by Nick Oldham
‘Always.’
‘Contract or pay as you go?’
‘I … I don’t know.’
‘But he definitely set off with two phones in his possession?’ Daniels asked to confirm, and Miriam nodded. Daniels knew that only one phone had been listed in Salter’s possessions, so the other was missing. The questions for Daniels at that point were is it missing or has it been destroyed and was it critical to the investigation – or was it just a red herring? Would it reveal any clues as to who Salter had been in contact with that day? They were all important things for her to get answers for. She asked Miriam to give her the number of the missing phone.
‘Right. Please stay here, will you?’ she asked of the three women. They said they would. ‘There’s a few things I need to do, one of which is get my boss up here … and I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ She left, hurrying back to her car. In it, she made another call to Henry, which also went straight to voicemail.
This time she left a message. ‘Boss, it’s Diane. Look, I’ve discovered that Salter had two phones – one business, one private. As far as I can tell, it’s the business one listed in his property … anyway, I’m just going on a hunch first. I’m going to see if I can get into his office and see if the missing phone’s in there, maybe fallen down a crack or something. Wouldn’t surprise me if these local tossers didn’t find it. Then I need to speak to you urgently, face-to-face. I’ve a lot to tell you. Ring me when you get this. Cheers.’
She ended the call and sped away.
EIGHTEEN
Henry stood on the cell bench with his mobile phone in hand, reaching high towards the ceiling, trying to get a signal on the fucking thing.
Not a chance.
He dropped back to the floor and walked to the door, kicking it repeatedly, thumping it with the side of his fist and jabbing the call button but got no response, then he attempted to peer through the peephole. The two-pence piece was still in place and effectively blocked any view.
He swore furiously, then sat back on the bench, hoping to get at least one bar of signal on his phone. It never came.
He sat and waited, knowing they would come.
On the wall, his eye caught some words gouged into the plaster by a previous occupant: All coppers are basturds.
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ he muttered.
The best hotel in Portsea was the Metropole, a huge, five-star monstrosity on a headland overlooking the North Sea. It had been recently refurbished for countless millions by a well-known chain and had only just reopened its doors to guests. There were three dining rooms. The one simply named A-la-C had already started to build a reputation for excellent, if simple, dining.
DCI Jane Runcie sat in the bar next to A-la-C sipping a vodka Martini which tasted of ice and spices. She sat atop a barstool and wore a split skirt displaying her shapely legs all the way up to the enticing top and also, just as tantalizing, was her blouse, which displayed her just-right boobs, hitched up for best effect.
Although she had rushed to get ready, she looked sheer class and the epitome of cool, even if below the surface veneer of nice tits and fanny, her mind was a churning clutter.
The thing was – she was certain – that shit-faced cunt of a detective superintendent called Henry Christie did not yet know a fucking thing about a fucking thing, but she could tell he was on the cusp of discovery, which is why she felt she’d had to act so quickly in the Salter murder investigation, because that clearly was not going to go away any time soon.
Thank fuck, she thought – she always ‘thought’ in foul expletives – she’d had the foresight to snaffle that Makarov.
It had proved to be a godsend; the thing she hoped would save the day and head that fucker off at the pass, as it were.
Many months earlier, following national initiatives, there had been a firearms amnesty across the county and the no-questions-asked bin at Portsea nick had been inundated with guns of all makes and sizes. No questions did not actually mean not having each weapon analysed to check if it had been involved in serious offences.
Runcie had been in charge of the administration of the firearms amnesty – even making a plea on local TV – and it hadn’t been difficult for her to palm the Makarov out of the system without anyone knowing.
Access to an illegal firearm, she’d speculated, could be useful at some juncture, just one of those things on the backburner for later use if necessary. Corrupt cops needed to keep their options open.
So when the decision had been made above her head to kill Salter, that was when the gun – which had been handed in fully loaded and with a full spare magazine – came into its own.
Obviously she had been in a position to take charge of the murder investigation due to a lack of superintendent SIOs and had promised Tullane she could control the fallout. When the bullets that had been shot into Salter had been analysed, she’d been as surprised as anyone that they matched a bullet taken from the leg of a wounded security guard injured during an armed robbery from way back, and for which no one had been arrested.
She had thought everything was under control. That also included the murder of Mark James Wright, whose correct suspicions that he was being scammed had got him knifed to death before he got the chance to blow the whistle (another murder she’d been put in charge of). She’d thought she was outwardly showing she was doing everything to solve these jobs, though pleading that, even sometimes, one’s best is not good enough. It helped that her force was falling apart at the seams in many other ways, so it was easy to deflect interest away from a couple of murder investigations to the other stuff that was going on – like funding being reduced and morale being at an all-time low.
That was until the arrival of John Burnham, the new chief constable, who wanted renewed efforts to be made into solving unsolved murders, of which there were six in the force, a very big number compared to the force’s size. Four had nothing to do with Runcie. They’d occurred in other divisions. Two, of course, had.
Burnham sent Jack Culver to check up and see why no results were forthcoming.
He got too close, too quickly, to the truth.
The problem then was that Runcie did not know how much Culver had revealed to Burnham.
It escalated horribly, and Runcie knew it had to be nipped in the bud by dealing with both Culver and Burnham, under the assumption that whatever Culver knew had only got as far as Burnham.
Unfortunately she hadn’t been quick enough to get to Burnham before he got across to Lancashire and engaged the services of Henry Christie.
What she had wanted to do with Christie – thinking on her feet – was to demonstrate that all was well in both investigations. They were proceeding well, even if results were not forthcoming.
Christie’s problem – having survived a fall down some cellar steps – was that he was simply a nosy fuck-twat and he’d arrived at the force at an inopportune moment because of Runcie’s current dealings with sex offender Sowerbutts. Runcie almost had a heart attack when he turned up at the scene of Sowerbutts’ spectacular cliff suicide and then insisted on attending the PM. Hopefully that had all been covered up nicely.
Planting the gun under Milner’s shed was done on the hoof, swiftly followed by his arrest on suspicion of murder, prompted by an anonymous call to Crimestoppers, which she had made.
Milner had been as good a choice as anyone.
Known to be violent, known to use firearms, known to rob people. He was a brilliant suspect and Runcie had been quietly chuffed by her choice, but was then blindsided by Christie wanting to observe the interviews, which therefore had to be played by the book.
Her face twitched at the thought.
However, she was again sure she’d pulled the whole thing off and that her acting had been of an Oscar-winning standard.
Tullane entered the bar, ending her musings.
As ever, he looked immaculate. Beautiful suit, well-trimmed hair and goatee beard, just under fifty years old and six feet tall. He was walki
ng ahead of Silverthwaite, who had picked him up from Manchester airport, driven him back and settled him in the Metropole – under an assumed identity.
Runcie slid from the stool and slinked towards him. She knew he would have to be kept very sweet that night, as ever, and they would end up back in his room later, where she would give him the fuck of his life, as she had done many times before.
‘Mr Tullane,’ she cooed quietly, stretching out her hand.
‘Ms Runcie.’ He kissed the back of it and they turned back to the bar.
None of them had noticed the tall, good-looking man sitting in a dark alcove in the corner of the bar, sipping iced water, nibbling nuts and constantly reading the menu, but whose clear blue eyes were watching every move being made.
Runcie’s phone was on the bar, vibrating as a call came in. She glanced at Tullane. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ’head.’
Runcie crushed the phone to her ear and stalked across the bar to within earshot of the man tipping the water.
‘What the hell do you want?’ she whispered, then listened. ‘Fuck, fuck … you’ve done what? Fuck me!’ Her eyes briefly caught those of the unknown man and she whirled away, dropping her voice even further. ‘Keep him … I’ll send Silverthwaite and Hawkswood over. Yeah, yeah, you did right. Don’t panic.’
The good-looking man observed Runcie’s demeanour change dramatically from chic cool to cold dread. As she ended the call, she visibly got a grip of herself, ran her hands down her thighs and shuddered. Her face changed from a snarl to an alluring smile. Once more, she caught the eye of the man in the alcove.
‘Fuck you looking at, shit-head?’ she demanded of him. He raised his hands defensively. She jerked him the finger, said, ‘Swivel,’ then walked back to Tullane at the bar.
Tullane asked, ‘Problem?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
Henry Christie shivered. It was chilly in the cell and, as he sat there, he had time to explore how his body was feeling. From the bullet wound to the knocks and bruises sustained in the fall, to the bang from the assault on the riverside. On the whole, it all felt fairly grotty. Assessment over.
He turned his mind to his present predicament and how he had managed to end up locked in a cell.
What should have been a routine job to provide a bit of a helping hand to a struggling police force had turned out to be something very different. He still hadn’t joined all the dots; if, in fact, there were connections at all.
Two murders, both unsolved, seemingly bearing no relation to each other, except the police investigation into them both was shit-poor.
Or perhaps the phrase should have been deliberately poor.
Clearly the local cops were unsettled by his and Daniels’ appearance on the scene.
Unsettled enough to try and ensure they never made it to Portsea in the first place by pushing him down a set of steps? By slashing tyres? By ambushing Daniels?
By killing their chief constable?
And the black man and white man in the Vauxhall.
Who were they? Were they the false ‘reps’ who’d turned up at The Tawny Owl? Had to be, had to be.
Shit. Fancy being pushed into a cell.
He heard footsteps approaching, voices down the cell corridor.
A key being inserted into the door.
Henry stood up slowly, knowing the answers to all of his questions were on the other side.
The man in the alcove who had watched Tullane walk into the bar and meet the woman with a bad attitude knew who Tullane was.
He had no idea who the woman was, nor the man who’d walked into the bar behind Tullane, though he did catch the woman’s name – Ms Runcie – as spoken by Tullane. The man with Tullane had the air of a senior cop and, if that assumption was right, was the woman also a cop? And, if so, why was Tullane meeting her?
That wasn’t the only question on the man’s mind.
To all intents and purposes, Tullane had arrived in this country alone, but the man knew this was not the case.
Because while waiting for Tullane’s appearance through the arrival gates at Manchester airport, another man had walked out well ahead of all the passengers on that flight carrying only hand luggage, and the man, sitting in the Costa café opposite the gates, had recognized him. His instinct told him something was going to happen.
He sipped his coffee and watched the first man through take up a position by one of the pillars so he could observe all the other arrivals coming through the gate.
The man drinking coffee did not know this guy personally, but had seen his photograph on many occasions and knew he was a killer. There was a smile on his face and excitement coursing through his body. Back at the sharp end, he thought.
‘Shall we dine?’ Tullane asked. He gave a slight, graceful bow and gestured for Runcie to lead him through to the restaurant. Once seated, they ordered wine and food and, after these preliminaries and when the waiter was no longer in earshot, Tullane said, ‘Speak to me.’
‘Everything’s good,’ she promised.
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘What have you heard?’
‘That you’ve lost control of things. That what you promised could be controlled hasn’t been. That your days are numbered,’ he concluded bleakly.
Runcie raised her wine glass to her lips, desperate to stop her hands shaking.
‘Who’ve you heard this from?’
‘Sources, but none of your business. So, what I need now, Ms Runcie, is reassurance. Reassurance that you can tighten everything up and find another reliable transporter.’
‘I can do all of those things. In fact,’ she smiled in anticipation, ‘I will demonstrate the level of my control later on this evening.’ She tilted her glass towards him, then took a sip.
The good-looking man entered the restaurant and sat alone at a table.
The cell door swung open and, in spite of the predicament, Henry almost had to laugh.
Instead, he said, ‘I could have sworn you were agricultural reps,’ to the pair of men who had tried that subterfuge on their visit to The Tawny Owl. ‘But no, let me guess.’ He pointed to the taller of the two men staring menacingly on the threshold. ‘You’re Silverthwaite, and you’ – he pointed to the smaller, stocky one – ‘have got to be Hawkswood, DS and DC respectively.’
He’d memorized the names from his mooch around the CID office and knew he had a fifty/fifty chance of getting the name-game right. Although the two men tried to cover it, his knowledge put anxious expressions on their face, and he knew he’d got the names the right way round.
‘You’re a smart arse,’ Silverthwaite said.
‘Which one of you pushed me down the steps?’
Hawkswood grinned and said, ‘That’d be me.’ He stuck out his tongue at Henry, who could clearly see the deep bite marks across it, still seeping blood. It looked very painful and Henry vividly remembered Daniels’ thrust of the heel of her hand up into the chin of her attacker on the track by the river. Henry went cold and became even more furious, if that was possible. ‘And you attacked a lone woman. Hey, you’re two brave guys.’
Henry’s eyes dropped and caught sight of the extendable batons each man held down by his side.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ the Lanky One sneered.
‘Good at slashing car tyres too.’ Henry looked at Hawkswood. ‘Yeah, I managed to get that video … I assume you’re the dim muscle in this partnership?’
‘Like I said, you don’t know the half of it,’ Silverthwaite reiterated, trying to get ahead of the game.
‘I think I do,’ Henry corrected him. ‘Well, now I do. Which of you whacked your chief constable?’ he punted, recalling what Rik Dean had told him about a white man and a black man having been seen in a car close to Burnham’s mother’s house. ‘What was it? A wrecking bar?’
Silverthwaite, obviously the senior of the two and the leader, let his mouth sag. ‘Maybe you do know too much.’
&
nbsp; ‘The net, as they say, is tightening, you pair of dim twats.’
‘Where is Daniels?’ Hawkswood demanded.
‘Fucked if I’d tell you even if I knew … Look, guys, it’s time to start acting like big boys now. Let me out. Let’s get this all sorted before it goes too far.’ Henry knew it had gone too far already. Even so, he walked confidently towards them.
Hawkswood moved first. He contorted menacingly past Silverthwaite, gave his baton a flick with his wrist, extending it with a metallic snap, and in the same movement it arced through the air and struck Henry on the left bicep – hard. The pain of the blow resonated down to his fingertips and also across his chest up to his right shoulder. He gasped, clutched his arm and staggered sideways against the cell wall, cowering as the next blow came, hitting him in exactly the same spot, sending equally painful tremors across his body. He made to turn away and raised his left forearm to protect himself, but Hawkswood was fast and proficient and pounded the baton against Henry’s arm. Henry dropped to his knees and tried to go into a protective ball.
Hawkswood dragged him to his feet.
Henry swayed unsteadily, his whole body encased in sheer agony from the blows.
And he was afraid.
Hawkswood stuck out his ragged, bloody tongue again and spat blood on to Henry’s chest.
Then he dropped the baton with a clatter, curled his right hand into a very big fist and smashed it into Henry’s right shoulder, again and again, until Henry was back down on his knees, cowering and whimpering.
‘That’ll do.’ Silverthwaite placed a hand on Hawkswood’s shoulder, holding him back. ‘Let’s get him out of here first.’
Silverthwaite flat-footed Henry with contempt over on to the floor while Hawkswood flipped him on to his front and bent his arms around his back. Henry cried out. Then he was handcuffed and the position of his arms up his back tore at his wounded shoulder agonizingly.
Hawkswood smeared a ready-cut length of duct tape over Henry’s mouth.
‘Put a spit hood on him, too,’ Silverthwaite said.
Next thing, Henry felt a thin mesh hood being placed over his head.