The Sister (33 page)

All the lights were out; he navigated his way up to the base of the stairs; the coin-sized beam of his penlight generated a sufficient spill of light to enable him to avoid obstacles like chairs and discarded shoes. He ascended the staircase to the top landing. With all the doors shut, he was reliant on his inner compass to confirm that the door on his far right, corresponded with the last light he'd seen turned off. He moved close to it and listened at the hairline gap where the door met the frame. He heard the sound of regular, deep breathing. Two long minutes passed and the first gentle rumblings of snoring began. Once he was sure she was asleep; he took a small bottle of liquid from his pocket. He caught a whiff of its sweet, seductive odour as he unscrewed the lid, surprised that even that small exposure, had snatched his breath away. He poured a measure of the solution onto the wadding, folded it and silently opened the door. He made a point of waking her just as the wad covered her nose and mouth.

Her eyes snapped open with sleepy surprise, immediately followed by wide-eyed fear, a futile struggle, momentary disbelief when she finally registered what was happening . . . then she succumbed to blissful unconsciousness.

He was already hard, and he salivated as he fitted the condom. Seconds later, she was his. The rustling of the paper suit and his own ragged breathing were the only sounds he heard.

When he'd finished, he carefully extricated himself from her. She was still unconscious. Retreating downstairs back to the kitchen, he unscrewed the lid from the makeshift delivery apparatus, leaving the jar on the side in the kitchen.

Once back outside in the garden, he slit the tape from the overshoes, removed the paper suit and gloves and put all of it inside the bin bag. He knotted it tightly.

Crossing the park to the far end in the darkness, and checking all round to make sure he was unobserved, he stopped to hide the bag, tucking it right in underneath a timber bridge that crossed over a deep water-filled ditch.

He climbed the park fence, silently dropping down on the other side; he made his way down the alley, back to where he'd left the car, four hundred yards further up the road.

Chapter 63

The telephone rang, insistently edging its way into his consciousness. At first it fitted with the dream he was having, he even interrupted the dream conversation to say. "I must get that . . ."

In a sleepy daze, he rolled over onto his side and answered the phone.

"Tanner," he mumbled.

It was Kennedy. "Sorry to disturb, but I need you to report to an incident in Blake Street, number 27 . . . Are you listening?"

"Yes, I am," he said, as he opened his eyes wide, trying to blink away the cobwebs of sleep.

"Good, only I couldn't hear anything. It's overlooking the park, not far from your place."

"What's this all about, sir?"

"Number 27 Blake Street," he repeated. "A woman was raped tonight in her own home by some freak wearing a gasmask."

He looked at his watch. 1:29 a.m.
Oh, great!

He arrived at the scene twenty minutes later. An ambulance was parked outside on the driveway. Although the curtains were drawn, half a dozen shadowy silhouettes were clearly backlit, moving around purposefully.

The front door opened unexpectedly; Tanner stepped to one side, allowing the exiting paramedics to pass. They carried the victim out on a stretcher, covered with a blanket up to her chin, an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. She didn't look much older than his daughter. He watched as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

"This is going to be a long night,"
he muttered wearily.

Chapter 64

Tanner almost overslept. Some internal mechanism dragged him into consciousness and sifting dreamily through his jumbled thoughts; one came crashing to the fore.
It's Sunday.

The double helping of coffee he drank before he left, did little to help him shrug off the sleepiness that trawled on his senses, it was a state that evaporated the instant he walked into the public bar. At least half the windows had been smashed and then subsequently boarded over. The darkness contrasted sharply with the brightness outside. He guessed the landlord had given up putting glass back in. His eyesight now adjusted to the dim light, he scanned the room. All eyes were on him.

Look out for a dark-haired guy about thirty, wearing a gold belcher chain with a golden boxing gloves charm hanging down.
At least two other men fitted the bill, but his man had been looking out for him. Pulling him over to the bar, the boxer said, "Are you looking for me, boy?" Introducing himself as the writer Ed Quinn, he shook hands with the middleweight. His name was Paul Kelly; he looked far heavier than his fighting weight, but that wasn't uncommon. He knew enough to know that these guys often blew up in weight between fights, and then trained it off a few weeks before the next one.

Kelly's face bronzed from a life of working outdoors, had stubbly five o'clock shadow on his high flat cheeks, and hair shaven at the back and sides, leaving a crown of longer dark hair slicked back and oily looking. His features were relatively unmarked.
A clever fighter,
he thought.

"So you're writing about the greatest knuckle fighters are you? Will I be in it, boy?"

"If you are a great fighter, you can be sure of it!" Tanner joked.

"Do you want to be finding out?" Kelly looked serious as he indicated the door.

Suddenly, he felt vulnerable; with half a dozen rough looking men now watching them, Tanner rested his hands on the bar.

Kelly put his big hand over one of them and squeezed. "Don't worry, boy, I'm joshing with you!"

Tanner found it vaguely unsettling that although he was at least ten years older than Kelly, he insisted on calling him 'boy'. They shared an uneasy few pints, with only stilted conversation going on between them, and then Kelly offered to put him in touch with a well-respected elder, a twice crowned, former King of The Gipsies, Archie Brooks.

Introducing himself to Brooks as Edward Quinn, he elaborated on what he was looking for, old photographs, stories and interviews if possible.

Brooks agreed to meet him at his house that evening.

Archie Brooks' house was like a static caravan, all luxury red tasselled velvet cushions, expensive ornaments and mementoes of a life on the road.

"Too old for the travelling," he explained. "I been here fifteen year now … don't like it, but the bones creak these days in cold winters, so here I am, stopped off coolin' my heels for a while, before the next big journey up the stairs," he said, and then rolled his eyes heavenward. "If he'll take me . . ." he said, with a wry smile.

'Quinn' interviewed him, getting his opinion on who the greatest ever gipsy champion was, they spoke about what these men looked like, their fighting styles, how they fought. Brooks talked him through what seemed like hundreds of rounds.

"You know unless you've been a part of it, you don't know what it's like to carry on when every part of you is busted up and bleeding, 'cos you never quit. People like me . . . you can't quit. It's all about honour. I never made money like they do today and the hands . . . sweet Mary . . ." He held them aloft, examining them with pride. The knuckles were deformed; the fingers gnarled like tree roots. "They used to pickle the hands in vinegar in those days . . . did it me self. Used to sit there, I did, with each hand sunk in a jar o' the stuff both sides o' me, for hours on end. Used to smell like a chip shop, but made the skin like boot leather, see."
Eventually, he produced a box and took the lid off. He sifted through an old collection of photographs; there were hundreds, all of them well-thumbed. He was careful to keep them in order, they ran through faded sepia, to black and white, the newest were coloured ones, and they came in all sizes, like the men they portrayed.

"Them old 'uns were my father's - well, would you look at that," he said, peeling a photo that had stuck to the back of another one. "I thought I'd lost this one," his face lit up, as he took in all the faces once more. "This is a group of past champions, taken at a big fight gathering in
Plymouth a few years back. Every single one o' them was a champion, in the thirty years before the photo."

"There are only seventeen of them," Tanner remarked.

"Aye, a few are dead, a handful has won more than once and this one here…" He tapped his finger on the fighter, who although older than the E-Fit, resembled the man he was looking for. "He's won it three times."

Tanner pointed at each of them in turn, asking the names of each of them, carefully noting them down. He was only interested in the three time champion though, Martin 'The Boiler man' Shaw.

He whistled in appreciation. "Three times . . . that's quite an achievement."

"Aye, it is that. The first time he took it; he was just a young man … then he just disappeared for ten years. Come back, won it again, held it for two years. He quit before some fresh young bull took him down . . . not like most of 'em, never knowing when to stop. He stood down from the fighting. He's unreliable, anyway, can't hardly find him when you want him. You know; he still fights occasionally, when the urge takes him, and he has a terrible temper that one - he'd suddenly boil up, then he'd let loose."

Tanner looked closer at the photograph, squinting, then at Brooks. "Isn't that you Archie, stood right next to him in the photo there?"

"Aye, we were stood more or less in the order we held the titles. He took it off me." He rubbed his chin at the memory. "I was in me forties, never been beat, not fair and square at any rate," he pulled his top lip up and back with the crook of his forefinger, revealing the missing teeth down the entire side of his mouth. "See that - got jumped by ten of 'em, dropped four before someone swung a bat on me . . . Woke up in hospital, so I did." He sighed deeply. "There was no need for it, you know what I mean? It's not how real men deal with things." He twisted each of the rings on his fingers, so the fronts of all faced forwards. "Anyways, when he came along, he took everything I threw at him, for the first time in me life I felt the age creeping up on me. He never threw ten shots to land one; he never wasted the power, unless he knew it was landing. He served me with a left that shook me all the way down to me boots, he never says a word, not like some, talking' at you all the time, before the fight, during the fight – no, not him. Never says a word, just boils up red with the rage. Now I'm old, I don't mind admitting… That's one of the frightingest
[sic]
things about him - you don't know what he's thinking - only sound he makes is Pum! Pum! Pum!" The old man was popping off shots to demonstrate, the look on his face, mean. "Getting more power that way, punching, punching, punching, every one a stick o' dynamite -
murderous
- I'd never lie down. Even now, you'd have to put me down and the only way to stop me is to knock me sparko, you know what I mean? I woke up in the middle o' next week! The boys told me he caught me with three punches, the one that shook me, I remember, but the other two . . . I never saw them coming."

Tanner took his camera out. "Would you mind if I take a shot of that for the book?" He pointed to the champions photograph.

"Put that thing away will you, here take it." He handed the photograph to Tanner. "Let me have it back when you've finished."

Holding the photograph in his hands, he was unsure if it was in his imagination, but he caught the faintest whiff, the smell of horses and saddles, which reminded him of the tack room, at the riding school he used to go to as a boy. "Thanks," he said. "Oh and one other thing . . . I'd love to talk to the Boiler man, do you think that would be possible?" He looked hopeful. It did not last long.
"You'll be lucky; he don't talk much to his own kind; he's got four words - yes, no and fuck off - keeps himself to himself . . . besides he is a
real
traveller, don't stay long in any place. Only time you ever see him, is when he wants to be seen, usually when there's a big fight with money involved."

"So you don't know where he lives?"

"No, I don't…" His eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Why would you be asking me that?"

"I'm sorry," Tanner said quickly. "I was only thinking about the interview…"

"Lets get one thing straight, Mr Quinn, book or no book, if you want to keep that head of yours on your shoulders, you won't go turning up anywhere without me, or my say so, do you know what I mean?"

For a split second, he thought the old man saw right through him. He fixed on his best poker face and replied, "I wouldn't dream of it. Look, can I get to see an actual fight?"

"For the book? We'll see… Leave your number, Mr Quinn,
and I'll call you."

On arriving home that night, he scanned the photograph and emailed a copy to Kennedy.

Kennedy examined the copy of the photograph closely. Going over the faces with a magnifying glass for a second time, he located the suspect quite quickly.
It's him. I know it!