Strangers Page 7

Barney didn’t know for sure, even though he’d driven them both here in his uncle’s shuddery old van. The truth was he didn’t even think this area of wasteland had a name. As far as he could recall from his daylight travels, it was a patch of emptiness lying just east of the B5237.

  He shrugged, helpless to answer.

  ‘A shit-tip where nobody lives,’ Kev said irritably. ‘Where you’d be lucky to find rats, because rats are generally not that fucking stupid. Nobody wants this place. So not only is no one likely to see us … why should it matter if anyone does?’

  Even to Barney – who was a bigger, heavier lad than Kev, but tended by instinct to defer to his lifelong mate on all matters where complex thought was required – the answer to this one was more than obvious.

  ‘Because it’s public land and fly-tipping’s illegal.’

  Kev snorted. ‘But it was alright to dig coal mines out here, wasn’t it? And dump mountains of slag?’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ Barney cautioned. ‘Let’s be careful.

  ‘We’ll be careful. But for fuck’s sake, don’t let these bastards guilt-trip you.’

  ‘These bastards’ was Kev’s signature phrase, and his catch-all term for anyone he perceived to have higher control than himself, be they employers, bailiffs, police officers, the local authority, central Government itself, or anyone at all who qualified in his mind as part of the establishment.

  ‘Hypocrites, the lot of ’em,’ he ranted on. ‘If they wanted a rubbish tip out here they’d soon okay it …’

  ‘I said alright!’ Barney didn’t normally interrupt his mate in mid-flow, but of the two of them, he, ultimately, had most reason to be nervous.

  They’d spent the whole of that dreary Sunday clearing out Kev and Lorna’s new flat, which the couple were about to move into at mates’ rates because its owner was Lorna’s brother-in-law. He’d offered to lower the asking price even more if they disposed of the pile of rubbish that the previous tenants, a bunch of art students at the local Technical College, had left behind. There were boxes of broken brushes, paint pots, turps bottles, easels, torn canvases, along with the ruined carpet from the main lounge, the festering contents of several bins, two mattresses, and even the bedding as well.

  It had been a lot more work than the two lads had expected, taking them several hours to bring it all downstairs and load it into the back of Barney’s uncle’s van, which ensured that all the municipal recycling centres were closed by the time it came to dump the stuff. Having opted – at Kev’s insistence – for this other, simpler solution, it now looked as if they’d be at least another hour out here, on a one-time colliery wasteland which it had been quite a challenge just to access. They’d prowled its edges for half an hour or so, both driver and passenger tensing every time another vehicle drove past, before locating a track of sorts. This was little more than a ribbon of rutted, rubbly ground, but at least it was driveable and it led away from the B5237 in a straight line, running a couple of hundred yards before terminating in front of what looked like a burned-out Portakabin.

  They halted here, and even though it was a desolate spot, the undefined outlines of rocks and stunted vegetation standing left and right, the pale flood of their headlights picked out a muddy footpath on the other side of the ruin. Barney was glad they were at least away from the road. He switched his headlights off and climbed out, glancing around and listening, before walking to the rear and opening the van doors.

  Kev went with him, saying nothing as he dug into the mountain of refuse inside, hefting out a box filled with bric-a-brac, and strutting away through the gutted shell of the Portakabin. Almost by unspoken agreement, they’d decided to chuck the stuff somewhere on the far side of it, using the broken structure as a final shield between themselves and the road. But as Kev vanished along the meandering path beyond it, Barney thought he heard something.

  He spun around.

  A clacking, or clicking.

  Most likely it had been branches rattling in a gust of wind.

  There wasn’t much starlight penetrating the cloud-cover, but his eyes were finally adjusting to what little there was. Scrub-like thorn breaks were clumped to either side of the track, interspersed here and there by the odd stunted tree; the sort of charmless, twisted vegetation you saw so often on former coal-tips like this but rarely anywhere else. His vision didn’t spear very far into it – a few yards, but that was sufficient to show nothing moving.

  Barney shuddered as he zipped his fleece. This desolation was the last place he wanted to be in right now. It was ten o’clock at night, and the nearest habitation – either Bickershaw or Leigh – were both miles away.

  ‘You’re one to talk about guilt-trips,’ Barney mumbled as he humped a roll of heavy, stinky lino onto his shoulder and stumbled through the Portakabin, following the same route as Kev. ‘Reminding me I owed you a few quid from when I was short, and calling this an opportunity to pay you back. It was only a few quid, lad.’

  Naked bushes clawed at him as he pressed along the path beyond the ruin. Some sixty yards later, it opened out onto a flatter, harder surface – what had once been the concrete floor to another industrial unit.

  ‘This’ll do, here,’ Kev said from just ahead, as he dumped his load in a kind of unofficial centre-spot. Barney followed suit. They stood there, breathless, glancing round.

  The B5237 was about three hundred yards behind them. The streetlights over the top of it were just barely visible, but their own vehicle was concealed by the trees and undergrowth.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Kev said in a “go on, I’ll humour you” kind of tone. ‘If it’s really bothering you, why don’t we build it all up into a bommy? I mean, it’s Bonfire Night in a couple of weeks. If some copper comes wandering around here, he’ll probably just think its kids. Won’t cock a snook at it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Barney said, not feeling convinced.

  ‘There’ll be bommies everywhere this time next week. We’ll completely fox the bastards.’

  Barney nodded again, before noticing that Kev was watching him – and only belatedly realising that this meant it was going to be his job to construct said bommy. While Kev lurched back along the path towards the van, he got to work, piling the rubbish together, and then looking for spare bits of timber with which he could form that distinctive pyramid shape.

  A few minutes later, job done, Barney was also on his way back to the van. They passed each other in the process, Kev’s arms wrapped around a bulging bin-liner. They passed each other again a short time later, Barney this time hefting a couple of armfuls. And so it went on, the two of them working in relays until Barney was headed back to the van for what seemed like the fifth and surely final time – only to stop dead when he came in sight of it.

  Because another vehicle was now parked at its rear.

  Blocking it in.

  The only conclusion – the only conclusion possible – was coppers.

  For half a second, Barney’s world collapsed. He felt his bowels shrivel inside him. It wasn’t a serious offence, fly-tipping … except that he was currently on probation for pinching lead off a church roof. And he had no idea how much another conviction, even a minor one, might damage his chances of staying out of jail.

  But now, slowly, he began to notice things that reassured him a little.

  In the dimness, he couldn’t distinguish much about the car parked behind his van – he could only see the offside of it, and he certainly couldn’t identify its make or colour. But there were no Battenberg flashes down its flanks. Nor was there any kind of beacon or visi-flasher on top of it. That didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a police car, but its engine had been switched off and there were no headlights showing. Surely, if they were coppers, they’d still be sitting inside, waiting for the miscreants to come back?

  Barney trod forward warily. Even drawing closer, it wasn’t possible in this gloom to determine whether or not someone was inside it. But then a voice addressed him.

  ‘Excu
se me … can you help?’

  He swung right, to find a woman sliding into view around the front nearside of the van.

  Barney was shaken to see anyone at all, but this lady was the last person he’d have expected. Even in the dimness, she was a stunner: quite tall, an impression enhanced by her high-heeled boots and long, shapely legs, which were clad in spray-on black leggings. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of a shiny, silvery anorak, which was partly unzipped, exposing the best amount of cleavage he’d seen since last accessing the Butts & Boobs section of SexHub. She had a pretty face as well, and a nice smile. What looked like an awful lot of blonde hair was tucked beneath a smart black beret.

  ‘Erm … miss?’ he stammered.

  ‘I said can you help me?’

  Barney remained tongue-tied; he was smitten. But it now struck him that whoever this lady was, she was still a potential witness to his crime. Even if she failed to recognise him again, she might recognise the registration mark on the van. Trust him to let bleeding Kev talk him into using his uncle’s vehicle.

  ‘I’ve broken down, you see,’ the woman said, apparently oblivious to all this. ‘I don’t know what it was but I just kept losing power and stalling. I’d only just managed to get off the road when I saw your vehicle. I could really use someone to look at the engine.’

  ‘Look at the engine …? I’m, whoa … I’m not a mechanic.’

  ‘Please help,’ she said, her smile faltering, her voice softening with distress. ‘I don’t want to get stuck all the way out here.’

  ‘Can’t you just call a garage?’ he said, and immediately cursed himself. That would be all they needed, a vehicle-recovery team showing up.

  But now the woman spoke again, taking a couple of steps towards him, unzipping the front of her anorak. To his disbelief, he saw that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  ‘There must be something I can do,’ she said, ‘to make you change your mind.’

  ‘Miss, I …’ Barney turned hoarse, his mouth dry of spittle. ‘You can’t be …’

  She beckoned him with a long, crimson-tipped finger, before slowly backtracking.

  Barney wondered if he was actually unconscious and dreaming. Even though a voice inside kept telling him that this didn’t happen in real life, he followed her anyway – back around the front nearside corner of the van and down along the flank of it towards the deep shadows where her own vehicle was parked.

  As Kev made his way back to the van, he quietly fumed.

  A small man, of thin, wiry stature, the last item he’d taken – the larger of the two mattresses – had almost overwhelmed him with its size and weight. He’d dropped it several times en-route; it had subsequently smeared mud all over the front of his white shell-suit top.

  It was no one’s fault obviously, but Barney was still going to cop it verbally.

  A bloke his size ought to have gone straight to the heavier items, rather than leaving them for his mate. And where the fuck was he anyway? They ought to have passed each other again by now. Kev was secretly hoping that, whatever remained in the van – and it couldn’t have been much – Barney would take care of it all himself.

  But then he came in sight of the vehicle. And stopped short.

  Who the bloody hell had been so inconsiderate as to park up behind them?

  Surely to God Barney hadn’t been right and, by a one in a million chance, some lazy-arsed copper had happened to drive past and spot what they were up to?

  ‘These bastards!’ Kev said under his breath, spittle seething through his clenched teeth.

  But then he realised that the other vehicle wasn’t a police car. At least, not a marked one.

  He padded forward, wondering why both vehicles appeared to be unmanned. If nothing else, Barney still ought to be hanging around. Unless he too had thought the new arrivals were coppers, and had headed for the hills.

  That would be so fucking typical.

  The big daft prat never watched the news, of course. Dear Lord, they weren’t even sending burglars down these days. Did Barn seriously expect they’d find prison space for fly-tippers? Of course, even if such stupidity explained why Barney was absent, it offered no clue about the car behind. By the looks of it, it was a relatively new Ford Mondeo. A posh bit of kit to be driving on a rubbish-strewn wasteland like this.

  Then, without warning, the van’s headlights came on, catching Kev in their full beam. He backed away a step, raising his hand to block the dazzle.

  ‘Whoa!’ he shouted. ‘Barney, that you?’

  The van’s engine chugged and coughed, and grumbled to life.

  With a CLUNK, it was thrown into gear – and then rocketed forward.

  ‘Jesus!’ Kev screamed.

  It crunched headlong into him, its front bumper-bar slamming his thighs with sledge-hammer force, snapping them both like sticks of celery, its windscreen smashing into his face with explosive force.

  Kev was carried forward for several yards, spread-eagled, before the driver hit the brakes. The van screeched to a halt in front of the Portakabin, and he slumped to the ground. At the same time, a heavy, cumbersome form catapulted down from on top of the van’s roof, and landed with a thud on the gritty floor next to him.

  Kev was only vaguely aware what had happened. His body felt like a heap of disjointed wood. There was no feeling in it, and when he tried to turn his head sideways, his neck burned with a bone-deep fire. Even so, he managed to focus on the prone figure at his side. This too was in a broken, bedraggled state, but its face, which had been worked over with some heavy implement until it was gory pulp, was just about recognisable. As Barney.

  This made no sense to Kev.

  Barn had been on the roof of the van?

  Who put him there?

  A pair of feet trudged up behind him. Kev wanted to glance around, but his neck was hurting too badly. With a slow exhalation of breath, someone sank to their knees.

  ‘Two trophies for the price of one,’ a hoarse voice snickered.

  To Kev’s incredulity, his flies were pulled down and someone started unbuttoning his skinny jeans.

  ‘Did you really think you were going to get some?’ the voice whispered. ‘You little shit! You little rodent! Did you and that brainless hunk of meat seriously believe you were going to tap this perfect arse?’

  Kev still didn’t understand. Chill air embraced him as his underpants were ripped away.

  These bastards, he thought as he ebbed into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 7

  The Intel Unit convened that first Monday, in their office on the top floor at Robber’s Row – to find that some wag from somewhere else in the nick had already attached a paper sign to the door, which read:

  Ripper Chicks

  As a general rule, there was dark humour, and then there was black humour, and then there was police humour. It was a psychological defence mechanism, of course. The best way to fend off the stress of spending every day steeped to your armpits in human misery was by laughing at it. But even by those standards, this was seen by several of the girls as a little close to the knuckle. Some, on the other hand, thought it rather catchy.

  ‘Kind of rolls off the tongue,’ PC Julie Ebbsworth from Oldham said. ‘We are the Rrrriiipper Chicks!’

  ‘Well, the blokes have always had cool nicknames, haven’t they,’ DC Val Ashworth from Preston replied. ‘They’ve had the Shots, the Protectors, the Sweeney. Why can’t we be the Ripper Chicks?’

  Perhaps if they’d been investigating the ripping apart of female victims, consensus that they weren’t offended by it would not have been achieved so quickly. It might also have been the case that, given what they were all about to undergo – and no doubt this had been preying on several of their minds for the whole of the weekend – this mischievous rebranding of their unit by an outside party did not seem such a big deal.

  When agreement was reached, DS Sally Bryant agreed to leave the sign there. In fact, she said she’d take it home with her aft
er shift and have it laminated so that it could be a permanent fixture on their office door.

  After this, they got down to business, using the locker room attached to the briefing room to change from the casual attire they’d worn to travel to work, to the street-gear they hoped would help them blend in when they hit the streets.

  Lucy had chosen a clingy blue camisole with lacy ribbons down the front rather than buttons, blue satin hot pants, fishnets and blue suede thigh-boots with platform soles. Over the top, she wore a black plastic mac. Her hair hung loose, while her make-up was loud and garish. All the girls affected similar transformations, looking each other over approvingly before deciding they were ready. There were some titters and sniggers, but an air of nervousness prevailed as the realisation finally dawned that they were going out there more or less alone. They’d have their phones and their ‘guardian angels’, as the plain-clothes TSG guys were now being referred to, but none of them would be carrying radios or wires. If they got into a cat-fight, they’d been advised, they’d have to see it through on their own (unless it turned very nasty), because it was always possible that communications devices could be exposed through yanked or torn clothing.

  Lucy was only thirty, but she was actually one of the oldest present and certainly the most experienced. Deferring to this, more than a couple of the other girls came over seeking words of comfort or encouragement, neither of which she was able to offer in abundance. Detective Sergeants Bryant and Clark were in a similar boat; technically, they were the girls’ line-managers, but in reality they’d be role-playing themselves and thus unable to act as normal supervision.

  Shortly after three, DI Slater appeared, having run through several pointers with the male members of the team in the next room along. He now went through everything again with the girls, and then gave them a quick pep talk.

  ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that. Ordinarily, we’d put you through a month’s training for a job like this, but there simply isn’t time. It may interest you to know – and this is totally embargoed, so don’t go blabbing – we’ve got another couple of APs. Both were found this morning on wasteland near Bickershaw.’