Curwen’s big mistake had been to go it alone. He wanted to be the one who carried out the raid and he wanted to be the one who made the arrests. He’d been too eager, too greedy. He’d kept the tip-off to himself, pimped the story, got a warrant and gone in.
He could remember that moment in the pub cellar, when room after room had been searched, coming up with nothing. They were standing there in a small room just off the main cellar, listening to the occasional glug from the beer barrels. It was the last place left to search. In the wall, there was a cupboard. The door was locked. ‘What do you keep in here?’ he’d said to Lavery. He could see wariness enter the other man’s eyes.
This was it. They’d found it.
‘Not much,’ Lavery had shrugged.
‘Have you got the key?’
Slowly, reluctantly, Lavery handed it over. One of the search team had unlocked the cupboard door. It’d swung open, revealing rough, slatted shelves. Pushed to the back of one of the shelves was a battered hold-all. The man carrying out the search had used his gloved hands to ease the handles apart and slide the zip back.
A few bags of coins gleamed dully in the dim lights, and there was a mixed bundle of notes – fivers, tenners, twenties – rolled up with an elastic band.
‘So what’s this?’ Curwen had asked.
Lavery had shrugged again. ‘Last night’s takings. I don’t have a safe so I keep it down here until I can get to the bank.’
‘You leave it here all day?’
‘Quiet night.’ Lavery had explained. ‘I’ve got other things to do. No one knows it’s down here.’ His eyes had narrowed. ‘Or they didn’t. If I get a break-in, I’ll know who to thank.’
Lavery’s explanation held up. The flicker of anxiety on his face as they’d opened the cupboard told Curwen there was something to find, but whatever it was, they’d missed it. Even checks by sniffer dogs revealed nothing.
It was a fiasco, and it hurt him, badly. Lavery had put in a complaint, and when Curwen’s application for the warrant was looked at closely, the evidence he’d used to support it didn’t stand up. He’d been reprimanded, and Gallagher had started closing his team down, leaving Curwen with just Andy to keep an eye on the Bridlington street drugs trade.
It was a bitter pill, and there was worse. He’d been up for promotion. He’d passed the exams, put the time in, applied to the promotions board – and been rejected.
Curwen’s informant had turned up a couple of weeks later in Hull, in a squat inhabited by junkies. He was dead, the needle still in his arm.
But Curwen knew Lavery was dirty. He’d known the instant he’d seen that wariness creep into Lavery’s eyes.
Curwen owed Lavery big, and he was going to pay him back. Every penny. With interest.
Andy shared his frustration, so when Curwen had suggested Andy keep an unofficial eye on the pub, he was enthusiastic. ‘No reason why I shouldn’t drink there,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll chat up the bar staff, keep an eye out.’
Andy’s brief had been simple: Go in, pose as a buyer looking for a big deal. Find the dealers in the pub, find out when the drugs came in and where they were stored, find Doc and Stoner.
Nothing, he kept reporting back.
Nothing.
Until Curwen almost believed that there was nothing to be found.
And then, just over a week ago, Andy had been approached – no direct contact, no offer, just samples of the drugs that were, presumably, available. He’d been waiting, since then, for the next contact that would lead to a meeting.
Instead, he’d ended up dead.
Curwen stood in the shop doorway, watching as Lavery stopped to say a quick word to a vagrant who was half hidden in an alcove to one side of the pub door. Lavery’s stance, and the abrupt jerk of his head, made it easy to translate what was going on. The vagrant was being given his marching orders. Lavery set off along the lane towards the main road.
Curwen knew he’d fucked up. He couldn’t tell DCI Hammond, or even his own boss DCI Gallagher, what Andy had been doing – not if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his career watching speed cams on the East Yorkshire roads. He needed to know what Andy had found and, once he had the evidence, go after Lavery with everything he’d got. But until he had the evidence, no one could know about this.
First of all, he was going to take advantage of Lavery’s absence and get in the pub. Andy had a contact there, a young woman who worked behind the bar.
Becca Armitage, or Becca the Barmaid as Curwen had dubbed her – to himself. Andy had implied she knew something but he wouldn’t tell Curwen anything more specific; just that he didn’t want to get her into trouble.
That was his choice.
Curwen’s was different.
Two birds, one stone. If he could pin the drug dealing on Lavery, and link that to Andy’s death, then the black mark of a reprimand on his record would count for nothing – he’d crack the drugs case, and bring Andy’s killer to book.
And the killer of the man who’d given him the tipoff. Curwen knew that overdose hadn’t been accidental, even though he hadn’t been able to convince Gallagher.
Waiting until he was sure Lavery had gone, Curwen crossed the road to the pub entrance. He glanced at the alcove before he went in and was surprised to see the homeless man hadn’t moved. He was still sitting there huddled under a blanket, with the mandatory dog beside him. The dog turned its massive head and
