Dead Wrong (19 page)

‘They’d kill me!’ He became agitated.

I switched on the tape. ‘Who’d kill you?’

‘You don’t get it, do you? They’d kill me. I go anywhere near Manchester, I’m dead.’

‘Who? Why? Look –just tell me what happened,’ I said gently.

He rocked back and forth on the bench a couple of times. Was he going to bolt?

Then he began to talk. ‘We were coming out, been a good night, one of the best. All this energy, you know, no grief. Everyone’s flying. Luke needed to throw up, he’d been mixing it, too much booze. We were gonna meet him outside, on the corner.’

We? Him and Ahktar? I didn’t interrupt.

‘There’s these two guys, this big guy and another one. We’re just going past them and one of them, the shorter one, grabs Ahktar from behind. He’s got his arm up his back and he’s holding his face so he can’t turn round. At first I thought they were fooling around but then they hustled him into the alley. I’m going “Hey, hey, what are you doing, man? Get off him.” They thump him in the guts and I get my knife out, right?’ He swallowed, coughed violently and rubbed his hands on his thighs. The sun was hot. I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my side.

‘This guy turns and he moves so fast, he’s twisting my arm, nearly breaks my wrist and I drop my knife.’

‘Where’s the other one?’

‘Still got Ahktar, he’s got his arms round his neck, holding him up. The one by me, the big one, gets the knife and…shit.’ He squeaked the last word and fished in his pockets. Pulled out a packet of Benson & Hedges. It wasn’t a cigarette he lit up but a small joint. Oh great, I thought. Now he gets busted for smoking dope before I get the full story. But no one blinked an eyelid. He dragged hard, sucking the smoke and holding it deep in his lungs. He erupted in a fit of coughing again.

‘He’s bending down, right?’ His voice was tight. ‘And he’s just got the knife and Ahktar kicks out, kicks him in the face, hard. The guy rears up, he’s screaming and…it happens so fast he sticks the knife in Ahktar. Then, I can’t remember, it was all going off at once.’ He took another toke, held it in, released a stream of smoke.

‘What did Ahktar do?’

‘He smiled,’ there was a note of disbelief in Joey’s voice. ‘The guy lets go of him and starts jabbering on. Ahktar sits down.’

‘What was he jabbering about?’

‘I didn’t get it all. Lot of it was Punjabi or whatever.’

‘They were Asian?’

He nodded. ‘But he was swearing, at his mate. “You fucking prat,” he said, “we weren’t supposed to do him, just a little warning. You stupid cunt, you stupid, stupid fucking cunt.” He’s really going mental. I shouted to them to get an ambulance and I called Ahktar. He’s slumped over. I tried to get near but the guy that done it’s between us. I’m calling, “Ahktar, Ahktar,” and the guy stares at me. I say, “He needs an ambulance, he could die, man.” He just stares at me, really freaky, then the little one starts screeching again, really losing it. “You done wrong,” he’s going, “you done wrong, man. What’s he gonna do when he finds out?” On and on he goes till the big one tells him to fucking shut up. I could see all this blood soaking through Ahktar’s jacket and I legged it. I wanted to get help. The big guy comes after me.’ He shuddered and drew hard again on his joint. ‘He pulled me back into the alley. He got me real close and said he’d find me. if I breathed a word he’d find me and he’d kill me. He asked me if I understood. I said yes. Then he got my hand. He twisted my finger back.’ He rubbed his little finger, looking at it as he spoke. I could see it was slightly crooked. ‘It snapped, he broke it.’ Joey began to shake. ‘He asked me again if I understood and I said yes. Christ, it fucking hurt. Then he broke the other one next to it. I was crying, right, and he slapped me. Told me to shut up. He said if he ever heard of me, any whisper about it, he’d find me and he would kill me very slowly, bit by bit.’ Joey paused. ‘I went home,’ he said flatly, ‘I rang an ambulance up on Oxford Road. Then I went home.’

I recalled Mrs Deason, the fleeting gesture she’d made with her hands, on the brink of telling me what they’d done to Joey’s fingers.

‘Did you go to hospital?’

‘No. My gran, she strapped them up.’

I watched the bowlers for a while. The gentle banter as one player missed her stroke. Joey ground the roach out underfoot. Coughed some more.

‘And Luke? When the ambulance arrived they found Luke with Ahktar. Unconscious.’

He shook his head. ‘They set him up.’

I wondered how. Had Luke come looking for Ahktar and been given a timely blow to the head, or had they found him by chance, passed out perhaps. A suspect of convenience. They must have wrapped his hand around the knife to get the prints.

I asked Joey to describe the men. He did, and I quickly recognised the picture that he drew of the larger man, the one who had used the knife. Rashid Siddiq. Killer turned witness.

‘I got to go.’ He made a move.

‘Hang on, I’ve a few more questions.’

‘Christ,’ he rocked with impatience. The dope didn’t seem to have settled him any. He sniffed again. Summer cold or cocaine eating away his nostrils? Joey D was a mess.

‘Why do you think they killed Ahktar?’

‘It was an accident,’ he said simply. ‘They were meant to give him a warning about something, that was all. The guy just went ballistic when Ahktar kicked him.’

And if he hadn’t had your knife, I thought, the blow wouldn’t have been fatal.

‘If you talked to the police,’ I began.

‘No way.’ He went rigid. ‘I already said, no police, no lawyers, nothing.’

‘You could get protection,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Twenty-four-hour guard, safe house, you reckon? All that for me? No way.’

‘What would they want to warn Ahktar about?’

‘Search me.’ He twitched again, an involuntary movement as though his skin were alive. ‘Look, I got to go.’

‘I’ve nearly finished. You hadn’t heard anything about Ahktar getting involved in anything?’

‘Dodgy? No. Bit of a nerd really, Ahktar. Nice guy but he wanted to be a lawyer, lot of studying. He partied at weekends, getting happy with the rest of us but that’s all.’

Secretly, I agreed. His recreational drug use was not reason enough for the heavies to come along and threaten him.

‘Do you remember Zeb having a go at you that night, in the club?’

‘Yeah.’ He was puzzled by my interest.

‘What was that about?’

‘He wanted a loan – he owed a lot of money. He was trying it on, promised to pay me ten per cent interest. I have this trust fund,’ he explained. ‘I told him no way, might as well flush it down the bog, never see it again. So he tries getting all heavy, threatening me, says he’ll put me out of business. I laughed at him. I’m only getting stuff for friends, I’m not a dealer, for chrissakes.’

‘Did you ever get stuff from Zeb?’

‘Once, maybe twice. And a couple of times he gets some from me. Dunno why, he could get more than I ever saw. Reckon he’d been helping himself, got a bit greedy, needed to top the bag up. He’d be paying over the odds getting it from me – last in the chain you get the highest mark-up. No head for business.’ Joey was serious. We could have been talking about building society flotations.

‘I’ve heard he was involved in bringing drugs into the country. Did you know about that?’

He shrugged. ‘You hear stuff; I didn’t want to know. That’s way out of my league. I never got into all that, I’m strictly small time.’ He grinned and for a fleeting moment he was a teenager having fun walking on the wild side. He coughed again.

‘Did you ever meet Rashid Siddiq? He worked with Zeb and his brother Jay?’

He shook his head.

‘How did you get the knife into the club?’

‘Gerry, one of the bouncers, he’s a customer of mine. I slip him a bit of something to help him relax at the end of the night, we had an understanding.’ He bit on his fingers again, tearing slowly at the skin around his nails.

‘How are you?’ I asked him. ‘Your grandmother’s worr–’

‘Sound,’ he cut me off. Sniffed.

‘You doing a lot of drugs?’

‘You a social worker in your spare time?’

‘You look rough, Joey. You look ill.’

‘Fuck off.’ But he didn’t move.

I watched the next couple of strokes.

‘It’s hard to get hold of stuff sometimes, that’s all. I get a bit shaky. Start crashing, you know. Stressed out, start to see things that aren’t there.’ He twitched. ‘Think people are following you. Does my head in. I just need a steady supply, that’s all. Get that sorted, no problem. I can handle it.’ He was all bravado now. ‘Tell her I’m OK.’

‘You still in business?’

He burst out laughing. ‘Yeah. You think I’m gonna start working at McDonald’s or something? Go on some pissy training scheme?’

A bee, heavy with pollen, careered towards us and bumped into Joey’s cheek. He swatted at it with his hand and knocked his shades off. The sunlight made him wince and he shielded his eyes with one hand while he searched for his glasses with the other. I got them first and handed them to him. His eyes were bloodshot, streaked with red capillaries, watering in the sudden light. Was that drugs too? Or illness or lack of sleep?

My guess was that it was all bound up together. The drugs that once gave Joey pleasure, not to mention profit, now brought paranoia and pain. He was an addict like his father before him, out of control.

‘I got to go.’ He stood up, trembling a little.

I clicked the tape recorder off. ‘Another appointment?’

‘Need to see if anything’s arrived yet, stuff’s been in short supply this last couple of days.’ No wonder he was so twitchy.

‘If you change your mind about…’

‘I won’t,’ he looked away from me.

‘I can play them this tape but I don’t know whether it’s enough to get Luke off. They have witnesses who are prepared to testify, to appear and say Luke killed Ahktar. If you’d come to an identity parade?’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘It won’t bring Ahktar back, will it? And they’ll kill me.’

‘How long are you going to hide?’

‘Long as it takes.’

‘And Luke?’

‘I told you what went down. That’s it. I got to go.’ He walked away.

I watched him go, off to buy a bit more oblivion. I wondered what the drug culture would be like by the time Maddie was exploring it. How would I protect her from the worst excesses whilst letting her take the risks that all teenagers sought? Hah! I thought, I won’t. I’ll be on the sidelines worrying, trying not to let it show. If I can’t even get her to talk to me now about what goes on at school, she’s hardly going to confide in me about her drug taking!

A patter of applause at the end of the game and then the bowl-players were called for tea over at the small clapboard pavilion at the far side of the green.

I left the park and made my way back to the car, calling in at the public toilets below the entertainment complex. They were all galvanised steel and mottled concrete floors reeking of industrial-strength disinfectant and damp concrete, resilient to seawater, sand and the ravages of tourists.

I passed the train station on my way back to the main road but there was no sign of Joey. In the car park I noticed a white van. Unmarked. My stomach flipped and my heart stammered. I reasoned with myself all the way home, but the worry wouldn’t go away. It just lodged there like a bone in my throat.

When I arrived back in Manchester I felt sticky from the journey and my shoulder was stiff from the combination of driving and fretting, but I decided to strike while the iron was hot.

I was on time; it was nearly four o’clock, but the court was empty again. Finished for the day. No wonder the wheels of justice took such a long time to turn. I felt like kicking the statues in frustration. Instead, I rang Mr Pitt’s office. My bullish tone the previous day must have had some effect because the secretary greeted me with something bordering on warmth and told me she was glad I’d got in touch; Mr Pitt had been called out at short notice on a matter of some urgency, but was very anxious to hear what I had to say. Could I leave a number where I could be reached this evening? I gave her my home number and my mobile – I was going for a drink with Diane. She had no idea when he might call and warned me it could be quite late. I reassured her that anytime was fine.

I should have rung Mrs Deason, then. But I was putting it off. Still hoping that my fears about the white van were unfounded. What would I say? He’s a wreck, Mrs D. He’s all skin and bone, he’s got a graveyard cough, he’s jumpy as hell, nerves shot to pieces and when he’s not got enough drugs he’s getting panic attacks and paranoia. Oh, and by the way, I think I was followed to Prestatyn. They may be on his trail – the people who want to keep him quiet. The people who broke his fingers. So, I put it off, deciding to call her the next day. And in the meantime try and get things in perspective.

It was warm enough to sit outside the pub for the first hour. As it got darker the midges drove us inside. Diane had not tried any more lonely hearts’ adverts.

‘I haven’t had time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working flat out. You know, they did a feature on dating agencies on Richard and Judy.’

‘Diane.’ She knows daytime TV makes me squirm.

‘It’s very educational,’ she remonstrated, ‘popular culture. As an artiste,’ she waggled her eyebrows, ‘I feel obliged to keep up with the trends of the time. To have my finger on the pulse.’

‘Be better off on the remote control,’ I muttered.

She ignored me. ‘They were saying how hard it is to meet new people these days. A lot of couples meet through work so that rules me out.’

‘What about your commissions, your patrons or whatever?’

She snorted. ‘Hah! No nice Spanish restaurateurs as yet. No, the place that wants the corkscrews is owned by a woman with a string of caravans in Southport and some boarding kennels in Hyde. Talk about diversification.’ She took a swig of her drink.

‘I’ve been to the seaside today,’ I confessed. ‘Work, not pleasure. Well, I had a paddle.’

‘Southport?’

‘Prestatyn.’

‘I got stung by a jellyfish in Prestatyn,’ she said. ‘Awful. I could feel the poison travelling round my body for hours, honestly. Little stings and prickles breaking out everywhere, even my eyelids. Hardly a mark on me but bloody painful. So how was sunny Prestatyn?’