Sleep No More by Jeff Gulvin

Author:Jeff Gulvin [Gulvin, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1832-5
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-03-28T16:49:00+00:00

Nine

VANNER LEFT THE HOUSE and paused on the steps to button his jacket. Across the road a man sat in a blue Cavalier. He flapped out a broadsheet newspaper. Vanner squinted at him for a moment, then he shrugged and walked towards the High Street. At the first phone box he stopped.

‘Sarah? It’s me. Can you do it?’

‘The computer?’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated. ‘You’re suspended. If anyone finds out?’

‘Is Morrison there?’

‘No.’

‘You’re checking leads, Sarah. You’re entitled to.’

He heard her sigh in his ear. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone you at my house this afternoon.’

Outside the phone box Vanner paused. The blue Cavalier was parked across the street. Then he remembered and smiled to himself.

Morrison parked his car and looked about him. The estate rose in ugly blocks of stone, cluttering the skyline. He watched a bedraggled-looking woman of about thirty struggle towards the spiral of broken, concrete steps with two toddlers and two shopping bags. She paused to push oily hair behind her ear before hoisting the weight of the bags again.

No way to live, Morrison thought. No way to live at all.

Number 53 had a battered blue door, a shiny new catch fixed into splintered and naked wood. The door was opened by a stocky, tattooed man, wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt.

‘Jo Hawkins?’

‘Who wants him?’ Hawkins showed his teeth. ‘Let me guess—police.’

Morrison smiled. ‘Superintendent Morrison.’

‘I’m paying the fine.’

‘I’m sure you are, Jo. I just want to talk to you.’

‘Well I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Vanner,’ Morrison said. ‘I want to talk about Vanner.’

Hawkins hovered a moment then he stood aside and gestured for Morrison to pass.

Morrison was greeted by a neat hall and an open door to the living room. A lengthy, chain-link dog lead hung from the back of the door. Hawkins led the way into the living room and moved a set of curl bar weights from an armchair. Morrison glimpsed the black and white photographs of his host dressed in army fatigues; a maroon beret laid on the shelf next to a picture from the Falklands. He nodded to the weights. ‘Keep yourself fit?’

Hawkins nodded. ‘Used to go running with my dog, till some tart shot the poor bastard.’ He took a packet of papers and a plastic pouch of rolling tobacco from the mantelpiece.

Morrison took out his warrant card and waved it at him. ‘I’m with CIB,’ he said. ‘Police complaints.’

‘I haven’t made one.’

‘I know you haven’t.’ Morrison perched himself on the arm of the settee. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Vanner.’

Morrison nodded.

Hawkins smiled. ‘I saw the bastard got suspended.’

‘Beating up a suspect.’

‘Yeah. That’s Vanner all over.’

Morrison pricked up his ears. ‘Is it?’

‘Course it is. Hard man is Vanner. Or at least he thinks he is.’

‘You don’t.’

‘He used to put it about a bit in Belfast.’ He shrugged. ‘Tough enough I suppose.’

‘You served with him.’

‘For a tour I did, yeah.’

‘After the Falklands?’

Hawkins nodded.

‘Vanner was there—in the Falklands?’

‘He was there. Not with the action though. At least I never saw him.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘Does anybody?’

Morrison moved from the arm of the settee to the seat, but found it no more comfortable.

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