by Tim Ellis
‘Penny Sanderson. She lives at 37 Scotts Road in Ware.’
‘That’s good news, Doc. To be honest, we were running out of ideas.’
‘Glad I could help. It’ll be your turn to buy lunch next time.’
Before he could tell her what he thought of that suggestion, the line went dead.
‘Good news, Sir?’ Richards asked.
‘Whose turn is it to buy lunch – mine or Doc Riley’s?’
‘Yours.’
‘Don’t think I don’t know what you and the Doc are up to.’
‘Up to? I don’t know about the Doc, but I’m not up to anything.’
He mimed his nose growing long. ‘Of course you’re not.’
***
She didn’t particularly like Jenny Weber. The woman was ugly, but tried to hide the fact behind a good head of hair, designer glasses and enough make-up to sink a small volcanic island in the Indian ocean.
‘Do you use Botox?’
Jenny looked at her over her glasses. ‘No. What makes you ask?’
‘You’re lips look unnaturally plump.’
Jenny grabbed her handbag sitting on the coffee table behind her desk, took out a gold-plated compact and opened it up so that she could look in the small round mirror. ‘I don’t think my lips are particularly full.’
‘It was just a thought. But you’ve had a facelift surely? I mean, the signs are unmistakeable – staring eyes, facial skin so tight you can hardly smile, splayed nostrils . . .’
‘No I have not.’
‘Bat ears corrected?’
‘No.’
‘Breasts enhanced?’
‘All mine. I hope this isn’t leading up to you asking me out? Because I’m not a lesbian regardless of what some people might say around here. I have a boyfriend – a senior police officer at another station, if you must know.’
Xena smiled. ‘Thank you for your kind offer. I don’t mind a bit of girl-on-girl every now and then, but I’m a bit busy today. No, I’m just impressed at the way you nearly manage to camouflage your natural ugliness through the liberal use of creams, magic potions and surgical intervention.’
‘Sticks and stones, Xena Blake.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.’
‘I’m well aware that you like nothing better than to pick on the little people, but I’m not going to play your game.’
She’d come up to discuss the media strategy with Jenny Weber. A photographer had already taken a photograph of the dry-cleaning tags, and they were waiting for him to come back with a stack of photographs ready to hand out to the press.
‘It’s no game, Jenny. The truth is the truth whichever way it comes out.’ She stood up. ‘Anyway, I’ll let you get on and I’ll see you in the briefing room at three o’clock.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘With the photographs?’
‘Of course. And you’ll explain to the press exactly what you need from them?’
‘That’s the plan. And . . .’
‘What now?’
‘You might want to touch up the invisible cream around your eyes – it isn’t invisible anymore.’
‘Goodbye, Inspector Blake.’
She went out through the door and pulled it closed behind her – waited a handful of seconds and then went back in.
Jenny had her glasses off, compact out and the contents of her make-up bag spread out on the desk. ‘Yes?’
The corner of her mouth creased upwards. ‘Oh nothing. It’ll keep until later.’ She closed the door and headed back down to the squad room.
‘Where’s my coffee, Stickamundo?’ she asked as she sat down behind her desk.
‘I didn’t know when you were coming back.’
‘That’s a pathetic excuse.’
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘Very kind of you to offer. So, what have you been doing while I’ve been keeping the riff-raff in line?’
‘Do you want me to answer your questions or make you a coffee?’
‘I want you to do both, but you can do them in order.’
Stick wandered off towards the kitchen.
While he was gone she checked her emails and intray, but there was nothing more important than catching the killer.
‘Do you think it will work?’ Stick asked when he returned and placed her steaming mug down on the coaster.
‘If it doesn’t, you’d better start looking for another job.’
‘Me? You’re in charge.’
‘You think Professional Standards will buy that?’ She adopted a sad face and stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Please, Sir. It’s not my fault. DI Blake is in charge. I was only following her orders. Oh, that’s all right then, DS Gilbert. You take two weeks leave, come back refreshed and we’ll give you to somebody else.’
‘That sounds fair.’
‘I’m sure it does – to a crazy person such as yourself. But it’s never going to happen, Stickynuts. Following my written recommendation, they’ll make an example of you by sticking your head on a gibbet outside the front of the station. It’ll be a warning to other employees who think they can blame their superior officers.’
‘You’re the best.’
‘The least I can do.’
‘What time is the press briefing?’
‘Three o’clock.’
‘Will you blame me if you’re late?’
She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Fuck!’
She ran along the corridor and down the stairs. In fact, because she was pressing her hand down on her stomach scar to stop her insides from falling out, it was more of a two-shoe shuffle than a run, but it still took her breath away.’
They went quiet as she slid into the chair and poured herself a glass of water. She had the feeling that beneath the human visage they were vultures shifting from one claw to another, and that soon – regardless of what she said to keep them docile – they would swoop down and tear the flesh from her starched-white bones.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, even though she knew that they were nothing of the sort.
The photographs had been handed out.
‘You have in your hands a colour photograph of five dry-cleaning tags with numbers and codes on them. We all get them when we take in our clothes for dry cleaning. Usually, the tags only have numbers on them, and the staff in the dry cleaners match up the number on your tag with the number on a tag attached to the article of clothing. If they match, you get your item of clothing back, which hopefully has been dry-cleaned.’
‘What are the codes, Inspector?’
‘For the impatient among us, the codes are apparently standard fabric abbreviations.’ She explained what each one meant, including the mistake in the silk abbreviation. ‘Now, how many of you have seen dry-cleaning tags with those abbreviations written on them?’
She looked at the sea of inquisitive faces, but no hands went up. ‘I’m reliably informed that for dry-cleaning staff to write those abbreviations on the tags is quite rare . . .’
‘And you need our help to find out who wrote the abbreviations? And which dry-cleaners they work in?’
‘As soon as I walked in the room I knew you lot were much more intelligent than the usual crowd. Any other questions?’
‘Do you have any other leads besides these tags?’
‘The tags are merely a small part of our overall investigative strategy.’
‘Do you have any suspects?’
‘What we have are people of interest.’ She stood up. ‘Thank you for coming, and thank you in advance for your valuable help.’
***
For a long time she sat on the ground in the alley hugging her knees and thinking about what had happened. Her attacker had made it perfectly clear that if she carried on trying to find out what the Baker Street Robbery was really all about, then she’d end up dead. He seemed to know exactly who she was, which also meant that he knew who Ray was and what he did for a living. There seemed to be only one logical conclusion to be drawn
from the events surrounding the robbery and what had happened to her – MI5 were behind the cover-up.
The question now was: What should she do next? Oh, it made perfect sense to drop everything and run, but she wasn’t that type of person – even after everything that had happened to her. A small part of her didn’t really believe that the man would kill her, even though she’d been in the same room and witnessed George Peckham’s murder. Another – larger part – knew that she was being fanciful. In the scheme of things, she was a tiny speck in the universe.
She took out her phone and dialled Bronwyn’s number.
‘Just because you have my number doesn’t mean you can pester me all day, every day.’
‘I was attacked.’ She didn’t know why, but she burst into tears again.
‘You’re a train wreck looking for a level-crossing. What happened?’
She told Bronwyn what the man had done and said to her.
‘Bastards. Are you giving up?’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to give up. You should also be aware that they’re probably listening to our conversation right now, so giving up is a good idea.’
‘Yes, I think I will give up.’
‘Me too. I’ll be in contact.’
The call ended.
Of course they were listening to her phone calls. They’d followed her and Joe to the Poplar Care Home, why wouldn’t they be tapping her phone? Or monitoring her GPS signal? Not for the first time, she’d been stupid and naive. Like a child, she seemed to walk into situations with her eyes screwed up tight. All her life Ray had looked after her, been there for her and protected her. Now, she was venturing out from under the cloak of invisibility, and she needed to protect herself.
She stood up, repaired her face and went out into Cardigan Street again.
Joe and Shakin’ were walking up and down on the other side of the street looking for her. When they saw her, they waved and ran across the road in-between the traffic.
‘We thought we’d lost you, Mrs K,’ Joe said.
‘And I thought I’d lost you two as well. Where have you been?’
Joe looked at the pavement and shuffled his feet.
‘You won’t believe this, Mrs K,’ Shakin’ said. ‘Joe struck lucky.’
She stared at Joe. ‘You found out something?’
His face turned a crimson colour.
Shakin’ grinned. ‘No, not that type of lucky. The other type of lucky.’
Jerry screwed up her face. ‘You had sex?’
‘It wasn’t my fault, Mrs K. One minute Shakin’ and me were standing on her doorstep asking about undertakers, and the next I was being dragged into her house and up the stairs.’
She looked at Shakin’. ‘And what about you?’
‘Well, I had to wait downstairs for him to finish.’
‘It was more like waiting for her to finish,’ Joe said. ‘She wrung every last drop out of me.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t think we need to know the gory details, Joe.’
‘Sorry, Mrs K. I thought I’d feel on top of the world, but I don’t. I feel used.’
‘I wish she’d have used me,’ Shakin’ said. ‘I wouldn’t mind being used – just once.’
‘So, you haven’t found out anything?’ Jerry asked.
Shakin’ shook his head and said, ‘We didn’t get the chance. What about you?’
‘I know that GE Harbottle & Son had their yard at number 87.’
Joe and Shakin’ looked around trying to locate it.
‘It’s on the other side of the street, isn’t it?’ Joe said.
Jerry pointed diagonally. ‘Over there.’
‘It looks like a builder’s yard now,’ Shakin’ said.
‘We’ll walk over there and take a quick look,’ Jerry said. ‘And then we have to get back to the university for the last lesson.’ She didn’t say anything about the brown envelope and its contents, or about the man attacking her and threatening to kill her. First, she had to decide what she was going to do.
Chapter Sixteen
She hadn’t planned on going out today. She’d been up late last night checking out the comings and goings at the Evidence Warehouse on Caxton Street behind New Scotland Yard. Thankfully, there had been no surprises – Yoda and Sushi were good to go. Once they were inside the Evidence Warehouse, they’d easily find out what had been taken from Box 253 on the night of September 11, 1971 at Lloyds Bank on Baker Street.
But that was before Jerry Kowalski’s phone call. Those bastard MI5 people got everywhere. They were like cockroaches. You stamped on one and ten more took its place. And because they were tapping Jerry’s phone, it meant that the bastards now knew where she lived again.
After this was over, she’d have to find another squat, but first she had to sort out Jerry.
She wrapped up warm – it was like the barren wastes of the Antarctic out there. If she’d have been a penguin everything would have been fine, but she wasn’t a fucking penguin. She stuffed all the things she needed into her rucksack and left the squat on Oakeshott Avenue in Highgate – opposite the cemetery.
Archway tube station was a bit of a hike, but squatters couldn’t be picky about the quality of the public services that they didn’t pay for. The squat was wedged between Archway, Tufnell Park and Highgate tube stations, and Archway was the nearest. It took her twelve minutes to walk there.
A couple of doors away from the station entrance she popped into a gift shop, bought four pay-as-you-go phones, recorded the numbers in her notebook and put twenty-five pounds of credit on each one. Then, she caught the train to Embankment, switched to the Circle Line and remained standing during the one stop journey to Temple station. At street level, she walked along Savoy Place to the Law School.
Nobody paid her any attention. She looked exactly like a student with her multicoloured hair, the strawberry eye-shadow around her light grey eyes, the five silver rings through her bottom lip, and the leather choker decorated with an assortment of spikes and studs around her scrawny neck.
After asking an old woman behind the Help Desk in Student Services where the law students were sleeping, she wandered up to the lecture room and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite the door to wait for Jerry to appear.
Within ten minutes students began piling out through the double doors.
She didn’t stand up, even though there was a danger that she might get trampled underfoot.
Jerry saw her and came over with two boys in tow. ‘Are you thinking of studying law?’
‘Waste of fucking time if you ask me. The government, people in positions of power, rich people, those bastards who work for the security services and the police have no respect for the law. The law is designed to keep us in our place, and protect those bastards from prosecution and us.’
Shakin’ sat down next to her. ‘Will you marry me?’
She ignored him.
‘You didn’t tell us you had a seriously hot friend, Mrs K,’ Joe said.
‘I forgot to introduce you to the two other members in my project group.’ She pointed at Shakin’. ‘Bronwyn, meet Richard Stevens who everyone calls Shakin’.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Why?’
‘Shakin’ Stevens,’ Shakin’ said, and grinned at her.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘And this is Joe Larkin,’ Jerry said, indicating Joe.
‘You want a man – I’m your man,’ Joe said, and puffed out his chest
She pretended to laugh. ‘Well, it’s all very nice meeting your two toy boys, but we have important things to discuss, and I have a life to live.’
‘Okay. Right, off you go boys,’ Jerry said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure?’ Shakin’ said. ‘We could . . .’
‘. . . You could fuck off and leave us alone,’ Bronwyn suggested.
Joe and Shakin’ slouched off along the corridor.
‘They’re
nice boys really,’ Jerry said.
‘Do I look like I like nice boys?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Definitely not.’
‘There’s a cafe downstairs in the atrium. Do you want to go there for a coffee and maybe something to eat?’
‘A coffee. I’ll grab something to eat later.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like shit.’ Bronwyn pushed herself up. ‘Before I go anywhere with you, we have to check something.’ She ran her hands all over Jerry’s clothing, felt in her pockets and then took her handbag.
‘Are you looking for more keys to lock-ups?’
‘Maybe.’
She shook the contents of Jerry’s bag onto the scuffed corridor floor. ‘Take a look at everything. Is there anything you don’t recognise?’
Jerry began putting the items back in her bag until she picked up a black pen. ‘This isn’t mine.’
Bronwyn opened the pen up and a mishmash of electronics fell out. ‘Bastards.’ She dropped the pen on the floor and stamped on it half a dozen times.
‘I think it’s dead now,’ Jerry said, as she finished putting the items back in her handbag.
‘It’d better be.’
Jerry pulled a face. ‘That man must have slipped it into my bag when he took the envelope.’
She followed Jerry down the stairs to the open-plan cafe. There were a few people sitting at tables, but most of the students had left.
They sat down at a table as far away from everyone else as they could get.
She reached in her rucksack, pulled out two of the mobile phones and passed them to Jerry. ‘They’re untraceable pay-as-you-go phones. I’ve put twenty-five pounds of credit on each one, and the numbers of the two phones I’ve got. As of now, we’re off the grid. You want to contact me from now on, use one of the new phones. If I need to contact you, I’ll do the same.’
Jerry nodded. ‘You’re not giving up then?’
‘Am I fuck? I’ve been put on this earth to make those bastards miserable. I’d be shirking my duties if I gave up. There’s nothing I like better than revealing government secrets.’
‘If you’re sure. You don’t have to do it for me. After all, it’s only a course project.’