by Dave Duggan
‘… and I feel that DC Hetherington may be under the influence of elements of the security services, who are pursuing a political agenda, aimed at discrediting the work of this unit and of PS(N)’s current leadership.’
Josh and Karolina exchanged glances. If they were any younger they would have hi-fived each other. They had enough material now to enliven after-work beers with their colleagues for weeks to come.
Hammy returned to pacing. Hetherington sat bolt upright on his high stool. I pinched my nose and gently swung the door open and closed. Karolina smiled. Josh stifled a laugh.
‘Thank you, DS Slevin. For managing to both clear the air and foul the air at the same time. “And they fall upon their faces, and the Quran increases them in humble submissions”, as we say. Here’s the drill from now on. In regard to these matters, I will take the Todd Anderson case back onto my desk. Slevin, you will continue on your current work assignments, pending a full resolution of your situation. Josh and Karolina, revise your case loads and bring me short notes this afternoon at 4. Hetherington, use the rest of today and all of tomorrow to draw the Todd Anderson material together. Write me a one page summary and another one page of your best thinking for the front of the Murder Book. Have all of that on my desk no later than 9.00am Friday. You will need to re-organise that corral of desks in the main office to reflect the disbandment of this team.’
‘But sir,’ Hetherington pleaded, ‘Slevin was not part of the team. There is no need to disband it. In fact, we’re just beginning to make progress, so now is not the right time …’
Hammy jumped in.
‘There is never a right time, Kenneth. There is only now.’
He had got us where he wanted us. He was back in charge and quoted another surah from Al-Quran to conclude.
‘“By the Time! Man is surely in loss, except those who believed and did good works, and exhorted one another to Truth, and exhorted one another to patience.” Don’t worry, Kenneth. You’ll get over this. Unsolved cases are what defines us as police officers, especially in this neck of the woods. And the Todd Anderson case, whatever else it may be, is a defining case. If we solved every crime, there’d be no need for us, would there? So, do as I say. Now. The only time there is. All this talk of food has put me in the form for an early lunch. Feel free to join me in the canteen. We’re all in this together, though some of us are less clear on what it is we’re in than others, and that includes me. Soup, I think. I’ll avoid the salad. The last one I had, the lettuce was singed and charred at the edges. And peppermint tea. Yes, peppermint tea, to settle the inner man.’
He rubbed his tummy, tapped Hetherington on the shoulder again and strode towards me. I opened the door fully to let him out and promptly followed him, pulling the door behind me, to let Hetherington stew in the questions I knew Josh and Karolina were bursting to ask him.
Hammy took my arm and steered me to the door of his office.
‘Now, Eddie, whatever shenanigans you and your spook friends are up to is your business. I won’t let it pollute our good work anymore. You’ll be off this floor quicker than shite off a slate. In the meantime, sit at that desk yonder, do whatever the fuck Sharon tells you to do, and no more. I haven’t a clue how all this is going to blow up, but blow up it will and I guarantee that, when it does, it won’t be on this floor. Now, fuck off.’
He squeezed my forearm and pulled me close, so I could smell the full range of his mother’s wazwan on his breath. Then he pushed me away and hissed.
‘I mean it. Fuck off.’
TWENTY SEVEN
Sharon kept me busy and days passed, each one growing lighter, into Spring. Better than any of us, she knew how the ball broke when players contested for it in the middle of the field. The strong jumped high to field it. Then others scrambled about to pick up the pieces. She was full of sporting sageness, from her own kick-boxing career.
‘What you don’t want is to suffer a knock-out. Take a couple of clouts, yeh. A few flakes to the kidneys. What’s a bit of bruising? Get the lovely Karen to rub on the arnica. Ah, don’t tell me you and Ms Lavery are not sparring any more.’
‘We’re between rounds. What happened your eye?’
‘I’m coaching one of our young ones for the nationals. I got a bit too involved and well, I’m not as quick as I was, so she caught me. Don’t worry. She’s alright and, well, it’s useful, sometimes, to get knocked out, when you’re young. It’ll stand to her in competitions.’
Sharon touched the bright green dressing on her left cheek bone with her black lacquered fingernails and continued,
‘She bent in too low, after clocking me under the eye. Everyday’s a school-day, Eddie. Just like here. And the lesson you’re learning is that Sheik Hamilton is not your opponent. He’s the owner. You’re not fighting him. You’re fighting for him. He owns you. And me, in a different way.’
‘I’d say he’s scared you’d kick him in the balls, so he stands well back.’
‘Listen, one good side to all of this is that the floor is getting back to normal. Hetherington’s attempt to build Fortress Kenneth is stalled. Josh and Karolina can go back to playing at being detectives again. You’re stuck with me for a while, so just keep your head down, duck and weave, duck and weave and watch out for Sheik Hamilton’s long left leg, because it’s coming and you’ll feel it from your kidneys right down the sciatic nerve, through your heel and over you’ll go unless you have yourself well and truly rooted.’
‘What about a move to Vice? I could work there.’
‘No chance. That’s a prime location for folks on the rise. Go-ahead folks like Josh and Karolina. Hetherington may have missed his chance, but, we’ll see. Redemption is possible. One shot only. You’ve used yours a dozen times over. Here, take a mouthful of these. Chewing’ll take the glum look off your bake.’
She held a plastic tub of nuts, dried beans and seeds before me. I pinched some between my fingers and tried them. They tasted like perfumed grit from the bottom of last Spring’s potpourri.
‘Saffron. You getting it? That’s the buzz in it.’
As well as filling me full of wisdom and roughage, Sharon had confirmed what my only contact in Vice, Joseph Dickson, told me when I travelled with him in the lift to his floor.
‘Your man, Hamilton and our top madam, DI Quigley, had a fine do-dah up here last week,’ he said. ‘Where are you going now?’
‘I’m hanging out with you is all.’
‘Jesus, Slevin, do me a favour and volunteer with The Samaritans if you want to do some befriending. I’m good for mates just now, online and face-to-face.’
‘I have to collect some papers up at Vice. Some depositions.’
‘Like fuck you do. You’re up leering about, seeing if you can imagine yourself on our floor. You can forget it. The two bigwigs did the finger pointing and the pouting behind closed doors most of the time, but she sent your man packing with “and if you think I’m going to take your cast-offs, just to save your skin”, which she delivered full-throated from her office door, held open to usher him through. The word is you’re the cast-off and you can forget Vice. We’re not having you.’
I stayed in the lift as he got out on his floor.
‘What about the depositions?’
‘I got what I wanted,’ I said, as gamely as I could. My form plummeted as surely as the lift. Sharon simply confirmed what Joseph Dickson had told me and my morale plunged to the basement.
‘Options won’t be great, Eddie, but we’re a big concern, the police, so some cubbyhole or other will be found for you. And you know what, I’ll miss you. You’re the first assistant I ever had,’ Sharon said.
‘I’m not your assistant, Sharon.’
‘No. You’re too old and too well-qualified to be my intern. So what are you?’
‘I’m your corner-man. Do ye have them in kick-boxing? I’m doing your cuts, your
ice. I’ll throw in the towel, if you need it.’
‘You won’t need to do that. Not for me. Not for yourself, neither. Stay in the game. Root yourself. Guard up. Kidneys covered. Go on. Do something.’
‘What?’
‘What? Jesus. Go out and buy yourself an Easter egg, like a good lad.’
It had to happen someday, even with me taken off front-line activity, so, when I got into a lift with Karen Lavery, I wasn’t surprised. She’d come up from the basement carpark. I was delivering papers to Sharon, who was on the top floor, staffing Hammy at a Joint Case Conference.
‘Hello, Eddie,’ Karen said. There was no hint that the last time we’d met had been under gunfire at my flat.
‘Karen. You here for the conference?’
‘Yes. You going?’
‘No. Not exactly. I’m sort of a runner.’
‘Ah. They’re coming down hard on you.’
‘You could say that. Paris good?’
Two men got on at the third floor and we both went silent, but stood closer together. I liked the fact that we were the same height. When we turned towards each other, our eyes met directly. I felt such a rush of desire, that I had to look away, which I immediately regretted. The lift stopped and the other two got off. Being alone again felt more charged and intense.
‘Paris, yes. Ages ago. The conference was very good. Got out and about a wee bit too. You know how we say the French are standoffish and cool? I didn’t find that. The hosts were really, you know, sound. And the work was fascinating, like, so much new stuff going on. We get lost in ourselves, here, Eddie, you know, sometimes.’
‘You’ll go back out then. Follow-up?’
‘There’s … we’ll see. And what about you? Lighter case-load?’
‘Nil case load. I’m desk-bound. Glorified office-boy, under Sharon’s thumb.’
‘Jayus, Eddie. Mind she doesn’t hit you a belt.’
‘Naw, she won’t. Up to a point, she’s the only one on my side.’
Eddie, I … I mean …’
‘Hammy wants me out, so I’ll be out. Where, I have no idea, but something back-office, no doubt.’
We reached the top floor and I let her step in front of me. She was wearing a royal blue trousers suit, with a fitted jacket that held her slim figure so gently it seemed to shimmer on her. When she turned back to me, her thinly-framed spectacles glinted. She smiled. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I was beholding. If love is something you fall into, I was in a headlong tumble. I managed to say,
‘You look gorgeous, Karen. The suit? Paris?’
‘Yes. Thanks, Eddie.’
‘I’m guessing you’re in the main conference room, along there,’ I pointed. ‘I’m dropping these to Sharon, then getting back to my filing. Oh, that fiver I owe you.’
‘Eddie, Jesus. I don’t like seeing you so down-beat. Keep the fiver, so I’m in credit.’
‘Always, Karen. I’m not that down-beat. You mind that plank you noticed against your back the last time we were together? I’m doing my best to keep it trousered at the minute, pressing these files across my front and not saying too much.’
Karen laughed wonderfully. Her timing was perfect, because Officer Cosgrove and his two henchmen, Daffy Duck and Goosy Gander, approached. They had shed their great winter coats, but kept their morticians’ suits and dark ties.
‘Hello, Ms Lavery. Are you planning to bring DS Slevin to the conference as your “plus one”?’, said Officer Cosgrove.
‘Good morning. DS Slevin has other duties and won’t be able to bring his insights to bear on our work this morning. Which is unfortunate.’
Cosgrove ignored that and turned to me.
‘I haven’t had time to see the footage, limited though it was, of your latest cock-up, Slevin. Something too strong in your espresso, was it? Something about a gun and you a danger to the public, not to mention costing us a pile of money in ruined broadcast equipment and causing my old friend DI Hamilton all sorts of bother. Not nice. Oh, and by the way, your police-college mate, Tony White? He’s away. Took a package and headed off. Probably in a caravan in Millisle, as we speak, counting raindrops on the windowpane. You’re the last one, Slevin. The last idiot in the CC’s idiotic scheme. She’ll be here today and I’ll take the opportunity to bring her up to date. Go, Slevin. Let’s make it a clean sweep. Say I can tell her you’re for the hills too, where you and your likes belong.’
‘Have a good conference, sir. You’d better get in fast, before all the scones are gone. Your two care-workers look like they could do with getting fed.’
‘Ms Lavery, could I have a word, before we go on in? Walk with me a moment, please.’
Cosgrove took Karen by the elbow, turned her and led her to a two-seater bench at the end of the corridor. Goosy Gander and Daffy Duck moved either side of me and launched their double-act.
‘No scones for you, Slevin.’
‘No hot, hot, hot Ms Lavery neither.’
‘Lovely girl. Karen, is it? She’ll have a farm a’ land, no doubt.’
‘A good catch, right enough.’
‘I might give her a go.’
‘Ah, you’d crush her, big lad. She has no more meat on her than a pigeon.’
The thought of either of those two with their hands on Karen blew the fuse that had been fizzing in my head for weeks and I kicked Daffy Duck squarely in the balls, then moved quickly to the other end of the corridor, where support staff for the conference was stationed in a long, narrow office and storeroom filled with tables, copiers, a phone bank, spare tablets of various sizes, display boards and stacked chairs and desks. I put my papers on a table next to Sharon.
‘Good man, Eddie …’ she began, but I cut her off and blazed past.
‘Two big lads coming, Sharon. I’m not here.’
I kept going, left the room by the far end door, ran to the end of another corridor and dashed down the service stairs, taking them in bounds of three and four, swinging off the newel posts and laughing like a teenager, thinking about Daffy Duck’s gasping and bent figure.
The story became Sharon’s stand-off with Cosgrove’s duo. I was written out of it. The version I heard from a constable I shared a cigarette with in the basement later had it that two big men burst into the room, one of them limping slightly, shouting my name and Sharon calmed them by saying her aide was on an errand and could she be of any assistance. The constable said he thought the two fellas would explode, then the fella with the limp got a message on his phone and they went back out the way they came. Sharon returned to her work, picked up a stack of papers and made for the conference room. The constable said she was smiling.
I laid low for a couple of days and then slipped in early one morning. I was alone with Sharon, long enough for her to give a post-fight analysis.
‘Kidneys, was it?’
‘More central,’ I replied.
‘Balls. Illegal. But not if you’re a cage-fighter, which is what you are, Slevin. A bloody cage-fighter. I don’t blame you. Big bastards, those two lads, which seems to be a requirement for IS. You’re either a measly wee shite or a shire-horse. You got two shire-horses and gelded one of them.’
‘I had no choice.’
‘Don’t give me that crap. You sound like a bad politician and you’re better than that. Your old flame, Karen Lavery, asked about you and I told her you were grand. She knew something had happened, but not the details. Nobody knew them at that point.’
‘Anybody come looking for me since?’
‘No. Eddie, listen, they know where you are. And they haven’t been idle.’
Sharon pushed a single sheet of paper towards me. Key words and phrases beamed out at me, as I scanned the classic PS(N) memo layout.
‘Reassignment’, ‘annexe NW14’, ‘necessary redeployment’, ‘six months’ review’.
It was signed by Hammy, my boss, above the telling line
‘On the authority of Chief Constable Elaine Caldwell.’
‘You see, Eddie, you’re the bargaining chip that broke the logjam.’
‘Where the fuck is annexe NW14? London?’
‘Maydown.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I know. And you’re too young for a bus-pass.’
‘You live out that way, Sharon. I could move in with you.’
‘Last thing I need is a lodger. A man under my feet? I had one of them. Tolerable father. Useless husband, especially when his “rod of destiny” – what he called it – began to lose its gleam. Me and the two girls are grand as we are and Daddy can do the weekend thing and clap himself on the back for it.’
‘And this, what is this Heritage Crime Strand of the Legacy Unit? Should I bring swim wear?’
‘It’s muddy trenches, not sandy beaches, the strand you’re headed for. You’ll be wading through blood. Don’t quote me on it, but as far as I know Heritage Crime is the new thing. You know, really big crimes you can’t blame on anyone and that ones are still suffering from, you know, like slavery. You’ll love it. It’ll be just like your college days, in jail. Reading books, then writing books nobody’ll read. And cops instead of screws to keep an eye on you. Maydown in May. A new start.’
I read ‘redeployment to commence on 1st May, at current grade. DS Slevin will report to the Strand Leader, DI Williams’ and asked,
‘Williams? Do you know him?’
‘Never heard of him. Likely a dud, coasting to retirement in a few months.’
The office began to fill up around us. Karolina waved, as she shrugged off her coat. Josh gave me a ‘thumbs up’ and continued to munch on a breakfast roll, which dripped red sauce like a punctured jugular. Hetherington ignored me and sat with his back to the room, which was fine by everyone else, but meant that he was vulnerable to the sort of japes that only Goss and Doherty could get up to. They nudged each other in delight as they went past me, singing softly.