The Wages of Sin (P&R2)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘I said it was slow going, Ray.’

  ‘Yeah, but three, Ed.’ Constable Palgrave approached with his coffee. ‘About bloody time, Palgrave, I thought you’d gone to Columbia for the fucking beans. Have you rung the press officer yet?’

  ‘Nearly, Sir.’

  ‘Nearly? What the fuck does that mean?’

  Palgrave started to open his mouth, but Kowalski waved him away. ‘Just fucking do it, Palgrave.’

  Ed gave him a look as if to say, ‘Shouting and swearing at everyone isn’t going to achieve much,’ but Kowalski ignored him.

  ‘Which three are you talking about, Ed? Are you focussing on those with blue cars?’

  ‘Well… To be honest, I’m just doing them alphabetically. We’re up to ‘F’ now.’

  Kowalski’s face reddened. He moved as if to stand up, but collapsed sideways onto the floor clutching his left arm. ‘Shit!’

  Ed darted round the desk to help him. ‘Christ, Ray, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I think you’d better call an ambulance, Ed. It looks as though I’m having a fucking heart attack.’

  Ed Gorman organised an ambulance. He then called the Chief and informed him what had happened.

  ‘Don’t worry about Richards, Ray, the Chief is coming to take charge of the search.’

  Kowalski was trying to focus on staying alive. ‘Start with the blue cars first, Ed.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Ray, you just look after yourself.’

  Before the ambulance arrived, a paramedic came on a motorbike within ten minutes of the call and gave Kowalski a clot-busting drug called Alteplase. The ambulance then arrived, connected him up to a monitor, stuck an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, and rushed him away to A & E at King George Hospital with the sirens blaring and the lights flashing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mary Richards rarely drank alcohol, because the following morning it made her feel sick. Now, in the total blackness, she tried to remember how many drinks she’d had because her head throbbed and she wanted to be sick. Wrapping her arms around her naked breasts she shivered. The cold floor pressed into her bare flesh. Returning the pool car to O’Flynn’s Garage and walking back along Brewery Road towards the station slowly came back to her as she lay there.

  She could taste the chloroform in the back of her throat as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Feeling around the floor, she found a blanket and a wall. Even though it was a coarse hair blanket and made her skin crawl she was too cold to care and wrapped it about her shoulders. She shuffled back against the wall and began asking herself questions.

  Where was she? Who had taken her? Where were her clothes and why had they been removed? Her thoughts were as dark as the room. She felt her Casio watch on her wrist and pressed the light – it was still working. The warm glow of two forty-seven in the morning comforted her, but tears still welled in her eyes and skittered over her cheeks into the blanket. Was it the killer who had grabbed her, or someone else?

  Pushing herself up the wall, she knew she had to get out of this place before he came back. He’d taken her clothes. God knows what he was planning to do to her, but she knew it wasn’t going to be good.

  DI Parish and her mum would be wondering where she was. They’d probably initiated a massive search for her, but where would they look? Where was she? Then she remembered – the man had a pig mask on – it was the killer. Now she knew exactly what he was going to do to her. A huge wave of panic engulfed her and took her breath away.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said out aloud, but then put her hand up to her mouth. She wanted to scream, run and bang on the door to be let out, but she didn’t want to make him aware she was awake. God – he could be in the room.

  Bringing her breathing under control, and holding the two edges of the blanket together with her left hand, she put her right hand out and began feeling around her in a semi-circle as she shuffled forward. After about six feet her fingers came into contact with something, and as she felt it she realised it was heavy-duty wire mesh. She moved her hand left and right, up and down until she knew the size of her prison. She was trapped inside a cage like an animal.

  Using all her strength and body weight she tried pushing against the mesh in front of her and to the sides, but nothing moved. Panic gripped her again. She was trapped with no possibility of escape. The only way she would see the light of day again was as a cold butchered corpse. She sat down on the floor and wept. Why had he picked on her? She wasn’t a sinner. Or, maybe she was, in his eyes.

  When she was all cried out, she knew she would never escape by weeping and wailing. Where was she? Sniffing, she could smell damp, a man’s body odour, and there was another smell like rotting food. She couldn’t hear anything, but then it was three in the morning and there was probably nothing to hear. Wrapping the blanket above her breasts and tucking it in like a bath towel, she knelt on the floor and began feeling around every inch of the available space. All she found was a bucket, which made her want to pee desperately. Before, she hadn’t given it a thought. She wanted to be defiant and hold it in, but if she did she wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

  As she squatted over the bucket and was about to empty her bladder she stopped herself. Standing up again, she turned the bucket over, put one foot on the base, and lifted herself up. Before, when she’d felt around her cage, she hadn’t been able to touch the roof, but now she could. Starting in the right-hand corner by the wall, she moved the bucket all along the wire mesh of her prison and felt the ceiling. The cage stretched all the way up to the ceiling. Once she’d finished standing on the bucket, she turned it the right way up and peed.

  Now, all she could smell was urine, and there was no way to prevent that because she had nothing to cover the bucket with. She moved the bucket carefully to the left-hand corner by the wall. What she didn’t want to do was knock it over and then have to slosh through pee until the killer came back, but it occurred to her that – as disgusting as the idea was – maybe she could use the urine defensively by throwing it over him. He was going to kill her anyway – she knew that. Trying to ingratiate herself with him wouldn’t change the outcome. There was no point in pleading with him, or doing what he asked of her in the hope he would let her go – he was never going to let her go.

  The panic returned, but she pushed it away. Panicking wouldn’t do her any good now. In fact, it would only do her harm. She needed a clear head to think and to plan, to have a course of action prepared so that she could fight him, hurt him, disable him. That was the only way she had a chance of survival.

  No one was coming to rescue her. As much as she wanted to believe that Parish or Kowalski would come and save her, riding a white horse and wearing nice shiny armour, that only happened in the movies. She’d watched enough programmes about serial killers on the Crime Channel to know that their victims were always found dead. The only person who was going to get her out of the killer’s clutches was herself. As a plan began to formulate in her mind, she rehearsed the questions and answers from the National Investigators’ Examination that she had created and written out in her five-part Project book.

  ***

  Parish woke up at three-fifteen in the morning and felt as though he’d been on a pub-crawl for a week. On the orders of Doctor Murray, Nurse Rhodes removed the tube from his throat and switched off the ventilator. He sat up and drank nearly three litres of water before he could speak, and then it was only in a hoarse croak. He could feel a lump the size of a golf ball on the back of his head, but couldn’t recall how it had happened. What he did know was that he had a throbbing headache like nothing he’d ever experienced.

  ‘What happened?’ he said to one of the armed police officers.

  The officer told him what little he knew, and pointed to the patient in the next bed. Parish didn’t recognise the person sprouting tubes and wires at first, but when he did he began to cry.

  ‘Where’s Naylor?’

  ‘He got away, Sir.’

  He vowed t
hat one day he’d find Naylor and kill him. ‘What’s your name, Constable?’

  ‘Rigby, Sir.’

  ‘What happened to the Chief, Rigby?’

  ‘He said DI Kowalski was downstairs in the A & E with a heart attack, and he’d gone to take over the search for PC Richards.’

  Christ, Kowalski… A heart attack! How old was Kowalski? He didn’t really know – probably early forties. Bloody hell, in another ten years – if he lasted that long – he’d be lying where Kowalski was. He eased the intravenous canula out of the vein in the back of his hand, and blood began oozing onto the bedclothes.

  ‘Nurse?’ he croaked, but his voice wouldn’t carry. Rigby called her for him.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asked when she saw the blood running from the wound in the back of his hand and staining the sheets.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, Mister Parish.’

  ‘You can either help me, or I go it alone?’

  ‘What about Angie?’

  ‘Angie would want me out there looking for her daughter, not lay here watching her snore. How is she? Is she going to make it?’

  ‘She’ll be okay. The bullet tore through the major veins and arteries leading from her heart, and they had to put transplants in. It also collapsed her left lung, so she has a chest drain, but apart from some external scarring – and providing there are no complications – she should be fine. You know how she got shot, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That man was holding me in front of him as a shield. He wanted to shoot you, but she said, “No,” and stood between the two of you, so he shot her instead. That was when the big policeman shot him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said sliding off the bed. He stood up unsteadily and Nurse Rhodes held his arm. The backless gown wasn’t tied at the neck and slid down his shoulders. She helped him to Angie’s bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Can you get my clothes?’

  He stood there holding Angie’s hand, and then bent down to kiss her forehead. ‘I’m going to find Mary, Angie, I’ll see you soon.’

  Nurse Rhodes put his clothes on the bed and drew the curtains, so that he could get dressed in private.

  When he had his clothes on, and the curtains were drawn back, Rigby said, ‘If you’re leaving, Sir, what do we do?’

  ‘Stay here and look after PC Richards’ mother. I can’t imagine Naylor coming back, but I’d hate to be wrong. And you know Mrs Richards and I are… together?’

  Rigby glanced at the other copper and nodded.

  ‘Make sure you look after her as if she were your own wife, Rigby.’

  ‘I’m not married, Sir, but if I were…’

  ‘Good.’ Parish cut him off. He needed to get going. God knows what was happening to Richards.

  He thanked Nurse Rhodes and made his way slowly down to A & E.

  Kowalski lay on a gurney wired up to a cardiac monitor in the fourth cubicle Parish peered in.

  ‘Lying down on the job again, Kowalski?’ he said.

  ‘You can’t talk, Parish. Anyway, what the hell are you doing up, you were close to death three hours ago?’

  ‘I’m a medical miracle. And I can’t lie in a hospital bed contemplating my navel when Richards is missing.’

  ‘It doesn’t look as though I’ve got a choice, Jed.’

  ‘A heart attack! How can a guy as young and handsome as you have a bloody heart attack?’

  ‘I have no idea, but they’re going to put some things called stents in my arteries to keep them open, and I’ll be on pills for the rest of my life. But they said that afterwards I’d be classified as bionic and I could live forever.’

  ‘Have I ever told you…’

  ‘…that I talk a load of crap? Yeah, a couple of times.’

  ‘Does Gerri know?’

  ‘They let me speak to her on the phone, she’s getting her mother to look after the kids, and then she’ll be in to give me grief.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ He felt awkward and shuffled his feet. ‘Listen, I’m gonna go…’

  Kowalski encircled his wrist in a vice-like grip. ‘The Chief has got the gun I signed out. Be careful, and you’d better find Richards – or you’ll have me to answer to.’

  ‘Look after yourself, Ray.’

  ‘And you, Parish.’

  ‘I hear they’ve got some dancing girls coming in.’

  ‘Excellent, I could do with cheering up.’

  ***

  He arrived outside the United Reform Church in a taxi at twenty past four in the morning. The driver robbed him of sixty pounds for the privilege. It was still dark and had begun to drizzle. He felt better than he had an hour ago, but on a ten-point scale of feeling like crap, he thought he was probably a thirteen. Nurse Rhodes had told him to drink lots of water to flush the heroin from his system, but he didn’t have any. She’d also given him some tablets, so he took two in the hope they would make him feel better, but he didn’t notice any dramatic change in his condition.

  A gaggle of shifty looking night shift media types mobbed him when he stepped out of the taxi. Spotlights, cameras with flashes, and microphones were aimed at him like weapons. He hadn’t given his arrival much thought, and certainly hadn’t expected any press here at four in the morning.

  ‘What’s going on, Inspector?’

  ‘Where’s PC Richards?

  ‘Why has Chief Superintendent Day taken over the case?’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Why have you co-opted the church?’

  ‘Where’s DI Kowalski?’

  He held up his hand to stop the bombardment of questions and tried to speak. His voice was still raspy and wouldn’t carry far. ‘Let me go in and find out what’s happening. I’ll come back out in half an hour and give you what information I can.’

  They seemed happy with that, and let him through.

  Inside the church the Chief leant over a map, but looked up as Parish came in. Next to him, DS Ed Gorman was on the phone, and behind them a number of uniformed coppers were answering ringing telephones, working computers, photocopying, faxing, or carrying out other mundane tasks associated with a busy incident room. Parish thought it looked exactly like the squad room.

  ‘If that’s you Parish, I’m going to demote you back down to Constable.’

  ‘Hello, Chief. I couldn’t lie in bed when Richards is missing.’

  ‘And Angie?’

  ‘Out for the count, but she’d expect me to be out here looking for her daughter as well.’

  ‘She did a brave thing, Parish. I think I’ll put her in for a medal.’

  ‘She’ll be embarrassed, Chief.’

  ‘I know. Okay, I’ll sanction your return to duty, but… If you start to feel…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Chief, I’m here in an advisory capacity only, but I know more about this killer than anyone else – where are we up to?’

  The Chief’s brow creased. ‘Oh, so I’m briefing you now?’

  Parish’s mouth wrinkled into a half-smile. ‘I could ask…’

  Walter Day waved his suggestion away. ‘Kowalski and Gorman set things in motion. We had seven patrol cars out checking the thirty-one people on the list, but it was slow, so Kowalski asked Gorman to arrange for another seven from other stations that are out there now as well. We’ve eliminated fifteen of the thirty-one names on the list so far, but its still slow going at this time of the morning, and there’ve been lots of complaints.’

  ‘What about the blue car?’

  ‘The DVLC haven’t got an up to date database, so we’re having to find out what car they own when they’re being questioned. We know that seven had blue cars, but we don’t know if they’ve still got them, or if the others have bought one in the last six months.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Chief but if the killer knows we’re looking for a blue car, won’t he say he hasn’t got one?’

  The Chief shrugged. ‘I’ve told them to ask
to see registration documents, road tax and insurance, which are also consolidated at the DVLC. I can’t think of any other way of checking if they’ve got a blue car or not, Parish.’

  ‘Richards and I planned to input the thirty-one names into the CrimInt database today, has anyone done that?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  Parish signalled to Sergeant Kristina Jackson who came over. ‘Can you run the thirty-one names through CrimInt and let me have the results?’

  She nodded. ‘Glad you’re okay, Sir.’

  ‘Thanks, Kristina. Any chance you can persuade someone to make me a four-sugared coffee as well?’

  ‘Palgrave’s looking useless, he can do it.’

  ‘Thanks. Which one’s Palgrave?’

  Kristina pointed to a thin spotty Constable.

  ‘After he’s made me a coffee, is it all right with you if I send him on a very important mission?’

  ‘I’d be grateful, but he’s not going to get into trouble doing it is he, Sir? He has the brains of a flip-flop.’

  ‘Events have conspired against me, Kristina. My dog’s on his own. He’ll need walking, and because he hasn’t had his walk…’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I get your drift, Sir. Palgrave is probably the right man to walk your dog and clean up any mess.’

  He took the house key from his key ring and passed it to her. ‘The lead is on a hook behind the back door, and tell him to look after Digby as if he was his own dog.’

  ‘Okay, Sir.’

  He turned to Ed Gorman. ‘Thanks for this, Ed.’

  ‘Hey, Richards is one of us. No thanks necessary.’ Gorman stood up and moved to the map. ‘We’ve marked the thirty-one addresses on the map, and as the units ring in we annotate each one with what they find.’

  Parish hunched over the large map of the Redbridge area with the Chief. Gorman explained the legend. ‘A small blue circle indicates the thirty-one addresses, and yellow centres highlight those that have been visited already.’

  ‘What does a green outer circle mean?’ Parish asked.