Post Mortem by Gary Bell (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

Five minutes passed. Ten. It got darker.

At first, I’d been genuinely concerned for the safety of the Meadows brood – there was something about Deacon that had rubbed me up the wrong way as soon as I’d heard him coming – but, on reflection, Charli’s son’s excitement wasn’t much cause for concern. Still, my hunch remained.

I was watching the rear-view mirror, in which I could see both the bend in the road and my own eyes. ‘Do we really look like Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ I asked.

‘Probably. You do, anyway.’

‘I should buy some new clothes.’

‘Probably,’ Zara said again. ‘At least we know who put those drugs in the car.’

I turned to face her; she didn’t look up from her phone.

‘Might as well say what we’re both thinking,’ she continued. ‘I have to admit, I did think our Keyser Söze would look a bit more impressive than Slim Shady on steroids, but there you go.’

‘We don’t know anything for sure.’

‘No? Growing up on my estate, I saw a lot of drug wagons. Now that, my learned friend, was a drug dealer’s car. He rocks up with his gold alloys, dressed in a few hundred quid’s worth of clothes, gives his girlfriend’s kid a pair of £500 trainers and just so happens to be familiar with the local courts. He put the drugs in the car. Next case, Your Honour.’

I clicked my tongue. ‘You know, you wouldn’t make a very good spy, staring at your phone like that. It’s lighting up the whole car.’

‘Research.’

‘How’s that?’

‘I’m rereading that National Crime Agency piece from last year: “County Lines Violence, Exploitation and Drug Supply”.’

‘I can save you the time,’ I said, eyes back on the mirror. ‘It’s a simple enough tactic. A group of dealers establishes an untraceable, disposable mobile phone line between their urban base and a distant county location. Orders are placed on that one phone line, and the group will typically exploit vulnerable persons, usually children, to travel out to whichever county whenever there’s stock to be replenished and cash to be collected. Seaside towns are a popular choice. If a child is nicked it’s no big loss to the dealers. A young offender can only receive a limited punishment and, as far as their bosses are concerned, they’re expendable.’

‘I know that, but there’s something in particular I wanted to check over … Ah, here it is. Cuckooing. Basically, it’s when a gang operates from the home of a susceptible person, typically a drug addict or sex worker, although this report also includes the elderly and people with mental or physical health impairments. Often, it says, cuckooing involves a drug dealer who forms a relationship with a single mother, essentially tricking her into feeling loved while using the house for storage of their product. Sound familiar, considering what we’ve just seen?’

‘It’s certainly persuasive,’ I had to admit.

‘I’d bet my tenancy on it. Then there’s the fighting dog. Didn’t you tell me those are rare?’

‘Very. Werner, the breeder I defended, told me they were being bred for specific people. It sounded as if he was talking about a gang.’

‘A gang like the Cutthroats?’

‘Quite possibly,’ I admitted.

‘And they’re used for guarding the homes of dealers?’

‘Often.’

‘Then she’s probably guilty,’ she said.

‘Remember not to confuse guilty with whether or not she has done it,’ I replied. ‘Guilty is a jury verdict, and that’s a long way away. We trust in the system. That’s justice.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but you’ve been doing this long enough. Surely there’ve been a couple of cases you’ve wanted to lose.’

‘Never. I want to win them all, and I try my best to do so.’

She inhaled deeply. ‘Because that’s what the client deserves, right?’

‘That’s right.’

Our wait continued. Another couple of minutes passed before Zara started to speak, hesitated, then started again. ‘I … I messaged Omar Pickett.’

I turned to face her. ‘You did what?’

‘Only through Facebook,’ she replied quickly. ‘And Instagram. Twitter … Oh, and Snapchat.’

‘Zara!’ I groaned.

‘Uh-oh. You only ever call me by my first name when I’m in trouble.’

‘You bloody well might be! That was a thoroughly unprofessional, dangerous, stupid thing to do.’

‘But this could be the solution to my whole case! This guy Omar is supposedly on the run from his own gang, so he’s got nowhere else to go. My client, Andre, was arrested in his place. All I said was that I wanted him to talk to me. If he does that, then maybe I could get him into witness protection in exchange for any information he has on –’

‘What about your own safety?’ I snapped. ‘Did you stop for one moment to consider the possible ramifications? You’ve personally messaged a drug dealer, a fugitive for Christ’s sake. It is totally irresponsible.’

‘Really?’ She looked me dead in the eyes. ‘How’s your dog?’

I opened my mouth. A few seconds later, I closed it again and turned my shoulder on her. After another minute of silence, music started playing from her phone. A hard, thumping, electronic beat with dark, slow, almost sludgy rapping over it. At first, I thought it was in a different language altogether, but there were definitely parts from the Oxford English Dictionary. Something about gutting somebody’s infant sister and burning down a hospital, as far as I could make out.

‘What the hell is this?’ I grumbled.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is Omar Pickett.’

It was enough to snag my curiosity. Reluctantly, I looked at her screen. A YouTube video. In it, a figure in a tracksuit was gesticulating in the half-pipe of an otherwise empty, graffiti-covered skatepark. He appeared to be a very young man, and he also appeared to be rapping along to the dubbed track, though both were hard to confirm as he was wearing a mask that completely concealed his identity. The mask was fabric and painted with a sinister red skull.

Unimpressed, I huffed. ‘How can you even tell who that is?’

‘He doesn’t try to hide it on social media. The mask seems to be for effect. His rapping alias is