by Jane Renshaw
The sun had, in fact, come out, and was throwing golden light through the row of windows facing her, as if in an effort to make the little box of a meeting room more appealing, but it just made Claire want out of here even more desperately. Out into the air.
She opened the file.
‘Best cover there is, of course,’ the DCI went on, ‘the cloak of respectability – but there’s no doubt about it.’ He sat back and looked right at Claire, as if daring her to contradict him. ‘Hector Forbes is a despicable human being.’
Maverick UC Claire Castleford repressed a smile. He may as well have had it emblazoned across the front of the file in big black letters:
This one’s personal.
The DCI wanted this, and he wanted it bad. Ten years of trying and failing to bring a man down would do that to you, she supposed. This bloody meeting was going to be one of those that ran and ran. She was going to be trapped in this claustrophobic little box for at least a couple of hours, minimum –
And maverick Claire was fine with that, although it was going to bore the tits off her.
She looked down at the top document in the file: Hector Forbes’s email to ‘Claire Colley’ inviting her to attend the interview. She flicked to the next page. Here was a photograph, the first one of him she’d seen.
‘Mr Darcy,’ she said out loud.
Hector Forbes didn’t actually resemble Colin Firth, apart from his colouring and maybe the expression in his eyes. But he could definitely have auditioned for Darcy. Might even have got the part ahead of Colin.
‘Yeah,’ said Phil, who was looking at the same photograph. ‘I always thought Darcy was a bit of a bastard, if not a homicidal maniac.’
The DCI shook his head, but the tense line of his lips had relaxed, she thought, fractionally. He and Phil were the same age, she reckoned, and were spookily alike physically: the same florid, rather meaty faces and short salt-and-pepper hair. They even had matching beer bellies. You could tell they were old pals.
Being up here was a bit of a nostalgia-fest for Phil. On the train from Aberdeen, Claire had had to listen to him waxing lyrical about the landscape. She’d gestured out of the window at the passing scenery – which at that point had consisted of a loopy river with a couple of swans on it, rolling fields, and stone farmhouses, with a few little bumps of hills in the distance – and remarked that she’d been promised mountains. Cue lecture from Phil about how large and diverse a county Aberdeenshire was, from the ‘environmentally degraded’ bleak fields of the Buchan coast to the ‘wilderness’ of ancient woodlands and mountains of Upper Deeside, where the target’s stately pile was situated.
It was hard to concentrate on what the DCI was saying. Bloody cortisol. But she was not going to be sick again. That would be the ultimate humiliation.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
The mention of her own name had her snapping to attention.
‘... DC Castleford.’ DCI Stewart turned to her.
She nodded, hoping that was appropriate. Hoping there hadn’t been a question in there. But she needn’t have worried. The DCI was the type who hammered home whatever he was saying two or three times.
‘Whatever preconceptions you’ve got into your head about him, get them out again. The guy’s dangerous, and you need to leave any misplaced complacency at the door. All right?’
DS Melissa Gardiner seemed to be appreciating that ‘misplaced’ crack. The hostility coming at her from the other side of the table was palpable. They were obviously thinking they’d drawn the short straw here, all right; that Claire had been foisted on them because their operation wasn’t felt to be important enough to warrant anyone better. They’d know all about what had happened with the Bristows, no question.
But maverick Claire wouldn’t be thinking about that. She’d be thinking about how her record, up to the Bristow job, had been impeccable. Miraculous, even. Everyone had a bit of bad luck now and then, and she had nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. These buggers should be on their knees thanking her for deigning to agree to go undercover for them on their piddly little job.
‘I’m certainly not complacent about the amount of prep I’m going to have to do,’ she said. ‘I’m not the most domesticated person in the world.’ She didn’t look at Phil, but she knew that the cough he was delicately suppressing had started out as a snort. ‘I’m going to have to swot like crazy before the interview if I’m going to come across as a credible candidate.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,’ said DS Gardiner. ‘Hector Forbes likes the ladies.’
The DCI allowed himself a smirk.
Yep, you’re only here because of the way you look was implicit in that smirk. And DS Gardiner can get away with virtually coming out and saying it because she’s a woman.
Phil was right in there, bless him. ‘Come off it, Claire. Let’s not have any false modesty here. You’d come across as a credible candidate if he was interviewing for a NASA space scientist.’
As he started on about the Leicester job, Claire looked off, at the view of the supermarket opposite and a big tree that was just starting to show autumn colour. She tuned out, the words buzzing in her head.
‘I mean, look at her,’ Phil finished, batting the ball right back at them. ‘How many heroin addicts do you know who could run a marathon in under four hours? But you should see her in heroin chic mode. Talk about a transformation. By the end of that operation we’d had seven dealers in the back of the van who’d sold to Claire on multiple occasions.’
DCI Stewart was offering her a perfunctory smile. ‘Phil’s told me great things about you.’
‘I’m not blowing smoke, Campbell. I’ve never had a better UC. She’s a chameleon. A fucking chameleon. And the way she can read people would almost make you believe in ESP. Scary stuff, Campbell, I’m telling you.’
Oh yes, her famous ESP – which had well and truly deserted her on the Bristow operation. They all knew that singing her praises wouldn’t have been necessary if she really had been the hot-shot Phil was bigging her up to be. And Phil himself seemed to realise this, because he quickly turned the focus on the target, ticking off the questions it really should have been Claire’s place to ask.
And as DCI Stewart talked about the man, Claire realised that the dynamic was a bit more complicated than he wanted to admit, probably even to himself. He even slipped up once or twice and referred to him as ‘Hector’. Cops and criminals often built up weird sorts of relationships that weren’t far off friendships. It was an occupational hazard for UCs – as John Innes seemed to have found to his cost – but it could happen to anyone. Not that the DCI would appreciate her pointing this out. To put it mildly.
She looked again at the photograph.
Mr Darcy. A million miles away from the Bristows.
She flicked on through the file as the DCI started talking about Hector Forbes’s stately home and the thirty-one thousand acre estate which apparently included moorland and forest, most of the houses in a small village called Kirkton of Inverglass – nearest towns Aboyne and Ballater, which again she’d never even heard of – various other tenanted houses and farms, an ‘in-hand’ farm, whatever that meant, and holiday lets.
‘Probably worth in the region of thirty-five million, all told. It’s the land that bumps up the value – particularly the farms. Even the big house would be peanuts compared with London prices.’ DCI Stewart shot Phil a grin. ‘Probably not worth much more than your place. Couple of mil?’
Phil, his wife Jennifer and fifteen-year-old daughter Laura lived in a detached house in Dulwich. Out of Phil’s reach on a copper’s salary, but Jennifer came from money and Phil was slightly defensive about it – so, inevitably, it was something his colleagues ribbed him about at every opportunity.
‘But he inherited it all?’ Claire stepped in. ‘It’s not like it’s proceeds of crime, surely?’
‘He inherited a bloody great white elephant that was going down the
tubes. The mortgages his father, Alec Forbes, had taken out on the place were literally weeks away from foreclosure when the man was killed. God knows how much money Hector Forbes has pumped into that estate in the last ten years. Question is: where’s he getting it from?’
Into the silence:
‘Is that a rhetorical question?’ Claire said.
DS Gardiner turned to the screen on the wall at the end of the table and fired up a laptop. ‘For starters, we think his outfit were behind the theft of this artefact from a house in Perthshire in June.’ An elaborately decorated gold cup filled the screen. ‘It’s a Tenth Century chalice: a marriage of the Viking and Pictish artistic traditions. The crime report is in the file. What isn’t in the report, due to lack of evidence against him, is the fact that a month before the theft Hector Forbes was staying with an Old Etonian pal and his wife on a neighbouring estate. Hubert Boyle – the American billionaire who owned the chalice – went over to dine with them one evening.’
‘Coincidence?’ mugged Claire. ‘I don’t think so.’
DS Gardiner gave her a weary look, as if to say Kids. Claire was pushing thirty, but she was the youngest in the room by well over a decade.
‘Forensics drew a blank,’ the DS went on. ‘No prints, no DNA – and nothing was caught on the cameras covering the front and back doors. The security system wasn’t activated. In fact, as Mr Boyle himself remarked, “You’d hardly know anyone had been in the place if it wasn’t for the goddamn chalice being gone”. A slick, professional job, carried out while Mr Boyle was away overnight.’
‘So we’re basically dealing with an upper class sneak thief?’ She grinned. ‘Hubert’s been put in touch with Victim Support, I hope.’ She began to rough out a sketch of the chalice in her notebook.
‘Any home invasion is distressing for the victims,’ growled DS Gardiner, ‘however much money they’ve got. Mr Boyle had insurance, of course he did. But that’s not the point.’
Phil nodded. ‘Another consideration, of course, is that some pretty nasty OCGs are often involved in these high-end crimes somewhere along the line.’
And into her head barged the Bristows, Kev and Lee and Ash... Still out on the streets, still wreaking their own special brand of havoc, still targeting some of the most vulnerable people in London’s sordid, sad underbelly because Claire had cocked up. An operation costing over three million and lasting six months had ended in humiliation and failure. The Bristows had ‘made’ her – they’d realised, somehow, that she was a copper. She’d blown her cover.
And the worst of it was that she still couldn’t work out how. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong, so how could she be sure she wouldn’t do it again?
How could Phil be sure? In recommending Claire to his old boss for this job, Phil had gone out on a limb for her – a pretty shaky limb, he was obviously thinking, a pretty rotten one.
‘Not to mention the fact that they put all our premiums up,’ added DS Gardiner.
Oh Kalia, Kalia. Claire had never known her surname. She doubted that Kalia had ever heard of insurance premiums, let alone paid one. Twenty years old and with a body so abused, so riddled with infections that she moved like she was seventy. Just one of how many victims of the Bristows? Claire had gone back, without the knowledge of her superiors, after the operation had been wound up – back to that awful HMO and the squalid little room where Kalia had eked out an existence between fixes. She’d had a vague, guilty notion of paying for rehab, but the girl had disappeared.
‘I’m pretty sure there’s more to Hector Forbes’s operation than the odd art theft,’ said DCI Stewart. ‘Although we haven’t even got probable cause for that. His henchmen won’t talk. Most of them have been with him for years. They’re too invested. And as for the locals...’ He shook his head. ‘Kick ae arse in Pitfourie, and aa the ithers dirl.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If you kick one arse... if you take aim at one of them, the shockwave reverberates through everyone else. They stick together. We did get an anonymous tip-off, while John Innes was in place – a tip-off that Hector had drugs stashed in the boathouse by the pond in the grounds of the House of Pitfourie. We got a warrant and carried out a search but found nothing, although the sniffer dog was definitely interested. Is it a coincidence that John died in that pond two months later?’ He sighed. ‘We just need something. Anything. Anything you can get on him... Anything at all. Evidence tying him to John’s death is obviously the jackpot, but I’m not holding out any great hopes on that one. You can’t take the breeks off a bare backside, as we say up here.’
‘What?’ said Claire. What was it with this backside obsession?
‘Breeks – trousers.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
He sighed. ‘If there’s no evidence, you can’t find it. He’ll have been very careful. The best we can probably hope for is stolen goods.’
‘I’m assuming you’ve got photographs of all the stuff you think he might have lifted?’
‘In the file. But I doubt he’s still got any of it.’
‘You never know your luck. Maybe he’s drinking his evening cocoa out of that.’ She stabbed her pen at the sketch of the chalice in her notebook.
DCI Stewart set something on the table in front of her, pushing it against her notebook so she couldn’t help but look at it: another photograph, this one of a grey-haired, rather ugly man with a large jaw and small, deep-set eyes under a defined brow ridge. ‘John Innes,’ he said. ‘Went by the name of John Cameron for this job, aka “Chimp”.’
John was smiling in the photograph, head tipped slightly back, small eyes almost closed in amusement.
‘Talk to any cop who worked with him and they’ll tell you he was the best, in every sense of the word. His record speaks for itself, so to say he was respected is putting it very low – but what goes a long way to explaining his success rate is the fact that he was such a thoroughly decent guy. People liked him instinctively, even the hard nuts. To spend time with John was always a pleasure. It didn’t matter how foul a mood you were in – five minutes in his company and you’d be smiling.’
Looking across the table, Claire realised, to her horror, that DS Gardiner, that hard-faced professional, was fighting tears. And glancing at Phil, she could tell from his fixed expression that he was doing the same.
Oh God.
‘Murdered in the line of duty,’ said the DCI quietly.
Claire swallowed. She couldn’t think what to say. She had to say something. It was okay for them to get emotional – they had worked with him, known him, liked him – but Claire had never met the guy. She wouldn’t be dissolving in a soppy mess just because they’d shown her a photo of John Innes.
Maverick Claire stepped up. ‘He does look a bit like a chimpanzee.’
What? What had she just said?
No no no! Even for a maverick, that was going too far.
The DCI turned to Phil. ‘Nope. I’m not putting her in there. We’ll get someone else. We’ll get another UC with a half-decent amount of respect for the fact that one of our own has died here. Whoever goes in there after John needs to be one hundred per cent committed.’
In the silence that followed this proclamation, Claire just sat there, conscious of a huge, shameful wave of relief washing through her. Because she didn’t want this. She didn’t want to get back on the horse. She knew the DCI was right – he wasn’t a soft target, this Hector Forbes, if he really had rumbled the brilliant John Innes and killed him. And she was terrified. She was terrified that she wasn’t up to the job. She was terrified that he’d rumble her too, just like the Bristows had. She’d probably been sabotaging herself, subconsciously, right from the start of this meet-and-brief, going way too far with the maverick UC thing.
‘Hey,’ said Phil. ‘Gallows humour is just Claire’s style. Doesn’t mean she’s not totally committed.’ But the look he turned on her was searching rather than reassuring.
Oh God.
She
had to do this. Phil needed her to do this.
She sat up straight. She nodded. She glanced down at John Innes, took a deep breath and looked the DCI in the eye. ‘Sorry, sir. My sense of humour’s a bit of an acquired taste.’
For a long moment, DCI Stewart stared her down.
But she knew what he was thinking, because her famous ESP hadn’t deserted her completely. He was thinking, erroneously, that UCs were well known to be mavericks. That it was practically a requirement for the job. If you were going to spend your career out in the wild running with a bunch of psychotic criminals, you’d better not be the kind of shrinking violet whose idea of taking a risk was eating in the police canteen.
So: ‘Okay,’ he said in the end. ‘But you need to pin back your lugs and listen, Detective Constable Castleford. This is no walk in the park. Hector Forbes is a dangerous man.’
Yeah, right. If you were a pheasant or a deer or a grouse. It was going to be a breeze. Candy from a baby.
She had to keep telling herself that.
She had to stop thinking about the Bristows.
She had to remember why she did this. She’d always wanted to be a police officer, but after what had happened in sixth form, after what she’d done, want had become need.
She needed to do this, no matter how scary it was.
Make the fear your friend.
Three hours into her first ever UC job, posing as a heroin addict in Croydon, she’d bottled it. She’d called the emergency number and Phil had come running, literally, posing as a rather overweight jogger who’d found Claire slumped against a fence bounding a brown-field site and stopped to check she was okay. She’d told him she couldn’t do it, that she wanted to quit, that they scared her too much, those dead-eyed, violent dealers. He’d talked her down and she’d gone through with her first attempt to score a ten bag of heroin from one of them, but she’d had to run off in the middle of the transaction and throw up behind a skip. Weirdly, though, that had broken the ice with the dealer, and the collar had gone down perfectly. He’d sold to her openly three times and even chatted about where he got the stuff, and they’d ended up convicting not only the dealer but his supplier. Quite a coup for her first time out of the blocks.