What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  ‘Mr Bolton, I—’

  Bolton held up a shovel-like hand. ‘Of course we’re not running your bog-standard business here, Mr Carter, but there are similarities. In both scenarios, you might be hauled into a room with your boss to explain yourself. Difference is, in our line of work you might not leave the room.’

  The blood drained from Carter’s face. Bolton was a big man. Correction, he was like Goliath to Carter’s David. Maybe he could outpace him if he made a run for it. The primal part of his brain was telling him to do just that, but his legs had turned to lead.

  ‘As I said before, though, I’m a reasonable man.’ Bolton turned so he was facing Carter now. ‘And if you deliver this message for me I guarantee you’ll leave this room in one piece. Can you do that for me?’

  Carter nodded, like a child eager to please its parent. ‘Course I can, Mr Bolton. Just tell me what I need to say.’

  Bolton smiled again. ‘Say?’ His laugh bounced off the walls and reached the corners that the weak light from the bulbs could not. ‘I don’t need you to say anything.’

  Carter’s forehead crinkled in confusion. He was still frowning when Bolton grabbed his hand. He felt something smooth slap his palm. His fingers closed, an automatic reaction at first, before Bolton’s meaty paw covered his hand and squeezed his fingers into the pad of his thumb.

  Pop.

  Carter looked down in surprise at his hand. He saw the blood welling between his fingers before the pain sliced through him. Bolton released his grip and reached up, grabbing Carter by the collar of his sweater in one hand, and stooping to reach through Carter’s legs with his other. Carter’s eyes were still fixed on his own hand. His fingers parted slightly, shards of glass glistening wickedly from between the gaps. He saw the swirling metallic thread of a light bulb fitting sticking out past his little finger.

  What the fu—

  Bolton plucked him off the ground as easily as a child plucking a flower and lifted him in one smooth motion above his head like a barbell. It happened so fast that Carter didn’t make a sound. His arms windmilled and his mouth gaped open like a fish. Bolton held him there for a second, no more, then, bunching his heavily muscled shoulders, he launched Carter horizontally at the window.

  There was no life story flashing before his eyes, just one glimpse of memory. When he was a child, they’d had a family trip to Blackpool and he’d ridden on the rollercoaster. The feeling of weightlessness had made him wide-eyed with excitement, and his eyes widened once again, but this time in surprise. The somersaults his stomach turned as he flew gave him a queasy feeling, a long way from the thrill of the fairground.

  He did a quarter turn before impact, his back smashing into the point where the upper and lower sash met. Time and damp conditions had long since weakened the wood, and it crumbled, the two halves of the window frame bursting outwards like they were made from papier-mâché. The noise was deafeningly loud after the relative silence that had preceded it, but Owen Carter heard nothing except the wind whistling in his own ears, and soon not even that.

  James Bolton looked out through the splintered frame, down to the road below. Carter had landed with arms and legs splayed out, like a child making snow angels in winter.

  ‘I did promise you would leave in one piece,’ Bolton muttered to the empty room. He saw movement off to his left down below, figures running towards the broken lump of flesh and bone that used to be Owen Carter.

  ‘Message delivered. Job well done, Mr Carter.’

  Simmons almost missed it. After nearly fifteen minutes of inactivity, she stood up straight behind the wall and rotated her neck in an effort to banish the stiffness. Moments after she resumed her position, she saw the window burst outwards a split second before the crash reached her ears. She watched, helpless and horrified, saw the arms doing a frantic front crawl in mid-air, looking for purchase but finding none. She heard the sickening thump even from that distance, then silence.

  Gibson’s voice roared in her ear and broke the spell. ‘Go, go, go!’ He raced past her and out into the street. She fell in behind him, her fitness letting her keep pace despite her shorter stride. A flash of movement caught her eye and she glanced upwards just in time to see a shape in the window before it pulled back. It happened so fast she couldn’t be sure, but from the size of the shadow, it had to be Bolton.

  Gibson reached the door ahead of her and pulled out his ASP telescopic baton. Simmons followed suit. He pointed for her to spread right when they went in and he would do the opposite. She nodded agreement, fighting to control her breath after the sprint, but revelling in the adrenaline rush that made her heart feel like it was trying to leap out of her chest. She glanced back at the corner they had sprinted from. No sign of the officers from the other units. They had been sat in their vehicles and might not have even heard Gibson’s shout. Best case, they were a good twenty seconds behind them. Gibson held three fingers up and mouthed the countdown.

  Three … two … one …

  They burst through the doorway, and she broke right. She took in the room in a series of sweeping glances. The long benches. The big cargo door at the back, partially shrouded in darkness. The staircase off to the left where Gibson now stood by the first step, looking upwards. He motioned her towards him and pointed up the stairs. She ran across to join him and they opted for speed over stealth. Gibson shouted as they raced up the first flight.

  ‘Police, anyone in the building stay where you are and do not move.’

  They reached the doorway on the landing and went through it in the same order they had entered the front door, Gibson leading the charge. Simmons didn’t see the blow that floored him so much as hear the impact, a sickening meaty thump. Whatever had hit him dropped him mid-stride, and he was halfway to the floor so that she almost tripped over him with her momentum. As it was she managed to grab on to the door frame with one hand and keep herself upright, but her leg had become tangled in his as he went down.

  She instinctively looked down towards him, her eyes tracing his fall. The black shape started in the periphery and exploded from nothing, like the Big Bang, to fill her vision in a nanosecond. She tried to raise her baton to block it, but seeing Gibson felled like that had short-circuited her reactions and the best she managed was a half-hearted block at chest level. An arm snaked around her neck, clamping a palm against the back of her head and pulling it forwards onto the door frame with such astonishing speed and force that she was powerless to resist. In that final moment, the one thing that registered was surprise, not at being blindsided by her mystery attacker, but that she was calm and felt no fear.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Porter was about to call it a day when the call came in. He and Styles bolted for the door along with four other detectives who happened to be sitting at desks nearby. With lights and sirens, they made good time and screeched to a halt twenty yards from the Taylor Fisheries building. The first officers to respond had already set up a cordon around the door and a section of the road outside. Porter glanced over to the left, where a young constable stood next to a crumpled form of a man. There was no mistaking him for anything other than deceased. His head was tilted to face Porter, his eyes wide in surprise, in denial right to the end.

  Porter dismissed him for now. He could wait; he wasn’t going anywhere. An ambulance was blocking his view of the front door. Its rear door was open, and he could see there was nobody inside it yet. He sprinted around it and into the building, stopping so abruptly that Styles nearly ran into the back of him. Paramedics were making their way carefully down the stairs, carrying a stretcher.

  ‘Evie!’

  The lead paramedic looked up at him. ‘Look out, gents, coming through.’

  Porter and Styles retreated through the door and the paramedics bustled past them. Porter looked down and felt his stomach lurch when he saw her face. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was an angry palette of purples and blues, ballooning up to an alarming size. They had dressed what looked lik
e a deep gash on her face. It ran from halfway down her forehead to her eyebrow, and continued another two inches from beneath her right eye down her cheekbone. There was no movement; she lay deathly still on the stretcher as they prepared to lift her into the ambulance.

  Jesus, is she dead?

  His stomach did another flip until he noticed the misting of condensation on the inside of the oxygen mask that waxed and waned with each breath. He turned to Styles.

  ‘She’s alive.’ He looked up at the paramedic who was stepping out to close the doors and head to the driver’s seat. ‘How bad is she?’

  ‘Could be worse,’ he said, hustling past them. ‘Vitals are strong, but she’s been out since we got here. Hard to say much for sure till we get her back to base.’

  ‘Where you headed?’

  ‘Darent Valley A & E, if you want to follow?’

  Porter nodded. He knew the way, but he also knew they’d not let anyone near her while they assessed her injuries. He wanted to have a look inside first, and he’d head straight there afterwards. He motioned for Styles to follow him. They heard footsteps up on the floor above them and headed straight up to examine the scene.

  Porter was moving at pace as he reached the first-floor landing, and almost walked head first into a man coming the other way. He pulled up short of a collision and saw Anderson with a startled look on his face.

  ‘Jesus, Porter, watch where you’re going.’

  Whittaker was right behind Anderson, and put his hand out to stop himself becoming part of the pile-up. Porter ignored Anderson’s comment and looked through the doorway. Mike Gibson’s body lay just beyond the frame, his feet no more than twelve inches past the threshold. He had fallen with his head turned away from them so Porter couldn’t see his face. A crimson halo surrounded his head, his hair, greying but still with a sprinkling of the dark brown it used to be, now had a liberal splash of red at the base of his skull. One arm lay flat against his body, the other tucked underneath. Porter looked back at Anderson, who just shook his head.

  They stood like that for a moment, not meeting each other’s eye.

  ‘What happened?’ said Porter finally.

  Anderson gave them a rough and ready account of what had happened at the warehouse, and how they had ended up here. He explained how they had been waiting in their cars when they heard Gibson shouting, and how he and Simmons had already disappeared inside the building by the time they rounded the corner.

  ‘By the time we got inside it was all over. Bolton was gone, the other guy, Stenner, had already shot off in the car, and Carter was roadkill. We heard a car start up somewhere out back, but it was gone before we got out there. Found Gibson exactly where you see him. The paramedics checked him for a pulse but …’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘What about Simmons? Where was she?’

  Anderson pointed to the floor just shy of the doorway. ‘She was in a heap on the floor. From the looks of it she’d cracked her head on the doorway’ – Porter saw the dark red stain on the frame where she must have connected with it – ‘and she fell backwards out onto the landing. Think she might even have tripped up on Gibson.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Styles, finding his voice for the first time since entering the building. It would be embarrassing for Simmons if that was how it had gone down. Whether it would have made a difference to the outcome for Gibson was debatable, but had her clumsiness meant that a suspect in the death of a police officer had been able to flee the scene?

  ‘Her foot.’ Anderson gestured with his hand towards where Gibson lay. ‘It was in between where his legs are now, slightly under the material on his trousers by the ankle. She was lying back here, mainly on the landing.’ He gestured back through the door towards the stairs. ‘I’m thinking she heard whatever happened to him, came up fast and came a-cropper.’ He pointed at the door frame. ‘Position of the mark on the frame is consistent with her height.’

  ‘And what exactly happened to him?’ asked Porter.

  Anderson shrugged. ‘Other than the fact the back of his head is caved in, your guess is as good as mine. Bolton and Stenner are nowhere to be seen. There’s a fire escape leading down the side,’ he said, pointing at a door in the far wall, ‘but by the time we checked for signs of life with these two, and cleared each floor, there was no sign of anyone else. We’re fairly sure Bolton came in here with Carter, but he didn’t come out the front, I know that much, so that’s our best guess for now.’

  Porter looked down at Gibson again. His thoughts immediately went to the picture on Gibson’s desk at work, a family shot with his arms around his wife, and their sons like bookends to their left and right. They would have to be told.

  Pity the poor bugger who pulls that duty.

  ‘What about the building?’ asked Styles. ‘Why here?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Whittaker, speaking at long last. His face was pale, and a sheen of sweat on his brow hinted that he was still struggling with what they had stumbled into. ‘We’ve not come across it before, but we can check it out at Companies House when we get back.’

  ‘Any idea what they used on Gibson?’ asked Porter.

  ‘Over there.’

  Anderson pointed a few feet past where Gibson’s body lay, to a piece of wood around four feet long. Even from where he stood, Porter could see the wispy strands that clung to it where a jagged edge had torn a clump from Gibson’s scalp when it had connected. The hairs of the light grey clump were bound to the wood by a congealing streak of blood. The contrast of the colours and the way the tuft stuck out reminded Porter of a fly-fishing lure.

  Porter stared for a few more seconds, soaking in the scene. His eyes lingered once more on Gibson, then the door frame, feeling his anger rising. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said, addressing the three of them. ‘Every extra minute that bastard is left to strut around town is an insult to Mike and Evie.’ His use of the officers’ first names somehow made it even more personal to them than it already was. ‘A man his size can’t be too hard to find, even in this city. Let’s bring him in.’

  They left one of the uniformed officers from downstairs to guard the scene on the first floor. Anderson and Whittaker had been working the Locke case for six months solid and had a good handle on Bolton’s usual haunts. He gave Porter and Styles addresses for Bolton’s office, as well as for the few businesses they knew he owned. He split a further eleven possibilities between the other officers who were outside on the street, opting to keep Bolton’s home address for himself and his partner.

  They agreed that whoever located Bolton would call for backup before attempting any arrest. After what had happened to Gibson and Simmons, nobody wanted to take any chances. Course of action agreed, each pair of detectives peeled away towards their own cars.

  Porter slid into the driver’s seat and had the engine growling impatiently, already in first gear and ready to pull away, before Styles had even reached the handle. He glanced through the windscreen to where Carter lay on a carpet of broken glass and splinters. Someone had covered his body with a sheet now, but his outstretched hands still peeped over the top edge, like a child playing hide-and-seek. The second his partner’s door closed, Porter hit the accelerator and the car jerked forward.

  Simmons had been hunting for a way to put Bolton, amongst others, behind bars for drug trafficking, and had been willing to put herself in harm’s way to do it. The irony dawned on Porter, as he drove, that it would be the harm she had been willing to risk that would see him arrested. He just prayed that she would pull through to see it happen with her own eyes.

  The hunt for Bolton bordered on anticlimax. Detectives Booth and Thomas found him in Oyster Bay, a Chinese restaurant that he owned, and the first on their list of three addresses. His car was parked outside, and he and Stenner were sitting there bold as brass at the table in the centre of the restaurant. He was halfway through a plate of Singapore chow mein that could feed a family of four when the
delegation of six officers walked in. Anderson and Whittaker took point, with Booth and Thomas bringing up the rear, sandwiching Porter and Styles in between them. Porter was straining at the leash to lead the charge, to be the one to confront Bolton, read him his rights, but he held back. It was more Anderson’s right to claim the collar. Bolton was part of his case, Simmons part of his team.

  Bolton didn’t look up or acknowledge their presence as they wound their way between the tables towards him, even when Anderson moved close, practically touching the cloth on Bolton’s table.

  ‘James Bolton?’

  Bolton stabbed his fork into the centre of his mountain of food and twirled it, his fork accumulating noodles like a stick gathering candyfloss. Only after he had heaved it into his mouth and started to chew did he look up. He smiled and tapped his lips with the fork, grunting as he worked his way through his mouthful.

  ‘Sorry, Officer, my mum always told me it’s rude to talk with your mouth full,’ he said once he had finished. ‘Apologies, but if you’re after a table we’re booked solid. You’ll have to come back another night.’ He gave a smile that had all the warmth of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Porter glanced involuntarily around the room. There were several dozen tables, all bar two of them empty. A young couple sat at the table by the window, oblivious to the scene that was unfolding, eyes only for each other. Four young men occupied a table in the far corner, suit jackets slung across the backs of their chairs, top buttons undone on their shirts and ties with knots that had relaxed a few inches below the collar.

  Anderson nodded and returned the smile with an equally cold one of his own. ‘Business is booming, Jimmy. We’ll call ahead next time and book. In the meantime, why not get them to pack up your food to go, and you can finish it down the station while we have a chat.’