Hit Back Harder

by Andy Maslen

  Something clicked in Stella’s brain. A feeling that this was a lifeline back to some sort of normality. Something she could reach towards once she’d done the things she needed to.

  “You know what? I changed my mind,” she said. “I’d love that coffee.”

  Jason’s face broke into a smile.

  “Great! I’ll just give Elle a call then we’ll get going. Do you want to follow me?”

  27

  Mystery Blonde

  EXACTLY FIFTY-NINE minutes later, as he had promised Danny Hutchings, Collier walked back into the armoury. The meeting had not been an excuse to leave and avoid answering questions. He had spent the best part of the previous hour sitting in a windowless conference room listening to an increasingly incomprehensible presentation about using social media to engage the general public in various crime-prevention and reduction schemes.

  The Met had supplied a social media executive from Scotland Yard to lead the meeting. Collier had put her age at twenty-four or five. The superintendent next to him had leaned close and murmured, “What, they’ve got twelve-year-olds telling us how to do our job now?” The young woman, with her ruler-straight fringe and earnest blue eyes behind heavy-framed black glasses had looked positively ancient beside the external consultant she’d brought with her. Josh literally appeared to be still in his teens. A wispy ginger moustache and beard and a full sleeve of tattoos on his right arm did nothing to alter the impression among the forty- and fifty-something officers in the room that here was a boy whose balls probably hadn’t dropped.

  Despite the threat to PPM in general – and himself in particular – that Collier felt the recent events in Oxfordshire represented, he was enjoying handling evidence and tracking a suspect. It reminded him of those aspects of the job he’d loved before moving into the upper echelons of management, where police work had morphed from catching villains to completing paperwork.

  He waited patiently until Hutchings looked up from his screen. Then he raised his eyebrows by way of an enquiry into the armourer’s progress. Hutchings hurried over to the counter.

  “Sorry, sir. Waist deep in admin.”

  Collier smiled. He could afford to be magnanimous. For now.

  “Aren’t we all? Now, what did you manage to goose up from the database? Any joy?”

  He watched a frown steal across Hutchings’s face.

  “No, sir. It’s not on the system. I cross-referenced to Europol and Interpol databases and they came back with nothing. I’ve put in requests to the National Crime Agency’s firearms boys but that’s going to take time.” He spread his hands wide. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Collier smiled a tight smile. He wasn’t done with the armourer yet.

  “When’s your next stock check, Danny?”

  Hutchings looked up and to the right, then back at Collier.

  “It’ll be in three weeks. The Wednesday. It’s always on a Wednesday. Gives us the rest of the week if we need to recheck anything.”

  “I want you to bring it forward.”

  “When to, sir? We’re kind of busy at the moment.”

  “Today.”

  “Today?” Hutchings’s eyes popped wide with alarm. “But we’re stuffed, sir. I got a new consignment of rifles coming in after lunch.”

  Collier shook his head. He’d had enough of the armourer’s excuses.

  “Not good enough. But listen. I don’t care about the weapons themselves. What I want to know is, how are our stocks of nine-millimetre ammunition?”

  Hutchings blew out his cheeks.

  “OK, that’s not so bad. Can you give me until the end of the day? I can do it myself, but I need to brief Nick and Colette on the rifles first.”

  Collier nodded.

  “I’ll be here until seven. Have it on my desk by then, yes?”

  Then he turned on his heel and left.

  Back in his office, he called DCI Duveen again.

  “It’s Adam Collier, Jacqui. I’m sorry to be a pain in the arse, but I don’t suppose you have any CCTV for the murder scene, do you?”

  “Not on site, no. Although given what we found in the lockup, it wouldn’t surprise me if their clients,” she laid heavy emphasis on this last word, “had paid extra to ensure the management of this place never put up their own cameras. We did find a single camera on the ceiling, but the guy who runs the place swore it had nothing to do with him.”

  “What about on the roads leading away?”

  “There’s a posh private school about a mile up the road. I’ve got a DS up there now. You never know, all the mummies and daddies might not feel safe letting Tarquin and Araminta out of their sight without video surveillance. If I may ask, sir, why do you need CCTV? I thought you said you were reviewing gun crime data?”

  “I am. But my bosses – yes, I have them, too – are pressuring me to get context whenever possible. Listen, I know we have a bad reputation for hogging the limelight, but believe me, I have absolutely zero interest in moving in on your patch. It’s just, you know how it is, the executive officers say ‘jump’ and we say ‘how high?’”

  It was a masterstroke. He could tell. The difference in their rank swept away with a carefully constructed comment about ‘us’ versus ‘them.’

  “Yeah, and just so they can stick it all in some PowerPoint nobody’ll remember three months from now. Look, if we get anything I’ll email you.”

  Collier smiled as he spelled out his email address.

  Later that same day, during yet another meeting – this time about diversity and inclusion in senior detective ranks – his phone buzzed. He glanced down, then looked up at the meeting chairwoman.

  “Sorry, I have to go. Operational matter.”

  He stood and left the room before anybody could protest or suggest he have one of his junior officers handle whatever “operational matter” was taking him away from the pie charts and mission statements.

  The email was from DCI Duveen.

  Hi Adam,

  We struck lucky. Hardingham School has two CCTV cameras facing the road – east and west – outside the main gate. They picked up this.

  Jacqui

  The email carried two attachments.

  He tapped the first paperclip symbol.

  The grainy colour photo showed a stationary black motorbike, its rider’s booted feet down on both sides, keeping it upright. The back of the bike was loaded with a black holdall. The number plate was clearly visible, not that Collier needed it. He knew what it said.

  The second image was the proof he wanted.

  The rider had removed her helmet. She had a cropped, blonde haircut, and she was facing the camera. He stared at the photo for a few seconds. The hair was distracting, but there was no doubt in his mind. DI Stella Cole was back in the UK. Not only that, but she’d just shot and killed one of Freddie McTiernan’s men with an illegal Glock 17 and was in the wind with a bag of something she’d taken from his lockup. Drugs or money, probably. Bingo!

  He was halfway through calling up Tamit Ferenczy’s contact details when somebody knocked loudly on the closed door to his office. He checked his watch, a black ceramic-and-gold TAG Heuer his wife had given him on his fortieth birthday.

  It was 6.30.

  “Come!” he shouted.

  The door opened and there stood a very sheepish-looking station armourer, his face pale, mouth set in a straight line. Scared, Collier thought.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, come in, Danny. Take a seat. So?”

  Hutchings took his time getting his words out, swallowing nervously and picking at the skin round his right thumbnail with the fingers of his other hand.

  “We’re missing two boxes of jacketed hollow-point rounds, sir. I don’t know how it happened. I’m really sorry.”

  “Never mind that. How many rounds are we missing?”

  “One hundred. They’re Federal Hi-Shok. Same as the FBI use.”

  “I don’t, honestly, give a flying fuck whether they’re used by the FBI, the
CIA or the Girl Scouts of America, Sergeant Hutchings. What I do give a flying fuck about is that the security of the armoury you manage appears to have been broken open like the padlock on a garden shed. The question is, by whom?”

  Hutchings appeared to be on the verge of tears. His eyes were reddening at the rims, and Collier saw he’d pulled away a piece of skin at the base of his thumbnail, drawing blood.

  “I … I think it was DI Cole, sir.”

  “Explain.”

  “We, er, that is to say, I had dinner at hers and stayed the night.” A pause, during which Hutchings looked up at the ceiling and then down at his shoes. “She might have taken my keys.”

  The confession only confirmed what Collier already suspected. But he felt a show was called for.

  “Might?” he asked, keeping his voice low, and measured.

  “I can’t remember. I had a fair bit to drink. My marriage isn’t so good and Stel—I mean DI Cole invited me round, and one thing led to another.”

  “So DI Cole plies you with alcohol, no doubt exhausts you physically as well, then while you’re out cold, she takes the keys to the armoury and burgles it. Is that about the size of it?”

  Hutchings dropped his voice to a whisper.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This wouldn’t be the night the fire alarm was triggered, would it?”

  Hutchings could only nod. Collier continued.

  “Now, I’m just a lowly detective chief superintendent these days, so forgive me if my knowledge of firearms is a little vague, but am I right in thinking you need a gun to shoot bullets out of?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So where did DI Cole find such a thing? Did she help herself to a pistol while you were asleep as well?”

  Hutchings shook his head.

  “I think she took a Glock 17 from a new consignment she collected from Heathrow. I don’t know how, sir. I’m really sorry. I mean, gutted.”

  Collier suddenly tired of the sport. The armourer was of no further use. If Collier managed to take down Cole before she repaid the favour, he’d deal with him then. For now, he had bigger fish to fry. Or shoot.

  “That will do for now,” he said, already turning back to his phone. Then he stopped the movement. “Actually, wait, sergeant. There is something else you can do for me. Something you can fetch from the armoury.”

  28

  Family Life

  JASON AND ELLE Drinkwater lived in a Victorian rectory on a wooded road halfway between Richmond and Putney. The exterior was red brick with a tiled roof. Stella had visited many times with Richard and then, when Lola had come along, the visits had tailed off a little as they were both so tired. The house was detached and set back from the road behind a tall laurel hedge. The first time she’d been introduced to her brother- and sister-in-law, she’d marvelled at the size of their house. She’d assumed that with his job as an estate agent, Jason must have pulled off some incredibly complicated property deal to finance the purchase. It turned out to be simpler and at the same time about a million times more romantic.

  “My grandmother founded a cosmetics firm,” Elle had told her once over a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. “Hélène Laselle. Her real name was Helen Salt but she thought a French name would sound more upmarket. They were very high end. They sold through professional beauty salons and a handful of shops so discreet if you have to ask the address, you won’t get through the front door. Granny left us all very well taken care of.”

  Stella followed Jason’s BMW in through the electronically controlled gates and up the short gravelled drive to the parking area in front of the house. As well as his M5 with its bulging bodywork and menacing black paint, she saw a canary-yellow Audi TT convertible with a black roof. She parked the Triumph beside the TT and heeled out the kickstand. She pulled off the helmet and, because the sun was shining and the sky was cloudless, hung it over the throttle grip. She tucked her gloves under the cargo net and waited for Jason, who was fiddling about inside the BMW’s cabin.

  Finally he emerged, smiling. He blipped the fob and the car locked itself with an obliging chirrup.

  “Come on, then,” he said, stepping up to the robin’s-egg-blue front door and inserting his key in the lock. “I think there’s a young lady inside who’s practically going to explode when she sees who I’ve brought home.”

  Inside the hall, Stella breathed in deeply. She could smell bread baking, a hot, floury, yeasty smell that made her smile. The floor was tiled in an intricate pattern of eight-pointed stars and nested squares of sky-blue, white and burgundy. They walked down the hall and into a square kitchen dominated by a long refectory table and a dozen or so chairs. Beyond the table, and through an open set of glass sliding and folding doors, was the rectory’s garden. And there, halfway down the striped lawn, swinging for all she was worth on an old car tyre suspended from a gnarled, old oak tree by a length of blue rope, was her five-year-old niece, Polly.

  “Go and say hello,” Jason said. “I’ll find Elle. She’s probably upstairs having a nap.”

  Stella wandered across the lawn, glad to see patches of daisies amongst the alternating pale and dark-green stripes. She opened her mouth to call out, but Polly saw her first.

  “Auntie Stella!” she squealed, wriggling out of the tyre and sliding out onto the lawn.

  The skinny little girl, pigtails flying, covered the twenty feet between them in a handful of seconds and leapt up. Stella caught her in her arms and swung her around in a complete circle before losing her balance and sending them both sprawling.

  “Hey, Polly Wolly Doodle, how’s my big girl?” Stella asked, as her niece regained her balance only to dive on top of her still prostrate aunt.

  “I’m nearly six! And I can climb to the top of the big tree. And I’m getting so tall, soon I’ll be as tall as you!”

  “Not quite yet, you monkey, but I bet it won’t be long.”

  Polly sat back, quite suddenly, and stared at Stella with eyes of piercing intensity.

  “Uncle Richard died. And Lola. Were you very sad?”

  Stella held her arms out and the little girl cuddled inside her embrace running her fingertips through Stella’s short blonde hair.

  “Oh, Polly Wolly Doodle, yes, I was. I was so sad.”

  “And are you still sad?”

  “Yes. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “This is making me happy. Come on, why don’t you show me your room. I bet you’ve got some lovely toys.”

  The invitation worked liked a charm. Polly scrambled to her feet and pulled Stella up by her right hand. They ran in together, almost colliding with Elle and Jason, who’d just reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’m showing Auntie Stella my room. We’re going to play with every single one of all my toys.”

  Elle caught Stella’s eye and raised her eyebrows in a question.

  Stella smiled back.

  “It’s fine. Give me a few minutes with my favourite niece,” she said, flipping Polly’s pigtails, “then we can have grown-up time. OK, Polly Wolly Doodle?”

  “I suppose so,” Polly said, pouting.

  Her bedroom was painted in candy stripes of white and pink. The bed was mocked up like a four poster from a movie princess’s room, with a purple and pink gauze tent over the head end.

  Polly pulled out a box full of Barbie dolls and began introducing them one by one to Stella, who very seriously shook hands and introduced herself to each of the impossibly long-limbed dolls.

  “So which of these do you want to be when you grow up?” Stella asked. “Air hostess? Doctor? Horse rider? Singer?”

  Polly turned that serious, sober stare on her aunt again.

  “Oh, no. They’re just dolls. When I grow up, I’m going to be a police officer like you. I’m going to arrest burglars and murderers and people who hurt children. Like the people who hurt Lola.”

  Stella’s heart missed a beat; she felt the stutter in her chest like a physical pain. She fought
to keep her voice steady.

  “What do you mean, Polly Wolly Doodle? What people?”

  “You know, silly – bad people. Like when Mummy and Daddy listen on the radio. I’m not supposed to understand, but when I go in for my cuddle in the big bed, sometimes I hear the serious man on the radio who tells the news. He says there are bad people called beaderviles, then Daddy turns it off. Do you ever catch those ones?”

  Stella put out her hands and cradled Polly’s pink cheeks carefully between her palms. So soft, she thought.

  “Sometimes I do. And I have friends in the police force who catch those people especially. You’re not worried, are you?”

  “Oh no,” Polly said, twisting a Barbie’s blonde tresses around her index finger. “Daddy would kill them if they came to our house. He says they should be put down. He had to do that to Barnaby last year.”

  Stella frowned.

  “Barnaby?”

  “He was our dog. He had something growing in his tummy. Not like Mummy. I know all about that. There’s a baby in there because Daddy planted a seed with his willy. But Barnaby had the other thing. A tuna. And Daddy took him to the vet and the vet said she couldn’t take the tuna away so Barnaby had to be put down. And Daddy says they should do that to the beaderviles.”

  The conversation was taking a direction Stella hadn’t anticipated. She’d never got anywhere close to having to discuss these things with Lola and was so far out of her comfort zone she was seriously thinking of rushing downstairs and asking for a drink. Instead she composed herself and changed the subject.

  “Well, you’re very lucky to have a daddy who can protect you, aren’t you? Now, I need a cup of tea and I want to talk to Mummy. Do you want to come down?”

  Polly seemed to have lost interest in the conversation already and was singing quietly to her dolls. She broke off long enough to say a polite, “No, thank you, Auntie Stella,” before resuming crooning to the doll.