Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective: Ultimate Omnibus Volume 1 of 4 (Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective Ultimate Omnibus)

by Adam Carter

  Baronaire frowned. “Aliens?”

  “You know, the film? When they come out a the walls or break through the ceiling? God, that scared me when it came out.”

  “Oh. Sorry, I’m not a big film fan. Was it based on a book?”

  “Uh, no. It was based on a film.”

  “What film?”

  “Alien.”

  Baronaire stared at him, trying to work out whether he was joking. “They made a film called Alien, then made a sequel called Aliens?”

  The two men looked at one another, both trying to work out the logic behind that.

  “Uh, guys?” Lin broke in. “Frank Fiennes?”

  “Frank,” Laurenson repeated, “was scared witless. I tried to calm him down, but he was white as a sheet. Kept muttering, but I couldn’t hear no words, you know what I mean? If I got too close, he’d scream, start batting me away like a crazy man. I don’t think he even realised I was there. Anyway, the next day he was calmer, but withdrawn. I’ve never seen Frank withdrawn, always been the life and soul of the party has Frank. He had a bit more colour to him, but he didn’t want to talk. Just lay there, staring at the wall. Frank’s never lain staring at the wall in his life, it’s not in his nature. Well, he wouldn’t talk to me about it, whatever it was, and I gave up trying. Figured he’d come around eventually, you know? Tell me in his own time.”

  “Did you go take a look at the docks?” Lin asked.

  “Do I look stupid, lady?”

  It was a fair enough answer. “Then what happened?” Baronaire asked. “You said it was about eight-thirty?”

  Laurenson nodded darkly, his eyes elsewhere, his mind back with Frank on the streets that night. “I was doing my crossword. Times crossword, I always do it of an evening. Annoys me when I can’t find the paper if I had a clue I couldn’t get the night before. So I was doing my crossword, trying to figure out some clue about a cat which could never tell the truth. I thought cheetah, but it didn’t fit.”

  “How many letters?” Baronaire asked.

  “Uh, four.”

  “If it can’t tell the truth, it’s always lion.”

  “Very good, Mr Baronaire.”

  Lin’s face disappeared into her hands.

  Laurenson could take a hint even if Baronaire was ignoring her. “I was doing my crossword,” he continued, “when I heard a scuffle. Frank was shouting. There’s sometimes trouble on the streets, Mr Baronaire, you come to expect that. Kids thinking they’re tough, showing off. Drunks sometimes, or cops who think they’re better than you. Know any a those?”

  “Probably.”

  But Frank’s shouting, it wasn’t anything like that. Frank’s always calm, cool. Makes the jerks look stupid without having to touch them. And no one ever picked a fight with Frank, because he could back up his words with his fists if he needed to. But this time, he was shouting, and it wasn’t pretty. He was scared, as scared as the night before. I dropped my paper and ran to help him, but all I saw was a car pulling away. I’m no good with cars, Mr Baronaire, but it was blue. Can’t tell you anything more about it. But I saw the driver, reflected in the wing mirror. The driver you just drew there on that page.

  “Then I went to Frank. He was shaking so bad, as though he’d just seen the ghost a Elvis himself. There wasn’t a mark on him, so whatever they did to him it wasn’t a beating. But he was white again, and muttering. I called for help, but by the time anyone got there Frank was dead. Heart attack, they told me, but Frank didn’t have no heart attack. He was the strongest man I ever knew, Mr Baronaire. Heart attack my backside.”

  “So whoever those men were,” Baronaire said, “you think they’re connected to whatever Frank saw at the docks?”

  “Absolutely. I stake my life on it, sir.”

  They finished up the interview and Baronaire slipped Laurenson a note and told him to go buy a decent meal somewhere. Lin had said nothing since Laurenson had started speaking and Baronaire liked to believe it was because she had changed her opinion on the entire case, but he knew otherwise. The two officers returned to their car and Baronaire pulled away from the station.

  “Something on your mind, Lin?”

  “No. What could possibly be on my mind, Baronaire? Maybe that you were leading the witness the entire way through? Maybe that you have it in your head there’s a criminal underworld operating from the docks? Maybe that we don’t have time to look into this?”

  “Michael knows his own mind, he doesn’t need me to lead him. And who says there isn’t an underworld at the docklands?”

  “You forgot to refute the not having time to look into it.”

  “If we don’t, who will, Lin? This happened days ago and the case has been closed already.”

  “Because Fiennes died of a heart attack.”

  “Brought on by shock and fear.”

  “That’s still not murder.”

  “We don’t just deal in murder, Lin.”

  “No. We have a very specific agenda. Do you know what that agenda is?”

  “Not in the mood.”

  Lin ignored him. “Our department, Operation WetFish, is a covert, unorthodox but entirely legal division of the police. We clean up the mistakes of the courts and save the tax payer a lot of money. We make sure criminals who escape justice the first time around pay for it the second time, even if we have to frame them or kill them ourselves. We’re the UK’s damage control. That’s our agenda. Now where in any of that does a homeless man dying from shock fit?”

  “Just because he’s homeless doesn’t mean he’s a secondary citizen.”

  “I never said he was. I’m saying this is a matter for the conventional police. I have my own assignment to be dealing with, and I’m sure you do too. The DCI is not going to be happy you’ve pulled us both away from them so we can step on another division’s toes.”

  “But there is no other division, Lin. No one’s looking into this, no one cares. Well someone has to care, because whatever they killed Frank for, it has to be illegal. And if it’s illegal we have a duty to investigate. Because however much you like to quote the rulebook at me, we are still police officers and we still have a duty to the people of this country.”

  Lin was silent a moment. Baronaire was not driving anywhere special, but that was only because he was avoiding going to the docks without Lin on his side.

  “So what do you suggest we do then?” she asked at last. “Head down there and check things over ourselves? If there are bad people there and they spot us, it won’t have done us any good going there.”

  “At least we’ll know Michael was right.”

  “Great. Look, I’ll make you a deal. We check things out tonight, but if nothing comes of it we get back to our proper assignments and make the DCI happy. Yeah?”

  Baronaire sighed deeply. “Sure, Lin.”

  Baronaire turned the car about and headed for the docklands. He had no specific area to check, and it was a big place, but he had a guy back at the office working on things for him and called him up on the car’s radio.

  “Baronaire. Been trying to contact you.”

  “Been busy, Stockwell. We’re going to check out where Frank Fiennes went the other night but we need to be certain we’re headed to the right place.” Barry Stockwell was young and enthusiastic, spent far too much time at his computer and was always pleased to talk to people. Stockwell represented every reason Baronaire could think of as to why computers should not become as important as he believed they would. For one thing it was likely damaging Stockwell’s eyes terribly; but more importantly it was granting him a power like no other. The things Stockwell could do with computers was worrying. Back in the eighties and early nineties they had been called computer nerds, but it was the mid-nineties now and Stockwell could find information on anything extremely quickly. He also spoke of people who could hack into other people’s computers, which never sounded good when Baronaire heard it.

  “I’ve triangulated his position based on other reports of the area,” Stock
well said.

  “There have been other problems, Barry?” Lin asked.

  “Not really. A couple of fights, but mainly I’ve cross-referenced all the information Baronaire gave me from the various homeless people he questioned.”

  Lin raised her eyebrows at Baronaire. He had hoped Stockwell would not have said that part. His deal with Lin hinged on her keeping true to her word after all and the last thing Baronaire wanted was for her to realise he had already started digging.

  Stockwell gave over the location and Baronaire tossed his notebook to Lin so she could write it all down. “Oh,” Stockwell said at last, “the reason I was trying to contact you. The toxicology came back for Fiennes.”

  “He die of heart failure?” Lin asked hopefully.

  “Yes.”

  Lin snapped shut the notebook and smiled triumphantly at Baronaire. “Case closed.”

  “But there were foreign substances in his body,” Stockwell finished.

  “Define foreign substances.”

  “No one knows. Otherwise I would have named them. We’re running more tests now, our end, and it looks like it was poison.”

  “They injected him,” Baronaire said. “They stopped the car, jumped out, injected him and drove off. They didn’t need to beat him up to keep him quiet. They just needed to kill him in such a way as no one would notice. Or care enough to perform an in-depth study.”

  “But why would they need to keep him quiet?” Lin asked.

  “That, Detective, is precisely why we’re headed to the docks right now.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was a lot of construction work around the docks and as Lin stood staring out across the water she could imagine the place becoming a major area in London’s economic structure. One Canada Square had been constructed a couple of years back in the Canary Wharf area, and it rose high in the sky for no apparent reason other than that whoever commissioned it wanted to own the tallest building in the country. It was certainly that, but Lin couldn’t help but feel some shops, bars, maybe a couple of nice parks might attract more interest. As things stood the areas beside the river were cold, bleak and rundown. There was so much construction occurring however she wondered how anyone managed to live in this area.

  Presently she and Baronaire had ventured to West India Quay, which at one time had been one of the country’s busiest ports. There wasn’t much to look at any more, and Lin had a very difficult time reconciling the broken worm-eaten husks of wood with the clippers and fishing trawlers which would have at one time unloaded their wares here.

  Lin hugged her coat tighter, regretting not having brought a thicker jumper. Her hands were freezing, even tucked away in her pockets, and she wished Baronaire would hurry up and decide this was all a waste of time. She knew he was upset with her reaction to all of this, but it wasn’t anything personal. Lin didn’t like to see any innocent people murdered, whether they lived in a big house in Kensington or in the gutter two roads down. People were people and Lin strongly believed she should protect them all. Her problem was one of authority and jurisdiction. They should not have been here, were not meant to be looking into this case, and if their DCI found out about it he would have both their heads for paperweights.

  Even so, it was nice to be out and about with Baronaire for a change. Lin had not been partnered with him for a while now, and the two of them had always got along well. Lin had joined WetFish almost a year ago, and while she had always got along with Baronaire she had detected a certain sadness to him, an emptiness. Now, however, he had found himself a good woman, and Lin was pleased for him. She was desperately trying not to hold his girlfriend’s profession against her and would not have been an especially good friend to mention her qualms to Baronaire. He was happy and that was the main thing.

  Now if she could just find time to get herself a decent man, things might be looking up for her as well. The main problem with the job was always the shift-work, but with WetFish there were more important concerns. It didn’t matter that she worked twelve hour shifts with only a few days off around them; that she could explain. It was not being able to talk about her work to anyone that always went badly with Lin. Her options were either to claim her work was classified (which the DCI had expressly told his officers not to do lest it incur suspicion), or just lie. Lin had only had one potentially serious relationship over the past year, and that had ended badly when she simply grew too tired of the lies she had created.

  So she was single again, like most people in the department she would wager, and it seemed odd that out of all of them it was Baronaire who had actually managed to find somebody.

  Lin dropped down to some wooden boarding which seemed to wend away under a bridge and vanish around a corner. There was a small boat moored to the boarding, although it was old and worn and did not look seaworthy. Also there was no one around to stop her stealing it, which told her it was worthless. Kicking absently at a stone, Lin wondered what Baronaire even expected to find down here.

  “Anything?” Baronaire asked, appearing as though from the shadows.

  Lin started, forcing herself to calm when she realised it was him. “Don’t do that to me all the time.”

  “Sorry. Anything?”

  “Would help if I knew what we were looking for. A drugs cartel hiding under the river? Renegade Nazi war criminals holed up in an antique boat? A random collection of misshapen, caricature Dick Tracy villains holding secret meetings in the moonlight?”

  “Aside from being surprised you know Dick Tracy,” Baronaire said blandly, “all I can say is I know as much as you.”

  “I take it you haven’t found anything either?”

  “No.” He looked worried by this, as though they should have been able to find something, even if it wasn’t the men responsible for the death of the homeless man. Lin was a detective who saw the world through realistic eyes. She had a good gut instinct for when people were lying and could piece together half-truths and other clues in her mind in order to come up with a reasonable hypothesis. But Baronaire was something else. He acted, even dressed, as though he would have been at home sixty, seventy years earlier. He thought maddening clues should always be found at crime scenes, to be puzzled over for hours until someone in jest gave away the answer. Baronaire read so many pulps he had become someone who believed the real world should be like them.

  “How are things with Rachael?” she asked in order to break the mood as they walked along the wooden boarding, shifting ever under their feet with the slight waves of the river. “You two’ve been together a while now.”

  “Rachael’s fine. Sanders found me a bigger place, so she has things to keep her occupied while I’m at work.”

  Lin had never been to Baronaire’s new flat, but then she had never been to the old one so that wasn’t saying much. “What about when she’s working?”

  By his expression Baronaire had taken that as a jibe, although Lin could not honestly say how it had been meant. “When I’m on my own,” he said simply, “I read.”

  Lin pretended she hadn’t insulted him. “Are you two thinking about Christmas? Do either of you have any time off?”

  “I don’t. Never really needed any before so I’ve never tried to book any. And I only met Rachael a couple of months back, you know what they’re like booking leave.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Can’t be worse than last year though. I spent Christmas Day with DCI Sanders, tracking down his ...”

  At first Lin thought Baronaire had seen something, but then realised he had just stopped the sentence because he had decided to. She knew whatever the two men had been doing last Christmas it certainly wasn’t something he should have been discussing with her, and quite frankly she didn’t want to know. Sanders could keep his little secrets; the less she knew the less he could hold against her if he needed to. “You got her anything nice?”

  “What do you mean?”

  For a minute Lin thought he was joking. “A present? Baronaire, you ha
ve a month left, you have to buy her something nice.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought about it. What do women like?”

  “Perfume maybe?”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “Chocolates? A holiday?”

  “Frilly underwear.”

  “Oh God, I hope you’re joking.” She could tell by his smirk he was playing her, however, and punched him in the arm. “Seriously though, you two should go away somewhere. When you both have time off. How does ... how does that work with Rachael anyway?”

  This time Baronaire did not take offence, which was good since she was asking a genuine question. “She can do what she likes,” Baronaire said. “Self-employed. Just so long as she lets her regulars know she’s unavailable she can disappear tomorrow if she wants to.”

  How Baronaire could speak so callously about his girlfriend’s profession she could not say. Rachael Webster lived in an area of the city Sanders protected with an iron fist. The prostitution in that area was run by a young woman named Tamara Uddin, and she looked after her girls every bit as much as Sanders looked after her. All the girls were clean of drugs and disease, and they were safe from physical harm thanks to the DCI. Lin could not understand why anyone would actually choose that profession, although had come across it a lot during her time with the police, even before she had joined WetFish.

  Prostitutes, so far as Lin knew, fell into three categories; the forced, the desperate and the immoral.

  The forced, rather self-explanatory, were virtual prisoners of their pimps. Perhaps they were brought over from other countries, promised decent jobs, then pushed into brothels. Perhaps they were hooked on drugs and it was the only way their pimps would feed their habits. There were a million stories on how a woman could be forced into such a trade, and Lin had probably come across only a small fraction in her time. She had not met anyone with any decent shred of morality who believed forced prostitution could ever be a good idea.

  The desperate were also more common than most people would have believed, although their numbers were nowhere near the forced. The desperate were women without money, without prospects. They maybe had come down to the big city with dreams in their hearts but no skills, and no money in their pockets. Most of the desperate had also fallen foul of pimps, but they were not all hooked on heroin. The desperate did what they did because they had to do it, and almost all the time they saw it as a short-term scenario. More often than not short-term meant several years, and ended either in arrest or a slit throat. Sometimes the desperate managed to get themselves out of the mess, find proper jobs, decent people to love them. Lin did not have any statistics on hand for this, although she feared it was a lot less than should have made it. The desperate knew what they were doing more so than the forced, and Lin would almost have preferred to have been off her face on crack if she had dropped so low to work like that.