Lucy was well aware of that, but she would turn it to her advantage if she saw the opportunity. If there was a chance to humiliate him, she would take it, because resentment made people vulnerable, just as any other emotion did. Atwal said, ‘This is mistaken identity. I was at home at the time. I can get people to swear to that and make you look stupid, DS Peach.’
He looked at her with contempt, which changed slowly towards a lust he did not trouble to disguise. She was an attractive woman, with flesh in the right places: buxom, the decadent English called it. She’d be good for one thing, and that wasn’t strutting about pretending to be police. He let his eyes roam over her breasts, then slid his chair back a little and attempted to review that portion of her body she kept behind the table. She wouldn’t come willingly, but resistance would give an extra spice to shagging her; he tried to convey all of this in his silent, brazen assessment of her charms.
Lucy knew what he was about. She wanted to tell him that she was proof against it, that she had endured all this and more from white youths who did not trouble to moderate their language or disguise their lecherous thoughts. Sexual insult was par for the course for her, even a little tedious by now. She spoke slowly and distinctly. ‘You waited outside the council care home. You spoke at length to three of the girls who are resident there. You attempted to recruit them for prostitution. All of them were under age.’
‘All of them were white trash who were prepared to sell themselves.’
‘And how would you know this? You said a moment ago that you weren’t there.’
He was shaken a little, but he didn’t show it. ‘I wasn’t. I know these things, that’s all. It’s common knowledge. They wouldn’t be in these homes if they weren’t trash.’
‘They’re in these homes because they haven’t got anyone to speak up for them or defend them. The very reasons why scum like you attempt to recruit them and exploit them. But I don’t need to tell you that. It’s because you know it that you hang around these places.’
‘These girls are white whores. They’re bred for it. They love it. They get paid for it.’ He looked her up and down again, studied her red-brown hair for a moment, flashed her a predator’s mirthless smile. ‘There’s plenty of older white women gagging for it, if they can get it.’
‘We’ve got enough to charge you, Atwal. Do you want a brief?’ At least it would be interesting to find where his lawyer came from and who was financing him.
‘You won’t be charging me. These kids won’t go into court. They’ve got more sense than that.’
‘But not enough sense to avoid scum like you? We’ll give them protection, Atwal. And if you dare to-’
‘You can’t protect them! You and a whole bloody army couldn’t protect them. Not against Lennon.’
The name was out before he could stop it. Anger had betrayed him, as Lucy had hoped it would. There was always a hope of that, with the thickos who operated down the order. His face telegraphed his mistake; for a brief moment fear flashed across his thin features, where there had heretofore been nothing but derision.
Lucy let the full implications of his blunder sink in for a moment before she said, ‘I’m sure Mr Lennon and his muscle men would be interested to hear you quoting them in this context. We may need to call you as a prosecution witness, when this case comes to court. You could make quite a name for yourself, Mr Atwal, because there will be national publicity. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes afterwards, though. Especially as I don’t think you’d be a high priority for the police protection services.’
‘You’ll never make this stick, darling!’ He tried to add menace to the last word, but it didn’t really work.
‘The best thing you could do is come clean right now. Luring minors into prostitution is regarded very seriously, and I don’t fancy your chances inside. Some of the crazy villains in Strangeways take as strong a view as we do, and they aren’t inhibited by the legal restraints that we have to observe.’
‘I’m not worried by you, darling.’ He glanced at DC Brendan Murphy beside her. The big, fresh-faced copper had said not a word, though he looked ready to use his fists at any second. Atwal blundered on blindly. ‘You lot don’t know what violence is. You lot don’t know what we can do and get away with.’
Lucy Peach leaned forward a little and said with deliberate contempt, ‘Murder, you mean? James O’Connor? Oh, I wouldn’t be too confident you’ve got away with that. Not confident at all, in fact. I think your Mr Coleman may be helping our team with its enquiries at any moment now.’
A hit. A very palpable hit. Amazement and fear flashed across Atwal’s mean features in quick succession. He uttered a few more phrases of ritual defiance before they returned him to a cell to stew for another couple of hours. Lucy watched him go, then contacted her husband on his mobile. ‘I don’t know quite where you’re up to on the James O’Connor case. I’d go hard after Coleman and the rest of Lennon’s muscle, if I were you.’
EIGHT
Peter Coleman was a contrast to his wife. She had been a smoothly finished product, well adapted to concealing her inner feelings. He was rough at the edges and apparently proud of it. He wasn’t at all effective in disguising the fact that he traded in violence; indeed, he delighted in making it only too obvious to the people he was employed to threaten.
He chose to meet the filth in a builders’ hut at the edge of a demolition site in the older sector of Brunton. The mill and the foundry which had once stood there were long gone. Now one of the last of the terraces of houses which had surrounded them was being removed to facilitate the building of new office blocks. Two hundred yards away, a new casino block with ample parking for its punters flashed its neon blandishments, even in the clear light of a May day. It was a depressing sight to anyone with a sense of history. The tawdriest of modern man’s amusements was being set against the fresh air and clear skies which would once have turned thoughts of hard-driven mill workers to healthier pastimes.
This was very different from the way in which Mrs Coleman had recently received them. Coleman wrenched two stacking chairs from a pile of five in the corner of the shed and banged them down for his visitors, taking a third one for himself and placing it exactly opposite them, no more than five feet away. He scratched his left armpit deliberately, then said in a broad northern accent with a Geordie inflection, ‘This canna take long. I’ve a work force to supervise. The buggers skive their arses off if they think I’m not around.’
Peach regarded the broad face steadily and without obvious emotion. ‘They won’t have to contend with you for much longer. Still, they might get someone who knows a little more about demolition and building and a little less about murderous violence, when you’re off the scene.’
Coleman allowed himself a smile. He and Peach had clashed many times before, as each had risen up the ranks on opposite sides of the law. Peach had put him away for a year when he was in his twenties, for using a knife during an affray. Since then he had skirted the law and narrowly avoided conviction. It is one of the paradoxes of modern justice that as you rise higher in the criminal fraternity and become more dangerous, it becomes more difficult for those who attempt to uphold the law to charge you and make it stick.
You become a bigger player, moving away from street violence as you instruct others to do that for you. You have expert lawyers to insulate you against prosecution, as you did not have when you were taking on street fights against your low-level rivals. You cover your tracks and ensure by a variety of means that there is no one willing to bear witness against you, so that the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers tell indignant police officers that they are unwilling to pursue a case with scant chance of success.
The biggest danger is that you can begin to feel impregnable. Overconfidence is an Achilles heel for many men who live by violence.