by LJ Ross
“It’s getting harder to trace the money, too,” said one of the members of the Fraud Squad he recognised as DI Anika Salam, who he’d worked with many times before. She might have been softly spoken, but Ryan knew her to be a first-rate detective with a solid track record. “They’re recruiting kids to act as go-betweens, so the dealers don’t have to touch the money. They send ten-year-olds to do their dirty work, then find some poor, vulnerable person’s home and move themselves in.”
“Cuckooing,” Gallagher added. “Happens all the time.”
Ryan nodded, and then looked around the room with stormy eyes.
“The buck stops here,” he said. “It’s up to us to put an end to this.”
“As soon as you pull one weed, another one springs up,” one of the Vice Squad muttered. “Today, it’s the Smoggies. Tomorrow, it’ll be something else.”
Ryan couldn’t argue with that. At times, he’d battled his own crushing sense of disillusionment, and had lain awake wondering why it was human nature for some people to inflict misery and destruction while others worked to prevent it. He still didn’t have the answer to that question, but he knew that apathy would never be an option.
“There’ll always be something or somebody new,” he said, with quiet conviction. “There’ll be other weeds to pull, but that’s the job we signed up for. We agreed to be the constant gardeners.”
He nodded towards the words he’d written on the board, in black and white.
“We agreed to be the watchmen.”
* * *
While Ryan battled outmoded attitudes and internal politics, Joan Watson awakened to a world of pain.
“Mum? Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids fluttered and her head turned towards the sound of her daughter’s voice.
Is she alright? Did she hear?
“I—I can hear,” she croaked.
“Mum! Oh, thank God. Thank God.”
Joan opened her eyes and immediately shut them again, finding the light inside the private hospital room unbearably bright.
“Shut the curtains!” Sally barked out another brisk order, and dabbed at the tears which leaked from her mother’s eyes. “Mum? The curtains are closed, now. Try opening your eyes again.”
Taking comfort from her daughter’s strong, authoritative voice, Joan blinked several times until the faces huddling around her began to come into focus.
“How are you feeling?”
This, from her son, Simon, who was seated on the visitor’s chair on the other side of the bed.
“Everything hurts,” she said, trying to swallow the ash in her throat.
“Pass her some water,” Sally demanded of her brother, barely stifling a sigh as he made a clumsy grab for the jug of lukewarm water and sloshed some of the liquid into a cup. “Can you go and find a nurse? We need to see about increasing her pain medication. Mum’s obviously in agony.”
Simon Watson mumbled something beneath his breath and left the room, presumably to do his sister’s bidding.
When Sally turned back, her face was deliberately cheerful.
“You’re doing so well,” she said, fiddling with the covers on the bed. “The doctors weren’t sure…they said it might take much longer for you to come around. But I told them, you’re as strong as an ox.”
If Joan had been in any doubt before, her daughter’s artificial cheerfulness was all the answer she needed.
Alan was dead.
“How’s your da’?” she forced herself to ask.
Sally’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. She reached out to cradle her mother’s hand, stopping short as she remembered the bandages protecting her burnt skin.
“He—Dad didn’t survive the fire,” she choked out.
Joan’s eyes glazed for a moment, confusion warring with grief, then let out a harsh sob that ricocheted around the bland, hospital walls.
Alan.
Oh, Alan.
Just then, Simon re-entered the room. He was joined by a nurse and another man she recognised as her daughter’s husband, Michael Emerson.
“Looking good, Joanie,” he lied, with his usual aplomb. “You’ll be out of here in no time!”
“Shut up, Mike,” Sally muttered, and blew her nose loudly. “Nobody wants platitudes at a time like this.”
“I’m just trying to keep things light,” he said, defensively.
“Light?” Sally was incredulous, and then her face set into knowing lines. “You took your time getting here, didn’t you? What was it this time? Traffic?”
Mike reddened, just a fraction.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said, forgetting that it was mid-morning and no longer rush hour. “I got here as quickly as I could.”
Joan cast her son-in-law a weary glance, cataloguing the unremarkable attributes of a middle-aged, portly man who’d gone prematurely bald soon after his twenty-fifth birthday, as she recalled. For all that, he was part of their family, and there was nothing more important to her than family.
“I—I tried to get Alan out,” she gasped. “I tried—”
“Shh, Mum. Don’t upset yourself,” Simon murmured, while the nurse fiddled with the drip next to her bed. “You did everything you could to save Dad. It’s a miracle you got him out and survived.”
Joan’s hands began to shake as her body remembered the trauma and exhaustion of dragging Alan’s inert body through the flames and out of the house. The smell was still in her nostrils, the stench of burning wood, burning plastic and…
Burning flesh.
“I thought it would be the mine that killed him,” she whispered, so softly the others strained to hear. “Thirty years down a pit bringing up coal was dangerous, back-breaking work. But, when the mines closed, that’s when I knew.”
She fell silent.
“What did you know?” Sally prompted.
“I knew it would be the drink that killed him, in the end.”
The others exchanged a glance, hardly knowing what to say. Eventually, Simon broke the silence.
“We don’t know how the fire started,” he said. “The police are still looking into it.”
Joan’s mind began to float away, as the new dose of pain medication started to kick in.
“I told him to be careful,” she slurred. “I told him—”
Her voice faded as she slipped back into oblivion.
CHAPTER 5
At Northumbria Police Headquarters, Ryan continued to field questions about bureaucratic targets and chains of command from the confines of Conference Room A. The sun continued to blaze, more strongly than before as it climbed higher in the sky, and the blinds had been firmly drawn so as not to distract those present from the job in hand. Alongside an unreliable air conditioning system, the heat served to create a unique aroma that circled the room and, as Phillips would later comment, it was deserving of its own criminal code. Although largely desensitized to malodour, Ryan was spurred to move the general discussion on to what he considered to be the ‘real’ business of policing sooner rather than later.
“How come Major Crimes is taking the lead on this, then? Seems a job for Special Ops, if y’ask me,” one bright spark was bound to ask.
Ryan was unfazed.
“The Chief Constable has asked Major Crimes—and me, in particular—to assume responsibility for leading this operation, not only because of the overwhelming increase in gang-related murders in the area, but because of the connection to several linked investigations on our books dating back to Moffa’s day,” he said, referring to the area’s former gangland kingpin.
He flipped open a cardboard file on the desk at the front of the room and pulled out a single, blown-up photograph of a man, which he tacked onto the centre of the whiteboard.
“This is Paul Evershed, more commonly known by his street name, ‘Ludo’.”
Instantly, there were murmurs of recognition. The man known as ‘Ludo’—thanks to an unfortunate predilection for Quaaludes back in the eighties—was i
nfamous. He’d been the late Jimmy Moffa’s right-hand man and, in addition to any number of less glamorous murders and grievous assaults, he’d been a key player in the high-profile escape of one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers, The Hacker. Ludo had been on the run since then and remained one of the country’s Top Ten Most Wanted Criminals. Every officer in the room knew that, if he was involved with the Smoggie gang, the stakes just got much higher.
“Our informants told us he was down on the Costa Brava,” a man Ryan knew to be Detective Inspector Paul Coates called out. He was Gallagher’s senior from the Drugs Squad, and generally known to be mild-mannered and approachable, having seen most things during his thirty years on the Force.
“If he was, he isn’t any more,” Ryan replied. “We have reason to believe Ludo has been involved in the murder of one or more known drug dealers right here, in the North East.”
“Aye, I know the ones. But, surely, Evershed would be smart enough never to show his face around these parts again?” Coates remarked. “He’s not exactly inconspicuous, is he? Any copper within a hundred-mile radius would know him on sight.”
Ryan nodded. It was true that, at a muscular six feet five, with a weathered, pock-marked face, Paul Evershed was not easily forgotten.
“We don’t know why Ludo’s come back,” he admitted. “But we have a number of witness sightings of somebody fitting his description, in connection with at least three murders.”
Ryan sought out Lowerson, who was seated on the front row between MacKenzie and Phillips, Yates having chosen to sit in the row behind.
“Detective Constable Jack Lowerson from my team in Major Crimes has been Acting SIO on three of the most recent murders,” he said. “Those murders now fall under the broader remit of OPERATION WATCHMAN, so it would be helpful for us to have a reminder of what his investigation uncovered before we move forward. Jack?”
Lowerson ran his fingers through his hair, then heaved himself up from an uncomfortable plastic tub chair to join Ryan at the front of the room.
“Thank you, sir.”
He faced his friends and colleagues, who waited patiently for him to begin, and found himself momentarily lost for words. There was a constriction in his throat and, as his eyes skittered over the crowd to rest on Melanie Yates, it became painful.
“I—ah, thank you,” he said again, and licked his lips. “Over the last week or so, myself and Acting Detective Constable Melanie Yates have led an investigation into three murders we believe to be connected. In each case, a man’s body was found fully or partially nude, badly beaten and with all identifying traces removed, including fingertips. The bodies were recovered from various dump sites, none of which the forensic team believe to have been the same site where the victims were killed. Little or no DNA has been recovered—”
Yates was frowning at him, and he began to stammer.
“Ah, th-that said, we were able to identify each of the men given their previous involvement with the police over the years. For example, the most recent victim, Daniel “The Demon” Hepple, was already well-known to us. He had an extensive record for dealing and possession, aggravated assault and other violent crimes, so we were able to enter and search Hepple’s home in Whitley Bay quite soon after his body was found. We believe that his assailant entered via the back door, which was smashed in, and that Hepple was attacked in his kitchen according to the blood spatter pattern identified by the forensics team.”
“Any other DNA?” Ryan asked, but Lowerson shook his head.
“Unfortunately, our search did not yield DNA belonging to Paul Evershed, which we already have on file for comparison. However, door-to-door enquiries threw up several witness sightings of a man in the area matching Ludo’s description, as well as some CCTV footage we were able to recover. We received similar witness statements with almost identical descriptions following the other murders, too. However, that’s all circumstantial.”
From her position in the audience, Yates waited for Lowerson to mention the ladies’ knickers and burner mobile found at Hepple’s home address, both of which were a vital link connecting Daniel Hepple to Bobby Singh, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist they strongly suspected as being a founding member, if not the founding member, of the Smoggies. They had already established that the burner mobile belonged to Singh’s girlfriend, Rochelle, who had been conducting an affair with Hepple before he died. When they’d tracked the woman down only days ago, she’d been terrified that Singh had got wind of the affair and ordered Hepple’s death, and, if that was the case, equally terrified of any further ramifications for herself. They’d hoped to convince Rochelle to become an informant for their team and it had seemed possible that she would agree.
Except, Rochelle hadn’t been answering her phone, lately.
Another thing to worry about.
Yates said none of this, and was relieved when Ryan saved her the trouble. He was, of course, already fully briefed on their investigation but it was important to share any leads with the rest of the task force.
“Wasn’t there a burner mobile found at the victim’s home?”
Lowerson shifted his feet, feeling sweat begin to pool at the base of his spine.
“Yes, sir. There was a burner mobile found at Hepple’s address, but the investigation is still ongoing—”
“The mobile belonged to a person of interest, sir,” Yates interjected, still struggling to understand why Jack was being so evasive when the very success of the operation depended on transparency. “We also recovered personal items from Hepple’s home, which we assume belong to the same individual, but we’ve been unable to confirm that without obtaining their consent to provide a DNA sample.”
Ryan made a rumbling sound of agreement.
“Aside from not producing voluntary DNA, is this POI willing to co-operate?” he asked, looking between them both. “Are we talking about a suspect, or an informant?”
When Jack didn’t answer, Yates picked up the baton again.
“Our working theory is that the individual is not a likely suspect, but may prove to be a useful asset to our investigation as an informant. For that reason, we’re continuing to protect their name and any identifiable details, sir.”
“Understood,” Ryan said, flicking an interested glance between the pair of them. “Keep working on it, Yates.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryan turned back to Lowerson, who looked positively unwell.
“What else can you tell us about Hepple’s known associates? How can we be sure that Ludo is connected?”
Lowerson recovered himself.
“We’ve been working closely with colleagues in the Drugs Squad,” he said, with a nod towards Gallagher and Coates, who were seated at the edge of the room, nearest the door. “As far as we know, Hepple is believed to have had a longstanding connection with the Moffa brothers. They are no longer active, and we assume they’ve been turfed out. If we further assume the Smoggies were responsible for that, it would be a safe bet that Hepple transferred his allegiance to them.”
“In that case, why kill him?” somebody else asked. “If Hepple was a successful dealer, with a long track record of loyal service, he’d be a key player in the Smoggies. Why kill him, unless there was some kind of serious infraction?”
“Hepple died around the time the circus came back to town,” Phillips put in, thinking of the travelling circus owned by Samantha’s late father. “The return of the circus after eight years of being away would’ve opened up a new supply chain for anybody looking to expand their business,” he explained, for any slow learners in the room.
“Or somebody who planned to set up shop on their own,” Ryan surmised. “Defection wouldn’t go down well with the ruling gang.”
“Sir, we can’t be sure that Hepple was planning to strike out on his own,” Lowerson said, shifting his feet as pain radiated through his injured leg.
Ryan noticed the action and frowned, lifting a chin towards the chair he had vacated
earlier.
“Have a seat,” he murmured, but Lowerson gave a subtle shake of his head.
“Thank you, sir, but I’m fine standing.”
“The kid’s right,” Gallagher intoned, his gravelly voice interrupting any further argument. “At this point, we don’t know for sure that Ludo killed Hepple, and we don’t know for sure it was because they were planning to set up on their own. It’s all conjecture. Sounds like a dead-end, if y’ask me.”
Ryan gave him another mild smile, then reached for his folder to draw out another photograph, this time of a much younger man somewhere in his thirties. He had the glossy good looks and grooming of a premiership footballer, and the dark, almost black eyes of a man who had seen things.
Done things.
“This is Balbir Singh, more commonly known as ‘Bobby’,” Ryan said, as he tacked the image onto the board next to Ludo. “He was born in Middlesbrough, where he spent his formative years in and out of juvenile detention. Nowadays, he’s big into property development, construction, venture capital…everything. He has his fingers in a lot of pies, and spends a good chunk of time giving after-dinner speeches about the rehabilitation of child offenders, and how important it is never to give up on the so-called ‘bad’ apples.”
“How touching,” Phillips remarked, and began to unwrap the emergency Kit Kat he’d stashed inside his breast pocket.
“Indeed,” Ryan drawled. “One cannot fail to be inspired. Except, of course, until you learn that Singh is suspected of dealing in various illegitimate business ventures, including drugs and prostitution, modern slavery and sex trafficking.”
“We’ve only got rumours,” one of the inspectors from the Vice Team chimed in. “We had a line on somebody who might’ve been willing to talk, a while back, but that went cold.”