Stalkers

‘You know that place?’ Lauren asked.

‘I’ll say.’

He glanced after Deke again, but the guy was now out of hearing range. Meanwhile, a crescendo of angry voices was rising inside the wrecked pub. Heck moved to the car, and ushered Lauren inside. As they pulled away from the kerb, the beaten-up rabble, newly armed with staves and pool cues, came spilling out onto the pavement. Heck watched them in the rearview mirror as the Fiat cruised away. Glancing left, he spotted Deke sauntering down into an underpass, vanishing from view.

‘Who the hell was he?’ Lauren wondered.

‘Dunno. But he can kick arse like I’ve never seen. You okay?’

‘Yeah.’ She dabbed at her bloodied nostrils with a handkerchief.

‘Par for the course in the Royal Ordnance Corps?’

‘Not exactly. Chapeltown maybe.’ They pulled off the desolate estate and rejoined the main road network. ‘We going to this Gallows Hill place now?’

‘We’re not going anywhere. You’re going back to the railway station.’

‘In this state? They’ll think I’m a right yob.’

‘If the cap fits …’

‘I just helped you out in there! Big time!’

Heck couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t try.

‘Look, Heck … it’s okay if I call you that?’

‘Yes, you can call me “Heck”.’

‘Heck … you can’t force me to go anywhere.’ She shook her head adamantly. ‘I don’t care what you say, this is a free country. You can’t make me get on a train to Yorkshire.’

‘Okay, that’s true. But if you’ve got no money and you’re not prepared to go home, where are you going to spend the night?’

‘I’m not exactly new to sleeping outdoors.’

‘Up to you. You certainly won’t be alone in this town.’ He drove on, circumnavigating a series of concrete roundabouts.

‘What about this Gallows Hill place?’ she said. ‘If O’Hoorigan used to buy drugs there, it sounds a bit rough.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘So … are you going to call back-up?’

If only he could, he thought. As things were, he wasn’t even planning to report what had just happened. He wanted to; he knew he ought to. But the moment Gemma learned he’d been involved in a bar room brawl where civilians had been knifed, her kneejerk reaction would be to pull him back in. She might pull him in anyway, if the word reached her from other sources.

‘Well?’ Lauren asked again.

‘We’re not going to Gallows Hill just yet. I don’t fancy another fight straight away. Do you?’

‘Suppose not.’ She dabbed at her nose again. ‘So where are we going?’

Heck followed signs towards the motorway junction. ‘Somewhere we can get patched up.’

‘Who is this O’Hoorigan guy, anyway?’

‘He may know something.’

‘So we’ve got to speak to him?’

‘Correction. I have to speak to him.’

‘And while you’re getting patched up, what if he moves on?’

‘Then he moves on. It’s not like I haven’t learned anything.’

‘Eh?’ Lauren looked baffled.

‘You think we just got lucky Deke intervened when he did?’

‘He wasn’t being a good Samaritan?’

‘You don’t find many of those in that neck of the woods.’

‘He didn’t sound local, I must admit.’

‘More East Anglian, I’d say.’

‘Still doesn’t tell us much.’

Heck shook his head. ‘It tells us that we’re onto something. Trouble is, at the moment I’m not sure what.’

Chapter 16

The house was on Cranby Street, a small terraced row, at least half of which had been demolished as part of some long-ago clearance scheme. It wasn’t exactly cobbled, but to Lauren’s eye it didn’t look as if it had changed since George Orwell’s day.

Every house was built from the same red brick, though a couple had received ‘stone-cladding’, much of which had now deteriorated, making them look grotesque. All their doorsteps had been fastidiously scrubbed, but here and there a lower portion of front wall bellied slightly. There was even a canal at the far end, with a lock-gate visible, and on the other side of that an area of reclaimed spoil land where playing fields had been marked out and rugby posts erected.

It was early evening and the street quiet, when they parked. The heavy cloud cover was in the process of clearing, much of it tinged pink by the setting sun. Both Heck and Lauren were now feeling their extensive cuts and bruises. The shock of the fight was seeping through them. Lauren climbed tiredly from the car as Heck approached the front door. Bradburn — from what she’d seen of it — was a typical South Lancashire backwater, but not massively different to many parts of Leeds.

Located twenty miles north of Manchester, it wasn’t the sort of place you’d even notice if you passed it on the motorway: a minor blot on a bleak, post-industrial landscape. Since the collapse of the coal and textiles industries, it had clearly tried to throw off its ‘muck and brass’ identity, but had found nothing to replace it with. Its central streets were now interchangeable with those of every other stagnating provincial town in the UK; lined with the same boring shops, delineated by soulless, monolithic structures of glass and concrete, which passed for malls. Its outskirts were even worse; a grid-work of uniformly drab housing estates, punctuated here and there by short rows of purpose-built retail units which usually consisted of a greasy chippie, a tanning salon and a boarded-up pub.

At least Cranby Street retained some old-time character.

Heck’s sister, Dana, lived at number twenty-three. She answered the door in flip-flops, cut-off jeans and a sleeveless blouse, an outfit which suited her. Aged in her early forties, she was very attractive, with long, dark hair and a slim, shapely figure.

Her eyes initially lit up at the sight of her brother, but then her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Good God, what’s happened?’

‘Is Sarah here?’ he asked.

‘She’s … she’s in France with school.’

‘Good. That means we can come in?’ He shouldered his way inside, awaiting no invitation. ‘This is Lauren. She’s helping me with a case.’

Dana, still looking stunned, turned and followed him in. Lauren brought up the rear. They entered a small, neat lounge, where a television was tuned to one of the satellite movie channels and a half-drunk glass of wine sat alongside the remnants of a salad.

‘What happened to you?’ Dana asked, switching the TV off. ‘You had an accident, or something?’

‘We ran into a spot of trouble.’

Dana glanced at Lauren, who’d cleaned her face with her sleeve, but had found it impossible to hide the dried blood spattered down the front of her sweater.

‘You sure you aren’t better off at casualty? You both look terrible.’