by Jaime Raven
‘You deserve it, hon. Have a great time.’
‘Are you home already?’
‘No, I’ve only just left the school. I’ll grab a takeaway. Do you want me to get something for you?’
‘No, don’t worry. I’ll sort myself out.’
Aidan was a teacher and worked in a big comprehensive near our home in Balham. We’d been together for four years, having been introduced by my matchmaking mother who was one of his colleagues.
‘I’ll see you when I see you then,’ Aidan said. ‘And try not to get too tipsy. There’s still a big stain on the carpet from the last time you rolled in drunk.’
I laughed and told him that I loved him, then put the phone back in my shoulder bag.
‘From the sound of it, things are still great on the home front,’ Kate said.
I nodded. ‘It couldn’t be better. We’re a good match, and thankfully Aidan’s pretty understanding about all the unsocial hours and stuff.’
‘You’re lucky. I’ve come to the conclusion that good men are a dying breed.’
Kate had been bitter and cynical about men ever since I’d known her, but I had some sympathy. Her marriage came to a brutal end after only two years when she found her husband – a fellow detective working at the same station – in bed with another woman, for whom he promptly left her.
What compounded her suffering and humiliation was the fact that most of their colleagues had known he’d been having an affair for months and no one had told her.
But the sorry saga did not end there. Two months after walking out, her husband died in an accident outside his new home when he was struck by a car that mounted the pavement. So grief was suddenly added to Kate’s emotional burden.
‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment?’ I asked tentatively.
She shook her head. ‘I was going out with a bloke until a couple of weeks ago. He was some kind of financial adviser, and that was the problem. He kept trying to get me to part with money. When he said he could double my savings I realised he was a wrong ’un and told him to sod off.’
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, but then it was a familiar story. I knew a couple of other middle-aged women who’d had similar experiences on the dating scene.
‘I made the mistake of telling that lech Tony Marsden that I was single again,’ Kate said. ‘And he had the cheek to ask me if I wanted to go out for a drink with him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him that I wasn’t that bloody desperate and that he should be ashamed of himself.’
I grinned. ‘I’m sure he’s heard that before.’
‘Maybe so, but the slimy toerag then said I didn’t know what I was missing.’
We both laughed and I went on to tell her about how Marsden tried it on with me at the last Christmas do.
‘It wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t by far the worst of a bad bunch,’ I said.
Tony Marsden was another of the detective sergeants on the team. He was an opinionated prick who despite being married with a young son was known to play away with anyone who’d have him, including prostitutes.
It was no secret that he was addicted to gambling as well as illicit sex, and he had always struck me as a pretty dodgy character, the kind of copper my dad would have hated working with.
And it was just our rotten luck that Marsden should arrive at the Rose and Crown at the same time we did, after Kate had dropped off the pool car.
He was a squat, bullish man in his late thirties, with a florid complexion and fair hair that was as short as putting-green grass.
When he saw us approaching, he opened the door to the saloon bar and treated us to one of his lascivious smirks.
‘Evening, ladies,’ he said. ‘I trust you’ll both be on your best behaviour. If not then I can assure you that it won’t be a problem, at least with me.’
‘Grow up, for pity’s sake,’ I said as I brushed past him, noting that his suit carried the heavy stench of cigarette smoke.
Inside it looked like the start of a boy’s night out, which was usually the case when the team got together socially. That was because Kate and I were two of only four women among the twenty detectives.
One of the others was Janet Dean, who was the same rank as me. She was already at the bar and waved when she spotted us.
Janet was in her late forties, and it was fair to say that she was the most unpopular member of the team. She was a miserable bitch most of the time and rarely attended social functions. When she did she tended to drink too much and slag people off.
‘So what’s your tipple, girls?’ she said as we approached the bar. ‘The booze is on the house so we might as well get stuck in.’
Her thin face was flushed and there was a wet patch on the front of her cream blouse. It was obvious she had already downed a few glasses of something.
I opted for a gin and tonic, and Kate had a white wine.
‘I’m surprised you’ve graced us with your presence, Janet,’ Kate said. ‘I can’t remember the last time you joined us for a drink.’
Janet lifted her shoulders and eyebrows at the same time.
‘It’s a special occasion,’ she said. ‘And besides, Ethan is spending a couple of days in Brighton working on the boat so I’ve got no reason to rush home.’
That was the other thing that people didn’t like about Janet Dean. She too often boasted about how well off she and her husband were. They lived in a town house in Chelsea, owned two BMWs, and their latest acquisition was a cabin cruiser that was moored in Brighton marina.
Of course, their lifestyle wasn’t funded by her copper’s salary. Her husband worked for an investment company in the City, although she’d always been vague about exactly what he did, and kept schtum about how much he earned.
I was on my second G and T when DCS Drummond decided to propose a toast to the team’s latest success.
‘You’ve all done a great job and I’m proud of you,’ he said. ‘But make no mistake – things are about to get much tougher. Roy Slack is a master when it comes to evading prosecution. And there’s no one who’s as cautious as he is at avoiding surveillance. As you know from the intelligence packs you’ve been given, he uses unregistered mobiles and employs debugging devices in his home and office. He also has powerful friends and we suspect there are officers in the Met who are in his pocket. Those are among the people we aim to flush out during this investigation.’
We all knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Slack was London’s longest established crime boss and it was strongly believed that he had connections with senior officers, the Crown Prosecution Service and several MPs. It was one of the reasons he had managed to reign supreme for so long.
‘When we get together tomorrow I’ll give a full briefing on our approach,’ Drummond said. ‘But one of our main lines of enquiry will continue to be the disappearance of firearms officer Hugh Wallis. I still believe that it’s highly likely that Slack had something to do with it, despite his denials.’
Officer Wallis had vanished while returning to his home in Shoreditch from a late shift just a week ago. His car was then found the next day parked behind a warehouse a few miles away in Stratford. The keys were still in the ignition.
No one had heard from him since his disappearance and no clues to his whereabouts had been offered up by traffic cameras and CCTV.
According to his wife there were no issues in his life that he might have decided to run away from. It was therefore feared that something bad had happened to him.
The task force had been alerted because Wallis had been involved in a joint operation that had been mounted three months ago with the NCA. Raids were carried out on the homes of twelve known villains, including a man named Terry Malone, who worked for Slack.
Wallis had shot Malone dead when he thought the guy was about to attack him. But there was a bit of a rumpus because Malone’s girlfriend – who sadly miscarried during the raid – later claimed that Malone had not posed a threat, and that
the officer had fired the three fatal shots because he panicked.
An investigation cleared Wallis and accepted that the action he took upon entering the couple’s bedroom that night was justified.
But the decision caused a ripple of alarm within the criminal community and the word on the street was that Roy Slack’s people had been using their contacts to try to find out the identity of the officer, which hadn’t of course been made public.
Personally I had my doubts that Slack would be so stupid as to seek retribution against the police, especially on behalf of someone who was fairly low down the food chain within his organisation.
But as we would soon discover, the man was far more ruthless than his reputation had led us to believe.
And he had secrets that would turn out to be just as shocking as his actions.
4
Slack
It didn’t take long for Roy Slack to reveal his plan to Danny Carver. It was a simple one, after all.
Danny’s reaction was predictable. His jaw dropped and the colour retreated from his face.
‘Is this a fucking joke, boss?’ he said, his voice stretched thin with shock. ‘Because if it ain’t, then I think you might have lost your marbles.’
Slack stood up and stepped out from behind his desk. It was uncomfortably warm in the office so he slipped off his cardigan and threw it on the chair. His white shirt had dark patches of sweat under each armpit.
He crossed the room to the cabinet with the bottles of spirits on top.
‘Care for a whisky, Danny?’ he asked.
‘Too bloody right I do,’ Danny answered. ‘And please make it a large one because I think I need it.’
Slack smiled to himself as he poured out triples of his finest malt, flown down from his favourite distillery in the Highlands.
He handed a glass to Danny. ‘You’ve been with me a long time, mate, and you’re the only person in this world who I’d trust with my life. It’s why I’ve told you what I intend to do and it’s the reason I’m now going to tell you why I want to do it.’
Danny’s hard face fisted into a frown and he rolled out his bottom lip.
‘Well, I’m all ears, boss,’ he said.
Slack sat down beside him on the sofa and sipped at his whisky.
‘I also need you to know that you’re going to be well looked after whatever happens,’ he said. ‘I’m going to transfer a large sum of cash into your offshore account first thing in the morning. If the firm survives then you can stick around if you want to. If it doesn’t you’ll have the option to fuck off abroad and enjoy an early retirement.’
Danny’s frown deepened and he tilted his head to one side.
‘Sounds to me like you’ve given a lot of thought to this, boss,’ he said.
Slack nodded. ‘It’s been rolling around inside my head for weeks. Now I can’t wait to get on with it.’
Danny grinned, showing off his two gold teeth.
‘Well, it sure is an insane idea,’ he said. ‘But for what it’s worth I reckon the fuckers have it coming. Most of ’em are more crooked than we are.’
Slack knew he could depend on Danny not to fill his nappy at the thought of what was going to happen. They didn’t call him The Rottweiler for nothing. He was a man of violence, a crazy fuck, who had maimed and killed more men than he could probably remember.
He was also fiercely loyal and had carried out heinous crimes on Slack’s behalf without a second’s thought. He was completely devoid of empathy and compassion.
For that reason Slack had absolutely no doubt that he would be able to count on him in the days and weeks ahead.
‘So come on, boss,’ Danny said. ‘There’s no way you’d be set on doing this just to hang on to what you’ve got. There has to be something else, something that you’ve been keeping close to your chest.’
So Slack told him, and for the first time since they’d met, Danny Carver was lost for words.
‘So now you know everything,’ Roy Slack said. ‘And that’s a privilege I won’t grant to anyone else. The rest of the guys will be fed information as and when I deem it to be necessary.’
Danny was slow to respond and Slack could tell that he wasn’t sure how. What he’d just been told had come as quite a shock, and he was shrewd enough to know that his world was about to be tilted on its axis.
‘I’m determined to see this through for the reasons I’ve just given,’ Slack said. ‘So don’t bother trying to talk me out of it. My mind’s made up, and since I’m still head of this outfit I’ll expect you to support me.’
Danny drained the whisky from his glass and found his voice.
‘I won’t try to talk you out of it, boss. Not because I know it’ll be a waste of time, but because if I was in your shoes I’d be tempted to do something similar.’
Slack was pleased but not surprised. He and Danny were very much alike in the sense that they had no respect for authority and both harboured a simmering hatred for the police.
It went way back to those early years spent on a rough council estate in Peckham when the cops were their enemy.
As teenagers they were sucked into the gang culture and from there they embarked on a life of villainy.
They eventually went their separate ways. Slack stayed in London and built a reputation for himself as a hard, uncompromising gangster. He served his apprenticeship as a thief, a pimp, a drug dealer and an enforcer. And all that time he managed to stay out of jail by outsmarting the law.
But Danny wasn’t so lucky. At eighteen he stabbed to death a man who came onto his girlfriend in a pub. He was convicted of murder and spent twelve years in prison. When released he went to work with a bunch of mercenaries in Libya. After a couple of years in that hellhole, he returned to London and offered his services to his old pal from Peckham.
Slack had been only too pleased to give him a job, and it wasn’t long before Danny became his right-hand man.
‘So have you got any questions, mate?’ Slack asked as he got up from the sofa to pour some more drinks.
‘I’ve got lots, boss,’ Danny said. ‘But they can wait. I’d rather we got down to business and you told me how we’re going to get this party started.’
Slack poured two more whiskies and then sat back down on the sofa.
‘It’s already started, mate,’ he said. ‘Yesterday I spoke to our friend Carlos Cruz in Mexico. He owes me a big favour and I called it in.’
‘What do you want from him?’ Danny asked.
Slack took a deep breath and held it for a second before speaking.
‘I want him to supply us with an assassin,’ he said, as though that were quite a normal request to make. ‘Someone who won’t be on the radar of any law enforcement agency anywhere in Europe. As we all know the best and most prolific contract killers work for the Mexican cartels.’
‘What was his response?’
‘He told me he’d be only too happy to help and that he’d ring me this evening.’
Danny’s brow peaked. ‘So assuming he delivers, what’ll be the next step?’
A slow smile spread across Slack’s face. ‘We then make use of the information that’s been passed onto me by our mole inside the organised crime task force.’
5
Laura
The task force had a temporary base at New Scotland Yard because the building we usually occupied around the corner was being refurbished. But it suited me because the interior was fresh and modern, and there were spectacular views across the Thames. It was also much closer to the Rose and Crown and a couple of other cosy little watering holes.
I was among the first to leave the pub after four gin and tonics, a ham sandwich and a packet of cheese and onion crisps.
I would have stayed later if it had been Friday, but I had no intention of getting pissed on a Monday night.
I’d enjoyed myself, though. The banter, the camaraderie, the chance to talk about things other than work. Plus, I’d also managed to steer clear of Tony Marsd
en, who’d spent much of the time chatting up the buxom barmaid.
DCS Drummond had been on good form throughout and had taken particular pleasure in using the occasion to reveal some more good news – that the wife of our colleague, DI Dave Prentiss, had given birth to a baby boy that very afternoon, which was why he wasn’t with us. Prentiss was one of the detectives I got on well with, so I was really happy for him.
After leaving the pub I walked to Embankment tube station and travelled south via the Northern Line to Balham where Aidan and I rented a house just off the High Road.
I got home shortly after nine o’clock. Aidan was watching the television in the living room and he was surprised to see me back so early.
‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Did they run out of booze?’
I laughed. ‘I didn’t dare stay any longer. It was my day off, remember, and I had a couple of wines with lunch. One more alcoholic drink and no way will I be fit for work in the morning.’
He got up from his favourite armchair, pulled me into an embrace, and kissed me tenderly on the mouth.
As always it was just what I needed at the end of a day spent apart. His warm, minty breath and the feel of his body so close to mine gave rise to a familiar sense of gratitude for having him in my life.
I loved him beyond measure and I knew in my heart that I’d always be able to trust him. He wasn’t like Tony Marsden or Kate Chappell’s adulterous husband.
Having got my pulse racing, he helped me off with my coat and offered to make me a cup of coffee.
‘Sit down and relax,’ he said. ‘Fancy a couple of chocolate biscuits?’
‘Does the Pope believe in Christ?’
He gave me another kiss, this time on the forehead, and I watched him slide off into the kitchen.
He was wearing his ‘comfy’ uniform – a pair of black tracksuit bottoms and a baggy blue sweatshirt with more stains on it than a baby’s bib.
I was the only person who ever got to see him like this. Whenever we had visitors he’d put on jeans and a smart jumper and pretend that he didn’t live like a slob while at home.