Daniel Dayton Box Set Read online

  He opened the bleach, his nose wrinkling at the astringent aroma. "Why the interest in my family?"

  "I work in a place where Ma Dayton lives. Scott Dayton turns up. You show up." Fred swallowed, working his dry throat. "It pays to be attentive."

  "Who were you calling? Who called you?"

  "It was the Maguires," Fred said. "It was an urgent job. It couldn't wait, apparently. If they were calling me, they must be desperate."

  "So you are in contact with them," Daniel said. "What's the job?"

  "I don't know. It's in the next couple of days."

  He waddled in the toilet bowl, his bare feet folding on top of one another.

  "Not a sandal wearer?" Daniel asked.

  Fred looked into the toilet with a frown.

  "You're going to tell me what I want to know," Daniel said, swirling the liquid. "No matter how white something is, a little drop of bleach always brightens it up. And your feet haven't seen sunlight in years."

  The chirping phone stopped and Daniel looked back to his daughter. "Keep playing your game, pet."

  "I don't know anything," Fred said, his voice catching.

  Daniel breathed deeply. The truth was like a seam of coal. Layers had to be stripped away. It was a process of elimination. Daniel needed to get to the bones of the problem.

  His eyes travelled over Fred's face. Pinprick pupils. Thudding jugular. Beaded upper lip. White ears with red tips. They were all signs, all telling Daniel one thing.

  Fred was lying.

  "I suppose you want me to wait outside, Daddy." Eisha was already off her seat and looking toward the door. Her skin was as pale as Fred's. She had probably guessed her father's intentions. When Daniel was a child, experiences like this were a rite of passage and there was always more than one. Perhaps Eisha had figured that out and decided to draw a line.

  He kissed her on the forehead and opened the door. She was smarter than him, he thought. And braver.

  Daniel took a pair of rubber gloves. The yellow material stretched white over his large hands. "We could have avoided this," he said to a trembling Fred. "If you'd told me the truth."

  After fifteen minutes, Daniel's eyes were red. The fumes from the bleach were too much. His nose watered and he was forced to stop halfway through to get a glass of water. It had been a difficult interrogation and his ears hurt from Fred's screaming. He was looking forward to a shower. Maybe he'd take Eisha to the chip shop.

  The toilet bowl had upended when Fred passed out, his bare feet trapped behind the U-bend. He'd convulsed on the floor and gone silent, but Daniel suspected he'd be fine. The bottle of bleach was empty. Most of it was on the floor where Daniel had splashed it to get Fred's attention. None of it had reached Fred's feet.

  Pain was useless in an interrogation, but fear of it was invaluable. Someone in agony would say anything to make to stop. Most people confessed before it began. Yet another lesson Daniel's father had taught him. Thanks Dad, Daniel thought staring at Fred's prone form.

  The handyman had told him all he knew, which unfortunately was precious little. When he revealed the reason he'd been sent to prison, Daniel had almost used the bleach for real. Only the thought of his daughter on the other side of the door had stopped him.

  Wiping his face with a damp cloth, Daniel stared into the shiny surface of a filing cabinet. His reflection was mutated, twisted into the howling visage of a Dayton. He threw the cloth to one side and left the room.

  "What's your high score?" he asked Eisha.

  The bleeping from his phone was piercing. At some point, Eisha had turned up the volume of Canny Crush to drown out the wailing of a frightened man.

  "Two hundred and thirty," Eisha answered, "and I got the golden Brown Ale. What did you get?"

  They kept their heads low as they passed a narrow-eyed Sharon on reception. Stepping outside, Daniel and Eisha were greeted with an autumn wind. It nipped at their cheeks and hinted at rain. Orange leaves danced around their feet as they made their way to Daniel's van.

  Eisha returned his phone and Daniel called for an ambulance. Fred had hit his head hard. It bounced off the concrete floor as he slipped into unconsciousness. The man hardly deserved it, especially after revealing his disgusting past, but Daniel wanted to set a good example.

  "There was no high score for me, pet," he said, opening the van door and looking back at Silver Linings. At the end, Fred was a gibbering mess. He gave out names, crimes, but none of it made sense. Daniel was getting rusty. "All I got was another question."

  While he'd been hiding his daughter from the world, other creatures like him had crawled from the sewers, showing their faces to the light. One in particular was making a move on his city. Daniel knew his enemies and they knew him.

  But now, there was a new monster in town.

  Chapter Eight

  Pallion was a suburb in Sunderland, tucked into the crook of the River Wear's bulging arm. It was once a port and shipbuilding area, populated by hard men with grim wives.

  Bronson was dressed in a dark suit and bright green tie. He was short and squat, more muscle than man. His handlebar moustache was an attempt to camouflage the twitch in his cheek. It didn't work and the twitch danced relentlessly, flagging up its presence to all who cared to watch.

  "I haven't heard anything," he said into his phone. "This guy works in a retirement home. Are you sure he wasn't pretending to be all gangster? Just to impress you?"

  "Not after what I did to him. I'm telling you something is going on." Daniel's voice sounded tired. "Are you being followed?"

  Bronson drove by the site of the old Pineapple Club. The place had been infamous for its drug use, with more pills between its four walls than the local chemist. After its closure, it had been knocked down and rebuilt as a carpet warehouse.

  Bronson checked his rear view mirror. "Nothing here, but memories," he said.

  Further along the road was the latest out-of-town shopping precinct and a patch of waste ground that had once been terraced housing. Things were changing and Bronson feared he wasn't changing fast enough to keep up.

  He heard a growl in his ear and Daniel ended the call. Cursing, Bronson threw his phone onto the back seat and picked up speed onto European Way.

  The gates to Marvin's Scrapyard were twelve feet tall, consisting of rusting corrugated sheets. Curls of barbed wire were nailed to the top, like a brutal tiara on an ageing prom queen. His beloved BMW vaulted the potholes in the yard and he scowled against the stones pinging off the chassis.

  The plot was over twenty acres and littered with the bodies of dead cars. Engine parts hid from the rain under weathered tarpaulin. Tyres were stacked in columns, like the trunks of charred trees. Cubes of scrap metal waited to be collected and shipped abroad It was a declining income, but a useful one.

  The main business was housed in a makeshift garage at the rear, out of sight of legitimate customers. Bronson liked to think it was a lucrative addition to an almost legal business, but it wasn't true. Business was drying up and he wondered if Daniel was right. Perhaps there was something happening on the streets they didn't know about.

  Parking by the portacabin office, he stepped into a pool of dark oil.

  "Give me a bloody break," he said, wiping his shoes on a clump of weeds.

  "Isn't that supposed to be a sign of good luck?" Masani was in her fifties with a round body and drooping chest. She claimed to have burnt her last bra in 1977, the day she landed on British shores from her native Uganda. "Britain is the land of equality," she often said and Bronson didn't like to argue. She wore blue nail extensions and blue overalls, stained and patched with old curtain material. Cradled in her arms was a Benjamin Marauder air rifle.

  "That's bird shit," Bronson said, "and the way my day is going, there'll be an ostrich flying overhead any minute."

  Masani laughed, her ruddy cheeks rippling.

  He pointed at her rifle. "Get much?"

  Masani produced two dead rats, swinging them by the tail. Ver
min were rife at any scrap yard. Without Masani, they'd be overrun.

  "Come in," she said. "I'll make you a cuppa."

  Bronson followed her inside and sat at his desk while Masani busied herself in the kitchenette. The portacabin was single walled and a haven for black mould, which they hid behind dinted filing cabinets and out-of-date calendars. The floor was made from tin, swept clean by Marvin at the end of every working day.

  Masani's husband worked at his computer. Round like his wife, Marvin sported a halo of white hair around a white head. He wore a checked shirt and striped tie, and didn't seem to care. In thick glasses and still short-sighted, his face was all but pressed against his computer screen.

  "Anything come in today?" Bronson asked, staring at his desk.

  Marvin didn't look up. "Sprout brought in a heap of shit earlier. You better talk to that boy. His brains are where his balls should be."

  "Anything else?"

  Masani walked into the room with two cups of steaming tea. She handed the first to her husband, kissing him on his scalp and handed the second cup to Bronson.

  "I've finished with that Jag," she said. "Needed a new carb and a few sparks, but she'll go."

  "Is it clean?"

  "Cleaner than me, you dirty man," Masani said with a snort. "But, yeah, it's untraceable."

  Bronson faced his desk. It was empty and dust free. Marvin must have polished it before he came in. There were no papers to sign, no Post-It notes marked urgent. He sighed and got to his feet. "Has there been anything odd going on around here? Anything suspicious?"

  "No more than usual," Marvin said.

  "Any strange men hanging about?"

  "Just you."

  Masani and Marvin had run their business for years. They could recognise shifty from a mile off. They weren't hardened criminals, but they knew how to bend the law to make a buck. Bronson was decoration, a tired piece of tinsel on a well-maintained Christmas tree. The Dayton name had bought him a slice of their action and he was grateful. He had nowhere else to go.

  "Well, I better have a word with Sprout, then." He made his way across the yard, avoiding oil slicks where he could. The doors to the garage were open and he stood outside looking in. The floor was poured concrete and wet from a leaking roof. The Jaguar was there. Its purple finish gleamed under lighting hanging from chains in the ceiling. He'd call the buyer later and tell him his getaway was ready.

  There was copper wiring from the local Metro system and a cache of false number plates in a filing cabinet. Three empty wheel clamps leaned against the wall. Their stickers revealed a phone number to an automated service demanding an extortionate payment before the vehicle could be released. The clamps were a nice little earner, but only if they were used.

  He found his trainee slumped in a sagging two-seater sofa. Arnie Brussel, nicknamed Sprout for obvious reasons, was eighteen years old, thin and covered with cheap tattoos that looked like they might run in the rain. As always, he was engrossed in his mobile phone, his fingers dancing over the screen as he sent another Facebook message or Snapchat or any other bloody thing he wasn't supposed to be doing during work hours.

  By his feet were two empty polystyrene food containers from a local restaurant called Big Mackem Fries. Bronson recognised one of them from yesterday.

  "What are they doing here?" Bronson asked, pointing at the wheel clamps.

  Sprout jumped, his phone falling to the floor. He picked it up and shoved it into his tracksuit. "What do you mean, boss?"

  Bronson's cheek twitched at the vacant face staring back at him.

  "They're no good sitting there, are they? They're supposed to be out stopping parents taking their kids to school or pensioners getting to bingo."

  "The phone number is broke. I've been clamping people and they can't get through to have them removed. We have to get it fixed."

  Bronson kicked the takeaway cartons to the back of the garage. They slid into the pile from last week.

  There was a tring from Sprout's phone and he made to answer it, halting under Bronson's glare.

  "I see your phone is working fine," Bronson said. "Who's so important you have to be in constant contact with them?"

  Sprout's face dropped and Bronson understood immediately. "Is it that girl?" he asked.

  "Who? Kimberley?"

  Scratching the corner of his eye, Bronson fought his rising irritation. "I thought her name was Julie."

  "Yeah, yeah," Sprout said. "It was Julie. She's pregnant."

  "I know she's pregnant and so did you when you hooked up with her."

  The teenager groped for his phone, tapping on the screen. "She's really nice," he said. "Sometimes."

  "Why don't you find yourself a quiet girl? Someone you can be with without worrying if her waters are going to break?"

  Collapsing into the dirty sofa, a cloud of muck engulfed Sprout's sullen face. "I did once. Well, sort of. I met Kimberley at school, but – "

  "It wasn't complicated enough?" Bronson asked, interjecting. "You kids love the drama, don't you? Gives you something to put on Facebook. So, have you found out who the dad is yet?"

  Sprout's face hardened, but not at Bronson's question. His eyes narrowed and he looked over Bronson's shoulder to the yard. Bronson followed his gaze. There was nothing to see, except the rusting hulk of a Ford Cortina and gathering storm clouds.

  And then, Bronson heard the rumble of motorbikes.

  They stepped out of the garage together, listening to the snarls getting louder. Sprout reached for a crowbar lying by the door. Bronson patted down his pockets, finding them empty. He rushed to the wheel clamps and opened a box of six-inch nails they used when wheel clamps weren't insufficient. Returning to the door, Bronson and Sprout waited. Masani and Marvin came to the windows of the portacabin, their faces like Victorian ghosts in a haunted house.

  The first motorbike was red, riding in on its back tyre as a second followed, spray painted in blue. It bounced off a pothole and sprung into the air. A third bike in white drove in slowly, stopping next to Bronson's BMW. The rider produced a baseball bat and shattered the brake lights.

  The riders weren't wearing helmets. They wore black masks decorated in white skulls, but Bronson knew who they were.

  He raced forward, the six-inch nails like daggers in his hand. Sprout was behind him. Masani smashed a window and pushed her air rifle through the gap. She fired indiscriminately, sending the riders fleeing.

  Gravel spat into the air as the bikes leapt onto the shells of cars, bouncing back onto the track at speed. The riders hollered like savages. Every time Bronson got close, jabbing the air with the nail, they banked and zipped away, peppering him with oily stones.

  Protecting his face with a forearm, Bronson yelled at Sprout. "They're after the garage. Lock the doors."

  Chapter Nine

  Sprout launched a suspension coil at a passing rider and missed. He ran back to the garage, pursued by two growling motorbikes. Masani was out of the cabin, her air rifle chocked against her shoulder. The pellets winged the Red rider. He skidded, toppling from his bike into the side of the Cortina.

  Bronson jumped on him, ready to use the nail. The material of the skull mask stretched as the rider screamed. Bronson ripped it clear and saw the face of a frightened middle-aged man, a tattooed skull by his eye.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the rider said. "They made me do it. I needed the money."

  Trembling under Bronson's grasp, the man squirmed to be free. His eyes twitched and Bronson's cheek twitched back. He gasped for breath, licking a dry tongue over his lips.

  Bronson was unable to hurt him, no matter what the rider's intentions were. He was too pathetic and in too deep, but there was always a price to pay. Bronson held the nail aloft, pretending like he was about to bring it down. He scowled at the Red rider, scaring him into submission.

  The White rider screeched to halt behind them and swung his bat into Bronson's wrist. There was a crunch and the nail flew from his hand. Bronson yelle
d, diving to one side. The White rider drove in the direction of the garage, leaving his cohort to scramble for the exit.

  The pain in Bronson's wrist radiated up to his shoulder. He rolled to a crouch. "If they take the Jag, we're finished."

  Masani was at his side, dropping to her right knee. She swung the air rifle left and right. A volley of shots kicked up dust between the two remaining bikes. "They're too fast," she said.

  "Don't you have a bigger gun?" Bronson asked.

  "I love you," she said, "but you're not worth killing over."

  Sprout was at the garage, half closing the doors, half watching the motorbikes buzzing around the yard like hornets. The Blue and White riders converged and sped down a path, disappearing in a haze of exhaust fumes. Bronson and Masani followed, but lost them among the wreckage. The roar of the bike engines echoed off metal corridors, masking their location. They were close, but hidden in the rear of the scrapyard.

  "Get ready," Bronson said. "They're coming back."

  Masani took cover behind a creaking pile of pistons. Bronson ran to the garage, pushing Sprout inside. "Don't come out," he said and ran to the copper wiring. Using cutters, he snipped off a six-foot length and snatched Sprout's crowbar as he went back outside.

  The Blue rider circled the garage, preparing to make a final assault. The White rider charged at Bronson, holding his bat up high.

  Masani levelled her rifle and squeezed off a round. Two pellets made their mark, striking the White rider in his thigh. He swerved, sliding in a haze of gravel.

  Bronson's fingers moved quickly as he tied the copper wire around one end of the crowbar.

  The White rider made another pass, gathering speed. Bronson ducked under the bat swinging for his head and cracked his makeshift whip. The wire caught in the rear tyre of the bike, wrapping itself around the axle. The crowbar flew from Bronson's hands, embedding itself in the spokes of the wheel. The White rider was thrown, his bike somersaulting over his head. Its spinning front tyre struck his face and he dropped to the ground.

  The Blue rider idled by a disused toilet block. He glanced toward something Bronson couldn't see and revved his engine. But he seemed to change his mind. Skidding to a stop, he dragged the White rider onto the back of his bike. Wobbling, they navigated the scrapyard and took their leave empty-handed.