Kitabı oku: «Paul Finch Untitled Book 2»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Keep Reading …

Praise for Paul Finch

About the Author

By the same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

The Hollinbrook estate, in Crowley, was as suburban as they came.

Not rich, but the gardens were neat, tidy, their lawns smoothly mown if not expansive. The cars on the drives were mainly family affairs, some a little beaten-up, all implying middle-income rather than wealth. But if it wasn’t hugely prosperous, at least the Hollinbrook had the air of safety. It might be part of Greater Manchester’s sprawling conurbation, but Hollinbrook was peaceful and quiet, a sedate backwater, where children could play unsupervised, and where pensioners like Harry Hopkins could take their dogs out for a late evening stroll in full confidence that nothing bad would happen to them.

Not that this would normally have been an issue for Harry. A former collier, he’d been a burly bloke in his youth, and though seventy-seven now, he still had a bluff, rugged aura. In his day, ‘graft’ had been a word that meant something: hot sweat, aching muscles, hands cut and callused, a body shrouded black with coal-dust. And none of it a source of complaint – because that was your job, your life, that was what you did to put food on the table.

A quarter of a century had passed since Hollinbrook Pit had closed, but Harry wasn’t the sole relic of those arduous days. He still lived at No. 8, Atkinson Row, the only line of dwellings that hadn’t been bulldozed in the late 1990s, when they’d finally started developing the vast brownfield site. This was partly because Atkinson Row had never looked out of place in the proposed new townscape. Its houses were more than serviceable, a terraced row of traditional two-up-two-downs, but with solid roofs, secure foundations and no hint of subsidence. These days they were downright attractive, their brickwork repointed and whitewashed, new pipes and gutters fitted, each with its own little garden at the back instead of a tiny yard and outdoor privy. They were still referred to locally as the ‘Pit Cottages’, even though Harry was the only ex-pitman living there. He had lived alone for the last nine years, since Ada had passed, but his property was the smartest of the lot, with a box of flowers under the front window, and his front door painted canary-yellow.

It was just after ten o’clock when Harry closed this handsome door behind him, the lock catching. Milly, his small Pekingese, waited patiently. She was thirteen now, tubby, grey at the jowls and bandy-legged. But she was an affectionate little soul who liked nothing better than an idle wander with her master. Harry buttoned up his overcoat, tugged his trilby down at the front and drew on his fingerless gloves. It was September, and the searing heat of August had noticeably diminished. Nights were cool, and there was an edge to the breeze.

They set off up the road together, Milly snuffling at the base of every streetlight, lapping at the occasional puddle left over from the afternoon rain, despite Harry’s gruff admonitions. They turned right at the top of the road, following their usual route.

Though it wasn’t terribly late, it was midweek, so each street they came to was bare of life: Candlemaker Avenue, Rotherwood Drive, Hornby Crescent, Billington Grove. They even sounded suburban, and they certainly looked the part: more of those manicured front gardens, rockeries, shrubbery. It was a far cry from the narrow terraced streets of Harry’s day. But in general, he had to concede that things tended to change for the better. It was too easy to get dewy-eyed about the past, especially if you hadn’t been part of it.

Most windows were now curtained, only soft lamplight filtering through, though now and then he passed an open bedroom window, and heard music playing or what sounded like a TV programme. That was something that had not changed for the better, in Harry’s opinion: kids having all that kit in their bedrooms when they should be out, running around. Not that he would really have expected that at this late hour, of course.

And not when there was that other thing supposedly keeping them indoors.

The black van.

By instinct, Harry tightened his grip on the lead, drawing Milly closer. The old girl wasn’t too worried. She didn’t exactly scurry these days.

The black van, though …

Harry didn’t know if it was one of these so-called urban legends. But if it was, he’d only heard about it recently. It had been down at the bookies a couple of weeks ago.

‘Whenever you’re walking your Milly, Harry … keep your eye out for this black transit van. It’s touring the neighbourhoods late at night. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be up to … but you can guarantee it’ll be no good.’

‘Well, if you don’t know what it’s up to, how do you know it’s no good?’ Harry had responded, puzzled.

A helpless shrug. ‘I dunno, pal. People are just saying it.’

‘Oh … must be true then.’

But now that he was out here on the road alone, and it was past ten o’clock, Harry didn’t feel quite so scathing. He was sure the black van thing was a myth. Good God, there were black vans all over. But though certain parts of Crowley, like this, had been prettified in recent years, he couldn’t deny that life wasn’t as tranquil overall as it once had seemed. Not even in the shopping district where you saw homeless folk everywhere. That was a sad story, but it was a nuisance too. Some of them had mental health problems, some of them were drug addicts, and nearly all of them were beggars. That had been almost unknown during his youth, even though everyone had been considerably poorer back then.

Equally unknown had been this new level of nasty criminality. Harry had always fancied himself a rough customer, but he wouldn’t go anywhere near the town centre pubs on a Friday or Saturday night, not these days. He much preferred The Horsehoe at the top end of the estate, even if it did have a reputation for being an old fellas’ pub. Harry didn’t mind. Anything was better than someone smashing a bottle over your head because you’d looked at them the wrong way, and then kicking your face as you lay on the floor. And it wasn’t just the town centre either. There were plenty of housing estates around Crowley that were just as bad; run-down neighbourhoods like Hatchwood Green for example. Nearly everyone in those miserable districts was unemployed, which didn’t help of course, though to Harry’s mind it didn’t excuse the wife-battering, the drunks sitting on doorsteps, the needles and condoms left in playground sandpits.

Harry knew all this went on because he knew men and women of his own age who were unfortunate enough to live in these areas, and they reported it every time he met them. But even the Hollinbrook wasn’t as safe as it might appear. Not these days. It had been idyllic once, but slowly and subtly things had been changing as the villains had started to notice it. There were burglaries here now and occasional vehicle thefts. Prowlers had been reported, even some pets had allegedly gone missing.

Grumpily, all previous concerns forgotten – because one thing you could never do was challenge Harry Hopkins in his own home – he unlocked the back door and stepped out. The garden light came on, and there was no mistake: a large, dark vehicle was parked just the other side of his back wall. He stumped along the path, Milly trotting inquisitively behind him, undid the bolts and yanked the gate open – to find a vehicle there so large that it literally filled the alley. Though its rear end was close to his gate, perhaps a yard to his left, there was minimal room to manoeuvre; less than a foot’s clearance separated its offside flank from his wall, which meant that he could only move along it if he slithered sideways.

But none of that mattered as much as the kind of vehicle it was.

A van.

A black transit van.

Fleeting pinpricks of sweat appeared on Harry’s brow; it was several seconds before he could even engage his voice.

‘Okay … okay,’ he grunted to himself.

This was a challenge, and no mistake – but there was no need to get jumpy. He’d already worked out what the problem was here: the Rodwells and their inconsiderate friends.

Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his shoes for slippers yet, so the fact there’d likely be lots of dirty puddles out there wasn’t a problem. He stepped from his gate and, as the rear of the van was nearest, edged in that direction first. For some reason, Milly hung back in the gateway. But Harry barely noticed, his temper continuing to fray as he thought more and more about the Rodwells and their loutish, snot-nosed pals. He noticed that the van wasn’t parked across their gate. When he reached the back of it, its rear doors were both closed, doubtless locked.

Moving to the vehicle’s nearside and finding that the passage on that side was wider by several inches, he sidled along it more quickly, though his feet sloshed through inches of mucky water. When he got to the front, there was nobody inside the cab. Both the front doors were also probably locked, but when Harry put his hand down to the radiator grille, warmth exuded from it. As he’d suspected, the damn thing had only recently arrived.

The more he looked at it now, the more he thought it was dark-blue rather than black, which was a relief in a silly kind of way. But that didn’t stop it being any less of a nuisance.

He was now well positioned to view the rear of the Rodwells’ house. There were no lights on at the back, but there could be at the front. Harry would need to go back through his house to check.

His slid along the vehicle’s nearside, circling its rear end towards his own gate – and there stopped in surprise. The left of the van’s two rear doors now stood open.

Harry was stumped.

Could it have been the wind? No, that was preposterous. There was the odd gust tonight, but nothing like sufficient to open a vehicle door, even if that door had been left ajar, which he was damn sure this one hadn’t.

So – had someone inside this van just climbed out?

He glanced over his shoulder, but the alley dwindled away in a straight line until it joined with the next street. There was no one there.

‘What the bloody hell?’ he muttered.

He leaned forward, poking his nose into the van’s interior. It was too dark to see anything, but now he wondered if that was a faint rustle of cloth he was hearing.

‘Is someone … someone in here …?’

Two hands in black leather gloves shot out of the darkness, gripping him by the cardigan collar.

He was yanked forward with tremendous force, smashing both kneecaps against the van’s rear bumper. The material of his trouser legs hooked on jagged metal, briefly anchoring him in place, allowing him to splay his arms out and grab at the door-frame on one side and the closed door on the other, wedging himself. As his shock ebbed, he began resisting, pushing backward, but those gloved hands were strong, and they dragged at him all the harder. Harry travelled forward again, feet leaving the ground, the material of his trousers ripping, along with the flesh underneath.

As he shouted in pain, one of the hands released his collar and slapped palm-first across his mouth. Then there was a thundering impact on the back of Harry’s head.

His world spun as his hands slipped loose and he slumped forward. Somewhere, there was a frantic yipping – was it Milly?

Whoever had hit Harry from behind now wrapped both arms around Harry’s thighs, and lifted him bodily, feeding him forward into the van’s interior. The person already in there continued to lug him.

The next thing Harry knew, though he was too groggy to make sense of it, he was lying in oily darkness, face-down on corrugated metal. As if that wasn’t enough, someone knelt on the middle of his back, pinning him with their full weight. And still that yipping went on, though it turned into a squeal of fright as a bundle of fur and paws was flung in alongside him. With an echoing CLANG!, the door slammed shut, and blackness descended.

The back of Harry’s head throbbed appallingly; hot fluid leaked through his thinning hair. Milly grizzled and snarled alongside him. When he attempted to speak – absurdly, it was to try and calm the dog – it came out a spittle-clotted burble. His captor responded by shifting one of his knife-like knees from the middle of Harry’s spine to the back of his head, pressing it down sideways, which intensified the raw, stinging pain. The old man yelped aloud, but it was lost as the vehicle rumbled to life and, with a shudder-inducing growl, accelerated away along the Backs.

Chapter 1

The men began arriving shortly after ten o’clock that night. At least, Lucy assumed they would all be men. The intelligence suggested that, and while she wasn’t so naïve as to believe that casual cruelty was solely a male preserve, this particular business, as well as being totally disgusting, just seemed so childishly laddish that she couldn’t picture any of the female offenders she’d arrested over the years participating willingly.

‘All units, we’re on,’ she said into her radio. ‘But sit tight … wait for the order.’

From where she was concealed in the woodland hide, just beyond the cover of the trees, Lucy had a clear view of the rutted track leading to the farm cottage. Over at the point where it joined Wellspring Lane, the gateman was busy admitting a succession of vans and cars, which now passed within seventy yards of her position, travelling slowly in cavalcade. Already she could hear the yipping and yelping of the dogs caged in their boots.

Geraldson, the RSPCA inspector, dabbed with a handkerchief at the sweat glinting on his brow. He was young and nervous.

‘Is there a black van out there?’ His voice was querulous.

‘Even if there is, it won’t necessarily be the one that’s been abducting pets,’ Lucy replied. ‘These are all paying participants. They’ll have their own animals.’

‘So … when do we move?’

‘Not until it gets going.’ Lucy – Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn – continued to watch through her night-vision scope but reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder with a firm, hopefully reassuring grip. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this.’

‘There’ll be some rough customers.’

‘That’s why we’ve got the Tactical Aid Unit with us. They’re mostly ex-military. They like nothing better than a ruckus.’

Geraldson nodded and smiled, eyes gleaming wetly as more headlights rolled across the hide, shining fleetingly on his face.

By Lucy’s estimation, about fourteen vehicles had now arrived at the cottage. Each one would likely be carrying more than one dog. So that would be twenty-eight animals at least, not counting any that were already being kept on site. The RSPCA were anticipating thirty-two in total, which would provide a straightforward knock-out contest. The members of this ring were clearly anticipating a long night.

As the vehicles pulled up haphazardly in the farmyard, a bulb sprang to life outside the ramshackle building to which it was attached, and a man slouched out. He was heavy-set and bearded, in a ragged green sweater and khaki pants. One by one, the parked vehicles opened, and men disgorged from them: generally at least two, sometimes as many as five. Like the guy from the cottage – whom Lucy had already identified as Les Mahoney – they mostly wore outdoor-type clothing: khaki, camouflage fatigues and such, though there were a few leather jackets among them, and a bit of oily denim.

‘Christ,’ Geraldson breathed. ‘There’s more than I expected.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Lucy replied.

As a rule, when you were facing big numbers, quite a few of them weren’t looking for legal entanglements and would scarper at the first opportunity. That was when they were most vulnerable; all you had to do was pick them off. Though, looking at these guys – and she turned the super-zoom dial on her scope – there might be as many fighters as runners. She saw shaved heads, scarred faces, scuzzy tattoos. For once she was glad the sixty officers from the TAU were parked in a layby in their troop-carriers a little way down Wellspring Lane.

She continued to observe the men as they greeted each other with high fives and bear-hugs, before swaggering over to Mahoney and thrusting at him the wads of banknotes that made up their admission fees.

Another cop came into the hide behind her. It was PC Malcolm Peabody, once Lucy’s probationer when she too had been in uniform. He was still only young, but a tall, rangy lad, with short red hair, a freckled face and jug-handle ears. Currently, he wore heavy-duty body-armour, plus a ballistics helmet with its visor raised and strap tight under his chin.

‘Sergeant Frobisher says everyone’s in position,’ he said quietly.

‘Everyone except you, Malcolm,’ Lucy replied, thinking that if it suddenly kicked off, she didn’t want handy lads like Peabody anywhere other than the front line. ‘There’s not enough space for all of us in here. Go back to your LUP and stay sharp.’

Peabody nodded and stooped back out through the low, narrow entrance.

None of them knew what the hide had originally been constructed for. It might indeed have been a wildlife observation point in the past. But it made a perfect OP for today: a flimsy, flat-roofed wooden hut, partly dug into the ground so it had an earthen floor, its exterior covered with vegetation, which, at the tail-end of summer, partly obscured the horizontal viewing port at the front – partly, but not completely.

Its interior was so restricted that it could only contain two with any comfort. But it gave an excellent view of the farm cottage, some fifty yards beyond the trees, and the open grassland to the east of it, where at this hour nothing stirred save a couple of tethered ponies munching the cud.

An increasingly excited canine yelping drew Lucy’s attention back to the cottage, where the rear doors to vehicles were now being opened and muzzled dogs brought out on chain leashes. Even through the zoom-lens of her scope, and with the whole of the farmyard area lit up, many of them were already so horribly scarred from battles past that their breeds were unidentifiable, but by their lean, squat, muscular frames she reckoned they’d be fighting species of old: pit bulls, Staffies and the like, an impression enhanced by the thick muzzles they wore, and their steel-studded leather harnesses.

‘Lucy …’ she said. ‘You might want to look in here.’

‘This going to make me throw up?’ Lucy said.

‘More likely make you dance a jig.’

Lucy went through into what was a basically a lean-to shed lit by a single electric bulb, its damp walls lined with shelves groaning beneath the grisly accoutrements of dog-fighting. She saw piles of spare muzzles and harnesses, stacks of grubby second-hand magazines with grotesque images on their covers, homemade DVDs, DIY veterinary kits, including staple-guns and tubes of superglue, and a number of ‘breaking sticks’, thick wooden bars impressed with toothmarks, which would normally be used to pry open a victorious animal’s jaws when it had them locked into its latest victim.

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Bloody perfect. All this needs bagging and tagging, Tessa.’

Payne nodded, at which point they were distracted by the sound of more canine whining. The outhouse had its own outer door – again just a frame with no actual door in it. On the other side they found an enclosed yard containing a set of weighing scales, a treadmill and a large glass tank, very grimy and filled to the brim with water so filthy and green that it was almost opaque. There was also a row of grillwork cages with crudely built kennels attached. Each was occupied by a dog, but these were animals of a different ilk to those they’d seen so far. They were highly subdued, lying still with ears flat, each one watching the humans beyond their cages with fearful intensity.

And it was clear why.

They were brutally scarred, in many cases so bitten and ragged that the fur was entirely missing from their faces. Several had lost so much flesh from their jowls that their teeth were exposed. At least a couple were missing an eye, the empty sockets crudely sutured shut. Lucy saw ears hanging in ribbons, paws chewed into lame, leathery stumps. The reason for that was evident in their breeds, for these were mostly mongrels, but those that weren’t were recognisable as Labradors, spaniels and retrievers, suburban pets rather than fighting-dogs.

‘Bait,’ Lucy observed as she walked along the cages.

‘Looks like this is where all the abductees we’ve been hearing about have finished up,’ Payne said, following.

‘Maybe.’

‘No sign of the black van yet, though.’

‘We need to keep looking.’

To Lucy’s mind, the existence of ‘bait dogs’ was one of the most sickening aspects of the whole dog-fighting disgrace. That these trusting, innocent creatures could be thrown into the pit repeatedly as part of a callous training regime for the fighting-dogs, where they’d be attacked mercilessly, again and again, by savage beasts that wanted nothing more than to senselessly kill anything they were faced with, didn’t bear thinking about. But that such a thing could happen to one-time pets, allegedly stolen from loving homes by this mysterious black van that had been reported several times when an animal had vanished, was somehow even more horrible.

‘We need the vets again,’ Lucy said, to which the younger detective nodded and hurried away.

‘At least you’re not going to need them in here,’ a voice said.

She glanced around, and saw Malcolm Peabody leaning out through the entrance to an ugly breezeblock building with no glass in its windows and a sagging tarpaper roof. He’d removed his ballistics helmet and now carried it under one arm. His hair was damp and spiky, his freckled features greased with sweat. Normally an affable young bloke with a great enthusiasm for the job, his expression was grim and angry, his pallor waxen.

Deeply apprehensive, Lucy followed him inside.

Torchlight revealed that it was a basic shell of a room with bare walls and a rugged concrete floor. It was also stained with the blood of ages and strewn with dog carcasses. There were at least ten of them, all relatively recent; Lucy could tell that because flies buzzed everywhere, and a fetid odour thickened the air. She surveyed the heap of twisted forms with what a stranger might have called indifference, but in truth was cold professionalism. It wasn’t that it didn’t affect her, it was simply that, twelve years in, Lucy was a veteran of this kind of ghastliness, and she knew that to get emotional would only cloud her judgement.

Peabody, a relative newbie, was less in control.

‘These are obviously the ones they couldn’t use any more,’ he said, looking nauseous as he indicated a heavy mallet hanging from a nail by a leather strap. ‘And this is how they put them out of their misery.’

‘Don’t touch it,’ Lucy replied. ‘Don’t touch anything. Not till we’ve had Photographic in here.’

They stepped back outside into the fresher air, and Lucy indicated to one of the other uniforms to come and stand by the door. Walking back through the barn, they came to the farmyard where the prisoners were lined up, their details and the details of the officers who’d detained them being tabulated by Sergeant Frobisher to ensure there’d be no confusion back at Custody. One by one, the prisoner transports were reversing into place, their back doors swinging along with the cage doors inside.

‘Your cards are fucking marked!’ the hefty figure of Mandy Mahoney squawked as two armoured policewomen frogmarched her to a waiting police car. As the only female detainee, she would travel separately from the others. ‘All you pigs … you’re all fucking marked!’

Not far behind her, the even more ponderous and dishevelled shape of Les Mahoney was also manhandled forward. He stank of sweat, and when he grinned at Lucy, showed a full set of rotten teeth.

‘Sorry to disrupt your evening’s entertainment, Mr Mahoney,’ she said.

His grin never faltered. ‘Fuck you, you slip of a tart.’ Hawking a green one, he spat it on the floor at her feet. ‘And tell your fucking clodhopping arse-bandit mates not to make too much of a mess, or I’ll sue the fucking lot of you.’

‘Some chance,’ Peabody retorted. ‘You’re going to jail, pal.’

‘Yeah?’ Mahoney guffawed. ‘Good. I could use a five-month holiday … you spotty-faced lump of dogshit.’

Peabody lurched forward, but Lucy physically restrained him.

‘Get him out of my sight,’ she said.

Mahoney laughed loudly and brashly as he was led away.

Lucy shook her head. ‘Last of the old-school charmers, eh?’

Peabody scowled. ‘It’s right what he said though. We’ll be lucky if he gets any more than a slapped wrist for this. We should drive the bastard around a corner somewhere and smack the living crap out of him … just in case he gets a free ride later.’

Lucy watched as they assisted the cuffed Mahoney into one of the vans. ‘What’ve I told you about getting too involved, Malcolm? You won’t go the distance if you let this job screw with your head. Those things back there … they’re just animals.’ She patted his cheek before walking away. ‘Wait till you see it done to humans.’

Chapter 2

Though she’d worn a uniform for the first decade of her career, Lucy Clayburn had now been a detective constable for two years, but in all that time she had only ever worked her home patch of Crowley, Greater Manchester Police’s legendary November Division.

The one-time industrial town – though these days it was more a post-industrial wasteland – had an infamous reputation for villainy, though it probably wasn’t any more deserved than those bad reps attached to other northern English cities where full employment was a thing of the past and drugs and alcohol had flowed in to fill the gap.

The problem with being a police officer – anywhere really, not just in a place like Crowley – was that you knew what went on behind the sometimes paper-thin façade of the local community. So she wasn’t entirely surprised that night of Wednesday, September 12, to look down the list of prisoners waiting in the traps at Robber’s Row police station, November Division’s HQ, and see that they included professional men with sedate family backgrounds: a senior civil servant, a local journalist, an estate agent, even a bank manager. There were louts and scallies among them too, all the usual suspects; but respectability was a keyword where several were concerned, or superficial respectability at least. Maybe, to an extent, she should have anticipated this, because dog-fighting wouldn’t have existed at all, even as an illegal sport, without the hefty cashflow it generated. It was only ever about gambling, and if you didn’t have the readies for that, you couldn’t participate.

‘Worrying, isn’t it?’ Lucy said, scrolling down the file on the screen belonging to Sergeant Joe Cullen, the Robber’s Row custody officer. ‘Lots of these guys come over as perfect citizens … so able to create the impression they’re normal that they can function easily in everyday society. They do jobs efficiently and make them pay. They impress socially. They have friends, families. But deep down, they’re so disturbed that they derive pleasure from watching innocent animals rip each other apart. Either that, or they’re so indifferent to it that they don’t care so long as they make a few quid.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the thin end of the wedge, to be honest,’ Cullen replied. He was a foursquare old-schooler, with a weathered hangdog face and a brush of thick grey bristles on his head. ‘If they’re prepared to do this, what else are they up to? Like you say … they’re not normal.’

‘Mahoney’s solicitor here yet?’ Lucy asked.

‘Doesn’t want one,’ Cullen replied.

She arched an eyebrow.

Cullen shrugged. ‘Asked him twice, but he insists he’ll be fine. Confident little toe-rag, I’ll say that for him.’

‘So, Mr Mahoney,’ Lucy said, ‘you understand that you remain under caution?’

Mahoney nodded. Still in the scruffy, rancid clothes they’d arrested him in, still smelling of sweat and cigarettes, he slouched on the other side of the interview room table, grinning.

Lucy rolled back the sleeves of her sweater and got the ball rolling. ‘For the benefit of the tape, we’re in Interview Room 3, Robber’s Row police station. I’m DC Lucy Clayburn, in company with acting DC Tessa Payne. This is the interview of Leslie Mahoney. Interview commencing –’ she glanced at the clock on the wall ‘– 11.15pm.’ She watched him carefully. ‘So, Mr Mahoney … how was your day?’

Mahoney guffawed with laughter. ‘That’s a funny one, I must admit.’

‘No more effing and blinding?’

He shrugged. ‘Just caught me at a bad moment, that’s all.’

‘The moment you’re referring to, of course, was the moment when you were arrested outside your home tonight, at 39, Wellspring Lane. Isn’t that correct?’

‘Yeah … that’s correct.’

‘I’m guessing you’re also aware why you’ve been—?’

‘Let’s not fuck about, love. You’ve got me for running professional dog-fights.’

Lucy remained cool. ‘You don’t seem too concerned.’