by Andy Maslen
“Could be all sorts.” She held her fingers out and began counting off. “Could be 9mm, .357, .38, .44 or .45 – all kinds.”
Hutchings nodded his approval at her reluctance to jump to conclusions. “Good. Rifle or pistol?”
She grinned. “What’s this, a trick question? Pistol, obviously. Rifle rounds’d be full metal jacket, ballistic tip or soft point.”
He grinned back.
“Just checking you’ve been paying attention. Now, although it could be any of those calibres, I seen a lot of bullets in my time. And to me, that looks like a 9 x 19mm Parabellum round. Lots of pistols use them, including Glocks like our 17s. So the first thing you have to do is import the image into the ballistics database.”
Under his gentle coaching, she created a new query record for the first bullet after importing the image into the database.
“Now what?”
“OK, so you know we identify weapons by the striations they create in the sides of the bullets, yeah?”
She nodded. “Apart from shotguns, which are smooth-bore weapons.”
“Spot on! So we got a special program that runs a pair of images up against each other, like they do in forensics for fingerprints or DNA or whatever. See, they’re not the only ones who can do the science stuff.” He favoured her with a wink. “Now, striations aren’t that complicated like prints, so it’s a question of analysing the type and number, their measurements and whether they spin clockwise or anti-clock, get it? And there’s not much room for doubt, either. A match is a match. I mean, never say never, but they’re like tool marks, you know? Really precise and impossible to fake or fiddle.”
“I press that one?” she asked, wiggling the mouse so the cursor danced over a grey button marked RUN.
He nodded.
They watched in silence as the cursor became an hourglass, twitching spasmodically through quarter-turns.
The machine emitted a distressed bleep: a series of short, descending tones that somehow sounded depressed. Almost as if the machine were disappointed not to be able to please its human masters.
Danny peered at the red rectangular ALERT box now occupying the centre of the screen.
“Crap!”
“What?”
“No match. Which means what?”
“Which means it was fired from a gun we’ve never seen before, either brand new or never used in a crime.”
“That’s right. Virgins, we call them.”
He paused. He was thinking of something. Or someone. Someone who’d run an errand for him, taking twenty-five Glocks past their warranty expiry date to be decommissioned. And then picking up twenty-five brand-new replacements from Heathrow Airport. Twenty-five virgins.
25
Deep Throat
Bricks smashing through windows were way outside Vicky Riley’s normal, everyday experience. Yes, she was a freelance investigative journalist. But until recently, her idea of trouble was a door being slammed in her face or a vague threat to “have you fired by your editor.” The latter didn’t trouble her overmuch, as she sold stories to many editors, not one of whom was her boss. Then came the story she knew would make her career.
For over two years, she’d been working on a story about institutional corruption inside the British legal system. Not just bribing judges or jury nobbling, either. The probable existence of death squads operating on British soil, controlled and directed by a conspiracy called Pro Patria Mori. Their motto might have echoed the famous poem’s line about its being sweet and proper to die for one’s country, but their methods would have made its First World War author reel in horror. No due process. No rule of law. No jury trial. Like spiders sitting in webs of vibrating silken strands, they waited for miscarriages of justice, as they saw them, then had the acquitted, the bailed or the paroled killed. Sometimes they used firearms officers. Sometimes hired killers. And sometimes, as a sign of their personal loyalty to the cause, they did it themselves.
She’d been working on the story with Stella Cole’s husband, Richard Drinkwater, until his murder at the hands of an unknown hit-and-run driver. Although she didn’t know it, that driver, The Right Honourable Mister Justice Sir Leonard Ramage, was now a few grammes of pale-grey ash sitting in a Ming vase on the mantelpiece of his former home in Egerton Crescent, London SW3. The conspirators had attempted, clumsily, to shut her down with a message wrapped round a house brick and launched through the sitting room window of her Hammersmith home. Instead, they had driven her into hiding at her godmother’s pig farm in south Wales. Bea Ryder had been only too pleased to have her goddaughter staying with her and had accepted without demur her story about needing peace and quiet to work on a story.
Stella had told her not to use her own phone, as she’d be risking PPM tracking her down. But she was a working journalist and although she’d bought a new phone, there was a conversation she could only have on her old one. It had been a while since the man she’d christened Deep Throat had called her. But several times a day she checked her phone for a message before switching it off again.
“Do you want some lunch, love?” her godmother asked, walking into the big, slate-floored kitchen where Vicky was working.
“Yes, please. What is there?”
“Well, I thought we could have chops. I took Maurice down to the slaughterer last week and there’s some lovely meat we’ve had off him.”
Vicky wrinkled her nose. She was as carnivorous as anyone and loved a juicy steak or a burger, but she still hadn’t got used to Bea’s ability to be scratching a pig behind the ear one day and then eating it the next.
“That would be lovely,” she said.
While Bea busied herself heating up oil in a cast-iron skillet on the Aga, Vicky switched her phone on again. She tapped her fingernails on the scrubbed pine surface of the table while she waited for it to come to life. Idly, she traced a spiralling scratch that ran across one corner. She remembered the day she’d done it. She was nine and drawing with a ballpoint pen directly onto the soft wood. Bea’s husband, Ralph, had come in from work and seen her.
“Oh, look what you’ve gone and done,” he’d said. “We only just got that table, and you’ve put a bloody great furrow right across it. That’ll never come out, will it now?”
And Bea had intervened to prevent her husband working up a head of steam.
“Oh, Ralph, stop your moaning. It’s a kitchen table. I dare say there’ll be motorbike parts being taken to pieces on it before the year’s out, eh?”
That had done it. He’d smiled and tousled his goddaughter’s silky blonde hair before going off for a bath. Bea was right. A month later, Vicky had come in to find Ralph taking a carburettor to pieces on the table. She watched silently as the screwdriver he was using slipped and gouged a deep wound into the surface.
Then she stepped lightly up to him and wrapped her skinny arms round his neck.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s a kitchen table.”
“Oh, you cheeky little monkey,” he said, but he was smiling, and she knew it was all right.
Her phone buzzed twice as it finally woke up. She swiped her unlock pattern and looked down at the screen. Her sharp intake of breath caused Bea to turn away from her work at the range.
“Everything all right, love?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Just saw something daft on Facebook, that’s all.”
“Oh, well, if you will faff around on the internet, what do you expect?”
“I’m just going to go out to the yard and make a call, OK?”
Outside in the farmyard, the sun was warm on her back. She walked fast across the concreted square to a six-foot brick retaining wall. With her back to the warm bricks, she reread the text.
Met pistol possibly used in Watlington murder. Call me.
She called the man she thought of as Deep Throat. His Welsh accent was the same as her godparents’, but other than that, and his job inside the Metropolitan Police, she knew nothing about him.
&nb
sp; “It’s me. I got your text. What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is, I just had a senior detective, and I mean a senior management senior detective, down here asking me to trace a gun. He had photos of a spent hollow-point slug – you know what one of those is?”
“Not really.”
“OK, in a nutshell, it’s a bullet designed to splay open on impact. Banned in the armed forces, but not for the police. Anyway, it wasn’t on our database, but—”
Vicky interrupted him.
“If it wasn’t on your database why did you text me saying it might have been one of your guns?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, aren’t I?” She heard him sigh. “Look, I can’t point the finger. Not just yet. But I think one of the detectives here might have stolen a brand-new Glock 17. That’s a pistol that fires these particular rounds, you see? If I’m right, it means—”
She jumped in again.
“It means there’s a Metropolitan Police detective using an untraceable pistol to murder people on the UK mainland. Yes?”
She sensed reluctance in his voice as he answered.
“Yes.”
“Wait a minute. You need to tell me your job, your station. This is amazing but it’s too vague. I can’t go to an editor with this.”
There was a long pause. Vicky looked across the yard. Bea waved through the kitchen window, then pointed at her watch and held up five outstretched fingers. Vicky waved back.
“Look, I don’t want my name in the media. Or even where I work. It would identify me. To the people I’ve been telling you about.”
“I swear I won’t. Journalists protect their sources. It’s the first thing they teach us. I’d go to prison before I’d break your confidence.”
“Yeah? Well I wouldn’t risk it myself. They’ve got people all over.”
“So are you going to tell me?”
“Yes. But your promise better be gold-fucking-plated. This isn’t office politics or bags of cash we’re talking about.” He took a deep breath that she could hear clearly. “I’m the armourer at Paddington Green Police Station, OK? That enough?”
“It’s fine. Thank you.”
26
Goodbye, Lola
The following day, Stella rode into central London, crossed the west side of the city and found her way to the cemetery. It sat at the centre of a 3,500-acre expanse of grassy, wooded parkland comprising Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park and Putney Heath. The cemetery itself was huge, with individually named roads leading off in a fan from a central junction. An information board told her they were named after men who’d been awarded the Victoria Cross: Ernest Alexander, Harry Schofield, Harry Greenwood and Alfred Richards. They sounded like down-to-earth names for down-to-earth men. Soldiers who fought for King and Country. She wondered what they would have made of Pro Patria Mori, murdering people unconvicted by any court and then turning on those who might have exposed them. What would they have made of Stella? Exacting brutal revenge on her family’s killers, again without recourse to the law. Before she had a chance to engage any of the war heroes in conversation, a black BMW M5 drew up beside her with a muted growl.
Moments later, the driver was at her side: Jason Drinkwater. They hugged, and Stella relaxed as his arms squeezed her tight. This was going to be all right. Not pleasant. Not enjoyable, but bearable. With him as her guide.
He held her at arm’s length, taking in her appearance. Stella did the same. He hadn’t changed: still the boyish good looks dominated by sharp blue eyes and a neat side parting that made him look more like the head boy of a decent grammar school than an estate agent, his chosen profession.
He released her shoulders.
“How are you?” he asked. “That’s quite a change in hairstyle from the last time I saw you.”
She ran her fingers through her cropped blonde locks.
“I’m OK. Coping. How are you?”
“Yeah, good, I suppose. I miss Richard, and Lola, obviously, but,” he sighed, “life goes on, doesn’t it?” He smiled, but she detected a hesitance in the expression. Then all became clear. “Elle’s expecting again.”
Stella smiled. She felt genuine pleasure for her brother-in-law.
“Oh, Jason, that’s fantastic!” she said. “When’s the baby due?”
“September fifteenth. I don’t know how they can be so specific, but anyway, that’s what the doctor said.”
“I’m pleased.”
“You’re sure?”
She looked up into his earnest face. Laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Yes. Really. I lost a child. And nothing can change that. But I want you and Elle to be happy, of course I do.”
He smiled back at her. Clearly reassured he hadn’t committed a faux pas, he pressed on.
“You should come round and see us. Polly would love to see her Auntie Stella. And I know Elle would love it. I don’t think she gets the level of interest in her swollen ankles from me that she thinks she deserves.”
“Sexist pig.” Stella punched him lightly on the same shoulder.
Somehow the playful insult broke the lighter mood they’d managed to create between them. Jason’s face dropped and his voice took on a serious tone.
“Shall we go, then?”
“Yes, please.”
“Take my arm.”
He crooked his left arm out and she threaded her right through the gap, curling her hand round to grip his bicep.
The walk to the graves took ten minutes. Stella could feel her heart bumping in her chest. Neither spoke until they were at the graveside. Two red granite markers stood side by side, the matching carved text picked out in black gloss paint.
Richard Gregory Drinkwater
18 October 1974 – 6 March 2009
Devoted son, husband, father.
Stella read aloud the quote beneath her husband’s simple biography.
“There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”
“Charles de Montesquieu,” Jason said. “French philosopher. Rich was always quoting him. It seemed appropriate, what with his passion for human-rights law.”
More than you know, Stella thought. Then the moment she had been putting off. She rotated her head through forty-five degrees, which felt like pushing against a rusted steel gate, to gaze upon the gravestone of her five-month-old daughter.
Lola Meredith Drinkwater
2 October 2008 – 6 March 2009
A precious blossom, picked too soon.
She sank to her knees on the soft grass to the side of the double plot and let the tears come. Her grief was with her all the time, but its expression had faltered, a nervous horse unsure whether to leave the gate in its first race. There had been furious rages, maddened fits of weeping, but then periods of utter calm when she could almost forget what she had lost. Sometimes all within the span of a single day. Now, to her relief and she supposed also that of her brother-in-law, the weeping was silent. And there was no wailing. No beating at the granite gravestones with her fists until she mashed the flesh and broke the fragile bones beneath the skin. She felt Jason’s hand on her shoulder. He let it lie there and she was grateful for its warmth through her jacket.
Finally, she felt able to get to her feet again. She brushed the cut grass from her knees and wiped her eyes with a tissue she fished from her jeans pocket.
“I need another hug,” she said, turning to Jason.
“Come here, then,” he said, enveloping her in his arms and holding her tight for another few minutes.
Finally, she pushed herself away from him, not hard, but firmly. She cleared her throat, which felt clogged with emotion she couldn’t cough up.
“I need to go,” she said, sniffing and dabbing at her eyes with the damp tissue.
“Sure, we’ll go back to the car park. Listen, we only live fifteen minutes from here. Come back for a coffee or something. A glass of wine. Like I said, Elle’d love to bend yo
ur ear about how useless I am at foot massages.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I meant I have to go from here.” She swept her arm in a wide circle around her. “From London.”
He frowned.
“Aren’t you back at work, then? Back at the Met?”
“It’s complicated. I’m on light duties, basically a glorified secretary and I sort of, well, I didn’t do what I was told.”
He grinned.
“What, you’re telling me you got into trouble? You? The girl with the psychology degree and the fast track to the golden mile?”
She shrugged.
“What can I say? Besides, there’s not much they can do, short of busting me back into uniform. Tell Elle good luck. I’ll be thinking of her in September.”
“That sounds like goodbye. Is everything OK, Stella?”
She nodded.
“I’m just working through things, you know? Come on, take me back to the car park; this place isn’t doing much for my mood.”
As they strolled back to the car park, she could hear a third pair of feet clicking along the tarmac path behind them. She glanced over her shoulder.
The other woman looked sad. She was dressed in conventional mourning: a knee-length black dress, black gloves, a black pillbox hat with a veil drawn down and clinging to the underside of her chin. She carried a single black rose in her left hand and was picking the petals with her right thumb and forefinger, dropping them to the ground in a trail leading all the way back to Lola’s grave.
“Everything all right?” Jason asked.
She turned to him and smiled.
“No. But it will be. One day.”
The black-clad woman came close, though Jason showed no sign he’d seen her. She leaned her veiled head towards Stella and whispered in her ear.
“They’re your family. All you’ve got. A girl can’t live on revenge alone.”
Something clicked in Stella’s brain. A feeling that this was a lifeline back to some sort of normality. Something she could reach towards once she’d done the things she needed to.