by Adam Carter
“Yet you still carry it around with you?”
“I like to think that so long as I do, Dan’s still looking out for me.”
She had let slip a name, and berated herself silently. She had been so careful not to tell anyone anything, and now the assignment was over she was spilling things which could land her in serious trouble.
“I’m sorry about Dan,” Harrison said.
“Me too, ma’am.”
“You don’t work for me, you know. Please start calling me Sophia.”
Thompson glanced away. “I would, ma’am, but I can’t give you my real name so it doesn’t seem fair.”
Harrison smiled over the rim of her mug and Thompson got the strangest impression that she was laughing at some private joke.
“Stenning said something,” Thompson said. “About the drugs, and the gun.”
“He said a woman gave him both. Whoever’s making the drugs, it’s someone who knows what they’re doing. Toxicology came back with nothing last time and the whole case fell apart. Now we have the actual pills I can’t see that happening again. Especially since we have a gun this time as well.”
“That was an F88 Austeyr,” Thompson said, and could see it meant nothing to Harrison. “It’s standard issue for the Australian army.”
“It was a weirdly cumbersome gun. I wonder why this chemist woman didn’t just give him a pistol.”
“I don’t know. But I think there’s always a reason for these things.”
“Well it’s confiscated now, so it doesn’t matter any more.”
“I guess not.” She could see Harrison was waiting for her to get to the point of why she had asked her for coffee. “When you were talking to Stenning, when you had the gun in your face. You weren’t talking generically were you?”
She could feel Harrison tense from across the table. “I don’t know what I was saying. I was just trying to keep him from shooting me.”
“How old were you when it happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Thompson assimilated this response and decided if Harrison didn’t want to talk about it, that was up to her. “Then I should be getting back to work. Hopefully I still have a job to go back to, but I’m not holding my breath.” She rose, although Harrison tensed even further and stared into her coffee cup with focused eyes.
“I was twenty,” she said in a small voice. Thompson slid back into the chair, saying nothing. “I’d gone out with my boyfriend. We had a fight and he went off with another woman. Well, that’s why we had the fight actually.” She hesitated. “There was this guy at the bar, he started talking to me. He offered to buy me a drink, so I said yes. I was angry, wasn’t paying much attention. He was just convenient. And we drank, and we drank, and we drank some more. He didn’t even slip anything into my drink, unless you count more drink. I don’t remember much of the night, but then I never did when I’d had that much. But I remember his arm around me, steering me to the door. I remember trying to sleep in the car, just wanting to go to sleep. And I remember fighting him when I realised I wasn’t back in my own bed.”
Thompson had said nothing throughout, but had suspected something like this from the outset. There had just been something obsessive about Harrison’s approach to all of this, something personal.
“I haven’t touched alcohol since,” Harrison said. “I never want to be out of control of my senses ever again.”
“Did they catch him?”
“No. This was in the seventies, remember. It would have been too much bother to prove I was assaulted. And I would have been told I was asking for it, the amount of drink inside me. Drink he’d put inside me to make me that way.”
“The seventies? I thought you said you were twenty at the time?”
“I’m almost forty, you know.”
“Wow. You, uh, look good for forty.”
“Almost forty.”
“Sorry.”
“So I’m not fat any more?”
Thompson felt a little colour rise to her cheeks as she thought back to the somewhat hostile conversation the two of them had had back in that club. This explained entirely why Harrison had been so eager for Thompson to get away from Stenning.
“Yeah,” Thompson said. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. We caught the bad guy and, like you say, that’s all that matters.”
“The guy who ... assaulted you. Do you know his name?”
“Yep. But it doesn’t matter. He disappeared about six months after he was released without charge. I thought maybe he’d done a runner, but his family never found out what happened to him, so I guess he must have died or something.”
Thompson bit her lower lip. Even if she was allowed to hazard a guess as to what had become of him, she could never be certain. “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she said. “But the more we take off the streets, the fewer women have to go through it.”
“That’s why I joined the force.”
Thompson was beginning to feel awkward with so much good feeling, especially since Christmas was a couple of months back. “I should go check in with my boss. If you ever want to talk, I’m willing to listen.”
“And how am I supposed to find you? Yellow Pages under ‘White’?”
“There’s an underground bar a few miles away. The Waterhole.”
“I know it. Well, I know of it anyway.”
“I spend far too much of my life there.”
“Then I’ll drop by to say hello one day.”
Thompson rose once more, and this time she knew she was going. “Take care, Sophia.”
“And you. And watch out for that partner of yours. He’s an odd one, but he seems loyal to you.”
“He and I are ... friends.”
“Keep it that way, Detective. I have a feeling he could turn nasty on you if provoked.”
“Oh, I don’t know: I reckon if provoked I could turn pretty nasty myself.” As Thompson left the café, she suddenly realised Harrison had called her by her rank. She shook such complications from her mind. She didn’t want to know how much Harrison knew, and certainly she didn’t want Sanders to know.
Speaking of Sanders, she was not looking forward to this next meeting at all.
*
She said nothing as Sanders read at his desk. As soon as Thompson returned to the bunker she marched to Sanders’s office and handed in her report. He had not asked how she was, how she was feeling, how the assignment had gone. He had simply accepted her hand-written notes and sat there going through them. Thompson was sure he was reading very slowly just to make her squirm.
At last he finished reading and set her report aside. Steepling his fingers before him, he stared at her in silence. Thompson stood rigid, knowing her entire future depended on his next words.
“Ineptitude,” he said slowly, “doesn’t cover it.”
Well that could have gone better.
“So far as we know,” Sanders continued, “you haven’t compromised this department. Your fingerprints have vanished from the system, the interview tape has been destroyed and any record of Rebecca White ever being arrested has gone forever.” He stopped there, boring his eyes into hers. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact it happened.”
“No, sir,” Thompson replied, feeling she should say something.
“I also have it on good authority that Stockwell and Baronaire were both helping you out.”
“Good authority, sir?”
“My eyes.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Ah.”
“I take full responsibility for their actions, sir.”
“They can take responsibility for their own actions.” He continued to stare, considering. “On the one hand, there’s no harm done. On the other, just because I’ve pulled your fat out of the fire once, doesn’t mean I can do so a second time. It wasn’t so long ago your poor planning almost got Baronaire killed. You do remembe
r almost getting Baronaire killed that time, don’t you?”
Thompson’s blood turning to ice was about the only thing which prevented her from exploding at him. “Yes, sir,” she hissed. “I remember.”
“Twice in six months is a habit, Thompson. Give me one reason I shouldn’t let you go.”
She tried to think of one, but even she could see she was a screw-up. “It won’t happen again, sir.”
“There’s a good way of making sure of that.”
“I ... WetFish is my life, sir. I ... I don’t have anything else.”
“No one here does. That’s not a coincidence.”
Thompson realised she had lost and tried to still her thundering heart. But if she was definitely going, she needed to do some damage limitation. “Can I at least get a transfer, sir? Instead of being let go.”
“Denied. You’re not transferring to Detective Inspector Harrison: I don’t care how well the two of you hit it off.”
“Then give me one more chance. I’ll prove to you I have what it takes.”
“Oh, you have what it takes. You just don’t plan ahead and you don’t always concentrate. You’re too concerned with the bad state of your life to focus on what you’re doing.”
She could not believe he had said that, although it was entirely true. “Then an assignment which doesn’t involve a target. Let me try to track down where this drug came from.”
“The drug? Who cares where it came from?”
“Because if we can find out who makes it, we might well be able to stop women all over the country being raped.”
“I’ve looked into it. This substance, whatever it is, was only being used by Stenning. His mystery benefactor, it seems, was using him as a test, probably. To see if it worked.”
“Then no one loses anything by letting me look for her.”
“You wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“I have one clue. The rifle Stenning had. It was Australian. The more I think about it, the more I reckon that was a message. A message to the people she knew would finally catch up to ... Boss, are you all right?”
Sanders’s face had drained of all colour, and the import of her own words sank in. Whoever was supplying Stenning with the drug knew the police would eventually catch up with him, and knew he would need a gun to defend himself. It was a leap to assume this woman knew of WetFish, but suddenly Thompson was wondering whether this entire thing was set-up so that WetFish would have become exposed.
“You’re sure about the gun?” Sanders asked in a tight voice.
“I grew up with the army, sir. I know my guns.” She thought about that. “Do you think it wasn’t a coincidence this happened on my case? That she knew I’d be able to identify the weapon?”
“And you’re certain it was Australian?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Don’t go anywhere near this woman,” Sanders told her, and she could see something almost like fear to his eyes. She had never before seen Sanders afraid so could not be certain of it now. “I’m looking into it personally. Now get back to work.”
“I ... Back to work, sir?”
“Yes,” he barked. “If this is who I think it is, I’m going to need every loyal WetFish officer on hand. Now beat it. I have work to do.”
Thompson returned to her desk with mixed feelings. She was jubilant to still have her job, but she was also terrified. She had never seen Sanders like this, and could not for the life of her imagine who they might be up against. But she was almost certain now this had all been staged; and, more than that, that it had been staged for the benefit of the DCI. A message had been sent: a message directly to the heart of Edward Sanders.
She shuddered at the thought. Until this mystery was solved, it was entirely possible the bunker was now the most dangerous workplace in the entire country.
OPERATION WETFISH
BOOK 7
FEAR AND ECSTASY
CHAPTER ONE
It was a damn stupid way to spend April. Walter Chamberlain stoked the fire venomously, cursing his father for having sent him all the way to Scotland. Chamberlain’s knowledge of Scotland was sparse, most of it revolving around Sean Connery, Braveheart and haggis. Probably deep-fried. He knew property in Scotland was cheaper than back home, especially where he lived in London, and that there were vast tracts of open lands all over the place. And cliffs. There were thousands of cliffs in Scotland, with little islands dotted about the place. Of course, everyone went around in kilts, put salt on their porridge and spoke in a northern brogue no decent-bred human being could understand on his best day. The women had faces like car accidents and the men may have looked no better, but it was difficult to tell beneath the mass of flaming red beard and square tartan hat. And he wouldn’t be able to sleep because the cocks woke every morning to play their bagpipes.
These arguments and more besides had fallen on deaf ears. His father had told him he was going to Scotland and that was final.
Upon arrival, the only child of Lord Ernest and Lady Vivienne Chamberlain had discovered only some of the pretences he had formed about Scotland were true. One of the things he had actually been looking forward to, however, was living in a castle. It turned out there were no castles near where he was going to be staying. One of the other things he found he had been right about was the open spaces and the cliffs. At least where he was being sent.
He believed the place had at one time been a farm, but there was no livestock here now, and the grass outside was overgrown. The winds on the top of the cliffs were horrendous, the cliffs themselves dropping sixty metres to the crashing surf below. Chamberlain had no intention of going outside any time soon, and if he could just get the damn fire back up and running he’d be a lot happier. And warmer.
Chamberlain grabbed another log and threw it into the hearth. The house had only the one storey, and a proper fire with a chimney that didn’t seem to want to work all that well. He had been meaning to hire someone to go clean it out, but the phone line was down, probably didn’t work too well at his current altitude, and the devil was he going outside in this weather. The house itself was pleasant enough, in a rustic sort of way. There was no piano, no porter, no butler and no snooker table, but he supposed when the weather improved he might be able to set up some form of polo course out in the fields. Or golf. The Scottish invented golf, he may as well get to like it.
“Would you stop attackin’ the logs like that? It’s nae gonna do ya any good. Honestly, it’s like ye beatin’ a hound or something.”
Chamberlain relinquished the stoker, although had been in two minds whether to use it to strike the stupid woman. However, if she could rescue the fire he was more than willing to sacrifice his anger.
He moved away to let the woman work and took a seat, observing her. Chamberlain was twenty years old, well-dressed and handsome. His strong, muscular form belayed any need to spend time in a gymnasium, and his peers were always commenting on how jealous they were of his stolid charm. His hair was gelled to the latest fashion, his soft hands powdered, no single item of his clothes, except perhaps the socks, even approaching affordable by the masses. He was calm, cool and generous to a fault, and his family adored him for his suave, popular nature.
The woman before him, in contrast, was pure filth. Agnes McBright was anything but; in fact she was a dull gloom to blot out even the cheeriest rays of sunshine, of which Scotland seemed to get none. She was of average height, average appearance, average ... well, just average really. She was far too fat for his liking, her hair stank of seaweed, her manners were atrocious and her accent barely understandable. Her hygiene was that of a moose, her lack of grooming simply unsettling, and the woman had no concept of personal space. Even when she had taken the stoker from him her fingers had almost touched his, and it wasn’t as though there was any clean water to wash his hands in afterwards. Oh, there were taps. Of course there were taps, but the water was tepid and cloudy, and Chamberlain was convinced Scotland didn’t even know what water purifi
cation meant.
“There,” Agnes said, turning away from the now-raging fire. She had even removed some of the logs he had already tossed on, the stupid woman. “All you need, Mister Chamberlain, is a little love.”
Chamberlain sniffed. “It’s still cold in here. Prepare my supper. And this time make sure it’s edible.”
“Yes, Mister Chamberlain.”
There was something to her tone he didn’t like, and it wasn’t just the ridiculous accent. There was defiance to her eyes, anger at the way he spoke to her. Having servants think that was one thing, having them show it was quite another. And having a stupid girl think it was altogether far worse. As Agnes went off to obey him he began absently playing with the poker. Perhaps he would have to teach her some respect once she had brought him his supper.
Heavens! If God-forsaken had been a word created for one purpose it would be to describe Scotland!
A little warmer now, Chamberlain rose and strolled over to the window. There was a terrible storm outside. For the past week the winds had been tremendous, and for two days straight it had rained. Yesterday the skies had cleared and Chamberlain had brightened somewhat. April showers were all well and good, but he needed to get out of the house if he was to stay sane. This afternoon however the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it had begun to hail. With the hail came snow, droves of it in fact, so that as he looked out the window now at the evening landscape it was to see the entire area covered in six inches of the stuff. He shuddered at the very thought of going out in it, even while his growling stomach began to wonder where his supper had got to. Dreadful place, this Scotland. Rain one day, sun the next; then snow. What sort of country has snow in April?
Chamberlain’s heart hammered in his chest as he heard thunder rock the house. He had heard tales of how lightning attacked the highest points, and there was nowhere higher on these tall cliffs than his house. The thunder repeated itself and he realised it was just someone pounding on the door. Chamberlain breathed more easily, reaching for his whisky to steady his nerves. Just some vagrant wandering about in the storm, that was all.