by Adam Carter
“Why? Welles is a nobody.”
“I don’t know.”
He could not help notice she was still shivering and said, “Let’s get away from here for now. The media will be here soon.”
“Sure.”
They headed away from the scene of the crime, still no closer to answers than when they had set out at midnight.
CHAPTER SIX
Barry Stockwell pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with one finger even as those of his left hand danced across the keyboard. At nineteen he was likely the youngest member of WetFish, although he wasn’t an officer. The DCI had brought him in because he was a visionary. The DCI, not Stockwell. Sanders saw that computers would soon become a detective’s greatest tool, and if there was one thing Stockwell knew it was computers. Sometimes Stockwell thought Sanders knew more than he was letting on, it was as though he knew just what was round the corner, and it left Stockwell both eager and frightened. He understood the power of computers, and if Sanders did too, that made it a reality.
“And?”
He realised he had been drifting again, and shifted posture in his seat. Flanking him, standing by his desk, were two officers: Lin and Jeremiah. They had come back to the bunker to ask him a question and he had set his computer to work. “It takes a moment to retrieve the data,” he lied to cover his own daydreaming, although they wouldn’t know to say otherwise. He noticed Lin was leaning her fists onto his desk, perilously close to a small scale model of a great white shark. Stockwell loved fish. When he was a kid it had been dinosaurs, but dinosaurs were dead, and as he reached his teens he had moved onto big cats. Now he couldn’t get enough of fish, and his mind was filled with useless trivia. Well, useless save in pub quizzes, which he may have been good at if he ever went to the pub. As soon as he filled his brain with everything there was to know about one subject, he moved onto another. It was a strange little hobby of his, but it was infinitely more interesting than football.
“They’re doing studies on cod,” Stockwell told her. “Do you know, they’re becoming endangered? Although no one seems to be listening. Will make trips to the chip shop mighty different ten years down the line.”
“My life is over,” Lin replied, deadpan. “What does the computer tell us?”
“Oh.” He read over the information he had discovered, scrolling through more quickly than either of the others could likely process the information. “There’s nothing here.”
“Well that was worth coming back for,” Jeremiah grumbled.
Stockwell had an odd impression from these two, although he couldn’t quite place what it was.
“Maybe there’s just nothing to find,” Stockwell suggested. They had asked him to run a search for Welles’s sister, a woman named Diana Welles, and he guessed they had been assigned to track down the guy from the news. Why Sanders would assign people to Welles, Stockwell could not say. It was not WetFish’s remit to hunt down criminals until the courts had had a go with them, but he wasn’t an officer and doubted he was even supposed to know their remit. Maybe he didn’t, and that was why he was confused. Anyway, he had found nothing on Diana Welles. She had gone to Australia some years back and had vanished without a trace.
“They could have killed her,” Jeremiah said.
“Who could have?” Lin asked.
He shrugged. “Whoever. Welles is angry at someone, maybe he found out someone killed her before coming to England to push drugs onto the streets.”
“And why would someone come halfway round the world to do that right after they murdered someone?”
Stockwell listened to them curiously. They were not angry at one another, although they were each growing a little testy as the other spoke. It was almost as if they were rivals in this case, the amount of barriers they were throwing up around themselves. He thought about mentioning it, but doubted it would serve him well.
“Keep digging,” Lin told him. “If you can find any useful information at all, it would be something. Even that someone’s seen her on the beach or something.”
“Australia’s not one big beach, Detective,” Stockwell reminded her.
“Just keep digging.”
A shrill beeping sounded from Lin and she fought to remember where she had put her phone. The way she jumped, the way she fumbled with locating it ... Stockwell wondered what had happened to make her so jittery. Maybe she had found the Drugs Gunner and been involved in a fire-fight or something, he couldn’t say. Then he noticed Jeremiah staring at him, hard, and he turned back to his computer screen and minded his own business.
Lin put her phone away after a brief conversation Stockwell did not catch. “Duck,” she said.
Stockwell raised an eyebrow.
“Good news?” Jeremiah asked.
“Good Cod I hope so.”
The two of them left, and Stockwell recognised a joke when he heard one. Hardy har har. Then his fingers stopped dancing so crazily across the keyboard and he thought about the other thing Lin had said. Duck. Duck ... maybe fish was yesterday’s news. Maybe it was time he learned about birds.
*
It was bad news, and even though Lin and Jeremiah raced to the school they knew there was every chance they would be too late. Lin had taken the call from Duck, who had said one of their kids, a fourteen-year-old boy by the name of Geoffrey, had reported seeing Welles. Instead of following Duck’s advice the boy had followed Welles to a school, where Geoffrey had found a payphone and called it into Duck. The woman was understandably frantic about Geoffrey being in danger, and Lin couldn’t blame her.
“He’s clearly hiding out in a school because it’s closed today,” Lin said while they hurtled down empty streets at incredibly illegal speeds which Jeremiah seemed able to handle with amazingly sharp reflexes. “No one’s going to disturb him there.”
“We shouldn’t know this,” Jeremiah said angrily from the driver’s seat. “You shouldn’t have your own little army of informants like some legalised Fagan.”
“You’re worried about the kid?” Lin asked, surprised. She did not understand Jeremiah; in truth she had been trying to all throughout their time together. But every time she thought she had him pegged he pulled something like this on her. “I thought all these kids were the next criminals. I thought we weren’t supposed to be giving anyone any breaks.”
“That doesn’t mean we should recruit them.”
“I honestly don’t get you.”
“There’s really not that much to get, Lin. I know what people around the office think of me. Half the time you talk to me as though we’re best friends, the other half you’re afraid of me. If I cared what people thought of me I’d do something about it. But the simple truth is I’m an officer of WetFish and I have a job to do. And I do it. The big house, the creepiness, the geniality ... none of it makes a difference. Nor does my not having any rank. I have a job to do and I do it.”
“There’s more to you than that.”
“No. There really isn’t.”
“Then why are you in WetFish?”
They skidded round a corner and Jeremiah pulled the car to a crawl as they approached the school. He was out the door in a moment and Lin knew an evasion of the question when she saw one. But they did have better things to be doing than chatting about motivation.
The school was a small facility, a primary school, consisting of only two buildings and a vast open playground and field. Lin could see no sign of anyone, could detect neither movement nor sound, but that did not mean the place was empty. Jeremiah had already moved across to the gate and gently rattled the lock. The gate swung open. Lin did not believe for a moment that it had been unlocked, but if she asked him he would just claim Welles had likely broken it. She did not want to be lied to, so didn’t ask.
They headed in slowly, together, until they came to the door of the first building. They could enter here without being seen, but if they intended to get to the other building they would have to cross the playground, and if Welle
s was close to a window he would be able to see them. And Welles was too careful a planner not to be close to a window.
“We should split up,” Jeremiah said. “You take this entrance.”
“And you can get over there without him seeing you?”
“I never said I was going for the other building. I’ll meet you in the middle somewhere.”
And with that he took hold of the drainpipe with both hands and shimmied up like a confused fire-fighter shuffling the wrong way up his pole. It was certainly a peculiar sight and she wondered just where he had perfected such a skill. Wherever it was, it was proving very handy.
Taking a deep breath, Lin tried the handle and found it unlocked. That was unusual also, although she had not seen Jeremiah even touch this one. Perhaps Welles had indeed been through here, she couldn’t say, although she could not shake the notion that Jeremiah had indeed somehow broken the lock of this door as well.
Slowly pushing the door, Lin peered inside, wishing the hinges were a little more oiled as the intense creak echoed through the corridor. She moved cautiously, noting several doors lining the walls, likely leading to classrooms. She ignored them, heading all the way to the back, opening the final door onto the stairwell. There was no sign of movement here either, and she started up slowly. Welles would not be hiding out on the ground floor. He knew they were after him and would take the high ground so he could snipe them if necessary. The theory that Welles was crazy did not enter into it at all: there was a method to his actions and Lin knew full well whatever he was doing, it was with a great deal of care and sense.
Her feet sent shivering tinny echoes through the narrow stairwell and her heart jumped with every step, her fearful mind screaming at her that she was signalling her steady approach and that Welles was lying in concealment with a rifle steady and waiting for her head to come into its sights. She could see the door which marked the end of the stairs and gingerly placed her hand upon it. Taking a deep breath, Lin pushed the door, but it opened swiftly as someone on the other side yanked it out of her hand.
“What?” Jeremiah asked from the other side of the door, staring at her with genuine puzzlement.
Slowly regaining control of her heart rate, Lin ignored the stupid question. “Any sign of Welles?”
“No. He’s probably in the other building.”
“How are we going to get over there without him seeing us?”
If Jeremiah had an answer, however, he did not have the opportunity to present it, for a clatter shrieked through the room, amplified by the emptiness of the stairwell. Jeremiah whirled, dropping into a crouch so quickly that in her surprise Lin almost forgot to get out of sight herself. She ducked behind the doorframe and carefully peered round it. The room into which the door led was some form of storage area, mainly of kitchen equipment. She could see a saucepan lid settling a few metres away, and as soon as it ceased moving an uneasy silence descended upon them both.
Jeremiah moved swiftly, without even consulting her, and Lin tried to follow, but then she heard a cry and watched as Jeremiah emerged from behind a stack of plates, holding someone by the scruff of the neck. The boy was shabbily dressed and could have done with a wash and running a comb through his hair, but Lin supposed that was the fashion among teenagers these days. His struggles were in vain, and Lin watched as Jeremiah dropped him unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Geoffrey?” Lin asked tenuously.
“Geoff,” the boy grunted, showing no fear that the two of them were ambushing him. He sat on the floor without making any move to leave and brushed imaginary dirt off his arms as though Jeremiah was infested with dust.
“Duck said you’d called in a sighting of Welles,” Lin said. She knew teenage boys did not like a fuss being made of their welfare and would not waste time in such a pursuit.
“He’s in the other building,” Geoffrey said with a shrug. “What do you think I’m doing in this one?”
“Which floor?” Jeremiah asked gruffly.
“Top floor, but he’s not there now. He left about ten minutes ago.”
Jeremiah scowled. “Then he could be anywhere.”
“Hold on,” Lin said. “What was he even doing here? I mean, why come to a school? Sure, it’s defensible because it’s isolated and empty, but to come here and just leave?”
“You think he’s still there?” Jeremiah asked hopefully.
“No. But I think he came here for a reason other than to just hide out for an hour.”
Jeremiah seemed to consider this. Then he said, “You look after the boy. I’ll go take a look.”
“Now just hang on a ...”
“Lin,” he said drolly, “I don’t care about the boy. You do. Let me actually do something for a change, this chasing shadows is making me itchy.”
Lin had to admit he was right. They could not both go over and search, leaving Geoffrey alone, and it really didn’t matter which one of them did what. “Call if you need anything,” she said for the sake of saying something. Once more Jeremiah grunted, and then he was gone.
“How do you work with that jerk?” Geoffrey asked contemptuously.
“Oh I don’t know, he’s not so bad. Once you get to know him.”
“You’re sleeping with him. Sure, should a seen that.”
“I’m not sleeping with him,” Lin said, shocked at the very thought. “We’re partners.”
“That what you call it?”
“Hey,” she said, sitting down next to him and punching him lightly on the arm, “what do you know about girls anyway, kid?”
“Nothin’.”
Lin had to wonder, however, precisely what she herself knew about Jeremiah.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jeremiah had never been to school. He had received schooling, had been tutored from time to time in whatever he felt he needed to know, but he had never been to an actual school with teachers and other children. But he had learned a lot through life, had learned more than most people could imagine. He was never one to sit idle and over the years had taught himself many skills, some of them useful, others luxuries. He could kill an armed man at ten paces without himself bearing any weapons, and he could also play the harp. Jeremiah was a man who very much liked to know as much as possible.
Yet he still could not understand why he was being so cranky. He told himself it was because of Welles, because this case was dragging on far too long and all he and Lin seemed to be doing was running around after him, always one step behind. That Welles was still in the school was unlikely, but Jeremiah was determined to find out just what he had been doing there. If he had been searching for something, then what was it? Surely it had to be something to do with his lost sister. The man had clearly been pushed over the edge by finding out she was dead or something, and that he was targeting drug dealers suggested she had died of a drugs overdose. But why had he turned to shooting prostitutes? Had that woman he shot just wandered into his line of sight? Had she known him and would have been able to tell police of his whereabouts? But no, the police knew his name and face, and shooting someone in the street was a fine way to announce your own whereabouts, witnesses be damned.
Jeremiah did not understand any of this, and he did not like to have to solve mysteries. Unlike Lin and the others, he did not bear the rank of detective. He was with WetFish for one reason and one reason only; to stay alive. It wasn’t such a bad life, and if there ever came that chance to be rid of it he would seize it in an instant. He had recruited an ally to this end, but nothing was coming of that and he had been waiting far long enough. Still, there were worse lives and Jeremiah found he shouldn’t complain. Like most people, however, that did not stop him at all.
He wandered the empty corridors of the other building in the school, having made his way as quickly as possible across the playground. He had not been shot on the way, so that was a good sign, but he would have almost welcomed a shot or two since it would have meant Welles was still on-site. Jeremiah could have done with wrapping this up rath
er quickly. It wasn’t that he especially celebrated Christmas this time of year – he didn’t see the point since Jesus hadn’t been born in December – but it was still a sacred day and he didn’t like the idea of someone running around on Christmas Day shooting people.
It just wasn’t cricket.
He made his way through one of the classrooms, noting the chairs neatly stacked on top of the tables, the wall charts depicting simplistic drawings of animals and various objects. There were educational toys stashed in one corner and a stack of exercise books lying on the teacher’s desk. He wondered how long classrooms would stay like this. They had changed very little over the years, although a tendency to shy away from blackboards was creeping into things; but aside from that and the fact teachers were being allowed less and less control, things were pretty much as they always had been. With the advent of computers a handful of decades back and their increasing power and decreasing size, Jeremiah wondered how long it would be before computer screens replaced exercise books, and typing skills would be valued over neat handwriting. The world was changing; Jeremiah had been forced to admit that many times throughout his years, but never more swiftly were things changing than now. The Internet was a ghastly concoction, putting shame to Ceefax and Oracle, and Jeremiah knew very soon there would be no place for people to hide. A hundred years ago fingerprints had been identified as unique to individuals, fifty years ago CCTV had removed people’s privacy even further. Fifty years from now Jeremiah could not conceive what the world would be like, but he knew one thing. Anyone who wished to hide would not be able to do so easily. It did not bode well for organisations like WetFish, but it was even worse news for people like Jeremiah.
Fifty years from now, Jeremiah feared Welles would have been caught immediately after committing his very first murder.
A sound snapped him back to the present, his mind no longer wandering. He had heard something in the next room, some form of crunch, as though a boot grinding chalk perhaps. It could have been the wind, or mice, or simply his imagination; but just for the sake of safety Jeremiah chose to believe it was a maniac with a gun.