Oh, I get it, don’t worry. That refined aura, that rough-diamond charm. He could win anyone over. But he’s a murderer. He’s surrounded by murderers. I can’t stress that enough. The man he works for is one of the most feared gangsters in Britain. He’s literally a homicidal maniac.’
Cora looked unimpressed.
‘But you know all this already, don’t you?’ Lucy said, deflated.
‘I’m not saying I’m about to tie the knot with him. I just don’t think we can keep pretending that he isn’t part of our lives. And quite clearly, neither does he.’
Again, Lucy didn’t know how to respond. All this had come completely out of left field.
‘If you insist on it, I won’t thank him for the flowers,’ Cora said. ‘But this won’t be the last time I hear from him. I can feel it in my bones.’
I’d love to know why, Lucy suddenly wondered. What is he up to?
Was it conceivable – was it even faintly possible – that Cora was right, and that McCracken was hankering after a proper family? If so, he surely couldn’t imagine that she and her mother would provide that?
‘How’s work anyway?’ Cora asked, trying to change the subject. ‘Sounds like you had a busy day yesterday.’
‘Yeah …’ Lucy frowned as the waitress removed their plates. ‘I had a bit of a score, but it was none of it very edifying. Think of the quietest, leafiest neighbourhood you can, and there’ll be monsters there. Hiding behind the privets and the chintz curtains.’
‘And yet some of the lowliest people in society are exactly the opposite.’
Lucy shrugged. ‘Good and evil don’t make class distinctions.’
Briefly, Cora stared at nothing. ‘And no one looks out for them.’
‘Well … we try to.’
‘You think so? What happened to that bloke Walter Brown?’
‘Walter who?’
Cora relapsed into thought. ‘I didn’t know him very well. Gardener … but he had a drink problem. Lost his job, lost his flat. For a time, he was selling the Big Issue at the top of Langley Street. Then he went missing.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘Used to see him every Wednesday lunchtime, when I went shopping,’ Cora said. ‘He was a nice man, when he was sober.’
‘What do you mean, “He went missing”?’
‘One week he just wasn’t there. A week later, there was a young girl selling it. I asked her what had happened to Walter. She said she didn’t know. They thought he’d just moved on. But he wouldn’t have moved on, I’ll tell you. He was a Crowley man. Been here all his life.’
‘And did no one report this disappearance?’ Lucy asked.
‘Like who? He didn’t have a family, didn’t have any friends.’
‘So, there’s no actual evidence that anything bad happened to him?’
‘No, but let’s be fair, Lucy … if I was to tell you this about a neighbour, someone who actually lived in a house and paid their taxes, I reckon the next thing you’d do as a police officer would be to knock on their door, to see what was what.’
Lucy mulled this over and was sad to admit that it was probably true.
Homelessness was a major story in Britain today, and rightly so given that it was a national disgrace. At one time, you’d only see those poor wretches in the forgotten backstreets of big cities, but now they were everywhere, right under society’s nose. And yet so few people even noticed them.
‘I’m sorry, love …’ Cora reached out and patted her daughter’s hand. ‘You’re a good police officer. It’s not your fault.’
Lucy didn’t reply. For a moment, all she could think about was Stan Beardmore’s comment the previous day: They’re just dogs … we’ve got a longer list of missing people who we haven’t got time to look for.
That ‘list’ comprised dozens of missing persons posters, each one depicting a grainy photograph of some poor individual – and there were all ages there, all races, all classes – who had dropped out of sight, never to be seen again. In many cases, it was so long ago that their posters had yellowed and curled. And it was the same story in police station foyers all over the UK.
And now they had more people vanishing from Lucy’s own streets, and yet it had taken a homeless heroin addict dressed as a nun, and an off-handed comment from her mother, to draw her attention to them.
‘No, it’s not our fault,’ Lucy agreed. ‘But maybe we can do a better job than we are doing.’
Mick Shallicker lounged in the penthouse suite of the Astarte Hotel in central Manchester.
The Astarte was a bland structure, looking like a typical midweek stopover for travelling businessmen, which was exactly the impression that its owners, Ent-Tech Ltd, aka the Crew, liked to give. The top floor, which was nominally the penthouse suite, comprised bedrooms, an office, a boardroom and a lounge bar, none of it accessible by public stairway or lift, only by a private express elevator, which ascended straight to it from a subterranean car park to which normal customers were also denied entry.
In fact, the Astarte was the hub of Crew operations, though few people who passed it would have the first clue that this presentable but on the whole innocuous building housed a crime syndicate whose baleful influence was so far-reaching that even the police had to tread warily around them.
Mick Shallicker was as much a part of this as the immense granite building blocks from which the Astarte was constructed. His prime role was as personal minder and chief enforcer to Frank McCracken, the Crew underboss in charge of shaking down all those non-affiliated criminal groups in the Northwest who didn’t voluntarily pay ‘tax’. By its nature, this department had constantly to be ready to threaten or employ violence to get its way, and Mick Shallicker was right at the heart of that. It helped that he was six-foot-nine, with a build to match. He was broad and strong as an ox, an all-round giant whose rugged, brutal face bespoke no mercy for those falling into his grasp.
At present, he was in the lounge bar, next door to the boardroom, sipping a cold beer and snacking on an excellent buffet. Others like him, at least in terms of rank, were dotted around the spacious, comfortable room, some on couches, some in armchairs, some, like Shallicker, standing at the bar. There was some chit-chat, but nothing especially warm or friendly, though there was no tension in the air. None of these men trusted each other, though they didn’t dislike each other, and even if there was some animosity, theirs wasn’t a paygrade that permitted outward displays of it. Watched closely by several dark-suited members of Benny B’s security team, who had already disarmed everyone on arrival, they spoke civilly to each other if it was necessary to speak – there were even a few quips, a few chuckles – but for the most part they simply nodded, smiled their enigmatic half-smiles and kept quiet.
