by Iain Cameron
He strode out towards the hens, his voice full of threats for disturbing his sleep. Doherty should have realised that with the long summer days, farmers started work early, sometimes at four or five in the morning to make the most of the daylight. Getting up so early meant they needed to go to bed around the time when the light faded.
‘I’m forever telling that ficking woman to shut the door, but she’s got a mind like a bloody sieve; she forgot to do it again. Must be the onset of bloody dementia.’ He looked inside the coop and, satisfied a fox hadn’t laid a trail of death and destruction, slammed the door shut and locked it with the latch.
He stood there in the moonlight looking left and right for the culprit who had disturbed his hens. Coming to a decision, he walked towards the end of the house, where Doherty was standing. The hen-thief leaned back behind the cover of the wall and pulled out his gun. Killing the farmer would bugger up his chances of living quietly for a few months as he’d intended, but kill him he would, and anyone else he found in the house. He wished he’d brought the silencer with him.
The farmer was walking with all the stealth of a platoon of soldiers, so Doherty could hear his approach without any difficulty. Like most farmers, frightened of tripping over a divot, he would have the barrel pointing away from him, so Doherty wasn’t fearful of finding a 12-bore being pointed in his face. He gripped the gun tightly, and counted out in his head, 1, 2–’
The noise of the upstairs window being thrown open broke the still of the night and his concentration. ‘Ronan McCafferty!’ a female voice bellowed. ‘What the hell are you doing down there with that gun? Who do you think you are, John Wayne? Get back in here and back to bed this minute!’
The window slammed shut and he heard Ronan’s footsteps retreat to where they had come from. Seconds later, the front door slammed shut. Doherty exhaled, not realising he had been holding his breath.
He saw the bedroom light flick off and waited a few more minutes. He walked away from the farmhouse and, when out of range of the bedroom light, should it come on again, turned and headed towards the dry-stone wall and home.
He smiled. Buying chicken in Tesco was a lot less dangerous than stealing your own, but the experience wasn’t half as exciting.
Chapter 29
There were few cars about as the doctor turned into the car park at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow. It was ten-fifteen at night and the day patients who needed fresh dressings, the painful bone-stretching of the osteopath and routine checks for cancer, diabetes, and STIs, were long gone.
The doctor pushed open the doors at the main entrance and, with a short nod to the receptionist, the man’s head deep in the sports pages of the Sun, he headed down the corridor. He passed a succession of nurses sitting behind desks, the emergencies of the day shift dealt with, and nothing else to do but fill in forms and be ready to respond to any patient with sleeping difficulties.
He reached the staircase at the far side of the building and climbed. Surgical 2 was the same layout as Surgical 1 on the floor below, but he was more interested in the private rooms located a few metres to one side. These rooms were located in a small corridor on their own, monitored by a nurse. Facing her was the room containing the gunshot victim being guarded by an armed police officer. Like a good soldier, the stoic cop wasn’t fraternising with the locals, not that the nurse looked pretty enough to risk a bollocking from his boss.
‘Good evening, Sister Stafford,’ he said, reading the name on her badge. ‘I’m here to see patient Fleming.’
‘Let me have a look,’ she said, as she turned to her computer and tapped away on the keyboard. She looked too young to be a sister, perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with jet-black bobbed hair and a plain, almost child-like face.
‘He’s not down to receive any more checks tonight, doctor. Are you sure you’ve got the right patient?’
The doctor consulted his clipboard. ‘It says here, Patient Kenneth Fleming, Surgical 2,’ he said in an irritated voice. ‘Check dressings and the patient’s response to the antibiotics.’
‘I wouldn’t normally question what brought you here, you being a doctor an’ all,’ the sister said, ‘but with him being, you know…’
‘What? Under police protection?’
‘Yes, under police protection. So, you see, I have to be sure.’
‘Let’s try this. If you let me do my job and allow me to visit this patient, I won’t say anything to anyone about you being obstructive. How does that sound?’
‘There’s no need to get so arrogant with me. I’ve got a job to do same as you. I’m sorry, I need to check.’
Her hand reached out for the phone at the same time as his snaked inside his white doctor’s overalls. He pulled out a gun fitted with a suppressor and shot her once in the head. The pistol made a quiet metallic sound, but her clumsy tumbling off her squeaky chair to the floor was in danger of waking the whole ward behind the double-doors.
He turned to face the copper, in the process of levelling his weapon. The doctor fired twice, both bullets striking the cop’s head, just below his black cap. He slumped to the floor in an untidy heap, his weapon thumping on the floor in front of him. He would have liked to go back to the ward sister and give her another tap, his trademark, but he resisted. It wasn’t the time for being meticulous.
He stepped over the cop and into the room behind him and closed the door. He was annoyed at being forced to shoot the cop and the nurse, as he’d wanted to spend some time with his former buddy. They’d grown up together, dated girls and often got drunk together.
‘Nick, is that you?’ a voice from the bed said.
‘Yep, it’s me.’
Fleming reached over and flicked a switch. A small bedside lamp illuminated. ‘Christ, don’t you look the part? You’ve even shaved.’
‘A man’s got to do…’
‘You’re a bit early for me, mate. I can’t walk with all this strapping on my leg and it’s fucking agony without the painkillers.’
‘What a pity. Two bullet wounds, I hear.’
‘Yeah, shoulder and leg. Lucky shots by all accounts. I threw the bitch down the stairs first. She had to be firing blind.’
‘You do like to stun them first, don’t you?’
‘Sure, there’s no fun shooting somebody cold, is there?’
‘You’re right there, mate, although in this case it didn’t pay to be so creative.’
‘What’s the plan? How you gonna get me out of here?’
‘Has anyone been here to see you?’
‘What do you think? The cops have been all over me like a rash.’
‘Which cops?’
‘Detectives, Essex Police. Serious Crime Squad, I think they’re called. They left a card somewhere.’
‘What did you say to them?’
He adjusted himself in the bed, a strained expression on his face. ‘I told them what happened. Well, I told them I was after a drug user who owed me money, but must have gone to the wrong house.’
‘Did they believe you?’
‘Doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t. I could be facing ten to fifteen inside.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They fucking told me, like. Possession of a gun and attempted murder.’
The doctor whistled through his teeth. ‘Heavy.’
‘And the fucking rest if they’re feeling vindictive: breaking and entering, damage to property, the works.’
‘Have you talked to anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘See, somebody told me agents from HSA have been here.’
‘Who?’
‘HSA; Homeland Security.’
‘Not to see me they haven’t.’
‘Kenny, you’re a fucking liar. You know better than that.’
‘No, I’m not, why would I?’
‘Doesn’t matter if you are or you aren’t.’ He stood and pointed the gu
n at Fleming’s head. ‘This is the escape plan.’
The gun fired twice.
Chapter 30
Matt and Rosie walked towards the entrance of the Princess Alexandra Hospital. It was close to midnight, but the hospital buzzed like it did at midday. Police cars clogged the entrance, patients in dressing gowns stood in small groups enjoying the spectacle, and doctors and nurses were dashing around as if their uniforms were on fire.
They made their way to Surgical 2, knowing they were there to see the dead not the injured. In the brief conversation between Matt and Rosie at her house earlier, they’d both agreed the death of Kenneth Fleming was a loss. They’d left the hospital earlier that day with an agreement that Fleming would appear in court as a witness, where he would say that Jack Harris had hired him and instructed him to kill Rosie Fox. It didn’t matter now, as none of his allegations would ever be heard in court.
This gave the HSA agents a problem. Even though Matt’s version of events following the shooting at Fashion Street had been accepted by Gill, no evidence could be found to link Harris to the location. The shooting of Fleming added to the circumstantial evidence against Harris, but it wasn’t enough to arrest a serving police officer, that is, even if they knew where he was hiding.
They reached the row of private rooms on the second floor as they were shipping one of the bodies out. It had come from inside the private room, suggesting it was Fleming. As the stretcher eased through the door, someone lifted the blanket covering his face, and Matt could see it was him. He also took note of the two bullet holes grouped close together in his temple.
In his days as a murder detective he would be forced to make some quick assumptions, as the body was now in the custody of the pathologist who wouldn’t let him near until the post-mortem. The two small-bore, close-grouped holes implied a handgun, no doubt silenced, the shots taken by an accurate, steady hand, and given the size of the room, the shooter and victim had not been far apart.
He turned to see Rosie looking over at the nurse’s station. He joined her. The pathologist was examining the dead nurse, two stretcher bearers standing idly by, waiting to be called. Matt could see what had happened clearly. The killer would have had to make a choice; nurse or cop. He would have preferred to shoot the cop first, as he posed the greatest danger, but the nurse had access to a desk phone, mobile, and an emergency bleeper.
He noticed the nurse had only one bullet wound, the copper and Fleming two, all in the temple. This suggested the nurse had been killed first. If Matt was tasked with the same assassination job, he would have dispatched the copper first, then the nurse. Something as traumatic as a shooting could cause normal people to freeze, leaving them unable to act until they were sure of the facts. This shooter had done it the other way round. Why?
Rosie nudged Matt, breaking his concentration. ‘We should leave,’ she said. They’d seen all they came to see, and this wasn’t their crime scene.
Walking towards the double-doors, they burst open and a small delegation came through.
‘What the fuck do you two think you’re doing?’ ‘Come to feast on the dead like a couple of fucking crows, have you? Get them out of here!’
Everyone at the crime scene stopped what they were engaged in and looked to see what all the fuss was about.
‘We’re not journalists,’ Matt said. ‘We’re agents from HSA.’
The guy walked right up to Matt and eyeballed him. ‘You are, are you? Then it’s your fault that one of my officers is dead.’ He poked Matt in the chest with his finger. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell his widow her husband’s not coming back tonight instead of me doing it?’
‘You’re out of order mate,’ Matt said. ‘The guy in there,’ he said jerking a thumb back towards the private room, ‘was sent to kill my colleague, this woman here,’ he said, nodding at Rosie. ‘If not for her quick thinking, she would be dead as well.’
‘Well, I didn’t mean–’
‘I know what you meant, and I’m sorry for your dead colleague, but shout your mouth off like that again and somebody with less restraint than me will knock your fucking teeth out.’
Matt turned and walked towards the staircase.
‘What got into him?’ Rosie said as they descended.
‘It’s never easy losing a fellow officer.’
‘We’ve all been there, but to take it out on two strangers at a murder scene is way over the top.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘If Harris was behind the attack on me, which we both agree on, then by association he’s behind this as well.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It’s one thing to hire a gunman to kill a woman alone in her house–’
‘An armed woman, I might add.’
‘It’s another thing to blow away a nurse and copper just to get at their failed assassin.’
‘If they hadn’t sent someone to kill him, Fleming would have testified against Harris. Or are you saying you don’t you think it was Harris?’
‘I’m thinking out loud. It just seems a big step up for him, if you know what I mean.’
They walked out of the hospital and headed towards the car park. During the day Matt would bet his car would be at the back, miles away from the entrance, if he could find a space at all. Arriving here after midnight, they had their choice.
‘I’ve been thinking about this, I could come up with a list of five or six people who might like to kill you or me.’
‘If this is a charm offensive, you’re doing a crap job.’
‘You know what I mean. If you take our most recent jobs, there’s people we’ve shot, beaten up, or sent to prison for long terms. This is not a job for making friends and winning the hearts and minds of the general public.’
‘I realised that when I joined. Most police work is a thankless task, but HSA takes it to a whole new level.’
Approaching his car, Matt took out the key and opened the doors.
‘I still have a nagging feeling it might have been the Irish,’ Rosie said.
Matt stood at the driver’s door and shook his head. ‘Nope, Fleming’s admission did it for me.’
‘It does it for me in the logical side of my brain, but call it what you like, woman’s intuition, I still think it might have been the Irish. There’s no harm done by keeping them in our hypothesis.’
‘My, that’s a big word for,’ he looked at his watch, ‘one-fifteen in the morning.’
‘It’s late and I need to get to bed. I need my beauty sleep. Take me home, driver.’
**
Siki was like a hippo wallowing in warm mud. Not only were his research skills centre stage, he was in the staff canteen with Matt on the tab. This allowed the big man to eat all the choccy biscuits and pastries he liked, and he wasn’t holding back.
Siki had finally cracked the password-protected file he’d downloaded from Jack Harris’s laptop. It was a Word file, set out in a table, everything on one page. To Matt, it looked like gobbledygook. The words didn’t make sense and the symbols even less.
‘Well done for opening this file, Siki, but I’m not sure it’s the revelation I thought it might be.’
‘Let me teach you, grasshopper.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind, it’s before your time, but before we start there is still one problem.’
‘Which is?’
‘My Coke’s finished.’
Matt rose and picked up the debris. ‘You’re milking this aren’t you?’
‘I haven’t finished yet.’
Matt refilled Siki’s Coke glass and his own coffee cup and returned to his seat. Siki was about to say something but Matt held up his hand. ‘This canteen is closed until I see some results, okay?’
‘I was about to say, now we can get started on seeing some results.’
‘Good?’
‘Now, the document you see in front of you is a list of sign-on credentials and protocols for a number of off-shore bank accounts.’
; ‘How do you work that out?’
‘These abbreviations on the left side are the names of banks. They’re more or less the same abbreviations used by the banks themselves to identify financial transactions between senders and receivers.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘I haven’t been through them all, but if we look at this one, LBPI, Lloyds Bank Premier International. Click on the web link.’
‘Where?’
‘See the link on the far right of each entry?’
‘What’s Bit.ly/2 when it’s at home?’
‘It’s a way of shortening long web addresses. Go on, click on it.’
He did it and a page bearing the Lloyds International logo opened.
‘Right, we’re going to log on to our off-shore bank account.’
Matt clicked on the log-on tab and followed Siki’s guidance for entering the security information, all extracted from Harris’s password-protected document.
They waited several seconds for the screen to load. He clicked on the only account he could see there.
‘There’s only two grand. Not much for a seasoned drug dealer.’
‘I thought I’d show you this one first. What it says to me is they’ve set up this account, but haven’t put much into it yet.’
Matt thought about it. ‘Based on what I know about other drug dealers, it could be they’ll use this one when other accounts reach a certain level, or it’s simply a link in a chain that will take the authorities years to unravel if they ever catch up with them.’
‘Right. Now, so you don’t think your time and money is being wasted, log out of this one and click on one of the Cayman Island accounts.’
Matt did as instructed. Siki was champing at the bit as Matt’s laborious finger-tapping was no match for Siki’s flash touch-typing; Stephenson’s Rocket versus a Maglev Train.
This time when the web page opened, Matt sat there open-mouthed. The account showed a balance of twelve-and-a-half million US Dollars. ‘The money we saw in the other Caribbean accounts, the four million, was probably Harris’s own. This is money he’s managing for Wood’s organisation. Has to be.’