The wrong hands, p.11
The Wrong Hands, page 11
‘Because you were.’
‘There wasn’t even a suggestion of tea in there. Never mind a biscuit.’
‘What?’ Xiu stared at him across the roof of the car. ‘I thought we were pushed for time.’
‘We are.’ Miller opened the door. ‘But politeness costs
nothing.’
Xiu struggled to find the words, but the twitch around her eye spoke volumes.
TWENTY-TWO
Miller sat on the sofa with Fred curled against his neck, while Ginger rolled around the room in her plastic ball. Miller had put Revolver on, which was just about his favourite Beatles album, even when Ringo’s percussive efforts were being subtly undermined by various arrhythmic clatterings and crashes as Ginger’s ball careered into chair legs and skirting boards.
Miller guessed that John would have quite liked it.
‘You were pretty rude,’ Alex said, without turning round. She was sitting on a chair by the window. It was dark outside, but she’d always liked staring out at the beacons on the distant trawlers and cruise ships; the flickers of light from North Wales and the Isle of Man on a clear night.
‘Was I?’
‘Not as rude as you can be, but yes, I think so.’
‘I didn’t mean to be,’ Miller said.
‘I know you didn’t.’ There was a smile in her voice. ‘You never do.’
Miller rubbed his cheek against Ginger’s fur and thought about it. Yes, the fact that James Holloway was in a wheelchair so had clearly not been the James they were looking for was the reason Miller had been frustrated and impatient and – he was willing to concede – a bit rude. But did the fact that the man was in a wheelchair make what Miller had said any ruder? He wasn’t convinced that it did. He’d once been very rude to a man with no legs and had got into an ugly slanging match a few months earlier with a blind bloke (involving a number of unpleasant and thankfully unseen gestures) who Miller thought had been a bit shouty with his guide dog. In point of fact, Miller could and would proudly state that, at one time or another, he’d upset people of every shape, size, race, creed, colour and sexual persuasion. There were many things Miller knew he could be accused of – though he didn’t like to dwell on them – but when it came to falling out with folk, he was an equal opportunities offender.
Did that make what he’d said to Holloway all right?
He wasn’t sure . . .
‘It’s hard,’ he said. ‘Without you around to keep me in check.’
‘Well, you’ve got Posh to do that now.’
Miller grunted, trying to sound non-committal, but knowing he was fooling nobody; least of all Alex. The truth was that he’d grown to like Xiu’s blank stares and twitches of disapproval. He valued her professional opinion more than anyone else’s and, despite all evidence to the contrary, he wanted her to think well of him.
He wasn’t sure that was exactly working out.
He needed to go easy with the jokes and the heavy-metal comments.
‘You need to go easy with the jokes and the heavy-metal comments,’ Alex said.
‘I know.’ Miller sighed and eased himself up. He carried Ginger back to the playpen and laid her gently back on her bed of straw, then chased after a runaway Fred and did the same. ‘I showed her the video,’ he said. ‘Posh.’
Now, Alex turned round.
‘ “It could be a lot of things.” That’s what she said.’
Alex nodded. She walked past him and sat down.
‘She’s right, obviously, but it was definitely money in that envelope, wasn’t it?’ Miller waited. He knew there was next to no chance that Alex would respond, not to questions like this, but he always waited. ‘I’m saying, it wasn’t raffle tickets that bloke was giving you, was it?’
Alex looked . . . defiant, suddenly. Defiant like she’d been that night at Accrington Town Hall when they were leading with one dance to go and Sue Dixon had tried to psych her out by saying she was going to mess up her quickstep. Like when she turned her ankle during a salsa at the Palace in Wigan and they won anyway. Defiant like she’d been when her arse of a DCI had told her she was never going to make inspector.
They stared at each other and the seconds ticked by . . .
The doorbell rang.
‘Saved by the bell,’ Miller said.
‘Saved from what?’
Miller shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just always sounds dramatic.’ He walked towards the front door, turning when he was halfway there to see that Alex had gone. He said, ‘Suit yourself,’ but something about the speed with which she’d absented herself made Miller apprehensive. He moved a lot faster towards the door, anxious suddenly without knowing why.
Until he opened it.
Finn was panting heavily, as though she’d been running. When she lifted her head, one hand was pressed to her face and there was blood running through her fingers.
Miller said, ‘Christ,’ and reached out, but she ducked under his arm and ran into the house. He called after her as she hurried into the toilet and could do nothing but wait, pacing and jittery, until she emerged a few minutes later with a wad of tissue pressed to her nose.
‘Are you OK?’
She walked past him and dropped onto the sofa, lowered her head and sobbed for a minute or so. Miller sat down next to her and rubbed her arm, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Some bloke,’ she said, eventually.
‘What bloke?’
‘I’d seen him this afternoon, in the precinct. He gave me some money. Then . . . ’
Miller’s hand clenched into a fist. ‘Then what?’
‘I was just mooching around behind the aquarium, looking for somewhere to sleep and he came out of nowhere.’ She was staring at the carpet as she spoke, shaky suddenly, as if she was going into shock. ‘He grabbed me and turned me round and smashed my face against a wall. He had hold of my hair and he just kept pushing. Talking about some briefcase . . . did I have it, did I know where it was, had I hidden it somewhere?’
Now Miller knew exactly what bloke.
‘I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he kept pushing even harder and whispering all the things he was going to do to me. So I kept telling him, screaming at him, until he just stopped and when I turned round he’d gone.’
Why had Draper targeted Finn?
It didn’t matter why.
‘He mentioned Andy’s name, too.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Is this something to do with why Andy was so frightened?’ She saw Miller hesitate and her eyes widened. ‘Was this the bloke that killed Andy?’
Miller nodded. ‘His name’s Draper and I’m going to find him. OK? I promise he’ll never hurt you again—’
‘Why haven’t you caught him already?’
‘It’s complicated.’ He reached out in vain as Finn jumped to her feet and picked up her rucksack. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going back . . . out.’
Miller jumped up too and moved to stand between her and the door. ‘Oh no you’re not.’
Finn hoisted her rucksack on to her shoulder and sniffed. There was still a clot of blood caked beneath her nose. ‘You think I’m scared?’
Miller recognised that fierceness, or her attempt at projecting it. She could be tough when she needed to be and he knew that she often needed to be, but he saw what was underneath, too.
She was so like her mother.
Alex had been every bit as strong as she needed to be, but Miller had seen the tears often enough at the end of a difficult day.
‘You need to stay here,’ Miller said.
Finn shook her head.
‘You really think I’m letting you go back out on the streets tonight?’
‘You can’t make me do anything.’
‘I’ll arrest you if I have to.’ Miller pointed. ‘You’ve got drugs in that rucksack, right?’
She began to cry again, silently this time, and the rucksack slipped from her shoulder. ‘I can’t stay here.’ She looked around the room as though she’d never seen it before, wringing her hands, then raising them to claw at her hair. ‘Please, Miller. Don’t make me stay here.’
TWENTY-THREE
The woman who ran the guesthouse of which Dennis Draper was unlucky enough to be a resident had collared him on his way back in. Her name was Isla (it was written on a badge in felt-tip) and she’d stepped out from her room on the ground floor just as Draper was about to head up the stairs. She’d dolled herself up since he’d last seen her – bright red lippy, a flowery headscarf and some bizarre neckerchief-type thing – and had smiled at Draper in a way which frankly put the wind up him a bit.
‘Hola, Señor Diaz.’
Draper had blinked, then said ‘Hola’ right back at her, desperately hoping that it was as much Spanish as the woman knew, because it was certainly as much as he did.
She had then switched – thankfully – to English, speaking slowly and loudly, confusing – as so many people did – being foreign with being an idiot. ‘I just wanted to check that everything is satisfactory with your room.’
Draper had been standing there, wishing he knew the Spanish for ‘satisfactory my arse’, when it had finally dawned on him that Isla was flirting. That it was a lot more than just a late-night conversation she was after. He could hardly blame her – even if she was very much barking up the wrong tree – because she was only flesh and blood after all and maybe he’d overdone the mean and moody Latin thing. She was giving him the ‘concerned landlady’ bit when all the time she wanted nothing more than to follow him upstairs, get her posh frock off and fiddle about like his knackers were maracas.
Well, he couldn’t be having that, obviously. Not with a woman, no thank you very much, and not with anyone when he was working.
So, he had just smiled right back at the fruity landlady, given it his best Julio Iglesias – ‘Ees very nice, gracias, señora’ – then legged it up to his room three stairs at a time.
Now, lying on the bed, thumbing the TV remote and bemoaning the fact that cheap digs never had any porno channels, ‘Diego Diaz’ tried to come up with an alias for whatever job came next. Something French, he thought: Didier, maybe? Or he could just pronounce David the French way, as if it was spelled Daveed? It was fun pretending to be foreign; it spiced things up a bit, but then again the language thing might catch him out one day, as it had nearly done with Up For It Isla, so in the end he decided it was probably best to avoid the whole foreigner thing from now on.
Spirit of Brexit and all that.
Besides, he wouldn’t need another name until he had another job and he wasn’t going anywhere until this one was put to bed and he got paid. Until he had hold of that effing briefcase.
Draper quickly lost interest in the TV and lay there, restless and more than a little confused, asking himself why he hadn’t killed the homeless girl. He wondered if it was down to the fact that he’d met her earlier in the day, when he’d given her money and she’d smiled at him. Was it because they’d made a connection?
Whatever the hell a connection was.
In the end, he decided it was just because he’d reckoned the girl had been telling the truth and it would have been a bit over the top – even for him – to kill her because she didn’t have the briefcase. Of course, Bagnall hadn’t had it either, but he’d got what was coming because he was the one who’d caused all the trouble in the first place. Pretending he was interested in those toilets while his mate was pinching the sodding case.
His elusive bloody mate.
That was who Draper would be going after next.
He’d found some backstreet scally who promised to unlock Bagnall’s phone for fifty quid (Draper had beaten him down from seventy-five) so by tomorrow afternoon, with a bit of luck, he’d have all the information he needed and it would all be over soon enough after that. For Bagnall’s mate, anyway, because case or no case there was only one way that bit of business would be ending up.
Half an hour later, as he was drifting off to sleep, the perfect name popped into his head, and he wondered why he’d never thought of it before.
De’Ath.
That was an actual name, wasn’t it?
Daniel or Desmond or whatever, but more importantly he’d have the perfect nickname too. ‘Sudden’, because of the way he struck without warning, coming at his targets out of nowhere.
So he’d be ‘Sudden De’Ath’. Like sudden death. It was funny.
He didn’t laugh, nothing like that. Draper almost never laughed out loud and, when he did, it was always because of something bad happening to someone else. Something fatal more often than not. He was smiling though, satisfied as he turned over and closed his eyes again, because that poxy briefcase thief, whose name he would know soon enough, was definitely not going to find it remotely amusing.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was a stupidly early hour to be knocking on someone’s front door, but Miller knew the occupants of the house well enough to be certain they would already be up and about. Bright-eyed (cataracts notwithstanding), bushy-tailed and breakfasted already. Standing on the freshly blackened doorstep, admiring the hanging baskets and perfectly kept pots, he couldn’t help but wonder why people, when they reached old age, got up earlier and earlier, when they had less and less to do? Was there really much point in kicking off your duvet at six in the morning only to get dressed, toddle downstairs for a boiled egg, then fall asleep in front of a television that was turned up far too loud?
Well yes, of course there was.
The reason was obvious, if somewhat depressing. It might even have been subconscious, Miller decided, but most people inevitably made adjustments once booking a holiday or buying green bananas became a gamble; when time was no longer on their side (if it had ever been) and it would be a terrible waste to sleep what was left of it away.
They seized the day.
It made perfect sense, he supposed, even if for many of them the actual seizing involved a trip to the garden centre before hurrying home in time for Bargain Hunt.
Miller was thinking about his mother, wondering when he might next get up to Manchester to see her, when Mary answered the door. She said, ‘Good morning, Declan,’ then leaned forward to peer at him. ‘You’re looking ever so tired.’
‘I didn’t get a lot of sleep,’ Miller said.
‘Of course you didn’t, love.’
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Still dead to the world,’ Mary said. ‘We thought we should let her sleep as long as she can.’
Howard lumbered up the hallway behind her, dressed in a jacket and tie as if he was all set to go to work. He gave Miller a thumbs-up. ‘No need to fret, lad. She’s tough as old boots that girl. She’ll be right as ninepence.’
‘Do you want to come in?’ Mary asked. ‘We’ve got kippers in the fridge.’
‘I need to crack on, but thanks. And thanks for coming to the rescue last night.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Howard said.
It had been Howard who had driven over as soon as Miller had called. He was actually a terrible driver who pranged their Vauxhall Corsa on a regular basis, but Mary had already downed a couple of gins by the time Miller rang, so there wasn’t a lot of choice in the matter. Miller hoped that Finn’s journey back to Howard and Mary’s place had been less traumatic than the assault she’d suffered a few hours before, but there probably hadn’t been a great deal in it.
‘Right, then.’ Miller took a step back and put his crash helmet on, but Mary moved forward to join him.
‘I meant to say sorry.’ She laid a hand on his arm. ‘For being a bit insensitive the other night at practice and banging on about that woman who wants to join. I really don’t know what I was thinking.’
Miller lifted his visor.
‘The woman who used to be a traffic warden, remember? I won’t make any arrangements until you’re good and ready.’
‘Actually, I think I was being over-sensitive,’ Miller said. ‘So go right ahead and ask Lovely Rita Meter Maid to come along.’
‘Her name’s Veronica,’ Mary said.
Miller smiled and shrugged. ‘Fresh blood is always good, right? Well, it can be a bit icky at a crime scene, but you know what I mean.’
Now, Howard stepped forward, grinning. ‘What with her being an ex-traffic warden, maybe she can hand out fixed penalty notices if one of us messes up a dance or whatever. Foxtrot fines or . . . tango tickets!’
‘You silly old sod,’ Mary said. She moved back to punch her husband on the arm, shaking her head and giggling like a girl.
Miller walked back to his moped, leaving the pair of them laughing. He guessed that however you chose to seize the day, if you could spend it with someone you still found hilarious after forty-odd years of marriage, it was going to be a good one.
The desk sergeant nodded down at the briefcase (£31.99 from TK Maxx) that Miller was carrying somewhat showily as he walked into the station. Miller held it up, said, ‘Tuna mayonnaise, a bag of Quavers and a can of Vimto,’ and hurried on through to the incident room. He made sure everyone in there got a good look at the case too, and was still carrying it fifteen minutes later when he walked into the briefing room.
He saw Xiu clock it and winked.
Tim Sullivan raised a hand to call those around the table to attention, a clear message that made everyone immediately fall silent, all except a member of the team’s civilian staff who had obviously been deep in private conversation with a colleague.
‘Hashtag, Sex-God . . . ’ He looked up to see everyone staring and mumbled an apology.
‘Right . . . so, where are we with Dennis Draper?’ Sullivan asked. The photograph from the hospital’s CCTV was on the screen behind him.
