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  He smiled, touched her arm. ‘I’m just for the bathroom,’ he murmured, and rose, went to the stairs, climbed them calmly, but turned right on the landing and proceeded by tiptoe into her bedroom. He crouched and with deft hands drew aside the clothes on the rail. There, he saw only the timeworn mounds of her pumps, heels and trainers.

  He felt needles behind his eyes – stood, cheated, despairingly silent, wanting to kick things over, looked about him wildly. Everything seemed messily available to his futile inspection, no other nooks or crannies. He yanked uselessly at the drawers. Why now? When hid for so long in plain sight? Who was thwarting him, laughing at him? He dropped to the floor, on his knees and elbows – and there it was beneath the bed, amid fluff and hair, shoved onto its side. He wrenched it out, pulled the zip halfway, determined that the packing was as he had left it.

  He sat down on the bed, by the bedside telephone – then, indeterminate, rose and went to the door, listened and heard still the aimless chatter below. And so he pulled the door closed, retrieved the scrap of paper from his wallet, took up the phone, dialled the number. It rang five times.

  ‘Hallo?’

  His voice lurched out of him as a hiss. ‘Robbie, it’s John Gore. I –’

  ‘Can’t bloody hear you, man, speak up.’

  He struggled up to a notch just below conversational. ‘It’s John Gore.’

  ‘Aw aye?’

  ‘I’ve got what I promised you.’

  ‘You what? What was that then?’

  ‘A gun. A gun, it’s Coulson’s but I’ve got it, how do I get it to you?’

  There was a pause, a discordant crackle, a new hush.

  ‘A gun. You serious?’

  ‘Yes, it’s in front of me for Christ’s sake, how do I get it to you?’

  ‘Don’t you do a fucking thing, I’ll come to you. Jesus. Don’t touch owt neither, you hear? Where are you?’

  The anticipated question, and yet still it loomed, a giant.

  ‘Where are you, John?’

  He was waist-deep, neck-deep, sunk and drowned. No compromise.

  ‘The Oakwell Estate, Hoxheath. It’s number thirty-two.’

  ‘Whose place is it?’

  ‘Her name’s Lindy.’

  ‘Not Lindy who works at Teflon?’

  ‘Yes, but this is what I meant, she doesn’t know anything about this, she has to be kept out of it.’

  ‘We’ll sort that all out, she’ll be fine. She’s there with you?’

  ‘She’s in the house. But she doesn’t know, see.’

  ‘Thirty-two Oakwell. Right. I’ll be there in maybe twenty minutes. Just sit tight and keep your head on.’

  Gore set down the phone, feeling the merest euphoric twinge through the knot of trepidation in his gut. He stood, stepped out onto the landing, heard nothing now. Edging to the top of the staircase, he craned over the banister and knew then that Yvonne was being shown to the door. He crept back to the bedroom, sat at the foot of the bed, pushed the Adidas bag to one side, and waited. Then he heard the footfalls on the stairs, and felt some measure of blood and vigour drain from him. She came through the door, and he met her jaded gaze.

  ‘What you doing up here? Were you on the phone?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. I just had to talk to a friend.’

  ‘Oh aye? Is this your house now?’ She came and sat beside him, gave him a look he thought plaintive – rueful, unimpressed and yet mildly indulgent. ‘I’m not just giving you the keys here, y’knaa. Just cos you love me.’

  ‘We have to talk, Lindy.’

  She sighed, profoundly. ‘I dunno I can manage much more. Can it keep for the morning?’

  He laid a hand on hers. ‘We know each other now, don’t we? No more secrets?’

  ‘If you say so,’ she murmured.

  With his free hand he hoisted up the hold-all between them. That flare in her he saw revive as if sparked.

  ‘The fuck you doin’ with that?’

  ‘Tell me what’s in it.’

  ‘What’s it to you, man?’

  ‘Because no more secrets, Lindy.’

  His invocation of principle seemed an added annoyance. ‘John, I don’t know what’s in it. It’s Stevie’s, it’s his bloody … bag of tricks. I’ve always kept it for him when he’s asked us. Look, he used to sell them drugs for weightlifters, the steroids? He’d ask us to hang on to his stash sometimes, case he got raided. Alright? So that’s why. It’s not my business, but.’

  ‘Okay. That’s good.’

  ‘What’s good about it?’

  ‘Because we have to get our stories straight.’

  She winced at him. He summoned his nerve. ‘The man I just spoke to – he’s a policeman. Northumbria CID. He’s coming here. So we can sort this out.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘He’s a plainclothes man, undercover, he’s – you’ll see, you’ll know him.’

  But she was clutching at her lolling head, face purpling. ‘Police? Coming here? Aw, what have you done, you stupid bastard?’

  ‘We’ve agreed, it has to stop, Lindy. Well this is how.’

  She groped for the bag in his lap and he pushed it aside, to the floor. But she swung an open palm at his face, and he felt the smart of her ring finger on his cheek.

  ‘Why did you do that? Why? How can you be so – stupid?’

  She punched and grabbed at him, and he tried to restrain her yet her vehemence defied him. They were struggling. She had her fingers on his face, her nails scoring.

  Now the doorbell was being rung, insistently, angrily.

  He managed to rise, aimed at the door, found her still snagged on him, yanking at him. ‘You mad? Where do you think you’re going?’

  He resolved that he would yank her along with him if need be, but the drag was more cumbersome than he had supposed. They were tussling still down the stairs, she flapping and forcing herself in front of him, pummelling him. And then she must have misstepped, for she was tumbling down the last half-dozen steps, thumping and flailing into the facing wall at the foot of the staircase.

  He hastened to her. She slapped at his hand – ‘Fuck off!’– and he felt himself let go of certain hopes that had lingered. He had not wanted it this way, but the door needed opening, and an amen put to affairs.

  Instead he heard a key turning. They both did, and her face was stricken.

  He turned and saw Coulson in the doorway – in his hard boots and his leather, his face a mask of rancour.

  ‘The fuck’s gannin on here?’

  Gore felt all his resolve crash through the floor. Panic had hold of him now as Coulson shouldered his way into the space. Lindy was regaining her feet, very awkwardly.

  ‘Y’alright, Lind? You hurt?’

  ‘Steve, man, you’ve gotta get on. Get out, it’s for your own good.’

  ‘Aw, I’m not leaving. Naw, I’m taking you. Get your bloody –’

  ‘You’ve gotta, Steve. Police are coming.’ Gore shot a look at her, and she at him, and he saw her in the act of relinquishing some stake of her own. ‘He’s shopped you. Your bag, he’s shopped you for it.’

  He saw it fully now – too late, he knew – her dread, conceivably worse than his own.

  ‘He has, ask him.’

  Coulson’s dead eyes were trained hard at Lindy’s and he was breathing oddly. A bitter dragging cry came down from the top of the staircase.

  ‘Mam, what’s happenin’?’

  Lindy was bounding up those stairs again. Gore felt Coulson’s dense, skin-crawling hostility turned solely upon him. The space was tight and this bull of a man filled it. No means of escape, no possible mitigation.

  ‘She right? Did you, then? Shop us?’

  ‘You have to stop, Steve. They’re coming for you.’

  ‘Who’s coming? Eh? Who?’

  The shove to Gore’s chest drove him against the wall and near off his feet. Coulson was shaping his body and Gore flung up his hands, but the flat hard heel of a palm flew out between them
and rocked him on his feet, rattled his jaw. The speed and the static before his eyes dazzled him, and as he listed the right fist came at him squarely through his feeble guard.

  The pain was as if a rail-spike had been hammered through the meat and bone of his face. His vision crumpled and muddied, his legs were giving way – he grasped a hold of the newel post of the banister, but felt himself lolling round it, hopelessly exposed. He wanted very badly to raise his groggy head, and yet he had the ghastly sensation of his face filling with blood like a wineskin. That, and the grim maddened monster, implacably over him.

  ‘Stop, Steve, please,’ he managed to groan, before he sensed the pivot in Coulson’s body and saw something of the boot hurtling at him, believing that his head was to be snapped clean off his neck in the fractional second before oblivion.

  *

  She had no choice but to try to contain the shrieking boy in her arms as she hurtled back down the stairs. She could risk but a hand to grab at Steve while he kicked the prone, inert Gore repeatedly in the stomach.

  ‘Stevie, don’t, man, you’ll kill him.’

  ‘Get away, he’ll fuckin’ –’

  ‘Why did you kick him in the head?’

  ‘Shut up, man. I oughta kick it the fuck in, the cunt.’

  And he lifted one boot and crashed it down on Gore’s collarbone. Jake, whose screams had become whimpers, broke into wails once more.

  ‘Steve, man, please, look, there’s blood coming out his ears.’

  ‘Shut up, you. That doesn’t mean owt.’ He wrenched Jake from her arms and swung the boy round, dumping him into the armchair. Then he seized the fabric of Lindy’s shirt and wrenched her toward him. She could smell the drink on him and her stomach turned, for she had watched him hurt people before but never with such fervour.

  ‘Fucking pull yourself together, woman,’ he spat. ‘Tell us what he done.’

  ‘He just said he called someone, they were coming.’

  ‘Where’s me bag? Upstairs? Your room?’

  She nodded and he thrust her aside. She regained her balance, looked at her terrorised son, his livid streaming face, and then at Gore, unconscious, his nose grotesquely flattened amid bluish bruising and shocked laceration. Don’t freeze, she told herself, even as something heavy and frigid clogged her veins.

  Noises carried through the hallway door, from the alley outside, and she turned to see through the frosted panel of the door – a human figure, first one then another, perhaps another. She ran to the door, fumbled out her keys, turned the lock, turned back to the staircase, her panic total. As she looked blindly this way and that, there was a grievous thump on the door that shook its frame, then another, a splintering, and the door swung wildly and battered the wall. Men were filling the hallway, men in black balaclavas and windcheaters. She gaped, turned and ran for the living room and her son.

  ‘Don’t hurt us, please.’

  But she couldn’t reach him, and then there were hard hands over her eyes and mouth.

  *

  Stevie heard the unholy commotion and was stock-still for one moment, knowing himself trapped, aware too of a torpor round him like a cold fog. Impulse was his only guide. Instantly he unlatched the window, seized the hold-all and hurled it over the neighbouring wall. In the same moment he resolved to follow, shoved the glass frame as wide as it would go, grasped on to the frame. But he was just too large to go through by any means other than a sickening plummet headlong to the paved patio below. Maddened by his brute plight, he wrenched himself back out in time to see the bedroom door smashed wide, and in that sight of hoods and balaclavas he was deluged by dreadful realisations – his own misreckonings, the nature of his betrayal, the shape of dread – for these were not policemen but soldiers, blades in their hands, two feet of long shining steel.

  The first assailant was scrambling at him across the bed, and he threw the right and struck relenting flesh, but his other flank had been taken by a second man, a canister thrust in his face and he received the toxic jet full-on, felt the dire piercing chemical burn, his eyes gushing pain. He bellowed and choked, lumbered and lashed about him. His hands were still on his face when he felt the cleave through his leather arm, through his flesh and to the bone, sick and loathsome and disabling.

  That’s dead, that’s gone.

  Sightless, nauseous, in agony, he clutched and his fingers entered the raw wet gaping wound. Then a savage gouge into the meat of his belly tore the breath from him.

  ‘That’s for Paul, Stevie, son. This is for Rob.’

  The blade was moving in his gut, another hacking at his back. Blow upon blow, ripping through, ripping apart. Blood thick in his throat.

  Someone was laughing near to his ear. Evil, pure devilment.

  ‘And this is from guess who? Brian. Your old mate Brian.’

  The next blow bit into the side of his face, then a fireball blazed in his head and burned out his eyes.

  Chapter V

  THE RECORD

  28 November 1996

  Dear Sir,

  I am writing to you angry past words for what was printed in your paper tonight of STEVIE COULSON. I know what of I speak for Stevie was my friend and a dear one to me for all his life that was ended so cruelly. Do people have no decency in them when a tragedy happens. It is not true and an OUTRAGE all what things are getting said about Stevie, who cannot defend himself now since he is gone. But shame on you and any others who give false witness. One day THE TRUTH will be known, not the lies and ‘scandal’ people write to sell their newspapers DAMN them.

  Yours,

  Mrs E. A. Dodd

  Date: 26 November 1996

  Crime number: 257539w/02

  Report of first attending officer: DC Chisholm

  Since June 14 1996 I have worked undercover as doorman for the firm of Sharky’s Machine Ltd, part of the SCT investigation into Roy Caldwell + Steve Coulson and suspected traffic/supply of narcotics.

  On night of Saturday November 24 [2109] I had information by phone from a trusted source and on basis of same proceeded to #32 Oakwell Estate, Hoxheath. My belief was I would gain entry to said address without difficulty and find on the premises physical evidence related to the killings of Messrs Paul Crowley and Robert Donner in North Shields on Thursday November 14 1996 (crime number 980230476, investigation ongoing).

  On arrival at #32 [2136] I found that forced entry had been made to the premises by the front door. I entered with caution to a narrow hallway, and was immediately aware of sounds of distress from behind a locked door to my right. Behind it in a small bathroom I found a white adult female and a white male child. The female I identified by prior acquaintance as Lindy Clark, sometime employee at licensed premises managed by Steve Coulson. I established that Ms Clark was the homeowner and that the boy was her son Jake, aged 6. Both were very agitated and I tried to calm them and prevent them from intruding further upon what I now took to be a crime scene. These efforts were difficult, especially with Ms Clark, and my initial requests for details of the break-in were not properly answered.

  Proceeding through to a living space, I found evidence of a struggle and then a man lying unconscious near the foot of a staircase to an upper floor. Here I was unable to prevent Ms Clark climbing those stairs with the boy. I inspected the unconscious man, saw he had suffered injuries to face and head, clearly a broken nose, plus swelling and bleeding I thought consistent with a fractured/dislocated jaw.

  (I established in due course that this man was a neighbour from the Oakwell Estate, John Gore, aged 31, a minister of the Church of England.)

  I tried to rouse Mr Gore. He recovered consciousness but he was breathing with difficulty on account of the broken nose, was not coherent, and in considerable pain and distress.

  I had heard cries from the upper floor and as soon as I was able made my way up, turning right into a woman’s bedroom (A) which I took to be Ms Clark’s. The scene presented as the aftermath of a violent assault (blood on walls, arterial spray). Ms Cl
ark was still with her child though trying to attend to another wounded man, the child now in such a bad way that I saw no option but to insist that Ms Clark take him and herself down the hall to another bedroom (B) while I made my inspection. This was achieved with some difficulty, but it was then I took the basic details as above.

  Returning to Bedroom A I used the telephone to make calls to the ambulance service and to my colleagues DI Fitzgerald and DS Henshaw, whom I instructed to alert Forensics and Scene of Crime Officer. I then went quickly to the second man, a white adult male. It was immediately apparent he had died as the result of multiple stab wounds, inflicted, I guessed, by a heavy knife or machete (victim effectively disembowelled, right arm partially severed, deep cuts to the neck, both thighs, and across the left cheekbone, disfiguring). His face looked also to have been scarred separately, a red blister-burn I took for CS gas or pepper-spray. I checked for pulse and found none. By prior acquaintance I could identify the aforementioned as Mr Steven Coulson.

  Ms Clark had once more entered Bedroom A despite my warnings, her manner hysterical, and again I had to insist forcibly that she return to her child. I quickly located a bedsheet and covered the body. I then made a further call to Area Operating Room to report the fatality and arrange a second ambulance.

  I then took steps to preserve the scene, conducted visual search for DNA and for dangerous items. Inspection of the view from an open window alerted me to a suspicious bag on the lawn of the neighbouring property.

  I returned downstairs and stayed by Mr Gore until DI Fitzgerald arrived on the scene [2151]. Having handed over I returned upstairs to Ms Clark. It was clear that much effort was needed to calm her, and that she would need to be removed from the scene for a statement to be taken. I brought her and the child back downstairs, where the paramedics had arrived. Steven Coulson was pronounced dead at 2202. Mr Gore was revived and here I established his details as above. DS Henshaw was now in attendance and I requested he make door-to-door enquiries, and also locate the item I had identified from the bedroom window. At this point Investigating Officer Fitzgerald relieved me of the care of Ms Clark and her child, asking that I accompany Rev. Gore in the ambulance to the General Hospital. I left the scene at 2212. Space was found for the Rev. Gore in A&E at the General and I took his statement at this time (cf. 723-1)