CHAPTER EIGHT
Drew had been twenty-four when Daniel died.
Old enough to know grief did not make people truthful.
Young enough to believe revenge did.
For nine years he had carried one version of his brother's murder because it was simple enough to survive.
Daniel had been running a North End delivery across the Humber.
Redmile intercepted him outside Barton. His bike was found in a drainage ditch.
His body turned up two days later in a lock-up with two bullets in his chest.
Police recovered a Redmile patch beneath him.
North End retaliated.
Three men ended up dead over the next month.
Drew had personally broken the jaw of the man he believed arranged it.
Now a memory card hidden in a cocaine brick had asked him the one question nobody had asked in nine years.
Who killed Daniel Sayer?
"You've gone quiet," Leah said.
They were in the warehouse attached to the haulage office. Gareth had taken Mia to a room upstairs with Sam. Owen had arrived ten minutes earlier, furious at being kept out and even angrier when he learned why.
Drew leaned against a pallet of boxed machine parts.
"I'm thinking."
"Dangerous hobby."
"You liked me better when you were lying to me."
"I was nicer then."
"No, you weren't."
She folded her arms.
The bruise on her cheek had darkened. He wanted to touch it again and resented himself for noticing.
"Daniel was my older brother," he said. "Three years older. He joined before I did. Thought he was cleverer than everyone. Usually was."
"What was he doing when he died?"
"Driving cash."
"For the club?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"Two hundred grand."
"Recovered?"
"No."
Leah's eyes sharpened.
"And the police decided Redmile killed him because of a patch?"
"There was more. Phone traffic. A witness saw two Redmile bikes. One of their members disappeared the same night."
"Who ran the case?"
He already knew why she was asking.
"Venn was on it."
Leah exhaled.
"Of course he was."
Drew looked toward the office where the card sat in an evidence bag improvised from a sandwich wrapper.
"Your father dies in a fire. Venn is there. My brother gets murdered. Venn is there. Ben disappears. Venn is there. You get sent undercover into my club."
"Venn is there."
"That's a lot of coincidence."
"Police work has fewer coincidences than people think."
"And more corrupt officers?"
She did not answer.
Owen came through the fire door.
He had changed clothes and brought two handguns in a sports bag.
"Gareth says we're meeting them tomorrow."
"We're not giving them the card," Drew said.
"Then Amy dies."
"Maybe she dies if we do."
Owen's eyes moved to Leah.
"Still taking advice from her?"
"I'm taking information from her."
"She's filth."
Leah smiled without warmth. "You make that sound personal."
"You spent four months drinking our beer and writing down what we said."
"Most of what you said wasn't worth writing down."
Owen stepped toward her.
Drew moved once and found himself between them.
Owen stared at him.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"She was building a case on us."
"And somebody inside this club was building one for Redmile. Pick the problem trying to kill you first."
Owen's nostrils flared.
"Mia said founder patch."
"I know."
"Six men. Mick's dead. Terry Pike's in Spain. That leaves Gareth, Sam, Pete Lawson and Len Barker."
"Where are Pete and Len?"
"Pete's home. Len's at his daughter's in Goole."
Pete Lawson was old North End: patient, watchful and loyal to club history like scripture. Len Barker was quieter and remembered everything.
"Get them both here."
Owen's eyes narrowed. "You think it's one of them?"
"I think I don't know."
"That's becoming your favourite answer."
"Better than inventing one."
Owen took out his phone.
Leah watched him leave, then said quietly, "He hates me."
"He hates everybody until lunch."
"It's four in the morning."
"Then you're getting the premium version."
A gunshot cracked outside.
Drew was moving before the echo died.
He shoved Leah behind the pallet and drew his pistol.
A second shot.
Then Sam shouted from the office.
"Drew!"
They ran.
The front shutters were still down. Gareth stood beside the outer door with a shotgun. Sam was kneeling near the window.
Mia screamed upstairs.
Owen was on the concrete floor.
Blood spread beneath his shoulder.
"Where?" Drew asked.
"Across the road," Sam said. "Roofline."
Drew killed the lights.
Leah crawled to Owen.
"Entry wound high. Through-and-through, I think."
Owen gritted his teeth. "Don't fucking touch me."
"Fine. Bleed artistically."
She pressed a folded towel against the wound anyway.
Another shot punched through the office glass and buried itself in the wall.
Drew stayed low.
"How did they find us?"
Nobody answered.
Then Leah looked at the laptop.
"The card."
Drew turned.
"Router's disconnected."
"Doesn't matter if the card has its own transmitter."
"A memory card?"
"The sleeve. The package. Anything."
She pointed toward the desk.
"Get it away from us."
Gareth grabbed the bag.
"No," Leah said sharply. "Don't carry it."
Drew understood.
He picked up a metal cash box, shoved the card and its sleeve inside, closed the lid and slid the box across the floor toward the loading bay.
The gunfire stopped.
Everyone listened.
Thirty seconds.
Nothing.
Drew crawled to a side window and looked through a crack in the blind.
A black estate car pulled away from the industrial units opposite.
"Gone."
Leah sat back on her heels.
Owen looked at her with grudging irritation.
"You still filth."
"And you're still bleeding. Hold that."
Pete Lawson arrived twenty minutes later in slippers, jeans and an old North End hoodie beneath his cut.
Sixty-one. Heavy set. Former mechanic. One of the original six still living.
Len Barker arrived eleven minutes after him in a wax jacket, looking furious at the existence of the morning.
Pete took one look at Owen's shoulder and said, "What the fuck have I missed?"
"Only the collapse of civilisation," Sam said.
They searched every phone.
Leah insisted.
Gareth objected until Drew put his own on the table first.
Owen's contained seventeen missed calls from women saved under names that made Leah raise an eyebrow.
Sam's had photographs of fishing trips, grandchildren and an alarming number of screenshots of weather forecasts.
Pete's had nothing except betting apps and messages from his wife asking him to buy cat food.
Len's contained messages from his daughter, two photographs of a leaking gutter and a parking fine he had apparently been arguing about for three weeks.
Gareth's was clean.
Too clean.
Leah noticed before Drew did.
"Where are your old messages?"
Gareth looked at her. "Deleted them."
"All of them?"
"Phone was running slow."
"That's not how phones work."
"Mine does."
Drew watched Gareth's face.
The president looked tired. Frightened. Furious.
Nothing else.
Leah handed the phone back.
"Any second handset?"
Gareth stood.
"Enough."
"Dad!"
Mia's voice came from upstairs.
Everybody looked up.
She appeared on the metal stairway, blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
"There was a phone."
Gareth stared at her.
"What?"
"The biker who was with the policeman. He had two. One normal. One little black one. He kept swapping the SIM card between them."
Leah asked, "Did you see his hands? Rings? Tattoos?"
Mia thought.
"Ring. Big silver one. Square face."
Owen swore.
Drew looked at Gareth's right hand.
Bare.
Then at Pete Lawson.
Wedding ring only.
Len wore a plain gold band.
Sam wore none.
Owen's fingers were bare too.
"Who has a square ring?" Leah asked.
Nobody answered.
Then Pete Lawson sat down slowly.
"Mick did."
Gareth's father.
The dead founder.
Drew felt the floor shift beneath the whole story again.
Pete rubbed his mouth.
"North End signet. Six of us had them made in ninety-eight. Mick kept his. Terry lost his in a fight. I sold mine when my lad needed money. Sam hated jewellery."
Owen looked at Gareth.
"Yours?"
Gareth's face had gone grey.
"Buried with him."
Leah said, "You sure?"
Gareth looked at her as if he might hit her.
"I put it on his hand myself."
Drew turned toward the dark window.
A dead man was apparently wearing a ring in a hostage yard.
A dead police officer was walking out of hotels in Rotterdam.
A murdered brother had left a question inside a drug shipment nine years later.
He thought of Leah's joke downstairs.
Hull was running out of graves he trusted.
His phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
Daniel Sayer, alive, sitting in a chair.
The image had been taken less than an hour ago.
A handwritten sign rested on his lap.
brING THE CARD.
Drew stared until the screen blurred.
Then Leah whispered beside him.
"Jesus Christ."
He handed her the phone.
For nine years, Drew had dreamed about killing the men who murdered his brother.
He had never once considered what he would do if Daniel came back.