She’d certainly be worth keeping an eye on.

  He’d start with Andy Bagnall’s friend, though. Not the one from the railway station (he guessed that name would be in the phone somewhere) but the one he’d been planning to lay low with. A couple of nights sleeping rough won’t kill me, that’s what he’d said in the note to his sister. Chuck my sleeping bag down next to hers. I’m sure she won’t mind . . .

  He settled back to enjoy the thrilling spectacle of DCI Barnaby ruthlessly hunting down a killer twisted enough to use an oversized dairy product as a weapon. Now, Draper had some hunting of his own to do. Yeah, Blackpool had more than its fair share of druggies and wasters, but there weren’t that many people dossing down on the streets, so this girl shouldn’t be very hard to find.

  Finn was an unusual name.

  ELEVEN

  A few minutes after Miller had unceremoniously plonked it down on his desk, DCI Bob Perks pushed the briefcase away and removed the nitrile gloves he’d snapped on before opening it. He puffed out his cheeks, sat back and sighed.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Miller said.

  Sitting across from him, Miller could see no reason why Perks should be anything other than delighted that the case had finally turned up, but if he was, the man from S&O certainly wasn’t letting his face know about it.

  ‘You’ll understand I’m quite keen to know how you ended up with it.’

  ‘My dog found it,’ Miller said.

  ‘Like that dog who found the World Cup.’

  ‘Exactly like that.’ Miller nodded enthusiastically, as if Perks was spot on. ‘Aside from the body parts, obviously. And the fact that it’s not a cup.’

  ‘What’s your dog’s name?’

  The offices of Serious and Organised were at the top of the headquarters building, two floors above Homicide, where Miller was based. He stared past Perks at the skyline, barely visible through windows whose cleaning was clearly no longer a priority now that budgets were tighter than a gnat’s chuff. They were on the wrong side of the building to have a view of the Tower, but Miller had seen that just about every day of his adult life and the magic had worn off after he’d seen it the first time. He stared out at a crane instead, a concrete pipe suspended beneath it, and wondered what he should call his imaginary dog.

  ‘Have you forgotten?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your dog’s name?’

  ‘Oh, did I say dog? I meant this lad found it, then gave it to me. Sorry, I’m a bit all over the shop.’

  ‘This . . . lad being one of the ones who nicked it at the station.’

  ‘I can see why they pay you the big bucks, Bob.’

  ‘Why did he give the briefcase to you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Miller said. ‘Anyway, those lads were just chancers, so there’s really no need to worry your pretty little head about them.’

  Perks looked as though he was worrying a great deal but chose not to pursue it there and then. ‘Did he at least have a name? This chancer.’

  ‘Andy Bagnall.’ Miller watched Perks reach for a pen and begin to scribble the name down. ‘I can tell you exactly where he is, too, if that helps.’ Perks nodded, pen poised. ‘He’s currently residing at the mortuary, because the poor sod was murdered last night.’

  Perks put the pen down. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Shit indeed. I’m guessing he was killed by the bloke responsible for the contents of that briefcase, who clearly wants it even more than you do.’

  The DCI sighed heavily and sat back, taking in this disturbing new development. Then something dawned on him and he quickly sat forward again, pointing at the briefcase. ‘So, you had this last night?’

  ‘Well, Bagnall didn’t give it me after he was killed, did he?’

  ‘So why the hell am I only getting it now?’ Perks immediately raised a hand to ward off an answer, well aware that whatever Miller was about to come up with was only going to make his mood a lot worse. He scowled and lowered his voice. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing, Dec . . . if Alex hadn’t been one of my team as well as being a bloody good friend, I’d be making damn sure you were up on a serious misconduct charge. As it is . . . ’

  ‘Alex always said you were one of the good ones, Bob.’ As Miller recalled, her precise words had actually been ‘tedious tit’, but he decided he’d best keep that to himself, all things considered.

  Perks nodded and sighed again. ‘God knows how I’m going to explain how the case has suddenly turned up, mind you.’

  ‘Maybe you could say your dog found it.’

  Perks opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Roger!’ Miller nodded, pleased with himself. ‘That’s what I should have called my dog. Roger the dog . . . though that is of course arrestable under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003—’

  ‘Can we please get on with it?’

  Miller looked shocked. ‘I’m waiting for you. So, let’s hear it then: what’s the story with your super-successful sting at the station?’

  ‘I don’t think I need to tell you anything,’ Perks said.

  ‘Come on, I told you about Bagnall.’

  ‘Just his bloody name.’

  ‘Quid pro quo, Clarice.’ Miller nodded at the case. ‘Look, I already know who those hands belonged to.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A little bird who runs a dancehall told me.’

  ‘Yeah, not surprised he knows what’s going on.’

  ‘What, but not why,’ Miller said.

  The DCI rubbed his eyes, thinking about it. Then he shrugged. ‘You ever had a Bardsley Burger?’

  ‘Not as I can remember.’

  ‘You should keep it that way, if you want to do your arteries a favour. Anyway, there’s a chain of them in Preston and Blackburn, as well as a few pubs and bars. Frank Bardsley’s built himself a decent little empire over there and he’s started to make inroads here. Nothing much, and certainly not enough to worry the likes of Wayne Cutler or your friend at the Majestic.’

  Miller’s face darkened. ‘He’s not my friend.’

  Perks raised a hand, acknowledging the tactless remark. ‘Bardsley’s certainly not in their league when it comes to criminality, that’s what I’m saying. It’s strictly Sunday kickabout stuff. The odd kebab shop owner having an unfortunate accident with a skewer, a few burger vans mysteriously catching fire, but nothing terminal.’

  ‘So, what’s rattled Cutler’s cage?’

  ‘Bardsley’s number two was a man called George Panaides, who—’

  ‘Won’t be making shadow puppets again any time soon.’

  They both stared at the severed hands; the rings adorning the swollen fingers which had now begun to blacken. ‘Well, I don’t have all the details because that murder was handled by a homicide team in Fleetwood, but yes, we have to assume they’re Panaides’s hands.’ Perks pointed at the largest of the rings, the raised letters GP. ‘George Panaides.’

  ‘Well, let’s not jump to conclusions, Bob. Does Gwyneth Paltrow have big hairy hands? Or maybe they belonged to a doctor with terrible taste in jewellery.’

  Perks ignored him. ‘It was Panaides who oversaw the opening of Bardsley’s first pub here.’

  ‘On Wetherby Avenue?’

  ‘Right. And who, almost certainly unknown to Frank Bardsley, began running a small drugs operation.’

  ‘Ah . . . ’

  ‘So, because that definitely is stepping on his toes, Cutler hires a man named Dennis Draper – which we don’t believe to be his real name, by the way – to sort Panaides out, which he did a couple of weeks back.’ Perks opened a drawer, took out a file and removed a selection of photographs. He slid them across the desk. ‘These are the only pictures of Draper that we’ve been able to get.’

  Miller picked up the photographs. Unsurprisingly, all had been taken surreptitiously from a distance and none provided any great detail. The subject was tall and stringy with long dark hair and – blurry as it was – the face did not look to be one you would forget in a hurry, however much you wanted to.

  ‘He’s a seriously nasty piece of work,’ Perks said. ‘But I obviously don’t need to tell you that.’

  ‘Not really.’ Miller blinked and saw Andy Bagnall’s face, purplish and bloated beneath that plastic bag. Brutally murdered, and guilty of not much more than dreaming of going to America.

  Now, real or not, Miller had a name.

  ‘Cutler was at the station the other day to meet Draper and hand over payment, in return for proof that Draper had done what he was hired to do. Catching Cutler in the act would have given us proof that he’d paid to have Panaides killed. Sadly, this lad Bagnall and his mate had other ideas, so . . . ’

  Miller stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To get you your proof,’ Miller said.

  Now Perks stood up. ‘Hold your horses, Dec—’

  ‘When I get Draper, you’ll have what you need, because I can’t see him going down without wanting to take Wayne Cutler with him. Blokes like that don’t tend to be super loyal.’

  ‘Look, I know you’ve caught this murder and I can see you’re fired up because you had dealings with this lad, but remember, this is my investigation.’

  ‘Well obviously,’ Miller said. ‘Soon as I get anything, you’ll get it.’

  ‘A bit quicker than I got this sodding briefcase, though, right?’

  ‘Scout’s honour. That said, I was chucked out of Scouts because I called Akela a bell-end, on top of which I could never say woggle without giggling.’

  ‘We’ll . . . liaise, yeah?’

  ‘You can use fancy French words all you like, Bob, but if you mean will I trot up here and tell you, absolutely. This is very much a bisexual arrangement though, right?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It goes both ways. If you get any useful forensics off that briefcase or any leads on Dennis Draper, you let me know.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Perks followed Miller to the door. ‘This mate of Bagnall’s, have you got a name?’

  Half a name, Miller thought. ‘I’m on it,’ he said.

  ‘Best get on it fast,’ Perks said.

  Miller didn’t need reminding why. Until Draper had his hands on the briefcase containing Panaides’s hands and got the payday it represented, he would remain very dangerous. Now he’d eliminated Bagnall, chances were he’d go after the lad Bagnall had been with at the station.

  Miller urgently needed to find Andy Bagnall’s partner in half-arsed crime before Draper or Cutler did.

  TWELVE

  Frank Bardsley owed everything to his prowess at mathematics. Being good at maths at Moorbrook School was a triumph in itself, growing up in an area of Preston where reading a tabloid cover to cover was likely to earn you the nickname ‘professor’. Frank had always loved numbers. They did what they were told. Two multiplied by two was always going to sodding well be four with no arguments. So, while his contemporaries signed on or went thieving, Frank waited for his numerical acumen to pay dividends.

  One night in a burger joint on Fishergate, it did.

  The forty-four (and counting) fast food establishments upon which the Bardsley empire was based grew from a stroke of genius best expressed as a simple mathematical equation.

  Lager + Time = Shit Food.

  It had dawned on Frank – in a Eureka moment that made that Greek bloke in the bath look like Joey Essex – that these burger bars and kebab houses were wasting their time opening during the day. There was something in lager, some secret additive, he was sure of it. That was the only possible explanation for people wanting to eat greasy reconstituted rubbish in the first place. And a good few pints as well, not just a quick half at lunchtime. Nobody in their right mind wanted a kebab at lunchtime.

  So, why were these idiots wasting good money on wages, raw materials, heating and lighting and all that during the day? Open between 11 p.m. and two in the morning and you w ere on to a winner. Obviously there was the small matter of getting rid of the competition, but that was where Frank’s best mate George had come in.

  George Panaides, too, had taken his childhood interests and successfully exploited them in adulthood. His area of expertise was more predictable in a school where you were overdressed with both your ears. At Moorbrook, George had been the leading exponent of an initiation rite in which first-formers, in a timeless gesture of warmth and welcome, had their heads shoved down the toilet. Once he’d put away childish things, George began to branch out. He used other, more imaginative combinations of vessels and liquids: a bath full of paraffin; a septic tank; and, on one occasion of which he was particularly proud, a deep-fat fryer.

  ‘I don’t know which I enjoyed more, Frank,’ George had told him. ‘The sound of the bloke squealing or the sizzle when I shoved his arm in.’

  So, through a creative mixture of mathematics and dunking, the Bardsley empire grew until nobody ate so much as a battered sausage in Preston without Frank knowing about it. Soon they branched out into the licensing trade, taking over a string of pubs on the north side of the city.

  Now he had the lager and the shit food, Frank truly believed that he owned men’s lives.

  Of course there had been pressure, notably from George, to invest in the city’s other growth industries – prostitution, gambling and drugs – but Frank had always pushed back, because fast food was where his heart was. Fast food had made him. The sight of a discarded Styrofoam carton bearing the legend Bardsley’s Burgers was still enough to bring a tear to his eye. The fact that, in all probability, it still contained the burger was neither here nor there.

  Frank had earned the big house in Woodplumpton, the swimming pool and the fleet of flash cars. He’d worked his tits off for the holidays in St Lucia and the private schools for Francesca and Archie. And now it could all turn to doo-doo because stupid bloody George had got greedy.

  It had been George’s idea to open a Bardsley’s Burgers in Blackpool, the pub as well, and even though Frank had briefed him on the perils of encroachment on firmly established turf (after first explaining what encroachment meant) George had insisted on pushing ahead. And for a while, it looked as if they’d got away with it. There had even been a phone conversation with Wayne Cutler, during which Frank had assured his fellow businessman that he had nothing to worry about.

  ‘Burgers are my business, Wayne.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Burgers and nowt else. Well, we also do a blinding saveloy . . . but you get what I’m saying.’

  Cutler had said that he did. He said that he might even pop in one night to try a Bardsley quarter-pounder for himself and, as long as burgers stayed Frank’s only business, they would get on like a house on fire. Which might well be what would happen, he warned, should the situation change.

  Well, the situation had changed, all because George had decided to moonlight as a bloody drug dealer, knocking out weed and pills and whatever else along with the nuggets and the onion rings. He’d paid the price, too. Left a wife and two kiddies behind.

  He’d known the risks, of course he had. Daft sod. Nothing was going to bring him back, though, and whatever else Frank could be accused of, he was not and never had been a man of violence. Not very much violence, at any rate.

  But . . . George had been his friend.

  And then there was the maths problem. The bloody maths didn’t work! Frank was now minus one and it niggled him because things needed equalling up. The obvious way to do that was to ‘subtract’ one of Cutler’s crew and, in an ideal world, it would be the one who’d taken George out of the equation.

  It couldn’t be that hard to find out the bloke’s name.

  Plenty of gobby coppers were partial to a Bardsley’s Big Beefy One.

  Frank stood up, poured himself a Campari and soda and knocked off the sound on Countdown. The numbers game was a piece of cake anyway. He wandered across to the big windows in his sitting room and looked out at the garden. Archie and Francesca were messing about on their quad bikes.

  It was an awful lot to risk, but maths was maths, wasn’t it?

  Not that any of it would matter if Maureen did what she’d started threatening to do and walked out with the kids. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out why his wife had been so miserable lately. It hacked him right off, what with everything Bardsley’s Burgers had given her, but once this George situation had been sorted out, he’d do whatever he could to improve the situation and make her happy again.

  Some nice jewellery, maybe, or a new car. She’d come round . . .

  Standing at the window, Frank was thinking about another lad he’d known back at Moorbrook, one who’d been particularly matey with George, as it happened. Martin Molineux had been rather more . . . practical than Frank had, with metalwork lessons being his particular favourite. He was a dab hand with rasps and power-tools and stuff, and Frank could still picture the cracking set of coat-hooks he’d knocked up for his mum. Martin had eventually been expelled for nicking equipment but – fair play to him – had gone on to use his skills both professionally as a skilled welder and in rather more creative ways. Once when someone cut him up at traffic lights and, most recently, when someone had looked the wrong way at his girlfriend.

  Frank was pretty sure he’d be out of prison by now.

  In the garden, Francesca and Archie were tearing around the pool on the bikes. Frank banged on the window, worried that they were getting too close to the edge, but they couldn’t hear him.

  He thought about George and his innocent glee at that ‘sizzle’. About happier days when the two of them stood proudly behind the counter together in that first branch of Bardsley’s Burgers. He thought about the simple pleasures of equilibrium.