They bound the lad with tape around his wrists and ankles and across his mouth. His initial struggling was neutralised by the blows he received but they were nothing compared to what was dished out to him when they got him to the waste ground behind the old chemical factory. Shaun Campbell’s favoured weapon of choice was a plank of wood with three-inch nails stuck to it. The others used the more traditional implements of correction such as crowbars and hammers. They left the lad lying unconscious in a pool of blood and all went home to have their tea.
‘ Aren’t you having anything?’ asked Shaun as he tucked in and saw that all Natalie was doing was smoking a cigarette.
‘ I’m not hungry’ she answered. ‘ I’ll maybe have a sandwich later’.
‘ Are you not feeling well?’
‘ I’m not ill, no’.
‘ What do you mean?’
‘ I’m pregnant, Shaun’.
She watched the shock drain the colour from his face like approaching fog drained the colour from the landscape. She could well tell that he wasn’t enamoured with the idea.
‘ But we always use something’.
‘ It must’ve torn’ said Natalie, nervously ‘ They can sometimes do that’.
Shaun put his knife and fork down and pushed his plate away. ‘ Well you’ll get rid of it’.
‘ What?’
‘ Natalie, there’s no way I want to be saddled with a kid’.
Natalie was fighting back the tears ‘ Not even if it’s mine, Shaun? I thought you loved me’.
‘ Ah fuck’s sake not the bloody crying game again. Look Natalie, I don’t want to be a father. So make an appointment and get rid of it. End of discussion’.
Natalie ran out of the room crying her heart out.
.
CHAPTER TEN
Graham knocked on the door of Jimmy Kent’s office.
‘ Sir? Do you have a minute, please?’
‘ What is it?’ asked Jimmy.
‘ Sir, I will need some more time off after all. The family aren’t settling after the Jamie Robertson incident and I need to try and sort them out’.
Jimmy didn’t believe a word of it. His instincts were telling him that once again Armstrong was speaking with a forked tongue. But he didn’t have any choice but to agree to him taking some more time off. He had offered it to him in the first place.
‘ Okay’ said Jimmy. ‘ How long do you want? A week? Two?’
‘ A week’ said Graham. His next job was to book a plane ticket over to Manchester and see for himself if Ian Taylor was his old mate Duncan Laurence. ‘ That should do it, Sir. And thank you’.
‘ Before you go, DI Armstrong, are you planning to hand over the investigation into who this Judas character is? The investigation I handed to you?’
Graham stopped momentarily to think about his answer to what was such a stupidly obvious question but one he hadn’t thought of.
‘ I’ve requested certain pieces of information on that, Sir’ said Graham ‘ DS Patterson knows how to contact me if they come through’.
‘ Don’t you think it would be more efficient to hand the whole thing over?’
‘ With all due respect, Sir, no I don’t. This could prove to be extremely delicate and I think it should stay with one officer’.
‘ Okay, DI Armstrong. But don’t let me down on this. I’m expecting you to produce a result’.
Lynne had just walked into Mark’s office with a mug of tea and to have a sit down and a chat when their attention was taken by the sound of shouting coming from the staff lounge down the corridor.
‘ What the hell’s going on?’ said Lynne.
‘ Sounds like Tina’s voice’ said Mark ‘ We’d better go and see’.
Mark got to his feet and Lynne followed him down to the staff lounge where it was looking very ugly indeed. About six of his team were looking on as Shakira, a Muslim girl from Oldham who always wore her traditional shameez, was sitting on a chair with her head in her hands and in floods of tears. Tina was standing over her, pointing her finger and unleashing a torrent of racial abuse. Mark liked Shakira. She was never late for work, always on top of everything, and she could say sorry when she’d made a mistake. For that she earned his total respect. But Tina was ranting that Shakira and ‘her lot’ were to blame for the London suicide bombings. Mark seethed at Tina’s racist stupidity. Shakira had condemned the London bombings as much as anyone had.
‘ They didn’t do it in my name!’ screamed
Shakira ‘ They didn’t do it in the name of Islam!’
‘ Oh listen to her!’ scoffed Tina ‘ You’re a Muslim and you’re responsible!’
‘ What the hell is going on here?’ Mark demanded. ‘ I’ve never heard anything like it!’ He went straight over to Shakira and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘ Shakira? Are you alright?’ He looked around at all the others standing there. They were watching but they were doing and saying nothing.
Tina wasn’t having any of that. ‘ Oh that’s it! Stick up for her because of course we mustn’t upset the darkies’.
‘ And that’s enough talk like that from you, Tina!’ said Mark. She should keep her pig ignorant views to herself. He could see so much venom in her eyes. It was appalling.
‘ Enough? I haven’t even started yet. We’re all living on the edge because of people like her’
‘ Oh you mean people from Oldham, Tina? That’s where Shakira’s from’. Mark was disgusted by Tina’s performance. It was totally mindless but then what did he expect from a girl who’d gone to Blackpool with a load of mates and been proud of the fact that in the Italian restaurant where they were eating she’d asked them to stop playing Pavarotti and put some ‘English’ music on.
‘ Since them bombs went off in London and killed all those innocent people, none of her lot are to be trusted no matter where they’re from’.
‘ Are you going to apologise to Shakira for what you’ve put her through?’
Tina baulked ‘ Apologise? For what I’ve put her through? You’ve got a flaming nerve. No way’.
‘ Lynne, would you take Shakira to the ladies and make sure she’s okay, please?’ Mark asked.
‘ Of course’ said Lynne, moving forward and putting her arms round
Shakira when she stood up. ‘ Come on, Shakira. Let’s get you cleaned up’.
‘ I’ll see you in a minute,
Shakira’ said Mark, softly.
Shakira was sobbing her heart out as Lynne led her out of the room. But Tina couldn’t resist throwing a parting shot.
‘ And whilst you’re there take that flaming scarf off!’
‘ You’ve said your piece, Tina’ said Lynne ‘ Now shut it! Can’t you see the damage you’ve done?’
‘ Oh that’s typical’ said Tina. She looked around for support. ‘ She gets all the sympathy and I get told to shut it. This country doesn’t belong to proper English people anymore’.
‘ Tina, would you go to my office now please?’
‘ But … ‘
‘ … I said now, Tina’. He didn’t relish confrontation but he had to stand up for what he believed to be right. He’d always been like it. It had got him into a lot of trouble at school. This was one of those times when turning the other cheek was just not acceptable.
Tina turned on her heels and stormed out the room leaving an atmosphere that was heavy and excruciating. Mark turned to all the silent spectators.
‘ I cannot believe that you all just stood by and let that happen. Do none of you have any guts or any principles? Don’t any of you stand up for anything worthwhile? Or is sending texts to speculate on who’s going to win Big Brother so much more fucking important to you!’
‘ They’ve arrested Kevin for the murder of that policeman’ said Ian as he sat with Mark on the sofa. They’d finished dinner and had opened a second bottle of wine.
Mark gasped. ‘ Kevin? Why?’
‘ He’d fallen in with a bad lot’ said Ian ‘ He was stealing stuff from my yard and panicked when the policeman stopped by and asked what was going on. He was small fry, a middle man, a go-between. He wasn’t a main player in the gang’.
‘ Gang of who for God’s sake?’
‘ Loyalist paramilitaries form back home’ said Ian. ‘ He was seduced by it all. He thought he could bring some excitement into his otherwise dull little life’.
‘ He worked for you, Ian and he was planning something like that. It sends a shiver down my spine’.
‘ I met a lot like Kevin back home. They think they’ll get away with it, they think nobody will ever find them out or grass them up. But they all end up being very, very sorry’.
‘ Are they trying to involve you in what they want to do?’ asked Mark who just knew from the way Ian was talking that he spoke as someone who knew
first hand what Kevin had got himself into. ‘ Ian, are you connected with these people in some way?’
‘ It was just a coincidence that Kevin worked for me’.
‘ You must feel very let down by him’.
‘ He’s let his family down’ said Ian ‘ His two wee girls. He’s been a stupid fucking idiot. I can get over it. Those two wee girls will have to live with what their father did for the rest of their lives’.
Natalie wanted to curl up into a ball and die. She was desperate to have her baby but every time she as much as broached the subject with Shaun he wouldn’t hear a single bar of it. All he kept doing was getting onto her about making an appointment and getting rid of it. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to have her baby and give it the love she’d lost when her Uncle had made her do things to him that she knew were wrong.
‘ Is that you, Shaun?’ she called out. She was lying on the bed and heard the door go.
‘ Yeah!’ he called back.
She went through to the lounge just as Shaun finished a call on his mobile.
‘ You’ll need to get over to Bangor ‘ he said ‘ Some wee
shite has been trying to muscle in on our patch and it seems the source of his merchandise is Republican. I want to know who he is and where he lives and I’ll deal with him from then on’.
This was the usual way that problems were dealt with. For the last four years Natalie had handled the sales and Shaun had seen to the distribution. But she was rapidly losing interest in anything to do with her life before falling pregnant and if she could only get to Shaun’s father on his own she was sure she could convince him that the prospect of the arrival of his first grandchild would soften him enough to put pressure on Shaun to let her keep it.
‘ Did you hear me?’ he asked. He was sitting on the sofa with some papers in his hand and Natalie was standing behind him.
‘ Yes, I heard you, Shaun’.
‘ What have you been up to?’
‘ I went to lie down for a bit. I was feeling sick’.
‘ Have you made that appointment yet?’
‘ No’
Shaun swung round and faced her ‘ How many times do I have to make myself clear, Natalie? I don’t want a kid. Period. Now you’ve got a week to sort it’.
‘ Or what?’ she asked tearfully.
‘ Or you can find somewhere else to live and we’ll be finished. I’m not bringing up your wee bastard’.
‘ But Shaun this is your baby you’re talking about’ she pleaded.
‘ I said I wanted you to get rid of it, Natalie, and I meant it’.
Mark looked at his watch and saw that it was a quarter to six. Ian was picking him up on the hour. He switched off his computer and went to the lift that would take him down to the foyer. He’d only just gone through the main doors when a voice flew through the air like a brick.
‘
Oi, Earnshaw!’
Tina and her fiancé Tyrone came round the corner with their faces set. Tina was in some kind of fur jacket which Mark couldn’t work out because it was a hot summer’s evening and her leggings were so tight it looked like she’d been poured into them. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail and she was scraping along in high-heels. Tyrone looked like he’d just laid the tarmac on the M6 single-handedly. There was no finesse in his bulk. He just looked like a thug and he headed straight for him.
‘ I wanna a word with you!’ growled Tyrone, prodding Mark’s shoulder and forcing him to step backwards. ‘ If you think you can get away with treating my fiancé like you’ve done you’ve got a very painful lesson coming, pal. Suspended? Just for exercising her right to free speech? I don’t think so’
‘ Free speech is not defined as the right to insult someone because of their race!’ Mark raged. He felt no fear. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by this idiot. Somebody had to stand up to these people even though Tyrone was so up close and personal he could almost taste his breath let alone smell it.