by Andy Maslen
“I feel your pain, boss. Is there anything I can do for you? I mean,” she dropped her voice to a murmur, “The Model told us all you’re kind of easing your way back in, and he’d prefer us not to burden you with operational detail.” Frankie rolled her eyes as she mimicked Collier’s measured cadences.
“There is something, Frankie. Do you want to come out the back for a fag break?”
Frankie looked puzzled. “I don’t smoke, you know that.”
“I know. Now, do you fancy coming down for a fag break or not?”
Paddington Green had a central courtyard enclosed on all four sides by administrative offices, the armoury, the custody suite and a block of holding cells, and the front of the station. The latter housed the reception area where members of the public were permitted, coming in to report lost dogs, snatched bags and suspicious characters milling around outside public buildings, who almost always turned out to be students, foreign tourists or winos congregating by a warm air vent.
The courtyard, with its nooks and crannies, also served as a discreet venue for the station’s smokers to light up away from the disapproving eyes of their more health-conscious colleagues and those senior officers who felt smoking showed a lack of self-discipline. Not to mention the hated pen-pushers who’d banned smoking in the first place, forcing anyone who needed a nicotine fix to skulk around like a criminal.
Stella led Frankie to an unoccupied corner, nodding on the way to a couple of plainclothes officers she knew from an operation she’d worked on before the accident. The murder. Before the murder. He’d murdered them. I’ll make him pay, baby. Don’t worry.
Frankie was talking, but her voiced sounded muffled. It didn’t matter. What did matter was the small child playing in the centre of the courtyard. She couldn’t be more than eighteen months old, in a little flowery dress and pale pink sandals. Must belong to a witness or maybe a relative, or a guest of the custody sergeant. As Stella watched, the little girl retrieved a cigarette butt from a patch pocket on the right side of her dress and placed it between her lips. She took a lighter from the same pocket, thumbed the wheel and touched the flame to the blackened end of the butt, cupping her other hand around the flame.
Stella tried to run to her. To snatch the burning cigarette from between her fingers and grind it under foot. But she couldn’t get moving. Her knees were locked together and she knew if she tried to run, she’d simply collapse. The little girl screamed as the cigarette flared with orange flame. The flame blew backwards into her face and within seconds her hair was blazing. The dress caught fire next, roaring as the flames were fanned by a sudden breeze. The screams intensified and Stella watched helplessly, wordlessly, tears streaming from her eyes as the little girl’s skin peeled off in the heat before she toppled sideways and lay still.
Then she disappeared.
Stella lurched sideways, colliding with Frankie’s right hip.
“Oh, God, no!” she wailed. “Lola!”
Frankie was leaning over her, an expression of concern creasing the normally smooth skin of her forehead.
“Boss? Stella? Are you all right?”
Stella got to her feet, brushing dirt from her jeans.
“I’m fine. Did you, did you see the little girl? In the flowery dress?”
Frankie frowned. “Where?”
Stella turned her head, knowing there’d be nothing but the scrubby patch of scuffed dirt and grass.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Just felt a bit faint. I missed lunch, that’s all.”
“You were staring over there. Your mouth was working, but you weren’t making a sound. Did you not hear me talking to you?”
A voice in Stella’s head was muttering the same two words over and over again, “run now, run now, run now”. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Oh God, for a Valium now. Just half a one would do it. A little round pill to quell those fucking sparrow-sized butterflies fluttering and panicking to be let out of her stomach. She fought down the fear, forcing herself to slow her breathing, and lighting a cigarette to buy a little time.
“Like I said. Just felt a bit woozy for a moment. Must be the thought of that fag.” Stella took a drag and aimed for a smile, but she could tell it wasn’t convincing from Frankie’s doubtful expression.
“I’m going to let that go. For now. But you need to come out with me. Soon. For a proper conversation. You can let me in, you know. If you’re having problems coping. I won’t tell The Model. Or Miss Bitchy-Face from occie health.”
“You know her too, do you?” Stella asked, knowing exactly who Frankie meant.
“Everyone does. We call her Eva Braun. She’s like Collier’s loyal little sheepdog. Always pestering us about this training or that evaluation centre. I think she imagines all the lowlifes on our patch just put their shit on hold while we go off to get lectured about appropriate professional standards and best practice. I’d like to give her a slap, boss, I really would.”
Stella gave a wry smile. If what she suspected about Linda Heath was true, Eva Braun was just about on the money. And a slap would be only the beginning.
“Frankie, do you ever wonder whether we’re truly the good guys?”
“What do you mean?”
23
Square Eyes
Stella paused. She was as sure as a body could be that Frankie O'Meara wasn’t the sort of cop – the sort of woman – who would join a vigilante group inside the police force. Just as she had been about Lucian.
“I mean, what if there were people inside the force who were doing bad things?”
“Well, duh! No offence, seeing as you’re my DI and everything, but bent coppers in the Met aren’t exactly news.”
“I know that, but I’m not talking about vice shaking down pimps or porn barons, or even cops on the take from gangsters. I mean seriously bad people on our side of the line going out and–” Well, what are you waiting for? Go on, say it. Out loud.
“What, boss?”
Stella inhaled deeply and rushed out a sentence before her lips clamped tight around the opening word. “Killing people they think are guilty no matter what the courts say.”
Frankie paused for a second, then laughed.
“Really? I mean, it’s a lovely idea, given what we see happening month in, month out, but come on, boss. This is London, not Hollywood.”
Something about Stella’s unsmiling expression must have spooked Frankie, because the DS suddenly became still and watchful. The same way Stella knew she’d be if they were on a stakeout or about to burst into a suspect’s scuzzy tenth-floor flat with a psychotic dog barking on the other side of the cheap painted door.
“You’re serious, aren’t you? What’s going on, boss?”
Stella pulled on her pony tail, letting the thick hank of hair slide through her closed fingers. She looked around. No smokers within twenty yards. She lowered her voice anyway.
“There’s a group inside the legal system. Right here in town. They call themselves Pro Patria Mori. And they’re offing people they believe deserve it. And for whatever reason, I think because he was onto them, they killed Richard. Lola, too, just because she happened to be in the car with him.”
“Shitty death, boss! And you’ve got evidence?” She bit her lip. “Sorry, I mean, of course you’ve got evidence.”
Stella shook her head. “No, nothing that would stand up in court, anyway. But I’ve met this journalist who’s been digging around. She and Richard were working on it together. You know how we were talking about it the other night at mine?” Frankie nodded. “They got further. And now I know the motive.”
“Couldn’t it all be just, you know, journalistic speculation? Some nosy reporter looking to get a prize for investigative journalism. Or something.”
“Honestly? Yes, it could, just. But it isn’t, Frankie. I know it. I feel it. They got my family, and I want to get them.”
Frankie straightened her back, and looked Stella in the eye.
“What can I do to help?”
“Right now? Nothing. But you know Lucian, from Forensics?” Frankie nodded. “I told him last night. He’s one of the good guys. I need to form some kind of plan to bring them down, then I’ll let you know.”
Frankie smiled. But it was a grim smile. Her eyes were deadly serious. “Just let me know.”
Now that Reg was back, Stella felt she had more leeway to pursue her real project. He seemed blissfully unconcerned with her comings and goings and just nodded complacently whenever she said she would be gone for a few minutes, or hours. After lunch, she announced she was “popping out”. He didn’t even look up from his phone.
Earlier, she’d called the CCTV guy at Urban Oversight, Dave Locke. He’d been happy for her to come round the same afternoon and review the tapes for Putney High Street from the sixth of May. She got the sense he didn’t have a lot of excitement in his life, so helping a DI from the Met was probably the high point of his week, if not his year.
The company’s offices were in a building in the shadow, literally, of the Gherkin, the phallic glass-and-steel tower on St Mary Axe in the City of London. The reception area was dominated by a sculpture of Janus, the Roman god with two faces, one looking backward and one forward.
After explaining who she was to the receptionist, a pale, severe young woman with tawny hair scraped back into a bun at the back of her head, she was given a visitor ID on a scarlet lanyard then told, not asked, to take a seat. Stella watched as the receptionist placed a call to Dave Locke. Botox, for sure, she thought, as the unsmiling, unlined, unmoving face spoke into the handset of the desk phone.
Five minutes later, a tall, smiling man in a well-cut, charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and solid red tie strode across the open area of floor to greet her, his hand outstretched. His grey hair was cut extremely short and it stood up all over his scalp, which showed, pinkly, through the silvery bristles.
“DI Cole? I’m Dave Locke,” he said in an accent from somewhere up North. Yorkshire, she guessed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please, come this way. Derek will buzz you through.”
Derek turned out to be a black security guard manning the pivoting glass security gates that formed a barrier between the reception area and the corridor leading to the lifts. Stella glanced at him, appraising him with a cop’s practised eye. He stood six foot five in his boat-like black shoes and tipped the scales at two-fifty to three hundred pounds. A giant, anyway. He smiled as Stella approached the gate, and she noticed what she took to be Lupus scars on both cheeks, lumps and bumps of keloid scar tissue on his otherwise smooth brown skin. Then he placed an ID, held delicately between thumb and forefinger, onto the glass scanner screen set flush with the stainless-steel post supporting the gate.
She stepped through and thanked him, then followed Locke to a bank of lifts.
“I’m on the fifth floor. Won’t take long,” he said.
Members of the public all start to act guilty after a few minutes in the company of a detective. Stella had been told that in week one of her basic training. “Use it to your advantage,” the sixtyish instructor had advised the class of hopefuls. “They’re primed to tell you the truth, and as everyone has something to hide, they’ll be as nervous as a bridegroom on his wedding night that you’re going to sniff it on them.” Locke fitted the stereotype. He was fiddling with his own ID badge, looking at the floor indicator beside the lift door, scratching the back of his neck and generally behaving like he’d stowed his wife’s corpse under the patio.
“Do you get many requests from the police?” she asked him as the bell pinged and the doors hissed open.
“Now and then, yes. Depends, though, doesn’t it?”
“On what?”
“Where the crime they’re investigating was committed. Urban Oversight only has the contract for the London Borough of Putney, so it could just as easily be one of our competitors.”
They stood in silence for a few seconds as the lift hummed them up to the CCTV department.
“Ever been asked to testify?” she asked.
He turned to her, as the lift doors opened at the fifth floor. He was actually blushing.
“Me? No!” he said. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. Expert witness? Explain to the jury how CCTV cameras work, maybe?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I just manage the archive. Nothing as exciting as appearing in court. Purely admin, that’s me.”
I know the feeling, Stella thought.
Inside the CCTV department, Locke led Stella to a small meeting room, maybe eight feet square. It was furnished with a round, blond wood table and four hard chairs. A computer monitor was placed centrally on the table, with a wireless mouse and keyboard positioned in front. A printer sat on a separate table, tangled cables snaking from its rear to a grubby grey plastic conduit screwed to the skirting board. A whiteboard screwed to the wall bore the words, “stakeholder engagement” in scrappy green capitals. Stella had no idea what it meant.
“This is connected to our central server,” Locke said, pointing at the monitor. “I cued up the footage from midnight through to midnight on the day you asked for – a complete twenty-four-hour period. All the cameras from Putney Bridge up to Tibbet’s Corner on the A3. I warn you, there’s a ton of them.”
“Usual controls?”
“Pretty much. You can fast forward up to thirty-two-times normal. Slow down to half-speed and freeze-frame. Use the mouse and the on-screen control panel. You can print whatever you need using that icon there.”
Then he left.
“Right then,” she said to the four walls. “Let’s find this fucker.”
As a trainee detective, and then a lowly detective constable, Stella had spent many hours “reviewing the tapes” as it was still called, even though most cameras now had digital feeds. As a DI, she would never normally sit in front of a monitor staring at the world’s most boring reality TV show, but this wasn’t normal. If Collier knew what she was doing, he’d throw a fit. Investigating anything when she was officially on light duties would be a problematic situation, as he’d probably call it. Investigating the unlawful killing of her own family, without a warrant or reasonable grounds? It would need a longer, more pungent phrase. One that began with “What the–” and ended with “–were you thinking of?”
She shrugged. What’s the worst that could happen? If I get fired, I’ll carry on anyway.
For two hours, she sat watching traffic zipping along at four times normal speed. She’d decided on a plan. Watch the entire 24-hour period from the camera at the southern end of Putney Bridge. Find the purple Bentley. Track it from that time stamp until it turned off towards her house. Her and Richard’s house. Her and Richard’s and Lola’s house. Her eyes were stinging in the artificially cooled air, and when she squeezed them shut the corneas burned from the lack of blinking. The room smelled of stale coffee and the sharp solvent of dry-wipe markers.
She jerked forward. A dark-coloured saloon was driving towards the camera. It was getting closer. Then it slowed to let a bus move ahead of it, into the inside lane. The monstrous red double-decker obscured all but a narrow sliver of dark purple flank.
Stella’s breathing quickened and she leaned forward, willing the bus to move forward and reveal the number plate of the saloon. This was him.
“No!” she shouted.
The bottom half of the screen had degenerated into a flickering mass of disjointed pixels. Where there had been cars, motorbikes and pedestrians, now there were strobing diagonals of grey, black and white squares. It looked like snakeskin.
As if taunting her, a strip of purple roof cruised past the camera. It might have been a Bentley. It might have been a Ford. Or a Toyota. It was impossible to tell.
“Fuck you!” she shouted.
She switched to the next camera along. Waited, holding her breath. A knock at the door broke her concentration. Stella whipped round in her chair as it opened and a young man – black goatee, dark hair gelled into spikes – poked hi
s head through the gap.
“What?” she barked.
He flinched. “Is everything all right?” he asked. “Only, you know, I heard you shouting.”
“No. It’s not all right. Your stupid security camera just fucked up my investigation. I mean, what’s the point of privatising CCTV to some fucking profit-making outfit like you lot if you can’t even give us a decent picture? It’s not your gran’s old telly, you know. We’re not supposed to roll our eyes and bash the top with a fist. This is the twenty-first century, or hadn’t you heard?”
The young man blanched. His eyes widened in shock, as if he’d been looking for a quiet drink and walked into a bar fight. “I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I’m just an intern. I can find someone if you want me to.”
He looked close to tears. His breathing was coming in short gasps and his voice was quavering like a kid reciting a difficult poem at a school talent contest.
Stella shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Don’t be sorry. That was out of order. Just forget it, OK?”
He withdrew his head, clearly grateful to have escaped without having his face chewed off.
Stella turned back to the screen. She’d not paused the video so had to rewind back to the original time stamp. The next camera on Putney High Street, which was mounted on a post outside a fried chicken joint, failed to pick up the purple saloon. Yawning, she watched the images flick by, first at thirty-two times, then sixteen, eight, four, double speed, then real-time. No sign of it.
“Shit!” she muttered.
She Alt-tabbed through the open programs until she came to a web browser. Even though she knew what she was going to find, she called up a street plan of Putney. There it was. Between the two cameras was a side street. Not just any side street, either. Putney Bridge Road. It led to the northern end of Oxford Road. Bastard must have turned in there and then waited for Richard to come in from the other end. Must have known his routine. Must have followed him, gathering intelligence. Which meant he – and his poisonous friends – would have known that Richard always brought Lola home from nursery on a Wednesday. So, she was just collateral damage. Yes, that was what they would have called her. Her jaws were grinding together, producing a low grating deep in her inner ears. She detected a high-pitched hum, too, and as she stared at the web of yellow streets on the screen, she felt blood in her mouth. She’d bitten the inside of her cheek. Its coppery taste brought her back to the present.