‘Hi,’ she said as she walked towards him. ‘You OK?’ She wanted to share her good mood with everyone tonight. Almost everyone.
Russ didn’t encourage chat but they’d talked once, briefly, when she came out of the pub for a ciggie. She’d told him she came from Leeds, and he’d laughed and said ‘How come you ended up here, then?’
He wasn’t a mate or anything, but they got on. More or less.
‘Evening,’ he said now, after a moment. Champ turned his large head and stared at her coldly, then obviously deciding she wasn’t a threat, relaxed again. ‘You look like you’re having a good day.’
‘Yeah. I’m OK. You?’
‘I’m all right.’ He sounded friendly enough, but she thought he looked sad. Being homeless was hard. She’d lived rough, for a while. It had been lonely and scary and people had bothered her all the time. She’d never slept, not properly, because that was when they got you. You had to learn how to pass, how to look like a normal person with a place to go, how to become invisible. Becca had learned never to trust anyone, especially not people who came round with smiles and offers of help. She had never been so scared in her life as when she had been sleeping rough.
It would be different with Russ. He was big, and you could tell he knew how to look after himself. People wouldn’t mess with him.
But she wasn’t going to spoil her evening by thinking about that. ‘See you,’ she said to Russ. She pushed open the pub door and looked round expectantly.
But Andy wasn’t there.
OK, it was early. She dumped her coat in the back and went behind the bar to begin her evening’s work.
Her good feelings began to fade as the evening drew on. It was getting later, and there was still no sign of Andy. He hadn’t texted either. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at the door each time someone came in, though not many people did. The pub was quiet – quieter than she’d ever known it, so there was nothing to distract her, no sign of Johnny Dip or the other bikers, no sign of Sal Capone, the woman who hung out with them.
At first, she’d been pleased the pub was so quiet – it meant that she and Andy could spend some time alone, talking and catching up, only… time was getting on, and he wasn’t here.
She checked her phone again.
Nothing.
Carl came out from the back. She hadn’t known he was in. What had he done with the holdalls? Were they in the cellar now? She was suddenly furious at Carl and his holdalls – they were all Andy had been able to talk about when he texted her. ‘I’m off out,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back later. Looks like you won’t need me until closing.’
‘OK.’ Carl might be a grabby creep, but at least he trusted her to take care of things. She wasn’t sure he’d have left Dosser in charge. Toby, she corrected herself. She didn’t want to start calling him Dosser to his face – and anyway, Toby was OK. He went out and got the glasses in, which meant she didn’t have to squeeze through the crowds on a busy night. He was over by the games machines right now, playing again. Carl left, and she leaned against the bar, trying – and failing – to stop herself checking her phone.
Andy, where was he?
She heard the familiar sound of the pub door swinging open and slamming shut again. This time she was so sure it was going to be Andy that she looked up with a smile, into the face of a total stranger.
Curwen stood opposite the pub, studying the frontage. The name – the Smokehouse – had to be a tacky marketing invention, because the old pub sign, weathered almost to illegibility, said ‘The Bell’. Behind the faded yellow banner that promised. ‘–ootball and Hap–y Hour’, Curwen could see all the signs of neglect – peeling paint, dirty windows. He wondered why the owner and pub landlord, a local businessman called Carl Lavery, didn’t take better care of his property.
Curwen realised someone was coming out and stepped back quickly into the shadows. It was a good job he did, because it was Lavery himself, as if conjured up by Curwen’s thoughts. He watched as Lavery stood in the doorway, his bulky figure silhouetted against the light. The last thing Curwen wanted right now was an encounter with the landlord.
It had started a couple of months ago with a simple tip-off from one of Curwen’s informants, about drugs coming into Bridlington harbour and being stored in the pub cellar. Drugs teams up and down the coast were trying to pinpoint the source of stuff that was pouring into the area, so this was worth following up.
Curwen was ambitious. His life plan outlined that he’d be DI by now, with DCI in his sights, but his career seemed to have stalled. He needed a big arrest to make his mark, something in his file that said highflier, person to watch.
For the past three months, he’d been working with a small team – Andy Yeatson and a DC called Dinah Mason, recently transferred from uniform – going after the drugs users and dealers in Bridlington, a kind of ‘clean the streets’ initiative to help the council keep the place attractive for tourists. Their boss, a DCI called Kevin Gallagher, had more or less given Curwen carte blanche, a sign of confidence that wouldn’t be missed higher up.
And then one of the street dealers Dinah Mason had arrested made a claim. He’d given Curwen tip-offs in
