Paul Grzegorzek - Closer Than Blood

“Jane, I want you and Barry M to do house-to-house in the area where my car was recovered. See if anyone saw Jake when he dumped it. It’s a long shot, but it might turn something up.”

“Will do,” Jane confirmed, standing. “I’ll get one of the analysts to run a search on ANPR and known privately-owned CCTV in the area too.”

They filed out, leaving me with Barry Everett.

“Where does that leave us?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his bald head to wick away the sweat that was already forming.

“Trying to find out how Simmonds made contact with Jake in the first place. I’d ask Simmonds himself, but he won’t tell us shit.”

Barry nodded, donning his trademark brown leather jacket despite the heat.

We left the office, stopping only to grab our bags and a set of car keys. The bags contained what we referred to as our ‘fighting kit’; baton, spray and cuffs. Regulations stated that we should have them on us at all times while on duty, but I’ve never yet found a way to hide them effectively without tell-tale bulges all over the place. And that can be more dangerous in our little niche part of police work than being unarmed.

“How’s your dad?” Barry asked as we headed down into the bowels of the station.

“Dying,” I said, too harshly, then shook my head and softened my tone. “Sorry, that was rude, but he is. The docs gave him three months to live when he first got diagnosed, but here we are seven weeks later and they give him a week at the outside.”

“You know no one would blame you if you took time off to be with him, right?” Barry’s voice was soft, echoing gently as we passed through the locker room and down the steps into the underground car park.

“ He would.” I barked a laugh. “He made me promise to find Jake and keep him safe.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Keeping Jake safe is like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling. It’s impossible, and you get covered in shit if you try. Still, it makes a nice change to be pulled in the same direction by Dad’s wishes and the Chief Super. Not sure what I’d do if I’d been ordered off the case instead.”

“Best not to think about it. Who’s driving?”

“I am,” I said and hurried to the driver’s door. Barry was an excellent officer, but a good driver he was not.

As my allocated vehicle was still on its way back from wherever Jake had left it, presumably via a forensics team, I’d taken the keys to one of the pool vehicles, a beaten-up old Vauxhall Corsa that had been ragged to hell and back.

“So where first?” Barry asked as we pulled out of the car park and onto William Street, the engine sounding more like a Land Rover than a Corsa.

“Whitehawk,” I replied, referring to the poverty-stricken council estate on the east edge of the city. “And you’d better keep your fighting kit handy, because this could get messy.”

The Baker family were a legend in the City’s criminal underworld.

They bred like rabbits, and out of the seven brothers that made up this generation’s crop, at least three were usually in prison at any one time.

The family lived in five of the houses on Warbleton Place, a too-pleasant sounding name for the collection of tiny terraced homes that crowded both sides of the street. How the Bakers had convinced the council to let them congregate in one place I had no idea. You could spot their houses easily compared to the others; theirs were the ones with gardens full of discarded kitchen cabinets, old beds and other, less identifiable items.

Between them they terrorised the rest of the street and few were brave enough to report them to the police. They had their own brand of justice in east Brighton, and it usually involved baseball bats and the occasional petrol bomb.

More importantly, however, two of the Bakers – Eddie and Marcus – occasionally worked for Simmonds as muscle. They were the worst the family had to offer, happy to do absolutely anything, no questions asked, if the price was right.

Eddie had been arrested for attempted murder no fewer than three times, but never charged with anything more than GBH, and Marcus had a string of weapons offences and assaults that would put a London gang to shame.

We pulled up outside Eddie’s house, a tiny two-bedroom mid-terrace with a garden so covered in rubbish you could barely see the grass. In the few clear spaces, dog turds sat like brown landmines, waiting to go off should the unwary trespasser enter.

“You sure about this?” Barry asked, eyeing the place nervously. “They’ve not got the best track record when it comes to dealing with coppers.”

“Eddie thinks he owes me a favour,” I replied, slipping my pepper spray out of my bag and into the pocket of my jeans, just in case. “Remember when I nicked Colin Murphy last year?”

“The paedophile? Yeah, vaguely.”

“Well, turns out he was targeting the school where Eddie’s little girl goes. He was there outside the school when I nicked Murphy, nearly had to nick him as well when he found out there was a nonce trying to pick up kids there. Anyway, now he figures he owes me, so I was hoping to call in the favour.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

“Then we have a nice polite chat and walk away. Even I’m not stupid enough to go two against however many of the Bakers are nearby at the moment.”

We climbed out of the car to the sound of aggressive barking coming from the house, accompanied by the scrabbling of claws on wood. The sound cut off abruptly with a yelp.

Sticking carefully to the path, I made my way towards the door with Barry close behind. Before I could knock it was opened by a disgruntled-looking Eddie, huge arms folded across his chest, rippling muscle underneath full sleeve tattoos. He was about my age but looked ten years older, his fair hair receding and greying at the temples. He wore a white vest and grey jogging trousers, the latter looking like they hadn’t been washed in a month.

“You’re on my property,” he said bluntly as I stopped a safe distance away.

“Actually Eddie, it’s council property, but I’m not here to fight.”

“Why are you here then?”

“I thought we could have a chat.”

“About what?”

“About,” I paused and looked around ostentatiously, “something that probably shouldn’t be discussed out on the street.”

He eyed me up and down, then glanced back over his shoulder. Deeper in the house, I could just hear the sounds of something heavy being moved, along with a rapid scraping noise.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked, trying to look past him without being too obvious.

“Depends. You looking for one of my brothers?” He squared his shoulders.

“Christ no. It’s about one of your employers, actually.”

“I’m on the JSA, ain’t got an employer.”

“Come on, Eddie, this is me you’re talking to. How long have we known each other?”

“Years, but that don’t make us friends.”

“I never thought that it did. I prefer to think of us as opposite tradesmen, but there’s no reason there can’t be a bit of mutual respect, is there?”

“All clear, Eddie!” A young-sounding voice called from inside. Eddie shut his eyes and shook his head. I tried not to grin, knowing he’d take it the wrong way.

“You can come in,” he said, then nodded at Barry. “But the poof stays outside.”

I felt more than heard Barry stiffen. Brighton was famed for being laid back to the point of falling over, but on the outskirts, homophobia was alive and well and both the Barry’s went nuclear when it raised its ugly head.

“That poof ,” I said, before Barry could react, “is a police officer, my colleague and my friend . Whatever you and your brothers might believe, Eddie, you can’t catch gay, and even if you could Barry wouldn’t give it to you. Now stop being a dick, and either let us in or fuck us off, but get on with it.”