by Adam Carter
Joining the man in the corridor, Baronaire stood before him, his mind working through the other man’s thought processes. There was a fear to his eyes now as some semblance of his own self returned, which was as Baronaire needed it. He sent a mental command and the man responded. His eyes panicked at what he was saying, his brain not comprehending why he was doing so. Perhaps there was a part of him which still believed he was asleep.
Baronaire didn’t care what he felt. He just needed him to shout the correct words.
“Hector?” the man said loudly. “Hector, you shouldn’t be ... Hector, no!” he shouted loud enough to wake the dead. “Hector, what are you doing? We had a deal, what are you ...” And then he screamed, really screamed, as Baronaire brought a wooden cudgel up in a wide arc and straight into the man’s forehead, crushing his skull.
The woman was at the door a second after, shrieking, but Baronaire was already running: he had to run so she could see someone fleeing. Once he reached the stairs however he simply faded into oblivion.
His last task for the night was done. It was time for Baronaire to head home.
*
“The video evidence would have been enough to send Doldress away, you know,” Sanders said an hour later over his desk. The office door was closed, and Baronaire had even taken a seat this time. “You had a video of Doldress confessing not only his crime but also his sick fantasies. No court would have let him walk after hearing that.”
“I couldn’t get him on the child porn charges,” Baronaire said in frustration. “I just wanted to make certain, Ed.”
Sanders glanced down to the report. “Framing him for the murder of his own lawyer though? Questions will be asked.”
“Doldress was paranoid. Once Joe Fletcher’s corpse turns up and it’s proven Doldress had him killed, that’ll come out too. Maybe Doldress thought Nields had betrayed him as well.”
“This could go badly. Doldress could plead insanity.”
“If he does, we’ll just have to deal with it.”
Sanders leaned back. He didn’t sound happy, but Sanders never sounded happy. Baronaire could tell he was pleased with the result, however. Lawyers were not nice people, and if they could be taken out as well it only made for a very tidy case indeed. Not all lawyers perhaps, just the ones they dealt with in WetFish.
“Good job,” Sanders said. “Take a few hours off, I’ll have your next assignment ready when you get back.”
Baronaire nodded, but did not move. Sanders had taken to writing something in the files and raised his eyebrows when he realised Baronaire was still there.
“Something else?”
“A question.”
“Fire away.”
Baronaire hesitated, nervous. “The video will be of Doldress admitting his sins. I should be on it too. But I know I won’t be. Why don’t I show up on video equipment, Ed?”
Sanders stared at him for several long moments. “You really want to know the answer to that, Charles?”
“I ... I don’t know.”
“Come back when you’re sure. ‘Til then, just take it as a job well done. Dismissed.”
Baronaire left the office as he always did: with a deep sense of disturbance and ignorance of the bigger picture. He found Jeremiah waiting for him. “Sanders looked pleased,” Jeremiah noted.
“Ecstatic. How’s Foster?”
“Battered but excited.”
“Excited?” Baronaire frowned. “I don’t follow.”
To which Jeremiah could only grin. “You really don’t have a memory for penance do you?”
Baronaire closed his eyes. He had become so engulfed in the mission he had forgotten all about his promise.
*
The room was dark, with a single blazing rectangle of light before them. Classical music blared at them and Baronaire wondered just what he was doing there. Sharon Foster held onto his arm, her head snuggling against his shoulder. She was still bruised, but her injuries had not proven severe and she had performed her task admirably last night. It was only fair that Baronaire should keep his side of the bargain.
“Isn’t this fantastic?” she whispered, giggling. Ever giggling.
Baronaire still couldn’t understand the science of the thing, couldn’t say it sounded plausible in the slightest, but a part of him was beginning to wonder about dinosaurs. The power they possessed, the control they would have had over human lives if the two had ever existed at the same time. If man and dinosaur were ever pitched against one another, he had no idea which would survive. Human beings were such monsters, so able to manipulate everything, he wasn’t certain at all he would be betting on the dinosaurs.
But the point was moot. He would never face a dinosaur, yet he could but hope.
Before them both, the dry husky voice of Richard Attenborough whispered at them over the roaring theme. “Welcome,” he said, “to Jurassic Park.”
OPERATION WETFISH
BOOK 2
CHASING INNOCENCE
CHAPTER ONE
“Excellent work, Charles!”
Baronaire’s thoughts were elsewhere, he was barely aware he was even moving through the office; but when the DCI spoke to you, in whatever capacity, you knew to listen. Detective Chief Inspector Edward Sanders clapped him on the shoulder, genuine pleasure to his face. He was a man probably in his fifties, although Baronaire knew he could well have been older. He kept physically fit, despite his desk job, and was always ready with condemnation. To be praised so openly, therefore, should have been reason for Baronaire to be happy.
Charles Baronaire was far from happy.
“Wasn’t a hard case,” he shrugged. “Grayn had clearly battered his wife to death and dumped the body. No idea why the court threw it out to be honest.”
“But to get him to write the suicide note himself, not even under duress, was genius.”
Baronaire said nothing. He was an officer of the law, working from an underground bunker for an organisation which even within the Met did not officially exist. It was the remit of Operation WetFish to correct the mistakes of the courts. If ever a case was thrown out for lack of evidence, disappearing witnesses or simply an expensive lawyer, WetFish stepped in to make sure British justice was done. Baronaire had been doing the job for a while now and didn’t really think much of it. Humans were a foul and disgusting breed when they wanted to be and he had no qualms in taking a few of them out. The case against Phillip Grayn was certain, but hardly tight. In this instance it had not been an expensive lawyer or influencing witnesses which had destroyed the case. Police incompetence had lost evidence, police reports didn’t match up, and when in the docks one officer seemed to forget even the date of the murder.
The case had landed upon the desk of Sanders for him to clean up and he had thought it was a joke. Baronaire had dealt with the matter quickly. Grayn was dead, hanged, all evidence pointing to suicide, and Baronaire had done well.
He still didn’t feel good about it.
Sanders seemed to sense his perturbation. “What’s wrong? You don’t actually feel sorry for the creep?”
“Man murders his wife after almost fifteen years of drunken battery? No, I don’t feel sorry for him. Makes me wonder what human being would allow herself to be put through any of that though.”
“You’re empathising with the victim?” Sanders asked, amused. “That’s not like you, Charles.”
Baronaire rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I’m just tired, Ed. I might go home, get some rest.”
“Well you certainly deserve it.” But Sanders could detect something else. “Come on, what’s eating you?”
“The kid. Abigail.”
Sanders shrugged. “Not our problem. There are divisions for that sort of thing.”
“Divisions set up to track runaways? Come on, Ed, you know how many kids go missing every day? And how many of them are ever found again?”
“More than you think.”
“And how many are found before they’re hooked
on crack and have been whored out to the scum of the country?”
Sanders didn’t have an answer for him. “It’s not your job to worry about her,” was all he could say. “Heck, I’m glad you’re concerned for her – shows me you actually can care about someone – but tracking runaways isn’t what we do here.”
“I’m gonna try to find her.”
“What part of what I just said didn’t you understand?”
“You just told me to go home, you can’t deny me the afternoon searching for her at least.”
“Charles, even you couldn’t find one lost girl in a single afternoon.”
Edward Sanders was not a bad man. He was just a realist. In his day-to-day job Baronaire came into contact with all kinds of lowlife. Monsters were prowling across London more than anyone realised, which was what kept WetFish so busy. They were trying to make the country a better place to live; but sometimes they lost sight of who they were doing it for. An innocent child was caught up in this mess and Baronaire would not see his job as finished until he made sure she was all right. He had nowhere to bring her home to of course, but the least he could do was find her.
“We do what we do for the children, Ed,” Baronaire replied tiredly. “I have to try.”
Sanders seemed about to say something, changed his mind and clapped him on the shoulder once more. “Good luck. Take Jen. She’s just come off assignment and you two always work well together.”
Baronaire left him then, marvelling at how a man could be such a mass of contradictions. WetFish was unorthodox, but entirely legal. However, if it was ever discovered what they did, anyone higher than Sanders would deny it. They would be left to fend for themselves. As such would Sanders allow none of his officers full disclosure of knowledge. No single officer knew enough about the organisation to bring the whole thing down, or at least that was the idea. As one of the senior officers, Baronaire knew more than most, but then he had a lot more to lose than simply his job should WetFish ever be revealed. One of the ways in which Sanders secured his operation was to discourage contact between his staff. They worked together, but he frowned upon their spending time together outside of work. They were not allowed the same circles of friends; in fact it was better if none of them even had any friends.
Yet Sanders would always pair his officers, often with a different partner for each assignment. There were fewer than thirty people working in WetFish, and Baronaire knew them all by name, even if all the others couldn’t say as much.
As much as Sanders liked to run his ship like a military operation, he was a family man at heart. Not that Baronaire believed Sanders even had a family, but if he did, that would be the one secret Sanders would never reveal. The man could have had a wife of thirty years and six kids for all Baronaire knew. But he doubted it very much.
Jen Thompson wasn’t at her desk, and Baronaire knew precisely where that meant she would be. The bunker was formed of several levels, supposedly. There were always rumours about just how many levels there were and what purpose each served. So far as Baronaire knew there was an office level and a car park. But there was a lift in the far corner of the office level and it did not go up to the parking lot. Just where this lift went, none would say. Baronaire had himself seen Sanders use it on more than one occasion, and there was a part of him which believed it was just a door leading to another room; that Sanders had made it look like a lift entrance to fool people and to maintain the mystery. There were rumours that the bunker went down into the earth for ten, twenty levels. Miles of WetFish, perhaps thousands of staff members.
Baronaire didn’t much care whether it did. The office and car park were more than enough for his purposes.
The car park was dark and contained over one hundred machines. Some of them belonged to the various members of staff, but most were company vehicles or those confiscated from various people WetFish had taken out. They sometimes came in handy for future frame-ups after all. Baronaire knew precious little about cars; he knew how to drive one and that was all that really mattered to him. He left it to other people to become obsessed.
As soon as he arrived in the car park he was greeted with the booming sound of Queen’s We Will Rock You and knew he had deduced correctly. He strolled between the cars, following the sound of the music until he came across a motorbike.
It was the colour of a bluebird and to Baronaire’s untrained eyes looked pretty cool. But it was still just a bike and its purpose was still just to get someone from A to B.
There was a woman working on the bike, lying underneath while she rubbed some form of oil onto the underside. Jen Thompson was tall and slim, her body incredibly toned. She wore dark trousers which clung to her shapely thighs, with long black riding boots. Baronaire watched her in silence for several moments, knowing she could not see him. Her black T-shirt was thrown over a car’s wing mirror and the only thing she wore above her waist while she worked was a thick, black brassiere. Across her stomach there was splashed a long lithe dragon: a great Chinese wyrm, flying freely across her skin. It was a thing of beauty, freedom, and absolute power. So was the tattoo.
He could not see her face, beneath the bike as it was, but his eyes trailed up the tight muscles of her stomach, as tanned as the skin was toned, and stopped when they reached her chest. This wasn’t the first time he had seen Detective Jen Thompson without her shirt – indeed, she didn’t care who saw her in what state – but every time he had the opportunity Baronaire liked to look. Not because he was aroused by her, but because he wasn’t.
Thompson was strong, arrogant, determined; and could hold her own in a fight. She was also reliable, strict and sometimes even frightening. She was exactly the type of woman Baronaire could respect, talk to even as an equal. She was so far from what Baronaire found attractive in a woman he actually found it a joy to speak with her.
“Suzuki RF600R,” a voice said from beneath the bike. “100 bhp, with an engine size of 599 cc. Steel twin beam frame, 16 v transverse 4, 6 gear engine.”
He watched as Thompson dragged herself out from under the thing. Her arms were well muscled, but she had such a slender frame that she managed not to look like a bodybuilder. Oil stained her skin, giving her a dark tinge, and it dripped ignored down her trousers. Her face was long, her eyes pinched, and she wore her beautiful dark hair just shy of the shoulders. Enough to sometimes put into a rough ponytail, but that was only for special occasions. At a guess Baronaire would have placed her on the good side of thirty, but he had never been good at recognising ages, and guessing a woman’s was always a minefield. She wasn’t smiling, but then Thompson didn’t like smiling.
Taking a rag, Thompson wiped at her hands before tossing it; then rubbed the back of her hand across her face, smearing oil down her cheek.
Oil-stained, sweat-glistening biker girls were adolescent fantasy, and Baronaire was always glad they meant nothing to him. He liked Thompson for the simple fact that he didn’t like her too well.
“I’ve no idea what any of that means,” Baronaire admitted.
“Course you don’t.”
“Sounds impressive though.”
“Bike’s new. Just been released. Not sure if it’ll last more than five years, but it’s my new love and it’s lasted longer than any of my girlfriends.”
Baronaire had often wondered whether Thompson’s sexual orientation had anything to do with him not being attracted to her, but very much doubted it. Just so long as they screamed in genuine fear, Baronaire didn’t much care what they preferred to get up to behind closed doors. “What’s the top speed?”
“Ever the pragmatist,” Thompson noted. “147, but I’m tweaking it. Got it past 160 already and I’ve only had the thing a week.”
Baronaire nodded as though he was interested, but even on his best day his mind would have been elsewhere. “Well get cleaned up. Sanders has an assignment for us.”
“Really?” she asked with a frown. “Just came off a case, thought I’d have a few hours at least to work on my bike
.”
“Sorry, my fault. I’m taking something personal and Sanders wants you to ride shotgun.”
“Do we get to take my bike?”
“Not unless you want me clinging onto your waist for dear life.”
At this Thompson did smile. “Deep, dark and brooding Charles Baronaire, afraid of a little wind in his hair?”
They were perhaps the best three words to sum him up, which was another reason he liked this woman so much. Charles Baronaire was thirty-two years old, with a healthy muscular frame as though he spent a lot of time at the gym, but didn’t. He almost always wore a shirt and trousers, his trench coat all but having been moulded to him. His hair was short, his expressions generally dark, and there was little mirth within him. But he was who he was, and he didn’t much care what anyone thought about him.
“I don’t think,” he replied, “I’m quite the type of girl you’d want clinging to you on the back of your bike, Jen.”
“If I get to take my bike out, Sanders could jump on the back for all I care. What’s the mission?”
“Guy serially beats his wife, one day he kills her. He’s dead now, suicide.”
“Suicide by WetFish?” she guessed.
“The daughter,” he said, producing a photograph. “Abigail Grayn. Fourteen years old. She was staying in a foster home after her mother was killed. Kid ran away right before the trial.”
“And?”
“And I want to find her. Make sure she’s OK.”
Thompson took the photograph, her brows furrowing. “This isn’t like you, Baronaire. You’re usually more like me.”
“Jen, I hate bikes.”
“You don’t care,” she said, handing him the photo back. She met his eyes. “So why do you care about this one?”
Baronaire turned away. “I don’t know. I just can’t stand the thought of her out there all alone. Her mother’s dead and now her father is too.”
“Because you killed him? Guy’s a jerk, Baronaire; no one’s gonna miss him, least of all his kid.”