by LJ Ross
Ludo had created a WhatsApp contact group on his burner phone, which contained three members. Each member went by a non-identifiable nickname, but the group itself had been named ‘PACK DOGS’ and the content suggested that they were police officers. Lowerson therefore understood that Singh was giving the order for Ludo to instruct the bent coppers on his payroll to kill him.
Just as his thoughts began to spiral downward, dwelling on all the gloomy possibilities that lay on the horizon, the automatic doors at the front of the building opened and he spotted Ryan, who emerged like an avenging superhero. Lowerson would always remember that moment, and always be grateful that, at his lowest ebb, there had been someone there to help—his mentor, his hero, his boss, and, most of all, his friend.
Jack flashed the headlights, to attract Ryan’s attention.
A moment later, he let himself into the passenger side of the rental car and pulled Lowerson in for a brief, hard hug.
“What the bloody hell has been going on?”
Lowerson wondered where to start.
“Ludo’s dead,” seemed as good a place as any. “I found out where he liked to go every weekday morning, and tailed him there. He made me, and drove like a madman out of Washington Services, straight under a lorry.”
Ryan drew in a deep breath, then let it out again.
“I thought we agreed you would get in touch before making any moves.”
“There was no time,” Lowerson said, and it was probably true. “Besides, if things turned bad, I didn’t want you there. You’ve got Anna to think about.”
Ryan didn’t know whether to hug him again, or punch him.
“Jack, for Christ’s sake…will you never learn? We work as a team, not as lone wolves, and you don’t need to worry about me. Yes, there’s Anna, but every officer has someone who would miss them, should anything happen.”
Ryan realised that, deep down, Lowerson didn’t feel he had anybody.
“For starters, you’ve got your dad, your brother…me, Phillips and MacKenzie. And you’ve got Melanie Yates, too.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Not right now,” Ryan conceded. “She’s angry and hurt—and rightly so. You lied to her, and to all of us. I understand the reasons why, but she doesn’t. That’s something you can correct, and maybe she’ll forgive you.”
Lowerson didn’t dare to hope.
“If she finds out about this business with Rochelle—”
“You’ll have to explain that, too.”
Jack nodded.
“I’ve made some bad mistakes, but I think I’ve found a way to redeem myself.”
“I’m all ears.”
Lowerson reached for Ludo’s burner mobile and wallet, which he’d taken to stall the traffic police making an identification too quickly.
“These belonged to Paul Evershed,” he said. “I took them, before the traffic police arrived, and then lied about who he was, to buy us a bit of time.”
“And why do we need more time?”
“Look on the phone.”
Ryan spent several minutes scrolling through old and new messages, his face becoming more and more thunderous with each new outrage.
“So, Singh wants you dead,” Ryan said, clasping the inoffensive piece of plastic in his fist. “But he doesn’t know Ludo hasn’t received the order, and he doesn’t know Ludo’s dead.”
Ryan thought of the personal cost and presence of mind it must have taken for Lowerson to keep Paul Evershed’s name a secret, amidst the carnage of such a serious road traffic collision. There would only have been minutes in which to act, and he knew that he would have taken the same decision, if the situation was reversed.
“You did the right thing,” he said. “Because you were brave, Jack, we’ve got an opportunity now to bring the whole house of cards crashing down.”
“I thought…maybe we’d be able to set something up, now we know how to contact them,” Lowerson said.
“Exactly. If we can get these people to incriminate themselves, we’ve won.”
“So long as Singh doesn’t find out that Ludo’s dead.”
It was a genuine risk, since the man had sources everywhere.
“I’ll put a call through to Pinter and ask him to handle Evershed himself,” Ryan said. “That’ll minimise the risk of leaks. He’s already done me a favour, this week, so we might as well make it two for two.”
“The traffic police will find out, soon enough, that I lied about Ludo’s identity.”
“Don’t worry about that, now,” Ryan said. “It’ll come out in the wash. The priority is to draw these people—these pack dogs—out, and expose them for what they are.”
“How?”
“By following through Singh’s orders,” Ryan said, with a slow smile. “Let’s beat them at their own game.”
Lowerson nodded. This wasn’t just a crusade to prove himself or even to defend himself anymore; he’d finally come to understand that his career in policing had never been about Jack Lowerson. It was, first and last, about protecting others and protecting what was right. It had been a long and painful lesson to learn, but he had learned it.
“There’s more on there,” he said. “Times, dates…if we play it right, we might be able to bring Singh down with the rest of them.”
Ryan flicked through a series of messages containing plans for the next shipment of drugs, and shook his head, mutely, at the audacity of it.
“They need to believe we know nothing,” he said quietly. “And we’ll play along.”
“We don’t know who to trust,” Lowerson started to say, but one look from Ryan silenced him.
“We’ve always known who to trust.”
CHAPTER 35
An emergency briefing had been arranged that lunchtime for the taskforce of Operation Watchman, once again convened in the largest conference room Police Headquarters had to offer. Ryan had gone to town, providing a buffet lunch for all the hardworking men and women of CID, many of whom had never heard the old saying that they should be wary of Greeks bearing gifts.
“Thank you all for coming at short notice,” he said, casting his eye around what was, by now, a sea of familiar faces. “The reason you’re here is that we’ve had a breakthrough, thanks to the efforts of our colleagues in the Drugs Squad.”
Ryan looked across to where DCI Coates and DS Gallagher were seated, looking pleased with themselves.
“I think the next part would be best coming from them, so I’ll invite DCI Coates to fill us all in.”
Paul Coates sauntered to the front of the room.
“As Ryan says, we’ve had a breakthrough,” he said. “My team have been working around the clock, chasing down leads to get a handle on how the drugs are coming into the region. This operation might be about tackling county lines, but it’s also about stopping the source, before it gets that far.”
There were nods around the room.
“This morning, we received intelligence to say there’s going to be a big delivery via the Port of Tyne, late tonight.”
Coates paused, for dramatic effect.
“Our source tells us that the ship isn’t due to be unloaded until the morning, but the drugs will be taken off sometime after dark and then loaded onto a lorry for onward transportation.”
“Do we know which lorry to look for?” Phillips asked, between mouthfuls of egg mayonnaise.
Coates shook his head.
“That, we don’t know. But any lorry that arrives after dark should be treated as suspicious,” he said. “It’s imperative that no move should be made until the goods are transferred from the ship onto the lorry; in other words, once its driver has taken possession of the contraband.”
“Who was the source?” MacKenzie asked. “Are they reliable?”
DCI Coates gave a thin smile.
“We are not able to divulge the identity of our sources, as I’m sure you’re well aware, DI MacKenzie. However, I can say that the intelligence they’ve provided to us in the past h
as been reliable.”
“Thank you, DCI Coates.”
Ryan stepped forward again and faced the room.
“Our plan is to be there when the shipment is unloaded,” he said. “There’ll be a tactical firearms unit, squad patrol vehicles to manage exit routes and a police helicopter on standby, if things go south.”
He picked up a sheet of paper, on which was printed a detailed map.
“You should each find in front of you a copy of this map, which shows the Port of Tyne complex. DCI Coates will be commanding the operation this evening, assisted by DS Gallagher, and he has set out a number of rendezvous points which will provide the most cover and maximise visibility for those on the ground.”
“At this point, I want to thank our colleagues in Drugs Squad again for their fast and efficient work, which, with a little bit of luck, will help to reduce the flow of drugs at all levels.”
Coates and Gallagher nodded, looking even more pleased with themselves.
“In terms of the wider investigation, as many of you will know, our effort to apprehend the man known as ‘Ludo’ proved unsuccessful in Biddlestone, the other day. However, we remain optimistic that, with a bit of old-fashioned detective work, we’ll bring him in sooner rather than later.”
Ryan’s eye caught the snatched glances between some of the officers in the room, and smiled grimly. They thought they were untouchable, he realised. They believed they were above the law.
They’d be disabused of that notion, soon enough.
* * *
While MacKenzie remained at Police Headquarters, it was Phillips’ turn to do the school run.
It was a bit of a shock to the system, having to implement a new childcare routine, where none had existed before. It took some getting used to, especially for somebody like himself, who had spent the best part of fifty-five years being answerable to nobody.
Yet, for all that, it was no hardship.
Despite missing the opportunity to take spontaneous decisions, he was coming to understand that parenting Samantha was enriching his life in ways he’d never imagined.
For instance, he was learning much about rare equestrian breeds, which seemed to be of great importance in the life of a ten-year-old girl.
Unicorns.
“I bet they’re real, Frank. They just live in really far off places, where people can’t find them.”
Whilst he was ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent certain they were merely the stuff of myth and legend, Phillips would never be the one to trample on a person’s dream.
“Aye, maybe you’ve got a point there,” he said, as they followed the road home from school. “What kinds of far off places, d’you reckon?”
Samantha made a humming noise as she thought about it.
“Well, it depends if the unicorns like hot or cold weather.”
“Let’s say they like both,” Phillips put in, enjoying the game.
“Oh, well—that’s easy then,” she said, knowledgeably. “Some of them live in Outer Mongolia, and others prefer to live in the Gobi Desert or the darkest rainforests.”
Phillips wondered if they’d had a geography lesson today, by any chance.
“You’ll have to take a trip, one day, and let me know if you see one.”
“You could come too,” she said, and brought a lump to his throat, as easy as that.
“Aye, maybe I will,” he said, and, when he spotted a golden ‘M’ up ahead, decided it was high time for an after-school treat.
“Fancy a milkshake and some nuggets?” he asked.
“Is the Pope Catholic?” she replied.
“Atta girl.”
* * *
Once they had fortified themselves with thick strawberry milkshakes and Happy Meals, they were back on the road again and the conversation changed to more mundane topics.
“You seem a bit more cheerful, today,” he remarked. “How’d school go?”
“Better,” she said. “I took your advice and set some new boundaries for the girls who were nasty to me, yesterday.”
Phillips wasn’t sure he liked the sound of her ‘setting new boundaries’.
“I see, and what kind of new boundaries did you set?”
Samantha looked mischievous all of a sudden.
“Well, they kept calling me a ‘gyppo’, so I told them they should be careful because gypsies know magic, and spells. I said, if they didn’t stop calling me names, I’d put a curse on them so they wouldn’t grow any boobs.”
Phillips almost choked on the rest of his milkshake.
“You—you said that?”
Samantha nodded.
“They’re the ones who are desperate to have all that stuff, so it scared them a lot. They didn’t say anything nasty for the rest of the day.”
Phillips tried to find something to fault in her approach, but all he felt was pride.
“You handled yourself, kid. Now they know not to mess with you, without you having to lift a finger. I’m proud of you.”
“You are?”
“Course, I am!”
“Nobody ever said that before.”
Phillips smiled.
“I reckon there’s going to be lots of times when I’ll be saying that to you,” he said, and made the turning for home.
CHAPTER 36
John McDougall had been a fisherman all his life.
As a boy, he remembered going out on a little red boat with his father, who taught him everything there was to know about the oceans and their secrets. He taught him to love the sea and to respect it; and, if he did, the sea would be kind to him. John had tried, but he’d found that loving the sea was not enough. There were bills to pay and mouths to feed, neither of which he could do without bringing in a good haul and selling it for a fair price, which was becoming harder and harder every day.
John shut the front door to his white-painted cottage with a soft click, then began to make his way down to the harbour, where his boat was moored. It had blown a relentless gale earlier in the day, the rain battering against the town walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed with all the might of an angry god. But now, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a warm breeze that brushed against his face as he followed a well-worn path.
As his footsteps sounded against the cobbled stone streets, John told himself he had no choice; that circumstances had led him to this and, if the sea had been kind to him as his father had promised, he would never have been driven to accept.
And, why shouldn’t he accept the man’s offer? he thought, defensively. It was a good offer, one that would clothe and feed his family for a long time to come, without any of the stress that came with his usual lot in life.
What about all those people…
No!
He wouldn’t think of that, or of anything but the job in hand. It was just one more trip. One more load, and he’d be set up for months, if not years.
He’d be a fool not to.
As he reached the harbour, John spotted his fishing boat, the Annie-Mae, bobbing on the water. The afternoon sun showed up every peeling crack, and made a mockery of his father’s stern warning that a fisherman was only as good as his boat.
There’d been no money to keep it properly maintained, let alone to buy a new one.
But now…
Now, he could buy a gleaming new vessel, one that would put all the other boats in the harbour to shame.
John stood for a long time by the water’s edge in England’s northernmost town, formerly one of its greatest strongholds since it was situated less than three miles from the Scottish border, on the River Tweed. He could hear their accent in his own, which was a diluted version unique to that corner of Northumberland, and their traditions were shared. John was proud of his town and of its heritage, and it gave him no pleasure to think that he would be despoiling that heritage, in any way.
His thoughts circled back around to his wife, Trina, and their two girls. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.
John looked out at the ope
n water, and then back at the tired little fishing boat.
Time to go.
* * *
It was after five by the time Lowerson retrieved his things from the dingy airport hotel and returned the hire car, then drove back home in his own car. The garden flat he’d lovingly renovated and restored felt alien to him now; a place filled with unwanted memories and ghosts of people from the past; a place where he’d lived in fear.
Perhaps, that would change.
He stepped inside the hallway and locked the front door behind him, setting his small bag on the floor. He took a few minutes to wander around the rooms, re-acquainting himself with its shadows and edges, noting all the things that could be used as a weapon, if need be.
Then he sank down into one of the armchairs and stared out of the big bay window in his living room, watching people bustling past at the end of the working day. Soon, the street would be quiet again, those people tucked safely inside their own homes, never knowing what might be happening on their doorstep.
The rain had stopped, and the early evening skies were awash with blue.
It was a good day to die.
CHAPTER 37
The Port of Tyne was the navigational authority for the tidal reaches of the River Tyne, all the way from the mouth of the river to Wylam, seventeen miles west of the sea. It was a deep-sea port, handling all manner of regular and bulk cargoes that came to berth and be unloaded on its docks for onward transport, as well as serving the cruise liners that came to visit for a day or two. There were two piers at North and South Shields, respectively, but it was to the south that DCI Coates and DS Gallagher made their way to intercept the arrival of an enormous cargo of illegal drugs.
The sun was making its final descent into the horizon by the time they took up their position beside The Starry Night, a long, low cargo vessel designed to carry bulk container storage.
“This’ll do,” Coates said, as Gallagher reversed his car into the alleyway between rows of offloaded containers from other ships.
Coates spoke into his radio and received confirmation that his team were in position; squad cars from the local police were standing by in the network of smaller streets leading out of the main entrance to the port, ready to close off local roads upon receiving his order. The firearms unit were also in position, with officers stationed at strategic points with a clear view of the vessel and its bulkhead.