by Lisa Cutts
I wasn’t sure how it had come to this: I literally had nothing. The low-life criminal whose safe I had once knocked off was blackmailing me, and now I’d knocked him unconscious, gone through his pockets for the promised passport, and left him on the ground. I couldn’t blame him for trying to stitch me up – after all, if the boot was on the other foot, I’d have done the same.
I turned the car towards the docks. I had a passport in my pocket, plus as much cash as I could carry. The holdall next to me on the passenger seat was only really for show. I thought I’d look a little less conspicuous strolling on to the ferry with a bag than without one. The socks I’d grabbed didn’t even match. Still, Spain sold socks. I’d worry about it when I got out of this shitty little one-horse town.
My heart lurched when I saw a flashing blue light in my rear-view mirror. Would I actually get away if they were coming for me?
The relief hit me when the marked police car behind me turned down a side road, giving me a new concern. Were they trying to head me off at the docks?
Surely they wouldn’t be stupid enough to let me know they were behind me and then try to cut in front of me.
Not willing to take the risk, I put my foot down and drove towards the top of the cliffs. It was a clear and bright afternoon, people milling about, going about their business as if they didn’t have a care in the world. I’d never felt like that in my life.
I pulled into a car park that was rarely used at this time of day. It was too far from the port, too far from the town, and the dog walkers usually came along later. I knew the footpath down the side of the cliff could be a bit heavy on the calves, but it cut valuable minutes off the journey, not to mention the CCTV in the car park still wasn’t working so no one would know at what time I’d walked away from my car.
I even bought a car-park ticket valid for twenty-four hours to make it look as though I’d meant to come back.
Then I picked up my bag of meagre belongings and trotted towards freedom.
The pathway was fairly steep, but wide enough for me to avoid the edge. East Rise council didn’t want to be sued for some careless day-trippers plummeting over the edge.
I tried to peer over to see how far away the fall to my death would be. I couldn’t even see it. No danger of that today then.
Stopping to look at the sea, I wondered if I’d ever be back this side of the Channel again. I supposed it was unlikely, unless I wanted to see out my days banged up constantly wondering when Turner or his cronies would get to me.
The noise of cars turning into the car park, fifty yards or so above my head, made me hurry on down the path. There was a chance they were police cars, so the sooner I got completely out of sight and on a ferry, the better.
I started to run. I knew they’d catch up with me if they really wanted to, head me off at the bottom, but what else could I do? Stand there and wait for them to put the cuffs on me? That wasn’t going to happen.
At times, I stumbled; I was getting closer to the terminal building and where I needed to be. Once I was off the side of the coastal path, I was there. All I had to do was buy a ticket, show them the passport I’d taken from Turner’s pocket, then I was away.
Of course, I knew that I wouldn’t be completely away until my feet touched French soil, yet still, I was getting closer.
The noise behind me from the car park grew ever fainter with the sea breeze and the distance I was putting between us, so on I stumbled, stepping aside a couple of times for walkers and joggers as they made their way past me.
At last, I reached the building, sweating more than I would have liked. It was instinct to want to look round, make sure I wasn’t being followed. I fought the temptation to check who was watching. Apart from being a pretty good criminal, I had an idea how surveillance worked and I wouldn’t see them before it was too late.
Steadying my breathing, calming my heart rate, I strolled to the ticket booth, ready to act as though all I wanted from life was to head to Calais, buy a baguette and stagger back with as much cheap booze as I could carry.
Ticket in hand, someone else’s passport in my pocket, I felt good. Even the slow, steady stream of passengers I joined to get on the boat made me reckon that this was actually going to work out.
As soon as I got on board, I made my way to the bar. A celebratory pint of over-priced lager was in order.
Nursing the only one I knew I could allow myself, I sat in the far corner, cradling it, while I watched the other passengers come and go.
For the first time since abandoning her, I thought about Sophia. That was how self-centred I’d become. I stared into my pint. Or had I always been this way?
There must have been a time when I wasn’t such a selfish bastard. Strange thing was, I don’t ever remember being really happy, just elated when I was committing crime.
For the first time in years, I was without a phone. It was probably for the best. Who was I going to call anyway? Sophia? Tell her I was sorry for running out on her, and for fitting her up for stealing half a million pounds from police headquarters?
She’d probably be all right. She wasn’t violent, didn’t have any other convictions and could take care of herself. Prison probably wouldn’t be too bad for her.
I took a swig of my beer. Who was I kidding? She was as likely to get shanked inside as I was.
Still, better her than me.
Yeah, I really had the morals of a polecat.
A glance at the clock above the bar told me we were about halfway to France. I thought I’d take a wander around the deck, make sure no one had followed me. I’d been keeping an eye on who was in the bar area, looking out for anyone under sixty who didn’t have kids with them. I’d never know if a surveillance team were anywhere close to me and could only rule them out by old age and children. Even Turner didn’t stoop low enough to employ toddlers or geriatrics. It didn’t mean to say that they weren’t hiding somewhere else on the ferry.
I’d go and buy some chocolate, make myself look like a proper tourist, then take a leak.
The next few minutes passed without incident until the moment in the shop when I saw what looked like someone wearing an earpiece. It was more the fiddling, finger-poking to the ear that did it. He fitted the bill: white, mid-thirties, five-ten, looked like he worked out, casually dressed, but in a way that said ‘police officer’. He looked clean too, both literally and free of alcohol and drugs. And a dead giveaway was that he wasn’t like most of the fucking clueless sheep who were following each other around the shop in the hope of two pounds off cheap vodka.
I knew this was a risky journey, leaving me like a sitting duck, but I’d had no other choice. I couldn’t afford to panic, yet I couldn’t afford to pretend that this bloke was going to be anything other than my undoing.
With a glance at the queue with a huge bar of Toblerone in my hand, I sauntered towards the exit. It led to one of the seating areas with doors to the deck.
If it came to it, would I have the bottle to throw myself into the sea?
The weather was mild, I was a strong swimmer and the bundles of notes in my pockets would dry out eventually in the Spanish sunshine.
I decided to test the waters – not the English Channel waters, but the ones that would tell me if I was being followed or not.
I chucked the bar of chocolate on the nearest shelf, not wanting to add shoplifting to my misdemeanours, and idled through the door.
There was a slow but deliberate movement behind me, confirming my worst fears. The celebratory pint had been too early, and had no doubt numbed my senses slightly, numbed them enough that I only saw him lurch towards me at the last minute.
In my last few minutes, I could have sworn he came out of the disabled toilet. I hadn’t even thought that danger could lurk there. How many others could claim that the most defining moment of their life came from a disabled toilet on a fucking ferry?
I fell to the floor for some reason. It took me a moment to realize why my legs wouldn’t work and wh
at the burning feeling was in my side. Then I saw the blood.
Fucking typical. I was going to die closer to France than England. That was one of my last thoughts as Milo’s face began to blur as he was grabbed by the bloke with the earpiece from the onboard shop and a couple more of his colleagues.
My meaningless life had one more surprise for me as I lay shivering in the warm May weather, bleeding to death on the Calais-bound ferry. A figure dropped down beside me.
‘Dane,’ he said, ‘hang on. Help’s on its way.’
The pain was beginning to subside, as was everything else, but still I managed a smile at my detective inspector. ‘What you doing here, Harry?’ I said with a voice that sounded so very quiet and unlike my own.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I need to put pressure on the wound. You’ve been stabbed. The medics are here on board, so you’re going to be fine.’
‘Hey, don’t bother. I’m not worth it.’
He was leaning in so close to me. His face was next to mine. I could only focus on his stubble.
‘There’s one thing I have to tell you,’ I said. ‘I need to tell you about Sophia.’
Harry moved his head so close, I could feel his breath on my skin, his ear touched my lips as I spoke.
‘It was all her idea – the safe at headquarters, the theft, the plans she drew up were in her drawer in the office. She’s a wrong ’un. I had to tell you.’
Chapter 69
Harry fought to get Dane’s jacket open to stop the bleeding from his chest. He knew it was futile, but it didn’t stop him trying. Arms grabbed at him, pulled him away before others took over.
Once again, he was aware he was sitting by and watching his colleagues try to save another fallen comrade’s life, even if that comrade wasn’t worth saving.
As he moved back out of the way, Harry was aware that Dane’s holdall had been dropped by his side as he fell to the ground. Moving it aside with his foot, he unzipped it, trying to conjure up an excuse if anyone ever questioned why he’d opened it.
He crouched down, pulled the sides open and came up with the best excuse that if it contained a firearm, it needed to be made safe before it was moved.
What greeted Harry were several bundles of twenty-and fifty-pound notes and a two-inch bundle of papers. At least, at first glance, it all looked like papers. He leafed through Police National Computer checks, private bank and personal details from police intelligence data bases, and one name jumped out at him – Jenny Bloomfield.
That stopped him in his tracks. Harry looked back over to where police and security were trying to save a man who appeared to already be dead.
There was no way that Hoopman could be responsible for Jenny’s death, so what was he doing with all this paperwork?
That was the point that a colour photograph pushed inside the black-and-white pages caught his eye.
It was a photograph of Linda Bowman standing next to a man who bore a striking resemblance to Linda. If Harry wasn’t very much mistaken, he was looking at Linda and her brother, a career criminal and someone who had never been located in Linda’s murder investigation. This was the information he had been missing all this time that would link the murders of both Jenny Bloomfield and Linda Bowman.
And that link was Sean Turner.
Chapter 70
Thursday 14 May
Quite what Sophia was supposed to do with herself while suspended from work, she couldn’t fathom. Her mind was whirring and most of her colleagues wanted nothing to do with her after she’d been arrested and interviewed for her part in a burglary at headquarters and the attempted murder of a colleague.
Could she really blame them? Still, everyone was being very cautious whenever they did speak to her. The only one who truly didn’t seem to care was Harry.
Sophia hated to think what kind of place the incident room would be if they didn’t have Harry. He had taken them through so much over recent years, and she knew he had no idea just how much he meant to them all.
As she trudged from the town centre car park towards the Seagull Pickings where Harry had asked her to meet him, she thought about how bloody foolish she’d been.
Walking through the door of the seedy eatery, she saw the unmistakable figure of her detective inspector waiting for her.
Tears pricked her eyes as she fumbled through the tables and handful of grumpy diners, until she reached her friend.
His arms were around her, grabbing her in a bear hug and crushing her until she had to pull away to catch her breath.
‘How you doing, girl?’ he said, with damp eyes staring down at her.
She managed a shrug, despite still being encased.
Harry let go and waved at the counter.
‘Two teas, please, De Niro,’ he said to the waitress whose face relaxed into the beginnings of a smile, only didn’t quite make it there.
Harry pulled out a chair for Sophia and took the seat opposite her.
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
She took a deep breath, waited until ‘De Niro’ had unceremoniously plonked two mugs of strong tea down on the table, and moved away.
‘Even after everything he did,’ she said, voice faltering, ‘I can’t believe Dane’s dead.’
‘None of this was your fault,’ said Harry, placing his hand on her hers. ‘He was rotten to the core.’
She noticed Harry glance at the other customers, a frown flashing across his features.
Following suit, she stole looks at the couple sitting next to them, meeting Harry’s eyes with a raised eyebrow.
‘You can’t be too cautious,’ he said in lowered tones, accompanied by a conspiratorial wink.
‘Look,’ he added, leaning across the table, ‘it would be wrong of me to tell you too much about his background, but he wasn’t a good person. What he was, was charming, and like others before you, you fell for it.’
Harry gave her hand a squeeze and produced a tissue from his pocket.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘have this. I’ve only used it once or twice.’
She couldn’t help but smile through the tears as she dabbed at her bloodshot eyes.
‘Thanks, Harry. You don’t know how much this means to me. Most people have shunned me, and I can’t say as I blame them.’
She hesitated, not sure whether to tell him, then figured she owed him a full explanation.
‘You remember me telling you about Hannah?’ she said, blinking through the tears.
‘Course I do. An ex of Hoopman’s.’
She nodded. ‘Well, when I met her, here, she told me that he got her into bad ways. I’ve told you some of it, but she said that he . . . sold her online for sex.’
Sophia choked up, the words catching in her throat. ‘He said that we’d disappear away together, forget everyone else. In the back of my mind, since she told me her pitiful story, I worried I’d end up like Hannah. If he was prepared to do that to her and steal from me, I don’t doubt that’d be next.’
There was an awkward pause, Harry pulled his tie away from his throat as if it was cutting off his air supply, and Sophia tried as best as she could to hold it together.
‘Whatever’s happened, you would have come to me or someone else and told them. I know you, Soph. You wouldn’t have let things go on. What we need to concentrate on now is getting through this.’
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she said. ‘Will I go to prison?’
With a shake of his head, Harry said, ‘You know the criminal investigation takes priority. You’ve been interviewed. They had no choice. At best they’ve got a conspiracy to commit burglary; you came straight to me about it, so please don’t worry. Then of course, they’ll want to talk to me.’
‘What? You’re not—’
He held up a hand to stop her. ‘I don’t have anything to worry about, and neither should you. It’ll be unpleasant, but you have to keep it together, all right?’
Sophia gave a wretched nod. ‘I’m sorry I stormed out of
your house on Sunday.’
‘You came back though,’ said Harry. ‘That’s the main thing.’
Sophia paused while she steeled herself to ask her next question.
‘Can you tell me one thing?’
Harry’s hand went up to scratch his stubble.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The man in the office. Was he . . . Is he likely to get better?’
‘We think so.’
One second-hand tissue was not going to be enough to stem her tears. Harry fished in his pocket for another.
‘He’s not in a great way, but he’s alive,’ Harry said when the crying had subsided.
‘He just kept hitting him, again and again. We didn’t know he was going to be there, or we wouldn’t have risked it, not that night. Well, I certainly wouldn’t have done. I can’t guarantee Dane wouldn’t have been there.’
They both sat staring at their mugs of tea, united in their misery.
‘There is one other thing though,’ Sophia said. ‘If Dane was being set up, and I was sent in to go along with it all, why was someone sitting at his desk working in the early hours with us about to knock off the safe?’
Harry loosened his tie again and ran a hand through his hair.
‘That simply doesn’t make sense,’ she added. ‘Even when I went through the humiliation of being arrested and interviewed, no one’s been able to give me an explanation of what that fella was doing there.’
‘That’s because, Soph, it was what they call a good old-fashioned police fuck-up.’
‘And I’m supposed to face the consequences of that, am I?’ She felt something which she hoped was anger – at least it meant she had some sort of energy left in her.
‘It’s a murky world,’ said Harry. ‘One that Dane lived in and one that he dragged you into.’
‘At least he did the decent thing in the end,’ she said, a tight smile on her face.
The questioning look Harry was giving her forced an explanation from her.
‘It was one of the things they told me in the interview,’ Sophia said as she wrapped the sodden tissue round and round her fingers. ‘He must have had some modicum of decency about him. You know what I mean?’