Ronan relaxed his gun hand, dropping his arm back to his side. ‘It’ll be dangerous, but if you can pull it off, you should be able to pay me back with interest.’
‘I don’t care how dangerous it is. If it saves my family and gets you your money, I’ll do it.’
Ronan nodded. He was getting all the right answers.
‘There’s a guy. A drug dealer. Tomorrow afternoon, between four and five, he’ll take possession of a bag of money – a white Adidas sports bag. Thing is, he’ll only have it for a short time. It’ll be picked up from him again at seven o’clock. You’ll need to get it from him before then.’
‘Get it from him? What do you mean?’
Christ, thought Ronan. Why do I have to spell it out?
‘I mean take it. Steal it. You do whatever you have to do to get that money from him, and then you bring it here and give it to me.’
‘How much money will he have?’
‘Hard to say. Depends on how good a day it’s been. It’ll be a lot, though. Enough to cover my losses so far – the losses you caused. And, by the way, don’t get tempted to skim from the top. I’ll get accurate figures afterwards. I’ll know.’
‘I don’t want the money. I just want to put an end to this.’
‘Then you’ll do it?’
‘I . . . You said it’s dangerous. How dangerous?’
‘This guy, he’s not just going to hand over the money. You’ll need to go in hard and fast.’
‘And . . . if I fail? If I get killed trying?’
‘You can consider your debt paid. I won’t go after your family.’
Ronan watched as Scott searched the sky for guidance.
‘It’s a deal. If you can promise me that my family will be safe, whatever the outcome, it’s a deal.’
‘I guarantee it. You get me the money or you die trying. Either way, your family will never hear from me again.’
‘Okay. Who’s the guy? Who am I stealing the money from?’
‘That’s the beauty of it. He lives in the same building as you. Goes by the name of Barrington Daley.’
41
Hannah desperately wanted in on the interview.
She had been home – brushed her teeth and gargled, had a shower, brushed her teeth and gargled, got dressed, brushed her teeth and gargled – and now she was back at the station. She wanted to look her attacker in the eye as she asked him what had been going through his head. And, in return, she wanted to give him her side of the story.
But it was against regulations. For one thing, she was still under the influence of alcohol. For another, she was the victim, and therefore it would be a conflict of interest for her to take part in the investigation. It wasn’t even a case for CID. She would just have to trust the pair of interviewing officers, while she made do with watching it all on a live camera feed.
He had turned down the offer of legal representation. Said he had nothing to hide, that he was proud of what he did. ‘Bitch deserved it,’ he said. ‘What would you do if someone murdered your mother?’
It was a one-sided interview. The doctor had inspected his wounds and given him the all-clear, and now he wanted to get it all off his chest. His hate for Hannah was the only fuel he needed to keep talking, the brief interjections from the officers serving only to keep him on track.
‘My mother was a good woman,’ he told them. ‘Okay, maybe she didn’t make the best decisions when it came to men, but that didn’t make her a criminal. Didn’t mean that your detective bitch friend had to make her so scared that she had to run away. Why didn’t she just let her go instead of chasing her right into the path of a train? My mum didn’t deserve that.’
‘That incident was investigated thoroughly, Shane,’ one of the officers said. ‘DI Washington was—’
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t even go there, okay? You lot always close ranks. You cover it all up. Maybe if you’d done your jobs properly and punished that woman – fired her or something – then maybe none of this would’ve happened. But no. She was allowed to carry on as normal. Like my mum didn’t even count.’
‘And that made you angry enough to go after DI Washington?’
‘I hated her. Simple as. I wanted to hurt her. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I wanted revenge.’
‘So how did you go about it?’
‘I went back and read all the reports about my mum’s case. One of the papers mentioned the police station where Washington worked. I started parking up outside and waiting for her. It took me a while to figure out which car she used, and then I started following her. The first few times, I kept losing her in traffic. And whenever I managed to track her all the way, there’d always be other people there – other coppers. I had no chance to get near her. But then this one time she went into a block of flats.’
‘Erskine Court.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what happened there?’
‘She and another copper talked to a gang of lads, but then the lads came out. When I walked towards the flats, I could see that she’d split up with the other detective and she was alone by the lift door. I had a piece of wood with me, under my coat, and I went inside. She didn’t see me, and I knew this was my chance. I started hitting her. She tried to get away, but I just kept hitting her, and then she went down. I . . . I don’t know what I was going to do then.’
‘Were you trying to kill her?’
‘No. Not kill her. I just wanted to hurt her. I needed to punish her. But then this bloke came into the building. He saw me and shouted something, and I ran out the back door. I didn’t know how bad her injuries were, but to be honest I didn’t really care. I did what I had to do. For my mum.’
‘So why wasn’t that enough for you?’
