The Pole got the message. “Okay, okay, I do what you say, Frankie, keep calm, friend.” Slowly he pulled himself away from Sophie Balfron and she immediately grabbed the remnants of her night attire close to her and shuffled over to the inert shape of her husband’s body.
“Oh, Johnny. Forgive me, please, please forgive me,” she pleaded with her husband’s corpse.
Grimes had no sympathy for her, “Save your breath bitch, there’s no point asking for his forgiveness now.”
He whipped out a roll of parcel tape and threw it to Tomasz. “Bind her wrists and tape her mouth. If you are not at the van within five minutes, I will come back here and personally send you to hell. Understand me, Polak?”
Tomasz nodded that he did and with that, Grimes stalked out the farmhouse kitchen.
A moment later he was hunkering down next to Drummond’s heaving body and watching the life fade from his leader’s eyes as his vital fluids seeped out, over the hands which Drummond had clamped to the shotgun wound. Drummond’s wavering gaze met his number two’s eyes and he croaked, “I’m fucked, Frankie. Good and proper. You need to get the boys goin’ fast.” His words and gaze were interrupted as Tomasz dragged Sophie Balfron by her bound hands, her mouth sealed by the tape, out of the farmhouse door behind Grimes. Drummond’s eyes returned to Grimes’ face. He gasped in agony as the waves of pain racking his body threatened to become too great to sustain.
“You are the man now, Frankie, but watch the Pole. Don’t trust him my old friend. A slug in the head is my advice, mate, as soon as.”
Grimes shook with emotion. Death was fast approaching for Drummond and they both knew that to take him with the rest of the gang would make life extremely difficult for them.
Drummond knew the score, “You know where to take the boys, Frankie. It’s time you put the lights out for me, old friend.”
Grimes grimaced involuntarily at the outcome he knew was inevitable, “Come on, Joe, we can get you patched up, mate. You’ll see, you’re gonna make it through this.”
Drummond shook his head with what seemed like his last ounce of energy and gasped, “I’m goin’ nowhere, Frankie,” he said and his right hand grabbed Grimes’ arm. “Finish it, Frankie, now, for Chrissakes,” he hissed.
Grimes offered his boss a tortured smile and stood up, moved behind Drummond, placed the handgun against his head and pulled the trigger.
An hour later the Luton van, sporting the motif ‘The Chairmen: Furniture Removal Specialists’, raced down a tree-lined road with Tomasz behind the wheel and Grimes sitting in the passenger seat. Jammy Gilles stayed in the back of the van with Sophie Balfron and the cargo of stolen cuts of prime meat.
“There it is on the left,” said Grimes and he pointed to what looked like a set of derelict prefab buildings.
As Tomasz brought the vehicle to a halt and applied the handbrake, Grimes spoke once again, “Now listen to me, Tomasz. We need some time to get things sorted and this is an old safe house that Joe, me and the boys have used over the years that has remained under the radar. I don’t want any more trouble with the Balfron bitch. We need to decide what to do with her and we need to do it quick.”
“Okay, you boss now,” said Tomasz through a sickly smile, before adding, “Where are we Frankie?”
“This is the old Millearn Hospital. It was used to tend to injured servicemen – sailors from the convoys and also casualties from Clydebank during the Blitz – way back in 1941. Been derelict ever since, except when Joe, me and the boys have needed somewhere to lay low when the heat has been on, and fuck me, it’s on now.” With that, Grimes vaulted out of the passenger door and ran around the back of the van, opening the shutters and beckoning Gilles and Sophie Balfron out.
Jammy immediately hauled the female to her feet and shoved her out of the vehicle forcing Grimes to catch her while the tape muffled her screams. Grimes held her tight, smelled her femininity as his arms encircled her, the sensation that swept through his body threatened to break his self control. “Do what you are told darlin’ and you will make it out of this alive, fuck us about and you’re pan breid. Understand me?” rapped Grimes.
Sophie nodded that she did and found herself being dragged by the wrists into one of three whitewashed buildings, one with a roof covering its prefabricated framework of precast concrete, brick and fenestration mill.
Grimes ordered Gilles to take their captive to a side room, “Get her in there and make sure she is secure and then meet me and Tomasz back in the front room, mate, and make it quick.”
“Nae bother, Frankie, whatever you say, mate,” replied Jammy obediently and disappeared as he was bid, with Sophie Balfron.
Grimes made his way back into the front room, speaking as he went, “Stop fooling about Tomasz, where are you? We have to get this sorted before we try and punt the meat.”
The cold steel that rammed against the side of his head was a shock to the system. “We get nothing sorted, Skurwysyn,” said Tomasz and squeezed the trigger.
Grimes’ body collapsed in an inert heap, his head spouting blood and brain from the hole the projectile had left. Tomasz dragged the body over to the window and then hid behind the open door and waited for the footsteps to come.
Jammy had been startled by the shot. He sprinted out of the back room and along the corridor before entering the main reception room at full pelt. As he charged in his attention was immediately hooked by Grimes’ body lying crumpled at the window; he failed to see the leg thrust out in his path and went flying over it. As he hit the ground Tomasz jumped on him, grabbing him by the hair and slamming his head into the cold concrete floor. He then pulled him back up until Grimes’ skull met the end of the revolver’s barrel.
“Sorry Jammy, but your luck just ran out,” said Tomasz and a second crack rang out.
Sophie sat shivering in the corner of the cold, damp room. Her ripped nightdress had been covered by an old coat that Jammy Gilles had wrapped round her in an act of kindness at odds with everything she had experienced from the gang since they had torn her world apart. Gagged and bound, she tried to slow her breathing and impose some sense of calm on herself, but the huge sobs that had racked her body since she’d seen her husband murdered in front of her would not stop. For Sophie blamed herself and the stupid infidelity with the good-looking young Pole that had now left her life in ruins. Tormented by guilt and exhausted by her excoriating emotions, she shut her eyes and prayed.
The door burst open. Tomasz stood in the doorway and looked at her with a rising hunger, knowing that this revenge was not his to take. “Open your eyes bitch, now it’s you and me in old building and we have fun, no?” spat the Pole.
Sophie opened her eyes in terror just as the Pole knelt down beside her and ripped the gag from her mouth, “Please, leave me alone, you have everything – my husband is dead, my life is in ruins, what more do you want? Please, just let me go,” she begged.
“You go nowhere, Miss Sophie, until Janek come see you. My brother very angry with you. But it is while before he come to have fun, maybe I take mine first . . .” grinned Tomasz. He ran the index finger of his right hand down the side of her tear-stained face, all the while smiling with ravenous intent.
“What you think, Miss Sophie? We have some fun before Janek come?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper that only served to increase the terror now engulfing Sophie.
“I beg you, no. Look, I will give you my bank details and you can empty the business accounts, please just let me go,” pleaded Sophie.
Tomasz was not interested and his index finger continued its journey to the top of the old coat which Sophie had buttoned up to her neck. Then he started to pop the buttons one by one and Sophie screamed.
“Please . . . keep screaming Miss Sophie . . . I like very much,” said Tomasz.
13
HARDIE FLICKED the ash off his Silk Cut and out of the half-open car window; the stiff breeze whistling outside the CID car did its best to blow it back in. He articulated h
is disgust in trademark fashion, “Aah, fuck off.”
Sitting in the passenger seat Thoroughgood enjoyed a scene he had observed a hundred times before – at least – with a wry smile, and offered his colleague some helpful advice.
“Do you need to have that thing hanging out your mouth when you’re driving? For crying out loud, don’t you ever feel the draft coming in when you are puffing away on those bleedin’ cancer sticks? Serves you right, faither! Your dry cleaning bill, if you ever put one of these monstrosities you call a suit in to the dry cleaners, would be astronomical.”
Hardie turned his head and stared impassively at his superior officer. Holding the steering wheel with his left hand, he attempted to brush the ash off his lapel and out of the window, only to see it fall down the space between himself and the door.
Thoroughgood was far from amused, “That’s great, that is. We’ll have Group Two CID reporting us to Tomachek over this. Correction, reporting you to the old man, unless you get it hoovered up when we get back to Stewart Street.”
Hardie belched his disgust at the order and changed the subject. “I reckon it’s three miles until we hit the Balfron Mill. You reckon our butcher shop bandits have branched out and maybes got a bit more ambitious with their targets?”
Thoroughgood frowned, intimating that his number two was stating the obvious, “Well, the factory outlet has been emptied of all choice cuts of game and the safe in the farmhouse is blown open and empty. The worrying thing is that we have the owner cold on his kitchen floor with his throat cut ear to ear, and no sign of his missis, Sophie Balfron. But there doesn’t seem to be much point in speculating when we are five minutes away, so let’s hold our fire on hypothesising until we get to the locus.”
With that, Thoroughgood turned to look out of the window and with his mind evidently elsewhere, he missed the twinkle in Hardie’s eyes.
The DC’s rumbling baritone soon interrupted the silence. “So how did the big dinner date go then, gaffer? Er,” he cleared his throat almost apologetically, “if you don’t mind me asking?”
Thoroughgood’s sea-green eyes rested on his partner’s sagging features and seared them. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get round to that, faither, and to be fair, you never disappoint.” Thoroughgood stopped and Hardie was left hanging, just as his DS had intended.
“Aw, come on gaffer, in the name of the wee man, put me oot my misery,” whined Hardie. Pointing at the road ahead Thoroughgood said, “Ah. That seems to be the turnoff for Balfron Mill. What a pity your little inquisition will have to wait for a while yet, so get your game face on, faither, we have a murder locus to examine.”
Thoroughgood, covered from head to toe in a white paper suit, bent over Johnny Balfron’s corpse and examined the wounds that had left him bled out on his kitchen floor.
“If it is our mob then they’ve certainly done a butcher’s job on Balfron. Two serrated edge blades, by the looks of it, drawn across his neck at the same time and it’s goodnight, Vienna.”
Standing in front of one of the uniformed officers guarding the murder scene, Hardie peered over his gaffer’s shoulder, his world-weary features looming large from within the paper hood of his anti-contamination suit. “Aye, I pity the milk man. Not exactly what you sign up for when all you want is to deliver the cream of the bottle, is it? Still, at least we’ve got Balfron identified. What about the ned lying outside pumped full of lead from Balfron’s shotgun? At least he got one of the bastards before they did him.”
Thoroughgood was making his way back to the front door, when he stopped to pick up something from the tiled floor, just past the kitchen table, and slipped the article into a transparent evidence bag. It was clear the table had been incongruously re-located at an odd angle to the rest of the room’s disturbed furnishings, almost certainly as the result of a life and death struggle.
The DS continued out of the kitchen, past the SOCO personnel busy photographing the locus and the uniformed officers now protecting the scene of the crime. He made his way through the hallway and past the remnants of the smashed door, hanging drunkenly from its hinges, which had led the milkman to investigate the inside of the farmhouse upon his arrival with the daily delivery.
The body of the gang member lay propped up against the farmhouse wall, filled with lead. Smouldering in the background, and embedded in what was left of the outlet shop’s shutters, was the torched van. Facing Thoroughgood was the paper-clad back of the force pathologist, Doctor Herbert Strange.
“Good morning, Doctor Strange,” said Thoroughgood as he attempted to gain the attention of the physician, who most people thought was perfectly named for his vocation. Strange’s sandy-coloured mop turned round and his expressionless gaze swept over the detective.
“Not for this fine fwellow, detective sergeant, or have you been pwomoted at last, Fowoughgood?” said Strange, his lisp almost comical, so pronounced was it.
“No need to ask what was the cause of death, Doctor. But what about time of death?” asked Thoroughgood.
“Stwaight to the point Fowoughgood, as always,” responded the pathologist in a delivery that had Hardie clearing his throat behind Thoroughgood in an attempt to avoid an involuntary explosion of mirth.
“Aah, Hawdie it’s youwself, whewever one goes the other will follow, eh? The body tempewature has dwopped sevewal degwees but rigow mowtis has not set in yet, as it would about fouw houws aftew death.
“Time now is 08.40hrs so we could be talking appwoximately anytime between say 5.30 am and around 6am. That good enough for you, Fowoughgood?”
“Absolutely, Doctor Strange,” replied Thoroughgood, emphasising the pathologist’s name but desperate to call him by the term of endearment he was universally known by in the force – Strangelove.
“I believe the shotgun that did for him has alweady been secured as evidence, but then that is your job Fowoughgood. By the way congwats on that job with the tewowist chappy, what was he called again? Ah, Tawiq wasn’t it?” asked the good doctor.
By this time Thoroughgood could hear Hardie starting to split at the seams and attempted to stop himself dissolving into a fit of the giggles. “Thank you, Doctor. Detective Constable Hardie is on his way to take charge of it, aren’t you Hardie?” said Thoroughgood. Hardie read between the lines and returned into the farmhouse.
Strangelove had not finished. “Any sign of these pips yet, Fowoughgood? Or is there as much chance of the Fistle getting pwomoted as youwself?” asked Strange.
Thoroughgood smiled, more out of politeness than anything else, “Who knows, doc? Anyway, I will leave you to your work and we can liaise later, after the post mortem and identification.”
“Good day, detective,” said Strange and put Thoroughgood out of his misery.
Making his way over the cinder drive and car park, Thoroughgood examined the tyre tracks leading out of the farm outlet. Soon the sound of foot steps was coming his way and Hardie joined his gaffer. “Interesting, eh, boss? Obviously it’s been a team job and they reckoned without Balfron’s shotgun, but there are still a few questions to be answered. Not least the identity of neddy boy there.”
Thoroughgood turned his attention from the corpse to Hardie. “Yep. SOCO will need to examine these tyre tracks ASAP and I’m assuming we have taken prints off the deceased already?”
“I believe both matters are in hand, gaffer, pardon the pun,” replied Hardie.
“So what is the question at the top of your list, Hardie?” asked the DS.
“You saw the photo on the dresser in the hall? Balfron is married and his missus is nowhere to be seen. On top of that, Balfron was taken out and left lying cold on the kitchen floor, but there seems to have been a secondary struggle going on over at the kitchen table,” said the DC.
“Very good, Hardie! Next thing you will be having a go at the Telegraph crossword,” mocked Thoroughgood before continuing, “Did you notice that the kitchen table also showed signs of having had a sharp implement embedded in it?
That it also had blood traces on it that I would wager belong to Balfron? And . . .” he pulled the evidence bag from his suit pocket, “That this piece of silk fabric is, ten to one, from a lady’s night attire.”
Almost despite himself Hardie’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “Obviously, the gang have abducted Balfron’s missus?”
“Elementary, my dear Hardie, as the man once said. Clearly they have used two vehicles for the turn. The first to ram the shutters and the second to load the loot and . . . it would appear, Sophie Balfron. So what we now have ourselves here, is both a murder enquiry and an abduction. Butcher shop bandits? I knew it was too good to be feckin’ true,” groaned the DS.
“Wait ‘til the old man hears about this,” said Hardie before adding, “By the way, is Vanessa a black silk girl? The missus is strictly Pyjamarama, as dear old Bryan Ferry would call it!”
But Thoroughgood was already striding towards the Focus and although he could not see his lips moving, Hardie could hear Thoroughgood’s words drifting back. “We need an ident’ on the gang member and then we need a list of associates, pronto. ‘Cos right now we have a gang of tooled-up bastards on the loose and in possession of a certain Mrs Balfron, somewhere out in the countryside.”
Jumping into the driver’s seat Hardie saw that his gaffer was already on the radio set barking out orders. “I want a stop and search posted for any high-sided vehicles, Luton vans or the like, within a twenty mile radius of Balfron Mill, which will take us out of Strathclyde Police territory and into Central Scotland. So please notify our country cousins at Randolphfield. All officers are advised to use extreme caution, suspects within are armed. Can we also please request armed response vehicles are mobilised and sent out on patrol in the area, just in case we need the back-up. Oh, and if we can manage it, can the Force helicopter sweep the area?”
The Longest Shadow Page 6