Hunting for Crows

by Iain Cameron

  ‘What the fuck’s this, Mat? This isn’t what you told me when we was in Wakefield,’ the big man said.

  ‘Shurrup Ace. He’s lying. I’ll handle this.’

  ‘If you lot didn’t steal my gold,’ Street continued with a sly smile, raising his voice, ‘how come we found gold bars from the raid in each of your mates’ fucking houses?’ His face betrayed a look of triumph as if playing a winning hand at the end of a twelve-hour poker marathon.

  ‘So, it was you, you bastard! You killed Eric, Pete and Barry!’

  Street turned to Ace. ‘Give this guy a Mastermind rose bowl, he’s cracked it!’ Street said, guffawing at his own humour.

  ‘You bastard Street, you’ll spend the rest of your life rotting inside a jail cell if I’ve got anything to do with it.’

  ‘Fat chance of that happening is there, with you all tied up? So c’mon, tell me. How come your lot had gold?’

  Derek shifted in his seat, the trace of a smile on his face. ‘I can see it now, you believe the crap some old con told you, don’t you? Somehow you think I nicked the gold from the raid and used it to set everyone up in business. Is this the reason you killed them?’

  ‘It was my fucking gold,’ he said tapping his chest, his face twisted in hate. ‘The heist was my idea and went off as sweet as a nut. If I hadn’t got sent down three weeks later, I would still have it.’ He paused for a second, reminiscing. ‘So if your mates didn’t get the gold from you, where did they get it from?’

  Henderson could feel the last piece of the jigsaw falling into place, and for a moment he wished his voice recorder was switched on to capture some of this stuff, but he was sure if he pulled it out now, even the noise of it powering up would be enough to blow his cover.

  Ace and Street began to argue but he couldn’t hear what they were saying as both men were shouting at the same time. The gist of it seemed to be that Ace felt he had been employed under false pretences, although Henderson didn’t expect to see him at an Employment Tribunal any time soon. Street told him everything was fine, as they had recovered loads of money and part of the gold, but it didn’t seem to mollify the big man who kept whining like a spoiled child.

  ‘Enough Ace!’ Street said.

  ‘But Mat!’

  ‘I said enough!’ Street looked livid, angry enough to deck the big man. ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

  Ace stood for a half-minute, not moving, staring at him. Such odd behaviour would unnerve most people but Henderson was learning from this little show that Mathew Street was not like most people.

  ‘Ok,’ Ace said when normal service had been resumed. ‘We’ll get nothing more out of him, what do we do with him?’

  ‘Beat him up some more. I still think he knows something.’

  Ace punched Crow in the chest, kidneys, the face and kicked him in the shins. It was horrible to watch and it took Henderson a strong measure of self-restraint not to go in there and give Derek a hand. After suffering this for a minute or more, Crow said, ‘All right, all right, I’ll tell you.’ At least that’s what it sounded like, his mouth was bloody and split and his nose distorted.

  Crow tried to clear his throat but winced in pain at the effort and spat loose teeth on the floor.

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Eric Hannah stole your gold. You and him were mates at the time and he knew about the gold. He told the other guys and hatched a plan to nick it, but first he needed to get you out of the way.’ He paused trying to clear something from his throat that was making his voice garbled.

  ‘He told the cops about what you and your thieving pals did–’

  ‘You bastard!’ Street made to punch Crow but in a lightning movement, Ace caught his fist.

  ‘Leave it Mat, I wanna hear the rest.’

  ‘I spent 25 years inside thanks to this fucking bastard.’

  ‘They would have caught you eventually,’ Crow said, ‘it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘No chance. We had–’

  ‘Finish your story,’ Ace said.

  He shifted in the seat trying to get comfortable, wincing when his bruised kidney rebelled. ‘After they arrested you, Eric broke into the lock-up and nicked the gold. He gave some to Barry and Pete but I wouldn’t touch it.’

  ‘You expect me to believe this?’

  ‘Why the hell not? Did you find the remains of the stash at Eric’s place? He only cashed in a couple of bars each year to fund a holiday in the Caribbean. He must have had loads left.’

  Street looked at Ace. ‘You searched Hannah’s place, didn’t you? You’re not trying to hold out on me are you, big man?’

  ‘No, Mat don’t be daft, I would never do that. I told you, Hannah’s woman’s been there all the time. I couldn’t get in, but I’ve still got her old man’s keys.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Street said.

  ‘I need to go back there and look again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Street said. ‘Soonest. Tomorrow and if she’s still there, don’t fuck about, use the knife.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We stick to the plan.’

  Ace walked over to Derek. In a slick movement indicating the actions of a seasoned professional, he pulled a small cosh from his pocket and whacked him over the head several times until Derek lost consciousness.

  ‘Right,’ Street said, ‘let’s get him out of the chair and upstairs.’

  Ace made to grab Crow but stopped. ‘What about the dope?’

  ‘Christ, I forgot about it. Good thinking big man, it’s in the bag.’

  Ace reached into a holdall and pulled out a well-wrapped package about the size of half a kilogram of cheese and put it in Derek’s pocket. Henderson didn’t have a good view of the bag, but he saw it also contained cash, thousands of pounds in his opinion.

  A bag of dope in the pocket was an old trick. When the body is discovered, the police assume the murder is the result of a drug deal gone wrong, leading them down the wrong path. The added twist to this one, and the reason he believed they were intending to kill Derek aboard this boat, was his body wouldn’t be noticed until the ship reached port and its cargo unloaded. Local police would have no idea if the murder had happened on their patch or in the UK, adding more fuel to a confused situation.

  Henderson watched as Ace untied the inert figure, gripped him under the armpits and hauled him towards the door. When he pulled Derek into the corridor and clear of the narrow cabin doorway, Street moved out to join him. With Ace at the shoulders and Street at the legs, they lifted him and slowly made their way along the corridor. In a few minutes, when he could no longer hear any grunting and swearing, and it sounded like they were now negotiating a staircase at the end of the corridor, Henderson poked his head out of the dining room.

  He stood there for several seconds until he was sure neither man would come back to retrieve something left behind in the cabin. He left the dining room and retraced his steps back to the galley. When he got there, he stopped and looked around to make sure everything looked the same. Satisfied, he climbed the staircase, and headed up in the direction of the star-laden night sky.

  FORTY-TWO

  The more Carol Walters downed the fruity Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, the more relaxed she became, but with it surfaced the regret of her earlier outburst. She was a cop and even though she hadn’t been working late these last few weeks and didn’t often go into the office on weekends, there were times when she needed to cry-off a date. Therefore, it was childish for her to throw a flaky with her new friend Simon when he put in an appearance forty minutes behind the agreed time because his boss wanted a word about his up-coming pay rise.

  Her main problem with relationships was she didn’t understand how they worked. Was she supposed to be on the lookout for someone who would be one hundred per cent compatible in character, humour, sexual preferences and their choice of job, or was ‘true love’ the only criteria and when she found it,
everything else would fall into place? In her experience, it never seemed to work either way and she was coming to the conclusion that she was a lousy compromiser.

  What Simon didn’t know, her hair was at the heart of the problem. For more years than she cared to remember, her hair was cut to shoulder-length and parted in the middle. Based on a whim or on something he might have said on their last date, it was now short, only covering her ears, and, another first, coloured with a parting to one side. When she first came out of Coco’s in East Street, feeling self-conscious and ninety-quid poorer, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say she felt violated and regretted parking the car so far away in Churchill Square.

  Simon’s first mistake was to call round after she had bumped into her friend Melissa. Using a deadpan expression Melissa last used when she re-told the story of when she caught her son masturbating, she said her new look was ‘interesting’ and ‘a bit of a change,’ with no mention of the years it took off her age or how it suited her pretty, rounded face.

  Simon’s second mistake occurred when he didn’t say anything about her hair. Whilst he apologised for being late and prattled on about his boss and the size of his next pay rise, he failed to notice a woman in need of massive reassurance and a healthy dose of TLC. A quick altercation later, he returned to his car and was on the way home before she could say, ‘re-modelled’, ‘re-styled’ or ‘meet the new me.’

  She started watching a film on television but she couldn’t concentrate and decided to stop boozing as the alcohol was making her feel melancholy. With some difficulty, she rose from the chair and walked into the kitchen. She made a mug of coffee and carried it back into the living room with a bag of crisps, a vain attempt to try and soak up the booze.

  Friday night television, as usual, was a load of crap. She flicked through the channels looking for something not involving answering asinine questions against a ticking clock, trying to imagine a bygone age with actors who sounded modern in voice and with hairstyles that wouldn’t look out of place now, or an action film with crash-bang pyrotechnics designed to wake the kids upstairs and with hard-to-hear, mumbled American dialogue.

  She started watching a stupid comedy about two straight guys living together, but the jokes sounded familiar. The phone rang. Keep calm girl, she said to herself, if it’s Simon, he’s the one who needs to apologise.

  ‘Carol, it’s Angus,’ he said in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

  ‘Where are you? Have you been drinking? You sound like you’ve been drinking?’

  ‘I could say the same to you, but no, I haven’t had a drink all night. I’m on a ship at Shoreham Harbour–’

  ‘Bloody hell! Was it something I said? You’re not thinking of emigrating are you?’

  ‘Shut up, Carol and listen. There’s a ship docked in Shoreham Harbour, the east side of the harbour, called the Baltic Star. Mathew Street and his mate Ace have abducted Derek Crow and brought him here. They’ve bashed Derek around and I think they’re about to kill him.’

  ‘Derek Crow? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m bloody sure. I know what Derek Crow looks like, I’ve been watching him being tortured for the last fifteen minutes. They think he stole their gold.’

  ‘What gold?’

  ‘Don’t you start. It doesn’t matter about the gold, I’ll tell you later. What’s important is you need to get our people down here, armed and plenty of them.’

  ‘Right ok, I understand. Where’s Derek now?’

  ‘He’s lying on the deck. He’s unconscious.’ He paused. ‘I think they’re going to dump him in the hold.’

  ‘Why would they do that? Are they not just going to dump him overboard?’

  ‘I think, although I haven’t seen inside it yet, the hold is full of grain and his body will end up–’

  She heard scuffling, a yelp, and a series of soft thumps, which to a suspicious copper sounded like repeated blows from a fist or a boot. Seconds later, the line went dead as if the phone network had failed or someone had stamped on Henderson’s phone.

  The Sauvignon Blanc haze disappeared as the copper inside seized her attention. Still holding the phone, she called Lewes Control and resolved to speak with as much poise and clarity as she could muster, not wanting to sound like a hysterical teenager or a drunken bum who called in for a laugh. All calls were recorded and often played back in court where they were picked over by a team of defence lawyers, sober as judges and as thorough as crows picking over carrion.

  She identified herself and said in a voice less pissed than she felt, she needed the armed response team down at Shoreham Harbour, and to her surprise, the operator responded. If the call to Lewes Control sounded business-like and went according to plan, there remained a high probability the next one wouldn’t. She gathered her thoughts, dialled the number and took a deep breath.

  ‘Edwards here.’ In the background Walters could hear the clinking of glasses and raucous, drink-infused laughter.

  ‘Good evening, ma’am, DS Walters here. Sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘DS Walters, you’re not still on duty are you? It’s after ten on a Friday night.’

  ‘No, ma’am, I’m at home. I’ve just received a call from DI Henderson–’

  A loud voice faded in, then out, but she couldn’t make out the words. ‘It’s my husband telling me I’m neglecting my supper guests. Will this take long DS Walters?’

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner party, so I’ll cut straight to the chase. Derek Crow, he of the Crazy Crows rock band and the Prime Minister’s businessman friend, has been kidnapped. DI Henderson followed him and now believes Derek Crow is in mortal danger.’

  ‘Have you been drinking, DS Walters?’

  ‘Yes, I have. As you say, ma’am, it is Friday night, but this isn’t me telling you all this. DI Henderson told me before the phone went dead and we were cut-off.’

  ‘Why was he calling you? Did he ask you to do something?’

  ‘Yes, he told me to send back-up as he’s sure Derek Crow is about to be killed.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve instructed Lewes Control to give me as many cars as they can find and an armed response team.’

  ‘I’m on my way. Where am I going?’

  ‘To the east side of Shoreham Harbour. He’s on a ship called the Baltic Star.’

  The phone went quiet for a moment and she heard the muffled sounds of CI Edwards talking to someone. ‘Right,’ she said when she came back on the line. ‘I’ll go back in and say goodbye to my guests but I bet they’ll be well chuffed to see me leaving as I haven’t yet served dessert.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the interruption ma’am, but thank you. There’s just one other thing. Could you pick me up on the way?’

  FORTY-THREE

  Henderson could see the night sky as he reached the top of the ladder, ascending out of the ship’s bowels and welcoming the clean, night air, a change from the stale atmosphere below decks.

  In the shadow of the funnel, he pulled out his phone and called DS Walters. He was two minutes into the phone call when he fell on the deck in a heap after receiving a whack on the head which turned his knees to jelly. He dropped his phone and heard a crunch as his attacker stood on it.

  Kicks came in but he’d been in this position enough times to realise he couldn’t just lie there and take a beating otherwise he’d be finished, as it seemed this guy meant business. When the next kick came in, he grabbed the leg and pushed it back with as much force as he could muster. The guy staggered backwards, more in surprise than from the force of the shove, and fell against a rail.

  Henderson got to his feet but to his amazement, the other guy leapt up in a flash, like a fairground target felled by an air rifle, and turned to face him. He now adopted a martial arts stance, his hands in karate-chop shapes and walking towards him in cautious steps. Whoa, fists and kicks he could deal with, but oriental stuff was out of his league.

  The attacker edged closer, his movements stealth
y for such a big man.

  ‘Police!’ Henderson said in a voice as strong as he could muster, the last desperate attempt of a man with a groggy head and a ship’s funnel at his back.

  ‘What!’ he said, his face incredulous. ‘Show me your ID.’

  Henderson reached into his pocket and pulled out his warrant card.

  He leaned over and grabbed it, took a quick look before handing it back.

  ‘Ah fuck, sorry man for whacking you on the nut. I thought you were Mat Street’s big mate. It was dark like.’

  ‘I’ll live,’ Henderson said, rubbing his head where he felt a large lump. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Don Levinson, Derek Crow’s personal protection specialist, bodyguard in old money. What are you people doing here?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

  ‘I followed Derek to this place but–Hey, look out!’

  Henderson turned to see Ace’s impassive face and the cosh he’d been bashing Derek Crow with swinging towards him. There was little he could do to get out of the way and it caught him straight across the temple. On this occasion, there wasn’t time for knees to buckle, his lights suddenly had no power.

  He woke up, his cheek resting on a lumpy rivet, adding more pain to the rhythmic bass playing in his head. He eased himself up into a sitting position. The cons had pulled back the cover of the ship’s hold and he was lying close to the edge, and even though he considered himself a strong swimmer, he didn’t fancy his chances in a pool full of wheat or oats or whatever the stuff down there might be. Up close, the space looked cavernous and gauging by the height of the ship, ran to a depth of about thirty or forty feet.

  His head was spinning and he felt nauseous, but a few moments later everything cleared, except for the rhythmic thumping of a mini bass player performing inside his head. He didn’t know if he had been out for one minute or five, but he could still see Don. He must have squared up to his attacker, Ace didn’t take him by surprise, as the cosh was no longer in Ace’s hand, no doubt felled by one of Don’s karate kicks. Instead, Ace held a knife. This was no cheap punk, jabbing and slashing as if trying to clear a path in a dense jungle, but taking a calm, measured approach, receiving a kick to the head in return for a better opening. Henderson stood and was about to go over and lend a hand when he remembered Derek.