about that, Sean. You’re not in the army any more.”
He offered a half smile that gave up trying almost before it formed. “And here was I thinking you were going to give me a lecture about the moral rights and wrongs of it.”
I shook my head. “There was a time when I’d have been first in the queue to help you plan the hit,” I said. “The man’s a shit of the lowest order and he probably deserves to die, but not at your hands, Sean. Not if I can help it.”
“What really happened to you, Charlie?” he asked, and must have seen my face close up. He held up his hand. “OK, OK, you don’t want to tell me, and I think I can understand that, but one day I hope you’ll feel you can trust me enough to tell me about it, because that sounds like the voice of experience talking.”
With that, he moved past me, and for a moment I didn’t follow him. I did trust Sean, I realised, but I didn’t think I’d ever be ready to bare my soul to him.
I didn’t much like looking in there myself.
“So,” Madeleine said, pale and nervous, “what do we do now?”
“We have to get to Roger – if he isn’t dead already,” Sean said. “We’ll worry about how to deal with everything else later—”
“I would say,” said a measured voice behind us, “that you’ve got far more important things to worry about right now.”
We spun round, to find Superintendent MacMillan and a pair of uniforms large enough to have been Streetwise men themselves were looming behind us.
“Charlie,” MacMillan nodded sharply in my direction, then turned that flat gaze onto Sean’s suddenly tense figure. “And you must be Sean Meyer, whom I’ve heard so much about. Well, much as I hate to break up the party, I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”
Twenty-six
Just for a moment there was silence. Not that any of the people who thronged the car park stopped talking or crying. Not that the distant sirens stopped blaring. But for the six of us there was utter silence, nonetheless.
It was Sean who broke it.
“What’s the charge?” he said, with that slight lift of his chin I knew so well. The one that issued a challenge you’d be foolish to ignore.
“Murder.”
“Whose murder?”
“Harvey Langford’s – for now,” MacMillan said, composed, “but I’m sure we can add to that later, if need be.”
One of the coppers standing behind him reached for his cuffs, shook them loose, and took a step towards Sean.
Without clearly recalling doing it, I found I’d shifted my feet halfway into a stance. When I looked, I found we all had. Even the Superintendent looked poised and Friday was standing motionless but alert.
Sean turned his head slightly, stared straight into the approaching policeman’s eyes. “Come near me with those now, and I’ll break both your arms,” he said. His voice was light, pleasant, but I’d never heard anyone mean a threat more.
He looked back to the Superintendent. “Give me until tomorrow morning,” he said, “and I’ll turn myself in.”
“What happens tomorrow morning?”
“Because by then I’ll either have found you the real killer, or my brother will be dead,” Sean said evenly. “Either way, it won’t matter much any more.”
The copper with the cuffs took another step. His mate unhooked the baton from his belt. Madeleine and I closed in on either side of Sean, and I slipped Friday’s lead.
The Ridgeback moved smoothly in front of us, showing every incisor in his considerable array and making noise in his chest like the continuous droning of a light aircraft engine. It was enough to stop all three policemen in their tracks.
I took advantage of the breathing space. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on round here?” I asked MacMillan quickly, trying to keep the note of desperation out of my voice. “Don’t you want to find out not just who really did kill Langford, but
The Superintendent tore his eyes away from the dog’s teeth.
“What makes you think that we don’t know already?”
“Because if you could prove it you wouldn’t be here, going through the motions of arresting a man you
MacMillan eyed me without speaking for a long moment. I could almost hear the gears in that calculating mind engaging. I don’t know what conclusions he came to, but maybe he remembered back to another time when we hadn’t trusted each other, and someone had died because of it.
“Come on, MacMillan,” I said, unable to stand the waiting any longer. “I got you the proof you needed last time. Don’t do this again.”
Eventually, he sighed and his hand went out, stilling the advance of his men. “OK,” he said cautiously. “Tell me what you know and maybe we can talk about this. Just don’t let me down, Charlie, or we’ll both swing for it.”
I acknowledged the enormity of the concession he’d just made. “So,” I said, “you don’t have anything solid to go on, then?”
“Nothing that would stand up in court, no,” he admitted at last.
The balance shifted. I felt the tension began to unwind out of my shoulders. I glanced at the others, but their faces didn’t give me any encouragement to collaborate with the enemy. “We think the person who’s been running the burglary ring on the local estates is your Community Juvenile man, Eric O’Bryan,” I began.
“Why?” MacMillan rapped out, but there was no real surprise there.
“Because he’s got the perfect access to all the local teenage criminals,” I said. “We think he and Garton- Jones’s mob have had a deal going where O’Bryan revs up the crime rate, and then takes a cut when the private security men are called in.”
“You think, or you know?” MacMillan asked sharply now. “We’ve suspected the same for a while. O’Bryan’s got expensive tastes in classic cars that he couldn’t finance from his official earnings, but he’s been clever, and it’s been extremely difficult to prove it. He tells a good story about buying them as wrecks and doing them up himself, and witnesses have been singularly reluctant to come forwards.”
“Your proof’s in there,” Sean said tightly, indicating Lavender Gardens. “O’Bryan’s arranged for my brother to be killed in there tonight, because of what he knows. Unless you get to him first.”
“Where?” MacMillan asked.
I told him about the derelict houses with cellars, omitting to mention how we’d obtained the information.
Once he’d pinpointed the exact location, MacMillan gave a frustrated grimace and shook his head. “We can’t do it,” he said.
“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t do it?” Sean flared. “We’re talking about saving the life of a fourteen- year-old boy. Don’t you give a damn about that?”
“Yes, but there’s no way I can get my men in there,” the Superintendent said, keeping his own anger in check. “It’s the middle of a war zone, the way the gangs are fighting. They’ll treat it as an invasion. I haven’t got the manpower to cope as it is. The best we can do at the moment is contain the trouble within the estates. Let them slug it out and pick up the pieces afterwards.”
He cocked an eye upwards. “The only thing you can do now is pray for rain. Nothing quells a riot like a good downpour.”
“So let us go in and get him,” I said urgently. “If you can’t, then for God’s sake let us do it.”
MacMillan’s gaze was even as he considered the implications and the consequences. “No,” he said. “I don’t
