Val McDermid - Crack Down

‘I’d be a lot happier if Richard brought Davy along rather than you. Then I could be sure there wasn’t a hidden agenda.’ Frankie said calmly.

I hoped the dismay I felt didn’t reach the surface. I pulled a face and said, ‘You and me both. But the boy wonder is out of town tonight. He’s gone to Birmingham to see some international superstar I’ve never heard of at the NEC. He went off this afternoon early. He doesn’t even know about Cherie.’

Frankie sighed. ‘I’ll just have to live with it, then. OK. We’ve placed Wayne and Daniel with emergency foster parents in Levenshulme. Normally, it would take a few days to organize a visit while we checked out the credentials of the person claiming to be friends or family, but in this case, I don’t see why we shouldn’t speed the wheels of bureaucracy since I know both you and Davy. Besides, it might just help the boys to settle, feel less abandoned. After we’ve eaten, I’ll find a phone box and call the foster parents, see what time will fit in with their arrangements.’

I put my mobile phone on the table. ‘Have this one on me,’ I said, nudging it towards her.

Frankie shook her head, smiling wryly. ‘Since I’ve known you, I’ve come to realize what the essential quality of a private investigator is,’ she said, reaching across and picking up the phone.

‘What’s that?’

‘You simply don’t recognize the point where the rest of the world backs off,’ she said. ‘Now, how do I work this thing?’

It was just after seven when Davy and I pulled up outside a trim between-the-wars semi off Slade Lane. The street was quiet; one of the few in the area that motorists driven demented by traffic don’t think is a short cut to anywhere. I’d had a difficult half-hour with Davy, explaining what had happened to Cherie and the boys. I thought I should keep it low-key so I wouldn’t frighten him, but I’d forgotten how small boys like things to be gory. He hadn’t seen it happen right in front of his eyes, so it was no more real, no more frightening than a cartoon or a video. I was glad Frankie had gone off to her meeting; anything less like a terrified nervous wreck than Davy it would be hard to imagine.

You couldn’t say the same for Daniel and Wayne. They sat huddled together on a settee in the front room. The television was on and their eyes were pointing at it, but they weren’t watching. They didn’t look up when the foster mother showed Davy and me into the room, but when she spoke, they both turned their heads towards us, a look of bafflement on their faces. They had the bewildered, desperate air we’ve all grown used to seeing in endlessly recurring TV film of refugees from disaster areas.

‘Hi, lads,’ I said. ‘Davy and I were wondering if you fancied going to the ice-cream parlour.’

Wayne got to his feet and, after a moment, Daniel joined him. I felt like a monster, dragging these two shattered kids out of the nearest thing they were going to have to a home, just to satisfy my curiosity. Then I looked at Davy and remembered my front door. That reminded me there was a lot more at stake than my nosiness. ‘Or we could go somewhere else, if you’d rather,’ I said.

‘It’s good there,’ Davy said anxiously, disturbed by his friends’ silence. ‘I want to go home,’ Wayne said. ‘That’s where I want to go.’

The foster mother, a bulky, comfortable-looking woman in her late thirties, stepped past me and gave Wayne a hug. ‘You’ve got to stay with us for a while, Wayne,’ she said in a soothing voice. ‘I know it’s not the same as home, but tomorrow we’ll go back to your house and get your clothes and the rest of your stuff and you can be at home here, OK?’

‘We’ll go to the ice-cream place, then,’ he said grudgingly to me. Wayne shrugged off the woman’s arm and pushed past her into the hall, where he stood expectantly by the door. Daniel followed him, and, after a quick glance at me for permission, so did Davy.

‘I’ll have them back in an hour,’ I promised.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Quite honestly, love, the more worn out they are tonight the better.’

For the first twenty minutes, I said nothing about Cherie or the shooting. We pumped money into the Wurlitzer, we argued the relative merits of everything on the menu. Then I sat back and watched while the boys wolfed huge ice-cream sundaes, gradually returning to something approaching normal behaviour, even if it was tinged with a kind of hysteria. I even joined in some of their fun, dredging my memory for old and sick jokes. When I reached the point where the only one I could remember was the one about the Rottweiler and the social worker, I reckoned it was time to change tack.

‘Davy got a lot of new transfers yesterday, didn’t you?’ I said brightly.

‘Where did you go?’ Daniel asked.

‘VIRUS,’ said Davy and proceeded to enthuse about the virtual reality centre.

‘Maybe we could all go together the next time Davy’s up,’ I suggested. ‘Show them your tattoos, Davy.’

He took off his New York blouson to reveal tattoos that spread up from his wrists and finally disappeared into the sleeves of his T-shirt. Wayne and Daniel studied the intergalactic warriors and dinosaurs, desperately trying not to look impressed.

‘Huh,’ Wayne finally said. ‘I’ve had ones just as good as that.’

‘Where from?’ Davy challenged.

‘From Woody on the estate. You know, him that gave you a load last week.’

There is a god. ‘I don’t think I know Woody,’ I said. ‘Where does he live?’

‘Up the top. Near the Apollo. Where the chip van parks,’ Daniel said positively.

‘Wasn’t your mum going to go and see him last night?’ I asked, feeling like I was walking on eggshells. It was the first time Cherie had been mentioned, and I didn’t know how they would react.

Wayne stared into his sundae dish, scraping his spoon round the sides. But Daniel didn’t seem bothered. ‘Nah,’ he said scornfully. ‘It wasn’t Woody she went to see. She’d already seen Woody and gave him a right gobful about giving things to us. And Woody said he was just doing what he was told to do, and she said he was a waste of space and who told him, and he said, the guy in the house on the corner. And that’s where she went.’

‘What guy is that, do you know?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Don’t know his name. We don’t go there.’ ‘What house is it?’ ‘You know I said where Woody lives? Well, if you was standing at the chip van and you looked across the street that way,’ he said, gesturing with his right arm, ‘it’s the house on the corner. That’s where my mum went last night,’ he added.

I was impressed. ‘Were you with your mum when she saw Woody?’ I asked. Daniel’s information seemed almost too good to be true.

‘Course we weren’t,’ Wayne said contemptuously. ‘She didn’t even know we were out. We followed her. We always follow her. She says we’re the men of the house and she needs us to take care of her, so we follow her, but she don’t know. We watch and listen so we’ll know if anyone did bad things to her and we could get them back later. She never saw us,’ he added proudly.

‘I wish I was that good at following people,’ I said. ‘It would come in really handy in my job. You’ll have to give me lessons one of these days. Where did you learn your tricks? From the TV?’

Wayne shook his head, swinging it elaborately from side to side. ‘Our dad showed us. He trained us to be silent and deadly, just like the Paras.’

I felt a chill in my heart. According to Cherie, Crazy Eddy hadn’t been near the kids in years. ‘When was this?’ I asked casually.

‘For ages. He just turns up at the common where we go with our bikes and takes us up Levenshulme and trains us. But he made us promise we wouldn’t tell anybody because he didn’t want Mum to know. But now Mum’s not here, it doesn’t matter about telling, does it?’ Wayne’s face crumpled and he rubbed his eyes savagely with his fists.