What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  ‘Sounds like he’s asking me out on a date, Mr Stenner, not very politely I might add. I preferred it when he called me James. What do you think, should I play hard to get?’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Jimmy, you’re not my type. I’m not in the mood to fuck around today, though. James Bolton, you’re under arrest for the murders of Owen Carter and Michael Gibson, and the attempted murder of Eve Simmons.’

  Bolton sat back and looked impassively up at Anderson as he recited the rest of the statement. When Anderson was finished, Bolton plucked the napkin from his lap and dabbed his lips before laying it on top of the remnants of his meal. Porter looked on, reminded of the sheet he had seen draped over Carter.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said, his eyes moving slowly, deliberately, from one officer to the next. ‘In every sense of the word. However, never let it be said that I don’t cooperate with our fine boys in blue.’

  Bolton put his hands up in mock surrender and stood up slowly, before extending his wrists towards Anderson, who grabbed them as roughly as he could, trying to pull Bolton away from his table. He might as well have been tugging on a towrope anchored to a vehicle for all it moved Bolton. The big man just smirked and watched with a bored expression as Anderson cuffed him.

  They repeated the process with Stenner, and Booth stepped forward and did the honours with his cuffs. He and Thomas manoeuvred Stenner towards the door. Whittaker, in the meantime, came to the opposite side of Bolton and put a hand on his left arm, while Anderson took the other. As they steered him out past the silent stares of the restaurant staff, Bolton spoke over his shoulder to the restaurant manager.

  ‘Make the call, please, Mr Lau.’

  A smartly dressed Asian man moved away from the kitchen door at the back of the room and picked up the phone that sat behind the bar. Porter and Styles brought up the rear as the convoy of officers herded their suspects out into the street, looking left and right as they pushed them down into the waiting cars. It looked an impossible task to squeeze Bolton through the door frame and into the back seat, but they managed. Porter glanced back through the window. Beneath the reflection of the street, he could still make out the manager, more animated now that his call had clearly connected. His free hand gestured towards where Porter stood.

  Porter wondered who was on the other end of the phone. He doubted it was Locke. The manager wouldn’t be quite so animated and demonstrative with the man himself. Whoever it was, he had no doubt that the message would filter through to Locke quickly enough.

  Let’s see how he reacts now that we’ve got his big Dobermann locked up.

  Bolton sat opposite Porter, looking as calm and unhurried as a man waiting for his main course at a restaurant. It wasn’t the first time he had seen the inside of a police interrogation room and it showed. His relaxed posture oozed apathy. Next to him sat Charles Jasper, who had arrived at the station minutes after them. The lawyer, or an associate of his, had clearly been the target of the call that the restaurant manager had made, and Jasper had ushered Porter and Styles out of the room for twenty minutes while he conferred with his client. With Jasper as his shield, Bolton had yet to utter a word since arriving at the station.

  Styles pushed a button to start the recording, and nodded at Porter, who walked them though the standard opening, his eyes never leaving Bolton, who stared back blankly.

  ‘So, Jimmy, let’s dive in head first. You were in the Taylor Fisheries building down by the river earlier today. What brought you to that neck of the woods?’

  ‘Business, and Mr Bolton will do just fine.’

  ‘What kind of business, Jimmy?’ said Porter, sticking with the informal version of his name in the hope of needling him.

  Bolton shook his head softly at the weak attempt to antagonise. ‘Manners cost nothing, Detective. My business there is property. I own the building and wanted Mr Carter to gut the place for me so I could develop it.’

  ‘So you agree that you were there with Owen Carter and Daniel Stenner at approximately 5.30 p.m.?’

  ‘Mr Stenner drove me and Mr Carter there, yes.’

  ‘How do you know Mr Carter?’

  ‘He’s an employee at Atlas. I run security for Locke & Winwood. Atlas is part of Locke & Winwood. It’s my job to know who we employ.’

  Porter changed tack. ‘So now we’ve established the three of you were there, how about you tell us what you were doing when Owen Carter decided to do a swan dive through the top-floor window.’

  Bolton just smiled and Jasper jumped in. ‘Detectives, we are willing to stipulate that my client and his associate had arrived at the scene with Mr Carter, but that is as far as we go. Neither Mr Bolton nor Mr Stenner entered the premises, and had left the scene before the incident you are referring to took place.’

  Porter snorted a laugh. ‘You’re trying to tell me that Owen Carter was just having a bad day and threw himself out of that window?’

  No, Detective, I’m telling you that your own officers at the scene have confirmed that my client’s car was no longer parked outside when they entered the building. They have in fact confirmed that it left some ten to fifteen minutes before the incident occurred, ergo there is no evidence to suggest that either of them were at the scene at the time of the incident.’

  It always bothered Porter how trivial a state a lawyer could reduce a situation to. Calling it an incident made it sound like a minor fender bender, or shoplifting. Two men had lost their lives and Simmons was fighting for hers, or at least he hoped she still was. The thought that she might lose that fight, while he sat here unaware, squatted in his mind front and centre, and he had to struggle to concentrate. Jasper’s casual offhand references were starting to get a rise from him, and he felt a dull thud in his temples. He took a deep breath to even himself out, and fixed Bolton with a steely glare, even though he was addressing Jasper.

  ‘So what you’re asking us to believe is that your clients’ presence at a murder scene mere minutes before two people were killed, and a third seriously injured, is a simple case of coincidence and nothing more?’

  ‘I believe the term you’re looking for is circumstantial evidence, but essentially, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, Detective. We are confident you will find no physical evidence linking either of my clients to the scene. In addition, Mr Lau, the manager of the restaurant you arrested my clients in, can confirm their time of arrival, which is consistent with having left the Taylor building ten minutes before these events took place.’

  ‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ snapped Porter. ‘Ten minutes is a small enough margin of error that they could have left after killing Carter and Gibson and floored it to get there. Hell, for all we know, Mr Lau is just earning his keep by saying they arrived when they did.’

  Jasper shrugged. ‘I’m just recapping the facts, Detective. There’s no speculation or conjecture in what I’ve just said. It’s supported by your own officers’ eyewitness accounts. You can’t place my clients inside that building, let alone laying a hand on Owen Carter or your officers. Nobody actually saw them enter. Now please tell me, do you have anything else to substantiate these charges?’

  Porter let out a loud sigh and sat back from the table. He hated to admit it to himself, but Jasper was right. They had nothing solid yet linking Bolton to either of the murders, or the attack on Simmons, apart from his gut instinct screaming that the big man was guilty as sin.

  ‘Well, Detective, anything else to share with us?’ said Jasper, raising his eyebrows.

  Porter wanted to ask Bolton about Carter and Patchett, about the drugs that they knew and could prove were moving through the company. That was off limits for now, though. They couldn’t prove Bolton’s involvement in that any more than they could prove he was a murderer, not yet anyway. All that would do was confirm any suspicions that both Bolton and Locke might have, that they had been compromised. There was a chance they already knew about the leak. Perhaps Bolton had killed Carter to cut the flow of in
formation to the police. That would definitely be motive enough, but they needed something more concrete to make a case, and avoid the Crown Prosecution Service getting jittery about going after him on circumstantial evidence alone.

  Finally, Porter spoke. ‘We have nothing further to ask at this point, Mr Jasper, although we will most likely want to speak to both of your clients again once we’ve completed a thorough examination of the crime scene and the bodies. We’ll be taking statements from Mr Lau and the other officers at the scene, so if there’re any discrepancies you can rest assured we’ll be in touch. We’re also hopeful that Detective Simmons will be able to give her account of what happened soon.’ He looked at Bolton as he said her name.

  ‘If that’s all, then, Detectives’ – Jasper looked from Porter to Styles – ‘I’d ask that my clients be released without charge, and allowed to leave until such time as you uncover any evidence actually linking them to any of these events.’

  Porter terminated the interview and nodded at Styles, who ended the recording.

  Bolton and Jasper got up to leave, and Porter reached for the door handle to let them out, but stopped before turning it.

  ‘Don’t you be going too far now, Jimmy. I have a feeling we’ll be speaking again soon.’

  ‘Always a pleasure, Detective,’ said Bolton, moving close so that Porter had to tilt his neck a few more degrees to maintain eye contact. ‘Do give my regards to your colleague if she wakes up.’ There was the tiniest emphasis on the ‘if’, just enough to make Porter dig his nails into his palms to control the anger he felt rising.

  It was Bolton who broke away from the stare, and Jasper filed out after him. Porter followed them out into the corridor. He and Styles watched as the diminutive Jasper scurried after Bolton, the difference in their sizes almost comical.

  ‘Well, what now?’ asked Styles.

  ‘Now?’ Porter turned to face him. ‘Now we go and see Simmons. Until we know what the crime scene techs found at the scene, she’s our number one play. There’s a good chance she knows what happened in there. Let’s go and see if she’s awake yet.’

  Bolton’s words echoed in his mind.

  If she wakes up. If …

  Sometimes the smallest words carried the heaviest of weights.

  Porter stared through the window on the intensive care ward. Simmons looked so small in the midst of the machines that surrounded the bed, tubes and wires swarming around on all sides. Her hair, usually pulled back in a ponytail, made a dark frame for her eggshell-white face. A plastic tube snaked along her arm and in through her mouth, chest rising and falling courtesy of the nearby ventilator. He hated hospitals. Their scents and sounds. Squeaky rubber floors and lemon-scented hand sanitizer.

  He had no idea how long he had been staring for when he felt a tap on his shoulder and saw Styles gesturing towards a doctor coming towards them.

  ‘Detectives, I’m Doctor Rose.’ He was a tall thin man in his early fifties, with short-cropped grey hair, and bony shoulders that made it seem the hanger was still stuck down the back of his white hospital coat.

  ‘DI Porter, and this is my partner, DS Styles.’ Doctor Rose smiled warmly and shook hands with them both. ‘How is she doing, Doctor?’ asked Porter.

  Rose sucked air in through his teeth while he decided how candid to be. ‘She’s sustained a serious head injury, and we found some bleeding on her brain so we had to take her straight into theatre.’ He saw the grave look on Porter’s face and held up a hand. ‘We’ve managed to stop the bleeding, but we won’t know for sure how serious the damage is until she wakes up.’

  ‘When is that likely to be?’ asked Styles.

  ‘Hard to say.’ Rose shrugged. ‘It’s an inexact science, I’m afraid. She has swelling around the area of impact, internally and externally, that will take at least a few days to go down. I know you’re keen to speak to her, but I wouldn’t count on doing that for a few days at least.’

  Porter felt disappointed and elated at the same time. On one hand he desperately needed the help she could give him. He wanted to be out there chasing down his man, but at the same time, the thought that she could be sat up in bed talking in the next forty-eight hours gave him hope.

  Rose continued with his diagnosis. ‘There’s a chance with head trauma that her memory of the event may be fuzzy, or even not there at all. She also has a depressed fracture of the cheekbone and orbital socket. She’ll most likely need surgery for that, but that’s relatively straightforward and can wait until the swelling has subsided. Has anyone contacted her family?’

  Porter nodded. ‘Her parents are on their way back from a holiday in Spain. They should be here first thing in the morning.’ He glanced over Rose’s shoulder and saw Anderson and Whittaker walking towards them, carrying cups of canteen coffee. Rose made his excuses and left to carry on his rounds, nodding to the other two detectives as they joined Porter and Styles. They all stared through the window as Porter summarised the doctor’s comments for them.

  When he finished, none of them spoke for a moment. Through the glass, the muted ping of the ECG echoed on endless repeat, punctuating the background hum of the ward. Porter felt an uncomfortable dose of déjà vu wash over him. The machine Holly had been hooked up to had kept the same rhythm, all the way to the end. The same sense of irony struck him now as it had then, that the very noise that signified a heartbeat, and confirmed life itself, could also be a countdown to the inevitable, depending on whether you were glass half empty or half full.

  ‘This is so fucked up,’ muttered Anderson. ‘They didn’t have this coming, either of them.’

  His sympathy clearly didn’t extend to Carter. Porter glanced at him and saw a thin veil of pink overlaying the white of his pupils; had he been crying?

  ‘What’s our play, guv?’ asked Whittaker.

  Porter tore his eyes away from Anderson and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. All the tension of the day seemed crammed into a spot just above the base of his skull that throbbed with all the signs of a legendary headache to follow.

  ‘Our play …’ His voice tailed off as his mind teemed with a hundred unanswered questions. ‘Our play is we hit these bastards with everything we’ve got.’ But his words rang hollow in his own ears. The fact that they had released Bolton and Stenner told him what they had wasn’t enough. He saw that reflected in the eyes of the three men looking back at him.

  ‘I say we speak to Superintendent Campbell tomorrow. We ask to lead on Mike’s murder, and Evie’s assault. We ask him to pool resources and share what we have across the two cases, this one and the drugs angle.’ He half expected Anderson or Whittaker to object; at the very least, to stake their claim to lead on it. Simmons was one of theirs, after all, but they stayed quiet for now.

  ‘First thing is to see what they find at the scene. We should have that tomorrow, right?’ He looked at Styles, who nodded confirmation. ‘Maybe that puts one of them in the same room as any of the three victims. In the meantime, we hit them all where it hurts, in the pocket.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Whittaker, looking puzzled.

  ‘I mean we get in their faces, make it hard for them to do business.’

  ‘We can’t do that yet, guv,’ said Anderson, shaking his head. ‘They don’t know we’re on to them. If we start hanging round for no good reason they’re going to suspect and just shut up shop.’

  ‘You really think they don’t know we’re looking at them?’ Porter asked incredulously. ‘Why kill Carter if they didn’t think he’d crossed them? Why were we on the scene that quickly if we hadn’t already been watching? They aren’t stupid, more’s the pity. Besides, we’d not be investigating trafficking, we’d be looking for a murderer. We’d be looking for a cop killer.’ He paused to let his words sink in. ‘We have every right to be in every one of their buildings, speaking to anyone we damn well please to find who did this. Who mentioned drugs? If we happen to stumble upon something in the course of that then so be it.’

  Wh
ittaker chipped in. ‘And in the meantime they’ll shift little or no product, with us sniffing around.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Porter. He could feel his pulse quickening as a plan started to form. ‘Styles, first thing in the morning I want you looking at everything Locke owns or has ever owned. I don’t care how low-profile this bastard has been. Nobody can operate for this length of time without making a single mistake; it’s just that no one has been looking in the right place, that’s all.’

  Styles nodded. ‘What about our case with Barclay? We putting that on hold for now?’

  Porter shook his head. ‘I can’t put my finger on it yet, but Barclay selling out to Locke doesn’t feel right. Whether that sent Barclay over the edge and he hurt Natasha, or whether she got caught up in the middle of whatever was going on between them, I don’t know. Either way, I say we work both cases. There’s too many roads leading to Locke for them to be just coincidence. We can pick up where we left off tomorrow on that one too.’ He checked his watch: ten-thirty. ‘Go on, all of you get some sleep and we hit this full steam ahead in the morning.’

  Pep talk done, he looked back at Simmons. He saw from the corner of his eye that the others had started to wander towards the exit. He watched her for a moment longer, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. For a second he was back at Holly’s bedside, waiting for the flicker of an eyelid that never came. His eyes started to mist around the edges, and he blinked tears away before anyone could see. The lack of arrest, the absence of someone to blame, still festered in a dark corner inside like an unlanced boil. Her death had left a blank space in his life, and no direction in which to channel his anger.

  Blink.

  His mind snapped back to the present. This was not Holly. This time, things would be different. This time there was a face to funnel that rage towards. He turned and trotted to catch up with Styles.

  I’m coming for you, Jimmy.