Case One (26 page)

Holly took a seat next to Taz and opened her sandwich. “Have you seen anything of Drew Alford?” she asked, keeping it casual even though the fact that Alford was still walking around free continued to rankle with her.

“Nah, not much,” Taz said. “He's still hanging out, you know. But I don't see him cos he's not with Bex any more.”

“Has he got another girlfriend?”

“Dunno. Someone said he was with a girl from Haysden the other night, but I didn't see.”

By now Danny had finished setting up the laptop again. He turned to Taz. “Okay, I want you to watch this,” he said. “They're clips from CCTV cameras. Say if you think you recognise anyone. Look carefully.”

He pushed the laptop back to the centre of the table and tapped a key to start the first of the clips running.

As Taz's co-handler Holly was required to be at any meeting with her, but because Holly was only a trainee, Danny and DS Ray Woods were the ones who prepared the briefings. This was the first time Holly had seen the images on the screen so she watched them with interest – perhaps more than Taz.

A lot of the pictures were similar to the footage you might see on
Crimewatch
or the news, although they lasted longer. They were often blurred and indistinct, almost always jerky and sometimes it was hard to tell who you were supposed to be looking at. The first clip was of two white guys in hoodies robbing an off-licence and threatening the owner with a baseball bat; the second was from a street camera, directed down on a mixed-race man dealing drugs; the next was of a fight outside a town centre pub.

For ten minutes they watched these and other clips while Taz ate her pizza. A few times she asked Danny to pause the video and then peered closely at the screen, frowning in concentration. To Holly it seemed a bit put on though – as if Taz was playing a role. And even when the girl did offer possible IDs on the figures she was looking at, she never fully committed herself. It was always “
Maybe that's…
” and “
He looks a bit like…
”

Finally Danny got to the last clip. It showed external and internal pictures of three men smashing their way into a warehouse through a roller door. They all wore beanie hats down to their eyebrows and had bandannas pulled up over their noses. They worked fast and efficiently as they robbed the place, quickly loading boxes into the back of a Transit van.

“They're taking laptops, hard drives and games consoles,” Danny said. “We've heard some of the stuff's being flogged on the Caddy Estate.” He gestured at the figures. “Recognise anyone?”

“Can't see 'em, can you?” Taz said, which was true.

“Wait a sec.”

Danny hovered a finger over the keyboard. The view was of the warehouse door from outside. One of the raiders was hurrying to get into the driver's seat of the van and as he did so the bandanna over the bottom half of his face slipped. In the moment before he pulled it back into place, Danny hit pause.

Holly frowned, taken by surprise – squinted harder. The man frozen on the screen was white and looked as if he was in his mid-thirties, though it was hard to tell unless you knew him.

But if you
did
know him… Then you'd know that he was thirty-six, with dark, curly hair –
if
you knew him.
If
it was him.

“Seen him anywhere?” Danny asked Taz.

“Dunno,” Taz said. “Maybe – or someone like him. I don't know. – Did they get a lot?”

“Enough.”

“So there's a reward?”

“
If
we charge someone.”

Holly realised the muscles in her shoulders had frozen up. She forced herself to shift, glancing at Danny to see if he'd noticed her stiffness; her sudden focussed interest. It didn't seem that he had.

“I'll listen out for anyone flogging laptops then,” Taz said.

Danny nodded. “We're calling this one The Bandit cos of the bandanna. Got it?” When there was a particular suspect they were interested in they were given a nickname to make it easier for Taz to remember them.

“Yeah, The Bandit. I'll remember,” Taz said. “I've got a good memory for faces, I told you.”

Holly glanced at the screen again, still not certain if she was right. Was it – or not? She knew which answer she wanted, but before she could decide Danny shifted and closed the laptop.

“I know you said that,” he told Taz. “But so far it hasn't helped much, has it?”

“What do you mean?” Taz asked, defensive.

“I mean, we need more than a few ‘might-be's and ‘maybe's,” Danny told her. “And that's all you're giving us at the moment.”

“I'm doing my best,” Taz said, sounding hurt. “It's not easy, you know.”

“It was easy enough to tell us which jacket you wanted though.”

Suddenly angry – or making a good pretence of it – Taz pushed her chair back and stood up. “Okay, have it back then!” She unzipped the jacket with a ripping sound. “It makes me look fat anyway. Keep the stupid thing.”

“Taz, come on,” Holly said, standing up and putting a hand out to stop her. “That's not what— The jacket's yours, okay? But we
do
need your help. You're the only one who can tell us what's happening on the Cadogan Estate. That's why it's important for you to really try with this. We're relying on you.”

For a moment Taz stood motionless and sulky, then she took her hand off the zip and shrugged her shoulders back.

“I can't just come out and ask, can I?” she said. “If they think I'm asking questions, if they think I'm a grass…”

“You don't have to ask, just watch,” Holly said. “Like we told you at the start. Faces and names, that's all.” She glanced at Danny. “Right?”

“Right,” Danny said with a nod, though it sounded as if it was against his better judgement.

“So, can you do that?” Holly asked, turning back to Taz. “Anything you see. Anything at all that might be useful.”

“I'll try,” Taz replied, still a bit grudging and resentful, but calmer now.

“Fantastic,” Holly told her. “Come on, sit down. We'll run through it again, yeah?”

When the back door closed behind Taz twenty minutes later, Danny Simmons leaned on the kitchen worktop and pursed his lips. “She's in the last-chance saloon,” he said.

“I think she knows that,” Holly told him. “You made it pretty clear.”

Danny was unfazed. “Sometimes it needs to be. We're not here to be her mates – she's doing a job. That's what she's paid for, but if she's not going to deliver…”

“She might do better this time,” Holly said. “Now she knows we're not happy.”

“We'll see.” Danny sounded unconvinced, but not so much that he was ready to call the whole thing off quite yet. “Let's get this place cleaned up and get gone.”

Holly moved to the sink to wash their coffee mugs as Danny dumped the pizza box and crusts in a bin bag.

“That warehouse robbery,” Holly said after a moment. “The last CCTV clip. When was that?”

“Week last Tuesday. Shenford. Why?”

“Just wondered.” She made it sound like casual curiosity. “It looked more professional than the other stuff.”

“It was. They must've set it up in advance. They knew what they were looking for and where to go in.”

“Any suspects?”

“Not so far. Only thing we do know is the van was torched on Palman's Road two hours after the raid.”

“That's why you think it could be linked to the Caddy?” Palman's Road was close to the Cadogan Estate.

“You don't have to be smart to be lazy. Short walk home.”

“Right.”

For a moment Holly thought back to the indistinct images of the warehouse raid and the man whose mask had slipped.

“Listen, if—” But as she looked up from the sink she saw that Danny had gone into the other room to tidy up.

“What did you say?” he called out.

“Nothing,” Holly said.

2

At the end of the fourth-floor walkway Ryan Atkins couldn't keep from turning his head left and right every few moments, looking to see who else was on the landing, how far away, what they were doing. He'd have liked to move, to pace up and down maybe, but he couldn't as long as Drew Alford was inside the flat.

Ryan tried to look relaxed and innocent as he stood beside the railing. It was hard though. Even though he lived in the block he knew that when most people round here saw a teenager in a hoodie hanging about – especially a black teenager in a hoodie – they would come to the obvious conclusion: he was up to something.

Being stuck out here on lookout was the worst – not just because of what was inside the flat – that was risky enough – but because Ryan knew what Drew was doing.

“I'm just after two or three,” Drew had said. “No one's gonna notice. Listen, trust me. I know, okay?”

Ryan hoped so. It was one thing to be involved with this flat in the first place, but it was another to be ripping off Tommy Vickers: a guy who'd reward that with broken legs – or worse – if he found out. No one stole from Tommy unless they had a death wish, but that was exactly what Drew was doing, and he'd made Ryan a part of it too.

Then the door opened in front of him and Drew stood in the hall of the flat, a tall, tightly muscled figure with a baseball cap pulled down to his eyebrows.

He didn't step out. Instead he looked at Ryan expectantly. Ryan glanced left and right. For the moment there was no one in sight and he nodded quickly to Drew.

As soon as he saw it Drew stepped out of the flat, pulling the door shut behind him. The Yale lock snicked closed and he twisted the second key in the mortise lock, withdrew it and moved away briskly, pushing the keys into his pocket.

Finally able to move, Ryan fell in beside him as they headed for the stairs. “You get them?” he asked, hoping the answer would be no.

“Yeah,” Drew nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag containing six Es embossed with the picture of a flower. He let Ryan see, then shoved them back.

“You said two or three,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, well Riz wants some an' all, for tonight. What about you?”

Ryan shook his head. “You sure no one's gonna know?”

“Nah. I told you before. They're out of this big bag, no one's counted. It split open the other day when Malc had it. All over the floor. So if some got lost…” He grinned, tapped his forehead. “See? I've got it all figured out. You worry too much.”

THE KILLING STREET

THE KILLING STREET

“To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, I try to write stories about people who commit realistic crime for real reasons and with real consequences – not just to provide a convenient excuse for the cops to turn up and solve it.”

introducing

Chris Ould

the freshest blood in YA crime fiction

Hear from Chris Ould on writing crime fiction

What do you think is the key to writing authentic crime fiction?

Research. If my books seem authentic it's because I try to create stories that the reader could imagine happening to them, or to people they know. Talking to real coppers, reading about and researching real crimes and then imagining the circumstances that could have made the crime happen are what make the stories seem real – at least, I hope they do.

How do you keep the pace of the books fast-moving and gripping?

It's all to do with combining the characters with the plot. If the reader cares about characters like Holly and Sam and then I put them in situations where they may be in danger or have to take a risk, then the reader wants to know what happens next. There always has to be jeopardy of some kind and the TPOs need to work hard to find out the truth. If the answers come too easily or the reader can predict the next move then I haven't done my job properly.

Do you have any rules for your writing?

Just two: Write at least a thousand words every day and don't cheat the reader. By that I mean, don't rely on coincidence to make something happen, and if the plot requires a character to act in a certain way it must be a credible thing for them to do. I also try to stick as closely as possible to real police procedure, although occasionally you do have to use a bit of dramatic licence to keep the story moving. No one wants to read about the endless form-filling which is part of a real copper's everyday work.