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  DARKNESS VISIBLE

  A Lambert and Hook Mystery

  J M Gregson

  This first world edition published 2009

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SMI IDE

  Trade paperback edition published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2010 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2009 by J. M. Gregson.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Gregson, J. M.

  Darkness Visible.

  1. Lambert, John (Fictitious character) - Fiction. 2. Hook, Bert (Fictitious character) - Fiction. 3. Police - England - Gloucestershire - Fiction. 4. Extortion investigation - Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6798-8(cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-166-9(trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  All Severn House titles are printed on acid-free paper.

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd., Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd., Bodmin, Cornwall.

  To John and Frances Milburn, who have supported me over many years with enthusiasm and a wealth of lively comment!

  ‘No light, but rather darkness visible’

  Milton, Paradise Lost, Book One

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  One

  He preferred the winter. It suited his personality, as well as what he did. He told himself again that he should rejoice in the summer warmth. He ran his fingers over the thin flesh of his arms, feeling them warm, assured himself that June was a comfortable month. But the wish was skin- deep; his mind yearned for the winter dark.

  The silhouette of Gloucester Cathedral rose above him against a summer sky which still held the last vestiges of light. At ten thirty on this balmy evening, you could see no detail save the massive outline, soaring away towards the deepening navy of the infinity above.

  A neutral, pitiless infinity, Darren Chivers told himself contemptuously. Not that all-seeing, all-knowing heaven which had dominated the thoughts of those ignorant builders and the peasants who had flocked in to gaze at their handiwork. The cathedral was a vain leap, not towards heaven but towards an impersonal, indifferent infinity. He sneered again at the pretensions of those fourteenth-century men who had let their lives be dominated by stone and superstition.

  Yet the cathedral made Darren uneasy, as it always did. A massive certainty had lain behind its building, a certainty which made his confident rejection of those ideas seem very puny. He turned his back determinedly upon this silhouette of the past. He listened to the noise of the city, to the sounds of voices raised in laughter and in argument, which were carried to him through the warm night. Then he padded away quickly towards the place he had to go, cursing again the summer and the warmth and the night which did not have the blackness of winter.

  He needed darkness for what he had to do. Winter darkness. No one really wanted the cold and the rain, but he needed the dark to cloak his actions. ‘Darkness visible’: he remembered that phrase from his schooldays, which belonged now to another, more innocent, world. A world where he had been a bright boy, studying for A levels, knowing nothing of this different world awaiting him.

  One of those dusty old poets - he couldn’t remember which - had used that phrase. But he liked the idea, now that he was threatened by the garish hues of summer. Darkness which you could almost see and touch was what he needed. ‘Darkness which may be felt.’ A phrase in the Bible, which he now found so quaint.

  The pub wasn’t far from the cathedral. He threaded his way through the narrow streets towards the old docks. He liked the contrast between the respectable tourist parts of the ancient city and the spots where he now made his living. The cathedral and the old streets like Eastgate and Westgate were within half a mile of the spot where the gruesome Fred and Rose West had perpetrated their appalling murders. He liked that proximity; it seemed to afford a shield for his activities.

  The pub was crowded, as Chivers had known it would be. He sat in one of the alcoves which were all that remained of the pub’s original design. What had once been a labyrinth of small rooms had been converted long ago into one large bar, but these recesses still afforded a little of the privacy which had been automatic in the old building. It wasn’t until he was sitting with a pint of lager in front of him that he realized that one of the three small light bulbs above his head had fused. He had automatically chosen the dimmest of even these less-illuminated spots.

  Darren Chivers pulled out his copy of the Gloucester Citizen and scanned the headlines. Immigrant workers were providing easy copy again. The farmers in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire maintained that they needed them to harvest the strawberries and raspberries in the summer and apples, pears and plums in the autumn; the residents muttered darkly about housing problems and rising crime statistics.

  He had not been there more than five minutes when a longhaired youth slid into the bench seat on the other side of the scarred table. He felt the new arrival’s anxious eyes upon him, but he did not look up from the newspaper. The youth coughed, then asked urgently, ‘Darren Chivers?’

  Still he did not look up from his paper, with its half-page picture of polythene strawberry tunnels stretching away to infinity. ‘We don’t deal in names here.’

  ‘I need to know. I don’t want to try to deal with the wrong man, do I?’

  Darren looked up, stared directly into the anxious, too-revealing face. It was a little older than he had thought: twenty, perhaps twenty-one. He was twenty-seven himself, but he felt immeasurably older than his gauche young questioner. ‘Fair point. I’m the man you want. But forget that name. As soon as you leave here. I’m Gary Peters. Got it?’

  ‘Gary Peters. Yes, I’ve got it. It’s just that—’

  ‘What do you want?’

  The young man glanced automatically to each side of him, checking whether there were listeners. He shouldn’t have done that. It was likely to draw curious eyes to what you were about. It was a mistake that wouldn’t have shown, wouldn’t have mattered, in darkness. ‘What you got?’

  Darren didn’t check for listeners, didn’t twist his head in that too-revealing movement his customer had made. But he was aware of everything around them. ‘I’ve got most things. What you buying?’

  ‘You got coke?’

  ‘I’ve got good rocks. Quality rocks. Clean rocks. Not cheap, mind. But you’ll find the quality warrants the price.’

  ‘Horse?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got horse.’ He looked at t
he arms the man had folded on the table, wondering what puncture marks lay beneath the wool of the thin sweater. Thin but expensive, like the fawn chinos hidden under the table; this customer should be able to afford the new prices.

  ‘Rohypnol?’

  The sex drug, the scarcest and most highly priced of his wares. The one which would get a girl into bed with you, whatever she had thought she would do at the beginning of the evening. Or even a man, if that’s the way your cookie crumbled.

  Darren said with a small, sour, unemotional smile, ‘Dirty bugger! Yes, I’ve got Rohypnol. It’ll cost you, though.’ He looked into the eager young face, thought contemptuously of the racing hormones which would drive this man into parting with his money.

  ‘It shouldn’t be that dear. It doesn’t cost that much to produce.’

  ‘Supply and demand, son. Short supply, high demand. You don’t have to buy. No one’s forcing you to buy.’ He let a little mockery creep into his voice, knowing that this client couldn’t afford to take offence. ‘You can just carry on wanking.’

  The youth tried to assert himself. ‘Let’s have some prices. Let’s see what you have to offer, before we go any further.’

  The man’s hand slipped automatically to his pocket. Darren heard the rustle of notes.

  ‘Easy, mate, easy. Not here. We don’t deal here. Little pigs have big ears and big eyes.’ His customer stared round again, looking for cops in plain clothes. You’d think he was deliberately trying to attract suspicion, thought Darren Chivers with a mental sigh.

  ‘Where, then?’

  He hadn’t even pinned down prices. This was the kind of client you needed, the kind the bosses always pretended were queuing up for you: affluent, non-violent, amenable. There weren’t many of them about nowadays. In another few months, even this one would be wilier and more difficult. Make hay while the sun shines, Darren told himself. Perhaps there’s something to be said for the summer after all.

  ‘There’s a small yard at the back. Go though the door beyond the gents. Twelve minutes time - not before that. I don’t want you hanging about out there and exciting the wrong sort of interest. Go back to the bar now. Don’t look at me again. Talk to someone there, if you can. We mustn’t be seen to go outside together.’

  The young man checked his watch and Darren gave him a grimmer, more businesslike smile. He always gave a precise time, and never used a round figure. It seemed to impress the punters, that. He sipped his lager slowly, glancing occasionally at the pub clock, not at his wrist. Without moving his head as the younger man had done, he checked the people who sat at other tables, as far as the limited view from the alcove permitted. There was no one around who looked like an undercover drug squad man. Or woman - you had to be alive to every possibility these days.

  Chivers was apparently reading the Citizen when the longhaired youth left the bar. Ninety seconds later, Darren finished the last of his drink, rose unhurriedly, folded his newspaper, and slid it under his anorak. He was the only one wearing such a garment on this warm evening. He’d considered abandoning it for the summer, so as to blend in with the crowd.

  But he needed the four capacious pockets in the worn, baggy garment for the goods he was selling. He was glad to find a reason for its continued use. It felt to him like a uniform, offering the protection which other, more genuine and respectable, uniforms accorded to their wearers.

  He put his glass back on the bar, nodded his assent to the barman’s thanks, and went down the corridor to the gents’ toilet. He’d sold in here, when he’d started, but he knew of two people who’d been arrested in such places. There always seemed to be a cubicle with a locked door. You never knew who was using the secrecy of such places, and he saw no need to take unnecessary chances. You needed caution and luck to survive in this game; if you were cautious enough, you made your own luck. That was what he’d told one of the new recruits yesterday. He smiled in the welcoming darkness. In this trade, you could be a veteran at twenty-seven.

  The youth was where he’d told him to be. Ninety seconds can be a long time when you stand alone in darkness, waiting to conduct an illegal transaction. He was nervous, anxious to have this over with, as Darren had known he would be. There was a low brick wall here, the remnants of an outside privy which had never been completely removed. Chivers laid his samples out for inspection, as he had done many times before, flashing his tiny torch six inches above them to show the range and the quality. ‘The coke’s a hundred quid.’

  The youth raised a tentative hand towards the rocks of cocaine, but Darren clamped a steely grip upon his wrist. ‘You don’t handle the goods, son. Not until you’ve paid for them. You’ve got eyes in your head, that’s all you need.’

  ‘They’re not very big.’

  ‘They’re quality. You can cut them. Even cut them again, if you want to. Mix them with cheaper stuff, if you care to take the risk. That’s up to you.’ He switched off the white light of his torch.

  ‘It’s not much, for a hundred quid.’

  ‘Price isn’t for negotiation, son. Take it or leave it.’ Darren knew that the man was going to take it.

  ‘All right.’ The hand moved again towards the white cubes, faintly visible in their paper on the top of the wall, now that their eyes were accustomed to the night.

  Claw-like fingers fell again upon his wrist. ‘Payment upfront, son.’

  The rustle of paper, the welcome feel of notes in his palm. He flashed the torch again on what he held. He didn’t like fifties; he always feared counterfeits, though he’d never been passed any. These two looked genuine enough. ‘The Rohypnol’s fifty a shot. Do you twice if you use it with discretion.’ He gave a sinister chuckle at his humour, at the mention of discretion in such a context. Chivers had no idea whether what he said was true, but he fancied it wouldn’t be tested. When the blood pounded and men wanted women they couldn’t have, economy was the last thing on what was left of their minds. Another hundred pounds changed hands.

  The long-haired man took a long, deliberate breath, trying to still the thumping he felt in his chest. Darren smelt the whisky on his breath, the chaser he must have given himself at the bar before he slid out into the darkness for this meeting. First time, he reckoned, for this lad. But worth cultivating as he seemed to have plenty to spend.

  Chivers hadn’t got much sales talk - he didn’t need much, in this game, where people were anxious to buy. But he said, ‘You’ll find everything I push is good stuff. We only do the best.’

  ‘If that’s right. I’ll be back.’

  ‘You know where to find me. Gary Peters, not that other name you’ve now forgotten. I’m here most Thursdays.’ He wouldn’t give him other venues, other times. The less the man knew, the better. That was true of everyone in this trade. Chivers himself knew no one in the hierarchy above him except his own supplier, and didn’t wish to. If you knew the names of the big boys and revealed them, wittingly or unwittingly, you’d be found in some derelict site with a bullet through the back of your head - or not found at all. Ignorance was not exactly bliss, but it afforded a measure of safety in a dangerous world.

  The man hesitated, then repeated, ‘If what you say is right and this is good stuff. I’ll be back. Maybe with bigger orders. I have friends who use coke.’

  Darren smiled an unseen, contemptuous smile in the darkness. The middle-class professional set who used coke for kicks on nights in. He could see this young fool snorting the white stuff after dinner parties in a few years’ time. ‘I can do as much as you want.’ The man probably didn’t realize the different court sentences which came to a user and a supplier, but it wasn’t up to Darren to point out that he’d be carrying too much for his own use, that he’d be taking risks for other toffs in his circle. More fool him, more profit for me.

  Chivers slipped away the heroin and the LSD he had not sold, tapping down the flaps on the anorak pockets. ‘You leave now. You’ll need to go out through the pub - there’s no exit from here. I’ll depart in my own good time
.’

  That old saw about the customer being always right had no application here. It was the seller who called the shots in this trade. He turned his client towards the door of the pub, gave him a tiny push in the back to set him in motion. The orange light of the aperture blazed briefly for a moment, unnaturally bright to eyes now accustomed to darkness. The raucous laughter of the group at the bar blared for a second, then was abruptly silenced as the door shut.

  Chivers, senses acute as was appropriate for a creature of the night, listened for a moment to the sounds of the city as eleven o’clock approached. Car horns, car doors, engines roaring into life as feet pressed carelessly upon accelerator pedals. The sound of muted communal laughter and shouting was so distant that it seemed to him to come from a different world. He gave it two minutes, then moved soundlessly to the door which his client had slipped through a minute earlier. He opened it an inch, pressing his ear automatically to the gap to listen for any noise which might alert him to danger. Caution, as usual.

  It was caution which saved him.

  He did not catch the words of the challenge, but he heard the high, apprehensive response of the man whose two hundred pounds nestled in his pocket. Then the other voices in the pub fell silent and he heard the beginning of the words of arrest, the warning that the man did not need to say anything but anything he did say would be recorded and . . .

  Darren Chivers didn’t wait any longer. He was away over the wall at the back of the yard, using the foothold he had noted when he had surveyed his chosen dealing spot in daylight, dropping with simian agility into the deep shadow at the other side of it.

  There was a police car on the double yellow lines outside the pub entrance, as he had expected. Its siren was off, but its blue light blinked rhythmically, dazzlingly bright against the dimmer lights of the old street lighting. There was at least one copper inside the vehicle, probably two, but they were watching the front door of the pub, waiting to cover their colleagues if anyone tried to escape by that route.