The First Stella Cole Boxset

by Andy Maslen

  “And when you say ‘pleasant,’ I’m assuming you’re making some kind of a point about me, are you?”

  Stella turned. Other Stella was standing facing her, hands on hips, eyes gleaming in the low-wattage light from the night security lamps.

  “Look, can we focus on getting out of here, please? We can discuss your low self-esteem when I’ve found somewhere to lie low.”

  Other Stella held her hands up in mock surrender. Stella noticed a large-bladed scalpel gripped in her right hand.

  “Where the fuck did you get that?” she hissed, walking again.

  Other Stella fell into step beside her.

  “A&E. The Haloperidol was a masterstroke, but I saw this in a tray and, well, a blade’s a blade, isn’t it? I know you like your broken bottles, but me, I’m all for a bit of surgical steel.”

  Other Stella was referring to the weapon Stella had used to mortally wound Peter “Foxy” Moxey, the psychopath Collier had sent to kill her. Two grinding stabs to the eye sockets in a canal-side fight had caused catastrophic damage that had led to his bleeding out before the following morning.

  “Fine. Just keep it hidden, OK? I’m just a nurse from the psych ward, not a surgeon.”

  “Fine by me, Stel,” Other Stella whispered, winking broadly and slipping the slim instrument inside her jacket.

  The reception office was locked. No need for lock picks when you had a bunch of keys. Stella was inside and looking for the locker marked with her name. She found it in the centre of the topmost row. The first key she tried, a small chromed number, almost jammed in the lock. Swearing under her breath, she wiggled it free without snapping it off in the barrel. The second key, brass, with a neat, raised ABS logo, wouldn’t even go in.

  “Come on, come on,” Stella murmured. “Third time …” She pushed the stainless steel key all the way into the keyhole and turned it clockwise. With a smooth click, the lock opened and she pulled the door wide. “Lucky!”

  She grabbed her wallet, house keys, a heavy, four-inch long leather tube fastened with a press stud, and phone, and dropped them into the daysack she’d arrived with. Closing the locker and locking it again she turned to see Other Stella at the door, peering through a narrow gap.

  “Hurry up, Stel!” she muttered. “I can hear someone coming. Too late! Get down.”

  19

  Ingatestone

  Crouching below the level of the window set into the plasterboard wall, Stella reached for her little helper. It had been given to her by Sergeant Doug “Rocky” Stevens, an unarmed defence tactics instructor with the Met. The leather tube contained a stack of thirty one-pound coins. “To help even up the odds,” he’d told her as he handed it over all those years earlier. And it had, repeatedly.

  Gripping it in her right fist, she crouched low, out of sight, straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. She’d made her mind up. Anyone coming into the reception office was going to be asleep before they sensed the presence of the intruder.

  “There!” Other Stella whispered. “Hear him?”

  “Hear who?”

  Then she did hear. Dan Hockley’s unmistakable limping gait. Even though he was obviously trying to move silently, the step-slide beat was audible through the thin partition. Realising she was holding her breath, she made a conscious effort to exhale. The hiss of her outflowing breath drowned out Dan Hockley’s steps and when she listened again, they were gone.

  “He’s finally gone home. Time for us to go, too, Stel,” Other Stella said, nodding at the door.

  Stella crawled to the door in a half-squat and turned the handle. She poked her head out and looked towards the main doors of the ward. Hockley’s back was just disappearing.

  “We need to wait till he’s gone. Five minutes.”

  Other Stella nodded in agreement.

  “OK. But if we meet him in the car park, I’m going to gut him like a fish,” she said with a grin, holding up the broad-bladed scalpel and swishing it vertically through the air.

  This time Stella got the key decision right first time. She was through and locking the main door to the ward behind her a few seconds later. Ignoring Other Stella’s grinning, swaggering presence just beyond her peripheral vision, she made sure the NHS badge was facing outwards, dropped her gaze to the floor about ten feet ahead and walked away.

  “Here, take this,” Other Stella said, handing her a clipboard. “I snagged it on the way out. Better than a wig and false glasses.”

  Hospitals are still busy at night. But apart from A&E and Maternity, most departments settle into a calmer, quieter nocturnal rhythm as darkness falls. Patients, or the lucky ones at any rate, are sleeping. Nurses can drink coffee, eat chocolates left by grateful patients, do crosswords, catch up on paperwork or read, only occasionally troubled by someone needing a bed pan or a dose of pain killers. No visitors clogging up the passageways. Nobody from human resources, finance, or facilities prowling the wards, bugging clinical staff about procurement policy, health and safety or patients’ rights. Just the bleeping of heart monitors, the wheeze of ventilators, and, if you work in maternity or neonatal care, the occasional plaintive cry of a newborn.

  People are less alert, too. Without alarms, shouts or fire bells, most hospital staff zone out apart from their own immediate area of responsibility. So a nurse heading away from the psychiatric ward wearing the correct badge and lanyard and holding a clipboard drew precisely zero attention.

  Scanning ahead the whole time for Hockley, but not seeing him, Stella reached the main reception area of the hospital by 3.15 a.m., and assumed a world-weary expression. The total complement of staff consisted of two bored-looking security guards and a single receptionist behind the desk. She offered the receptionist a small smile and mimed putting a cigarette to her lips. The woman smiled.

  And then, just like that, she was free. Outside the main doors, listening to their pneumatic closers pulling them together behind her back. She resisted the urge to run. Instead, she zipped up her jacket, turned right and walked out of the hospital. She passed under the brick archway that marked the edge of the hospital grounds and walked along Norfolk Place until she reached Praed Street. Turning right, she walked southwest for five minutes until she reached the Hilton. The street was silent: no traffic of any kind, and worse for her, no black cabs.

  Stella reached the hotel. The pale cream stonework – classical columns and a frieze of Greek figures four floors above the ground – glistened in the moonlight. She trotted up the five red-carpeted steps, into reception, head held high, NHS badge bouncing against her chest. She approached the night porter with a smile, noting his swift glance at the badge.

  “Yes, love?” he said.

  “I’m a nurse at St Mary’s. I don’t suppose you could call me a taxi, could you? My boyfriend was supposed to pick me up at the end of my shift but I got stuck with a few hours of overtime and he got called out. He’s a fireman. I know it’s a cheek but there aren’t any cabs about and my phone died and —”

  He laid a calming hand on her forearm and smiled.

  “It’s not a problem, OK? You lot deserve all the help you can get, that’s the way I see it. You all right to wait for a few minutes?”

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks so much.”

  He picked up the desk phone beside him and punched a button.

  Five minutes later, Stella was climbing gratefully into the back of a black cab and waving to the night porter who’d insisted on accompanying her right to the kerb.

  The driver, a burly man with a glistening, shaved skull above a thick, tattooed neck, twisted round in his seat.

  “Just come off shift, ’ave you darlin’? Where’s home, then?” the driver asked.

  Yes, good question. Where to? Somehow I don’t think going back to mine would be a smart move. Collier’s probably got someone watching it.

  The driver’s East End accent reminded her of Freddie McTiernan, the gangster who’d helped her fashion the sawn-off shotgun she’d used to kill Tamit Fere
nczy and two of his men. Freddie knew all about Collier. He might have retired, but he was still connected and wouldn’t ask the wrong kind of questions. Might be willing to help her out again, seeing as he wanted Collier to pay for fitting up his son-in-law.

  “It’s an address in Ingatestone, in Essex. Mill Green Road, do you know it?”

  “Bloody ’ell, love! Ingatestone? I mean, yes, I know it, but that’s a two-hundred quid fare this time of night. You can’t afford that, not on a nurse’s pay. Look, I live in Chelmsford. Ingatestone’s on the way. I was thinking of knocking off anyway, business has been terrible tonight. I’ll take you, all right? On the ’ouse.”

  Not needing to feign surprise at the man’s generosity, Stella looked at his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  “That is incredibly kind of you. I’m not going to insult you by arguing. Yes, please!” she said, beaming at him.

  Traffic was non-existent as the taxi sped eastwards through Central London, then the City with its glass-and-steel towers, each topped with a red light to warn aircraft away. Stella was wide awake, adrenaline doing a fine job of keeping sleepiness at bay. They picked up the A12, and Stella stared out the window as they entered, and left, each new settlement along the way. Gallows Corner, about halfway, made her smile. An hour and twenty minutes after she had climbed into the taxi’s warm, pine-scented interior, she was standing on the pavement on Mill Green Road, a long tree-lined avenue.

  “Blimey! The taxi driver said, as he buzzed his window down. “Maybe I should’ve charged you after all!”

  Stella laughed.

  “Yeah, right. I wish. Still living with my parents, aren’t I?”

  “You going to be all right, then?” he asked. “Only I’ve got a long day tomorrow and as you can see, I need me beauty sleep.”

  Stella nodded.

  “I’m fine. And thanks again. You’re a life-saver.”

  With a wave, the taxi driver performed an effortless U-turn in the wide road and clattered off back the way he’d come.

  Like his neighbours’ houses, Freddie McTiernan’s home was invisible behind a conifer hedge that wouldn’t have looked out of place guarding a fairy princess’s castle. Entrance to the castle required the visiting knight to pass through a looming gate of solid timber. In the pale light of early dawn, the wood gleamed like metal.

  Stella pressed the button on an intercom screwed to the left-hand gatepost. Three short buzzes for attention that she hoped Freddie would hear, and decide to answer.

  She looked around, realising as she did that there was every chance Freddie wouldn’t be in, let alone awake. He might have decided to visit his favourite daughter, Marilyn, and her husband Ronnie Wilks, in Marbella on the Costa del Sol. Or the “Costa del Crime,” as the tabloids had rather unimaginatively christened the stretch of Spanish coastline between the cliffs of Maro-Cerro Gordo in the east to Punta Chullera in the west.

  Mill Green Road at 4.30 a.m. made Praed Street at 3.00 a.m. look like Oxford Street on a Saturday lunchtime. To call it deserted was an insult to deserted streets the world over. With so much off-street parking, the road harboured not a single parked car. And as a cul-de-sac, albeit a mile-long cul-de-sac, it welcomed no through traffic, either. Somewhere in the thick woodland behind the houses, an owl hooted. Its “Tu-whit, tu-woo” call was almost comically accurate.

  “Come on!” Stella said. “That has to be a recording.”

  The voice that barked at her from the squawk box, making her jump, was definitely not a recording.

  “Whoever the fuck you are, you’d better have a fucking good reason for waking me up.”

  Stella leaned in closer to the grille.

  “Freddie, it’s me. Stella. Can you let me in, please, because it’s bloody freezing out here.”

  It wasn’t cold at all. But as an undergraduate studying psychology, Stella had learned that providing a reason – any reason – why someone should go along with your suggestion made it more likely they’d comply. Even if they were heavily built gangsters with workshops full of firearms and voices like angle grinders chewing through concrete.

  “Jesus-fucking-Christ, it’s four thirty in the fucking morning.”

  The intercom bleeped into silence. The latch buzzed and clacked, and the heavy wooden door swung inward on silent hinges.

  20

  House Guest

  Stella breathed a sigh of relief and crunched her way up the gravel drive towards the house. Named for the trees that dominated the huge front garden, and which were now in full bright-green leaf, Five Beeches bore all the hallmarks of what the snobbier architecture critics would call “Stockbroker Tudor.” Black beams over white stucco. Climbing roses and wisteria draped over the mullioned windows and pantile-roofed porch, their colours muted in the soft dawn sunshine. A few petals had fallen onto the roof and bonnet of Freddie’s gold Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.

  “I bet the Commissioner hasn’t got a nicer place than this,” she said under her breath as she reached the front door. Looking up, she scanned the front of the house, looking for a box supplied by whichever security company protected Five Beeches. Not seeing one, she frowned, then extended her finger towards the black, antique-finish doorbell. No need. The banded and studded oak door swung inwards on silent hinges.

  Freddie McTiernan had wrapped his muscular, seventy-year-old frame in a black-and-gold silk dressing gown. Stella looked down and was relieved to see dark pyjamas beneath the hem of the garment. Even having been roused from a presumably peaceful slumber, he looked well groomed. His thick silver hair was swept back from his high, unlined forehead. The crow’s-feet and lines etched at the corners of his mouth weren’t too deep. And his purple-grey eyes were bright and clear. Clearly “the life” had been good to Freddie.

  “Stella Cole. Last I heard, you were sorting buttons in the funny farm,” Freddie said. “You’d better come in.”

  Sitting in a comfortable pine chair at the kitchen table, Stella watched Freddie make tea and toast.

  “Tell me something,” she said to his broad back. “How come you keep that beautiful car outside? Shouldn’t a Roller be in a climate-controlled garage or something?”

  Without stopping his practised movements, spooning tea into a pot and filling the kettle, he answered.

  “I bought that car new in 1980. Forty grand she cost me. Cash, obviously. Back then you could have got yourself a nice little semi in Ingatestone for less than that. A lot of people who make a bit of money, well, they go off and buy something foreign and flash, you know.” He adopted a wildly comical Italian accent. “Ferraaari, Maseraaati, Lamborghiiini. But for someone like me, there was only ever one choice. Gotta be a Roller, hasn’t it? It’s a big two fingers to all those snotty teachers who told me I’d never amount to nothing. And what did their university education get them, eh? Driving around in some piece of Japanese shit they’ve bought on the never-never, while I,” he turned and jabbed a thick finger into his chest, “cruise past my old school in a car longer than their house is wide. So, to answer your question, I keep it out there because I like looking at it. Every morning, every evening, every time I’m in the garden feeding the fish or off out for a walk, there she is, as bright and shiny as the day I took the keys off this smarmy salesman called Rupert or Julian or some stupid fucking name.”

  Having delivered himself of this speech, which had left him panting a little, he turned away and assembled the breakfast things onto a tray. Freddie carried it through to a conservatory that looked out onto the immaculate back garden. A pair of blackbirds hopped about, pulling up worms from the lawn. A lawn mown into regimentally-exact pale and dark stripes by a gardener who clearly suffered from OCD.

  Accepting a mug of tea and a plate, Stella spoke through a mouthful of buttery toast.

  “How did you know I was in the loony bin? I thought there might be a few places where your tentacles didn’t stretch.”

  “After that business with those Albanian fuckers, I thought I might’ve heard from you
. When all I got was, ‘Hi, this is Stella, leave a message’ I made a couple of calls. Ended up speaking to a DS. Nice bloke. Helpful. Banner? Tannon?”

  “Tanner. Jake.”

  “That’s it. Tanner.” Freddie winked at her, though to Stella it felt like a wildebeest being winked at by a crocodile. “Anyway, he told me what happened in Collier’s office. I’ve got to give it to you, girl, you’ve got brass-fucking-balls. Marching into your guvnor’s office with a shooter. So you were actually going to do him, right there, were you?”

  “That was the plan.”

  Freddie frowned, though his brow didn’t so much as crinkle. Botox? Stella wondered for a second.

  “And then what, Stella?”

  “And then I intended to kill myself, Freddie.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face, then took a swig of tea. He regarded her over the rim of his mug, blowing on the surface.

  “Maybe they did you a favour, sticking you in the hospital, then. Cos you’re clearly not thinking straight.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I haven’t been thinking straight since I found out those murderous bastards killed my baby girl as well as her daddy. But that’s not really your problem.”

  “No? Then how come I’ve got a certifiably bonkers DI from the Met drinking my English Breakfast and eating my sliced white in my conservatory at five thirty in the fucking morning? Do I get an explanation? I think I’m entitled to one, don’t you?”

  Stella sighed. He was right.

  “Collier can’t use official channels to get to me. Not without blowing his cover and ruining his chances of getting out of this in one piece. But he’s still got contacts. Still got a few foot soldiers willing to follow orders. I can’t risk going back to my place, or my family or friends. I just thought, who’d be the last person Collier would think I’d go to for protection?”