“Do you think Jake was killed because he knew what was on the drive?”
Even in my weary state I caught the look they shared. Jones immediately turned off, pulling up on the hard shoulder. I straightened, ready to reach for the door handle as the earlier tension returned full force.
“You’re a smart bloke,” Patterson’s eyes drilled into mine. “So I’m sure at some point you’ll start putting all the pieces together and come up with some questions. Searching for the answers won’t do you any good though, it’ll just land you in a cell somewhere that doesn’t officially exist. There’s far more to this than you know, and people involved in it that you don’t want to know. Let me offer you something, here and now, that will never be talked of again. I promise you that Jake’s murderers will get everything they deserve. I will also make sure that Sussex don’t haul you over the coals too badly for what’s happened. I can’t make any guarantees there, but I think I can make sure you keep your job, at least. Think about it. You can carry on with your life, and you and your missus can have a load of screaming kids and live to a ripe old age. All you have to do is keep your head down and your mouth shut.”
“Or?” I didn’t like the way Jones was staring at me, like a hawk watching a rabbit, ready to strike the moment it bolted.
“Or you ask your questions and raise your head above the parapet. You do that, no one is going to be able to stop it from being lopped off. Your choice, but I’d take what’s behind door number one.”
I nodded, trying to grasp all the ramifications of what he was saying. I’d once asked why MI5 weren’t involved in all this, but from what he was saying, perhaps they were. I knew very little about the murky world of spies and counter-terrorism that wasn’t learned from either basic police training courses or Bond movies. But I was sure there was enough moral ambiguity involved that people could be locked up or even killed to protect national interests.
“And if, as I hope she does, your missus survives,” he watched me carefully, “she’d be in the firing line too. God, forget I used that phrase. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, sure.” I was surprised at the coldness in my voice. “So I shut up and have a vague hope of coming out of this with some sort of life intact, or I push it and risk getting banged up or killed. Thanks for the warning. Can we drive back to Striker now?”
The two men exchanged another glance.
“I need your word,” Patterson said apologetically, pulling out his phone, “or I have to make a call right now.”
I nearly told him to do it, but common sense prevailed at the last second.
“Fine,” I agreed. “I’ll keep my mouth shut, but you’d better hold up your end of the bargain.”
“Oh I will,” he assured me, relief evident on his face as he waved at Jones to pull away again. “I can assure you it will be my top priority.”
Much, I thought, as mine will be to find out just what the hell is really going on, and whatever I might tell you, I’m not going to stop until I do.
Chapter 50
Word of my impending arrival had spread, and half the nick had found business either in the back yard or close to a window that overlooked it. A sea of faces watched me as I climbed out of the car, stumbling against Patterson as he helped me.
Pushing him away, I made eye contact with as many of the observers as I could. I was supposed to be returning as a prisoner of sorts, but I intended to make it clear that I was here because I wanted to be. I was still a copper, for now at least, and so I limped unaided up to the back doors with Patterson and Jones trailing slightly behind.
A copper in his early thirties, broad chested under his brown suit with short hair and a full hipster beard, stepped in front of me.
“Sergeant Bell, I’m Bill Watson from PSD. I’m …” he began but Patterson cut over him.
“Here as an observer at this time, as Sergeant Bell is in the custody of the National Crime Agency. You’re welcome to accompany us up to the Chief Superintendent, however.”
Watson paused, mouth open, then shrugged and fell in behind as we entered the nick.
The climb up the stairs was painful, both physically and emotionally. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the last time I’d make this journey as a copper. After all I’d done in recent days I didn’t see how it couldn’t be, despite Patterson’s assurances.
I knew that everything I’d done, I’d done for the right reasons, so I straightened my spine as I exited the stairs and walked down the command corridor, meeting the eye of everyone we passed.
I stopped outside the Chief Super’s office and knocked on the door.
“Come.”
I pushed it open and walked in to see Striker behind her desk, facing the door while her hands played with a freshly sharpened pencil. It was a nervous habit I’d not seen from her before, and it confirmed just how badly things were about to go for me.
The others filed in behind me, including Watson. Ignoring me, Striker stood and leaned over to shake Patterson’s hand.
“Tony, thank you. I can only apologise for not handing this whole thing over to you earlier. If I had, we probably wouldn’t be where we are right now and I take full responsibility for that.”
“It all turned out alright in the end.” He waved her apology away. “And despite his methods, I have to be honest and say that Sergeant Bell’s actions made a huge difference. Had he not followed his nose then we might be in an awful lot of trouble.”
“One of us still is,” she replied, finally looking at me. “Sergeant, I can’t accurately convey just how disappointed I am. I understand how difficult it must be to lose your brother in such a way, but you are a police officer, and as such are expected to identify conflicts of interest and recuse yourself from investigations where necessary. We cannot condone you turning an active case into a personal vendetta. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Several things, actually.” I’d been expecting worse, and after the week I’d had, her disapproval didn’t faze me as much as it would have done previously. Particularly now that I’d finally put the pieces together, much as Patterson had told me I would, only I didn’t need to go searching for answers. One thing he hadn’t counted on was my ability to take seemingly unconnected pieces of information and paste them together into a whole that, while not always perfect, gave enough of a view to see the overall picture. “Firstly, if you want to make sure you stop the people responsible for all of this, then don’t let anyone here leave the room.”
There was a stunned silence. Eventually Striker broke it. “This is not an episode of bloody Poirot!” She snapped, throwing the pencil onto the desk. “The only person here who needs to explain themselves is you.”
“Actually, that’s not quite true, is it, Patterson?”
He turned to stare at me, then laughed. “I have to say, Gareth, I’ve come to think of you as many things over the past couple of days, but until now desperate wasn’t one of them. Are you really going to try and pin some of your shit on me?”
Gone was the genial detective. I could see a murderous glint in his eye as he turned to Striker.
“He’s clearly lost it,” he shook his head sadly. “Grief and stress, probably.”
“I agree.” Striker nodded and gestured to Watson. “I was hoping that he’d have some kind of crazy but believable rationalisation for all of this, but apparently not. Get him out of here.”
Watson stepped forwards, hand out to grip my arm, but I danced away. The movement caused Jones to clap a hand to the pistol he still had holstered on his hip and I raised my hands to prevent a fatal misunderstanding.
“Easy there.” I turned to Striker as Watson approached again. “Ma’am, please. I’m not crazy. Just give me thirty seconds. Please.”
She stared at me over folded arms, then sighed and shook her head.
“Give me one good reason.”
“Sally.” Saying her name out loud hurt. “She got shot, she might be …”
I stopped,
unable to force any more words out past the lump in my throat.
“You have twenty. Make them count.”
I nodded my thanks and turned to Patterson, pushing all the fear and worry aside and slipping my game face on like a mask.
“What’s on the USB flash drive you took from Svetlana’s corpse?”
“You know that’s classified,” he frowned. “Are you stupid?”
“No, just a bit slow, apparently. Show it to me.”
“No!” I saw realisation dawn on his face. “Ma’am, don’t entertain his bullshit, he’s clearly …”
“If you won’t show me, then show her.” I jerked my head towards Striker. “The casing isn’t marked, what harm can it do?”
“This is fucking ridiculous,” he turned to the Chief Super. “His twenty seconds are up, I trust we’re not going to carry on with this idiocy?”
“I just want her to see what this was all about,” I kept my tone as reasonable as I could. “That’s not a lot to ask, is it?”
“Is there a reason you don’t want me to see it?” Striker cut in, and I shot her a surprised glance. I’d not expected to get this far, let alone have her take my side.
“Well no,” Patterson said, “it just seems pointless. I don’t understand what showing it to you will achieve.”
“Then humour me and let me take a look.”
Sighing, Patterson reached into his inside pocket and withdrew the flash drive. Holding it in his palm, he showed it to Striker. It sat there, the matte black surface scuffed in a couple of places but otherwise pristine.
“There you go. Now, if we’re done?”
“But you won’t tell me what’s on it?” I pressed.
“No, I told you, it’s a matter of …”
“National security, yeah, I remember. But you’re certain that’s the USB stick you recovered?”
“Of course it is!” he began, then saw the trap and his hand drifted towards the outer pocket on his coat.
“Then,” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the silver USB stick I’d taken from him when I’d stumbled in the car park. “There’s no reason you know of for the Chief Super not to plug this into her PC and take a look, right?”
His eyes widened and his hand automatically reached out to grab it as I dropped it on the desk in front of Striker.
“Ma’am,” I said respectfully, “can I suggest that you take a look at what’s on that flash drive?”
“No!” Patterson lunged for it but I stepped in front of him. Striker scooped it up and fixed us both with a glare that could have melted glass.
“Cut the bullshit,” she snapped. “Just what the hell is going on?”
“You can’t plug that into your PC,” Patterson warned. “It’s a virus, OK? There’s a virus on the drive, that’s what they were trying to get away with. It’s how they got into your computer systems.”
“But that’s the drive you retrieved,” I said, pointing at the pocket the black flash drive had disappeared into. “So you’ve got no reason to know what’s on this one, have you?”
“Gareth!” Striker shouted, finally reaching the end of her tether. “Stop trying to be a clever bastard and tell me what you know, or I’ll have you all nicked and dragged to custody in cuffs. Now.”
Knowing that I had her attention, a sense of elation hit me and I felt a grin tug at the corners of my mouth.
“Permission to do it Poirot style, ma’am?”
“Only if you want to be sacked on the spot,” she warned.
“Then I’ll keep it brief,” I promised. “Do you have a laptop?”
She leaned down and pulled one out of her bag, dumping it next to the keyboard on her desk. Flipping the top, she logged in and spun it so that we could all see the screen.
“Do your thing.”
I disconnected the laptop from the network, just in case. Then I plugged the drive in with shaking hands and waited until it showed up on the screen, conscious of the deadly stares directed at my back as I worked.
“Can you not just tell me what’s on it?” Striker asked as I opened the folder and saw three video files sitting there.
“I could,” I clicked play on the first one, “only I have no idea. The reason I think we need to see it is because he’s tried so damn hard to make sure that no one does.”
Chapter 51
The grainy video showed two people meeting in a hotel bar. I recognised them both, and couldn’t help glancing at Patterson and Jones as they watched from nearby. To my surprise, their expressions told me that they hadn’t seen what was on the drive either.
Turning back to the video, I saw Svetlana sat at a table opposite Jones. She passed him a thick brown envelope, which he opened briefly then tucked into his coat. Despite the questionable quality of the recording, it was easy to see the huge wodge of bills within.
“Tell Patterson we can’t afford to keep paying him this much,” Svetlana said, her voice just audible over the background din. “The next payment needs to be half that or we’ll cut our losses and start working elsewhere.”
“Do what you need to do,” Jones replied, standing. “But just remember that we’ve already got enough dirt on you to put you away for a ten-stretch, so you see what happens if you run.”
He walked away, leaving Svetlana alone. Just before the video cut out she looked directly at the camera and smiled.
“That’s been doctored,” Patterson said, waving a hand at the screen dismissively. “Any fool can see …”
“Shut up.” Striker spoke quietly but her voice had the ring of command to it, and he did. “Play the next one.”
The second video was much better quality. In it, Jones could be seen crossing the street and getting into the driver’s seat of a grey Lexus. Patterson sat in the passenger seat, and he looked over as Jones climbed in.
“Well?” Despite the person behind the camera being across the street, the voices were crystal clear. Whoever had taken this had used proper surveillance gear.
“It’s all there.” He took the envelope out and passed it to his boss. “But she said that next time you need to halve it or they’ll go set up shop somewhere else.”
“Not bloody likely. Maybe she needs a reminder of who’s in charge. How difficult would it be to kill one of her lads, make an example?”
“I’ve got just the rifle for the job,” Jones said with a dark smile. “Came from that bust last year in Camden. The log says it was destroyed but I tucked it away for a rainy day.”
“Looks like umbrella weather to me.”
The video ended and I looked up. Patterson had gone deathly pale, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air.
“I think,” I said with a grin, “that you two are pretty fucked.”
Jones moved like lightning. Elbowing Watson in the face, he leapt for the desk and the laptop, already reaching for his pistol. Reacting without thought, I grabbed the nearest weapon – Striker’s discarded pencil – and slammed it into the flesh just above his collar bone, hitting the bundle of nerves there as it punched through the skin.
He let out a high-pitched scream that cut off abruptly as I leaned back and kicked him under the jaw, snapping his head backwards and knocking him unconscious before he hit the floor.
He landed in an ungainly heap and the room went suddenly, shockingly silent. The only sound was the steady patter of blood from Watson’s broken nose hitting the carpet.
“Well,” Striker said after a long moment, “that wasn’t what I expected when you lot walked in.”
Patterson began to sidle towards the door but Striker shook her head.
“If I were you,” she warned, “I’d stay right where you fucking are. Unless you want to get Dinged too, of course.”
He froze and I grinned at her use of the nickname that no one called me by anymore.
“Can I suggest, ma’am,” I looked at the carnage, “that you get someone in here before Jones wakes up?”
“Suggest away,” she picked up her
phone and dialled a number. “And when that’s done, you and I are going to have a very long chat about a lot of things, not least of which is how the hell you put this all together and why you only decided to come out with it in my office.”
“Actually, ma’am,” Watson said, fingers pinching his dripping nose, “I hate to press the point, but I think you’ll find that he’s mine.”
Chapter 52
Patterson and I sat opposite each other in the small room. We both had a faux-marble bench to ourselves. A nervous-looking PC, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, stood between us and tried to watch us both at once.
Through a set of windows either side of the glass door we could see the bridge at the custody centre, a semi-circular rotunda with high sides from behind which custody sergeants could look down on those being booked in, charged or released on bail.
The centre itself was busy, with at least a dozen prisoners and officers at the desk. Although the thick door shut out most of the sound, I could still hear the background buzz of conversation like a wasp batting at a window in the next room.
As I stared out of the window, two officers brought in a bald man with a brown leather jacket and directed him to a custody sergeant on the far side. The prisoner was jostling the officers, speeding up and slowing down so that they struggled to maintain their grip on his arms, and I was impressed at what I could hear of the constant torrent of abuse coming out of his mouth.
I turned to stare at Patterson, wondering how he could justify what he’d done.
People had died, my brother had died, so that he could avoid paying the price for being dirty but although I wanted to hate him, I just couldn’t find the energy. All I could think about was Sally, seeing her fall over and over again in my mind’s eye.
A shout made me look out again to see the bald man at the desk shoving one of the officers away, then sinking a fist into the gut of the second, just below his Kevlar vest.
A cry went up as other prisoners began to cheer him on, the mood quickly turning ugly. First one, then another of the prisoners began to start playing up, while the pushy-shovey on the far side became a full-scale fight.
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