Closer Than Blood

by Paul Grzegorzek

  “Easy now,” his voice was low. “If anyone’s going to end up with something shoved somewhere nasty it ain’t gonna be him.”

  “Look,” I ignored Eddie as I tried one last time to stop this from going sideways, “all I need is a name. You give me that, I’m gone. Do you really want to go down for assaulting a copper?”

  Simmonds leaned forward, pulling his feet from the desk so that he could look me in the eye from mere inches away.

  “But you’d have to be here lawfully for that. Not my fault if you burst in and threaten me. Now how about you fuck off and stop bothering me? If you had anything useful to offer, you would have offered it by now.”

  “Just fucking tell me!” I snapped, finally losing my temper. I surged to my feet, then slammed into the desk as Eddie shoved me from behind. Spinning, I saw him pulling back the pool cue, ready to bring it down on my skull.

  Before he could finish the movement I lunged forward, elbow jabbing into his throat. The big man stumbled backwards, gasping for air and I followed him, throwing several quick punches into his torso.

  The cue dropped from nerveless fingers as he fell to his knees. I caught it before it hit the floor and spun again to see Simmonds hurdling the desk in a surprising display of acrobatics and sprinting for the door. My hand snapped forwards and the cue spun end over end towards him. It missed, ricocheting off the door in front of him, but it made him flinch back, giving me the time I needed to scoop the heavy glass ashtray off the desk and hurl it at him like a discus. It struck him square between the shoulder blades, slamming him into the door. He rebounded much as the cue had done and landed in a heap on the floor, groaning in pain.

  I crossed to where he lay and grabbed him by the shirt, hauled him to his feet. Up close he smelled of cigarettes and fear.

  “One simple answer,” I growled, “and you could have avoided all of this. Now, who put you in touch with Jake and where do I find him?”

  Simmonds was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. I’d taken out the two of them in moments, and the realisation must have helped his self-preservation instincts kick in.

  “Harrison, Craig Harrison! He set it all up, came to me about a week ago and said he had some product to shift on the cheap.”

  “Harrison sells coke?” I didn’t bother trying to keep the surprise out of my voice. Last time I’d seen my brother’s old best friend he’d been a junkie well on his way to an early death.

  “Yeah, he sells anything that makes a profit. Usually his gear is shite, but he promised this was A grade stuff.”

  “So where do I find him?”

  “He works out of a brothel on Silwood Street, just off Western Road.”

  “Maggie’s place?” You don’t police Brighton for long without knowing about Maggie’s. On the surface it’s a bed and breakfast, but the rooms are rented by the hour and the only thing that gets eaten there are the customers, if they’ve paid enough for the privilege. We raided it about once every six months, but it was always back up and running within a week or so.

  “Yeah.”

  “That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Can I assume that you’re not going to tell anyone about my visit?”

  “Who would I tell?” Simmonds glared at me, hatred warring with fear. I’d crossed a line and we both knew it, only he had no idea how far I might go. I pushed away a faint sick feeling and did my best to look like I might kill him given the chance.

  “No one,” I said, patting his face as I released him and stood. “Because then I’d be really pissed off. Now go and make sure Eddie isn’t going to choke to death.”

  Eddie wheezed something at me that might have been a curse, pulling himself slowly to his feet. A large purple bruise was already spreading across his throat, and I realised with a chill how easily I could have killed him.

  “Right chaps, laters.” Feigning cheeriness, I threw a two-finger salute and let myself out, forcing myself to walk when all I wanted was to run screaming from the scene of my crime.

  Chapter 25

  Maggie’s place was a two-storey building nestled in the middle of a Georgian terrace on Silwood Street, all white plaster and black wrought iron railings. The second floor had balconies of the same black metal, the bars gleaming with fresh paint.

  We weren’t far from John Cooper’s flat, or mine for that matter, and close enough to the beach that I could smell the sea.

  Even this early in the day trade was brisk, and in the twenty minutes I sat down the road in the car watching, at least half a dozen men entered or left.

  Most of them looked surprisingly respectable. Surprisingly, that is, unless you worked in my trade and knew that respectability was just a show people put on for their peers.

  I’ve found that if you dig deep enough with anyone, it peels away to show the darkness within. Priests could be paedophiles, office workers stalkers or rapists and, closer to home, coppers could be psychopaths who hurt people to get what they wanted.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you prick,” I said to myself, watching a man in a tweed overcoat with a rather impressive moustache walk up to Maggie’s and let himself in. “Let’s just get this done.”

  I was halfway to the brothel when I spotted the tail.

  A man, nondescript in a light brown jacket and black jeans, walked across the top of the road and looked down it for just a little too long. His eyes searched the road not for cars, but for something else.

  The moment he saw me he glanced away, casually but quickly. That told me I was his target. As he moved out of sight, I walked past Maggie’s and to the end of the street to Western Road, one of the main routes through Brighton that led from Churchill Square and its shops and cafés to the edges of Hove.

  The road was busy, with buses, taxis and a spattering of cyclists fighting each other for space while the pavements thronged with people. I crossed, giving myself an excuse to look both ways, but I couldn’t see my tail anywhere in the crowd.

  When I reached the far pavement I headed for a nearby café. Bought myself a latte in a takeaway cup and sat just inside the tall windows, where I could look out over the street.

  I was there for almost ten minutes before I saw him again, this time walking back the other way towards Hove, glancing into shops and cafés as he passed.

  The fact that I was being followed didn’t overly worry me, that came with the territory. What did concern me was the fact that he didn’t look like one of the Russians. If I had to guess, in fact, I’d say he was a copper.

  With that in mind I sank back in my chair, sipped at my coffee to keep my face obscured. Watched the flow of people passing the window. Sure enough, other faces began to stand out as they kept returning, looking up and down the road for me, and soon I’d spotted no fewer than four of them, three men and a woman.

  A ball of worry began to form in my gut.

  My first thought was that they were PSD. They’d been gunning for me ever since my run in with Quentin Davey, and I’d only stayed under their radar by being a model copper for the best part of a decade. Had they got wind of my Russian visitors the night before? If so, how?

  Then it hit me and I groaned aloud, causing a lady at the next table to give me an odd look.

  The NCA. Striker had pissed them off by refusing to hand the investigation over at once. They must have figured that I was the best shot at finding Jake, and so were spending their time following me instead of twiddling their thumbs.

  I couldn’t blame them, it was what I would have done in their place, but it made my job that much harder. How in hell was I supposed to navigate the already perilous criminal underworld of the city, if I was dragging a bunch of coppers along behind me?

  And how long had they been following me? If they’d picked me up before or during my encounter with Simmonds, I’d have a reception committee waiting to welcome me back to the nick with handcuffs and a cell with my name on it. If that happened, I’d never find Jake.

  “Fuck!” I swore aloud, earning a withering g
lare from the nearby lady.

  Gripping my cup so tightly that it threatened to burst, I stood and made my way to the door. Paused to look up and down the street. None of the team I’d spotted were in sight so I slipped out, sprinting between a pair of buses and almost getting killed by a cyclist as I cleared the other lane.

  “Wanker!” he shouted, and I ducked back down Silwood Street before anyone could turn and look for the cause of the commotion.

  Sacrificing stealth for speed, I ran down the road towards Maggie’s, only slowing as I reached the front gate. All the coffee had sloshed out of the cup and over my hand. So I dropped it in a recycling bin and shook droplets from my fingers, as I approached the door, then wiped the remainder off on my jacket.

  The door opened with a push, ringing a little old-fashioned bell that tinkled merrily. Inside, a drab reception area greeted me, the desk manned, or womaned, I should say, by a girl in her early twenties with more makeup than clothes.

  She had long blonde hair up in pigtails and a cheeky smile, which she cranked up to ten as I approached the desk.

  “Looking for some fun?” She straightened her spine and pushed her assets towards me.

  “Looking for Maggie, actually.” I kept my eyes carefully on hers.

  “Oh. I’ll call her. Who should I say is here?”

  “Gareth Bell.”

  “One minute.”

  She picked up a phone from the desk and started to dial a number, but before she could finish, the door in the back wall opened and Maggie herself bustled out.

  “Sergeant Bell!” She smiled sweetly, but I noted her voice was loud enough to carry to most of the rooms in the place. “How lovely to see you.”

  Maggie was in her late fifties and a little larger than she’d no doubt been in her youth, but she was still beautiful enough to take a man’s breath away. Her dark brown, almost black hair was cut in a bob with the bangs at the front longer than the back. Her green eyes, although too brilliant to be anything other than contact lenses, were wide and sensuous.

  She only came up to my shoulder, but she radiated the kind of self-assuredness that made people do as she asked before they even realised she’d done it.

  “Nice to see you too, Maggie.” I stooped to kiss her cheek. “Can we talk?”

  “Of course. Finally going to take me up on my offer?”

  “Not this time, I’m afraid.” I reddened slightly, remembering my first trip here. I’d been a probationer back then and she’d propositioned me in the middle of a raid, much to the amusement of my colleagues. “It’s business.”

  “Ah, shame. Crystal, be a dear and bring us some tea in my office? Thanks, pet.”

  The girl with the pigtails nodded and slipped out. Maggie hurried me through the only other door and into a hallway that was gaudily decorated with faux-gold wall lamps and cut-glass chandeliers. At the far end she unlocked the door to her office and ushered me in.

  “Sit, please.” Although the room was small, she’d somehow managed to fit not only a desk and several filing cabinets, but also a small sofa and coffee table. The walls were covered in pictures, mostly black and whites of actresses from the fifties and sixties, and much like the rest of the place it smelled faintly of sex overlaid with perfume.

  I took a seat on the sofa, shifting over slightly when she sat herself right next to me. This was deliberate, I knew, designed to keep me off balance until she knew why I was there. Madam she might be, but Maggie was one of the smartest people I’d ever met, which went a long way to explaining why she’d stayed out of prison despite all the raids over the years.

  “So,” she said, as Crystal swung the door open, plonked two mugs of tea down and left again, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Craig Harrison.”

  “Ah.” She grimaced. “Go on.”

  “I need to speak to him.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “It’s a personal matter.” I liked Maggie, but that wasn’t the same thing as trusting her. She was one of the best-connected criminals in Brighton, although perhaps criminal was too strong a word, and if I told her too much then there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t sell that information on.

  “Your brother?”

  I tried to keep my face expressionless, but something must have shown.

  “Thought so.” She nodded. “Word gets about, you know. I hear he’s gotten himself in some pretty deep water.”

  “I didn’t know that you knew him.”

  “I don’t, not really, but Craig has been keeping his head down and we’ve had all sorts of unsavoury types coming by in the last couple of days, asking after your brother. I hear there’s an awful lot of money on offer for anyone who finds him.”

  “So he’s here then, Craig?”

  “What would you do if he was?”

  “I just need to talk to him.” I paused, weighing up my options, then decided to come clean. Lying wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “He’s the only person I can think of that might know where Jake is.”

  “Why do you want to find him so badly? I’ve got a reputation to maintain, and if word gets around that I helped you arrest him, well, that would be bad for business. Don’t forget your tea.”

  I picked up the mug and took a swig.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said truthfully, “but I know that if I don’t find him first then he’s going to end up in Shoreham harbour with pockets full of concrete. I can’t let that happen.”

  “No, I suppose not. Okay, say I could put you in touch with Craig. What would I get out of it?” She smiled, but her eyes were as hard as those of the Russian woman from the night before. If the two of them were shut in a room together, I honestly wasn’t sure which one I would bet on to walk out.

  “What do you think would be a fair price?”

  “How about you pick up the phone next time you hear we’re going to have a visit?”

  “Wow.” I shook my head. “I’d be putting my job on the line if I did that.”

  “How badly do you want to talk to Craig?”

  “I could just sit outside until he comes out,” I countered, “or better yet get a couple of uniforms to sit up out there, right on your doorstep. That would be bad for business.”

  Her smile withered instantly. “Keep going like that and I’ll change my mind about helping you altogether, and you can do what you like. My price is a friendly warning, take it or leave it.”

  I considered for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Fuck it, sure. It’s not like it’s the worst promise I’ve made today.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Never mind, you don’t want to know. So, where’s Craig?”

  “Upstairs in the loft. Come on, I’ll show you, but just you remember something. This is my house, and no one spills blood here without my permission. You do anything to Craig that I don’t like and I’ll have you thrown out of the window, copper or not. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied without hesitation. Friendly as she was, I had no doubt she would carry out her threat if necessary, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be man enough to stop her if she did.

  Chapter 26

  The ‘loft’ turned out to be a huge room that spanned the entire width and length of the building, accessible by a sequence of no fewer than three locked doors.

  The floor was covered with something that looked more like an overgrown lawn than a carpet, on top of which sat a three-piece suite, a kingsize bed, a desk, two chairs and a sideboard with a 50” plasma TV balanced on top. A set of free weights lay scattered on the carpet next to the bed, which itself was strewn with cast-off clothes.

  In the far corner was a kitchen area, the floor of which was laid with dark lino, and I could just make out a shower unit behind a privacy screen on the opposite side.

  The only door apart from the one we’d come through led to a toilet, judging by the sound of flushing as we entered the space.

  The other door opened and Craig Harris
on stepped out. At least I assumed it was him, because he looked so different that I had to search his features for anything familiar to confirm it.

  Last time I’d seen him he’d been a physical and mental wreck. Only in his mid-twenties, he’d looked a couple of decades older and skeletal in the way that only persistent heroin use can make you. That was almost twenty years ago, but the man standing in front of me, frozen in the act of buttoning up his fly, could have passed for the son of the man I remembered. His short dark hair framed a face that, while not model-quality good looking, would at least turn a few heads. His chest and shoulders bulged with muscle beneath a blue Nike t-shirt.

  “Little Gareth Bell!” He grinned and suddenly the two, the memory and the man, meshed together. I remembered that grin only too well, insincere and oily as it was. “You’ve grown up.”

  “And you’ve apparently grown backwards,” I replied, looking around. “You got an oil painting in here somewhere?”

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind. Maggie, mind if I talk to Craig alone?”

  She quirked an eyebrow at Craig, who shrugged and nodded. She patted my arm and left, closing the door behind her.

  Craig sat on the edge of the bed and gestured towards the rest of the room.

  “Take a seat, it’s not like there’s a shortage of them. What do you think of the place?”

  “As far as prisons go, it’s nice enough, I guess.” I pulled a chair away from the desk and spun it around, sitting on it backwards. “What the hell, Craig? Last time I saw you, you looked weeks away from death.”

  “I quit the gear. Got into weightlifting, get my buzz off that now.”

  He flexed to prove his point, rippling the muscles in his arms.

  “And what, started selling drugs to fund your gym addiction?”

  He stiffened slightly, all friendliness gone. “You here on official business?”

  “Not as such, no. I’m looking for Jake, and I need to find him before the people he nicked that coke off do. I might want to kill him, but they’ll actually do it.” He opened his mouth to voice a denial but I cut over him. “And don’t give me any bullshit about not having seen him, Eric Simmonds already told me you set up the meet.”