The Girl in the Rug (14 page)

Tony ‘Turk’ Lahars sat in the corner of the pub and stared
into his beer. The Red Stag public house was far from salubrious, with its
slightly sticky carpets and strong all pervading smell of stale beer and old
cigarettes that seemed to have seeped into every inch of the shabby bar.

But if Turk noticed its seediness he gave no indication of
it, in fact he seemed miles away deep in thought. The truth was that he was a
seething mass of rage and indignation A rage that was getting stronger the more
he thought about his so called ‘mate’ Nellie and the things he’d said to
him…the names he’d called him before walking away and leaving him lying in the
dirt.

‘You fucking prick,’ Nellie had hissed, as he grabbed Turk
by the throat and flung him up against a wall. ‘What the fuck is this all
about…the fucking girl in the rug…you stupid cunt, I told you to get rid of it
fella!’

Turk who could barely breathe let alone speak, tried to
explain. ‘Thought I heard someone coming didn’t I…had to get rid quickly…’ow
was I to know some busybody cunt’s going to search the garage…aaarrgh…no
pleeaasse …aaarrgh.’

Turk screamed louder as Nellie pulled his arm back up and
behind him until his shoulder popped out of its socket.

‘Nellie…aaarrrgh…no no…they’ve still got nuffin on us ‘ave
they…’

‘What about the garage you tosser…your uncle’s fucking
garage,’ Nellie spat at him. ‘How long do think it will take for them to
connect us to that…’ he released his grip on Turk who fell to the floor with
another grunt of pain.

‘I told you to take it to the wood didn’t I…prick, somewhere
far away from the estate Why the fuck would you hide it so close to the
estate?’ He seemed to suddenly think of something.

‘Unless you were fiddling with it…’

‘No…I wasn’t Nellie I promise…I just thought it would be a
good place to ‘ide it…I never touched ‘er I swear….AAARRRGH.’ Nellie brought
his boot down hard on Turk’s dislocated arm, making him scream in agony.

‘You fucking sick bastard…you fucked her didn’t you, oh my
god…you fucking did.’ His fist smashed into the side of Turk’s mouth and he
went down again, groaning in agony as Nellie’s boot connected with his chest
breaking a couple of ribs.

‘You stupid sick fuck…don’t you think they’ll know you’ve
been sticking it to her? Are you so thick, they’ve got tests man, they’ll have
you’re whatsit…DNA, you stupid dickhead…’ Nellie kicked him again in his
frustration.

‘God…please Nell…I didn’t…don’t please…’ he gasped from the
ground where he lay at Nellie’s feet. ‘Used a rubber didn’t I…they won’t find
nuffin I swear…aaarrghh.’

Nellie grabbed him by the hair twisting his head round so
that he could see his face. ‘Well let me tell you something you fucking freak,
I ain’t going down for this…so you an’ me we’re through, you get me fella…you
go your way and I’ll go mine, but I don’t want to see your filthy perverted
face ever again…cus if I do…you’re a dead man.’ And with that he’d shoved
Turk’s face into the dirt and walked away, leaving him where he lay.

And that was the last time Turk had seen Nellie. Oh he knew
he was still hanging around, for some reason he was staying in the area. Seemed
he had something good going on, Turk wasn’t sure what it was…but he’d been
keeping tabs on him, at a distance.

Once he felt strong enough Turk had crawled back to the
shabby room that he had rented. After disposing of Lucy’s body he had needed to
disappear, he was well aware that the police knew his address on the
‘Buttercup’ estate. He had treated his various wounds as best he could with the
help of his Bosnian girlfriend Paula, who had the muscles and the facial hair
of a cage fighter and had managed with much swearing and shouting to manipulate
his shoulder back into place and bind his ribs so tightly that he could hardly
breathe, and then he had lain low.

But as he had allowed his body to heal he had started
thinking, and the more he thought the angrier he had become…who the hell did
that fucking bastard think he was dealing with? How dare he speak to him like
that. Didn’t he realise that people shrank away from him in terror? He was a
man to be respected…feared, not punched and stamped on…Turk was determined to
be avenged.

DCI Riley was on Carla’s back…he wanted Kathy Hunt charged
with the murder of her daughter ASAP.

‘But sir, I am not at all convinced that she did kill Lucy,’
Carla argued. ‘I just can’t see her being capable of it…oh don’t get me wrong I
can see that she could have, in a drunken moment, hit her too hard etc. But I
can’t see her being physically capable of carrying the body all that way and
moving all the stuff in that garage to hide it right at the back. Most of the
time sir she is unconscious, or on her way to being unconscious…it just doesn’t
make sense to me that’s all…’

‘For crying out loud Carla we have enough evidence to charge
the woman ten times over. It was well known that she hit those kids, she was so
pissed most of the time that she probably doesn’t even remember that she ever
had a daughter. We’ve got the girl’s blood and hair on her living room
floor…what more do you need…her bloody diary giving us blow by blow details of
how she did it?’

‘No, I do see that the evidence is overwhelming sir it’s
just…well what about the abuse of the body, the sexual interference how does
that fit with what we know of the mother. Surely it’s worth just…’

‘Look,’ Riley said running his hands through his hair
impatiently, ‘for all we know the mother may have abused the girl herself. She
was a prossy after all; maybe she was into little girls on the side who knows.
Charge her Carla…and then perhaps we can all move on.’ The DCI’s voice took on
a note that brooked no argument so Carla just nodded and left the office.

She didn’t know why this case bothered her so much. Of
course the death of a little girl was tragic, and there was no denying that
Kathy Hunt was a diabolical mother, Andy Hunt didn’t realise it now but he was
so much better off in the home than living with that old soak. But instead of
the usual elation that she felt when she had ‘got her man or woman banged to
rights’ so to speak, she felt uneasy…as though she had missed something.

Oh god fuck it, she would just charge Kathy and move on as
the DCI said…after all it would free up a bit of time to take a more active
role in Ted’s investigations.

So later that day, Kathy Hunt was formally charged with the
murder of Lucy Hunt and of the concealment of the same. She would appear before
a magistrate in the morning and probably be remanded in custody until her case
came to trial, which could be anytime between six weeks and six months.

Frank had been preoccupied ever since that evening when he
had found Linda at Carla’s and discovered Ted’s secret investigations. He
wasn’t his usual jokey self, just coming in getting his head down and then
leaving at the end of his shift. He wasn’t unfriendly just not so
communicative, and Carla was a bit worried about him.

Today there had been two sightings of Elliot ‘Nellie’ Dentch
and Tony ‘Turk’ Lahars that they needed to follow up on. One particularly came
from someone who claimed to be a neighbour of Nellie’s, he said that Nellie had
returned to his flat in the early hours of yesterday morning and that as far as
he was aware he was still in there.

Once again Carla and Frank found themselves heading towards
‘Buttercup’. Nellie lived right in the heart of the estate in a second floor
flat that belonged to his parents. As it had to be assumed that he would be
armed, Carla had brought some armed police with her and she would let them
enter the property before she went in herself.

The leading officer banged on the door.

‘Police…open up,’ he waited but there was nothing from inside,
he banged again and waited…nothing.

‘Ok,’ said Carla, ‘we go in…after you constable.’

The door fell away easily with the help of the battering ram
that was used to force it and the armed police rushed in, running through the
flat pushing doors open left and right as they did so.

A terrified looking elderly woman appeared at the top of the
stairs. ‘What’s going on…what do you think you are doing…get out of my house,’
she shouted waving her hands around.

Carla approached her, ‘Mrs Dentch?’ she asked her.

‘Who the hell are you people, you’ve got no right to be in
here…this is my house.’

‘Are you Mrs Isla Dentch,’ Carla asked again.

The woman nodded, ‘Yes that’s me…who are you?’

‘I’m DI Carla Right Kenley CID, and this is DS Frank Hill.
We have reason to believe your son Elliot is in the house…is that right?’

‘No…he’s not here I haven’t seen him for ages…hey…be careful
in there, some of that stuff’s irreplaceable you know,’ she looked back at
Carla, ‘You won’t find him, he’s not here.’

‘Well we’ll keep on looking if it’s all the same to
you…wouldn’t want to waste a perfectly good warrant would we, and while they’re
searching maybe you could answer some questions.’

Half an hour later Carla and Frank were back in the car
heading back to the station empty handed. After practically tearing the flat
apart there had been no sight of Nellie and nothing in his room to give them
any idea where he could be hiding. Mrs Dentch had been no help at all, and had
spent most of the time shouting at them to be careful with her things.

They had removed some stuff from Nellie’s room though…some
photographs and a note book that contained lists of numbers and letters some
underlined and some with dates next to them. Carla thought it might be worth
taking a closer look at it.

Back at the station Carla went straight to her office to
study the note book. The lists seemed to be divide up into two columns, one
headed G and the other M:

And so on, pages of the same thing,
sometimes there were dates in the margin and sometime there was an amount
circled next to one line of the column. On one page two names ‘Jude’ and
‘Gavin’ were written near one of the columns each highlighted with an *.

Carla sighed as Frank came in carrying a couple of coffees,
‘Well he was up to something but I’m buggered if I know what…here see if you
can make anything of this,’ she passed the book to Frank who sat down opposite
her and started to go through it.

‘Well it would help if we could figure out what ‘G’ and ‘M’
stand for…someone he was working for maybe?’ he said after a couple of minutes,
‘I suppose ‘B’ could stand for ‘Buttercup’…maybe he was meeting someone at ‘Buttercup’,
or had to pick up something from ‘Buttercup’.’

‘And who are Jude and Gavin,’ mused Carla, ‘why are they
highlighted I wonder, may be this is about drugs…lists of drugs dealers on ‘Buttercup’,
and maybe the dates are when a new batch of a certain drug is being delivered…’
she broke off as her desk phone rang. It was WPC Wendy Hailsham from the front
desk.

‘Hi Wendy, what’s up,’ she answered.

‘Ma’am, you’re not going to believe this but we have someone
claiming to be Tony Lahars on the phone wanting to speak to you…’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Carla shocked, waving her hand at Frank
trying to get his attention. ‘Well you’d better put him through Wendy…’ Carla
put her hand over the phone, ‘It’s only Turk on the phone wanting to speak to
me…’

‘You’re kidding…’ began Frank.

Carla held up her hand as a voice came over the phone, ‘This
is DI Right Mr Lahars, what can I do for you?’

‘Well it’s more like what I can do for you init?’ said Turk.
‘I’ve got some information about that girl, and not just that neither…that paki
that got shot, I can tell you about that too…’

‘Well that’s very interesting Mr Lahars, maybe you’d like to
come to the station and then we can take a statement from you…’

‘Nah,’ growled Turk, ‘I ain’t coming to no station, not
until we make a deal, and I ain’t going down for no child killing, so if you
want to ‘ear what I’ve got to say then you have to cut me a deal…’

‘I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that Turk,’ Carla said
raising her eyebrows at Frank who was listening. ‘We are looking for you in
connection with four armed robberies and the killing of Amish Patel, those are
all very serious offences. I would need to know just what information you had
for me before I can make any promises and I can certainly tell you that you
will still be looking at a custodial sentence if…’

‘Yeh yeh blah blah,’ said Turk, ‘I just need your promise
that I ain’t going to go down for killing nobody, and especially not some kid, cus
I ‘ad nuffin to do wiv any of that…and I will need police protection, you ‘ave
to give me that or I’m not saying anything right?’

Carla sighed, ‘Look Turk, why don’t you come to the station
off your own back, and then give us any information that you’ve got. I can promise
you that you will be listened to, we will be very interested in anything you
can tell us about the killing of Lucy Hunt…but you need to come in and let us
take a statement from you, obviously we will keep you as safe as we can…’

There was silence on the other end of the phone, but Carla
could hear him breathing so she kept quiet and let him think about what she’d
said, finally he said, ‘Yeh, ok.’

Carla released the breath that she hadn’t even realised she
was holding, ‘Good,’ she said, ‘that’s good Turk, where are you now, shall I
send a car to collect you…’

‘Nah man…don’t want no prying eyes seeing me getting into no
police car do I?’ Turk said with a nervous laugh. ‘I will come to the
station…later ‘bout seven, after it’s dark.’

‘Ok I will stay here and wait for you…don’t let me down now
Turk, because we will find you sooner or later you know, much better that you
come to us…ok?’

‘Yeh man…whatever,’ Turk said hurriedly and rang off.

‘Wow,’ said Carla looking at Frank, ‘well that’s put the cat
amongst the pigeons…seems we were right Frank, there’s more to Lucy’s death
than we thought. I wonder if he’ll come…I bloody hope he does, and he might be
able to tell us what these bloody lists are all about.’

‘He’s had a bust up with Nellie hasn’t he,’ Frank whistled
under his breath. ‘Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes if Nellie ever finds out
he’s spoken to us though…he’ll be dead meat.’

‘Well we’d better make sure that we keep this very quiet
then Frank,’ Carla said thoughtfully, ‘just between the two of us for now ok?
Obviously we’ll have to let the DCI know if he gives us anything interesting,
but until then let’s keep it zipped.’

‘Yeh sure,’ said Frank, ‘if he turns up of course, which I
very much doubt he will.’

Seven o’clock came and went with no sign of Turk, by nine
Carla had to concede that Frank had been right after all, Turk had obviously
got cold feet and Carla was kicking herself. Why the bloody hell hadn’t she
pushed him into waiting for a car to pick him up…or Carla could have met him
somewhere. They had come so close to getting some hard evidence against Elliot
Dentch, and maybe finally finding out what really happened to little Lucy. She
had blown it, what a stupid cow you are, she thought angrily. She finally went
home at about ten thirty feeling despondent and frustrated.