A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest Book 2) Read online

  It had been a good couple of days. The Christmas Eve Massacre could, finally, be put in the rear-view mirror, and she had disposed of the question of the bone much more quickly than might have been expected. She had a long list of outstanding work that needed to get done, but at least she had a clear run at it now. She realised that she was thirsty and went to make herself a cup of coffee. The kitchen was empty, but there were three people in conversation outside it. She recognised two of the lads from the drugs squad in Melksham: DS Simon McPherson and DC Jules Horne. They were with a third person—a woman—whom Mack hadn’t seen before.

  “Morning, lads,” she said.

  “Morning, boss,” McPherson said. He gestured to the woman. “This is DC Jessica Edwards.”

  Mack held out her hand. “Don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

  “Metropolitan Police,” she said.

  “Jessica is with Operation Orochi,” Horne said.

  “What’s that—County Lines?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ve had intelligence that a particularly unpleasant gang in East London is setting up shop down here.”

  “We’ve got an address by the ring road,” McPherson said. “We’re just about to head over there and take a look.”

  “I hope these miscreants take good care of you,” Mack said.

  Edwards shook Mack’s hand and followed McPherson and Horne to the exit. Mack went into the kitchen and flicked the switch for the kettle.

  13

  Atticus inhaled deeply to clear his head. Finn’s house was thick with narcotic fumes, and the simple act of breathing the air had made him a little high. He went back to his car, opened the door and lowered himself inside. He took out his phone and called Mack.

  “Find your runaway?” she said when she picked up.

  “Not yet. What about your bone?”

  “Still waiting for the tests to come back.” She paused, and Atticus could hear the muffled sounds of conversation in the background. “Sorry—I’m busy. What’s up?”

  “I need a favour.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Come on, Mack. You owe me. You’d still be looking on the Plain if I hadn’t helped.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “It’s not strictly legal.”

  “What is it?”

  “The girl I’m looking for either is or was having a relationship with a local dealer. The boyfriend went down for dealing, apparently—did time in Winchester. He’ll have a probation officer. There’ll be an Offender Assessment report. I’d be very grateful if you could take a look at it for me.”

  “God, Atticus.”

  “Just his address. The odds are good that my misper is with him.”

  She sighed.

  “Look,” he said, “I know I shouldn’t ask, but my client doesn’t want the girl to get into trouble.”

  “She should’ve thought about that before she shacked up with a dealer.”

  “True. But she’s seventeen. She made a mistake. Wouldn’t it be nice to give her a second chance?”

  Atticus heard the sound of conversation again.

  “Okay,” Mack said. “I’ve got to go in now, but I’ll see what I can do. What’s his name?”

  “Jordan Lamb,” he said.

  Atticus didn’t have to wait long. He had only just parked the car again when his phone buzzed with an incoming WhatsApp message. He tapped the screen to wake it and saw that it was from Mack. There was no preamble, no salutation, nothing except the address of a property on Payne’s Hill.

  Atticus checked the map: it was just a short ten-minute walk away.

  No time like the present.

  He set off.

  Payne’s Hill sat just inside the ring road that encircled the city. It was a narrow street, just wide enough for a single car to pass, and set on a steep incline. The house on the corner was a grand two-storey residence from the late seventeenth century with a hipped tiled roof, dormer windows and an imposing six-panelled door with a rectangular fanlight. But that was not the address that Atticus had been given. The terrace that adjoined that grand building could not have been tawdrier by comparison; it was brick built, with miserly windows and satellite dishes fixed to the walls. It was next to the subway that ran underneath the ring road and faced a row of six garages, their corrugated metal doors defaced by graffiti and the unkind ministrations of the elements.

  There were windows at street level, and, as Atticus walked along the terrace in the direction of the subway, he took the opportunity to look into them. Some were covered by cheap net curtains, while others revealed spare and austere interiors: a kitchen with stacks of unwashed plates and dishes in the sink, a sitting room with an enormous flat-panel TV and children’s toys strewn around. He reached the bollard that marked the end of the road and the start of the slope that descended beneath the ring road and turned back. Mack’s message had said that Jordan Lamb’s address was number 59; the recessed doorway was set back from the pavement and reached by a short flight of three brick steps. Numbers on the outer door indicated that it was for flats 57 and 61; number 59 had fallen off.

  There was a panel set into the door to the right with three buttons and a speaker grille. Atticus pressed the button for 59.

  “Hello?”

  “Delivery.”

  “What?”

  “Delivery. This is 59 Payne’s Hill, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jordan Lamb?”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “I’ve got another dozen Amazon parcels to deliver before I knock off, mate. You want to take this one or not?”

  “Hold on.”

  Atticus stayed close to the door. He heard an internal door opening and closing and then the sound of footsteps. The door opened, and a young man looked out.

  Atticus smiled. “Jordan?”

  “What? You said you had a delivery.”

  “Sorry about that. I doubt you’d’ve opened the door otherwise.”

  “Piss off.” He went to close the door, but Atticus was too quick for him. He jammed his foot between it and the jamb. “Hey!”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Atticus said.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Piss off.”

  “Molly York.”

  “Who’s that?”

  He was a dreadful liar; Atticus did not need a careful observation to see that.

  “Come on. I know you know her. Her father is worried. He’s asked me to see if I could find her for him.”

  “You’re police, then?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You look like police.”

  “I used to be, but not anymore—I work for myself now. You’re not in trouble—not yet, anyway. Let me come in and ask you a couple of questions, and then I’ll be on my way. If you don’t, I’ll go to the police and say that you’ve been selling dope.” He reached into his pocket and held out the bag that Finn had given him. “Like this. You wouldn’t want them to find that when they came knocking, would you? I’m pretty sure that’s going to be against the conditions of your parole. Right?”

  Jordan shuffled nervously behind the door. “Questions about what?”

  “About Molly.”

  “It won’t take long?”

  “Five minutes,” Atticus suggested with a smile. “Promise.”

  “Okay. Fine. Come inside.”

  14

  Atticus stepped inside the door and closed it behind him. The communal hallway was tiny, with the doors to the individual flats set out around him. The door to 59 was ajar, and Atticus followed Jordan inside. He found himself in an entrance hall with three internal doors. They were all open, and Atticus quickly assessed the layout: bedroom to the left, sitting room ahead of him—the kitchen must be through there, too—and bathroom to the right.

  He glanced into the bathroom; it was in a disgusting state, with mould growing on the floor and a discarded tourniquet next to the toilet.

  “Hey!” Jordan exclaimed as Atticus stepped around him and
looked into the bedroom. It was barely habitable. Atticus saw a photo of Jordan with a couple whom he took to be his parents and concluded that this was where he slept. There was nothing of any immediate interest, so he left it and continued to the final door at the end of the hall.

  “You can’t just go where you want.”

  The space had been converted into another bedroom, with a mattress on the floor and a cheap set of drawers that had clothes spilling out of them. The mattress was a mess of crumpled clothes and plastic bags, and the floor was littered with the dog ends of cigarettes and empty cans of cheap lager. The carpet was stained and scorched with burn marks. The kitchen was to the left. Atticus went inside and saw that it had been left in an awful state. Rubbish had been piled on the work surfaces, the sink was full of dirty crockery, and one of the cupboard doors had been yanked off, leaving stacks of used newsprint to spill out onto the floor. Atticus saw a scrap of paper on the counter that looked familiar. It was a wrap; he could see a little cocaine residue gummed into the folds. He took out the wrap that he had found in Molly’s wastepaper bin and compared the two; the typeface of the text that he could see was the same, suggesting that the wraps might have been made from the pages of the same magazine.

  “Stop!” Jordan complained.

  “I’m sorry,” Atticus said with a reassuring smile. “Let me just ask you those questions, and then I’ll be out of your hair. Do you live here alone?”

  “Get out,” Jordan said.

  Atticus held up the bag of weed that Finn had given him. “Answer the question, or I’m going to lose this somewhere.”

  “You’d fit me up?”

  “It would be so much easier for both of us if you’d answer the questions.”

  Jordan’s eyes glittered with animosity. “Fine. Yes. I live here alone.”

  “Really? This isn’t just you—all this mess? It was the guy who came down from London. Right?”

  “How do you know about him?”

  “I asked around, Jordan. I know other dealers—I arrested most of them at one time or another. You get a London gang moving into a quiet city like this and it’s going to make waves. It’s bad for local business. This guy—he told you that he was moving in?”

  Atticus was fishing, but he was confident in the conclusion that he had drawn. Jordan was exactly the kind of person who fell victim to cuckooing. The London gangs looked for vulnerable locals who could be exploited, and Jordan ticked all the boxes: he lived alone, he had a habit, and he didn’t have the money to feed it. His parole made him susceptible, too; he could be blackmailed, just as Atticus had demonstrated.

  Jordan shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you should go.”

  Atticus didn’t move. He had been watching Jordan’s face for a reaction, and the young man was too naïve and guileless to be an effective liar, especially not to someone as perceptive as him.

  “Come on,” Atticus said gently. “I know he’s been here. He’s been using your flat to sell drugs.”

  Jordan glanced away. “You said that you’re not police?”

  “I’m not. And I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to find Molly. Help me out and I’m gone.”

  The second mention of her name caused a flicker of pain to pass over Jordan’s face.

  “You and Molly had a relationship, didn’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “And you liked her.”

  Jordan bit his lip and nodded again.

  “How did you meet?”

  “I’d just got out of prison. I had a connection down here, and I started selling again. I sold to one of her friends.”

  “And Molly liked a smoke, too?”

  He nodded. “The two of them used to come here. She’s nice. Really pretty. We’d get high and listen to music.”

  “How often did you see her?”

  “A couple of times every week, after she was done classes; then she’d go back home.”

  “Is she happy there?”

  He shrugged. “I know she had arguments with her dad. He caught her with a joint, and she said he lost his shit. She said that she’d been thinking about moving out, but that she didn’t have enough money. She was going to get a job and save up for when she was old enough.”

  “She wanted to move out because he found her smoking?”

  “There was something else, too. She got upset one night, said that she didn’t want to go home—she asked to stay. Slept on the sofa. She never said what it was.”

  “Next?”

  “Pepsi came down from London.”

  “Who’s Pepsi? The dealer?”

  “Black Pepsi,” Jordan said. “That’s what they call him.”

  “Real name?”

  “Shayden, I think.”

  “Last name?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And he moved in here?”

  “He wanted to sell, and he said that I could get mine for free if I let him stay. I didn’t know he’d be here for so long. Didn’t know that he’d be selling the other stuff as well.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “Everything,” Jordan said helplessly. “Cocaine, heroin, crack. I didn’t think I could get rid of him; then I was thinking maybe I could but maybe I didn’t want to… You don’t know what it’s like—you couldn’t, not unless you’re a user. It’s like medicine on tap. He totally knew what he was doing, giving me just enough to keep ticking over. He said they didn’t want me to be gouged out, so he gave me a little tickle, just enough to get a bit of a buzz a few times a day, a little bit in the morning to get me going. I needed that. That little hit in the morning, start the day right. He knew it.”

  “Was Pepsi violent?”

  “Didn’t do anything, but he threatened me. He said that if I caused any trouble, he’d beat me up. What was I supposed to do? He had a knife. He used to show me it when he was telling me how things were going to go. It started to get really difficult. I lost my car, and I thought I was going to lose the flat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you’re an addict, and when there’s someone in the other room with drugs all the time, any time you get dole money, or any money, you keep going into the room and buying it. I did that until I was skint. Then I sold the car, my stuff, everything. Having the gear so close by was too tempting.”

  “What about Molly? How does she fit in with Pepsi?”

  “She came over this one time, and he started talking to her. He liked her. She liked him. There wasn’t anything I could do.”

  “You must have been gutted.”

  He looked away again. “She’s too good for him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got her smoking this really strong weed. Chemdawg—super high THC, melts your mind. She wasn’t interested in doing anything with me after that—it was always his gear. Nothing else would do. She started coming every night. Sometimes they would go upstairs, and I’d see that she was still here in the morning.”

  “She’d stay overnight?”

  “Now and again.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “London.”

  “They left together?”

  “I don’t know. Pepsi left on Sunday. He said the police were onto him. He took all his stuff and disappeared. He was right. Old Bill came yesterday. Drugs squad. They’re still watching me.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “There’s a car outside with a woman in it. She’s been there all day. They must think I’m an idiot or something.”

  Atticus frowned. He hadn’t seen anything. “What—now?”

  “She was there when you came in—I thought you must’ve been with her.”

  “Where?”

  “She’s not stupid enough to park right outside. She’s on Barnard Street. Down the hill.”

  Jordan was getting agitated. Atticus was nearly done.

  “Can you still get in contact with Pepsi?”

  “No.”

  �
�Do you have his phone number?”

  “He changes it all the time. They use burners. I don’t know the new one.”

  “Social media?”

  He hesitated.

  “Jordan, please—I’m not interested in Pepsi, and I won’t say that we’ve spoken. I’m just looking for Molly.”

  “I know his Facebook,” he said, still reluctant.

  “That would be a good start. Could you show me?”

  Jordan went into his bedroom and returned with a beaten-up iPad with a cracked screen. He woke the device, opened Facebook and tapped out a search, selected one of the results and then showed the screen to Atticus. It was a Facebook profile for Shayden Mullins. The banner image showed an image with two hooded young men pointing handguns directly into the camera. The profile picture showed a young black man, a bandana tied around the bottom half of his face, staring straight out with cold, hard eyes. Atticus took out his phone, opened Facebook and made the same search.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been helpful. If you hear anything from Molly, would you give me a call?”

  Jordan shrugged. “If she says she doesn’t mind.”

  Atticus took a business card from his pocket and handed it over.

  “Are you going to find her?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Tell her to come and see me,” he said.

  Atticus looked around at the flat and thought of what must have happened here for it to get into this sort of state, and about what James York would think if he could see where his daughter had been and the company that she had been keeping.

  “Goodbye, Jordan,” he said.

  15

  Atticus stepped out onto the pavement and turned to the right. Barnard Street was over a crossroads, leading down the hill toward the centre of the city. There were marked residents’ parking zones on the left and right with no spaces available. All of the cars, save two, were pointing down the hill. The exceptions—an old BMW, with a dent in the right wing, and a Volkswagen—were at the front of the parked queue, pointing up the hill toward him, and, although it was a little too distant to make out any details, Atticus could see that both cars were occupied.