Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  Goodwin made his way back up the stairs, he saw that both of the whiskies he had bought in his second round had gone and Dave was now at the bar, buying more. A middle aged woman, with make up that looked as though it had been plastered on by a second rate construction firm, was asking him for a light for her cigarette. He heard her tell Dave how grateful she was. Goodwin could tell that she would be very grateful indeed. If the price was right.

  “Over here, Dave” he called. Things were complicated enough without him picking up some rotten old slapper who rented herself out by the quarter hour. Morris forced a smile at his new friend and returned to the table. Since he’d been married he had never even looked at another women. Well, OK, looked maybe but never touched and tonight he definitely wasn’t in the mood.

  “Sit down, Dave” Goodwin instructed.

  “I’ve got you another drink, Guv.”

  “Thanks. Now sit down.” This time, Dave complied. “We’ve just done what we had to, Dave. We had no choice. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I did.” He paused, clearly confused. “I suppose so. It’s just that, well, Tommy did kill the D.I. didn’t he? He must have done?”

  “There’s no proof of that, Dave.” Goodwin could tell that this was going to be an uphill struggle. “We’ve gone over it all. It’s just conjecture.”

  Dave laughed but there was no humour there. And it was a little too loud. “Of course there’s no proof. We’ve just destroyed the fucking proof. You, me and Pat.”

  “The key word in there, Dave, is you. You did it. I didn’t force you. I didn’t hold a gun to you head and make you do it. You’re in this as deep as Pat. As deep as me. There’s no going back. It’s too late for that. What’s done can’t be undone.”

  “But hekilledher, Guv.Murder.” The word was anathema to Morris and it tasted like acid on his lips. “He nearly cut her head off. Fucking hell, he did cut Steve’s off.”

  “Even if he did. And I’m not saying that he did. What good will raking it all up do? It won’t bring Charlotte back, will it? And Tommy’s not going to be punished. God knows, he’s been punished enough already. If you say anything, all you’ll do is crucify the three of us. If you could prove it, and let’s face facts, there’s not a lot of evidence left, is there? If you could prove it we’d all go behind bars for a very long time. You included. But it’d just come down to your word against Pat’s and mine. They might even believe you but they’d never be able to prove it. And we’d all be finished then. After all, there’s no smoke without fire. That’s the way it works with the Met. We all know that. You’d be finished too. Especially you. Nobody likes a whistle blower. Tell me, Dave. Is it worth it? You’d be sacrificing everything, your career, your pension, your family too, probably. And what for? For nothing. All for nothing? Just because your lousy conscience is pricking you.”

  “Yeah. Now we’re at it. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?Yourcareer.Yourpension. Not got long to retirement have you, Guv?”

  “Yes, Dave, You’re right. That’s what this is all about. But it’s not just my career and pension that are on the line. We’re all in it together. You, me and Pat.”

  “God, you make me sick.” His tone was now aggressively vitriolic. It was all coming out at last. Morris had been in a kind of shell shock since he had heard Todd’s revelations. He had been going along with Goodwin, acting like an automaton, not a man, blindly doing everything that he was told to. Not thinking for himself. For a while, it seemed, he hadn’t really been able to think. But now the Scotch was flowing freely and with it, a distinct clarity seemed to return to his thought processes. As the Romans said,in vino veritas. “I went along with you. I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t thinking straight but I am now. Perverting the course of justice. That’s what we’ve done. Do you know what that makes us, Guv? Do you? It makes us worse than the criminals. We’re the ones who are supposed to set the standards, not just uphold them. The rules apply to us as well. It’s the fucking law.” He drained the last of the Scotch. It was patently obvious who he blamed. “I’m seeing it clearly now. What you made me do was wrong. Evil. And I’m not going through with it. I’ll take what’s coming to me and so will you.”

  He stared at Goodwin before he left. Hard, straight in the eyes. There was a real hatred in Morris’ eyes, one that he had never felt for any man before. And with it came a steely determination. Goodwin could see now that it had been a mistake to get him a drink. Clearly, he couldn’t handle it, but he had needed one himself and he hadn’t wanted to drink alone. If he’d taken him straight home and left him to the morning he would have probably persuaded himself that there was nothing he could do and that he should just put it all behind him. Goodwin had made a bad mistake. A costly mistake. It was a mistake he would have to rectify straight away. He knocked back his Scotch, pushed his way out of the door and followed Morris down the street.

  He saw him, just a little way ahead, making his way down Windmill Street, towards Shaftesbury Avenue. He ran, as if to catch up but pulled up a few yards short. Morris was striding out quickly and Goodwin felt quite breathless. He was definitely feeling too old for this sort of business but he knew he had no option but to act, and to act decisively, if he wanted to save everything that he had worked so hard for all these years. If Dave Morris intended to spill his guts, he would have to make sure that he couldn’t. He would have to kill him. He had toyed with the idea at various times that night. Tossed it from one corner of his mind to another. But he hadn’t been serious, despite what he had quietly intimated to Pat Todd earlier that evening. Not really serious. Good God, he was a policeman after all, not a killer. It wouldn’t come to that. Morris would see sense – he’d told himself that, chanting it like a mantra, time and time and time again. He would make him. He had to. But Morris hadn’t seen sense and he knew with a certainty that the stubborn bastard never would. Not now his mind was made up. Just as the whisky had fortified and given voice to Morris’ resolve, so did it to Goodwin’s. He was sure of what needed to be done but not yet sure of how to do it. This wasn’t the sort of job he could have delegated, even if there had been time. He had to look for an opportunity, here and now. Any opportunity. And he prayed to God that one would offer itself up. If not, he would follow the bastard home and club him to death with a brick, if he could find one.

  Morris reached Shaftesbury Avenue and tried to hail a cab but the curtain had just come down on the production in the Gielgud Theatre and he was joined on the street by a throng of excited theatre goers who all seemed to share the same ambition. Goodwin pushed his way through the melee until he was standing right behind Morris. Directly behind him. He was so close that he thought Morris must be able to feel his breath, harsh and rasping on the back of his neck. But Morris’ mind was elsewhere. Could this be his chance? Please, sweet Jesus, let it be. He silently invoked a deity that he had long ago lost any faith in. But sweet Jesus heard and he answered. To his right, coming from around Piccadilly Circus, was a bright red route 217 double decker bus. Goodwin glanced to his left and he could just about make out a bus stop some two hundred yards further down the road. Good, it wouldn’t be stopping until then. Through the din of the incessant traffic noise and the constant bustle of the crowd, he heard the note of the bus’ engine drop as it shifted gear as it came around the bend and accelerated. This was his moment. He felt it deep inside. It was now or never. As the bus passed he pushed sharply, with two hands on the small of Morris’ back. Morris was a big man and despite all the booze he was quite steady on his feet. But he wasn’t prepared for this assault and he was too close to the edge of the kerb to retain any balance. He fell forward into the road and his head hit the concrete with a thudding crack. The bus driver saw something out of the corner of his left eye. He wasn’t sure what it was but instinctively he turned his wheel violently to the right, trying to avoid it. Whatever it was. The bus swerved and veered as the driver braked hard. It crashed into a Rover coupe c
oming in the opposite direction, burying itself deep into the driver’s door and pushing it over the kerb and onto the pavement, scattering pedestrians in all directions.

  But as he did so the bus driver felt his near side front wheel run over the thing in the road. Jesus wept, he thought. I’ve killed him. He had. That was the last time that Lou Abadi ever drove a bus. London Transport wanted him back of course. They even paid for counselling. They were very supportive. It wasn’t his fault, everyone told him that. It was an accident pure and simple. A tragic accident. The man had just fallen, or maybe even jumped. And the autopsy proved that he was drunk, too. Lou had done everything that he could. No-one could have done things any differently. But whenever he even saw a bus in the distance, let alone went near one, the bitter, bloody memories came flooding back. Choking him. Engulfing him. Drowning him. He saw the driver of the Rover, an accounts clerk aged twenty five, a man who’s young baby would never seehimwalk again, screaming in twisted agony, amidst the wreck of his car. But most of all he saw the man on the road. He saw him every night after he had consumed the half bottle of Scotch that he needed to persuade him to even try to close his eyes and sleep. He saw the squashed, gory mass that had been his head, everything now shapeless and unidentifiable. He saw teeth mixed with brain mixed with bone mixed with eye mixed with blood. Blood. Blood. Blood everywhere. It haunted him.

  * * *

  Goodwin couldn’t believe what he had done. It had been so easy. Far too easy. It should be much harder, he thought, to take a human life. And he had done it so casually, found it so simple just to walk away from it. The crowds on the street flocked around the body, drawn to it with the morbid insatiability of the critically curious. No notice was paid to the man moving unobtrusively away. Probably he was squeamish, couldn’t stand the sight if blood. Poor soul, he didn’t know what he was missing. But Goodwin knew exactly what he was missing. Perhaps over the years he had seen so many devils, devils of desire and of despair, that he was no longer able to master the one that lived inside him. The devil within. But he could still recognize it. He could still be shocked by its power and ferocity. He walked the streets, he couldn’t face the underground. Descending once more into the cavernous bowels of the earth would be too close to taking yet another step down, into the pits of hell. He’d always thought that he was a good man. A good copper, too. He’d never killed anyone before, he’d never even taken a bribe, for heaven’s sake. Not even in the old days, when he was on the Flying Squad and everyone had played the game. Even then, he’d kept his nose clean. Sure, he had always taken care of his officers, those whom he liked and that was most of them. He would sweep any little indiscretions carefully under the carpet and have a favour owed that he could call in, now and then, as required. OK so he’d make sure a blind eye was turned to some of the indiscretions of one or two chaps at the Lodge. But that wasn’t immoral. It was common sense. Just brotherly love.

  As he walked on, the night seemed to become darker with each successive step. It seemed colder too and he pulled up the collar of the jacket of his grey suit. He was normally fastidious in his appearance but after all of this evening’s events he looked and felt more dishevelled than he had ever been before. He tried to convince himself that Morris had had to die to protect the reputation of Tommy Windsor and to hallow the memory of Charlotte Ashworth. But, try as he might, he couldn’t really believe it. In his heart of hearts he knew that Dave Morris had been sacrificed on the altar of self preservation to the great god of pension rights.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It must be morning now, Micky Johnston thought. He sat on the bed of the holding cell, his back to the wall. He had been that way, he thought, all his life. The cell was sparse, just four stark walls, the metal framed bed and blanket and what he thought once might have been a small toilet, but he wasn’t really sure. They’d taken his clothes off him last night and rushed them down to the forensic lab for the scientists and technicians to pore over. He hadn’t been sorry to see them go. The blood that drenched them had soaked through to his skin. It felt cold and clammy and his shirt and trousers had started to stick lasciviously to his body as it began to congeal and dry. Now he was dressed in a plain white overall that seemed, he thought to be made out of a thick sort of paper. The right leg of the overall hung limply over the side of the bed. They had not given him back his leg. It was evidence they said. Bollocks. Did they think he had kicked her to death? Without the prosthesis he felt naked. He thought back to when he had had his first fitting. He had been, he remembered clearly, literally frightened of the thing. He couldn’t force himself to look at it, not at first, let alone to touch it. That revulsion had taken a good while to pass, but pass it had. Eventually. Now without it, he felt even less complete. It reminded him of how he had felt when he lost the leg itself, when that bastard Doyle blew it off. His bitterness had not subsided. They hadn’t even got a crutch to give him which rendered him effectively immobile. He had had to lean on a policeman for support as they took him into an interview room for questioning and later, back in the holding cell, he had had to crawl across the floor to get to the toilet. He knew that he had no dignity left. Doyle, the filth, you, me – we had all stripped him of that. The police knew that, too. He had made it clear to them from the first minute of the first interview.

  They had arranged for the duty solicitor to be called in, but despite her urging caution, he had told them absolutely everything. He had wanted to. It was almost as if he was compelled by some driving inner force. Like Macbeth, surely everyone could see that he was a man more sinned against than sinning? They would be bound to understand that. They had to understand. Johnston knew that he would go to prison although he was quite secure in his moral innocence. He knew that was how the system worked – the odds were all stacked against the little man. He knew, also, that the system was wrong. It was Doyle that should be in here, not him. And Bellini, too. His rotten, putrefying corpse should be brought in and banged up for life. The initial questioning took three hours in all, including two brief interludes for coffee and toilet breaks. To the officers, trying to get a question in, on the odd occasion that he paused for breath, it seemed more like three weeks. It became Johnston’s catharsis and he went through every minute detail, with them, starting from his early career on the fringes of Bellini’s organization and ending with his being half carried into the interview. It was a diatribe, they thought. One that was punctuated by a tragic chorus of long, drawn out self pitying episodes. Here was a man whom the fates had conspired too ruin. The fates had names. They were Francis Doyle and Donald Bellini.

  He gave them enough ammunition to sink the battleship that was Don Bellini’s illicit empire. Unfortunately, Bellini’sTitanichad already encountered its own iceberg and was sinking slowly but surely to the ocean floor through its own shear dead weight. Detective Inspector Brian Young, who had been called in from the comfort and warmth of his bed, to head up the Southend murder investigation team, knew of Bellini. Didn’t everybody? He had served in the Met. for nearly ten years before he transferred out into the sticks to finally get the promotion he felt he richly deserved, and he remembered the bloody names Bellini and Doyle only too well. After they eventually managed to shut Johnston up and, at last, terminate the interview, Young tapped the two gangsters’ names into the police national computer terminal at his desk and central records advised him to contact one Chief Superintendent Goodwin at Scotland Yard immediately and a phone number was given. He shuddered involuntarily – he remembered Goodwin as well as he remembered Doyle and Bellini. Chief Super. now? No problems withhispromotions, he thought. He had been just a D.I. when Sergeant Young knew him. That bastard D.I. It was his reports that had caused the promotion board to hold back his advancement for so long. It was Goodwin’s fault that he was out here in Essex and not still in London. Well. He could gloat now. Goodwin owed him and this, he felt, was pay back time.

  He dialled the number excitedly an smile playing over his lips. Momentarily he had visi
ons of being the man who brought down Don Bellini’s untouchable crime empire single handed. Maybe Ross Kemp could play him in the mini series, he thought, he seemed to be doing a nice line in the hard-as-nails-copper-with-a-vulnerable-side parts these days. But all his hopes were immediately diffused when the detective constable at the Yard who answered Goodwin’s phone told him, with barely concealed delight, that Bellini had been found dead that evening, murdered, it was thought by Francis Doyle. Young didn’t like the way the constable seemed to be talking to him and he liked it even less when he had to admit that he had no idea of Doyle’s whereabouts and no effective leads to follow up. The D.C. did, however, promise to contact the Chief Super. at home and he would, he expected, probably call him sometime in the morning. Screw you, thought Young as he hung up the phone. If the Met. could take care of their own problems in the first place and keep them in London rather than exporting them to the rest of England, he wouldn’t have this bloody mess on his hands.