by Iain Cameron
It was a needle-in-a-haystack exercise, trying to guess where the guns would land when they arrived in the UK or Ireland. There were hundreds of major and minor ports in both places. They ranged from main sea crossings at Dover, Harwich, Rosslare and Wicklow, rail crossings through the Channel Tunnel, small trawler-like boats slipping into unmanned ports, to goods secreted inside a container and landing at a large hub such as Felixstowe or Drogheda.
She walked over to the worktop and refilled her empty wine glass. She was staring at the pattern on the tiles on the wall, a teapot, flowers, and a plate of biscuits, when her phone rang. She left the glass on the worktop and reached over to the table and picked up her phone. Expecting it to be Matt, she was surprised to see it was DI Jack Hillman from CTC.
‘Rosie, how are you?’
‘I’m good. Just going over some of the stuff we talked about today. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Pleased we’re working together. I didn’t see you leave after the meeting this afternoon, I wanted a chance to speak with you.’
She’d noticed DI Hillman looking at her across the conference room table more than was warranted by the flow of the discussion. At the time, she put it down to the counter terrorism boys feeling territorial at having interlopers on their patch, or testing out their body language skills, but this sounded like something else.
‘What about?’
‘Oh, nothing much. What sort of things you get up to in HSA, what happens when you get some spare time, and if you wanted to come out to dinner with me.’
Whoa, that came a bit out of left field. She’d thought they were talking business but he’d smoothly segued into asking her out. Very slick. While she wouldn’t call her relationship with Andrew scintillating, or even that exciting, she wasn’t ready to give up on it just yet. He worked shifts, meaning he arrived and left home at odd hours of the day and night, and when she was working on a job, so did she. Problem was, their time off didn’t always coincide and some days it felt like two ships passing in the night. Then again, she had to think of the future.
‘When were you thinking?’
Chapter 7
Matt Flynn lifted his pint and took a long drink. He’d vowed a few days back to improve his lifestyle: eat better, drink less, spend less time with his reprobate neighbours, but here he was once again in a bar necking beer. Tonight, though, it was all in a good cause.
The pub was located in Earl’s Court, a non-descript modern place with about as much character as a burger joint. By the look of the clientele at the bar, it was frequented by young professionals after they escaped from work in the various offices nearby. They would sink a few beers before heading off for their trains to the suburbs, leaving this place as empty as their pint pots. London had many hostelries like this; few who worked here could afford to live in surrounding streets and, over in the financial district, many pubs didn’t even bother opening at weekends.
Matt spotted Jack Harris as soon as he walked through the door. He was tall, about six foot, an inch or so over Matt, scruffy black hair and a face that needed shaving twice a day to avoid looking like his razor blade was blunt. The way he cast his eyes about as he entered shouted ‘copper’, and if the pub had been in a dodgy part of south London and filled with ex-cons and narks instead of suits, they would all be taking an avid interest in their beer at this point.
‘Hi Matt,’ Harris said walking towards him and reaching out to shake his hand. ‘It’s good to see you. How have you been?’
Matt returned the gesture. ‘Hi Jack. Thanks for agreeing to meet me.’
‘No problem. Can I get you a top-up?’
‘Sure. John Smith’s.’
‘Coming up.’
For a boy who grew up in a council house in Bermondsey, East London, he was now living in a large house in Tufnell Park. Following a recent promotion, to DI and filling Emma’s vacated shoes, Detective Inspector Jack Harris had come a long way. It wasn’t Matt’s place to ask him how he could afford such a property on his salary, Professional Standards were there to do that. Many police departments were involved in areas that created opportunities for cops to make money, and for the unscrupulous, none were better than those dealing with illegal drugs.
With the introduction of CCTV cameras, time-delayed vaults, SmartWater, electronic payments and ATMs, bank and security van heists went out with Betamax video recorders and maxi dresses. Any villain with any sense, and that was saying something, burned their balaclavas and bought themselves a stash. The trade was now so lucrative, dealers could make any investigating police officers rich and still have millions to spare for that yacht, town house in Mayfair, and a Ferrari.
Emma had been aware of the rumours surrounding some of her colleagues. While she couldn’t afford to ignore them, she hadn’t let it interfere with any relationships she had built up within her team. With hindsight, Matt wished she had been more circumspect, especially when it came to Harris, because she’d often treated him as a brother. Everything about the man made the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck bristle, especially now that he knew it was Harris who had authorised the transportation of Simon Wood from Wandsworth Prison to their nick for questioning.
‘Here we go,’ Harris said, ‘pint of John Smith’s.’
He put Matt’s drink on the table plus a pint of lager and a sizeable Jack Daniels for himself. He sat down in the chair opposite.
‘Cheers,’ Harris said, lifting his glass of JD.
‘Cheers,’ Matt said, as he drained the first glass.
‘I don’t know how it’s been for you, Matt, but I’ve had a fucking crap day.’
Matt smiled. ‘The paperwork getting on top of you?’
‘For sure. I’ve been writing bloody appraisals, risk assessments for a new job we’re planning and the responsibility for giving a presentation to a bunch of local dignitaries landed on my plate at four-thirty. Emma, God rest her soul, used to do all this and still have time to go out cruising in the car looking for faces. Me, I’m stuck in the fucking office all day. I don’t see fresh air from eight to gone nine at night. I don’t know how she did it.’
‘I don’t suppose the escape of Simon Wood from a security van helps.’
‘Simon Wood? You hear about that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought people like him only interested people like us, but you’re right, him fucking off like that only adds to the grief.’
‘It’s one of the reasons I left the Met. Everybody wants promotion for more money and all that, but what you used to love about the job gets buried under back-to-back meetings and all the reports you need to read and write.’
Harris picked up his pint. ‘Amen to that.’ He took a long drink, befitting a man intent on drowning his sorrows, before putting the glass down. He looked at Matt, the two dark eyes and the steady stare reminiscent of a callous predator, a hawk or a snake, he couldn’t decide. It was a look designed to frighten and intimidate cons, as if his eyes were boring into their brains and seeing their blackest deeds.
‘What can I do for you, Matt?’
‘I called you as I’m trying to piece together Emma’s last hours, starting with the raid you guys did on the warehouse at Grays.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time to let go? You’re just beating yourself up with this stuff going over it time and again.’
Matt took a deep breath, in an attempt to control his temper. No way would he give Harris an excuse to walk away.
‘How can I? No one’s been arrested for her murder. As her former work partner, you must feel the same, surely?’
Harris tried to appear empathetic, but it was a look that didn’t suit. ‘I sympathise with your position, Matt, I do, but we all have to move on. It’s still an open case with the Serious Crime Squad. Let them handle it.’
‘The case is open but not active. You know what that means. They’ll do nothing until somebody walks into a police station one day with new information. You know as well as I do they’re up to their ne
cks in the knife crime that some say is making London more dangerous than New York.’
‘I can’t argue with you there.’
‘So, come on, what happened at Grays?’
Harris sighed and it looked for a moment like he might get up and walk out, but a calm expression passed over his face. He lifted his pint and took a long slug before leaning towards Matt. ‘Me and Em went there straight from the briefing with the rest of the team. Intel suggested a Spice lab was being operated from this rural warehouse. So, we–’
‘Hang on. Why would detectives from London go all the way to Grays to close down a simple Spice lab? Why not let the locals do it?’
Matt knew the answer but he wanted to hear Harris elaborate.
The DI let out another sigh. ‘You’re right. We only went there because we thought the place belonged to Simon Wood. You heard of him?’
Matt shook his head, despite having heard plenty.
‘He’s one of the biggest dealers in the South East. Deals in Coke, H, Spice, you name it.’
‘And did it?’
‘And did it what?’
‘Did the warehouse belong to Simon Wood?’
‘Yeah. We traced ownership through a suite of holding companies, it belongs to him all right. But with him now being a fugitive…’
‘What happened when you got there?’
‘We smashed in the door, rushed inside, then all the lights went out. When they came back on we realised all the people who’d been there had legged it. We could hear their cars driving away, but in their rush to get away they left all their gear behind.’
‘So, a success of sorts. You got the gear but you didn’t get the people?’
‘Yeah, that was the story run in the papers, but we were all disappointed. To stick a boot into something belonging to Simon Wood would have been great.’
‘Was Emma disappointed?’
‘For sure she was, we all were.’
‘What went on after that?’
‘Nothing much. I went out for a smoke and when I went back inside, Emma had taken off. I got a lift back to civilisation with one of the wooden-tops.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’
Matt closely watched Harris’s body language, the direction he shifted his eyes, what he did with his hands. He knew from interviewing hundreds of suspects and the study of neuro-linguistic programming, the science of reading body language, that out of his mouth would now come a load of tosh.
‘I dunno. On the way back home to your place, she must have been abducted, but I don’t know how or why.’ He looked at his watch. ‘God, is that the time? Sorry Matt, I gotta go. I’m meeting someone else.’
Matt didn’t protest. He watched him stand, drain his drink, walk out of the bar and hurry up the street.
Harris had told him nothing new about that night; he’d made an official statement at the time which Matt had read. However, he did let something slip. He said Emma was disappointed when they found the people in the Spice laboratory had escaped. All the evidence Matt had read stated that Emma hadn’t spoken to Harris again after the lights went out.
Matt couldn’t be sure if this slip was due to a faulty memory on Harris’s part, or a slack turn of phrase, saying ‘for sure she was’ instead of ‘I’m sure she would have been’. If true, it suggested he had spoken to Emma after leaving the Grays laboratory. Also, his shoulder-shrug and bland comment when asked what he believed had happened to her, suggesting he knew nothing, was all a fabrication. Matt was convinced he knew something, maybe not the how or why she was killed, but more than he was letting on.
Chapter 8
At the back of a warehouse in Tilbury Docks, four men were seated on boxes gathered around a makeshift table, an upturned packing case. In the centre of the table, a bottle of vodka, four small glasses and a portable lamp. The two Russians in the group were ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign, either because they couldn’t read English, or they couldn’t give a toss if their cigarettes caused a fire. It wasn’t their warehouse.
Simon Wood looked at the man opposite: Vladimir Stanilov. He’d been working with the Russian for two years, Stanilov bringing in dope within the hold of the big freighter on which he was first mate, and Wood paying him big bucks for his trouble. It sailed the Far East routes, first dropping off cargo in the Middle East before picking up more from stops in Turkey and Italy.
It wasn’t a pleasant face to look at and, as such, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that his third wife had just left him, despite the lure of cash. His face was large, matching his broad frame, scarred and ruddy from working outdoors, and the yellow teeth suggesting poor hygiene habits. This was reinforced by the Nike t-shirt he wore, the original colour undetectable for all the oil, beer, and grease stains.
Like many Russians he’d known, they settled everything: marriages, death, business deals, anything at all, with copious amounts of vodka. Tonight was no different. Drinking didn’t bother Wood. During his teenage years he’d discovered he could drink plenty and show little of the effects. It also helped that Wood was tipping most of the vodka on the floor when Stanilov and his companion from the Tblisi, Andrei Mikhailov, fell about laughing, often at one of their own jokes. He liked vodka, but not this crap, which tasted like the pure alcohol they used to distil in the school chemistry labs, only palatable with the addition of copious amounts of the matron’s orange juice.
‘Let me see if I understand what you are saying,’ Stanilov said in his big booming voice, designed to inform anyone at the back of the warehouse of their business, except they were the only people inside. ‘You want to double your order for the next time?’
Wood nodded, his patience, not one of his strong points, wearing thin at the slow progress of their discussion.
‘I want more H, more coke, more of the blue happy pills. Don’t look so concerned, it means more money for you guys,’ he said, smiling for the benefit of the Russians.
‘I am always interested in making more money, eh Andrei?’ he said, nudging his fat companion.
True to form, Mikhailov didn’t utter a word, not even in Russian. He wasn’t sure why Stanilov had brought him along, unless it was to laugh at his jokes, which he did as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did.
‘I can get the goods, of course I can; I, Vladimir Stanilov,’ he said, pounding a closed fist against his dirty t-shirt, now also streaked in sweat like his big face, ‘can get anything.’
‘But?’
‘Why you want it?’
Fucking hell. This guy was doing his head in. Did Wood not make him rich, and now want to make him richer? ‘To open a fucking children’s nursery, what do you think? To make money of course,’ he said louder than he intended. ‘Business is good; I want to expand.’
‘Is this wise? You are, after all, a fugitive from British justice.’
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with it?’ he said, his temperature rising. ‘I don’t need reminding by you or anyone else about my status.’
Roderick Lamar, Wood’s nephew and right-hand man, leaned over and whispered in his ear, ‘Calm the fuck down, Simon. He’s just trying to wind you up.’
‘Yes,’ Stanilov said, ‘but if I stick my neck out and find you all this extra dope, what if I come here and find you are not around, or this place is swarming with cops, eh? It will leave me in the pigshit,’ he said spitting the words out. Wood and Lamar were far enough away not to get sprayed.
‘What the hell are you talking about? After we struck a deal last time, I didn’t come down here to collect the shipments and pay you. One of Lamar’s boys did it.’
A look of derision crossed Stanilov’s face when he looked over at Lamar, almost for the first time this evening. He was tall and black-skinned with such fine features he could be mistaken for a Shakespearean actor. Stanilov’s behaviour only succeeded in reminding Wood what a racist pig the Russian could be. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have brought Lamar with him tonight, but he trusted him more than any other membe
r of his crew.
Mikhailov refilled the vodka glasses, breaking the palpable tension that pervaded their corner of the large warehouse. This time, his hand was a little less steady than before, and some spilled on to the packing case.
‘Na Zdorovie!’ Stanilov boomed after picking up his glass.
Wood lifted his glass and drunk the near-proof liquid for only the second time this evening. He needed something to calm him down.
A few minutes later, when the noisy toast was finished, Wood said, ‘Let’s cut to the chase Vladimir. Can you do it? Yes or no?’
‘I don’t know. I have to think.’
‘What the fuck do you have to think about? Do you wanna make more money or not?’
‘I have to weigh everything up, as you English say. There are risks, the extra costs, the people I need to bribe.’
‘Vladimir, I don’t need to remind you, but you’re not my only supplier. I only asked you because you’ve always told me you can get anything I want. This time, I want more.’
‘Of course I say this!’ he boomed. ‘Vladimir can get anything.’
Wood sat there watching as the Russian went through the equivalent of a gorilla beating his chest to warn off a rival, except there were no rivals here.
Stanilov sat back in the makeshift chair and regarded the Englishman with one eye closed. ‘I am caught in two minds here.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I am tempted by your offer; it would of course put a couple of million into our pockets, eh Andrei?’
‘Da,’ he said.
Miracle of miracles, the fat man speaks.
‘Why do I think I hear a ‘but’?’