Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  Goodwin had been home when he received the call from the office, lying in bed next to his wife, but a million light years from sleep. If only Micky Johnston had come up with this when Doyle first attacked him rather than waiting all these months. It was Dave Morris that he’d sent round to the hospital to interview him in the first place. He remembered having to chew him off a strip on the instructions of some of the brass upstairs. If only he let him have his head, let him push Johnston harder and harder, rather than send in Charlotte Ashworth to do a snow job and go through the formalities, expecting nothing. If he’d done that, how many people would have been left alive today, he wondered? He wasn’t an emotional man – he wasn’t in the right job for that – but he felt a single, solitary tear fall down his cheek and on to the pillow below.

  He was in the office before seven thirty in the morning. He felt better for the little sleep that he had been able to get and was much more confident now. Everything had been done for the best. It would work out. The demons that had visited him in the night and had seemed so fearsome and devouring, in the morning seemed smaller and somehow less dangerous. Perhaps he would be able to banish them after all. By the time he was showered and dressed, he no longer felt the need to put on a mask to face the world. He was confident that what he had done was, if not actually ‘right’, in a world were it seemed that there were no moral absolutes left, then it was at least justifiable. As soon as he arrived, he had called D.I. Young in Southend for a full briefing. It had been a late night for Young but he had waited almost patiently to take Goodwin’s call. Yes, of course, Goodwin remembered him from his time in the Met. and he greeted him warmly, as one would an old friend. Young’s report was concise yet comprehensive. Maybe he’s not so bad after all, Goodwin thought and he invited Young to look him up the next time he was in town. Young said yes but promised himself that he would never even piss on Goodwin if he was on fire.

  By eight o’clock Pat Todd was hammering at Goodwin’s office door which, unused to such outbursts, shook wretchedly on its hinges and nearly burst open. When he was admitted, Goodwin could see that he was clearly agitated. He had heard the news. You can’t keep things under wraps for long, not in the closed environment of a squad office. Goodwin himself had received a message from upstairs, as soon as he had finished on the phone to Young, telling him about Morris’ unfortunate accident and giving him all the details that he already knew only too well. The call from the same high ranking officer who, all those months ago, had instructed him to reprimand Morris. It seemed possible, he said, that he had been in some seedy little strip club in Soho and had been either too drunk or in too great a state of excitement to see the bus coming. Goodwin was given the impression that things wouldn’t be investigated too thoroughly. Morris had a wife and kids, after all. No need to cause them any undue embarrassment. Or the Force either. It was a terrible tragedy among many terrible tragedies. Shakespeare had it spot on when he said that when troubles come, they come not as single spies but as whole battalions. One thing the Met. Had become good at over years was closing ranks at times of trouble; raising the drawbridge and excluding the world. Goodwin agreed with everything his superior officer intimated to him and thanked the Commander on behalf of Dave’s colleagues and family for his tact and understanding. But now he was faced by Pat Todd and he seemed to be a long way from understanding.

  “What happened, Guv? What happened to Dave?” A bitter angst was etched across his face and was pacing up and down the dark blue carpet agitatedly.

  “Calm down, Pat. There’s no need to get excited. Sit down.” Goodwin’s voice was re-assuring and employed a practised air of authority. He had, the night before, fought through the whole gamut of emotions that Pat Todd was now beginning to experience, as well as many special ones of his own. He had crawled his way through the tunnel though and so would Todd. “It’s just like they’re saying. It was an accident. Pure and simple. It could have happened to any one of us. At any time.”

  “So what did happen, then? Really.” It was a fair question from a man in Todd’s position.

  “We’d cleaned up everything at Tommy’s flat. Got rid of everything. Dave was fine, Pat. He’d had no second thoughts” he lied. “I took him up West for a few drinks. A celebration really. Everything had gone like clockwork. It was a relief, you know. I think he’d had a few too many and he went off to call a cab. He was a bit unsteady on his feet. I suppose I should have stayed with him but I went off to pick up the tube. Anyway, I was about ten yards or so down the road when I heard this God almighty crash. There’s a bus all over the road. I rushed back but there was nothing I could do. Dave was dead already. No doubt about it. He would have gone instantly, he probably never even saw it coming.”

  “Oh, thank God. I had horrible visions of …..” Todd couldn’t quite bring himself to articulate just how awful these visions had been.

  “Well you can forget about them. It happened just like I said. There was a whole crowd of people around him by that time. It wouldn’t have done any good if I’d stayed. It would have just complicated things, you know.” Goodwin waited for Todd’s response and he was duly rewarded with a nod of assent. “I got on the tube and went straight home. I’ve just spoken to Commander Bannister upstairs. It’s an accident, they all know that. They’re not even going to investigate it. How did things go at your end?” He tried to steer their conversation away from the subject of Dave Morris.

  “No problems. I dumped all his gear and burned it, just like you said. Nobody even came near and I waited and checked that it was all burnt through. Everything was fine. But you’re sure that it was an accident?” Goodwin didn’t like to be cross examined and he had to restrain himself from snapping at Todd. He could tell that he was worried about the story but he also knew that in the end Todd would rather blindly accept it as gospel than to dare to confront a less palatable truth.

  “I’ve told you, Pat. I’ve told you exactly what happened. It’s over. Finished. Dead and buried. Tommy’s clean now and Charlotte can rest in peace. Now, let’s just put it all behind us and concentrate on catching the evil bastard who killed them. Not a word about if from now on. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Just hearing the word was a relief to Goodwin.

  “Good man. Now I can bring you all up to speed. Come on.” He opened his door and walked through into the hive of inactivity that was the early morning routine of the squad office. This morning it was unusually subdued. The squad was still reeling from the deaths of Tommy Windsor and Charlotte Ashworth and now the rumours were circulating about the demise of Dave Morris.

  “Right” he announced loudly. When he spoke he was accustomed to being listened to and everyone turned to face him as he stood in his customary place next to the white board. He looked for all the world like a teacher addressing a surly fourth form. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s begin our briefing” he announced decisively. “We have updates. Important developments. But first off all, I’m sure you’ve all heard about Dave Morris’ accident. Last night in the West End, Dave was involved in a road traffic accident and he was killed outright. He was hit by a bus. It seems that he’d been drinking. But that doesn’t matter. Dave was one of us. He was a good copper. You always knew where you stood with Dave, he was straight as they come. And he was a good friend too, to us all. There’s not one of us here who Dave hasn’t helped out of a tight corner in the past. He was the sort of man you’d turn to when you’re in an awkward spot and need someone who you can rely on to watch your back. We’ll all miss him. Ray,” he addressed a detective constable, “I want you to take care of the collection for his family.” Ray nodded obligingly and Goodwin handed him two strangely familiar fifty pound notes. “Start with this. I’ll let you all know the details of the funeral as soon as I have them. And I’ll be going to see his wife later today, if she’s up to it. I’ll pass on everyone’s sympathy. On top of recent events, to lose another member of the team is the last thing any of us need, especially in such trag
ic circumstances, but thank god Dave wasn’t killed by Frankie bloody Doyle.” Although there was nothing to concrete to substantiate it, it was now generally assumed that Doyle had murdered the Ashworths as well as Tommy. “We’ve got to get him. And we will get him. Not just for Tommy and Charlotte, but now for Dave, too. It’s what he would have wanted. We are going to make this our tribute to Dave. It’s going to be his memorial.

  “OK then,” he continued. “Let’s get down to business. Last night we had some developments. You’re all aware that Doyle killed Bellini last night on the Dagenham road. He severed his carotid artery and ripped his throat open. Same to assume that he’s now more dangerous than ever. I saw what he did to Bellini and believe me, it was not the work of a rational man.” The team knew all this already, it had come to pass before they signed off last night. “Like you I’m not going to shed any tears for Don Bellini. We all know exactly what sort of man he was and if it was just him that Doyle had killed, I’d pat him on the back and buy him a beer myself. But it’s not. Thanks to young Patrick here, we’ve got a positive I.D. of Doyle from the C.C.T.V. tapes at the Tower of London. He was there when Tommy died and we’ve got a guardsman who’s pretty sure that he saw them sitting together on Tower Green, where they found the body. That’s all we need – its more than enough to bang him up and get to work on him. Proof positive, in my book. Now we just need to bring him in. But that’s not all. This morning, just before zero four hundred hours, an armed response unit from the Essex Police, responding to reports of gunfire coming from a residential street, arrested one Micky Johnston in Southend on Sea. Remember him? Yes, that’s right, the one with the leg. Well, it seems that he had tortured to death – brutally, mark you – the occupants of the house, a Mrs. Melanie Wheeler and her husband Scott, a printer.”

  “Christ” a disembodied voice came from the assembled team. It could have come from any one of the assembled coppers. They all thought the same thing. “That’s big league stuff for a little prick like Micky Johnston. He’s never amounted to anything before. All he ever was was just a bag man.”

  “That’s what I thought too. We all did. But it doesn’t finish there. It goes deeper and deeper. Wheeler was Melanie’s second husband. She used to be married to our friend Frankie Doyle. It seems like the poor cow hadn’t even seen Doyle for fifteen years or so. And then this. It probably came as a bolt out of the blue to her.”

  “Getting revenge for his leg? On Doyle?” A middle aged man sitting on a desk at the back of the room, swinging his own legs like a child, joined in.

  “Probably, Des. Well, it seems that Doyle turned up to the party.”

  “And Micky Johnston’s not dead?”

  “Surprising isn’t it? Apparently he had enough opportunity to finish him off. He just chose not to. He walked away.”

  “Doesn’t sound like that psycho bastard to me. Are they sure it was really Doyle? Not just Johnston telling tales?”

  “The local boys seem sure enough.”

  “Well, could he have done the torturing then? That’s more along his lines that Micky Johnston’s. We haven’t even seen sight nor sound of him since his accident.” Everyone who knew him, everyone who had ever even met him was having difficulty in reconciling the picture being presented of the insignificant, worthless Micky Johnston as a sort of latter day Torquemada conjuring up all the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition.

  “Apparently he’s held up his hands to it. Not the sort of thing you say if you’re innocent. Not something like this. I want you and Rachel to go down to Southend today, Des. It’s all arranged. Liaise with a D.I. Young. I want you two to interview Johnston yourselves. Find out how much of his story’s true. Really turn on the charm. Try to frighten the little shit. The yokels over there are going to pull out all the stops to see if Doyle’s holed up out that way. Personally, I doubt it. The only connections he’s got are in London and I would imagine that he’s back here already. Without Bellini to direct operations he’s going to be feeling pretty isolated. He’s not the brightest banana in the bunch and he’s already acted out of character in letting Johnston live but I think we have to assume that that was a one off. God alone knows what he’s planning to do next. He probably doesn’t even know himself. Our number one priority is to get him off the streets so that he can’t do any more damage to us or to the public. I want you lot out there. All of you. Talk to everyone you know. Put pressure on your snouts. I wantallof Bellini’s known associates pulled and questioned. Yes, I know we had them in yesterday, but things have moved on a pace since then, haven’t they? Arrest them all, just a holding charge, if you need to, but I’m getting a copy Johnston’s statement e-mailed to me now. Apparently that names all the names so we’ve got just cause on every man jack of them.” Goodwin didn’t know at this stage that the statement contained a clear indication that Tommy Windsor had given him the Brocock revolver. D.I. Young hadn’t mentioned it on the phone, after all, it hadn’t even registered with him that Tommy was the undercover copper who had been killed at the Tower of London, although he had read about it in his paper. That was a surprise that lay in the future for Goodwin. “When Des and Rachel get back from Essex we’ll go through everything we’ve got and pile up the charges then. I can’t imagine that anyone’s going to be too keen to hide Doyle at the moment. He’s pretty hot property, so try and push everyone to finger him. Oh, and I want that slimy bastard John Loader in for questioning, as well. It doesn’t look like Johnston’s got anything on him but we can try and put on the frighteners on him, just for the hell of it. You can do that, Pat. For god’s sake, play it by the book with him. And be gentle with him, his fee income has plummeted all of a sudden.” There was no more than the odd muted half laugh. “One last thing” Goodwin added undeterred. “Remember all of you, Doyle is our number one priority. I want him in custody and I want him today. OK guys” he concluded firmly. “Let’s get going.”

  * * *

  “There’s a problem, sir.” Goodwin was ushered into the plush office of Commander Bannister and lowered himself into the richly upholstered leather chair that creaked wearily as it accepted his weight. The vast expanse of ornately polished mahogany desk seemed to be an extension of the ornately polished mahogany Bannister. It was starkly empty, save for a tiny lap top computer and few sheets of carefully arranged A4 headed paper. The heat was oppressive and Goodwin mopped away the beads of sweat that he could feel forming on his brow with a handkerchief that was none too clean.

  “Opportunities, David. Problems are but un-realized opportunities.” Goodwin hated it when he said that. It had become a sort of catch phrase that he wheeled out on every possible occasion. Goodwin didn’t like the man. He was far too smug and self righteous, he thought. His uniform was far too well pressed and the buttons far shinier than any buttons ever had a right to be. And he didn’t know the first thing about police work. Not real, out on the streets at three in the morning after drinking all afternoon with coppers and villains alike, knee in the groin police work.

  “It’s a bloody great big ‘opportunity’” Goodwin said without thinking.

  “Then you’d better tell me about it” the senior officer said, resisting the temptation to castigate Goodwin once more about his attitude. As he spoke, he too sat down. The chair into which he sank was luxuriant and still smelled of new, soft leather. Goodwin tried not to but he coveted it.

  “It’s the statement of Micky Johnston’s that the lads in Essex have sent down to me. I told you about it before.” Bannister nodded. He remembered of course. He looked intently at Goodwin over the top of a pair of metal, half round reading glasses, perched precariously on the tip of his nose. His hands were together, fingers touching as if in prayer, and they tapped, gently and precisely against his lower lip. He looked for all the world as though he was a minor character in one of Dickens’ bleaker novels. “Well, I’ve been going through it. It’s good stuff. Don’t get me wrong. There’s an awful lot of dirt on an awful lot of villains. But there’s an
…..” He paused deliberating over the choice of his next word. “Inconsistency.”

  “And what’s that?” Bannister enquired tentatively. He didn’t like the sound of this at all. Another bloody cock up, it seemed, was about to land on his desk.

  “Johnston claims that he got the revolver, the one that the police took off him last night, from Tommy Windsor.”

  “What?” This was all he needed to hear. He managed to retain a level of composure commensurate with his rank despite the fact that what he really wanted to do was scream at Goodwin. “This is not good news, David. If this comes out, it’s going to cast doubt over the validity of his entire statement.” A thought suddenly struck him. “You don’t think he really did, do you?”

  “Oh God, no. Course not, sir. It’ll just be that little shit stirring things up for us. He will have seen that Tommy was an undercover copper. It’s been in the papers, on the news, too. In any event, there’s no other evidence to support a case that Tommy was anything other that a decent copper doing the best he could in a difficult situation.” He hoped like hell that there was no other evidence. Not after everything that he’d been through to clear away everything he knew about.

  “Thank goodness for that. You are absolutely sure?” Bannister seemed assuaged by Goodwin’s assertion, probably because he wanted to be.

  “Absolutely.” Please god let it be true.

  “Nevertheless, it will certainly queer our pitch in court. If the worst comes to the worst I expect the Crown Prosecution Service will have to run with it along the lines you suggest but any defence counsel worth his salt would have a field day. Do you have any influence with the Essex Police? Could they bring any pressure to bear on Mr. Johnston. Ask him to reconsider. Perhaps his memory was momentarily faulty.”