If Fear Wins

by Tony J. Forder

  Bliss swallowed. Nodded. ‘I agree. Or at least, it would have left me exposed, were it not for the fact that before Munday and I left the station I sent a text to Bannister containing the passwords, informing her that should anything happen to me or Emily Curtis she was to open and use both files with my permission.’

  The man from Six did not respond immediately. He swirled ice around in his glass, eyes distant, contemplative. Finally he shook his head and gave a short, empty laugh. ‘Bliss, whilst I do admire your doggedness and cunning, I think you may have over-estimated the power of the stories you have to tell, whilst at the same time under-estimating my reach and ability to ensure they never see the light of day. If I am willing to take steps to silence both Mrs Curtis and you, a police detective, do you imagine I would shrink from doing the same with a local newspaper journalist?’

  Bliss shook his head. ‘No. But I do think Ms Bannister is intelligent enough to ensure that whatever she has from me is also made available to her editor, just in case she should meet with an accident. And just in case she isn’t as bright as I’ve given her credit for, my note in the text insisting she do precisely that should do the trick.’

  Stalemate, Bliss thought. The SIS agent glared at him, but Bliss’s own firm gaze did not falter. He felt sick to his stomach, but refused to let the other man see through to that anxiety. He did not doubt Six’s capacity to act upon a threat so casually made, but he also did not believe the situation merited such an extreme action, and that a compromise could be arranged. It was a gamble, but he thought he had played it just right.

  All the same, he was glad when his phone rang and Chandler informed him that Lewis Drake and friends were on site with their solicitors and awaiting his presence. As he stood to leave, Bliss turned to Munday.

  ‘And how about you? Where are you in all of this? You okay with a police officer and an innocent widow being threatened in this manner?’

  Munday held up both hands. ‘It’s not for me to interfere, Bliss. But as you have asked, let me just say that I think you are capable of handling this on your own. You certainly appear to be doing a good job of it so far.’

  ‘And what if that job is not good enough?’ Bliss asked. He felt himself becoming angry now. ‘Will you still stand idly by while this man sets his minions on us?’

  The man from Five glanced across at Six, then laid his eyes on Bliss once more. ‘Who knows what the future might bring, Inspector. Let’s play this out. You may be better at this game than you think.’

  41

  Lewis Drake was dragged kicking, scratching and biting from his office above a betting shop in the centre of Peterborough. In a joint raid, five of his closest associates were also arrested and taken to Thorpe Wood. Bliss had ordered the swoop-and-scoop and Edwards had signed off on it. Bliss had gone to his boss intending to ensure everything was above board and countenanced by at least one of his superiors. To his surprise, the DCI had readily agreed without any argument the moment he finished outlining the revised strategy. Bliss wondered what her angle was, but guessed that she had been reined in by Superintendent Fletcher and instructed to be more accommodating. This was not a time for petty politics or point scoring, and he thought that maybe his boss had been warned off.

  Drake and his crew had arrived within minutes of one another, their solicitors’ team not far behind. As usual, the interviewing detectives let their suspects stew for a while. Bliss interviewed Drake himself, bringing Chandler along for the ride. Although not an imposing figure, behind Drake’s spectacles lay the eyes of a cold-hearted monster without any semblance of a conscience. Bliss spotted it the moment he sat down, aware of the man’s close scrutiny. He had shared a room with such people many times before.

  The NCA file that Bliss had checked out whilst waiting had Drake in the frame for all manner of organised criminal activities, but they had never been able to charge him with anything. The solicitor in the chair next to Drake was on the man’s speed-dial and had driven down from nearby Stamford, where his practice was one of the most respected among those who required the very best defence team money could buy. Bliss assumed this was the main reason Drake had evaded being prosecuted until now.

  The four spent forty-three minutes together in the tiny room. Drake said nothing other than to repeat the same two words: ‘No comment.’ He neither smirked nor scowled, remaining impassive throughout.

  ‘I know you have the right to say nothing,’ Bliss said at one point. ‘But I thought an experienced bloke like you would be bright enough to know that it’s all bullshit. You can talk without incriminating yourself, surely? Contrary to what is said and popular belief, refusing to answer our questions does not work in your best interests.’

  When Drake said nothing, Bliss smiled and nodded. ‘Right. I didn’t ask a question that time, did I? So let’s change direction for a moment, Mr Drake. You may have decided not to discuss your smuggling operation, and that’s fine. But the drum of acid containing human remains, surely that’s something you want to get ahead of?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Really? See, it may be just my suspicious nature, but the usual response from an innocent man to a question like that would be something along the lines of… “what drum of acid?” So I can’t help but suspect that you know precisely what drum of acid I am talking about, and whose remains are inside it. Do you know anything about it, Mr Drake?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Do you know everything about it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  The man did not even appear to sweat. He remained impassive, staring straight ahead. It was as if he had switched himself off, and would remain so until he was breathing fresh air again.

  Bliss looked at Chandler. She shrugged. Lewis Drake was no Darren Bird, and there was no dumb wife out in the waiting room for them to work on. Bliss sniffed and completed the questions he had in front of him; those he would need on record if the case against Drake went forward. He ended the interview shortly afterwards.

  It had gone exactly as he had expected it would. He would have sent Hunt and Ansari in to ask the same questions and get the same result, but both Drake and the solicitor would have been expecting someone of Bliss’s rank and so that’s precisely what they got. The arrest of Drake and his most senior men was essential, but Bliss had never once considered that he would get what he wanted from any of them. He was gambling everything on his next interviewee for that.

  ‘Hello again, Stu,’ Bliss said breezily as he entered the room. He nodded at the youngster’s solicitor. ‘We need to talk again, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Got nothing to say,’ Stu shot back immediately, his gaunt face pale and haunted.

  ‘Well, then you can listen instead.’ Bliss sat down and casually tossed a blue folder onto the table. It was an inch thick, currently stuffed with paper Bliss had yanked from the closest printer. But neither Stu nor his solicitor were to know that. He waited for Chandler to take her seat before ploughing on, first by going through the standard interview protocols and then aiming his full attention at the young man opposite.

  ‘See, we know pretty much all there is to know about what went down, Stu. And I don’t just mean the contents of the drum that you were so concerned about, I mean everything. Top to bottom we know all about the smuggling, the trafficking, the use of RAF cargo planes. We have it all. Our chat and subsequent arrangement with your boss has allowed us to clarify the entire situation.’

  Bliss noted the man’s eyes spring wide for a moment.

  ‘Oh, yes. Did you think it was just you we had in custody, Stu? No, we have your boss as well. Him and his head honchos. In fact, we’ve just spent almost an hour speaking with Mr Drake. Not that he grassed or anything like that, Stu. No, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea about him or what took place. You’re not foolish enough to believe that of him. We just laid it out for him and he confirmed whatever he could. You’ll be pleased to know that he puts you in the clear, Stu. He confirmed for us that you w
ere not responsible for murdering the young woman and stuffing her body into a drum of acid. Nor that you were responsible for abducting, beating and setting alight Flying Officer Duncan Livingston.’

  The man on the opposite side of the table nodded as if this was something he had been insisting all along. His shoulders slumped back, his posture slackened, and a slight smile touched his lips.

  ‘So having chatted with Mr Drake we now also know that Livingston reacted badly when he discovered your crew were smuggling in more than stolen artefacts, Stu. It’s common knowledge that as soon as he discovered trafficking was involved, he set the girl free.’

  This time the look on the young man’s face was one of genuine surprise. It flickered only briefly, but had been there all the same. Bliss spotted it, and wondered what it meant. ‘You knew about the girl, right? That she had been trafficked in by the RAF so that your boss could use her as a hooker. You certainly knew she was in the drum of acid, Stu.’

  The solicitor interjected at this point. He was of no great age himself. Newly qualified was Bliss’s guess. ‘My client denies all knowledge of this,’ he said, arching his eyebrows at Bliss, peering over the top of his spectacles. ‘Please don’t suggest otherwise as if it is a proven matter.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Bliss raised a hand and smiled. ‘My apologies. But let’s not play games. Stu here knows that we know that he knew. After all, it was his anxious glance at the drum that gave the game away. I don’t suppose his boss will be thrilled to learn that, but let’s push past it for now. The fact is, RAF officer Livingston was happy enough to take money for his role in the smuggling, but not when it came to people trafficking. On top of that, we are also aware that he made his disgust clear to Holbrook.’

  The puzzled look reappeared on Stu’s face. This time it remained. Bliss had taken a leap of faith throwing that name out there. It looked as if it had backfired, that Holbrook might not be their other man. He decided to give it one final shot.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant Holbrook,’ Bliss repeated. ‘Duncan Livingston’s boss. The other man taking cash from your boss.’

  ‘You mean Lundy,’ Stu said. He nodded twice for emphasis. ‘Lundy, the RAF cop.’

  ‘Stuart!’ The reprimand from the solicitor was instantaneous, but it could not go back in time and prevent the man from having spoken.

  ‘What?’ Stu snarled, baring his ugly teeth. ‘These people think they know it all, but they got that bit wrong. I’ve never heard of this Holbrook. They’re trying to trick us. Lundy was the main contact. You know how these people twist things around. You have to do something. If Mr Drake told it wrong then he might not get his deal.’

  ‘There is no deal, you bloody idiot.’ The solicitor pushed himself back from the desk and cupped both hands around his mouth as if offering up a prayer.

  Stu turned to Bliss. ‘You said Mr Drake and you had a deal, right? You can’t lie to me with my brief here.’

  Bliss shrugged. ‘Actually, I can. But I never told you I’d made a deal with him, Stu. I told you we’d spoken and that he had clarified matters. And that much was true. I asked him questions and he clarified the fact that he had no comment to make.’

  The youngster flapped his head between Bliss and his own solicitor, the realisation of what he had done slowly starting to seep in. ‘You tricked me,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed.’

  ‘I did and I am. Thing is, Stu, rather than getting all upset with me for tricking you, and yourself for being tricked, you’d be better off concentrating on what comes next. I don’t see your boss being very happy with you when he learns about this. Do you? In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that the first thing Lewis Drake does when he leaves here is go diving into all that scrap back at the yard to see if he can dig out a second drum and another batch of acid.’

  When the solicitor closed his eyes and exhaled deeply, Bliss knew things had just swung his way. He turned to Chandler and said, ‘Get Bishop in here to take Stu’s witness statement. You and I need to have a chat with RAFP Lundy.’

  42

  Speaking with Lundy was not as easy as it ought to have been. To begin with, upon arriving at RAF Wittering they discovered that Lundy was off duty. Then they came up against forces personnel bureaucracy. There were channels to go through, and as with any major organisation involving so many layers of departments and ranks within them, obtaining the RAFP officer’s personal details took far longer than Bliss’s impatience could stand.

  He and Chandler sat in Holbrook’s office with the head of human resources at the base. She was the person charged with communicating with those above. A pleasant woman who Bliss guessed was in her late thirties, and whose uniform looked to have been purchased at least 10lbs ago, Flight Lieutenant Anne Wheeler eased her way through the labyrinthine system with the kind of forceful good nature that tends to achieve timely results. As the minutes ticked away, Bliss came to the conclusion that she and they were being given the runaround.

  As they all waited in almost deafening silence for someone to return a call, Bliss broke it by getting to his feet and putting both hands to his head, saying, ‘I know what’s going on. Behind the scenes, your people are frantically trying to reach Lundy in an effort to both determine his whereabouts and secure legal representation by the time we catch up with him.’

  ‘That is not what’s happening at all,’ Wheeler responded, completely unflustered or even mildly put out by his outburst. ‘You heard my side of the conversations, Inspector Bliss. Without wishing to repeat myself, I would remind you that I am unable to provide you with RAFP Lundy’s personal information. Not even our Group Captain can give me the go-ahead to release those details to you. Now, I don’t know what your chain of command is like within the police service, but I can assure you that the RAF takes personal data very seriously and only those at or beyond a specified level within a particular department can agree to release that information. I have jumped through the various hoops on your behalf, utilising specific clauses within the regulations, and the call I am expecting at any moment now will be the ultimate level. This will provide us with a firm and final yes or no.’

  ‘And if the phone doesn’t ring?’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘Okay. What if the answer is no?’

  ‘Then we will have done all we can do. Meanwhile, Flight here has people out scouring the base and local haunts searching for Lundy. If located, he will be brought back here immediately.’

  ‘By his fellow RAFP officers?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Great. That’s comforting.’

  ‘If you could tell us why you need to speak with Lundy so urgently, maybe we could help,’ Holbrook said. He smiled in that precise, appealing and pleasant way of his.

  ‘I cannot do that until after I have interviewed Lundy,’ Bliss said. ‘It is crucial that he has no idea why we are here to speak with him today.’

  ‘Although we can all speculate that it has something to do with poor Duncan.’

  ‘You can speculate, yes.’

  ‘The call will come in, Inspector,’ Wheeler said softly. ‘Despite what you may think of us, we don’t deflect in order to delay. That may be your usual experience of large organisations, but that’s not the way we handle things in the RAF. However, I would remind you that RAFP officer Lundy is a member of the armed forces, and as such he will be respected and he will also be provided with adequate support at the appropriate time.’

  Bliss was about to argue when a phone rang. It was the office phone, which Holbrook answered. He spoke in a clipped, curt manner before replacing the handset in its slot. When he turned back to Bliss and Chandler he wore a thin smile.

  ‘Detectives, you’ll be pleased to know that officer Lundy is now on base and currently waiting for you in an office just off the RAFP corridor. I’ll be happy to show you the way.’

  Glancing at Wheeler, Bliss gave a resigned nod and said, ‘Apologies. I’m a little overwrought. I meant no offence.’

  ‘None
taken, Inspector.’ The lack of a return smile suggested that might not be the case.

  ‘All the same, I should not have taken my frustrations out on you. Thank you for all your efforts.’

  He and Chandler went with Holbrook, a five minute walk to a two-storey building which was long and narrow, its width just about enough for offices on only one side of a corridor that ran its entire length. RAFP was on the second floor, the room Lundy was holed up in located immediately after the stairway they took. As they entered, the officer was sitting at a desk that faced the door. At first glance, Bliss thought Lundy appeared perfectly relaxed. He found this disturbing, considering the officer must have been aware what this conversation was going to be about.

  As Holbrook turned to leave, Lundy said, ‘I want the FL to remain. I’d like a witness to what follows.’

  ‘You have a right to legal representation,’ Holbrook told him. ‘If that’s going to be necessary.’

  ‘That’s entirely up to officer Lundy,’ Chandler said. ‘He is not under arrest at this time, so he is free to leave, free to request representation or, as he just indicated, the presence of a fellow officer to act as a witness to the interview.’

  ‘It’s up to you, Lundy,’ Holbrook said. ‘I’ll stay if you like. Perhaps just see what the two detectives want first, then assess whether you need something a bit more official putting in place.’

  Bliss said nothing. He kept his eyes on Lundy throughout the entire exchange. There was something about the man’s calm demeanour that worried him.

  ‘I’m free to leave?’ Lundy said, challenge in his direct gaze.

  ‘Of course. At which point we’ll arrest you and do this back at the nick. Your choice.’

  Lundy gave a knowing nod.

  ‘Let’s get on then, shall we?’ Chandler said.

  Holbrook remained standing by the door, whilst Bliss and Chandler took a seat each. The office was large enough to be comfortable with four people in it. Chandler read Lundy his rights as if it were nothing more than a casual aside.