‘Fuck me,’ his antagonist groaned, ‘where the fuck did you pick that trick up?’
The question was more penetrating than he realised. If any of Tod’s men knew the answer, Ian would be dead in the instant. But Tod’s narrow face creased in an admiring grin.
‘I never seen anyone jump Nick before,’ he chuckled. ‘Archie, you’re my man.’
Ian said nothing and Tod waved a hand, slender as a girl’s.
‘One of my boys gave me the dirt on you,’ he went on. ‘Never been touched by the filth.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘That’s lush. An ex-con’s less use to me than a man with a clean record. That way they don’t have your mug or your prints and all that shit. I like to avoid trouble with the filth. But you done some shit all right.’ He laughed.
Ian nodded. Jack’s team had been thorough in creating a fake history for Ian’s new identity as Archie.
‘What do you want me to do with him, Boss?’ Ian asked, giving Nick’s arm an extra twist so that he yelped in pain.
Slowly Tod drew a small pistol from his desk and pointed it at Nick. A few centimetres to the left, and he would be aiming straight at Ian’s head. It was an effort not to flinch.
Tod shook his head. ‘I’m not sure which one of you I’m going to pop,’ he said with a careless shrug.
Nick began squirming violently, and Ian struggled to conceal his own terror.
‘You’re a cool one, no shit,’ Tod said, staring at Ian with evident respect.
He flipped the gun until it was pointing at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening retort and Nick slipped from Ian’s grasp, collapsing on the floor with a moan of terror.
‘You’re canned,’ Tod said, scowling down at Nick. ‘Get out.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Fuck you,’ he snarled.
It wasn’t clear if he was talking to Ian or Tod, who threw his head back and laughed. Regaining his stern composure, he nodded at the burly bouncer in the leather jacket. ‘Take him to the lock-ups, Frank. If he whinges, take him out.’
Whimpering, Nick was yanked to his feet and the older bodyguard dragged him from the room. There was a burst of noise before the door swung closed behind them leaving Ian alone with Tod. Eyeing the gun, Ian restrained a wild impulse to arrest him on the spot.
‘Seems there’s a vacancy come up now Nick’s gone,’ Tod said, calmly replacing the gun in his desk. ‘Are you game, Archie?’
Forgetting for a moment that Archie was his new name, Ian raised his eyes and stared at the ceiling, avoiding looking at the bullet hole.
‘Archie,’ Tod’s voice grew sharp. ‘Don’t make me ask you twice.’
‘Yes, Boss,’ Ian replied. ‘Thank you, Boss. I’m your man.’
Tod nodded and looked at the ceiling. ‘I need to get that fixed,’ he said in a languid tone of voice.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘Now what are we going to do about Nick?’
‘I don’t suppose he’s dangerous,’ Ian ventured.
‘Who asked you to go supposing?’ Tod snapped, opening his eyes and glaring coldly at Ian. ‘Obviously he must be dealt with. He knows too much. He has to be dealt with. You want his job, don’t you?’ He leaned back and closed his eyes again. ‘Nick’s waiting for you in the lock-up. It’s properly soundproofed but remember to shut the door behind you when you go in. Sound carries. Frank will tell you where to find him.’
Ian understood what Tod meant before another word passed between them. This position was no ordinary case of dead man’s shoes. Tod had just ordered him to kill Nick.
8
Geraldine had no objection to working with Matthew. If anything, she rather liked him. Underneath his easy-going manner, he was sharp and committed to his work. But she missed Ian, who had been her partner in her personal life as well as at work. Shortly after she had thrown him out of her flat he had left York without even telling her his plans. She had lost her life partner as well as her twin sister, and felt as though she had suffered a divorce and bereavement at the same time. Yet all the while, no one else knew anything about what had happened in her personal life. Even her friend, Detective Sergeant Ariadne Croft, had been kept in the dark. Although Geraldine was pleased that no one was feeling sorry for her, and she could mourn her losses privately, it was hard having no one to talk to.
She was relieved to be partnered with Matthew, who had never even met Ian, because she thought Ian would not come up in conversation. She was mistaken. As they drove to Pansy’s flat, Matthew enquired about him.
‘I hear your former partner left in something of a hurry,’ he said.
Geraldine gave a noncommittal grunt.
‘I was talking to Ariadne,’ Matthew went on, and Geraldine looked away to hide her annoyance.
Of all her colleagues, Ariadne was the only one who had seemed absolutely convinced that Geraldine and Ian were in a relationship, despite Geraldine’s equivocations.
‘She thinks it was all a bit sudden,’ Matthew went on. ‘There’s a rumour circulating that he’s working undercover in London.’
‘Yes, I heard that too,’ Geraldine replied, keeping her tone as casual as she could. ‘But I’m not in touch with him so I couldn’t say.’
‘Don’t you think that confirms it?’ Matthew said. ‘I mean, if he’s left without staying in contact with anyone here, it does make it sound as though he probably is working undercover. If he had just relocated, surely he would have kept in touch?’
‘Perhaps,’ she conceded, although she had barely spoken to her own former colleagues in London since she had moved to York. ‘But he probably wouldn’t have kept in touch with me.’
‘Weren’t you partners?’
‘We worked some cases together, yes. But we weren’t close outside of work.’
The lie slipped out before Geraldine thought about what she was saying. In fact nothing could have been further from the truth. Even before Ian moved into her flat, they had been good friends for years. She was not sure why she was so keen to deny that, except that she was still angry with Ian for preventing her from seeing her sister.
‘I’m not very good at keeping in touch with people,’ she added, truthfully.
‘I heard he left in a hurry,’ Matthew persisted.
‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent reason for his relocating so suddenly,’ she replied. ‘Maybe he was needed somewhere else urgently, rather like you were. So, how’s it going?’ she asked, hoping it wasn’t too blatant an attempt to change the subject. ‘How are you finding it here?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘New year, new job. No complaints so far,’ he smiled.
‘Well, let’s focus on Pansy. We’re nearly there.’
They spent the remaining few minutes of their journey discussing work. Matthew seemed to have forgotten about Ian, and Geraldine was relieved not to have to talk about him any more. She did her best to convince herself that her lie had been perfectly reasonable. Her personal life was no one else’s business, least of all a colleague who had only just moved to York and was effectively a stranger. She hadn’t pried into his affairs or asked him why his marriage had failed. Her working life was spent uncovering other people’s secrets, but she liked to keep her own life private. The irony was not lost on her.
A team of constables were questioning other local sex workers who might have known Pansy in an attempt to trace any of the murdered woman’s clients, while Geraldine and her new sergeant went to have a look around Pansy’s lodgings. She had rented a flat above a dingy row of shops near the hospital. A couple of the premises stood empty, which added to the dilapidated atmosphere of the street. Geraldine and Matthew agreed to split up to go into the shops, starting from opposite ends of the parade. A light snow was falling, covering the frozen grey slush on the ground as Geraldine made her way carefully along the pavement, trying to step on snow that lay between
patches of slippery ice.
Her first visit was to a florist where a taciturn woman behind the counter barely glanced up. She replied to Geraldine’s questions in monosyllables, but the whole exchange was pointless. If she knew anything about Pansy, she was unwilling to share her information and denied knowing anyone who went by that name or looked like the woman in Geraldine’s picture. It was the same in the next shop Geraldine entered. Finally, in a newsagent’s underneath Pansy’s lodgings, she came across a man who seemed to recognise the picture of the woman who had lived above his shop. A thin, swarthy man with heavy dark eyebrows, he gave an uneasy smile as he saw Pansy’s picture. It occurred to Geraldine that he might have enjoyed more than a nodding acquaintance with his neighbour.
‘I saw her from time to time, just going in and out, you know,’ he admitted. ‘But I never knew her name or anything. We barely said hello.’
Geraldine wasn’t sure she believed him.
‘Do you know how she earned her living?’ she asked.
The man shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied, his face twisted in a puzzled frown. ‘Why would I?’
She wondered if his denial was slightly too earnest to be truthful.
‘Why?’ the man went on. ‘Has something happened to her? I haven’t seen her around for a few weeks.’
Geraldine didn’t bother to tell him that Pansy had been murdered. He would find out soon enough, if he didn’t already know.
‘Who are you anyway?’ he demanded, suddenly suspicious.
Geraldine held up her identity card and asked him where he had been on the night Pansy had died.
‘I just want to know whether you might have seen anyone visiting her,’ she lied.
‘Last weekend?’ he repeated, screwing up his face as though trying to remember. ‘I was here, wasn’t I? Working. But I took the Friday off.’
Geraldine held her breath. ‘Why was that?’
He shrugged. ‘It was my girlfriend’s birthday. I took her away for the weekend to Blackpool.’ He leaned forward slightly, his lips glistening moistly as the light caught them. ‘Would you believe she’d never been to Blackpool?’
Geraldine breathed again. Either she was facing a very cunning killer or the man in the newsagent’s was innocent. She took down details of where he had been staying in Blackpool and the times of his trains.
‘Here, you don’t think I’m involved in anything illegal, do you?’ he demanded, suddenly spooked by her questions.
‘It will help us to eliminate you from our enquiries,’ she replied.
‘What happened to the girl upstairs then? I noticed a lot of police outside. Do they have anything to do with her?’
‘I can’t reveal any details yet,’ Geraldine said. ‘Thank you for your co-operation.’
Leaving the shop, she called the police station. A call to the hotel where the man claimed to have stayed confirmed his alibi. Matthew’s enquiries had been equally fruitless. Disappointed but not surprised, they ascended the grimy stone staircase that led to Pansy’s front door, treading with care on the slippery steps. A search team were inside, looking for evidence of Pansy’s clients and acquaintances, but the pickings were meagre.
‘Nothing so far,’ a sergeant leading the search team told them. ‘I’m afraid she didn’t keep a diary of assignations with names and contact details of her punters.’
‘No,’ Matthew replied. ‘Our girl seemed to have picked up her customers on the street.’
‘All the same, she could have kept someone informed of her whereabouts,’ the sergeant said. ‘For her own protection.’
Leaving Matthew talking to the sergeant, Geraldine walked slowly around the flat, trying to gain an impression of the life of a dead stranger. There was a double bed in one room, covered with a miscellany of clothes strewn haphazardly over the duvet and floor. Several pairs of shoes, mostly stilettos, lay in an untidy heap on the threadbare carpet beside a tin of cigarette butts. There was no wardrobe, the only other furniture in the room being a large chest with underwear, T-shirts and wigs spilling out of drawers crammed too full to close. A dirty mirror hung on the wall above a jumble of jars and tubes of make-up on top of the chest. A case lay open on the bed, containing a few small bags of cannabis together with needles and dirty bandages, confirmation that Pansy had been a junkie. The room stank with a heavy mixture of stale sweat, drugs, alcohol, and cheap perfume. Trying not to breathe in too deeply, Geraldine stared around before checking the other rooms.
The kitchenette was predictably cluttered with dirty plates and cups, the bathroom looked as though it had never been cleaned, and a small sitting room was impossible to enter without treading on magazines or clothes or empty cigarette packets. Everywhere Geraldine looked, officers were busy combing through the detritus of Pansy’s life.
‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ Matthew said, joining her in the doorway of the living room. ‘It stinks. Come on, let’s go. It’s too depressing.’ He sighed. ‘What a way to live. I ask you.’
Geraldine nodded. A few moments in the flat was enough to repel her with a combination of pity and disgust. She could only imagine how miserable it must have been living there.
‘Poor cow,’ she muttered as she followed Matthew back down the stairs and into the chilly fresh air. ‘No wonder she felt the need to escape from reality.’
The snow had stopped, but it was icy cold and Geraldine shivered inside her parka, remembering the bare-legged corpse lying on snowy ground in the woods. Even if she had still been alive when she arrived there, she wouldn’t have survived long in the freezing conditions.
9
Ian had not yet adjusted to the milder weather in London. It was mid-January but the path was as yet untouched by snow, and green weeds poked up from cracks between the paving slabs. They were seated on a bench beside a scrubby patch of grass, which a sign on the railings rather grandiloquently called a park. An elderly man was walking his dog on the far side of the grass, but otherwise the place was deserted. Not yet swept or blown away by human intervention, withered brown and yellow leaves skittered and swirled along the path with every gust of the chill wind. A dirty yellow leaf fluttered on to his shoe and settled there like a spectral butterfly. He shook his foot and it floated to the ground.
Jack brushed a stray lock of grey hair off his forehead and took out his phone. He didn’t switch it on.
‘You’re in there, all right,’ he murmured into the phone, without looking round at Ian. ‘Well done. We’ve been trying to get close to that fucker for over a year, and you come along and snap your fingers at him and before you know it he’s sharing his most intimate secrets with you.’
‘What do you mean? He hasn’t told me anything,’ Ian replied, also talking into his phone.
Jack glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘He’s telling you who he wants you to get rid of, and if that isn’t a secret, I don’t know what is.’
Jack grinned, accentuating the lines on his face.
‘Yes, I’ve been given instructions,’ Ian replied miserably.
‘Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s absolutely fucking brilliant. It’s a sign of trust. You’re a natural. You’re in.’
‘That’s all well and good, when you put it like that,’ Ian replied, frowning. ‘But what now? You know what he’s ordered me to do, and if I refuse, he’s going to smell a rat. So what the hell am I supposed to do with this bloody secret?’
‘Well, obviously you don’t want to go ahead and actually carry out the order,’ Jack said quietly. ‘That would be taking things a step too far. Although it would certainly help to get your feet under the table,’ he added.
‘I thought we were supposed to be the good guys.’
‘Everything’s relative,’ Jack murmured softly. ‘It could be justified, as a means to an end. Get rid of the small fry to gain the trust of a bigger fish?’
&n
bsp; ‘I’m not doing it,’ Ian replied. ‘No way.’
‘No, better not go down that route,’ Jack agreed, with a shrug. ‘Pity, but of course you’re right, that’s not an option. Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he added, with a rapid glance at Ian, ‘there’s no need to look so worried. I was pulling your leg. I was never really going to sanction you doing it, even though it would be no great loss to the world.’
Ian did his best to conceal his unease, but he couldn’t help wondering whether Jack had actually wanted him to follow Tod’s orders. There was a certain logic to it, in that seeing Nick’s dead body would help to convince Tod that Ian was trustworthy. Yet if Ian murdered Nick with his superior officer’s blessing, Ian and Jack would be no better than Tod. He shook his head. It was unthinkable.
‘We’ll just have to come up with some other way to deal with it so no one suspects you botched the job.’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ Ian repeated, no longer making any attempt to conceal his discomfort. ‘I told you, I’m not doing what the boss wants. If that’s what you’re expecting, you can take a hike. It’s not going to happen.’
‘No, no, there’s no need to be so jumpy. Jesus, what do you take me for?’ Jack laughed softly. ‘But come on, let’s stop dicking around and be serious. What do you propose to do?’
Ian shook his head. ‘Whatever we do, the boss has to be convinced that I carried out his orders.’
‘Exactly,’ Jack agreed. ‘That’s just what I was saying.’
Speaking in a rapid undertone, Jack explained he would arrange to offer Nick a new identity in exchange for information that would see Tod put away for a long time. They discussed how to set about bringing the discredited bodyguard in. The fewer people who knew about the plan the better. Even Jenny, who was completely trustworthy, would be out of the loop, since the team routinely operated on a need-to-know basis for everyone’s protection.
Deep Cover Page 5