‘You said yourself he was awarded for his work with paedophiles,’ Sam said, leaning against the windowsill. ‘He wouldn’t be going undercover in his own neck of the woods and he’d more than likely have Intel on ones who got away from him in the areas he was undercover, maybe peripheral players they didn’t get the evidence on before the job was pulled.’
Ed had to concede it was possible but why now, why when Cat had been out 10 years or more?
He jumped up. ‘Shit, I said I’d go and see Jayne-with-a-Y.’
Bev Summers appeared at the door. ‘You need to see these. The background checks into Jeremy Scott.’
She put the papers on Sam’s desk. ‘I’ve gone through the court transcripts for his trial.’
‘Thank God for the courts,’ Ed said. ‘Best record keepers in the land. Well, them and the Church.’
‘Hark at our little historian,’ Sam said, sliding onto her chair.
‘In this case he’s probably right,’ Bev said. ‘Look at the interviewing officer who gave evidence at the trial.’
She pointed to the relevant entry.
Sam stared at it. ‘Oh my God.’
Chapter Forty-Four
Elizabeth Doherty, aka Linda Pritchard nee Avery, was sitting in the twin-axle caravan with her parents, sister, nephew and nieces.
The years were rolled back, the years before she ran and ended up in the clutches of Billy Skinner, the years before she married a paedophile.
There were no accusations, plenty of tears and hundreds of questions. Linda listened and answered while she took in the brightly coloured interior. The caravan was different to the one she grew up in, but the garish colours, a world away from the pastels of her home, were not.
She had her own questions about their life but everyone apart from her knew the answers to those. Her questions would have to wait.
The teapot in the middle of the table was permanently full, topped-up by her mother, sister or nieces.
As word somehow circulated of her return, distant relatives formed a queue at the door.
She wanted to ask what had happened to the people of her own age. She really wanted to ask what had happened to the boy who was always pulling her at The Grabbing. But those questions could keep for later.
Her dad looked out of the window, stood up and walked outside. Nobody questioned his departure.
She looked out of the window. Doherty was in deep conversation with a dark haired man. A group were standing behind them, posing and preening, silently leaning against the four pick-ups.
A toddler ran into the caravan, shouted ‘boo!’
Everyone laughed at the boy who was bare-foot and naked except for a disposable nappy and an oversized gorilla mask.
Sam and Ed travelled in silence, both thinking about Jeremy Scott’s interviewing officer and the implications, if there were any.
Coolio’s ‘Gangster in Paradise’ broke the silence.
Ed answered his phone and listened.
‘Cheers,’ he said, and ended the call.
He glanced at Sam.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Traffic giving us the heads-up, he said. ‘Luke and Mark Skinner have had their car rammed by an army wagon, shunted twice into a wall.’
‘Fuck,’ Sam muttered.
‘Both carted off to hospital but the injuries aren’t life-threatening, more’s the pity,’ Ed smiled. ‘What a day this is turning out to be.’
Sam didn’t share his enthusiasm.
The last thing Sam needed was an all-out gang war on her plate.
Approaching a set of lights, she grabbed the gear-stick and changed down to third with more speed and thrust than necessary.
Ed had worked with her for long enough. This was not the time for a one-liner.
‘Let’s get back to the beginning,’ she said. ‘Jeremy Scott’s first, then Julius Pritchard and Hans van Dijk and then Billy Skinner.’
She slowed for a roundabout, came to a stop.
She turned and looked at Ed. ‘All killed in disused buildings, all snatched with a lot of planning and now two Skinners rammed off the road.’
Ed took it on. ‘By a truck who witnesses said was revving its engine at a junction as if it was waiting and the Skinners were being followed by a pick-up with no registration plates.’
Sam moved off.
‘But why?’ she said. ‘The Skinners aren’t connected with sex abuse, not of children anyway.’
‘But they’re all connected with John Elgin,’ Ed said.
Sam looked to her right, moved onto the roundabout, Ed still talking.
‘Elgin was a regular at their clubs, seemed close to them. So why kill them and how would he plan all of this never mind execute it? And involve Curtis? I can’t see it.’
Ed shuffled in his seat.
Sam indicated left. ‘Linda Pritchard gets dumped by Skinner then discovers her meal ticket is a paedophile. Plenty of motive there.’
‘She couldn’t do it, but her childhood family?’ Ed said. ‘Torching and torturing would be right up their street and they’re in town.’
‘Are they?’ Sam said, edging slowly forward.
‘Yep and more coming daily,’ Ed told her. ‘Word is one of Declan Doherty’s granddaughters is getting married.’
‘Word from where?’ Sam glanced at Ed, irritated. ‘I never hear it.’
He turned to face her.
‘Sam, I’ve worked this place longer than you, know more people than you. I’m bound to hear things you don’t.’
That was true but Ed heard things no one else in the nick picked up.
‘Sign of a good detective,’ he tried a smile.
Silence again.
‘But what’s their connection to Scott?’ Sam said. ‘Skinner yes. Pritchard and van Dijk yes. But Scott?’
She sighed. ‘Everybody in the frame is always one body away from having the full set…unless we stop looking at people singularly.’
‘Go on,’ Ed looked at Sam.
‘No one person is linked to them all. But if you put Elgin and Linda Pritchard together...’
‘The cuddle?’
‘Yes, then between them they’re linked to every victim,’ Sam said.
Ed saw how that would work, especially with Declan Doherty on the scene to pull it all together.
‘Would he be capable?’ Sam sounded unsure. ‘Even the attack on the Skinner brothers?’
‘Absolutely.’ Ed had no doubt.
Sam wondered aloud if Doherty would try to take over Billy Skinner’s empire but Ed said the travellers were too mobile.
‘Their motivation would be revenge but they’d take a few quid if someone offered. Pull over at the shops will you? I’m starving.’
Sam nodded. ‘Like the guy at Scaramangers?’
‘Harry Pullman?’ Ed said. ‘Possibly but I’m not buying that bull from Luke that Harry’s just gone away.’
Sam pulled into the small parade of shops. Ed was out and marching to the butchers before she’d reached for the handbrake. He emerged with a white paper bag and a mouth full of pork pie, shedding crumbs in a shower when he got back in the car.
‘Bloody hell, be careful,’ Sam wincing at the passenger carpet covered in pastry flakes. ‘Is it nice?’
Ed nodded, mouth too full to speak.
Sam waited until he finished the first pie. A second was in the bag. ‘Why don’t you believe Harry’s gone away?’
‘Too convenient and too quick,’ Ed told her. ‘I think something’s happened to him, and if it has, something’s happened to Dean Silvers as well. Nobody would take out Harry and leave Dean. He’d go looking for them.’
Ed pulled pie two from the bag, steak and onion this time.
‘And Deano’s way too ambitious to walk away for a new life in bloody Argentina. He can barely speak English never mind Spanish. That whole story is a piss take.’
Ed bit into the pie, holding it on a tilt to stop the hot juice running down his fingers.
&n
bsp; ‘Don’t get that on the seats, I’m warning you,’ Sam picturing a full valet heading her way. ‘How do you know all this?’
Ed smacked his lips. ‘Like I’ve just said. I know people.’
Sam’s mobile trembled in the Audi’s centre console.
Ed worked on the rest of the pie as she listened, nodded, and terminated the call.
‘That caravan,’ Sam said. ‘The one in Seahouses.’
‘What about it?’
‘That was the intelligence unit. It belongs to Geoff Mekins.’
Sam shook her head, wondering how many she would need to tackle a full-on war.
Ed stared out of the passenger window, looking at the houses and chewing the last of the gravy-moist crust.
‘You in a rush?’ he said.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Fancy meeting Declan Doherty?’
Sky Sports News would have been a distraction while he contemplated his next move. Daytime TV at 3pm was not. But if you were holed up in a budget hotel where the clientele were more rigger boots and hi-viz than shiny shoes and sharp suits, Sky Sports wasn’t part of the package.
He had lain in the dingy room and watched the radio alarm clock and its red digital display until 5am. He must have drifted off because he didn’t wake until after 1pm.
He was still on the single bed now, the tiny TV fixed on the wall bracket providing nothing but background noise. Time was when he’d have been in bed with the owner but they were past that stage now, had been for years.
Still, she was a good friend and he didn’t have many of those left. Maybe he didn’t have any.
He jumped at the two quick taps on the door but relaxed immediately. It wasn’t the pre-arranged danger signal; no need for him to leg it out of the en-suite window.
En-suite? More like a converted wardrobe but it was on the ground floor and it did have a window.
The door opened and she walked in carrying a tray loaded with a metal teapot, a chipped china cup, and a plate of Bourbons.
‘Thought you might like some tea.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What you going to do?’
‘There’s a problem with every plan I come up with,’ he picked a biscuit while the tea brewed. ‘All I can think is Ed Whelan. I need you to get in touch with him. Call the Murder Team and leave a message for him to ring you. Don’t mention me. When he rings, tell him to meet you here.’
‘You sure about this?’
He reached for the pot.
‘No choice,’ he told her. ‘Out of options and nowhere to run.’
She thought about The Commitments, thought about singing the song but saw his face.
‘I’ll do it now then.’
She closed the door behind her.
He sat up and poured the tea. More leaked out of the spout onto the tray than went in the cup.
Harry Pullman was on borrowed time. The Skinners would come for him again, but right now they thought he was dead.
He allowed himself a small smile.
He doubled over the cheap pillow and stretched out, trying to get comfortable, still struggling to believe he was alive.
The sea had been freezing but it was also black and in the darkness the Skinners couldn’t see him.
On his back and moving his legs like a breaststroke swimmer, he wouldn’t have won any prizes for style but it was effective.
He kicked towards the flashing red light of the port-marker-can, a navigational buoy indicating the outer edge of the channel to vessels coming into the harbour.
On the third attempt he successfully heaved himself onto the buoy. He had probably been in the water two minutes.
The rocking marker-can and bound hands meant getting his trousers off was a task to humble Houdini but he did it. He had one slim chance at survival.
Before the navy dishonourably discharged him for desertion, Harry had learned two things during his 18-month service...hatred for authority and Morse code, more specifically, how to send an SOS signal.
Marker-cans are allowed, with certain exceptions, to flash their lights in any rhythm. Flashing a pattern that might be read as three dots, three dashes, three dots would be a statistical miracle.
Covering the red light with his trousers, Harry Pullman made the miracle happen.
That the lifeboat crew who saved him thought the SOS signal was an extension of the training exercise they’d just finished was, Harry knew, divine intervention.
Harry, covered in a medical foil blanket, had feigned shock and remained silent throughout the journey to shore. He knew he’d be taken to hospital, knew someone would notify the police, and knew he could never allow that to happen.
The Skinners had contacts everywhere, in every organisation. Reach a hospital bed and he might as well have let the sea and the darkness take him.
He had been helped into a waiting ambulance, feeling the blanket doing its job, the cold that had gripped him beginning to ease.
When the ambulance stopped and the back doors opened, the A and E entrance a glow of light, Harry saw his moment.
He stepped down as the driver went for a wheelchair, pushed the other green-uniformed paramedic to the ground and bolted.
For a dead man he was surprisingly fast on his feet.
Chapter Forty-Five
Sam had followed Ed’s directions on auto pilot, her mind full of the ruthless gang capable of military planning and execution.
Doherty would have access to enough people and no issue with vigilante justice. But military planning? Sam wasn’t convinced it would be his style.
She turned through a five-bar gate at Ed’s behest and slowed down. The Audi wasn’t designed for rutted country tracks and the potholes in the fading light were harder to miss.
‘When we pull up let me do the talking,’ Ed said.
Sam rolled her eyes. ‘I know. Patriarchal culture. Women should be barefoot, pregnant and tied to the kitchen sink.’
Ed laughed. ‘Something like that. God those must have been the days.’
Sam playfully punched his left shoulder. ‘Sexist pig.’
‘Just kidding.’ He looked at her and smiled.
Sam stopped the car, looked around and shook her head. ‘Why do people still want to live like this?’
A woman inched her way towards them. Sam guessed she was less than thirty but with a back borrowed from an octogenarian and blue, swollen fingers that gripped a mug of something hot, more for the warmth than the drink inside, Sam suspected.
‘Mr Whelan,’ Doherty said, as Ed got out of the car.
The woman turned and walked away.
Doherty walked towards him, hand extended.
‘How are you Declan? Long time no see.’
‘You know how it is,’ Doherty said. ‘Just want to live a peaceful life, but not everybody wants us to have it.’
‘Quite a gathering,’ Ed said, looking around as another two white caravans were towed onto the makeshift site. ‘Council not been round yet?’
Doherty shrugged, said by the time the council got at them they would already be on their way.
‘Not here long,’ he said.
‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Parker,’ Ed said, indicating Sam with the palm of his hand.
Declan extended his hand again.
Sam shook it. ‘Mr. Doherty.’
‘Such manners on one so young and a chief inspector already,’ he smiled. ‘Now what can I be doing for you?’
‘Just thought I’d pop by and say hello,’ Ed said. ‘You’ve got a busy weekend coming up and we don’t want to spoil anything.’
Declan grinned and gave Sam a wink.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about Mr. Whelan.’
Ed let that go, satisfied Doherty knew he knew.
‘Mind if I have a wander about?’ Ed asked now. ‘Police business.’
The wattage dropped a notch on Doherty’s smile.
‘Be my guest, but I’ll walk with you,’ his huge hands struggl
ing from the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘Some of the young lads aren’t as friendly as me. Just because you’re not wearing a uniform doesn’t mean they’ll not know who you are. Call it instinct.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Does the young lady want a cup of tea?’ Doherty asked.
Sam forced a smiled, ‘The young lady’s fine. I’m coming with you.’
The three of them walked amongst the caravans dodging mothers hanging out washing, dogs barking, tethered horses feeding.
‘Who owns the pick-ups Declan?’ Ed nodded towards four vehicles, all bearing Irish number plates.
Doherty stopped. ‘I can’t remember, Ed. It’s my age. Everyone seems to have them these days. Less and less Mercedes and Land Rovers than in my day.’
‘Can you find out?’ Ed said.
Doherty crammed his hands in his waistcoat pockets again. ‘I could, but you’d have to tell me why?’
‘I saw your daughter the other day,’ Ed sneaking it in like a rabbit punch.
This time the lights behind the smile went out and Doherty stared into Ed’s eyes. ‘Then you’ll know we have nothing to do with her. Not since she ran off and got in with Billy Skinner.’
Ed kept it short. ‘He’s dead.’
‘I heard,’ Doherty fiddled with the chain of his pocket watch. ‘Good.’
‘And his sons are in hospital,’ Ed said.
‘Even better.’
Doherty started to walk.
‘Seems they were in a bad crash,’ Ed walking with him. ‘Pick-up involved.’
‘Go and check them for damage,’ Doherty told him, not altering stride, looking straight ahead.
‘And four pick-ups just like those were seen at Scaramangers pub before it was torched,’ Ed nodding towards the vehicles.
Doherty stopped and looked into Ed’s eyes.
‘Torched you say,’ not a hint of unease. ‘Nasty. I‘d like to help but I don’t know how I can.’
‘Let’s start with the owners of those vehicles,’ Ed said, moving so close they were stood nose to nose. ‘We don’t want the site swarming with police do we? I’ve come here to keep this low-key.’
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