The Cover Up Page 29

  A baby pink cart, empty of its previous occupants, rattled towards them. With a quailing heart, Gloria stepped forward, taking her place between Bob’s legs.

  ‘Good Lord!’ she cried. ‘It’s just a normal seat belt, like what you get in a car! This can’t be safe.’ She looked questioningly at the lad who manned the queue.

  ‘You’re all right, love,’ the lad said. ‘Safe as houses. Put your hands in.’

  It was too late to protest. The car jolted forwards and they were off. She could feel Bob’s knees gripping her; his fingers digging like pincers into her shoulders. The cart lurched upwards in a steep climb. Gloria was already regretting having said yes to this ride. And as they reached the summit, she was plagued with doubt as to why Bob had been fiddling about with Sheila’s brickwork. He had said he’d coincidentally been working on next door and had spotted a fault in her mortar. Sheila’s side to the story … she had yet to hear.

  ‘Here we go!’ Bob shouted. ‘Hold on tight.’

  The car dropped almost vertically, picking up speed with every millimetre that it fell. Gloria felt her bottom lift out of her seat. Her whole body pressed painfully against the flimsy seat belt. She screamed. Tensed up every muscle. Braced herself for the inevitable crash. But it didn’t come. Instead the car whipped back upwards, sending her reeling back into Bob’s lap. She hated each second. She wanted out.

  So concerned was she with the potential for spinal injury and the sheer horror of being tossed around in mid-air, just as a cat plays with a mouse, that the cold steel pressing against her temple took her by surprise.

  ‘Tell me where Lev lives or you’re dead,’ Bob yelled.

  ‘What?’

  She had a split second in which to understand her situation. She was strapped into a rollercoaster car with a gun to her head, held there by her lover.

  ‘Lev. Tell me his address or I’ll shoot.’

  Unable to turn around to face her interrogator, Gloria could only stare ahead as the cart tracked left and right, swinging into a neck-breaker of a turn.

  ‘Bob! No.’ Fear kicked in suddenly. She started to scream.

  ‘Not Bob. Hank. My name’s Hank. And if you’re not going to tell me where to find your son, I’ve got orders to kill you. Goodbye, Gloria. I’m sorry,’ the renamed Hank said, just loud enough for her to hear above her own din.

  The bullet left the gun just as the car shot downwards yet again. Time seemed to slow in that deafening last moment on earth. The ground hurtled up to meet her and Gloria considered the words of John 11:26.

  And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

  Closing her eyes, she waited for heaven and prayed death would not hurt. Remembered Leviticus as a small boy and her grandson, Jay, recovering post-op in a Baltimore hospital. Remembered the pastor and her futile unrequited love for him. At least now, she would find peace.

  ‘Shit!’ Hank cursed behind her.

  Except she was not dead, apparently.

  The rapid descent had thrown his aim off and he had missed. With her survival instinct on high alert, Gloria grabbed his hand and rammed it repeatedly up against the side of the car in an attempt to liberate the gun.

  ‘You sh— scoundrel!’ she yelled. In truth, ‘shithouse’ had been on the tip of her tongue, but the near-death situation didn’t give her carte blanche to drop her standards.

  ‘Agh, my hand, you bitch! You broke my fucking hand.’

  The gun went off a second time, the thunderclap close to her ear, almost masked by the incessant rattling of the car as it pinged like a bagatelle ball up, down, from side to side.

  Hank squeezed her ribs so hard with his knees, Gloria wondered if he would puncture her lungs. One more shot might finish her. She had to kill or be killed. Grabbing his gun hand again, she bit down hard into the sinewy flesh. He punched her in the neck with his right fist but her cleaner’s stamina stood her in good stead. Her bite was so unrelenting that she tasted blood. With all the strength she could muster, she smashed his hand into the side of the car one last time. The gun went spinning into the air, clattering and bouncing down through the intricate lattice structure of the rollercoaster.

  But his right hand was around her throat, squeezing hard.

  She tried to shout ‘Stop!’ but a hoarse gurgle was all she could manage. Why was this happening? How had her love soured so quickly? Was he Bancroft’s man? Her consciousness was ebbing away. Soon, the ride would be over and she would be dead.

  Kicking out, flailing in a bid to take a breath, Gloria’s hand hit the fastening for the flimsy seat belt. Though her mind was sluggish, she knew what to do. With her last drop of energy, she depressed the button, freeing them both.

  As the car plummeted into its final steep nosedive, Gloria clung onto the bar in front for all she was worth, though she lifted clean out of her seat. Behind her, she felt Hank dislodge with the force of their descent.

  He shrieked as he flew from the car. Propelled through the Blackpool night sky like a human cannonball from the circus attractions of old. Gloria’s last sight of Hank was the glimpse she caught of his body breaking against the unforgiving ground below.

  As the cart came to a standstill, a bloodied Gloria launched herself back onto solid ground, patting her hair back into place and smoothing her dishevelled clothing. She spoke to the lad in a tremulous voice that quickly gathered strength.

  ‘And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Revelation 12:9.’

  Flushed with a grim euphoria, Gloria fled from the Wild Mouse as the first screams at the discovery of Hank’s body pierced the fateful night.

  Chapter 41

  Lev

  ‘No. I still don’t know where my Mam is and I still haven’t heard from her. How many times do I have to tell you?’ Lev said, ending the call from Conky. ‘I’m sending the next fucking call straight to voicemail,’ he told Jay, who merely chewed on his teething ring in response, strings of drool stretching all the way to his lap like gossamer rice noodles.

  ‘You shouldn’t be using language like that in front of the boy,’ an old woman on the seat opposite said. She clutched her shopping wagon for balance as the tram leaned to the left, making its agonisingly slow progress from Piccadilly Gardens southwards past the City Art Gallery. ‘It sets a bad example.’

  ‘Piss off, grandma,’ Lev said, immediately feeling a prize shitbag for treating the nosey old cow with such flagrant disrespect. He knew better than that. ‘Soz. I’m having a bad day.’

  Her wizened face didn’t soften. She merely glanced at the dressing on his temple where he had been struck with the crowbar and turned with a sour, judgemental expression to look out of the window.

  Sod her. Lev’s breath was still coming in short, shallow gasps. He felt transparent and weak like a piss-water cup of tea. Taking Jay’s warm little hands into his for comfort, he shot furtive glances around the tram, dreading the next stop. Would the police get on? Would they be coming for him after what had gone on? Undoubtedly caught on CCTV.

  With a whine and a hiss, the tram pulled up against the concourse at St Peter’s Square. Might there be a spy at every window in the town hall and the surrounding office blocks, peering out in the city-wide manhunt for Leviticus Bell – hardened criminal turned fugitive?

  ‘Hurry up! Hurry up! Jesus.’

  Willing the passengers to get on and sit down so that they could leave the city in haste, Lev saw Tiffany in every glum face that boarded.

  ‘Daddy!’ Jay shouted joyfully, blowing him a clumsy dribble-kiss.

  But he felt undeserving of his son’s love. He had pushed Tiffany down an escalator. An accident, almost certainly. He wasn’t even sure how it had come about. But he was now shafted beyond redemption nonetheless. That accusatory face of hers, as she had levered herself up from the bottom, surrounded by horrified, shrieking women an
d concerned men … that embittered, underweight face, covered in fire-engine red blood. Red for danger.

  Why had it had to happen at a time when he desperately needed to keep Tiffany sweet?

  It had been a chance meeting. He had been wheeling Jay through the Arndale Centre, blithely looking in the shoe shops at mid-season reductions on trainers. With his new-found wealth and his clean bill of health after the clear CT scan, he had been feeling chipper. The new, high-end solicitor, paid for with Sheila O’Brien’s money, had said his chances of getting full custody of Jay were excellent, providing he kept his nose clean and they moved fast. The social worker’s visit to the rented house had gone particularly well. So, he had already treated Jay-Jay to a celebratory new outfit from Selfridges, because the boy deserved labels, man. Hadn’t it been his plan to bag himself some fine new Nikes?

  But on the way through the upper mall from TK Maxx towards the bright main section with its temple to Apple and the double-height Next cathedral, he had to bump into Tiffany, didn’t he?

  ‘Oh, here he comes. Captain fucking Catwalk with his posh bags.’

  His babymother had looked even more washed out than usual under the bright Arndale Centre lights which forgave nobody and which paid no heed to the darkening early evening sky outside. Her hair, scraped into a high ponytail, had been thin enough to reveal the scalp beneath.

  ‘Look,’ Lev had said. ‘I’m not gonna do this in here. My solicitor told us not to talk to you. I don’t want bother. I’ll see you in court.’

  Notably, Jay had not even stretched out his arms to his mother. He had merely sat contentedly in his pushchair, singing a toddler’s garbled rendition of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. Lev had started to walk away, recognising his increasingly frenzied heartbeat as an anxiety marker – the sort that had led to his being cooped up in the house for what felt like an age after the head-in-a-Fried-Chicken-Family-Bucket debacle. Anxiety was not good. Tiffany was worse.

  ‘Hey! Don’t you bleeding well walk off on me, you ignorant knob-end! I wanna talk to you about custody, without all this bleeding legal-eagle shit. I want my frigging baby back. He’s mine.’

  She had tugged at his parka. He had shaken her off. But hand on hip, Tiffany had rounded on them. She had latched onto their little father-son outing like a frenzied, bloody-minded wasp buzzing around beleaguered picnickers.

  ‘Leave it, Tiff. People are staring, and it’s not nice for the boy.’

  Shouting and acting out like a cornered shoplifter, Tiffany had been all bony hands flailing and hooked fingers jabbing at him. ‘It’s not nice? Who the fuck do you think you are, Leviticus Bell?’

  Perhaps inadvertently, though in hindsight, Lev reasoned that it had more likely been intentionally, she had manoeuvred them near to the top of the escalators. Perilously close, in fact, so that they were partially blocking the access.

  ‘I’m not having this, Tiff. I’m really sorry, the way things worked out between us, yeah? But you screwed it all up for yourself the day you stubbed a ciggy out on my son’s arm. You’re a conniving witch.’ He had rapped his index finger against his forehead. ‘You’re tapped and I’m not having you poisoning my boy with your bullshit.’

  Standing on her tiptoes, she had taken a swipe at Lev. Had made contact with his jaw with a bony junkie’s fist. Fingers that had once caressed him. Knuckles he had once kissed. The sad decline of their relationship had not been lost on him. But the Arndale Centre at the witching hour of 5 p.m. had been no theatre in which to play out their personal drama – especially not in front of Jay, who had started to observe their antics.

  He had grabbed her hand. Making physical contact. The biggest mistake, he now realised.

  ‘Pack it in,’ he had said in a calm voice, trying and failing to move away from the escalators. Sensitive to the tutting of passers-by, who had been forced to edge past the cringe-worthy contretemps.

  Tiffany had somehow wheeled him around so that the two of them had formed a stopper at the summit of the escalator.

  ‘Get off me, you big bullying bastard!’ she had shouted, eyeballing the shoppers, as though she had been performing for their benefit.

  Lev had wheeled Jay’s pushchair clear of the descending steps. Baulking at the sight of all that metal, throwing up memories of him being five or six, screaming for help as the hem of his jeans had caught in the jagged teeth.

  ‘I’m out of here. You’re fucking fruit loops.’

  He had tried to back away, but she had grabbed hold of the pushchair, trying to prise Jay free of his straps. Lev had yet again gripped her arm to free Jay of her. And then, whatever had happened next was still a mystery to him, as he raked over the sequence of events on the tram to Altrincham.

  Somebody had barrelled into him from behind. There had been a struggle with Tiffany. He didn’t even remember having a hold of her arm at that point, but she had fallen headlong down the escalators. The world had come to a standstill. His babymother lay sprawled at the bottom of the long, steep staircase. Somebody had hit the alarm, bringing the escalator to a halt, but Lev had been convinced at that moment that Tiffany – a broken woman whom he had once adored – had been killed. Blood on the ground beneath her: a gleaming deadly puddle of dark red, pooling outwards. How could she have survived such a fall? And he had been unable to run to her aid. His primary instinct had been to stay by the pushchair with his son. Slowly backing away from the scene.

  At the bottom, a crowd of rush-hour homeward-bound workers had already started to gather. People had been dialling for help on their phones or else taking photos of the ragdoll of a woman who had been lying motionless, face down on the floor.

  With his flight instinct and blind panic kicking in with gusto, just as he had been about to turn around and walk away, Lev had noticed Tiffany start to move. Like some zombie in a shoot-em-up Xbox game who refused to lay down and die, she had raised her bloodied head. Had craned her neck to stare up at him with sheer menace in those medicated eyes.

  ‘You’re fucked, Lev Bell.’

  Had those been her words? From that distance, he’d had to lip-read. But yes. As he replayed the chain of events in his fevered mind, he was certain she had threatened him. And from that moment, he had known that she intended to get him for attempted manslaughter.

  Now, he was watching a twilit South Manchester speed by as he headed back to the rental, expecting at every stop that the police would board the tram with handcuffs and batons at the ready for Lev Bell – a domestic abuser of the worst kind; an attempted woman-slaughterer. Accusatory faces on the passengers that lined the platform of Trafford Bar, Old Trafford, with its stadium bearing down on him, Stretford, Sale … Every stop held peril. Every time the tram slowed, he expected some conversation to be taking place at Timperley, perhaps, between Transport police and the track operatives. They were all conspiring to root him out and bring him down.

  With the world spinning around him, he finally boarded the bus at Altrincham interchange, suspecting every pedestrian of being a plain-clothes policeman. But they passed through Hale, veering out towards Bramshott. The golden-leafed oaks and sunburst-coloured beeches – grey in the evening murk, save for where the street lamps shone a light on their brilliance – replaced the ungainly 70s office blocks and cramped streets of overpriced Victorian terraces. Lev’s breathing eased. The spinning slowed, like a merry-go-round running out of steam.

  ‘Right,’ he said, disembarking with his son in the pushchair. ‘Daddy and Jay are going on a little adventure, son. All right?’

  Packing was easy. What he couldn’t fit into a single case, he would buy when he got to the other end. As long as he could fit in the rubble sack of money and a few nappies, that was all that mattered.

  With Jay burbling at the television from the safety of his playpen, he hastily threw together ham sandwiches to eat on the hoof. Caught up in thoughts of Tiffany and her threat. You’re fucked. She knew she had won through one simple, life-threatening act of self-sabotage. Tiffany, Tiffany, h
is mind was full of blood-soaked, nightmarish Tiffany. When he heard the front door slam, he jumped. Ran through to the hall, armed with a breadknife and a thundering heartbeat.

  ‘Mam!’

  Bedraggled and spattered with dried blood, as though she were carrying Tiffany’s torch as an Olympic-standard drama queen, Gloria stood in the hallway, trembling. He could hear a car’s engine running outside.

  ‘What’s up with you, for Christ’s sake?’

  Gloria hugged herself tightly. Kicked off her shoes, looking a good deal smaller and somehow childlike in her stockinged feet. ‘Don’t blaspheme,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Bob’s dead. He tried to kill me. Bob wasn’t even his real name. He was called Hank!’ She opened her arms, clearly expecting a hug from her son like any normal mother would. But Gloria wasn’t a normal mother.

  ‘Did you kill him?’ Lev asked, lowering the knife but ignoring her outstretched arms. ‘You topped your boyfriend. Am I guessing right?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was an accident. Self-defence. He tried to shoot me.’

  ‘So, you did kill him.’

  Tears rolled onto Gloria’s cheeks. ‘Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; Psalm 144:1.’

  If Bob or Hank or whatever he was bloody called had tried to kill Gloria, chances were he was one of Bancroft’s men, Lev calculated. And if Gloria had killed Hank, Bancroft’s men would be coming for Lev, in addition to that psycho, the Fish Man and whatever other loons had it in for him, including the coppers.

  ‘That your taxi outside?’ he asked.

  His mother nodded.

  Running to the door, he flagged the Skoda estate car down just as it was engaged in a three-point turn, ready to pull away. A Blackpool cabbie, unwilling to take another job that left him at the wrong end of the M61. Until Lev showed him a wad of twenties …