What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  Simmons scrabbled around for the small pair of binoculars in her lap without taking her eyes off the man, although with his size she suspected she knew who she would see. He quickly came into focus and she nodded to herself.

  ‘Hello, Mr Bolton,’ she said under her breath.

  Gibson gave a low whistle. ‘Could be a little unexpected bonus for us here,’ he said to Simmons, then clicked the button to speak to a wider audience. ‘All units be advised, an additional target has arrived on-site.’ He gave a quick description of James Bolton, although Simmons doubted it was necessary. They had all seen his picture pinned up on the wall back in the investigation room, and you didn’t see many who had the height and width to fill a suit the way that Bolton did.

  She adjusted her position by millimetres, and focused on the car. Another man sat motionless in the driver’s seat, another face she recognised.

  ‘We’ve got Daniel Stenner in the car as well, but he looks like he’s made himself comfy for now.’

  Stenner was another name on the chart they had built which sat on the wall in their investigation room back at the station. It mapped out a mixture of those they knew were involved in Alexander Locke’s organisation, and those whom they merely suspected. Stenner was Bolton’s driver, gopher and general shadow. He was clean as far as a criminal record went, but as with many of the names on their wall Carter had spoken of him as a man who was more than willing to break the rules, as well as break anyone who tried to make him stick to them.

  ‘Hope we don’t have to stick him in a line-up at any stage,’ she said to Gibson, training her binoculars back on Bolton. He looked puzzled. ‘Imagine having to find another five his size to stick beside him.’

  They both shared a brief, nervous laugh, cut short as Bolton stopped his pacing and disappeared inside with a face like thunder.

  ‘Expecting company, Andy?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Not yet, I wasn’t,’ snapped Patchett. ‘Do us both a favour and make yourself scarce.’

  Carter nodded. ‘No worries. See you around.’ He scooped up the rucksack and swung it over his shoulder. He could feel the beads of perspiration prickling against his back as they soaked into his shirt. Thank God he had kept his coat on so Patchett couldn’t see any sweat patches. He could always blame the coat for overheating, anyway. He had been convinced from the second that he walked in that Patchett would know something was up. It was written all over his face, screamed aloud by his stiff body language.

  Why the hell did I let them talk me into this? Shit!

  He mumbled a farewell to Patchett, who gave little more than a grunt in reply, and had just reached for the door when it swung open. Even before he registered who it was, the bulk that filled the doorway made him stop dead in his tracks. He looked up, and was met with a flat dead stare in return.

  ‘Mr Carter,’ James Bolton practically growled, in a voice low enough to rival Barry White. ‘Going somewhere in a hurry?’

  Carter instinctively looked in Patchett’s direction, cursing himself for doing so in case Bolton saw the fear in his eyes.

  Stay cool. Act normal. Just look him in the eye and answer him.

  Carter gave what he hoped was a confident smile, though it felt more of a nervous grimace. ‘Me and Andy had just finished up. I was gonna head back home.’

  ‘Stick around,’ said Bolton. ‘Might have a job for you. I’ll come find you after Mr Patchett and I have had a little chat.’

  Bolton brushed against both sides of the doorway as he squeezed through. Carter stepped back to let him past.

  ‘I’ll hang round outside, then,’ he said as cheerfully as he could muster.

  ‘You do that, son.’ Bolton smiled, a strange thing to see, with all the creases on his face in the right place but none of the emotion behind it. He slapped the door shut in Carter’s face with a hand the size of a hardback novel, without saying another word.

  Carter stared at the door for a second, contemplating whether to try and eavesdrop, as much for his own nosiness as those he knew were listening in, but thought better of it. James Bolton was not a man you wanted questioning your intentions, let alone doubting your loyalty. He swallowed hard and retreated to the relative safety of the reception area to take a load off his feet until Bolton was ready for him.

  A heavy silence descended on the interior of the car, punctuated only by Carter’s slightly ragged breathing.

  ‘I don’t like this, guv. Not one bit.’ Simmons chewed nervously on her bottom lip. ‘Bolton doesn’t bother with the likes of Carter. Why would he line him up for a job now?’

  ‘If it gives us something solid on Bolton, who cares?’ said Gibson. ‘Bravo team, have we got eyes on Bolton and Patchett?’

  ‘Eyes on both,’ crackled the response. They had lost the audio, of course, without Carter, but a visual was better than nothing at this stage. ‘Bolton is doing the talking. Patchett is just sat there with a look like he’s shitting his pants.’

  ‘All units stand by. Nobody moves until Bolton clears the scene and I give the word.’

  Simmons heard a shuffling noise, and realised it was Gibson bouncing his leg up and down on the seat. The nervous anticipation that came with a stakeout was infectious. She realised her own breathing had fallen into sync with Carter’s, which echoed through the car’s speakers. Looking across at Gibson, she saw he had closed his eyes like he was meditating.

  Zen and the Art of the Stakeout.

  Time stretched out for what seemed an eternity before Bravo unit chipped in with an update.

  ‘Both subjects are on the move. Patchett standing up and Bolton going for the door.’

  As their transmission ended, Simmons heard a door opening and footsteps growing heavier as they approached Carter.

  ‘Let’s take a drive, Mr Carter. We can talk on the way.’

  Silence followed by a rustling noise, then footsteps receding. Simmons turned to Gibson with a puzzled look.

  ‘Is it just me or is the sound getting fainter?’ Regardless of whether they were leaving at the same time or together, she still expected to hear at least one set of footsteps consistently. She raised her binoculars again to focus on the door. It opened and Carter stepped out, followed closely by Bolton.

  ‘Shit! Where’s his bloody coat?’ Without the mike on his jacket, they had lost their one and only audio source. Carter was like a silhouette in his light grey sweater against the backdrop of Bolton’s black overcoat.

  ‘The son of a bitch has double-crossed us,’ spat Gibson.

  Simmons shook her head. ‘Something’s wrong, guv. He looks even more nervous than when he went in. What did we miss?’

  Let’s take a drive, Mr Carter. We can talk on the way.

  Carter had made his fair share of mistakes over the years but as he stooped to get into the passenger seat, he wondered if helping the police would be his biggest and perhaps last. From stories he had heard, he knew Bolton had a low tolerance for anyone who got out of line.

  Bolton had suggested the drive, and then held a finger to his lips with one hand, the other reaching down and turning over the collar on Carter’s coat to reveal the mike, like a caterpillar on the underside of a leaf. He had mimed the action of removing the coat to Carter and held his hand out for the offending garment, laying it on the chair and pointing towards the door that led outside.

  The cool air attacked Carter’s armpits in that brief walk to the car, and made him all the more self-conscious about the rubbery feeling of sweaty skin upon skin. He had no idea how Bolton knew about the mike, let alone where to look. He saw a man get out of the driver’s side, and climb into the back seat as they approached. He recognised the face, Daniel Stenner, one of Bolton’s right-hand men, and went to get in the back seat beside him, but felt a tap on his shoulder and saw Bolton nodding towards the front passenger seat. Bolton climbed into the driver’s seat, and the Mercedes visibly rocked side to side as he adjusted his position.

  ‘That’s better, don’t you think?’ he sai
d as he started the car.

  Carter looked at him blankly, his mouth hanging slightly open, unsure how to respond.

  ‘We can speak freely now, without our uninvited guests. Well’ – he paused and looked at Carter – ‘uninvited by me anyway.’

  Bolton turned the car around and cruised out past the raised security barrier. Carter sat still, head fixed front and centre, but all the while his eyes scanned the buildings and rooftops for any sign of his watchers. Would the watchers become his saviours or was he in this on his own now?

  ‘If I were in your shoes I’d be wondering two things right now,’ said Bolton, glancing over. ‘How did he know I was miked up, and what the hell is he going to do about it?’

  Carter opened his mouth to speak but Bolton cut him off.

  ‘In answer to the first point, that’s none of your fucking business, but suffice to say that I know everything that happens in my world. As for the second point, well, Mr Carter, that largely depends on you. You see, I know about your predicament.’ He casually rattled off the facts of the case the police had against Carter. ‘So you see, I understand you were put in a difficult position. It would have been better for all concerned, however, if you had kept your fucking mouth shut and asked to see Mr Jasper.’ Charles Jasper was the solicitor who handled all legal matters for Locke & Winwood.

  ‘Mr Bolton … sir … look, I—’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I want you to speak, Mr Carter.’ Bolton’s voice rumbled low like thunderclouds. It didn’t rise above a conversational volume, but the unspoken menace in his tone meant it didn’t need to be any louder. ‘I said we’d talk on the way there. I didn’t say you’d be allowed to do any of the talking.’

  Carter sat back in his seat. He glanced in the wing mirror and saw no sign of anyone following them. Had they even seen him leave, or were they still listening to his jacket sat alone on a seat? Like he had been for most of his life, he was on his own.

  ‘I have a proposition for you. One that reflects your previous loyal service to the firm.’

  ‘Whatever you need.’ Carter nodded vigorously as he clutched at the lifeline. Bolton turned to look Carter in the eye as they stopped at a junction, and silenced him with a glance so forceful it may as well have been a slap across the face. They had taken a series of rapid-fire twists and turns, so that even though they’d driven for less than five minutes he had lost his bearings. The sprawling mass of storage units and warehouses could be like a maze for the uninitiated.

  ‘Simple. I need two things from you,’ said Bolton. ‘I need you to promise me you’ve had your last conversation with the police.’

  ‘I swear,’ Carter said. ‘Those bastards won’t get another word out of me.’ He grinned in relief.

  ‘Secondly, I need you to deliver a message for me.’

  ‘Just tell me what and who to and it’s done.’

  Bolton nodded. ‘All in good time.’

  He pulled the car over to the kerb outside a four-storey brick warehouse. The sign over the door advertised Taylor Fisheries, but there was no sign of life inside. The metal shutters were pulled firmly down on both the ground-floor windows. Horns rang out from the nearby Thames, boats rumbling a greeting to each other in low bovine bass notes.

  ‘Upstairs.’ Bolton nodded towards the door. ‘We’ll be five minutes and I’ll drop you back at your car when we’re done.’

  They got out of the car, and Stenner slid into the driver’s seat. Bolton pulled a bunch of keys from the pocket of his coat. Carter looked back along the road they’d just driven up, unsure if he wanted to see the officers that had been his shadows for so long now. Would their appearance hurt or hinder his chances of getting out of this in one piece, bearing in mind that Bolton knew anyway? It didn’t matter either way; all he saw was an empty street with sheets of scattered old newspaper being prodded along the pavement by a lazy breeze.

  The drying sweat on his back gave him a chill that tiptoed up his spine, and Carter followed Bolton into the gloom of the doorway.

  Simmons sat bolt upright in her seat as Gibson pulled over to the kerb. He had positioned the front end of their car so the building in front shielded it from the road the three men had disappeared down a minute ago. Simmons was out of the car and at the corner in a flash with her back pressed to the wall. Gibson swore under his breath.

  ‘Get back,’ he hissed.

  She risked a glance past the edge of the wall and saw the car parked outside a whitewashed building with blue lettering that was too far away to make out. She could make out a shape inside the car, but it looked like just one man, not three.

  ‘They’ve gone inside,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. Gibson had come up alongside her.

  ‘All three of them? Into where?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone actually go in, but the car is parked outside and I’m pretty sure there’s only one of them left in it. Looks like Stenner. Can’t make out the name on the sign, but it’s the white one on the right-hand side.’ She shuffled back to swap places with him so he could see. She heard tyres and looked to her right. Two of the other units had followed them, leaving one car plus Bravo unit on the rooftop watching Patchett.

  ‘How do you want to play it, guv?’ she asked.

  ‘We sit tight.’ Gibson looked around. ‘Get the others to pull into the alley over there in case they come out fast and head back our way. Move ours as well. I’ll keep an eye.’

  Simmons did as she was told, and a minute later the street was deserted again. She told the other officers to wait in their vehicles with the key in the ignition in case they needed to pursue, and she went back to where Gibson stood glued to the wall.

  ‘Any sign?’

  ‘Nothing. Swap with me a second while I check in with Bravo.’

  He peeled away from the wall and she peered around the edge once more as he whispered into his phone. The doorway was around a hundred and fifty feet away, and the dark blue door looked firmly shut. She looked up at the storeys above it. Each of the other three floors had a matching pair of large windows, turned into mirrors by the angle of the sun. No more than three minutes had elapsed since the men disappeared inside, but it felt like the longest wait of her life.

  She heard the engine of the car rev up and it jerked away from the kerb, still with the solitary figure inside.

  ‘Car’s gone, guv. Bolton and Carter must still be inside. What do we do?’

  Gibson’s answer came low and urgent over her shoulder. ‘We stay with our man, and stay on Bolton.’

  What the hell are they doing in there? Is Carter still our man, or is he playing both sides?

  Carter followed Bolton towards stairs. Most of the light inside came through the windows even though Bolton had flicked a series of switches when they came in. The bulbs shone feebly and left the darkness in the furthest corners unscathed. A large cargo door at the rear of the ground floor was so rusted that it could have been painted brown. Four parallel lines of workbenches sat in the centre. That must have been where they gutted and scaled the fish. Carter sniffed the air. There wasn’t even a trace of telltale fishy odour. He was pretty sure no fish had passed through that door for a good few years.

  Bolton took the stairs two at a time without looking back, and Carter had to practically trot up them just to keep up. Neither of them had spoken a word since they came inside. When they reached the top of the final staircase, Bolton led him through a doorway with twisted hinges hanging from the side that had long since given up their grip on the door itself.

  He walked over to the large window in the centre of the wall that faced out to the front street and stood there, hands clasped behind his back, a lord surveying his manor. Carter stopped just inside the room. An old wooden desk and steel grey filing cabinet sat in the corner next to two plain wooden tables. Scattered around the room were a minefield of cardboard boxes, their once uniform brown exteriors discoloured with splashes of mould.

  ‘First things first, give me a hand moving th
ese,’ said Bolton, motioning to the nearest pile of boxes. ‘This place will be flats in twelve months and I need to clear all this shit out.’

  Carter nodded and followed Bolton’s lead, carrying them one at a time over to the wall nearest the door. They weren’t too heavy, but his fingers went through the bottom of several, where the cardboard had turned to mush. He wished he had a pair of gloves like those Bolton wore, but had to make do with rubbing his hands together, sending a shower of card fragments raining to the floor.

  It took almost ten minutes, and Carter had just placed the last box on the floor when he heard a scraping noise. He turned to see Bolton with his hands on one side of the old desk.

  ‘Grab this,’ said Bolton.

  Carter did as he was told and they manoeuvred it over towards the large window that looked out over the road.

  ‘Here will do,’ said Bolton, when they were four feet away from the panes.

  Carter hurried back over to fetch the matching chair and had just reached it when Bolton spoke again.

  ‘Do you know what makes a business successful, Mr Carter?’

  Carter stood mutely, unsure whether he should speak, let alone what to say. Bolton saved him the trouble.

  ‘It’s the people. With the right people you can achieve anything.’ He motioned for Carter to join him. Carter wasn’t about to argue. He left the chair and strode over eagerly to where Bolton stood. ‘You need people with the right skills, but if you’ve not got an engaged workforce, you’ve lost the game before you start. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Engaged? I, um …’

  ‘What I mean is that they have to understand what role they play, and why the business needs them to succeed. You have that and the sky’s the limit. You don’t, and, well …’ He turned to face Carter, ‘Your employees start to make poor decisions, like talking to the police.’