Stolen

‘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.’

‘It’s a bang-up job, isn’t it? You caught us at it red-handed, so yes … before we have to go through all that boring question-and-answer shit, I was causing the dogs to fight, I was receiving admission fees from the attendees, I was accepting bets on the outcome, I did possess premises and equipment adapted for use in dog-fighting, I was in possession of videos … and so on and so on.’

He grinned again, showing brown, scummy teeth, his ragged beard dotted with saliva.

‘Where’d you get the dogs from?’ Lucy asked.

‘Don’t own any dogs,’ Mahoney said. ‘I just organise the fights.’

‘I’m not talking about the thirty-plus fighting-dogs we recovered from your property,’ Lucy said. ‘We’ve yet to establish exactly who their owners are. I’m more interested in the seventeen dogs we found in kennels at the back of your barn. And in the thirteen dead dogs we found in what looked like an improvised mortuary.’

‘You’re talking about the bait dogs.’ Mahoney caught Payne’s mingled look of contempt and bewilderment. He chuckled at her. ‘Surprised, darling? I bet most of the poor sods you lock up are rarely this forthcoming, eh?’

‘So where did you get them?’ Lucy asked again.

‘I bought them. Or got them from rescue centres.’

‘So, they are yours?’ Payne said. ‘Even though you just said you don’t own any dogs.’

Mahoney looked amused again. ‘Fuck off, kid … they’re not real dogs, are they? Strays, mutts. God knows what kind of parentage most of them had. Every one a fucking mess.’

‘They were certainly a mess when you’d finished with them,’ she retorted.

Lucy glanced sidelong at her. Tessa Payne was a recent recruit to Robber’s Row CID, having done her initial uniform work out of Cotehill Crescent. She was sporty and fit – apparently a top athlete – but was also a college graduate, possessing the sort of sensitivity you rarely found in the police at one time. At present, she seemed calm, but Lucy could tell that she had no love for Les Mahoney.

‘If you’re talking about the dead ones, I was doing them a favour,’ Mahoney said. ‘You think ordinary vets don’t do the same thing … put some creature that’s beyond repair out of its misery?’

‘Ordinary vets normally do it in a clinical environment,’ Payne said. ‘In a humane way.’

Mahoney looked puzzled. ‘What could be more humane than a quick smack on the noggin?’

‘So you’re admitting killing the thirteen dogs in the shed,’ Lucy said.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘With this?’ She placed the mallet on the table between them. It was now enclosed in a sealed plastic evidence bag.

‘Yep.’ Mahoney didn’t even bother checking it. ‘That’s it.’

‘So, as well as the gym – we saw your swim-tank and your training treadmill – you also provide a bait dog service? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Correct.’

‘Fighting-dog owners come and visit you, and presumably for more cash, you’ll put one of your bait dogs in the pit … so the fighting-dog can get a lot of practice in?’

‘That’s about the gist of it, yeah.’

‘The other dog doesn’t stand a chance, does it?’ Payne said. ‘Don’t bother answering that, by the way … we’ve seen the outcome for ourselves.’

‘Look … why are you pretending you care?’ Again, the prisoner looked amused. ‘You’re a fucking rozzer. Kicking the shit out of people is part of your job description. And that’s people … not dumb fucking animals, brainless mongrels that no one fucking wants.’

‘So, you took possession of them,’ Lucy said, remaining focused. ‘By buying them, or … excuse me if I smirk, rescuing them.’

‘Correct.’

‘All done officially?’ Payne asked.

‘Absolutely. Paperwork straight and everything.’

‘There were certainly some dogs in your kennels that didn’t look as if they’d ever seen the inside of a rescue centre,’ Lucy said.

Mahoney tried to think. ‘Suppose there were one or two pedigrees. Yeah.’

‘Where’d you get those from?’ she asked.

‘Those were the ones I bought. Owners couldn’t look after them any more, or they were moving away, or a family was splitting up or something. Sad, eh? Like it’s not bad enough, the kids seeing their mum and dad separating, and then they get their pets taken off them too. But who cares, really? I mean, come on … pets. Soppy, poofy things. Fucking toys pretending to be dogs.’

‘You bought them?’ Lucy said, seeking confirmation.

‘Again, I’ve got all the documents.’

Which they would no doubt soon find, Lucy reminded herself. In addition to the dog-fighting offences, she’d also arrested Mahoney on suspicion of theft – i.e. having stolen the missing dogs – which had empowered them to perform a thorough search of his premises. Right now, as Lucy and Mahoney spoke, Malcolm Peabody and one or two other uniforms were still down at Wellspring Lane, going through the property inch by inch.

‘Do you want to know what’s really funny, though?’ Mahoney said.

‘Funny?’ Lucy replied.

He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You’ve come in here thinking: “Gonna teach this bugger a lesson. He’ll try and wriggle out of it, but we’ve got him. Gonna fucking wallop him.” And yet … I’ve not tried to wriggle out, have I? I’ve coughed to it. Because you and me both know the worst I’m going to get for this is six months.’ He grinned again, mouth filled with brown, shovel-like teeth. ‘Like I said, I could use the holiday.’

He sat back again, his grin broadening.

‘Done you like a pair of brain-dead kippers, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘Because you now reckon you’re going to lay a few theft charges on me. You’re thinking, “The only chance we’ve got of sticking this bastard somewhere the sun doesn’t shine is to prove that he’s pinched some of these dogs, especially these pedigrees because they’re worth a bob or two.” I bet you’ve got a list in your back pocket of a load of missing dogs, haven’t you? I’ve heard the stories too. House pets getting lifted all over Crowley by this evil black van.’

He gave Lucy a long appraising stare.

‘I wonder, DC Clayburn, if you’ve actually verified yet whether any of those missing pooches marry up with any of those in my kennels … or are you just guessing that’s the case? Because if it’s the latter, bad luck.’ He laughed again. ‘And to pre-empt your next dumbfuck question … no, I don’t own a black transit van. I’ve got three vehicles, and I’ve got documents for all of them. But don’t bother looking around my place for this mythical black van, because you’ll just make bigger arses of yourselves than you already have.’

DI Stan Beardmore, Lucy’s divisional supervisor, was an easy-going guy in his mid-fifties, short and squat, with a head of neat, snow-white hair, and a habit of wearing shabby tweed jackets over his smart shirts and ties. At present he looked nonplussed.

‘I don’t understand the problem,’ he said. ‘The bastard’s coughed to everything.’

‘Trouble is, he’s right, isn’t he?’ Lucy replied from the other side of the connecting office between Custody and the front desk. She whipped a folded print-out from the back pocket of her jeans. ‘I’ve got a whole raft of animals here that aren’t accounted for.’

‘Lucy, they’re just dogs. We’ve got a longer list of missing people who we haven’t even got time to look for.’

‘That’s not the point.’ She shook her head. ‘We’ve got enough to charge him with the dog-fighting stuff. But unless we can hit him with a decent theft charge too, he’ll get a tap on the wrist and then go home laughing.’

‘He had one or two pedigrees in his collection, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I’ve already checked and none of those marry up with anything registered as missing.’ She spread her paperwork on the desk and indicated a section that she’d previously drawn a square around in biro. It contained printed details, and a poor-quality black-and-white photo of a fluffball dog. ‘I was hoping to find this one, at least. Petra. A dyed-pink Toy Poodle, she disappeared two months ago from a back garden in Cotely Barn. Her owner reported a mysterious black van in the vicinity that evening.’

Beardmore rolled his eyes.

‘The point is that Petra originally cost her owner £650 when first purchased,’ Lucy said.

‘She definitely wasn’t in Mahoney’s kennels?’ Beardmore asked.

‘I think we’d know if we’d found a dyed-pink poodle.’

‘What about that shed where the dead ones were?’

Lucy shook her head, grim-faced. ‘She wasn’t there either. There’s another thing though. When Petra went missing, she was wearing a pink leather collar with diamond studs in it … that alone was worth two thousand quid. Ridiculous expenditure on a dog, I know. But if we could do Mahoney for that, he’d get a few extra months, if nothing else.’

‘And would it be worth it? For a few extra months?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘Stan … if you’d been there. If you’d seen what we saw …’

‘Okay, I know, I know.’ He looked frustrated. ‘I agree it’s a bag of shit … a bastard like Mahoney deserves the book throwing at him. He’d go down for five years if it was up to me. But we don’t make the law, Lucy. We just enforce it.’

‘I need something else. That jewelled collar at least—’

‘Excuse me, DC Clayburn,’ a voice interrupted. ‘There’s someone to see you out front.’

It was Daisy Dobson, one of the civilian employees who worked the station’s front desk. She was a tall, statuesque girl, with a mess of blonde hair and a permanently sour countenance. She might still have made a good impression in her smart shell-blue uniform, but she was also in the habit of chewing gum noisily. She stood impatiently awaiting a response.

‘Is it important, Daisy?’ Lucy asked. ‘Only … I’ve got a whole raft of prisoners.’

Daisy chomped on but didn’t move away. ‘I don’t know whether it’s important or not.’

‘In that case get rid of them,’ Beardmore replied. ‘We’re busy.’

‘It’s a nun,’ Daisy said.

‘A nun …?’ Fleetingly, Beardmore was lost for words.

‘That’s right, sir,’ Daisy replied. ‘A proper one. With all the gear on.’

Beardmore recovered himself. ‘Get rid of her politely then. We’re still busy.’

‘It’s all right,’ Lucy said, knowing who this caller would be. She folded her paperwork and slid it back into her pocket. ‘I’ll go through. She’s not a real nun. I mean, she was a real nun once. Well, a sister rather than a nun. Anyway, she’s neither now, because … well, it’s a long story.’

Beardmore was blank-faced. ‘Are we talking some kind of crackpot?’

‘That’s the problem.’ Lucy headed to the door. ‘With Sister Cassiopeia, you’re never quite sure.’

Chapter 3

Sister Cassiopeia, or Sister Cassie as she was better known, was seated on one of the benches in the waiting room. Given the lateness of the hour, she was there alone, but she’d have stood out even in a riotous crowd.

She wasn’t particularly tall, perhaps five-foot-seven, and never wore makeup, but she possessed a natural elfin beauty, a shadow of which remained even now, in her forties and after much hardship. She was thin, these days, rather than slim, but who wouldn’t be after living on the streets for a time, and yet her distinctive female shape remained visible, in fact was almost accentuated by her monastic clothing: the long black habit and brown scapular, the white wimple, black cloak and black veil. It was only when you were close to her, and the odour of her rank, unwashed clothes reached you, or when you noticed the patches, and the ragged hems of her skirts, and the mud spattered up them, that you realised there was a problem here. By then it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that if her arms were ever exposed, you’d see patterns of needle tracks.

‘Lucy, my child,’ she said in her soft Irish accent. She got up and crossed the room, her ever-present satchel swinging by its shoulder strap. As usual, she seemed remarkably energised for such a scarecrow of a person. ‘My, my … you’ve all been very naughty, this time, haven’t you?’

‘Oh … have we?’ Lucy replied.

Sister Cassie eyed Daisy Dobson with undisguised irritation. The big blonde girl, still noisily chewing, stood behind the desk openly and unashamedly eavesdropping. ‘May we speak somewhere a little more private, child?’

Lucy nodded. ‘I think we’d better.’

She led the ex-nun to a side-door, tapped in the combination and diverted her towards one of the station’s non-custodial interview rooms. ‘I have to tell you, though,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘I haven’t got a lot of time.’

‘Well, that’s always the problem,’ Sister Cassie replied, following her in, unhooking her cloak and seating herself rather primly in an armchair. ‘We’re all rushed off our feet these days.’ Then she became stern. ‘But I do think these disappearances are getting a little out of hand.’

Lucy sat in the facing chair, which thankfully was several feet away. Sister Cassie attended to her own hygiene as much as any homeless drug-addict could be expected to, regularly using the showers available in the shelters, but she also insisted on wearing this ancient religious garb of hers, which, by the look and stink of it, probably hadn’t been laundered in two decades or more.

Lucy shrugged. ‘Sister … we’re looking into these pet abductions as part of a larger operation …’

‘Pet abductions?’ Sister Cassie seemed baffled. ‘My child, if only it were pets I was talking about.’

Lucy could only shrug again, bemused. ‘Okay, so … what disappearances?’

‘My dear child … three of my regulars have recently dropped out of sight.’

‘Dropped out of sight?’

‘I believe that’s the vernacular. They’ve vanished. They’re no longer here.’

‘Sister, I’m afraid I’m still not sure what you mean …’

‘Oh, child.’ A look of patient frustration briefly etched the ex-nun’s face, a hint maybe of the teacher she’d once reputedly been. ‘This is not difficult. You know Edna Davis, I take it?’

Lucy couldn’t help thinking about the custody clock ticking next door. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘They used to call her the Cat Lady.’

Lucy paused. This name rang a bell.

‘Always sits at the junction between Stoker’s Street and Kiln Lane,’ Sister Cassie explained. ‘Or she used to. I don’t know where she is now.’

Lucy recollected the homeless woman in question. She was a lot older and in a far more decrepit state than Sister Cassie and was instantly recognisable for her beige mac and overlarge trainers, and for the crumpled, flower-covered hat she wore, but, most noticeably of all, for the three or four cats she always had with her.

‘Stoker’s Street and Kiln Lane?’ she sought to confirm.

Sister Cassie nodded.

‘And she’s disappeared, you say?’

‘One day, I was making my usual evening rounds – and she was no longer there. And she hasn’t been there since. No one I know has seen her.’

‘When was this?’

‘I would say … five days ago.’

Lucy pondered. Five days wasn’t that long, and some homeless people were transient and prone to wandering.

‘But I’m afraid that isn’t the worst of it,’ the ex-nun added. ‘Ronald Burke … you know him?’

Lucy regarded her quizzically. ‘No, but he’s also homeless, I’m guessing?’

‘You, most likely, will have met him when he’s been causing trouble in public houses.’ The ex-nun sighed at such regrettable behaviour. ‘He used to wear a brown overcoat and a grey balaclava. Whatever the weather.’

‘Yes, now you mention it … I remember.’

‘Well … he hasn’t been seen for two or three weeks.’

‘Sister … couldn’t these people have simply moved on? They’ve no work to keep them here, no fixed abode.’

‘Oh, my child …’ Sister Cassie gave a sad smile. ‘Let’s not find reasons not to investigate, mmm? You are a police detective, after all.’

Ever the school-ma’am, Lucy thought. ‘You said that three of your regulars have gone missing?’

Sister Cassie was thoughtful. ‘The last one is a little more troubling. For a brief time, I was unsure whether to include him on the list, because he can really be rather naughty. Frederick Holborn … you know him?’