by Nick Oldham
Suddenly, Daniels was terrified. Stunned, she placed the phone down in the tray in the centre console of her car just as the driver’s-door window was smashed by Hawkswood’s baton, sending a million crumbs of glass over her. Before she could even react, he ripped open the door and dragged her out on to the ground.
Silverthwaite drew a chair up to Henry, who could see the man’s eye swelling nicely.
‘You’re a bit old for this shit, aren’t you?’ Henry said. ‘What are you, fifty? You must be close to retirement. You must have your thirty in.’
‘That’s the kettle calling the pot black.’
‘I guess it’s a money thing, can’t be anything else really.’ Henry took a punt. ‘This must be a retirement fund. What are you – a gambler, a womanizer, a rent-boy fucker?’
That brought a hard slap.
Henry spat out again, shaking his head. ‘You’re going to have to wash real well, pal. More DNA.’
‘Womanizer,’ Silverthwaite said, ignoring him. ‘And when I’m done here, know where I’m going? I’ll tell you. The Tawny Owl. That landlady looks just my sort of bint. I’m going to enjoy raping her, Henry.’
Although a surge of fury gripped Henry, he said, ‘Best of luck with that, mate. She’ll rip your bollocks off.’
Silverthwaite arched his eyebrows.
‘So which one of you did Mark James Wright? I’m assuming that’s all tied in with this mess you’ll never, ever get out of.’
‘He got wind of a scam – the scam we were pulling with Tom Salter. Wright was going to go to the cops, ironically. We couldn’t discourage him so he had to go.’ Silverthwaite zipped his forefinger across his throat. ‘My mate, DC Hawkswood. Very good with a knife.’
‘And a wrecking bar. Made a mess of Burnham.’
‘Another one who found out or suspected. It’s all too lucrative to let go. Money for nothing, really.’
‘You can’t just keep killing people who discover what you’re up to.’
Silverthwaite looked Henry in the eye and Henry saw pure madness there when he responded, ‘’Course we can.’
Henry laughed, trying to keep his rising fear in check.
‘And why Martin Sowerbutts?’
‘Don’t know what you mean?’
‘Stand by for a shock: I’ve already had a second post-mortem carried out on him.’
‘Liar.’
‘Nah. I know he was murdered. My pathologist knows, my chief knows and I know exactly how much your local tame pathologist was paid to falsify the cause of death … suck on that. I’d get running if I were you. Got a passport ready? Got your money stashed? My advice: do a runner. Now.’ Henry spat blood again. ‘I’ll give you a twenty-four-hour start if you like, just for sport.’
The door to the unit crashed open and Silverthwaite looked up. Hawkswood shoved Daniels through. She crashed to her knees, then on to all fours. Her face was a bloodsoaked mess, as was Hawkswood’s forensic suit. He came around to be side-on to her and delivered a massive kick into her ribs, sending her sprawling and groaning in pain.
‘I’m never going to work with you again, Henry Christie.’
Daniels’ head sagged, her chin close to her chest, blood streaming from her broken nose. Her arms had been bound behind her, then she’d been placed on a chair next to Henry and duct-taped to it.
Henry’s head, too, had dropped. ‘Don’t blame you.’
‘Fuck, Henry … fuck!’
Across the unit, Silverthwaite and Hawkswood were in deep, animated conversation.
Daniels went on, keeping her voice low: ‘He doesn’t know I got into Salter’s office.’
‘Is that a good thing?’
‘I found a phone – Salter’s second phone. It’s still in my car.’
‘Is that good?’
‘Salter hid the phone and recorded footage of his own murder.’
‘That’s good.’
‘He must have feared the worst. Runcie was there. Another guy shot him; I don’t know who he is. Neither of these two, I don’t think. I sent the footage to you and to others. FB, Jerry Tope …’
Henry’s phone beeped. He looked up. The phone was in Silverthwaite’s hand. He looked at what had just landed and Henry could not prevent himself from smiling wickedly as the two men, heads together, watched the video Daniels had sent him from Salter’s phone. Their dumbfounded faces were a picture to behold.
Hawkswood rushed over and grabbed Daniels’ face, crushing it between his fingers. ‘Where’s the phone?’
‘Not gonna lie – in my car. You can have it.’
‘Where the fuck was it hidden?’
‘In his office, behind a vent. And, like I said, you can have my phone. I’ve sent the video to all sorts of people so at the very least, your boss is fucked.’
‘And so, by definition, are you,’ Henry added.
The good-looking man was called Karl Donaldson. He was eating his starter – an old fashioned but brilliant prawn cocktail, made with iceberg lettuce, very seventies. Marie Rose sauce and big fat juicy prawns, all in a cocktail glass. He was also keeping an eye on the situation with Tullane, the woman and the guy who looked like an ageing cop, who was sitting alone at another table.
Donaldson worked for the FBI from the American Embassy in London, where he was a legal attaché. It was a job he’d been doing for many years now but he still loved it. He had once been an operational FBI agent but, when he’d fallen in love with and subsequently married a policewoman from Lancashire who he’d met while investigating mob activity in the north-west of England, he’d landed the London job and never looked back. Now he was happily married with kids that had grown up too fast, and lived in a nice commuting village in Hampshire.
In theory, his operational days were behind him.
In practice, he still enjoyed the occasional foray into the cutting edge and flexing his not inconsiderable muscles.
His job mainly involved intelligence gathering and analysis and delicate liaisons with police forces and other law enforcement organizations across Europe, mostly in connection with terrorism.
That did not mean to say that ‘normal’ criminals were sidelined – and people like Barney Tullane always remained on the list of people of interest to the feds.
Donaldson had never personally encountered Tullane but knew who he was, because Donaldson always spent any spare time he had, which was very little, leafing through intelligence dossiers and mugshot books of known villains.
So he knew Tullane was a low-level operator, though with links to top-flight Mafia bosses in New York and Las Vegas. He was a scam artist, known for setting up deals through shell companies, taking money from innocent, though usually greedy victims and disappearing into the ether. Donaldson recalled that Tullane had been spotted in Europe a few times and there were unconfirmed rumours that his bosses were linked to the very lucrative human-trafficking trade that was like a cancer in Europe, and that Tullane was a fixer in the chain, though it remained only speculation.
It was by pure chance that an FBI surveillance team had tailed another ‘person of interest’ (read, terrorist) to JFK airport in New York, and one eagle-eyed member of the team had spotted Tullane at the baggage check-in for a Manchester flight. The agent had found the details and passed them on routinely, though quickly, to the FBI office in London who, of course, had no one to meet the flight in Manchester, except that Karl Donaldson was taking a short break visiting his wife’s mother, who still lived in Lancashire. Knowing this, and Donaldson’s keenness, his secretary contacted him with the information on Tullane’s flight.
Donaldson had thanked her and then looked at his wife and mother-in-law. He had hoped to spend a little time on his rare visit north with his old, good friend Henry Christie, but it looked as though it was not to be. Donaldson and Henry had met all those years before when the American had met his wife-to-be. The mother-in-law thing had been taking up all his time and he was desperate to get a break from it. If he could not get to see Henry
, then the Tullane visit was a damned good excuse to get that break.
With a sad face, Donaldson broke the news that work wanted him to go to the airport and, if necessary, do a bit of legwork following Tullane.
His wife saw straight through the lie and told him to go, wishing that the FBI had asked her instead, as her mother was just on the verge of intolerability.
Which is how and why he came to be at the airport watching a man with a backpack come out of the Arrivals gate, and because of Donaldson’s file and face-reading hobby, he had also recognized that young man as one of Tullane’s lieutenants – a dangerous killer called Tommy Dawson who liked shooting holes in people.
Tullane had been met by the guy who looked like a cop, been taken to a car in the short-stay car park and driven away. Donaldson had lost track of Dawson because he decided to stick with Tullane instead, who was the main man. And that journey took him across northern England to the Metropole Hotel in Portsea and the eventual meetup of Tullane and the woman called Runcie.
Even though Donaldson had lost Dawson, he was pretty sure he would not be too far away, but Donaldson had enough street skills to know that he had not been noticed by Tullane or Dawson.
He finished his prawn cocktail and pretended to check his phone just at the same moment the woman took another call on hers.
She rose out of her chair when the phone vibrated in her handbag. She smiled apologetically at Tullane and said, ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She left the restaurant and took the call in the bar.
‘What’s happening?’ she demanded.
Henry watched Silverthwaite make the call. He assumed he was speaking to Runcie, but could have been wrong. Silverthwaite moved to the far corner of the unit, keeping his voice low but urgent and Henry, whose ears were still ringing from his battering, could not hear a word of what was being said.
He guessed there was bad news being passed, but it still did not mean that he and Daniels would walk out of this place, wherever the hell it was. Henry had no idea. These people had resorted to the most terrible acts of violence to protect their criminal endeavours. Henry hoped for them they thought it had all been worthwhile.
Yet, other than finding out what had happened to Sowerbutts, Henry himself had not really discovered anything. Runcie could have bluffed her way out of that one, as could the pathologist, by saying he was having a bad day. And maybe, if the custody sergeant hadn’t been so eager to lock him in a cell and panic, then maybe Runcie could have blagged her way out of that one too. Maybe.
But Daniels’ discovery was dynamite and was the real game changer, even though Henry had yet to see it and might never see it, because he truly thought he was going to end up dead in a field with his brains blown out alongside Daniels.
‘You did a good job,’ Henry said to her. ‘Just want you to know that.’
‘Thanks. I still won’t work with you again.’
‘I know. I get it.’
Silverthwaite’s phone call ended. He walked to Henry and Daniels.
‘Have you just booked your flight out of here?’ Henry asked, and giggled slightly hysterically. No point not laughing now. He heard Daniels chuckle.
Silverthwaite scowled but said nothing. He tapped Hawkswood on the shoulder and beckoned him out of earshot of the two prisoners. They had another huddled conversation.
‘They’re screwed and they know it,’ Henry muttered.
‘Oh, good,’ she said.
Henry had to turn his head to look at her properly. Her head was still hanging loose to her chest, blood still drizzling from her nose, completely saturating her jacket and blouse. Her breathing was a gurgling noise.
‘Hang in there,’ he urged her.
‘I intend to,’ she told him.
He looked across at the two detectives, then sat a little more upright when he saw them both peel off their forensic suits, step out of them, roll them into balls and throw them down.
Without making any eye contact with Henry or Daniels, they walked past them, out through the door of the unit, and were gone.
TWENTY
The issue uppermost in Karl Donaldson’s mind as he watched Tullane and the woman, plus the other guy, leave the restaurant was that Tommy Dawson would probably, unknown to the woman and the guy, have Tullane’s back. He would be secreted somewhere out there, watching and ready to protect him at a signal from Tullane. It might even have been that Tullane and Dawson were linked via radio mikes, Dawson could hear every word being said and be ready to react in an instant.
Though Donaldson was certain he himself had not been ‘made’, getting up and following these characters was a dicey game that could easily blow his cover. In some respects, that would not necessarily be a terrible thing. It might prevent Tullane from doing whatever it was he had come to this country for, though that was not Donaldson’s preferred option. He wanted to catch Tullane with his fingers in the till.
It might also make Donaldson vulnerable, even though he had no fear of coming up against people like Tullane or Dawson, but even Donaldson could not deflect a bullet as he had once found out, much to his chagrin, when face-to-face with a desperate terrorist in Barcelona some years ago.
And nor was he armed.
He watched the trio pause in the entrance foyer of the hotel.
For his main course, he had ordered a T-bone, and the serrated steak knife had already been placed on the table. He picked it up and slid it, blade upwards, up his jacket sleeve. He stood up and walked out of the restaurant, having noticed that Tullane had peeled off and gone towards the toilets at the back of Reception.
The woman and her companion were having a hurried conversation.
Donaldson walked past them and out of the hotel into the chill night. Being exposed on a headland, the blast of air from the North Sea made him shiver and button up his jacket.
His car, a four-wheel-drive Jeep, was in the far corner of the big car park. Keeping his head down against the wind, he headed towards it but at the same time checked the car park for any sign of Tommy Dawson, who was maybe hunched in a car or hiding in a shadow somewhere.
As Donaldson climbed into his car, he spotted a leather-clad motorcyclist astride a fairly big-looking machine tucked up on the side street at the northern gable end of the hotel. Though in leathers, bulking him up, and wearing a helmet, Donaldson thought it could be Tommy Dawson.
If it was, Donaldson knew he had revealed his hand and could not just sit all innocent in his car and wait for Tullane to come out. He now had to drive away, make a decision about where to park up and hope he hadn’t screwed up his chances of finding out what Tullane was up to.
He swore softly, started up and flicked on his lights.
Pulling out of his parking spot, he was relieved to see Tullane and the two others walking down the front steps, getting into a Citroën Picasso parked in the pull-in directly outside the hotel. The woman got behind the wheel, Tullane slid in alongside her and the other guy got in the back seat.
As the Citroën moved away, the motorbike fired up and the rider dropped his visor down. Donaldson had purposely crawled across the car park and stopped at the exit. The Citroën drove directly past him just as the motorcyclist crept out of the side street and followed the Citroën.
Reluctantly, Donaldson had to turn in the opposite direction, but not before the biker had gone past him and lit up his headlights. He was certain it was Dawson.
Donaldson turned into the street from which Dawson had just come. It was narrow, with cars parked on either side; however, he mounted the kerb in a gap and swung the big car around in a fast five-point turn, powered back, then went in the direction taken by the Citroën and the motorbike. It made no difference to Donaldson that he knew nothing about the geography of Portsea. From here on in would be guesswork, luck and maybe a little cunning.
Tullane glanced in the passenger-door mirror and was relieved to see the headlights of the motorbike some distance behind.
He was sure Runcie hadn’t noticed th
e follower, but could not be sure about the guy in the back seat whose name was Saul.
‘I intend to show you just how in control of this I am,’ Runcie was saying earnestly to him while driving.
He was becoming less impressed by the minute, feeling very uncomfortable by the claims that she had a lid on everything.
Maybe the time had come to cut loose. If so, it was a decision he would make that would be understood and accepted by his bosses back home. His finger was on the pulse and he had been responsible for setting up the whole business anyway. Now it seemed that the good times were over. He was the one who had been working among the foreign gang on behalf of his bosses, helping to arrange transport for illegals across from Europe into the UK, usually via shady haulage and shipping companies such as the business run by Tom Salter; part of that was the reverse scam back to Europe, which meant that in a very short space of time they had grossed somewhere in the region of ten million dollars, of which Tullane had skimmed about twenty-five per cent for himself and his bosses. It had been a good two-way trade – never an empty truck.
Runcie and her corrupt crew had become involved when the cops carried out raids in connection with modern slavery, which resulted in her coming into contact with Salter. She had been greedy, easy to bribe, happy to turn a blind eye but also to get involved with the machinery plant side of the business, setting up the non-existent companies and running their short-lived lives with her own equally greedy and corrupt nucleus of detectives and other cops. She was a cold-steel person with no conscience, just an insatiable desire for wealth.
Perfect fodder for people like Tullane.
Cops on the books were always a good thing.
However, things had started to go awry when that eagle-eyed contractor became suspicious, was immune to bribery and threated to find some honest cops.
He’d had to be disposed of. And Runcie had been given the word. A simple job for one of her cronies. The man had been lured to an isolated location and simply stabbed to death. End of problem – especially as Runcie was in charge of the subsequent murder investigation.