The plan was simple: she’d contacted him, invited him over to see her in Newcastle. Got him up to the hotel room at the airport, where the filthy bastard must have thought all his Christmases had come at once.
But it was Jimmy who was waiting for him.
‘I want him to die screaming, Jimmy,’ she’d said.
And that’s precisely how he’d died.
Vos runs to the pen, keeping low until he reaches the brick wall. He creeps around the perimeter, away from the door, until he is crouched down beneath one of the viewing windows. Now he can hear Rafferty inside, pacing, muttering to himself. Thumping himself in the chest, slapping his own face with his open palms. The noise reminds Vos of a boxer preparing to go into the ring.
A cage fighter.
Then there is silence.
Slowly, agonizingly, Vos raises himself up until the top of his head is level with the bottom of the window. He takes a breath, holds it and then lifts his head above the ledge.
The pen is probably sixty feet in diameter, with a bare concrete floor, except for stray patches where it is covered in dirty wooden pellets. Rafferty is standing in the centre of the pen, feet astride a drainage channel, facing the far wall. He has removed his shirt, exposing a broad, tattooed back. His arms are raised, his hands pressed together above his head. He is breathing heavily, the powerful exhalations bouncing sharply off the bare brick walls and the sloping metal roof. On the floor by his feet is the toolbox. Directly in front of him, tied to a wooden chair, his head lolling on his chest, is Alex.
Vos ducks down again. He closes his eyes, but the image of his son is seared on his retina like pure bright light.
No. This is not going to happen. I am not going to let you harm him.
Inside the pen, Vos hears a soft moaning sound. It is getting louder and louder and he realizes it is Rafferty. He raises his head again and sees Rafferty now with his arms wide and his head thrown back, howling up at the roof.
Now.
Oh, she’d loved him for what he’d done. Told him he was a real man, someone she trusted to look after her now that her daddy was gone. She’d told him that soon they would run away and be together forever.
But there was one more thing she wanted him to do for her.
One more act she required as proof of his devotion.
And she told him about how her daddy had died, pushed from a fire escape by a bent copper who would never face the consequences because of who he was and what he represented.
‘I want him to suffer like I did, Jimmy,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘I want him to know what it’s like to lose someone you love.’
* * *
With a single movement, Vos vaults through the window. He lands heavily but regains his balance and starts running towards Rafferty. The sound of his shoes is deafening on the concrete and Rafferty half turns, a puzzled look on his face as if he’s just woken up. At that moment Vos crashes into his exposed midriff with all his power, knocking the younger man flying backwards with a roar of pain and surprise.
The two men crash to the floor just a few feet from Alex’s chair. Vos is momentarily on top and although Rafferty is the stronger man, he has enough of an advantage to allow him to dig the point of his elbow into Rafferty’s throat. He can feel Rafferty’s hands clawing at his shoulders, his neck, his face; he feels his own flesh ripping, sees his own blood dripping down onto Rafferty’s contorted face. Yet he feels no pain, just the energy of his own rage channelled through his arm as he bears down on the man who meant to kill his son.
‘Boss!’
You will never take away from me the thing that I love the most. I will kill you myself before I allow that to happen.
‘Boss. That’s enough!’
He stops. Looks down at Rafferty, at the lolling tongue and the bulging eyes. Hears the faint whimper of his fading breath. Suddenly the energy evaporates and he slumps to one side, allowing Ptolemy to rush in and snap the cuffs on Rafferty’s wrists.
Alex.
He crawls across to his son and cradles his head in his hands. The smooth skin is warm, the breathing heavy but regular.
Thank God.
Alex is alive.
TWENTY
Beer-gutted, red-faced and with a fine set of side whiskers, the duty sergeant at Keswick police station could have been dreamed up by some shrewd marketing expert at the Cumbria Tourist Board. There is a reassuringly old-fashioned look about him that puts visitors in mind of the idealized, chocolate box Lake District of Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth. Every year thousands of holidaymakers flock to the Lakeland town to walk in the hills, camp by the shores of Derwentwater, sail on the lake or just wander round in the tea rooms and gift shops – and, if he was so inclined, the sergeant could make more than a few quid on the side posing for photographs with the tourists.
Except the sergeant hates tourists. Tourists clog up his narrow roads like silt. They leave their chip wrappers in his hedgerows. They get pissed up and have fights in his pubs.
In other words they cause him grief.
Like the bloody idiot in the holding cell right now. The one who walked in off the street not half an hour ago demanding to be locked up. Spouting all sorts of nonsense about being in fear of his life. Unshaven, dishevelled, stinking of drink, looking like he hadn’t slept for a week.
Of course the sergeant had been civil at first. He’d politely informed the gentleman that it was not Cumbria Police policy to go around locking up members of the public for no reason. At which point the man had picked up a chair in the waiting room and thrown it with all his might against the reinforced glass screen erected around the reception desk.
Once he was in the cell, the man had become noticeably calmer, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d pulled out a business card from his wallet, scribbled a name and number on it, and asked if it would be possible for the sergeant to contact that person on his behalf. And the sergeant could not help but be intrigued.
Now he is in the back room, tapping the number into the telephone on his desk.
‘This is Sergeant Stamper from Keswick station,’ he says when his call is answered by a switchboard operator. ‘Could you put me through to a Detective Chief Inspector Vos, please?’
‘I don’t think life as a fugitive suits you, Al,’ Vos says.
Al Blaylock has been transported ninety miles from Keswick in the back of a Cumbria Police patrol car and is now sitting nursing a mug of Northumbria Police coffee in an interview room at West End station. Even though he has combed his hair he looks like shit.
‘ “Fugitive” suggests I have done something illegal,’ he says primly. ‘I assure you I haven’t.’
‘Well let’s not argue over semantics. Where have you been?’
‘My soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law has a caravan on the shore at Ullswater. I thought it would be a pleasant enough place to spend some time, but that was before the rain. Have you read about the rain in Cumbria, Vos? About the floods that washed everything away? It was fucking biblical. I spent two nights trapped in a village hall with the rest of the refugees before I could get to Keswick.’
Vos cannot help but laugh.
‘I’m pleased you think it’s funny,’ says Blaylock. ‘I most certainly don’t.’
‘OK. So what’s going on? Why the moonlight flit to the Lake District? I’ve been worried about you.’
Blaylock regards him through bloodshot eyes. ‘If you’ve been worried about me, then I think you know precisely what’s been going on.’
‘Are we talking about Jack’s Turkish friend?’
‘Of course we are.’
‘So tell me all about it, Al. I’m all ears.’
Blaylock takes a deliberate sip of coffee and winces as the scalding, bitter brew sluices his tastebuds. ‘I assume you know about the Manchester connection by now,’ he says.