Taylor could see what it contained.
On top of the contents was a note, printed in capital letters. It read: THERE IS?10,000 IN USED BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES IN HERE. YOU MAY COUNT IT IF YOU WISH. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO RECEIVE THIS MONEY IS TO ALTER THE CUSTODY RECORD AND HELP A FRIEND IN NEED. ERIC, PLEASE HELP ME. The signature could have belonged to Henry Christie. Taylor wasn’t sure.
He looked at the note and the money underneath it.
Then his eyes met Gallagher’s over the lid of the briefcase.
Gallagher gave him a quirky smile.
It was a lot of money, for not much effort.
‘ You’ve made me leave, John,’ Isa said. Glassy tears were twinkling in her eyes. ‘I wanted to love you… I do love you… but you’ve spoilt it.’ She bent down and picked up her suitcase.
‘ There was absolutely no need to do what you did. No rhyme, no reason, no excuse. Cold-blooded murder.’ She shook as she said the words.
‘ I didn’t have a choice, Isa,’ Rider said simply. They were standing in the lounge area of his basement flat, the bedsits above. There was a huge crash from the room above which juddered the whole ceiling. Probably the couple in the ground-floor flat having one of their usual domestics. Rider was not bothered by what was happening above. It was his own, fairly subdued domestic dispute which was his problem at the moment. He was very tired now. The action of the day had sapped everything, including his resolve to keep Isa. He was too weary to put up much of a fight, although he knew what was happening was very important. He wished it could be put off until tomorrow when he was feeling stronger.
‘ Everybody has a choice. You made yours without even thinking about me — and after what we said, promised each other, only hours before.’
‘ He killed innocent people. They burned to death on my property. I was responsible for them.’
‘ Did he kill them? How the hell d’you know that for sure? Where’s your evidence? It could just as easily have been one of your crack-crazed residents out of his tiny mind. Those idiots are capable of anything.’
As if to confirm what she said, there was another crash from upstairs. They both looked at the ceiling, then at each other.
‘ Why didn’t you tell the police? You had the opportunity.’
‘ Because they’re useless, corrupt bastards. Munrow would have paid them off, like Conroy does. You know what I think about cops.’
‘ John, you are a fool,’ she said sadly.
‘ So is this it?’
‘ Yes.’ It was a quiet, almost inaudible word. One she did not wish to utter.
She walked to the door, opened it and went through without looking back. Rider made no attempt to stop her, even though something inside him was willing him to do so. He knew he was being pig-headed and stupid.
He heard the front door close softly and saw Isa walk up the steps past the net-curtained window.
Maybe tomorrow.
Another crash from upstairs.
Rider’s nostrils flared. Noisy bastards. He was going to throw them out on their arses right now if they couldn’t damn well behave.
He stormed out of the room to the door in the short hallway which gave him access up a flight of stairs to the flats above without having to go outside. He unlocked the several bolts and chains and opened the door, treading carefully onto the darkened and narrow stairway.
They burst into the flat before he knew what was happening.
Two men. Blue boiler suits. Heavy boots. Hoods with eye and mouth slits.
One had a straight, extendable baton.
The other had a gun.
At the moment Shane Mulcahy opened his door, the one with the baton rammed it into his stomach, causing him to bend double; the baton was then expertly smacked across Shane’s face, breaking his nose with a sickening crunch of bone.
Shane was bundled back into the flat and his thin spidery body was slammed face down onto the bare floor where the red gush from his nose flooded out. The one with the gun knelt on Shane’s back, one knee planted firmly on his spine just between the shoulder-blades, the gun thrust into his cheek.
Jodie, Shane’s much-abused girlfriend, had been trying her best to breast-feed the baby which was cradled in her arms. One poor-looking breast and nipple were exposed. She reacted instinctively, drawing her arms around the baby and cowering in a chair for protection.
The one with the baton said to her, ‘If you speak or scream I’ll whack this across your head and then the baby’s.’
Jodie did not speak because, although not having experienced this type of scenario before, she was sufficiently street-wise to know when to shut up. She had immediately assumed these people were drugs dealers come to collect an unpaid debt. It was the culture she inhabited and she knew her best chance of survival was acquiescence.
She nodded nervously.
The baby, deprived of its meagre supply of milk, sucked air desperately.
‘ Now then, Shane, old bean,’ the man with the gun said, lowering his mouth near to Shane’s ear. ‘You’ve been a naughty, naughty lad, haven’t you?’
The young skinhead could hardly breathe, let alone speak. Blood had gagged in his throat. He coughed and choked, spitting a fine spray of red saliva.
‘ I don’t owe you owt,’ he gurgled.
‘ Oh yes you do, you owe us a great deal.’
Despite herself, Jodie let out a wail of anguish. The stupid idiot had obviously neglected to pay his drugs debts and from the sound of it they had amounted to a tidy sum. Now collection time had come and if they could not find the money, Shane’s brains might be joining his nasal blood on the floor.
The baton arced through the air towards Jodie’s head. She saw it coming, braced herself for the impact. It stopped a millimetre from her left temple. Her eyes focused on the end of it.
‘ Next time,’ the man warned, ‘I take your fucking head off. Now, shut it, bitch.’
She bit her lips and hugged her child which whimpered pathetically, picking up on the tension in her body. She rocked it.
The man holding the gun ground the muzzle into Shane’s cheek. He thumbed the hammer back. Shane closed his eyes tightly and lay there paralysed with fear. Tears formed in his eyes.
The man with the baton walked over to the TV set which was perched on a small table. He tapped the screen with the tip, lined himself up like a golfer before a tee shot and swung it into the screen, which exploded.
Jodie let out a gasp.
The baby in her arms jumped and started to cry.
Their TV had been destroyed. The TV set Jodie was tied to for all her entertainment. It had been her lifeline.
The man then kicked it off the table. It crashed to the floor.
Shane’s eyes strained in their sockets to look up at what had happened. He watched the man with the baton take a couple of steps over to him. The man with the gun, keeping it firmly implanted in his cheek, stood up, relieving the pressure on Shane’s spine.
It was a short-lived relief. Shane was then given much the same treatment as the TV set with about a dozen well-aimed, hard blows across his back and ribs.
When he’d finished, Shane lay curled up on the floor, emitting horrible grunting noises.
The gun was still in his ear. The man holding it said, ‘You may wonder what this is about, Shane.’
The baton man then demolished the stereo with a series of expertly wielded strikes, destroying a cheap but perfectly acceptable system which, again, Jodie relied on for her sanity. Her whole pathetic world was being decimated and she was unable to do anything to save it. As with the TV set, the stereo was kicked to the floor
