Deep Cover

by Leigh Russell

  Thomas had acted in retaliation, having been pushed beyond any reasonable level of endurance. When the blackmailer contacted him again, he would insist he had left the bag of money where they had agreed. If someone else had come along and taken it after Thomas had gone, that was nothing to do with him. He had done exactly as he had been instructed: left the bag on the ground by the tree and gone. The blackmailer hadn’t seen him retrieving the bag. As he trotted away as fast as he could, he realised that things had actually worked out for the best. He would say he had left all five thousand pounds in the bag, and it had cleaned him out.

  ‘There were five thousand pounds left in a bag by the tree,’ he would say. ‘Just what you asked for. I left the money in good faith. It’s hardly my fault if someone else came along and stole it from you.’

  There was no sound of pursuit as he rushed away across the waste ground towards the road without looking back, his bag securely over his shoulder once more. Reaching the street, he slowed down to a brisk walk and made his way around the block and back to his own house, making sure he wasn’t being followed, and avoiding passing by the waste ground, for fear his blackmailer was waiting for him there. As he reached his own street, he kept looking around, but there was no sign of a short person in a long hooded coat, and he reached his house without further incident. Somehow, the sight of his enemy, if only from behind, made them seem less frightening. The blackmailer had been small and probably out of their depth, hoping to make some easy money. Well, it turned out Thomas wasn’t as easy to outmanoeuvre as his enemy had expected. The blackmailer would think carefully before taking Thomas on again. With luck he would hear nothing more from his enemy. Smiling, he let himself back into the house. The nightmare situation was finally over.

  28

  Frank stared back at Ian, his eyes dull as a shark’s, and just as cold. Ian watched Frank’s pale tongue sliding over his lips, leaving them glistening, and heard his hoarse breath wheezing in his barrel of a chest. Without thinking, Ian felt his own hands clench into fists, and he took a step back, automatically weighing up his chances. There was no point in sizing up his enemy if Frank pulled out a weapon. Neither physical force nor reason would provide any defence against a psychopath with a gun. Nevertheless Ian stood his ground, poised to withstand an attack if at all possible. Whatever happened, he was not going to give up without a fight.

  His thoughts spun around wildly. He wondered whether he had time to reach Tod before he was shot. With Tod to shield him, Ian might manage to escape from the room, but Frank would whip his gun out before Ian had time to reach his boss. Any attempt to reach Tod would only provoke the bodyguard to shoot. In some ways Ian thought he might as well make his move and get it over with, yet he clung to his life and stood perfectly still, paralysed with fear.

  The sound of Tod snapping his fingers broke the heavy silence. ‘Fetch Tallulah.’ He was talking to Frank. ‘Jump to it.’

  ‘Yes, Boss.’

  Casting an evil look at Ian, Frank swung his huge bulk around and left.

  The exchange between Tod and Frank reached Ian as if from a great distance and he blinked, struggling to comprehend what they had said. A wave of relief swept through him and he felt his eyes water as he understood that he was not about to die. Not yet. For some reason, he had been granted a reprieve. As his mind cleared from a fog of terror, he recalled Tod telling him that he did not intend to kill a cop.

  ‘Like I’m gonna plug you and land myself knee-deep with the filth. Like I’m not screwed enough as it is.’

  Realising the threat to his life had been a product mainly of his own fears, Ian concentrated on breathing deeply. Meanwhile Tod returned to his seat behind his desk, where he was studiously avoiding looking at Ian. Perhaps he had genuinely forgotten about him. Once he had processed that he was out of immediate danger, Ian turned his attention to what Tod wanted. Before he could come to any sensible conclusion, the door burst open and Jenny strode in. She looked striking in her thick black make-up, with rigid strands of dark hair fanning out from her face. She was wearing a short denim skirt Ian had seen before, black thigh-high boots, and a skimpy red tank top.

  ‘What’s going down, Boss?’ she asked, barely glancing at Ian.

  ‘I take good care of my girls,’ Tod said, nodding at her. ‘So, Tallulah babe, dish the dirt on Archie.’

  Jenny’s eyes flicked to Ian, and he sensed uncertainty in her hesitation. It shouldn’t have mattered that she was unaware Tod knew Ian’s real identity. But Tod’s question suggested he had discovered, or at least suspected, something about Ian. At the same time, if Jenny revealed Ian’s secret, it would be tantamount to admitting that she was in league with the police, if not a cop herself. Tod would not look kindly on her withholding information from him. But her dilemma was that she didn’t know how much Tod already knew. Ian hoped she would trust that he would never have disclosed her double life, but they barely knew one another. Jenny was a tough woman with a mind of her own. She had no reason to trust Ian, just because Jack did.

  ‘What d’you wanna know?’ she asked, all wide-eyed and innocent.

  Ian had to admit, she carried it off well. She looked Ian up and down with a sly grin, playing for time, while he thought frantically of how he could make sure she understood he had protected her fake identity.

  ‘He’s fit,’ she said at last. ‘He’s my fella.’ She darted a look at Tod. ‘Why? What’s he done, Boss? What do you want me to do now?’

  Tod grunted in satisfaction. Tallulah had clearly passed a test in deferring to him. Whatever her feelings for Archie might be, she had made it clear Tod was her boss and she took her orders from him.

  ‘Keep your cards close to your chest,’ Tod advised her. Neither of them looked at Ian. ‘Don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘Not even you, Boss?’ she replied, blatantly flirtatious.

  ‘You got the hots for him, I get that. But stay sharp is all I’m saying.’ He frowned suddenly and turned to Ian. ‘You, scram,’ he said. ‘I got business with Tallulah.’

  Ian hesitated.

  ‘You heard the man. Piss off,’ Jenny said. ‘Tod and me, we got business,’ she added, as though that was something to boast about.

  Tod nodded and smiled. Clearly Jenny knew how to dance around him.

  With a shrug, Ian left the office. He was worried about what Tod might do to Jenny but, after all, she had been working for him at the club for over a year. If anything was going to happen to her, it would probably have happened by now. He just hoped he would not be the catalyst for trouble. Still, he told himself, Jenny had made her own decision to work undercover, and she was capable of taking care of herself. Now that he had been introduced to Tod, he was as powerless to protect Jenny as she was to help him. Accustomed to working in a team, he felt horribly isolated, knowing that he and Jenny were each on their own at the club and he might have compromised her safety.

  That night, Jenny called him on their secure line.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Ian asked, hoping Tod had not told Jenny that he knew Ian was an undercover cop.

  ‘He doesn’t seem happy with you, for some reason,’ she replied. ‘Did you do something to piss him off?’

  ‘I don’t think so. What did he say? Does he suspect?’ he asked, unable to restrain himself from touching on the question that was weighing on his mind.

  ‘I don’t know, no, I don’t think so,’ she replied, and Ian breathed a sigh of relief. ‘But he warned me off you. He said you might not be around for much longer.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Frank’s taken against me,’ Ian said at last. ‘Could that have anything to do with it?’

  ‘It might, I suppose,’ she replied. ‘Yes, that’s probably it. Tod wanted to warn me not to get too close to you because he thinks something’s going to happen to you soon.’

  ‘What were his exact words?’ he asked.

&
nbsp; ‘He said you might not be around for much longer,’ Jenny repeated.

  ‘But he didn’t say why?’

  ‘No. I’d have told you if he had.’

  The idea that Ian might not be around for much longer was ambiguous. Hopefully Tod was thinking nothing worse than that Ian would leave the club and carry on his police work somewhere else. But he was afraid his life might be in danger if he stayed in London.

  29

  The common approach path had been established along the far edge of the waste ground. A few straggly tufts of grass poked up through the dirty snow, a splash of green at intervals in the slush. No one had walked along there at the edge of the waste ground before the police turned up, so it had been adopted straight away as the best route to the site. In her slippery protective overshoes, Geraldine struggled to make her way across the row of plastic stepping stones that had been positioned alongside the bushes.

  ‘The dead woman’s name is Vanessa Slattery,’ a scene of crime officer greeted Geraldine, when she arrived at the site where a body had been discovered at the foot of a tree. ‘We found a wallet in her pocket.’

  Behind his mask the officer looked very young. He held up a credit card and Geraldine leaned forward to read the details. A quick check revealed that Vanessa had been forty-one and single, living in a street that ran at right angles to Holgate Road, not far from the waste ground.

  ‘So what happened?’ Geraldine asked, gazing around the area of open land where several white-coated scene of crime officers were already busy searching the ground and bagging potential evidence.

  The young officer gesticulated at the body, which was covered with a dusting of fresh snow.

  ‘Look,’ he murmured eagerly, his eyes shining.

  Seeing his nervous excitement, Geraldine wondered if this was the first serious crime scene he had attended.

  ‘We reckon she’s only been here a few hours,’ he went on.

  Geraldine searched the scene with her eyes and nodded. There was noticeably little insect activity near the body; even the flies had not yet gathered, but that was probably due to the cold. She shivered and approached the body. The dead woman was lying on her back, mud-coloured eyes staring up at the sky, her small mouth half open as though she was about to speak. Apart from her extreme pallor, at first glance there was nothing remarkable about her appearance except for the flakes of snow that had landed on her and not melted. Other than that, she could have been resting, about to clamber back up on her feet and continue on her way.

  ‘If this was India, there’d be vultures by now,’ the young scene of crime officer said, jumping from foot to foot in an effort to ward off the cold. ‘I was there on my gap year and made the mistake of falling asleep on a deserted beach. When I woke up, there were three bloody great vultures circling in the sky right above my head. They were almost close enough to touch. They vanished as soon as I moved, of course. They were just waiting to find out if I was still alive.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t be too careful.’

  ‘I’ll remember not to fall asleep on a deserted beach next time I go to India,’ Geraldine muttered. ‘Now if you don’t mind, nice as it is to chat, I’d like to focus on this body.’

  A medical officer was crouching down beside the corpse. Although his light brown hair was thinning on the top, he too looked very young. Stifling a sigh Geraldine tried not to dwell on the thought that she had reached an age where all of her colleagues were starting to look young. After a moment, the doctor straightened up, and Geraldine saw a tall and spindly young man wearing an open-necked blue shirt beneath his thick black winter coat. He peered at her through rimless spectacles.

  ‘Are you in charge here?’ he asked in a thin reedy voice.

  ‘What happened?’ she replied, holding up her identity card.

  For answer, the medical officer pointed at streaks of blood in the dead woman’s fair hair, and at traces of blood faintly discernible on the tree beside her head.

  ‘So she hit her head on the tree,’ Geraldine said.

  ‘Yes,’ the medical officer agreed. ‘That’s certainly how it appears initially. But you also need to take a look at this.’

  With a frown, he pointed at a few long smudges on the dead woman’s throat that could have been caused by dirt or bruising.

  ‘Those look suspiciously like there was something around her neck,’ he murmured, as though he was sharing an embarrassing secret.

  ‘Are you saying you think someone strangled her?’ Geraldine asked bluntly, staring down at the marks and frowning.

  ‘Strangled her or tried to,’ the doctor replied. ‘You’ll have to wait for the post mortem to be sure. But yes, it does look as though someone else might have been involved here.’

  The scene of crime officer overheard and chipped in. ‘We found disturbance in the grass and weeds behind the tree, and a thread of fabric caught in the bark. Someone might have been hiding there, waiting for her to arrive before they pounced.’

  Geraldine shook her head. ‘Let’s not get distracted with speculation while we’ve yet to gather all the evidence. If she died from the head wound, it could have been an accident.’

  ‘It’s hard to see how she could have attempted to strangle herself,’ the medical officer remarked drily.

  ‘The woman is dead, but how she died is not yet clear,’ Geraldine replied firmly.

  It was hard not to begin drawing conclusions before all the proof had been gathered and scrutinised, but it was important not to pre-empt the evidence. With a sigh, she turned her attention to the body. The woman’s expression was calm. She was lying slumped back, her head propped up against the trunk of a tree, her arms flung wide. Pale, fair hair covered her ears, a few strands stained with blood on one side of her head. Her dowdy navy jacket was speckled with snow, and half unzipped, with the hood thrown back. Below that her black trousers were similarly flecked with snow, and she was wearing flat brown moccasins with little tassels. There was something poignantly human about the style of the dead woman’s shoes. Geraldine wondered whether she had been pleased with the tassels, or if she had tolerated them because the shoes were particularly comfortable or cheap. Either way, the shoes were not very practical in the snow, which might explain how she came to slip over and hit her head. The sight of death always brought Geraldine a deep sadness, along with curiosity as to how the victim had died. Slowly, she turned and made her way back across the plastic stepping stones to the street. Geraldine’s colleagues would already be knocking on the victim’s door to inform anyone who had lived with her of her sudden and unexpected demise.

  Back on the street, she saw a young woman wrapped in a silver sheet, talking to a female constable. Geraldine went over to listen.

  ‘I was just on my way to work,’ the girl was saying anxiously.

  Her teeth were chattering with the cold or shock.

  ‘Where do you work?’ the constable enquired.

  ‘At Tesco. I looked up because a train was passing and caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye, just lying there. At first I thought she must be ill, or drunk, you know? She looked so pale. I went over to find out if she was all right because she was lying in the snow, but she just lay there without moving, and her eyes were open, not blinking, just staring up, and I kind of knew, really, so I called 999 and told them I thought she was ill or dead or something, I couldn’t tell which. They asked me if she was breathing and I said I didn’t know and then the police arrived and–’ She broke off with a helpless shrug. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Geraldine nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  The girl let out a low whimper. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘Did you know her?’ Geraldine asked gently.

  ‘No. But it’s just so horrible,’ the girl replied.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to find her like that,’ Geraldine said. ‘It must have been a shock, but you did the right
thing to call us. The constable will finish taking your statement.’

  As Geraldine turned away, the snow began to fall more thickly, covering the dirty pavement in a layer of pure white. She wondered how long it would be before the snow turned to ugly grey slush and sighed. People made the world a horrible place in so many ways.

  30

  ‘She didn’t have a bag with her,’ Eileen said at the briefing later that morning. ‘At least, not one that was found anywhere near the body. Why was that? Was it stolen in the attack? Could this have been a mugging that went wrong?’

  ‘It seems highly unlikely her bag would have been stolen but not her wallet,’ Geraldine pointed out.

  ‘She was found only a few hundred yards from her house,’ Ariadne said. ‘She’d probably just gone out for a walk.’

  ‘Maybe she’d gone out to post a letter,’ a constable suggested.

  ‘Yes, well, let’s not indulge in idle speculation about irrelevant details,’ Eileen snapped and the constable looked down at the floor, abashed. ‘Whatever her reason for going out, whatever her reason for walking on the waste ground beside the railway line, all she appears to have had on her was a set of keys and a wallet containing a credit card and around thirty pounds in cash.’

  ‘If this was a mugging, she wouldn’t still have thirty pounds in cash on her,’ Geraldine said. ‘It just doesn’t stack up.’

  ‘Unless her mugger was frightened off,’ Ariadne suggested. ‘It looks like she might have fought back and fallen over in the struggle.’

  ‘She could have been attacked at home and run out to escape,’ a constable suggested. ‘Isn’t domestic violence just as likely as a mugging?’

  ‘The disturbance on the ground suggests the attack took place where she was found,’ Geraldine replied.

  They were still awaiting the results of the post mortem, but there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Vanessa had been attacked on the waste ground. Even if she had been killed by slipping over on the icy ground and injuring her head on the tree, the marks around her neck appeared to be contusions, not dirt, in which case they could only have been made by someone else. If that proved true, the police needed to find her unknown assailant urgently. In the meantime, while waiting for the results of the post mortem, they had received a preliminary report from the forensic team examining the crime scene.