‘Well, then he does deserve it, doesn’t he?’
‘It was his last delivery,’ the biker stressed. ‘His very last one. After that, I was gonna cut him loose so he could start a normal family life.’
She eyed him with fascination. ‘So … is this your guilty conscience speaking, Kyle? Is the untouchable general finally getting a complex about the good little soldiers he sends into battle for him?’
‘Hey, I’m just trying to help a guy out who’s been a good mate of mine for a long time.’
She pondered, mulling over whether she could turn this thing to her own advantage. ‘Have we got a trial date yet?’
‘Yeah … next spring.’
‘Next spring?’
‘He’s at Manchester Crown.’
‘He’s at Crown Court?’ That surprised her. ‘And he was only delivering a few bits and bobs?’
Suddenly Armstrong couldn’t look her in the face.
‘Any other lies I should know about?’ she asked. ‘Like maybe he hasn’t got a job? Maybe his girlfriend hasn’t just had a baby? Maybe he hasn’t even got a sodding girlfriend … that’d be more believable, knowing half of your lot.’
‘Lucy, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘I can make this worth your while.’
‘Yeah … how?’
He lowered his voice, and glanced back along the path to the lights of the car park. ‘Maybe I can drop you a bit of intel now and then.’
‘Oh … you want to be my informant?’
‘For Christ’s sake, keep it down!’ he hissed. ‘And no, I never said that.’
‘But we’ll give each other a back scratch every so often?’
‘Come on … I know you do this stuff all the time.’
She contemplated his offer. ‘Anything you can give me now?’
‘No, but …’ He shrugged. ‘But when the time comes, you only need to ask. Come on, Lucy … you know me.’
Yeah, I know you, she thought. The Low Riders were reprobates through and through, and could hardly be relied on to give help to law enforcement. But they were connected, and if Armstrong – who at one time had been a lot more to Lucy than just an acquaintance, even if she had only been going through a ‘teen rebel’ phase – said he might be able to give her something now and then, there was always a chance it would be juicy.
She sighed. ‘You say this lad’s name is Ian Dyke?’
‘Yeah. He lives on Thorneywood Lane.’
Lucy knew the place. It was yet another nice-sounding street on a Crowley council estate, which in actual fact was so run-down that it ought to be bulldozed.
‘All I can do is speak to Drugs Squad,’ she said. ‘I’ve no clout … you understand that?’
‘Sure.’ He sounded happier.
‘I may be a detective, but I’m still only a constable.’
‘I know you …’ He eyed her suggestively. You can be very persuasive when you want to be.’
‘I can’t.’ she assured him. ‘And I’m not going to be. Best I can do is have a word.’
They walked back to the car park, where Lucy pulled her helmet on, kicked her machine to life and spun it round in a tight circle. Before heading back to the exit, she pulled up alongside Armstrong and lifted her visor. The rest of the chapter looked on in silence, though Hells Kells had now come forward and firmly linked arms with her beau. She glared at Lucy with icy intensity.
‘Let me know how we get on, yeah?’ Armstrong said.
‘There is no “we”, Kyle. So, don’t be pestering me. I’ll call you if there’s anything to report. And if we hit pay-dirt on this, I want something back.’ She pointed a warning finger at him. ‘I mean it.’
He shrugged. ‘Promised, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah … you promised all right.’ And she treated him to a dubious frown, before hitting the throttle and speeding out of the car park.
Lucy Clayburn was known widely in the Greater Manchester Police as a biker girl, and as a deft handler of her Ducati M900. There was scarcely a colleague, whether male or female, who didn’t in some way find this intriguing.
Most of the men, especially those members of the Motorcycle Wing, thought it majorly cool, even more so when they learned that Lucy was also a self-taught mechanic. One or two of the more old-fashioned types were vaguely miffed, regarding it as a challenge to their machismo, but these were fewer and farther between each year in the British police service, so on the whole they kept quiet. There were equally diverse opinions among the women, a couple of the more serious-minded types dismissing it as a frivolous thing, accusing Lucy of trying too hard to win the men’s vote by playing the tomboy. But most of the girls were impressed, liking the fact that she’d strayed unapologetically into male territory and quietly admiring the derring-do it surely required just to ride one of these high-powered machines through the chaotic traffic of the twenty-first century.
All of this was somewhat ironic, of course, because Lucy didn’t take her bike out very often these days. Back in uniform, she’d regularly used it to travel to and from work, because when she was actually on duty back then she drove a marked police car. Now that she was in CID, she could either drive one of the pool cars – which often had interiors like litterbins, and stank of sweat and ketchup and chips – or she could drive her own car, which was easily the more preferable option. As such, she’d bought herself a small four-wheel-drive, an aquamarine Suzuki Jimny soft-top, which now provided her main set of wheels. The Ducati was still her pride and joy, but the bike shed where it lived and where all her tools were stored, was still at her mother’s house in Saltbridge, at the Bolton end of Crowley Borough, while Lucy had moved into her newly refurbished dormer bungalow on the Brenner Estate, at the opposite end. As such, she rarely even saw the machine.
The previous night, when she’d headed up to the West Pennine Moors to meet Kyle Armstrong and the rest of the Low Riders, had been an exception; riding her bike to that meeting could only have helped to win their approval. But later on that night, when she returned to Crowley, she parked the bike back in its shed, and without bothering to pop indoors to see her mum, who by that hour was most likely in bed, she headed across town in her Jimny. First thing this morning, she was back behind its wheel, eating toast as she drove into central Crowley, not towards Robber’s Row police station, but to the central Magistrates Court.
En route, she used her hands-free to place a call to the CID office, where she asked DS Kirsty Banks to sign her on for duty. And then placed a call to DCI Geoff Slater, at the Drugs Squad. Slater, whom Lucy had worked with in the past on ‘Operation Clearway’ – a non-drugs related case – was not available to take the call, so she left a message instead, asking him to contact her.
On arrival at the Court – an authoritative-looking Victorian building, complete with tall, stained-glass windows and faux Grecian columns to either side of its front steps, and yet faded to a dingy grey through time and weathering – she parked in the staff car park at the rear, entered through the staff door and went down the steps to the police room and the holding cells.
‘Where’ve you been?’ DC Harry Jepson snapped.
‘Why … I’m not late?’ She threw her overcoat onto a hanger.
‘I know,