Screen of Deceit (12 page)

She pushed herself away from Mark, rotating her jaw, and stood up.

Mark sprawled on the armchair, his eyes – slightly mad – following her every move.

She brushed herself down, straightening her clothing and patting her hair flat.

Mark felt like he was on the verge of bursting. He swallowed and caught his breath, more exhausted than after a hard session on the BMX.

‘Wow,' Katie said with a smile. ‘So you do know how to kiss.'

‘So it seems,' he preened.

She held out her hands and twinkled her fingers. He placed his hands in hers and she eased him to his feet and dragged him towards the bed, turned him around and backed him against it and, with a hand at his chest, pushed him on to the edge and stood in front of him between his legs.

‘Can you lock the door?' she asked.

‘Yeah, why?'

‘Use your imagination.' She gave him a smile and went to the bedroom door, which had an inner bolt on it. She flicked it across with a click. Next she crossed to the window and drew the curtains before returning to Mark, who sat there mesmerised, his mouth sagging open.

Katie sat down slowly next to him and before he knew what had happened they were lying side by side on the bed, kissing like mad again, but Mark was totally unsure as to how things should progress. He had never been this far with a girl before.

Somewhere in the background he heard a knock at the front door, which he dismissed from his mind – more of Mum's bloody mates, he guessed – as Katie took the initiative, as ever, grabbed his hand and placed it on her tee-shirt over her left breast, causing Mark to shudder with pleasure.

Still in the background – voices in the hallway.

Mark's hand on Katie's boob did not move.

‘Squeeze it,' she insisted breathlessly. ‘Gently.'

He did. And, oh God, it was wonderful.

A door slammed.

Something incredible was building up inside him.

Downstairs – more talk, voices, urgency.

‘Touch me here,' Katie gasped. She lay back and moved Mark's shaking hand from her breast and guided it down towards her tummy.

‘Mark! Mark!' a voice from the real world yelled.

A look of horror broke on his face. ‘Oh, hell no!' he uttered desperately.

‘Mark – get yourself down here now,' Jack's voice boomed.

The deflation for both teenagers was instantaneous.

‘I don't believe this,' Mark grunted unhappily, pushing himself off the bed and standing up, his legs wobbly with a lack of blood which had surged to other, more demanding parts of his body.

Katie lay there panting, dishevelled, frustration visible in her face.

‘Mark!' Jack shouted again.

‘I'm coming,' he replied. He looked despairingly at Katie, who gave him an expression that summed up both their feelings. ‘Sorry,' he said meekly.

‘It's OK. Bad day anyway.'

Mark turned away from her and adjusted himself in his jeans before opening the door and stepping on to the landing. At the top of the stairs he could see down into the hall where Jack stood.

‘That cop's come back, Christie, so get your arse down here. He has something for us all to hear.'

D
etective Chief Inspector Christie spoke sombrely and very seriously. Mark saw and felt that the man had a certain authority, something about him that made everyone in the living room listen to him, hang on to his every word, despite their grief.

Mark's mum was in one of the armchairs. Jack leaned back into the settee, steepling his fingers underneath his chin, watching the detective with a degree of cold calculation, as though trying to weigh him up. Mark's eyes kept flicking back to Jack, wondering what was going on in his head.

There was also a woman in the room who Mark's mum referred to as her cousin Ellie, but Mark wasn't sure whether or not she was a relative or just a boozing buddy. She was just slumped on the floor, sitting back against the wall with a bottle in her hand – supporting his mum in her hour of need.

Mark watched Christie, the detective dealing with Bethany's death, the one who had interviewed him earlier that afternoon at Blackpool nick in the presence of Jack, the adult, and taken a statement. It had been a pretty painless, if exhausting, experience, as much as it could be in the circumstances, but Christie had been deep and probing at the same time. There was definitely something about this Christie guy. On the face of it he seemed to accept everything that was said to him, but underneath there was an undercurrent that suggested he didn't believe a bloody word anyone said. He was someone, not to be frightened of, but to be very wary of … which was maybe why Jack was scrutinising him so closely.

Cigarette smoke hung thick and still in the air. Mark's mum and her alleged cousin were chain smoking, clogging the atmosphere. There was a bottle of gin on the little table next to his mum's chair and an empty bottle of whisky laid out on the carpet. She'd been hitting the bottle and was watching Christie through watery, blood-shot eyes. Her head kept sort of bobbing around, too, as though she'd lost control of her neck muscles.

Mark glanced at her contemptuously, then looked back at Christie.

He was saying, ‘And the post-mortem was carried out late this afternoon …' He stood in front of the fireplace, having decided not to sit as he delivered the news. With all the smoke in the room, his head was just above the clouds, like the tip of some mountain or other. ‘As a result of the examination, the pathologist has determined that Bethany died of a massive drug overdose, but' – he paused – ‘further tests are going to have to be carried out to identify the drugs and see if what she had in her body was contaminated or cut in any way, or not. I intend to fast-track these tests.'

Mark had a quick flashback to yesterday's school assembly and the dour message delivered by the headmaster about another drug death, that of Jane Grice.

‘Are there some bad drugs going about?' Jack asked.

Christie looked at him. ‘It's a possibility, one we need to check out – something we always do in cases like this. Thing is, two people have now died from drugs overdoses in a short space of time. It's public knowledge that Jane Grice overdosed by taking a very unusual concoction of drugs, including heroin. A fatal cocktail, I think the local press called it. She'd taken the drugs in such a way that made it look like she could've been force fed them, which of course makes that murder.' Christie paused to let the words sink in. ‘Therefore forensic analysis of the substances in Bethany's body will possibly link to Jane's death. If that is the case, and there is a connection …'

‘Whaah ya mean?' Mark's mum slurred, interrupting Christie and then flopping back into the chair drunkenly.

‘I mean, Mandy, it's possible Bethany may have been forced to take a concoction of drugs and that then means I'm conducting a murder investigation until I find out different.'

‘The Crackman!' Mark uttered under his breath.

Both Jack and Christie turned quickly to him. ‘What, Mark?' the detective asked sharply.

‘Nothing,' he said, his face set hard and determined.

‘So what happens next?' Jack asked Christie.

Mark saw himself as tough and streetwise, but he had to admit he didn't know much about drugs, didn't want to either; he just knew they were bad news, which is why he had to ask Jack to explain what Christie was talking about when he mentioned ‘cutting' drugs, even though he knew his brother didn't know much about drugs either.

‘What it is, is this,' his elder brother patiently put into plain words. ‘Drugs usually start off in a foreign country a long way from here. Heroin, for example; quite a lot of it comes from Afghanistan. Gets carried on the backs of donkeys, over the border into Pakistan. It starts off as opium from the poppy, then gets converted to heroin, then it finds its way across Europe and gets into this country through a huge network of dealers and some folk who don't even know what they're carrying. Then it gets cut down and bulked out, usually with something like milk powder, and gets sold on the streets. Somebody makes a profit at every stage of the journey.' Jack wiped his tired face, rubbing his eyes with the balls of his hands. Mark could see it was all getting to him. ‘Thing is, though, sometimes it gets bulked out with something not so nice, such as scouring powder, for example. Something that if it gets into your bloodstream will kill you, even if the heroin doesn't.'

‘So that's what happened to Beth?'

The two brothers were sitting on the front garden wall of the house. It was getting late, after nine now, and Mark had been up for over sixteen hours. He was wasted and drained, but knew he couldn't have slept even if he'd wanted.

Jack shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Probably she just put too much into herself, y'know, misjudged it. It's what junkies do occasionally,' he said blandly. ‘Anyway, the police tests'll tell us.'

Silence fell between them.

‘I'm gonna find out who gave her the drugs,' Mark declared suddenly, ‘and then I'm gonna get them.'

Jack slowly turned his face to him and eyed him sardonically, shaking his head sadly. ‘No, you're not.'

‘Oh yeah I am, and I know where I'm going to start.'

‘Mark – don't be silly. If there's anyone to find, the police will do it. So let them. It's their job, not yours. I know that's what you feel you should do. I feel it too, but it's not going to happen.'

Mark pushed himself off the wall and began pacing around, building up inside, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘No, it's what I have to do, Jack. For Beth. I let her down in life, let her get hooked on drugs and didn't even notice. You don't have to be involved and I understand that. This is something for me, something for the streets here in Blackpool. I know you've no connection here anymore, so it's OK.' The idea was blossoming inside him, like it was the most important thing he had ever decided in his life. Something he had to do for his dead sister: investigate her death relentlessly and track down the person who sold or gave her the drugs.

Jack regarded him with a mix of sympathy and contempt. ‘I'd hazard a guess that this thing is way out of your league, bud. Take it from me, don't go poking your nose into a very dangerous world where you'll find yourself getting injured, or worse.'

Mark spat on the ground. With bravado, he said, ‘I'm not frightened – and anyway, I know who I'm going to see.'

‘Who?'

‘Jonny Sparks.'

‘Why him?'

‘Cos he's been hangin' around Beth and I know he deals drugs and I'll bet he gave 'em to her.'

Jack sighed and clicked his tongue. ‘Why didn't you tell the cops this?'

Mark shrugged. ‘Dunno. Something at the back of my mind stopped me. Maybe I knew it was my job to get him, but I don't know why I didn't say.' He squinted at Jack. ‘Do you know what I mean?'

‘Not really,' Jack said wearily. ‘Look, Mark, tell the cops, eh? That DCI left his card. Give him a bell. Tell him what you know. Let him do the dirty work.'

‘He won't do anything. Cops're rubbish.'

‘He seemed pretty sound to me, even though I'm not that impressed by his methods.'

Mark shook his head. ‘No, it's down to me. Whatever happens, I'm having words with Sparks and then, depending on what he tells me – or not – I'm going for the Crackman. He's the one behind it all.'

Jack looked at him as though he'd gone off his head. ‘All right then, who the hell is the Crackman?'

‘Nobody knows,' Mark said mysteriously, ‘except that he's a big drug dealer and brings misery and I'll bet he supplied the drugs to Bethany. Yeah, one way or the other, even if Sparks doesn't know anything, I'll bet the Crackman is the one who supplied the supplier who supplied Bethany.'

‘Mark – listen to yourself. You're talking rubbish. You're a fourteen-year-old lad who feels bad. Just tell the cops what you know, then back off and leave it to them. Don't do anything stupid.' Jack stood up and faced his younger brother and placed his hands on his shoulders, looked into his eyes. ‘And don't go around making wild accusations you can't back up with evidence, either. You know I'm talking sense, don't you?'

Mark avoided Jack's eyes and looked at the ground, then shrugged his hands off his shoulders.

He had made his decision.

It became all-consuming, the only thing he could think of. He had to find out who had supplied the drugs to Bethany. As he lay on his bed in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, his brain raced like an F1 Ferrari. Not that he was making any great attempt to get his head down. He didn't want to sleep because he believed he would have a nightmare and he knew exactly what that nightmare would be: Bethany on the mortuary slab being cut open and examined by some white-coated doctor who made sick jokes while he sliced her apart and ripped out her heart.

That he could not face, even in a dream.

He stood up, crossed to the window through which he had seen Bethany coming home, Jonny Sparks snogging her, touching her up. Mark's top lip curled at the thought of Sparks's hands on his sister's body … the sister who had gone off the rails, but who had not deserved to die such an awful death.

He didn't even remember falling asleep. Next thing he knew he stirred and his clock told him it was ten in the morning and he had missed both his paper round and the start of school. But he didn't care about either. He couldn't be bothered. The thought of them made him feel sick and he knew he didn't have to explain anything to either of them, the newsagent or his teachers.

He dressed quickly and, without even washing himself or brushing his teeth, or putting on clean clothes, or underwear, he left the house – which was empty now. His mother had disappeared, to where he had not a clue, and nor did he care either. She hadn't even hugged him once yesterday, so caught up was she in her own histrionics. As far as he was concerned, she could get lost. He had no time for her, would survive without her.