“If you’ll give me a moment, madam, I will find someone for you.”
He follows Mark back through the security door, and Elizabeth and Joyce are alone for a minute. Elizabeth stops the waterworks and looks over at Joyce.
“A nun? That was very good.”
“I didn’t have much time to think,” says Joyce.
“If pushed I was going to say someone had touched me,” says Elizabeth. “You know how hot they are on that these days. But nun is much more fun.”
“Why do you want to see a female officer?” Joyce has a number of other questions now, but this is first in the queue. “And well done on not saying WPC, by the way—I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, Joyce. I just thought that as the bus was going into Fairhaven anyway, we should pop in and see PC De Freitas.”
Joyce nods slowly. In Elizabeth’s world that is absolutely the sort of thing that makes sense. “But what if she’s not on shift? Or what if she is, but there are other female constables?”
“Would I have brought you here if I hadn’t already checked that, Joyce?”
“How did you check th—”
The security door opens and Donna De Freitas steps through. “Now, ladies, how can I”—Donna registers who is in front of her; she looks from Elizabeth to Joyce and back again—“help you?”
17.
DCI Chris Hudson has been given a file on Tony Curran so thick it makes a pleasing thud if you drop it on a desk. Which is what he has just done.
Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had once read a headline about Diet Coke that was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.
He opens the file. Most of Tony Curran’s dealings with Kent Police were from before Chris’s time in Fairhaven. Charges for assault in his twenties, minor drug convictions, dangerous driving, dangerous dog, possession of an illegal weapon. A tax disc misdemeanor. Public urination.
Then comes the real story. Chris opens an indeterminate sandwich from the petrol station garage. There are transcripts of a number of interviews held with Tony Curran over the years, with the last one being after a shooting in 2000 in a pub called the Black Bridge, which left a young drug dealer dead. A witness recognized Tony Curran as firing the fatal shot, and Fairhaven CID called him in for questioning.
Tony Curran had been in the middle of everything back then. Ask around and anyone would tell you. He ran the drug trade in Fairhaven, and plenty more besides. Made a lot of money.
Chris reads the depressingly familiar stream of “no comments” on the Black Bridge transcript. He reads that the witness, a local taxi driver, had disappeared soon after. Scared away, or worse. Tony Curran, local builder, walked away scot-free.
So what was that? One death? Two? The drug dealer, shot at the Black Bridge, and perhaps the poor taxi driver who witnessed it?
Since 2000, though, nothing. A speeding ticket, promptly paid, in 2009.
Chris looks at the photograph the killer had left by the body. Three men. Tony Curran, now dead. With his arm around Tony was a local dealer from back in the day, Bobby Tanner, hired as muscle. Whereabouts currently unknown, but they would track him down soon enough. And the third man, whereabouts very much known. The ex-boxer Jason Ritchie. Chris wonders what the newspapers would pay for this photo. He has heard of officers doing this. The lowest of the low, as far as Chris is concerned.
He looks at the smiles, the banknotes, and the beers. It was probably sometime around 2000, when the boy was shot in the Black Bridge. Funny to think of the year 2000 as ancient history.
Chris opens a Twix as he studies the photo. He has his annual medical in two months, and every Monday he convinces himself that this is finally the week he gets back into shape, finally shifts the stone or so that holds him back. The stone or so that gives him cramp. The stone or so that stops him buying new clothes, just in case, and that stops him dating, because who would want this? The stone or so that stands between him and the world. Two stone if he’s really honest.
Those Mondays are usually good. Chris doesn’t take the elevator on Mondays. Chris brings food from home on Mondays. Chris does sit-ups in bed on Mondays.
But by Tuesday, or in a good week, Wednesday, the world creeps back in, the stairs seem too daunting, and Chris loses faith in the project. He’s aware that the project is himself, and that drags him further down still. So out come the pasties and the crisps, the garage lunch, the quick drink after work, the takeaway on the way home from work, the chocolate on the way home from the takeaway. The eating, the numbing, the release, the shame, and then repeat.
But there was always next Monday, and one of these Mondays there would be salvation. That stone would drop off, followed by the other stonethat was lurking. He’d barely break sweat at the medical, he’d be the athlete he always secretly knew he was. Text a thumbs-up to the new girlfriend he’d have met online.
He finishes the Twix and looks around for his crisps.
Chris Hudson guesses that the Black Bridge shooting was the wake-up call that Tony Curran had needed. That was certainly how it looked. He had started working with a local property developer called Ian Ventham around this time, and perhaps, he’d decided, life would be simpler if he turned legit. There was good money in it, even if it was not what he had grown used to. Tony must have known he couldn’t keep riding his luck.
Chris opens his crisps and looks at his watch. He has an appointment, and he should probably head off. Someone saw Tony Curran having a row just before he died, and that someone is insisting on talking to him personally. It’s not a long trip. The retirement community Curran had been working at.
Chris looks at the photo again. The three men, that happy gang. Tony Curran and Bobby Tanner, arms around each other. And off to the side, a bottle in his hand, and that handsome broken nose, maybe a couple of years past the height of his powers, Jason Ritchie.
