by Adam Carter
Another thought struck him and he looked across to Lin, wishing she would have kept her promise not to hold any more secrets. “Sam,” he said, “did Jeremiah tell you who he was?”
Again she said nothing.
“He said if you talked,” Hope continued, “you’d die. He meant there were people after you, didn’t he? Who’s after you, Sam? We can help.”
“You don’t need to help me,” she said at last. “Jeremiah’s helping me.”
“I’m sure he’s a swell guy, Sam, but Jeremiah’s not a cop.” He paused, closed his eyes as he realised what an idiot he was. “Jeremiah’s a cop isn’t he?”
Sam said nothing.
Lin said nothing.
“Jesus,” Hope said, leaning back in his chair. “Sam, I’m going to get an officer to look after you until your parents get here.” The girl offered no objections and Hope called someone over. Once they were gone he looked back to Lin, who sat tensely, staring out the window.
“With me,” Hope said.
She followed in silence and they found an empty interrogation room. He had chosen it because it was out of earshot of anyone, but he could not escape the feeling of how apt the place was. She even sat on the opposite side of the table, as though she was being accused of something.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know we said no more secrets, but that wasn’t my secret to give.”
“So Jeremiah’s a secret cop now is he?”
“No. There’s nothing secret about any cop, Jon. But my department doesn’t like our names being put out there too much.”
“Why not? What’s so special about Operation WetFish that you don’t want people to know about you?”
Lin started.
“What?” Hope asked with a frown. “Am I not supposed to know you work for WetFish? Your DCI’s Edward Sanders; am I not supposed to know that either?”
“It’s ... How do you know any of that?”
“I looked it up. When you transferred suddenly last year I looked up where you’d gone. Some care in the community scheme with a stupid name. What’s so secret about a care in the community department? For that matter, what’s so good about it that you left me for them?”
He knew he was angry, but he had been angry for a year. Since Lin had fallen back into his life he had been far too focused upon finding the kidnapped girl to consider much about Lin’s life choices. But now the girl was safe, at least for the moment, and, while he had not meant to let his anger out, there were simply some things which could not be helped.
“They needed me,” she said simply, having annoyingly relaxed slightly by this point.
“I needed you.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
Hope ran a hand through his hair, found himself walking towards one of the walls and turned around to walk back. “So this is what you people do then? Your idea of care in the community is some extreme form of witness protection programme?”
Lin’s laugh was strangled. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that’s so not what we do.”
“Then what do you do?”
“We ... care for the community. Look, Jon, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jeremiah. Yes, he works with me. He’s a decent guy, or at least I always thought he was. He’s sweet and charming and will always do you a favour if you ask.”
“God, you’re sweet on him.”
“I ... no.”
But Hope could see something in her eyes as they turned from him. He had known her too long not to know what that look meant. “You’re seeing him?”
“No.”
“Just sleeping with him then?”
Lin straightened in her chair. “I don’t see that’s any of your business. Look, I was wrong about some of this, but so was my DCI. I like Jeremiah, he’s a good guy to have your back.”
“Because you really need people to watch your back with all that care in the community stuff.”
Lin ignored him. “Jeremiah disappeared a couple of days ago. When the hit on the jewellery store went down and Jeremiah took the girl, my DCI panicked. He thought Jeremiah had abducted her to kill her or something. I couldn’t see where he was coming from on that, but since you were my old DI he thought I should be the one to track him down. I couldn’t understand why Sanders thought Jeremiah would have killed the girl, but it seems I was right all along. He’s obviously stumbled onto something and is protecting the girl.”
“Was protecting her. We have her now.”
“But not for long. If Jeremiah wants her back, he’ll just take her.”
“I think I’m insulted.”
“Don’t be. I’ve seen Jeremiah do strange things. He’s more powerful than you think.”
“If he’s uncovered something, he needs to share it with us. These people he’s going around beating up. Who are they?”
“I don’t know any more than you on that.”
“But they’re connected. They have to be. I get he’s dragging Sam around with him because he thinks she’s safer with him than anywhere else, but if he’s a cop he needs to talk to us.”
“Jeremiah’s a great team player, Jon. When he wants to be.”
“I have a few of them working for me.” He sighed. “So what are we going to do about him? He’s coming here, you reckon? Should we set a trap for him?”
“You still trust me?”
“I’ll always trust you, Sue. At the moment what we need to do is talk with Jeremiah. You’re my only chance of that happening. I trust you to do the right thing, and the right thing is to protect that girl the best way possible.”
It put Lin in a quandary, but it was meant to. Hope was glad he at last understood some of what was going on, but he still had the horrible feeling as soon as she had what she wanted, Lin would flit out of his life once more, this time perhaps forever.
“Jeremiah would only have taken Sam for a reason,” Lin said. “We need to figure out what he’s thinking. What connects all the people he’s been assaulting, and why would he stop at just beating them up?”
“Your man Jeremiah has a penchant for killing people then?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
There was something about her tone he did not like. However, he had more important things to consider. “The obvious thing is that Stringer and Langley would have wanted to silence the girl for seeing them at the jewellers, but since we have both men in custody that makes no sense. What if they said something she wasn’t supposed to hear? They could easily have connections to the other people Jeremiah went after. If there’s some big boss at the head of all of this, maybe they said his name or something.”
“Big boss?” Lin smiled. “Now who’s talking TV?”
“Well what do you have?” He did not mean to snap, but the situation was infuriating.
“I think you’re right.”
“About the crime boss?”
“No. I think we have to talk to Jeremiah. Unfortunately he’s not going to trust me now he thinks I’ve turned on him.”
“He’ll realise you’re acting under orders from your DCI, surely.”
“Jeremiah and DCI Sanders don’t always see eye to eye.”
“Have a few of those on my team as well.” He checked his watch. “Sam’s parents will be here any minute. If we want to get anything more from her we’re going to have to move quickly.”
“You know, of course, we’re not allowed to interrogate a minor without her parents present.”
“Who’s interrogating? We’re checking a victim of kidnapping is all right. That’s what the police are for, right? Care in the community?”
He had intentionally said that to annoy Lin, yet she did not react at all. That had been the thing which had really got him this past year. Officers moved on all the time, especially the good ones, and Hope had always let them go with a smile and a celebratory knees-up. Lin had disappeared so quickly he had not even had the time to properly say goodbye. Being of an inquisitive mind, Hope had immediately done some digging and had
eventually uncovered the name WetFish. It had not meant anything to him, and when he had discovered their remit he was only left more confused, slightly angry and feeling incredibly let down.
The pay, he had long ago decided, must have been colossal.
They headed out together to find Sam, although had not gone far before they happened upon the officer Hope had assigned to look after the girl.
“Where’s Sam?” Hope asked.
“Sam?”
“The twelve-year-old girl I left in your care.” Hope was already not liking where this was going.
The officer laughed. “I think I would have remembered that, sir.”
Hope looked to Lin. “Another of your secrets?”
“Another of Jeremiah’s,” Lin said. “At least we know Sam’s in safe hands.”
“Do we?”
“Whatever Jeremiah wants, Jon, he’s doing it to protect the girl. At least we’ve discovered that much.”
“I’m not sure about anything any more, Sue. I guess this means I’m not going to get to talk this over with Jeremiah then.”
“We’ll find him. Maybe. If he lets us.”
Somehow Hope did not find that especially encouraging.
“Sir,” came a voice behind him, and Hope turned to find he was being introduced to a couple in their forties. Hope did not have to be a genius to realise who they were.
“Mr and Mrs Dickson,” he said, trying not to sigh. “Won’t you come this way?”
CHAPTER SIX
It had been difficult explaining to Mr and Mrs Dickson just where their daughter had gone, but DI Hope had told them the truth, or at least a certain aspect of it. He told them she was in the safe hands of one of his officers and that she had been taken into protective custody. It allowed him the opportunity to take the distraught parents into a room and ask them whether they could think of any reason a demented, exceptionally strong police officer would feel it necessary to take their daughter into protective custody. He did not, of course, phrase it in quite that fashion, but there was no way he would have been able to say it which would not cause them to panic and think him incompetent.
The impression the Dicksons made upon him was a simple one. They were ordinary middle-class people who dressed and spoke like ordinary middle-class people. Hope tried to reassure them as much as he could, but since he had himself no idea where Jeremiah had taken their daughter, or really even why, he could not offer them much in the way of comfort. It seemed they were having a spate of bad luck, for Mr Dickson told him of how they had been burgled only a few days earlier. Nothing of any real value had been taken, but their home had been ransacked and they were still trying to sort it all out. As such, their minds were already frazzled and having to deal with the possible kidnap of their daughter was pushing them over the edge.
It was when he passed them photographs of the various people Jeremiah had attacked that something interesting turned up.
“That’s Bill Yale,” said Mr Dickson.
“You know him?”
It was a stupid question. He’d just said the man’s name: of course he knew him.
“Bill helped us with the money we got when my mother died.”
“Helped you with ...? I don’t follow.”
“At the bank. Bill showed us which were the best savings accounts, that sort of thing.”
Hope was beginning to get a headache from this case. Lin had gone off to report in to her DCI and he was beginning to wish he had insisted she stick around. Then something Mr Dickson had said suddenly sank in. “If you don’t mind me asking,” Hope said, “how much money did you get?”
“Mother wasn’t well off, but she made some good investments in her time. Put a lot into property, which we sold off when she died. I’m an only child, you see, so all the money came to me.”
“We’re talking a lot aren’t we?”
Dickson tried to sound modest about it, but failed miserably. “About half a million, why? What does any of this have to do with my daughter?”
At last things were beginning to make sense. He needed to get rid of these two and find Lin, so Hope gave them some answer he knew would not satisfy them before leaving them in the capable hands of the first person who happened to pass the room. He immediately went in search of Lin and found her outside in the afternoon air, just finishing up the call on her mobile.
“Reception’s better out here,” she told him. “I promise I wasn’t trying to keep any more secrets.”
But Hope did not at that moment care for any of that. “Bill Yale was part of a gang of hoods. They had an idea to kidnap Samantha Dickson so Yale asked his friend Stringer to nab her. Stringer roped in a buddy from his darts team, Langley, and together they hit the jewellers. Stringer wanted Langley to be caught and tell the police it was a heist, since that was all he knew, while Stringer made off with the girl. Once he got her back to Yale and the gang, they’d ransom her back to the Dicksons for half a million and the entire group would disappear to Spain or somewhere.”
He stopped, a big grin on his face while he awaited Lin’s reaction.
“Well?” he asked.
“You figure all that out by yourself?” she asked.
“Most of it while I was looking for you. You’re not surprised by any of it though.”
“I was. About five minutes ago. I was talking to my DCI. Apparently Jeremiah phoned the office and told him precisely what you’ve just told me.”
Hope felt slightly deflated. “Well at least my detective’s nose is still good for sniffing. What else did Jeremiah have to say for himself?”
“That he wants to be left alone.”
“You think we should?”
“I think Jeremiah tends to know what he’s doing. But I also think when people do stupid things like this they generally need more help than they expect.”
“Did he say why he went around beating everyone up?”
“You tell me.”
“Well he somehow found out about the kidnapping and got there before it could happen. He attacked Yale so all his accomplices would gather and discuss what they were going to do. He then went to deal with them and got them all in one go.”
“Pretty much.”
“So why come back for Sam? If we now have everyone either in custody or in the hospital, who’s she in danger from now? Is he through assaulting people or is this just going to keep on escalating?”
“That’s ... a good point.” Lin frowned. “He clearly thinks there’s someone else involved, someone higher than the goons we met at the gym.”
Hope did not take it as a good sign that Lin was stumped.
“This is a nightmare,” he said. “And here I thought WetFish was a reactive department.”
“Oh, we can be proactive, boss. When we want to be.”
“Have you tried phoning him?”
“He’s either not carrying it or he’s not picking up. He won’t have time to assess my situation to work out whether I’m still against him. Not if he’s concentrating on saving that girl.”
“Which means we’re just going to have to work out what he’s trying to do. And just where he’ll strike next.”
It was not the way Hope liked to run his department, but he had a feeling he was lucky just to have learned as much as he had. He could not imagine what was so secretive about Lin’s job, but he had things in his own department that he didn’t want everyone to know about. Lin could keep her secrets, however. Hope had learned long ago there were things he simply did not need to know.
The rest of the day was spent without any progress at all. Hope had other cases to work on, and Lin offered to help where she could while they waited. Hope had feelers out, people actively looking for Jeremiah, although Lin assured him there was no way they would find him unless Jeremiah wanted to be found. They had been lucky enough to have met him at the gym, and that seemed to be the only stroke of luck Lin expected for them to have.
At ten o’clock, when Hope’s shift was just about to end, Lin r
eceived a call on her mobile. From her face Hope could see it was important, and he assumed her DCI was giving her an earful about not having this wrapped up yet. He allowed her some distance to make the call privately, trying not to watch her from his desk, trying not to attempt to read her lips.
She was edgy when she approached him and he almost did not want to know what the call had been about.
“That was Jeremiah,” she surprised him by saying. “He wants to meet.”
“Why? He’s realised you’re not working against him?”
“I think he needs help.”
“Of course he needs help. I just didn’t see him as someone to admit it.”
“He’s given me a place he wants to meet.”
Hope did not like the way this was going. “You’re not meeting him alone, Sue. I don’t care if he’s your colleague, this crime is on my patch and I’m going to deal with it.”
“That’s pretty much what I told him. He wasn’t happy about it, but agreed I could bring you along.”
It was not quite the way Hope would have liked things phrased, but at least she had argued his case for him. “When does he want to meet?”
“Now.”
“Then let’s get on with it. I’m happy for you to take the lead on this one, but I want you to remember these collars are for my department. Whatever twisted game Jeremiah’s playing, if there are crimes being committed here I’m dealing with them. Your Jeremiah will be lucky he doesn’t get charged with kidnapping.”
They headed out and Hope felt they were spending so much time in the car together Lin could well claim squatter’s rights. Lin directed him towards a multi-storey car park. Hope knew at this time of night it would not be seeing too much activity, for in the main people used it for their weekly trips to the supermarkets. It was eerie in the dark, and as they travelled the spiralling levels he could see fewer and fewer cars. By the time they had reached the seventh level he could see but a scattering.
Hope parked away from any of them and the two officers emerged. There was a dankness to the air which made Hope shudder, and as he scanned the ceiling he could see the light-bulbs were placed too spaciously for his liking; plus most of them had blown. Shadows encroached upon them both and he wished he had brought a torch. He could only imagine this must have been what it was like for Langley when he had claimed to have been attacked by the shadow man.