To Catch a Rabbit (14 page)

‘It’s not the flipping zoo, Denton.’ He hadn’t heard the door open and suddenly Burger was standing there with a face like a slapped arse. ‘Instead of gawping, get this lad a cup of tea.’

When he got back from the canteen, Burger was gone and Lee Stubbs was sitting with his chair pushed back and his feet up on the table.

‘Anywhere round here you can get a bag of crisps?’ Stubbs asked.

‘There’s a vending machine.’

‘Get us one then.’

‘They’re sixty pence.’

‘Then I’ll have to owe you. I’ve nowt on me.’

Sean shrugged. ‘Sorry, mate, I’ve got no change.’

‘Never mind. I’ll be on my way any minute now.’

‘Yeah?’ Sean tried not to sound surprised.

‘Did you think I was going to get locked up for riding me bike on the pavement?’ Stubbs sneered.

‘No, I…’

‘You’re a twat, you always were, and you’re even more of one in that uniform. You’re not even a real copper, are you Denton?’

Carly put her head round the door.

‘What’s up?’

Sean hoped she hadn’t heard the last bit; he didn’t want her losing her job for assault on a suspect. Not on his account.

‘This a Mr Stubbs?’

Lee sucked his teeth and tried his best to look hard. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Well if it is, you can show him off the premises.’

‘I’d be delighted.’

Stubbs slouched down the corridor ahead of him, rolling his hips as if he was a Los Angeles gangster, not a puny white boy from the edge of Doncaster. Then he stopped. He was looking at a poster on the wall.

‘I’ve seen him.’

It was the photograph of Mrs Friedman’s brother, which Sean had enlarged on the photocopier.

‘When?’

Lee Stubbs sucked his teeth. ‘Let me see. That would have been Bonfire Night. Busy night. Lots of parties. He did some business with me. A little package. D’you get me?’

Sean thought he probably did get him. ‘We might have to ask you some more questions about that.’

‘Yeah, well, your man knows where I live. But I wouldn’t bother. I can’t tell you no more than what I just have. In fact, I never told you nothing. We never spoke. That’s it.’

Five minutes later, Sean was upstairs looking out over the car park. He saw three people walking away from the building, Lee Stubbs, a middle-aged woman with square shoulders and blonde, bobbed hair and DCI Barry King. The woman had her arm linked with Lee’s and, as he watched, Burger put his arm round the woman’s shoulders. She stopped and pointed her key fob at a dark blue BMW. King opened the door for her. He was saying something through the window as she drove away. The car had a personalised number plate. Sean squinted but he couldn’t make out what it was meant to say. He just kept saying the letters over and over so they fixed in his head.

He slipped into one of the admin offices and found Sandy, who did him a DVLA search. ‘Stella Stubbs, 47 Linden Avenue.’

‘Stubbs? His mum.’

‘What were you expecting, pet?’

‘Don’t know.’

Burger obviously knew the woman, knew her well. Linden Avenue. It was on that estate with the posh new houses, just before they’d swerved off down the drive to Lower Brook Farm. Burger had stuck the twos up at a boy on a bike. Or had he?

‘How come Stubbs walked?’ he asked Sandy.

‘You haven’t seen Steve? He was in here, fuming. The lad had nothing on him apparently and Burger overruled him, said that there wasn’t enough evidence to book him, let alone keep him.’

‘He must have ditched his stash while we were following. You don’t make that much effort to get away if you’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Burger’s said he’s not going to authorise a team to search the whole of the Chasebridge.’ 

Had Burger stuck the twos up? Or had he waved?

‘It’ll be pointless now, anyway,’ said Sean. ‘Lee Stubbs will be way ahead of us.’

‘Oh, Sean,’ Lizzie put her head round the door, ‘I thought I heard your voice.’  

Sandy switched from the DVLA screen back to a document she was typing.

‘If you’ve got a minute,’ Lizzie said, ‘there’s something I’d like you to look at.’

Sean thanked Sandy and excused himself.

The address was off Leeman Road, behind the station. She crossed the river and turned towards the Railway Museum. She hadn’t heard from Charlie Moon. The night at the Brown Cow was almost a month ago and she was beginning to think she’d made a fool of herself, or maybe he thought he had. Now, it was the children’s final day at school and her last chance to pick up any presents without them seeing.

The Moyos’ house was a two-up, two-down terrace in need of a lick of paint. There was a
To Let
sign in the window, and through the empty glass she could see that the house was empty, no furniture or curtains left. She peered through the letterbox and saw a heap of pizza menus and free sheets cascading across the hall carpet. She wondered if they could postpone the hearing, or whether they would have to let it go. Jaz would be furious; he really felt they had a chance of winning.

She was glad the wind was behind her as she made her way back into the city centre. Outside Debenhams a young Santa was collecting money for a homeless charity. She remembered when Sophie was little, and she was pregnant with Cara, they used to pass a homeless man on their way to the mother and toddler group, behind the back door of the Co-op. He had a filthy white beard and straggly hair and Sophie thought he was Santa. One day he was gone and, when he reappeared a week later, he’d been shaved and shorn. Sophie was devastated. What had they done to her Father Christmas? This young man looked even less like Santa than that old tramp; she couldn’t imagine any child being fooled by his costume. As she put her hand in her pocket for some change, she felt her phone vibrate. Number withheld.

‘Happy Christmas!’ A deep voice with a hint of the valleys.

‘Charlie? It’s a bit early, there’s another week.’

‘Are you annoyed? You sound annoyed.’

‘No, I’m fine.’ It didn’t come out quite right.

‘Look, I’m sorry, you’ve got every right to be annoyed. I said I’d help you with your brother.’

‘It’s fine, really.’

‘Where are you?’ he said.

‘Outside Debenhams.’

‘Are you going into the RAMA office?’

‘I’ve finished for the day.’ The skinny Santa shook his bucket in her direction. ‘I was just going to do a bit of last-minute shopping.’

‘I think I’ve found something for you.’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve got to pop in and see Jaz, but, afterwards, tell you what, we’ll have lunch. I’ll meet you at the Italian on the river.’

Karen looked at her watch. It was noon. She had time.

‘Okay.’

The restaurant was packed. The maitre d’, a tall grey-haired Italian, greeted her with a smile.

‘I’m meeting a friend.’ He showed her to a table for two in a dark corner of the restaurant. She had nothing to hide, but somehow she felt grateful for his discretion.

‘Sorry I’m late.’

Charlie Moon unwound his scarf and dropped his coat into the hands of a waiter who appeared behind him. He seemed quite at home. She’d never been inside this place and she’d been expecting a pizza joint, but one look at the clients told her it was a great deal more exclusive than that; definitely a step up from the kebab van at All Saints’ Church.

‘There’s been a sighting of Phil,’ Charlie said, the second he sat down.

Karen felt dizzy. ‘When?’

He explained about a man on a bike and a chase and the PCSO. She pictured the young officer. He’d remembered her and she was grateful.

‘When did this drug dealer say he’d seen Phil?’

‘Bonfire Night.’

She’d lost her appetite now and when the waiter appeared to take their order she couldn’t decide.

‘Just a salad, I think, I’m not very hungry.’

‘I’ll have the linguine, and a half bottle of Chianti.’ He waited for the waiter to move away. ‘It seems that Stubbs is denying that he said anything to the PCSO. He’s probably woken up to the fact that it doesn’t look good if he’s on record admitting he can identify one of his customers.’

‘So why say it to Sean Denton in the first place?’

‘Denton got the impression that Lee Stubbs was showing off.’

The wine arrived and he filled her glass without asking. It stemmed the flow of questions she had, but which she knew he couldn’t answer. They talked shop for a while. The trial of the Grimbsy lorry owner, Xhoui Li, was coming up and he was busy trying to chase the forensic lab to secure an expert witness.

‘He’s playing hard to get, Mr Li. Every time the CPS provides an interpreter, he claims it’s the wrong dialect.’

‘Was Doncaster part of your target area or did you just go there on a whim?’

‘Bit of both,’ he smiled and the tension left the muscles in his face.

She finished her salad and after another glass of wine, decided she needed something else to soak up the alcohol. She ordered tiramisu and when it came it was beautiful: creamy, bittersweet and a texture that melted on her tongue.

‘Oh my God, have you tried this?’ Without thinking she passed him a spoonful. He hesitated and then closed his mouth around the spoon. He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, she had to look away.

Suddenly it was three o’clock and she remembered Ben. If she wasn’t quick he’d be waiting with Miss Leach again, arms full of cardboard robins and advent calendars covered in cotton wool. She reached into her purse and took out a twenty.

‘I’ve got to dash.’

He waved her money away. ‘I’ll get this.’

Within minutes they were outside again and she was wishing him a Happy Christmas.

‘And thank you, for lunch and for finding out about Phil, and the guy who recognised him. It’s not really sunk in.’

She reached out to shake Charlie’s hand, not wanting him to embrace her, not in broad daylight in this small city where everyone knew everyone else, and yet wanting more than anything to be held in those arms and press her face into the soft down of his puffa jacket. He handed her a small white envelope. Beautiful fingers, she thought. She wanted to kiss them, but she didn’t.

On the bus, she tried to shake off the torpor of the lunchtime wine. She pulled Charlie’s envelope out of her bag and opened it. It was a card with a bunch of snowdrops on the front. Inside Charlie had written in rapid biro:
A Very Happy Christmas – Phone if you need anything – C
and there was a mobile number. That ‘C’ could mean anything, anyone. He must have known she was going home to someone who might ask.

That evening Karen watched Sophie singing in the school concert at the Minster. It was gone ten when they walked back up the street and Sophie was sulking, three paces behind, because they’d argued on the way home about the length of her skirt. Karen opened the front door and heard an unmistakable yelp. The first time she heard that laugh, she thought Trisha had choked on a pretzel. After eight months of living next-door to her, she’d almost got used to it.

She tidied her hair in the hall mirror, wiped stray eyeliner from under her eyes and rubbed colour into her cheeks. Sophie put her head round the door of the living room, said a cursory hello and stomped off upstairs. Trisha and her husband Paul were sprawled on the sofa with Paul’s laptop, showing Max a slideshow of their holiday in Thailand. Karen heard Trisha say that the beaches were, ‘a bit scruffy, you know, a bit washed up’. Then she yelped again at her own pun. Paul turned to Max and said, in a stage whisper, that the girls in the bars more than made up for it. A Buddhist temple appeared on the screen, lit in a sunset glow. From where Karen stood in the doorway, its deep reds, reflecting off a gold dome, were flattened out into a blue-black negative.

‘Hi Trisha. Paul. Nice holiday?’

‘There you are.’ Max looked up from the sofa. ‘There’s some pasta for you.’

She went into the kitchen and closed the door. She wasn’t in the mood for holiday snaps. Max had plated up her food and she slid it into the microwave. She eased her feet out of her shoes and wished she could stay in the kitchen until they left, but she knew Max would be critical about her lack of manners and she hadn’t got the energy for another argument. He had a lot in common with Paul, a divorce lawyer serving the upper end of the market. Theirs was a world of profit and loss and us and them. It must be easy, she thought, to see things in such simple terms if you’re on the winning side. She thought about all the losers: the unnamed Chinese girl and the Thai girls who serviced the tourist trade. It was the sort of thing she could probably talk to Charlie about. A shudder rippled through her, like an aftershock or maybe a warning tremor and she wondered if there was such a thing as a before-shock. The microwave pinged and she took the steaming bowl to the table. There was fresh chilli in the sauce and plenty of garlic. It tasted good. Surprisingly good, considering Max was usually a ‘can’t cook, won’t cook’ kind of guy. Then she spotted an unfamiliar pan on the hob and realised Trisha must have brought it over.

She finished her food and took her glass of wine back to the front room. They were talking about football and Trisha was flicking through the magazine from the Sunday paper, she looked up at Karen.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, better with some food inside me.’

‘Any news?’ Trisha said. ‘I mean about your brother?’

‘No, none at all.’

Karen wished she hadn’t asked. She couldn’t stop thinking about the drug dealer who’d recognised Phil from the poster. She took a gulp of wine and as it entered her bloodstream, pictures of the day replayed through her mind. Not just pictures either, the taste of the tiramisu, the warmth of Charlie’s skin when they shook hands outside the restaurant. She hadn’t wanted to let go.