buzzer. ‘Can I help you?’ asked a voice with more static than a taxi radio.

‘I’m here to visit a prisoner. Richard Barclay. I’m his girlfriend,’ I said.

‘Go through the double doors to the lift and press the button for the seventh floor,’ the voice told me as the door buzzed and the lock was released.

The lift door opened on a different world from the spiffy smartness of the courts. No wood panelling or cool marble floors here. The paintwork was chipped and dirty, the floors pocked with cigarette burns, the walls adorned only with anti-crime posters to intimidate the visitors. I was signed in by a cheerful police officer who ushered me into a tiny cubicle, with two low stools bolted to the floor. The cubicle was divided in half by a metal-topped counter beneath a thick perspex screen. On each side of the counter, there was a telephone handset. I stared through the screen. The other side was identical, except that there was no handle on the inside of the door. I could get up and go any time I wanted, but the prisoner didn’t even have that amount of control. I glanced at my watch. It was just after quarter to.

The door opened and Richard walked in, giving a depressing little wave. He sat down, and I found myself noticing all the things I had come to take for granted. The smooth, fluidity of his movements. The way his smile starts on the left side of his mouth before becoming symmetrically cute. I blinked hard and nailed a smile on. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I picked up the phone, waving at him to do the same thing. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,’ I heard through the earpiece. It wasn’t an accusation. His voice sounded strange, disembodied but immediate, not like a normal phone conversation.

‘Sorry, but it was your fault I’m so late. I was out there on the mean streets working for you,’ I said with a ghost of our usual sparring.

‘How’s Davy?’ he asked.

I swallowed. ‘He’s fine,’ I lied, hoping it didn’t show. ‘He’s in bed asleep.’ That bit was true at least.

His eyebrows rose in perfect arcs, just like Paul McCartney’s. ‘Before nine o’clock? On a Saturday night?’

‘Alexis runs a tight ship,’ I said confidently. ‘She’s having so much fun childminding that she’s worn him out. Movies, computer games, swimming, enough thick shakes to eliminate the EC milk mountain. Or should that be lake?’

‘Depends if it’s gone sour yet,’ he said. ‘Is he missing me?’

‘When he has the time to notice you’re not there,’ I said drily. ‘I’m the one that’s missing you.’

This time, the smile only made it halfway. ‘I feel like Tom Jones in “The Green, Green Grass of Home”,’ he said. He rubbed a hand over his face. He looked exhausted.

‘You don’t look like him, thank God,’ I told him. ‘They treating you OK?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess. I’ve got a cell to myself, which is an improvement on last night. And the food’s just about edible. It’s the boredom. It’s doing my head in. I’d kill for a decent book and a clean shirt.’

I waved the plastic bag. ‘Clean shirt, boxers, socks and a couple of books. Alexis chose them.’ He looked bemused. I wasn’t surprised. ‘She says it doesn’t mean anything’s changed between you,’ I added.

He relaxed. ‘Thank God for that. I can stand most things, but I don’t know if I could bear to go through the rest of my life being grateful to Alexis. Thanks, Brannigan. I appreciate it.’

‘You better had,’ I growled. ‘I don’t do this for my clients, you know. You’re going to be working flat out till Christmas as it is just to pay me.’ I brought him up to speed, stressing how tentative it all was. That didn’t stop him looking like a kid who was expecting Santa to turn up with a ten-speed mountain bike and a Sega Megadrive.

‘OK, I hear you. Gimme the bottom line. Are you going to get me out of here in time to spend some time with Davy?’ he asked. The trust I could read in his eyes pushed my stress levels into the stratosphere.

‘I sincerely hope so.’ I had a horrible feeling that if I didn’t, my failure would mean more than one disappointed kid.

Leaving Richard wasn’t something I’d relished. But the fresh air outside the court building was. I breathed deep, staring up at the sky, not caring that there was a blur of light rain in the air. I can’t remember the last time I felt so low. I checked in with the baby-sitters and Chris told me Davy was still spark out. I drove round by Terence Fitzgerald’s house, but the place was in darkness and there was no car outside. I contemplated a bit of burglary, but I knew it was madness. The second rule of successful burglary is: Always make sure you know enough about their lives to know when they’re likely to come back. I didn’t know nearly enough about Terence’s nasty habits. And I didn’t relish the thought of being trapped on the top floor with no visible means of escape.

I didn’t feel like going home yet. I gunned the car engine into life and cruised back into town. Almost without thinking, I headed for Strangeways. In the long shadow of the Victorian prison commerce thrives. The narrow streets are packed with wholesalers’ warehouses, lock-ups and shop fronts, selling casual clothes, electrical goods, jewellery, beauty supplies and furniture. They’re mostly family businesses, and the ages of the businesses are like the strata in a geological map. The Jews were here first, then the Cypriots, then the Asians, then a handful of boat people. We’re expecting the Bosnians any day now.

A lot of the business that goes on in Strangeways is entirely legitimate. And then, a lot of it isn’t. A diligent Trading Standards Officer spending a Sunday poking around the market could find enough infringements to keep a court busy for a week. They regularly do. Only nobody ever answers the summonses.

On a Saturday night, Strangeways looks as empty, dark and moody as a Hollywood film set. Except for the Jewish café, that is. Formally the Warehouse Diner, it’s an unpretentious dive frequented by the traders, petty criminals and occasional visitors like me. It’s the only decent eating place outside Chinatown that stays open till four in the morning, which makes it handy for all sorts of reasons. Besides, they do the best salt beef sandwiches in town, and the best fry-ups. Some dickhead nominated it for one of those ‘cheap and cheerful’ good food guides, which means that every now and again a bunch of tourists arrives to gawp at the regulars. I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere, though if you want certain items, you have to pick your time carefully. The rabbi’s a regular visitor, and the mornings he’s due there’s no bacon butties and only beef sausages.

I’d hit a lull; the early trade had eaten and gone and the nighthawks weren’t in yet. As I’d expected, there were a few familiar faces in the diner. The one I was most pleased to see was Dennis. He waved to me to join him and his two buddies, but what I wanted to talk about wasn’t for public consumption. I shook my head and sat at a table on my own. As my tea and sandwich arrived, so did Dennis. ‘What do you know, Kate?’ he greeted me, pulling out the chair opposite me.

‘Not a lot. Life’s a bitch and then you die,’ I said wearily.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Life’s a bitch and then you marry one.’

‘That’s no way to talk about the love of your life.’

He grinned. ‘Me and the wife, we’re modern. Into all the latest fashions. That’s what keeps a marriage alive. These days we have an S&M relationship.’