Double Identity

by Alison Morton

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Mélisende, but I have little option but to suspend you. Mr Ellis wanted you arrested and thrown in a cell. I have to say I’m surprised, as he’s usually very relaxed, and gets on extremely well with female colleagues.’

  ‘But I didn’t attack him, Mr Stevenson. He was breaching the EIRS protocols. If you want to be exact, he assaulted me. I have three witnesses.’ She was throwing the words out so fast, she was almost losing her breath.

  ‘I’ve asked Kylie and Barbara to write up statements. That goes for you, too, Jeff.’

  ‘Boss, it’s crazy,’ McCracken said. ‘Ellis is the one that’s wrong.’

  ‘Look, you two have done extremely good work and it’s most regrettable that this has happened at a crucial stage of the investigation. Unfortunately, Mr Ellis has influence—’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the brother-in-law who’s supposed to be losing his wife.’ McCracken didn’t quite sneer.

  ‘Careful, Jeff, or you’ll be off the case as well.’ Stevenson leant forward in his chair. ‘Mr Ellis is obviously in a difficult personal place at the moment. Perhaps his judgement is going a bit haywire. But the case remains that his brother-in-law was against setting up the EIRS in the first place. I’m treading on tin tacks here. If we cock up on this first case, he’ll take great delight in withdrawing funding which would in effect shut us down. And I won’t let that happen.’

  ‘So what can we do with Mel gone?’ McCracken asked. ‘Do we go ahead and set up the meet?’

  ‘Yes, you lead, Jeff. I’m sure you will handle it perfectly. Off you go.’

  McCracken exchanged a look with Mel but said nothing. When McCracken closed the door behind him, Stevenson stretched his hand out to Mel.

  ‘ID card and personal weapon. Your permit is suspended as well.’

  Mel threw the gold-embossed EIRS card on his desk. She slowly withdrew the Glock from her waist holster and gave Stevenson a burning look. He looked steadily back at her. She dropped her eyes to the weapon, pressed the button to release the magazine and very slowly pulled the slider back. A round flew out. Her free hand flashed out and caught it. Very deliberately, almost insolently, she showed Stevenson the empty chamber. He nodded. She released the slider and placed the weapon and ejected round on his desk. Nothing, and years of army discipline, would allow her to release the burning resentment in her soul. She stood legs braced, hands clasped behind her and waited.

  He looked away for a moment. ‘As you have no garden to take leave in, I suggest you go back to your flat, read a few books and reacquaint yourself with British television.’

  43

  ‘It’s me.’

  Mel could see very well in the CCTV monitor that it was McCracken. For the third time.

  ‘Go away.’ She tapped the panel to ‘Off’.

  It buzzed again. Dieu, would he never give up?

  ‘What?’ she grumped.

  ‘Are you going to sulk forever, or can I get out of this bloody rain?’

  ‘I am not sulking.’

  ‘Right. And it’s not pissing down.’

  The rain was hammering against the window sending rivulets running down the outside pane at Olympic speed. She buzzed him in.

  ‘Give me your coat,’ she said as he crossed the threshold of her flat.

  ‘Am I staying, then?’

  ‘Don’t push it. I don’t want drips all over the carpet.’

  She came back from the bathroom where she’d hung the coat and flipped the kettle switch down. He leant back against the kitchen unit opposite.

  ‘Why are you here, Jeff? Why aren’t you out meeting the contact?’

  ‘That’s at nine. I just wanted to see if you were okay.’

  ‘I’m not okay. I’m fucking annoyed.’ She spun round. ‘It’s the unfairness of it all. That stupid connard Ellis who thinks the most dangerous thing is crossing at a red light has exerted political pressure to chuck me out just when we’re making a critical breakthrough.’ She slammed the mug so hard on the worktop that it broke. ‘Damn.’ She picked up the pieces and threw them in the bin.

  ‘Go and sit down,’ he said. He put his arm round her waist and guided her out of the kitchen. ‘You’re too dangerous to be in charge of a kettle at the moment.’

  She sat on the edge of the sofa with her chin cupped in her hands. Tension radiated off her. ‘I just don’t understand what I’ve done to upset him so badly.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ McCracken said back in the kitchen, ‘I feel for you. I was pulled off a case for a disciplinary once. They cancelled it off my record after investigation, but I felt like shit for weeks afterwards. And the CPS had decided not to prosecute the case.’ He put a steaming mug on the low table at the side of the sofa. She sat back, seeming to relax a little.

  ‘Tonight, are you going to stick to our plan?’ Mel asked. She tried her best to keep her tone casual.

  ‘Yes, I’ll go straight from here, if you don’t mind me squatting on one of your chairs for an hour or so.’

  ‘I have to send an urgent email, but make yourself at home.’

  * * *

  The rain had eased an hour later when McCracken shrugged on his ASG style coat.

  ‘I nicked it from that surly bugger Harris that you left in the lift when we raided Fennington’s.’

  She smiled. It was only three days ago but seemed like weeks now.

  ‘Good hunting,’ she said and leant in to kiss him on the cheek. At his puzzled look, she said, ‘It’s what Papa used to say to me when I was going on a mission. I could never fool him into thinking it was a simple exercise. He always knew.’

  He gave her a long look, grasped her upper arm, nodded, then turned and left.

  Mel counted to five, then grabbed her black leather jacket, black baseball hat, scarf and gloves. Her fingers confirmed her collapsible nightstick in her right hip pocket, pepper spray and light rope in her other. Should she take her knife? She could be arrested for carrying the other stuff anyway, so what the hell.

  She hurried down the emergency stairs and slid out of the building entrance door just as McCracken, driving Fennington’s Mercedes, pulled away from the kerb. She shot across the road to the car club spaces. Thank God. The Golf she’d reserved with that ‘urgent email’ was there, ready for her. She tapped a code into her phone then pointed it at the car to release the lock. At the squelch, she leapt in. She grabbed the keys from the glovebox and started the engine. Turning almost in a circle, she rammed her foot on the pedal and accelerated after McCracken.

  The cream Mercedes was so easy to follow, but she had to look out for it stopping. He’d have to pick up the officers accompanying him as security drones. In the plan, he was scheduled to stop in a tiny street parallel to Park Lane and then rejoin it, but you never knew with McCracken. She pulled her scarf up over the lower part of her face and the baseball hat peak down. Risking a nearby taxi’s paintwork and catching a rude gesture for it, she overtook the Mercedes at Marble Arch in the melee of the Edgware Road junction. McCracken was due to turn left into North Row, make the pickup, then emerge back onto Park Lane at Green Street. She’d wait in Wood’s Mews, the next parallel street down.

  The minutes ticked by as Mel waited in the discreet red brick mews in her Golf. She had perfect line of sight from this residents’ parking bay. If she missed the Mercedes, she’d deserve to. She glanced at her watch for the nth time. Where the hell was he? She knew the route he’d take to the rendez-vous point, but she’d rather be sure by following him.

  She jumped when somebody thumped on her window. A middle-aged woman was making window winding signs. And she looked cross.

  ‘You know, you can’t park here. Residents only,’ the strident voice came.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Mel said in what she hoped was an Eastern European accent. ‘I looking at map on phone for friend house. Excuse, please.’

  ‘Well, you should have done that before you set out. Now please move.’

  Cursing in her head, Mel gave an apol
ogetic smile and drove slowly along the ill-lit street towards the junction with Park Lane. Still no sign of the Mercedes. If he didn’t turn up in the next five minutes, she’d go straight to the rendezvous point alone.

  Headlights behind her flooded her Golf with light in blinding white pulses. Then a horn sounded. She blinked hard to adjust her dazzled vision but had no option but to advance and turn into Park Lane.

  Putain.

  She crawled out from the junction and slipped into the traffic, but when she glanced in the mirror at the car behind her, she saw to her horror it was Fennington’s Mercedes. Bloody McCracken. He’d come out of the wrong side street.

  He couldn’t have recognised her with her face mostly hidden, could he? Just before the end, she turned sharp left in the direction of the roundabout at the top of Old Park Lane, looped round it slowly and let the Mercedes flow past. Letting a couple of cars slip in between them, she followed him round Hyde Park Corner. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her gloved hand and pulled the scarf down from her face.

  The journey was smooth round Buckingham Palace and through Westminster. She knew the exact coordinates of the meeting place south of the Thames in Lambeth, just off Lambeth Palace Road, so she could stay three cars behind the Mercedes when they crossed the bridge. The Mercedes turned left towards St Thomas’s Hospital. In a short while, they’d turn right and plunge into a vast area of social housing; McCracken had assured her that afternoon he knew the area well. She kept a lookout for a warehouse or garage at least where they’d meet the contact.

  Just past the second block of flats, set back a good fifteen metres from the main road through the estate, the Mercedes stopped by a lamp post. Mel drove past and turned into the next access road to park up in the lee of one of the blocks. She checked the satnav. This was the designated RDV point, but they surely couldn’t be meeting in such an open space. She parked the car and crept back round the corner of the block. At the edge, she risked peeping round. There was McCracken standing by the Mercedes’ driver’s door and scanning the area. The lines of his face were harsh under the sodium light.

  A noise behind her. Footsteps, shouting, laughter as three young men emerged from the block’s lobby and stopped in front of her. One leant back against the wall and crossed his arms. All three looked her up and down.

  ‘’Ere, darlin’, you waiting for someone special?’ one of them said with a smirk.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And he’s late. Must have been held up at the gym. Heavyweight boxer.’ She tipped her chin up and threw them a look full of attitude.

  Just piss off.

  ‘Ain’t you the lucky one?’ But they did move off.

  She shivered as the rain began again, but five minutes later, a black BMW drew up behind the Mercedes. Two men went up to McCracken. He shook his head, they beckoned. McCracken’s two drones got out, but one of the new arrivals pushed one back into the Mercedes. McCracken waved his arm about, but after a few seconds he and the remaining drone got into the back of the BMW which drove off.

  Mel raced for her Golf and tore off after the BMW. An old trick – they’d changed the RDV, making Joanna and her backup troops useless. After criss-crossing the railway line through dark Victorian tunnels and under bridges, the road widened to a mixture of older blocks, terraced houses and more upmarket modern blocks. As they drove on between new developments of sleek designer glass-fronted mini skyscrapers, interspersed with huge banners advertising luxury apartments of the future, and builders’ cranes, Mel wondered where the hell they were going. The BMW turned into a side street lined with tall, anonymous builders’ hoarding and drove into a recessed entrance. The gate opened just enough to let the BMW through and quickly closed.

  Mel parked in a restricted bay behind an office block. Unlikely she’d get into trouble at this time of night. She tapped on her phone.

  Joanna, meet moved to building site, Minson Road, Southwark.

  Mel pushed her car door shut and tabbed back to the main road. On the satellite view of Minson Road on her phone, she identified a red-brick church with an incredibly valuable asset – an unlit garden full of trees bordering the building site. She crossed the small car park at the front of the church where a noticeboard exhorted passers-by to praise Jesus. At the side of the building lay an area of crumbling tarmac. A lamp hung precariously from an iron bracket halfway up the church wall and cast a weak light downwards. At the back were a bench and some overgrown hardy shrubs and behind them a good dozen trees far too tall and crowded for the space. The church probably couldn’t afford to have them pruned, Mel thought. But they would hide her from the main street and from any inquisitive eyes in surrounding blocks of flats. Praise the Lord indeed!

  She shimmied up a sycamore near the fence and perched in the main fork. New spring leaves camouflaged her position well, but not enough to interfere with a perfect view of the interior of the building site. Irregular rectangular lines on the ground outlined previous buildings and lives; dumper trucks and diggers blanched out and casting harsh shadows in the moonlight would give her perfect hiding places. A prefabricated building, a Portakabin, presumably the site office, was directly opposite her. Unusually for a construction site there were no floodlights on. The only artificial light on the entire site was seeping from between venetian blinds of the cabin widows.

  Mel tied her nylon line round the sturdiest of the sycamore’s main branches and let herself down onto the ground inside the site perimeter. She crouched and scanned the area. No sound of dogs or humans, just the hum of the twenty-four seven London traffic outside the hoarding.

  She ran to the left, to the wall of the ruin of a half-demolished office block and waited for a whole sixty seconds before letting out her breath slowly. Nothing. No movement, no noise. The cabin was only five metres away and she could hear raised human voices. She covered the distance in a second and hugged the wall, sliding along to the window. She ducked under it so she was between it and the wooden door.

  McCracken’s voice was distinctive. He was complaining about lack of trust between supposed colleagues. She smiled at his tone and choice of words. Hearing his stroppy talk proved he was still alive.

  Focus, Mélisende.

  The other voice was accented. Eastern European. Not Russian, but something near.

  ‘My boss is very tense now Fennington is arrested,’ the Eastern European said.

  ‘Mr Fennington is only answering questions for their investigation, Georgi.’ McCracken replied. ‘Our lawyer will get him cleared tomorrow by the latest.’

  ‘Not what I hear.’

  ‘Oh? You have an agent inside the police?’

  Mel caught her breath.

  ‘No need for you to know about him.’

  Dieu. So there was an insider.

  ‘Whatever,’ McCracken replied casually. Mel could imagine he was seething inside. ‘What I can assure you is that everything will continue as normal in the meantime,’ he added.

  ‘Is most important this last transfer be performed immediately in complete security.’

  ‘Have we ever let you down?’

  A pause.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then, we can go ahead.’ McCracken sounded so confident. ‘I’d prefer to speak to you one-to-one. Let’s ask each other’s colleagues to step outside.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you that when they’re out of earshot.’

  A longer pause, then an order in the like-Russian-but-not-Russian language. The door handle rattled and Mel raced round to the windowless side of the cabin. Her heart was thumping. She edged back to the corner. Three men, one of whom Mel recognised as an officer from Friars Green acting as drone, and two shorter, stockier figures emerged. She drew back and crept round the back. Cupping her hands round her ear, she pressed it against the metal skin of the cabin.

  ‘Look, I’ve got a proposition for you.’ McCracken’s voice.

  ‘I know you are policeman. You are going to offer me a deal.’r />
  ‘What do you mean?’ McCracken asked.

  ‘My boss tells me.’

  ‘He’s made a mistake.’

  ‘No, he knows everything you do, Mr Policeman.’ Georgi sounded smug through his accent.

  ‘Then why did you let me arrange the meeting?’

  ‘To draw you out and dispose of you.’

  ‘Why are you Russians involved?’

  ‘Not Russian, Bulgarian.’

  ‘All the same to me,’ McCracken said. ‘All villains. And you’re nicked.’

  A hard click. A thump, a grunt.

  ‘Turn round, hands on wall.’ The noise of pushing and shoving. ‘You English are so stupid with guns. You should practise more. You be quicker.’

  Then came a sickening thump against the cabin wall. And a second.

  Ohgodohgod. Bloody McCracken and his prim attitude about guns. Now he was going to die for it.

  44

  Yellow light flooded out as the cabin door was flung open. A figure was silhouetted in the doorway; presumably Georgi. He barked orders at his two henchmen. As soon as he’d slammed the door shut, they knocked McCracken’s undercover colleague to the ground and started kicking him. The policeman tried to roll away but couldn’t.

  Mel shot out from behind the cabin, nightstick in one hand, the other in a hard fist. She body-slammed one of the Bulgarian’s bodyguards to the ground. The other man spun round. His hand went for the gun at his waist, but Mel’s extended nightstick struck him across the arm, right on the radial nerve. He shouted in pain. She struck him with her balled fist on the bridge of his nose. As he crouched over, she chopped the back of his neck and he collapsed.

  The next minute she was falling to the ground, attacked from behind. As she went down her nightstick dropped from her hand and rattled across the concrete. She went into an instant roll as the other bodyguard brought his foot up to stamp on her ribs. She gasped as the edge of his foot caught her side but scrambled up to face him. But the man crumpled into a heap in front of her. The young policeman stood there grasping her nightstick in his hand.