Paul Finch - Stolen

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Used to see him every Wednesday lunchtime, when I went shopping,’ Cora said. ‘He was a nice man, when he was sober.’

‘What do you mean, “He went missing”?’

‘One week he just wasn’t there. A week later, there was a young girl selling it. I asked her what had happened to Walter. She said she didn’t know. They thought he’d just moved on. But he wouldn’t have moved on, I’ll tell you. He was a Crowley man. Been here all his life.’

‘And did no one report this disappearance?’ Lucy asked.

‘Like who? He didn’t have a family, didn’t have any friends.’

‘So, there’s no actual evidence that anything bad happened to him?’

‘No, but let’s be fair, Lucy … if I was to tell you this about a neighbour, someone who actually lived in a house and paid their taxes, I reckon the next thing you’d do as a police officer would be to knock on their door, to see what was what.’

Lucy mulled this over and was sad to admit that it was probably true.

Homelessness was a major story in Britain today, and rightly so given that it was a national disgrace. At one time, you’d only see those poor wretches in the forgotten backstreets of big cities, but now they were everywhere, right under society’s nose. And yet so few people even noticed them.

‘I’m sorry, love …’ Cora reached out and patted her daughter’s hand. ‘You’re a good police officer. It’s not your fault.’

Lucy didn’t reply. For a moment, all she could think about was Stan Beardmore’s comment the previous day: They’re just dogs … we’ve got a longer list of missing people who we haven’t got time to look for.

That ‘list’ comprised dozens of missing persons posters, each one depicting a grainy photograph of some poor individual – and there were all ages there, all races, all classes – who had dropped out of sight, never to be seen again. In many cases, it was so long ago that their posters had yellowed and curled. And it was the same story in police station foyers all over the UK.

And now they had more people vanishing from Lucy’s own streets, and yet it had taken a homeless heroin addict dressed as a nun, and an off-handed comment from her mother, to draw her attention to them.

‘No, it’s not our fault,’ Lucy agreed. ‘But maybe we can do a better job than we are doing.’

Mick Shallicker lounged in the penthouse suite of the Astarte Hotel in central Manchester.

The Astarte was a bland structure, looking like a typical midweek stopover for travelling businessmen, which was exactly the impression that its owners, Ent-Tech Ltd, aka the Crew, liked to give. The top floor, which was nominally the penthouse suite, comprised bedrooms, an office, a boardroom and a lounge bar, none of it accessible by public stairway or lift, only by a private express elevator, which ascended straight to it from a subterranean car park to which normal customers were also denied entry.

In fact, the Astarte was the hub of Crew operations, though few people who passed it would have the first clue that this presentable but on the whole innocuous building housed a crime syndicate whose baleful influence was so far-reaching that even the police had to tread warily around them.

Mick Shallicker was as much a part of this as the immense granite building blocks from which the Astarte was constructed. His prime role was as personal minder and chief enforcer to Frank McCracken, the Crew underboss in charge of shaking down all those non-affiliated criminal groups in the Northwest who didn’t voluntarily pay ‘tax’. By its nature, this department had constantly to be ready to threaten or employ violence to get its way, and Mick Shallicker was right at the heart of that. It helped that he was six-foot-nine, with a build to match. He was broad and strong as an ox, an all-round giant whose rugged, brutal face bespoke no mercy for those falling into his grasp.

At present, he was in the lounge bar, next door to the boardroom, sipping a cold beer and snacking on an excellent buffet. Others like him, at least in terms of rank, were dotted around the spacious, comfortable room, some on couches, some in armchairs, some, like Shallicker, standing at the bar. There was some chit-chat, but nothing especially warm or friendly, though there was no tension in the air. None of these men trusted each other, though they didn’t dislike each other, and even if there was some animosity, theirs wasn’t a paygrade that permitted outward displays of it. Watched closely by several dark-suited members of Benny B’s security team, who had already disarmed everyone on arrival, they spoke civilly to each other if it was necessary to speak – there were even a few quips, a few chuckles – but for the most part they simply nodded, smiled their enigmatic half-smiles and kept quiet.

All, though, were listening – mainly for any sign of increased volume from the boardroom next door. At present, it seemed calm, though this was a special meeting that had been called at short notice by Crew Chairman ‘Wild Bill’ Pentecost, and that didn’t always bode well. In fact, Mick Shallicker was so intent on listening – he knew there’d been a certain amount of strain in recent times between Pentecost and Frank McCracken in particular – that he half-jumped when his mobile suddenly buzzed in his jacket. Fishing it out, he saw to his surprise that he’d received a text from Lucy Clayburn.

Need to speak to him. ASAP.

He put the phone away and continued to wait and listen.

In the boardroom, Bill Pentecost was holding court from his usual place, standing at the head of the long teak table. At sixty-one, he was a tall, lean, permanently besuited man, and yet his appearance was never less than curious and unsettling. He had frizzy grey hair, a thin pale face and narrow blue eyes, which he levelled like a pair of laser beams through the square-lensed, steel-rimmed spectacles he always wore.

‘These are difficult times, gentlemen,’ he said in that slow, emotionless monotone that friends and foes alike found so difficult to read, and therefore so unnerving. ‘New challenges, it seems, are presenting themselves every day.’

The meeting had commenced at nine that evening, and only now, after ten, having dispensed with some routine matters, did Frank McCracken suspect the Chairman was at last getting down to his main business. By the concerted attention on everyone else’s faces, the rest of the Crew’s directorship felt the same. For his own part, McCracken was resolved to look calm and relaxed. Like all birds of prey, Wild Bill could sense fair game before it had even broken cover. Not that McCracken considered himself in those terms. Things were strange at present – there was something in the air he didn’t like – but generally he was at home in this dangerous company. Though in his mid-fifties, he’d kept well. He was tanned and fit, with a silver-grey crewcut, dark eyes and lean, predatory features that did little to conceal the hawkish personality underneath. As the Crew’s shakedown captain, his line wasn’t always as profitable as some of the others, but he was a regular and reliable contributor to company funds and he’d been close to Pentecost since their earliest days.