by Tim Ellis
‘You’ll be there. He won’t come clean if you’re there.’
‘Maybe I could ask him.’
‘You will not. Anyway, you’re making the assumption that I have similar feelings for him, that his desire for me is reciprocated – it’s not. I don’t even like him. If he had any respect for me – he’d tell me the truth. He’s a coward who’s too afraid to reveal his true feelings to the woman he loves.’
‘You?’
‘Yes – me. In fact, I’m thinking of submitting a sexual harassment complaint against him.’
‘I thought you said he didn’t molest you.’
‘Not overtly, but there are other ways. He undresses me with his eyes, he licks his lips, he . . .’
‘And you’re absolutely convinced it has nothing to do with you not following correct procedure, going off half-cocked and generally being irresponsible?’
‘Absolutely not. If it came down to it, you’d vouch for me, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m your partner, aren’t I?’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘I think it’s nearly midnight. The Chief will be here soon. We should make our way outside.’
She heard him stand up and make his way to the door, and pushed herself up as well.
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Oh! What question was that?’
‘You’d tell the sexual harassment committee that I always follow correct procedure, don’t go off half-cocked and am definitely not irresponsible, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m your partner, aren’t I?’
‘You’ve said that already.’
‘Have I? It looks as though it’s all clear,’ Stick said as he looked into the large central room. ‘Ready?’
‘Go.’
‘I think we could clear all this up if the Chief simply revealed his true feelings for you,’ Stick threw over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to ask him outright what his intentions towards you are. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it.’
‘Have you ever thought what it would be like to be a eunuch?’
‘Not recently.’
‘Well, if you say anything to the Chief you’ll have the opportunity to dwell on it at your leisure.’
‘I was only thinking of you.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘There could be a miniscule chance that your interpretation of the Chief’s actions might be incorrect – do you think?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Not even a smidgen?’
‘All right – maybe a smidgen.’
‘In which case I can understand how it might be politic to say nothing to him, or the sexual harassment committee. Imagine how foolish you’d feel if it turned out you were completely wrong and that the Chief had no such feelings for you.’
‘Mmmm! There is that.’
‘I think you should put it to the back of your mind. Obviously, if he begins to act in a lascivious manner towards you again, then you can bring up his past behaviour . . .’
‘But for now I should just move past it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re probably right, Stickamundo.’
Stick pulled on the chain to lift the metal shutter up a foot and peered out through the gap to see the Chief’s silver Mondeo in the moonlight.
They rolled through the opening and scampered across the yard to the car. Xena climbed in the passenger seat, and Stick got in the back again.
‘Hi, Chief,’ Xena said.
‘How is it in there?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Well, hopefully it won’t be for long.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
He passed her a heavy plastic bag. ‘Two Glock 17s. You’ll have to put the rounds in the magazines.’
Xena passed the bag to Stick.
‘There’s another bag behind this chair with some of the other stuff you asked for inside . . .’
‘No beers?’
‘No beers, Blake. Instead, there’s a radio. I spoke to the Chief Constable earlier. We’ve agreed that I’ll take command of this operation. There are eight specialist officers – four each on eight-hour rotating shifts – acting as your back-up. They’re not sitting in cars, they’re a lot closer than that. The radio is to be switched off, and should only be turned on if you need to call in the cavalry – understood?’
‘Understood, Sir.’
‘I also have a team of CO19 officers and a helicopter at my disposal should the need arise. Is there anything else?’
Stick leaned forward. ‘There was one thing, Sir.’
Xena swivelled round to stare at him.
‘Yes, Gilbert?’ the Chief said.
‘I was just wondering whether they’d found that young girl – Lisa Cabot – yet?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Chief.’
‘Right, you’d better get back in there. If nothing happens tomorrow, we’ll meet here at midnight again.’
They climbed out of the car and made their way back into the industrial unit.
‘Don’t think I don’t know what you did just then,’ Xena said.
‘I never would.’
Chapter Ten
Wednesday, February 3
If it had only been Shakin’ and Joe, they would have scampered over the fences and pranced through the gardens like gazelles on the Serengeti Plains, but it wasn’t only them. Jerry Kowalski was with them, and she wasn’t as young as she used to be. In fact, she was bordering on decrepitude at the ridiculous age of twenty-one – give or take a decade or two.
With all the grace of a newborn giraffe she’d navigated over the first fence, but it had quickly deteriorated from there. Gymnastics had seemed to pass her by unnoticed at school. Who needed gymnastics when all the boys had wet dreams about her anyway. But it wasn’t simply the lack of gymnastics. She’d had four children for God’s sake. Her insides had been turned inside out more times than she cared to remember in an attempt to continue the Kowalski lineage
‘Just let me catch my breath,’ she said, sitting on a broken tree stump. The garden at the rear of the clinic was seriously overgrown and resembled the Amazon jungle with waist-high weeds, trees that didn’t look as though they had ever been trimmed, and the sound of night creatures in the undergrowth.
‘Take your time, Mrs K,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll see if we can’t get inside. Won’t we, Shakin’?’
‘Sure thing,’ Shakin’ said. ‘You sit there and get your composure back. But if you need any help in tidying yourself up, just let us know, Mrs K. Me and Joe could tidy you up real good and proper.’
‘Very kind, but I think I’ll be able to manage, thank you. I just need a moment or two.’ She rummaged in her bag and passed them each one of the torches she’d bought at the petrol station. During the train journey she’d inserted the batteries and checked that they worked. ‘Here, you might need these.’
‘Wicked,’ Joe said, switching it on and off and shining the light in Shakin’s eyes as if it was a new toy he’d just been given for his birthday.
If the truth be told, she probably needed a week of pampering in a health spa to tidy herself up. Her designer clothes were filthy and torn. Her hair was full of leaves and twigs and resembled an abandoned crow’s nest. Her nails were broken, and she ached all over – especially the insides of her thighs from sitting astride the rough wooden fences. What was she thinking? Was this really the answer? Why didn’t she simply call the police? Or go to the newspapers, television and radio? Possibly start a Facebook campaign? She should act her age, and grow old gracefully. Being a barrister was about using the law to bring criminals to justice – not playing back garden Willie in the middle of the night with two toy boys. Was Bronwyn really in trouble? Or had she got cold feet and signed herself out of the clinic just like the staff said?
‘Yep,’ Shakin’ whispered. ‘We’re in, Mrs K.’
‘Already?’
‘You’re talking to a master crim
inal.’
‘Not a trainee barrister?’
‘I’ve heard it said that you can’t be one without having a foot in both camps. They’re two sides of the same coin.’
‘Who said that?’
‘I can’t remember off the top of my head, but someone famous must have said it.’
‘So you’re advocating justice during the day, and crime at night?’
‘They go hand-in-hand. I’ll be the Jekyll and Hyde of the legal profession.’
‘You do realise, that although Dr Jekyll was a very nice person, Mr Hyde – the evil side of his personality – killed people?’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, maybe Jekyll and Hyde wasn’t a good example. What about Wallace and Gromit?’
‘Should we go in?’ Joe said.
Shakin’ stood to one side, bowed with a sweep of his arm and said, ‘After you, Mrs K.’
She pushed herself up like an octogenarian, took the spare torch out of her bag, and made her way down seven concrete steps and into the cellar of the clinic through an open rotting wooden door that Shakin’ had forced open. ‘Very kind.’
The room she’d entered seemed to be an old storage room for gardening equipment that had ceased to be used a long time ago. There was an old rusty metal wheelbarrow with the wheel missing; a collection of garden implements in one corner; some chemicals in plastic containers and split paper bags; and cobwebs hanging everywhere.
‘No wonder you wanted me to go first,’ she said, parting the cobwebs.
Shakin’ clutched his chest. ‘I’m hurt you would even think that, Mrs K.’
Joe was weaving about between the gossamer threads as if they were infra-red beams on the set of a Mission Impossible film. ‘I hate spiders,’ he said. ‘I hope there’s no tarantulas down here, or those camel spiders that inject you with a drug before they eat your flesh. Did you know that the goliath tarantula eats birds? I reckon they could devour a human in a couple of sittings.’
They made their way through a door at the back of the room and entered a long corridor.
‘It doesn’t look as though anyone’s been down here for a long time,’ Joe said.
Jerry shone her torch in both directions. It was true. There was a thick layer of undisturbed dust on the concrete floor. Where they were standing, their footprints were clearly evident, but beyond the immediate vicinity there was no sign of any human activity.
‘Which way?’ Shakin’ asked.
Shining her torch she looked both ways. If she was standing on the corner of Lower Wimpole Street and Henrietta Plaza looking at the clinic, the main entrance was directly in front of her. They were now located to the right of the entrance. Bronwyn, she recalled, was to the left along a ground floor corridor. ‘Left,’ she said.
They began walking along the corridor in the direction of the main entrance. There were unlocked rooms on both sides. Some were completely empty. Others were filled with chairs, tables, beds and old medical equipment.
Eventually they arrived at a locked fire door blocking off the corridor.
Jerry peered through the small square window of Georgian wire mesh glass, but it was pitch black on the other side. She shone the torchlight through the glass, but the reflection made it impossible to see anything.
Shakin’ used his crowbar like a professional thief and had the door open with one flick of his wrist. ‘I could get used to this,’ he whispered.
‘That’s fine,’ Jerry said. ‘As long as you could also get used to the trials and tribulations of prison as well. My husband tells me that pretty boys don’t do so well in prison.’
Shakin’ shone his torchlight in her face, but kept it out of her eyes. ‘Pretty boys!?’
‘Good looking boys then.’
‘That sounds better.’
‘Me as well?’ Joe said.
‘Of course you as well,’ she said, and touched his face.
Beyond the door they carried on along the corridor.
‘Look,’ Shakin’ said, pointing his torchlight at a mishmash of footprints in the dust outside a door. ‘Someone’s been here recently.’
When Jerry looked through the small window, she could see a bundle of white huddled on the floor. ‘I think there’s someone in there,’ she said.
Shakin’ and Joe took turns to look.
‘Mmmm!’ Joe mumbled. ‘Could be.’
‘Open it,’ Jerry said to Shakin.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
He made quick work of the door and it burst open.
‘You’re like a man possessed with that crowbar, Shakin’,’ Joe said.
‘I think I might carry one with me all the time now. Who needs a key when you have a crowbar.’
Joe grinned. ‘Have crowbar, will travel?’
‘That’s it.’
Jerry hurried into the room. The bundle of white was a human being in a hospital gown. She turned the body over and fell back in horror and disgust. ‘Oh God!’
***
‘Major Tom calling Earth?’
‘The Chief said we weren’t meant to switch the radio on unless we needed the cavalry,’ Stick’s voice came out of the darkness.
‘I’m bored.’
‘As I recall, that’s the reason we’re sitting in this room now.’
‘Stop being a killjoy. It’ll only be for a couple of minutes. What harm can it do? I merely want to see who’s out there and make sure they’re awake. Hello Earth – this is Major Tom?’
‘Hello, Major Tom.’
‘Is that you Earth?’
‘We’re meant to be on radio silence, Ma’am.’
‘Are there any DIs out there.’
‘No.’
‘That makes me the senior officer then, doesn’t it?’
‘Actually . . .’
‘And if I’m the senior officer I say we should party – P-A-R-T-Y. Anybody got any beers?’
‘You’re forgetting one thing, DI Blake.’ It was someone else’s voice, and it sounded suspiciously like . . .
‘Such as?’
‘You’re not the senior officer when the DCI is out here.’
She took her finger off the “send” button. ‘Oh crap!’
‘I told you so,’ Stick said.
‘I told you so,’ she mimicked.
‘Anything more to say, Blake?’ the Chief’s voice seeped out of the radio like an avenging angel.
‘Aren’t we meant to be on radio silence, Sir?’ She turned towards Stick. ‘Now look what you made me do.’
‘I think we should try and get some sleep.’
‘Did you know he was out there?’
‘I knew as much as you did.’
‘Fuck! I hate it when that happens.’
‘What? When you get caught in the act, you mean?’
Xena mimicked him again. ‘How can I sleep when there’s four dead bodies next door?’
‘Put them out of your mind.’
‘And the smell, the flies and you?’
‘Me?’
‘I don’t want you going back to the station telling everyone you slept with DI Blake.’
‘I never would.’
‘Men are all the same.’
‘You know very well I’m not like other men.’
‘Sometimes you say the stupidest things.’
‘Thanks. Are we going to sleep now?’
‘No. We’re going to take a look in that room.’
‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘Imagine if the killer came back . . .’
‘The Chief and four officers are outside.’
‘Yeah, but if they weren’t? Or, if he managed to sneak in while they were sleeping?’
‘They wouldn’t be sleeping.’
‘Will you shut the fuck up and listen?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘He comes back and moves the bodies to another location . . .’
‘Without anybody noticing th
at he’s doing it?’
‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘Do you have a few examples?’
‘No I don’t have a few examples. You’ll just have to trust your superior officer when she tells you that stranger things have happened – okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Good. So, he moves the bodies – what do we have left?’
‘An empty room with lots of forensic evidence?’
‘But no bodies, and no killer. We’d have lost our one chance to find out who the victims are.’
‘I can understand why you might be concerned.’
‘Not only that, what if there was a fire?’
‘Who’s going to start a fire?’
‘It doesn’t matter who starts it. What matters is that a fire would destroy every bit of evidence in that room.’
‘True.’
‘Also, what if the drug smugglers . . .’
‘So you want to go into that room and collect as much evidence as we can before the conflagration comes?’
‘Didn’t I say that already?’
‘It’s a good job I kept my gloves, isn’t it?’ Stick said, passing her a pair of plastic gloves.
She slid them on. ‘Brilliant.’
With both torches switched on, they shifted the door enough to get through and stepped inside the room.
‘It’s a shame we haven’t got masks,’ Stick said.
‘And boots, and evidence bags, and suits.’
‘Maybe we could ask . . . ?’
‘Don’t be stupid. We’re not giving the Chief any more ammunition to crucify me.’
‘Okay.’
Xena stared at the four corpses. ‘Let’s look at the one that’s been in here the longest first – take notes.’
She squatted. ‘We should get extra pay for this.’
‘We do.’
‘Well, maybe a fully-paid holiday abroad, a BMW and free membership of a gym.’
‘A gym?’
‘Where they have masseurs, unisex saunas and beauty treatments.’
‘That sounds right up your street.’
‘Are you insinuating something?’
‘I was thinking of the beauty treatments.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Push that torch in your mouth and start writing.’
‘Uh huh.’