For a moment the two men’s eyes locked and Mower seemed to hesitate. Thackeray knew why and, for a split second, as the water surged over his head again and he was left choking helplessly in his sliver of breathing space against the slimy stone of the roof, he saw the face of Rita Desai, her eyes as full of light and laughter as they had often been before he and Mower had last seen her sprawling lifeless in the dust of a haulier’s yard.
Half drowned, his chest compressed by the sheer force of the rushing water so that breathing was almost impossible even when his nose and mouth were above the surface, Thackeray almost gave up only to see, when he had shaken the water out of his eyes one last time, that Mower was leaning down as far as he could and trying to reach him. With a desperation born of despair, Thackeray eased himself slowly towards Mower against the pressure of the stream until the two men could just clasp hands.
With his own body now spreadeagled right across the open manhole, one hand clutching the edge with desperate determination, Mower hauled Thackeray inch by inch towards him until he too could gain a purchase with icy fingers on the edge of the manhole and, between them, arms locked, they could begin to haul themselves out of the reach of the greedy, sucking black torrent below.
It took minutes, every one of which seemed like an hour, before Thackeray scrambled out to fling himself flat on the floor like a landed fish, choking and gasping, alongside Mower who had also rolled away from the manhole onto his back, utterly exhausted. It was Thackeray who finally found the strength to get back to his feet, shivering in his sodden clothes, to push the metal manhole cover back into place, hiding the deadly stream and reducing the noise to the point where conversation was just about possible. He held out a hand and pulled Mower upright.
“I owe you,” he said, holding on to the sergeant’s hand for a second.
“Think nothing of it, guv,” Mower said with an attempt at a smile. If it had been him who had gone into the water like that, he thought, he might not have made any particular effort to get out.
“There’s a sort of cage down there which Foreman must have been using for storage,” Thackeray said. “In normal times it wouldn’t have interfered with the flow of water, so no one could have guessed. It’s only recently the water company started complaining about the flow of the Beck not being right. I guess if Foreman’s made off with his stash of heroin or cocaine or whatever, the water’s running more smoothly tonight. They might not get quite the inundation they were expecting.”
“Shall we get out of here, just in case,” Mower said, glancing at the manhole cover which was rattling from the pressure below.
“I don’t think it’ll come up that way, but this place will certainly flood if the water in the street gets into the offices and pours into the cellars from above,” Thackeray said. It was only then that Mower noticed that the DCI had reached inside his sodden jacket and was clutching something in his left hand.
“What’s the fuck’s that?” he asked, not sure that he wanted to know the answer.
Thackeray shook his head, his eyes unreadable in the gloom.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it’s a baby’s skull.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Mower whispered with a long slow sigh.
Chapter Twenty
“You’re not going to like this,” Michael Thackeray said to superintendent Jack Longley as he brought him up to date with developments the next morning. Apart from the darker than normal circles under his eyes he gave no indication that he had come so close to death the previous day. Only his wrenched muscles, and throat and lungs which felt as if they had been scoured with sandpaper, reminded him of how close to the edge he had been. His whole being now was focused fiercely on Barry Foreman and making sure that this time the security boss did not slip through his fingers.
“Try me,” Longley said.
“I want to interview DS Jake Moody under caution, as a suspect.”
“The drug squad aren’t going to like that,” Longley said, although his own expression remained relatively unperturbed. “It’s when you tell me you want to interview me under caution that I might get alarmed these days. Did you read about the number of senior officers being suspended? Why Moody, any road? I thought he was a victim, not a suspect.”
“Maybe,” Thackeray said. “Obviously I want his version of what happened when he was shot.” He hesitated.
“But that’s not all?” Longley prompted. “You think he went over to the other side? He wouldn’t be the first undercover cop to do that.”
“Ray Walter hinted he’d not been providing much intelligence. Why the hell not, I’d like to know,” Thackeray said.
“You think he was taking back-handers from Foreman? Playing both sides against the middle?”
“Maybe worse than that,” Thackeray said. “Now we’ve got Foreman’s fingerprints they turn out to match some on the dirty videos at Stanley Wilson’s place. And our own intelligence did come up with something interesting when they were trying to match the unknown prints from Wilson’s house. They came up with a Brian Freeman, who did a long stretch when he was in his twenties. He was an enforcer for a gangland boss in Manchester. One of the things he enjoyed was stubbing out cigarettes on people. And guess who he shared a cell with in Strangeways.”
“Stanley Wilson?” Longley hazarded.
“I guess Foreman was terrified Wilson had told me about his change of identity. That would really have scuppered him just at the point when he was ingratiating himself into the legitimate business community in Bradfield. I don’t know if anyone else was with him at Wilson’s place when he was killed but I’m sure Foreman was there himself. And I guess he enjoyed the violence just as much as he used to in the old days.” Thackeray hesitated.
“I want Moody’s prints taken,” he said. “Wilson’s longtime boyfriend, Harman, reckoned that Stanley Wilson had a new black boyfriend but it’s just possible that if the person he saw was actually Moody, he was visiting Wilson for his boss and Harman jumped to the wrong conclusion. I want Moody’s prints taken and I want to see if Harman can identify him. If he was there, I want to know why, and what he knows about Foreman’s visits.”
“Moody’s not gay, is he?”
“That’s not the point,” Thackeray said impatiently. “Foreman has been to Wilson’s place, the home of a man he says was nothing more than an insignificant clerk in his organisation. Foreman’s been paying him over the odds — bonuses he says, set-up money for Wilson’s porn business more likely, part of Foreman’s money laundering operations, like the development company in Leeds and God knows what else when we’ve finished going through his books. But recently, according to Val Ridley, who’s been trawling through Wilson’s bank statements, Foreman’s been paying Wilson £1000 a month, on top of his salary. That looks more like blackmail to me, and Foreman’s not a man to put up with that for long.”
“You think Foreman tortured him and killed him?” Longley asked.
“It’s a distinct possibility. So far we’ve only charged him with possession of the consignment of drugs he had in the Land Rover when he was arrested, but there was enough there to remand him in custody while we get our act together on the rest. And we’ve got his prints and a DNA sample so the forensic people can get to work on those. But before I start questioning him about Wilson I want to get to grips with Moody and find out just how far his undercover activities took him. Even if he’s clean he knows more about Foreman’s movements over the last few months than anyone else. We’ve possibly linked Foreman to one murder now and there are three more suspicious deaths being investigated. Mower says that he found a lad who saw something near Donna Maitland’s flat the night she died. That needs chasing up too. But I need Moody’s evidence first, and I need it quickly, not in a couple of weeks when the drug squad have debriefed him and decided what they want to tell us and what they don’t.”