COLD KILL. Neil White

nodded. ‘It was called in yesterday, when she didn’t return home at the weekend.’

      ‘How sure can we be?’ Joe said.

      ‘The description matches, and she doesn’t live too far away.’

      ‘It’s Wednesday today. Why would Don leave it so long?’ Laura asked.

      Joe turned to her. ‘Because it involves calling us,’ he said. ‘Don Roberts will not want us digging into his life. He’s a long-time thug, Blackley’s most violent doorman before he started to run his own gang of bouncers, leasing them out to the clubs. He’s turned to clamping as well, and trust me, you were wise to pay rather than contest it.’

      ‘But why would that make him want to keep away from us?’

      ‘Because he makes a lot of money, and that cannot all come from fixing metal clamps to car wheels. However he makes his cash, he won’t be happy to see us looking into his life, and I can tell you one thing: we’ve got trouble now.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Because this is one of two things: targeted or bad luck. We need to look into the last murder again, see if there is any link with Don Roberts, and if there is, we can expect the revenge killings to start.’

      ‘And if it is just coincidence?’ Laura asked.

      Carson almost smiled at that. ‘The killer just has to hope that we catch him first, because if Roberts gets to him, he will die, but it won’t be quick and it won’t be pleasant.’

      Chapter Six

      Jack was smiling by the time he reached the court, even though the shadow of the court building took away the warmth of the sun.

      The drive into Blackley had done its job, with the wind in his hair and the roof down on his Stag, and so the ghoulishness of the murder scene began to seem a little more distant. He had driven as quick as he dared through the terraced back streets, avoiding the traffic lights and relishing the echo of the engine as he shot between the rows of parked cars, hemmed in between the solid line of brickwork dotted by windows and door frames. The car was his father’s legacy when he died, and so Jack liked to give it a good run out when he could, the feel of the wheel his link to those childhood Saturday mornings spent with his father.

      He looked up to the four storeys of millstone with tall windows and deep sills, decorative pillars built into the walls on the upper floors. The police station had once been next door, the prisoners’ journey into court through a heavy metal door at the end of the cell corridor and then up some stone steps, the light of the courtroom making them blink as they arrived in the dock. The police station had moved out to an office complex by the motorway, but the court had survived redevelopment, if survival was measured by draughty courtrooms and bad acoustics. The prisoners arrived at court in a van now, the subterranean journey through the tiled cell complex replaced by a short walk across the town centre pavement in handcuffs.

      Jack had no expectations as he approached the entrance. He always kept an eye out for the unusual cases, and so he listened in to the chatter of the lawyers, especially the prosecutors, because they always relished the chance to tell a good story. Something amusing or with low-shock value usually worked nicely, but the best cases rarely ended on the first hearing, so he kept a diary, just to make sure that he didn’t miss the hearings. The best cases attracted the internet spies though – those who looked at his reports and then turned up for the sentencing hearings – and so he preferred the unexpected.

      He strode up the court steps and noticed how quiet it was. He was used to striding through the haze of old tobacco mingled with nervous sweat and last night’s booze, but there was none of that today. His feet echoed against the long tiled corridor cast in yellow lighting with interview rooms to one side. It was almost deserted, apart from three people waiting, staring into space. He glanced at the clock. It was just after eleven. It seemed too early to have cleared the morning list.

      It should have been busier. He’d been attracted to crime reporting by the mayhem, the excitement he’d felt for the stories of bad men doing wicked things. It had always been crime that had interested him, from the television thrillers of his childhood to the Johnny Cash prison concerts that his father played constantly. His father had been a policeman, and Jack remembered the pride he’d felt when his father left each morning, his trousers dark and pressed, his boots shined, ready to take on the bad guys. Jack grew more distant from his father as he grew older, when they both retreated into themselves after the death of Jack’s mother, but when he was smaller, his father felt like his own private superhero.

      He looked back at the security guards by the entrance, old men in crisp white shirts, security wands in their hands. They were already counting the minutes until lunch. So this was it? Jack Garrett, hotshot reporter. He sighed. A quiet court meant nothing to report.

      The duty solicitor room – a small square room designed for client interviews usually filled with bored lawyers moaning about how they couldn’t make a fortune anymore – was slightly busier.

      He put his head in to ask if anyone had a case worth writing up. There was a general shake of the head and then it went quiet. They spoke to him when they wanted publicity or an audience for their wit, but Jack would never be part of the lawyer-clique, he knew that. His old denims and long blue shirt didn’t fit in with the dark pinstripes. Some were doing crosswords, photocopies from the national papers that got passed around at court. Sam Nixon was there, one of the main players, who practised from a small office over a copy shop, where tattered sofas and plastic plants served as a reception waiting area.

      ‘Nothing at all for you, Sam?’

      He shook his head. ‘Times are lean, Jack.’

      ‘I’ve just been up to a murder scene,’ Jack said. ‘They’ve found another girl.’ Everyone looked up at that. ‘Maybe you’ll get a slice of that when they catch the killer?’

      ‘You see, us lawyers are not that bad,’ Sam said, waving his hand at the others in the room. ‘We want the killer to be caught, not stay free.’

      ‘That bad?’

      Sam smiled. ‘It might keep me in business for another few months.’

      ‘You’re all heart,’ Jack said, and then nodded at the prosecutor, who was playing with a touchscreen phone. ‘And it might generate some excitement from him.’

      ‘I doubt it. I had to blow the dust from him before,’ Sam said.

      The prosecutor looked up and raised his eyebrows, just greying on the fringes, to match the silver streaks along his temples. ‘My activity is all deep,’ he said, grinning. ‘That’s the trouble with defence lawyers: they’re all show and no substance.’ Then he pointed towards the door as the sound of bold footsteps clicking rhythmically on the tiles got louder and louder. ‘Just to prove my point.’

      Jack put his head back out of the door and knew who it was before he even saw him: David Hoyle.

      He was different from the rest of the defence lawyers. Most of the lawyers in Blackley were sons of old names, the firms passed through the generations, sometimes split up and married off to other firms. Hoyle was an outsider. He had been sent to Blackley to head up the new branch of Freshwaters, a Manchester firm trying to establish a foothold away from the big city. No one had expected it, and Hoyle had just arrived at court one day, in a suit with broad pinstripes and a swagger that no one seemed to think he had earned.

      The other lawyers didn’t like him, because he made bold promises that made clients shift loyalties. Low-level crooks usually wanted nothing more than someone to shout on their behalf, and David Hoyle did that. And he didn’t work out of an office. Freshwaters had premises, but it was really just somewhere for Hoyle to park his Mercedes. He ran his files from home, did his own typing, and visited his clients on their own turf.

      His client trotted behind him, a red-faced man in a grey suit, his stomach pushing out the buttons, his shoes shiny underneath the pressed hems of his trousers.