by Paul Finch
It might only be half-past five, but she switched the bedroom light on and inserted her feet into her slippers. She really had to do something about her ‘coming home from work’ arrangements, she thought, as she opened the bedroom door. She couldn’t afford a taxi home every day, though even if she could, she’d still have to go out to the front of the shop to get it, which would defeat the object. Alternatively, perhaps she could arrange to work ordinary day shifts from now on. Though that wouldn’t be easy, because all the other ladies employed at the Spar were the same: they didn’t like walking home late either.
Nan crossed the hall to the kitchen, to make herself a cup of tea, when she spotted something lying at the foot of the front door. Something had been pushed through the letter box.
Her breath shortened again, her chest began to tighten. She took a couple of steps forward.
The dull light from her bedroom showed a relatively small object, two or three inches long, narrow, bright green. From this distance, it resembled a cigarette lighter.
‘Good … good God!’ she stammered.
Had someone put petrol through, and then had they tried to light it? It was beyond belief, but you heard about horrific things like that happening.
She blundered forward, heart trip-hammering. But as she approached, she realised that it wasn’t a cigarette lighter. Nothing so sinister, in fact. She ventured all the way up to it, and there was no mistake.
A pen drive lay on her welcome mat.
Nan wasn’t the kind of person one might automatically expect to be electronically proficient. ‘Dim’ was one term she’d heard people using for her. She’d been regarded as a ‘dunce’ at school. But in fact, in adult life, Nan had become familiar with computers, the internet and such because she’d needed to while she was working at the Spar. She’d even bought herself a second-hand laptop in order to practise at home. And though she wasn’t an expert yet, she certainly knew what she was doing.
She’d been so momentarily petrified by the thought of petrol that now she mainly felt relief, but she was mystified too. Why would someone stick something like this through your letter box in the middle of the night? If it was someone well-intentioned, wouldn’t they have attached a note? Perhaps not if it was a friend playing some elaborate but harmless joke – but Nan wasn’t friendly enough with anyone for that to be a possibility.
As she took her laptop from the shelf in the living room, it occurred to her that the pen drive might contain a virus. But she had nothing on her computer that she would miss if it was lost. She sat on the couch, set the laptop on her knees, opened it and switched it on. When it came to life, she inserted the pen drive, which immediately appeared as a smiley face icon on her desktop. When she touched it with her cursor, it opened, and she saw that it contained a single file: an MPEG, which someone had entitled: Greetings – from the Devil’s Messenger.
Even more mystified, she clicked on it.
A window opened, and a black-and-white video commenced playing. Nan watched it for twenty seconds or so, slack-jawed.
Before she began to scream.
Chapter 9
Setting off at around six from his Fulham flat, Heck made it to Staples Corner before seven, hoping to get some breakfast in the canteen, only to find even at this ungodly hour that it was busier than usual.
Lots of people appeared to have set off early to avoid being late for the briefing. Not just from SCU, but from the Cold Case team as well, while Gemma and her joint SIO, Gwen Straker, had secured the attachment of extra personnel, both police and admin, to do the legwork and provide office back-up. This meant that the queue to the service counter stretched halfway around the room.
Disgruntled, Heck went to the vending machine instead, to get himself a coffee-to-go. While he waited for his Styrofoam cup to fill, he glanced left – and saw Gemma in the far corner, facing Jack Reed across a tabletop, conversing with him in intent but friendly fashion. The body language alone was fascinating. The twosome cradled a cuppa each and leaned towards one another – not exactly the way lovers do, though it would be easy to picture Reed reaching out an affectionate hand and brushing aside a stray lock of Gemma’s flaxen hair.
Heck was more than surprised. Behaviour like this, not just in full view of her own team but of the Cold Case officers too, who’d be arriving here under the impression that their new joint boss was a hard-ass of legendary proportions, underlined the sea change in Gemma since Reed had come on board. She would never normally have been this lax in her manner. Quite clearly, other things were now on her mind.
Other things that were making her smile.
‘You’ll not win her favour by glaring at her in public,’ a voice behind him said.
Heck spun around and found Detective Chief Superintendent Gwen Straker waiting her turn at the vending machine.
‘Oh, ma’am …’ he stuttered. ‘Sorry … I’m done here.’
He stepped aside, and she moved forward.
‘I wasn’t glaring,’ he said. ‘I’m, erm … I’m actually waiting for the new DC I’m working with. Wanted a quick chat before the briefing.’
‘Why don’t you go and find us a table, Mark,’ she said.
‘Thing is, ma’am … I was going back to the office. Wanted to get some stuff sorted.’
‘Couple of minutes won’t hurt. Go and find us a table.’
This was easier said than done, so the first time a couple of seats facing each other became free, Heck pounced on them. When Gwen arrived, she sat down in neat, non-fussy fashion. Not atypically, she’d got herself a herbal tea rather than the milky, sugary coffee that Heck preferred.
One of the first black female detectives in the Met to actually make rank, Gwen was now in her mid-fifties. She wasn’t especially tall, around five-seven, and the little weight she’d put on over the years gave her a buxom-to-heavy build. But otherwise, age had been kind to her; she still possessed thick, shoulder-length hair, and, unmarked by wrinkles, boasted soft, pretty features. Back during her days as Heck and Gemma’s divisional DI at Bethnal Green, Gwen had favoured street casuals: denims, sweatshirts, leather jackets and the like, earning her the soubriquet ‘Foxy Brown’, after the gorgeous, hard-hitting heroine of the 1970s blaxploitation movie. But today, in reflection of her new, high-powered status, she wore a charcoal-black skirt suit, which fitted her snugly, though such a severe look didn’t quite match her personality, which was famously warm, at times almost maternal.
Gwen sipped her brew, before grimacing.
‘Ma’am, like I said, I have some stuff—’
‘So, you’ve been getting reacquainted with Gail Honeyford?’
Heck was surprised. ‘You know her?’
Gwen sipped her tea again, slowly but surely finding it tolerable. ‘You worked with her once, I believe?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it went well?’
‘We got a result.’
Gwen pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Sounds ideal … you and her, I mean.’
‘It’s hardly ideal.’ He’d blurted that out without thinking; immediately regretting it. He ought to have learned from experience that Gwen Straker never missed anything.
She arched an eyebrow, intrigued.
Heck chewed his bottom lip. His and Gwen’s previous relationship had been a difficult one to gauge, even at the time. While she was his DI, Gwen had rebuked him whenever necessary – sometimes spectacularly – but she was an old-stager herself. So long in the tooth that when she’d first entered the police, rules and regulations were mainly regarded as guidelines. For that reason alone, while she hadn’t always approved of some of Heck’s antics, she’d tacitly tolerated them if there was no serious fallout. Stranger than that, though, had been her attitude to his relatively short-lived romance with Gemma. Whereas most gaffers would have wanted the two officers concerned to work in different outfits so that they couldn’t distract each other, Gwen had seemed to enjoy it; like a fond parent pleased to finally see two of her wayward children
get fixed up.
Heck and Gemma had been her protégés, of course. Bethnal Green had been both their debut CID postings, and Gwen their first ever plain-clothes supervisor. Perhaps it was no surprise that, way back then, Heck had come to trust her to the point where he’d seek advice from her, even on personal matters, and would feel particularly lousy if he ever did anything that seriously disappointed her. It was probably as much the presence of Gwen Straker, right here in the canteen, as it was the sight of Gemma fawning over that square-jawed, blue-eyed Henry Cavill lookalike, Reed, that reminded him why a working partnership with Gail Honeyford might prove to be more awkward than he’d prefer.
‘Look, ma’am,’ he said, ‘Gail’s a great girl, and an even better detective. Spirited, tenacious. Not perfect, of course. When I first met her, she was all attitude and not enough nous. But that seems to have changed. I’m strongly hopeful she’s not going to go at this case like a bull at a gate …’
‘Well, no,’ Gwen agreed. ‘Two of you taking that approach would never work.’
‘Listen … if you must know,’ he lowered his voice, ‘last time, we … as in me and Gail … I’ve unfortunately neglected to mention this to anyone, but we had a thing.’
‘I see.’ Gwen looked thoughtful. ‘As in a real thing? Or as in you just ended up in bed together.’
‘Well, the latter.’ He reddened. ‘We’d had a tough day. Got into a real scrape, in fact. We were stressed, wired, whatever you want to call it.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess we just needed to hit a release valve. I mean, Gail wasn’t spoken for at the time. But it was still an error … and we both realised that afterwards.’
‘You don’t need to offer a defence, Mark.’
‘Just filling you in on the circs.’
‘You don’t need to do that, either …’ she sipped more tea, ‘because I know all about it.’
Heck was astonished. ‘How’d you know?’
‘Gemma told me.’
‘Gemma told you!’ he almost shouted. A couple of faces turned from nearby tables. He lowered his voice again, throwing a quick nervous glance to the farthest corner of the room, but Gemma was still engrossed with Reed. ‘How does she know?’
‘Don’t be daft. You can’t keep anything secret in this job.’
‘No, seriously … I didn’t blab about it, and I’m damn sure Gail wouldn’t have.’
Gwen waved that away. ‘No secret’s one hundred per cent, Mark. Think about it. No matter how sensitive the info, everyone trusts someone, and quite often it’s someone they shouldn’t. Hell, does it matter?… We’re all adults.’
‘Yeah, but …’ This wasn’t panning out the way he’d expected it to. ‘Look, if … if Gemma actually does know, and she’s still partnered me and Gail together, that’s a bit of an error, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps she just wants everyone to be happy?’
It was several seconds before Heck could process the meaning of that.
‘Hell,’ he said slowly. ‘She wants to sweeten the pill … is that it? So that when she finally hooks up with Reed, I won’t be too upset?’ It was a shocking thought, but it made a horrible sort of sense. Heck was so thrown by it that suddenly he was thinking aloud rather than making conversation. ‘Who’d have known she’d ever be so manipulative? The bloody little schemer. Well, it won’t sodding work. There’s nothing between me and Gail now …’
‘Hey, Mark,’ Gwen said, ‘got room for some advice?’
‘Sure,’ he said distractedly.
‘You’re being a bit ridiculous.’ She gave him a frank stare. ‘Gemma is doing the best she can with limited resources. One of those resources is a relatively inexperienced detective … who, quite rightly, she’s put in company with an experienced detective. And as those two detectives know each other already and have worked together previously, so much the better.’
‘Yeah …’ When Heck thought about it that way, it did make sense.
‘I honestly don’t know why you still have this hankering after Gemma’s affection,’ Gwen said. ‘Assuming that’s what it is. The way I hear it, you and she fight like cat and dog.’
‘We’ve been through hell and high water together.’
‘Tough experiences usually bring people closer.’
‘Personally, I’ve always felt it’s the job that’s got in the way.’
‘The job?’
‘Most of our fallouts are over procedure.’
‘Ah. You mean you want to use the Ways and Means Act, and Gemma wants to do things the proper way?’
He didn’t bother answering that, because there was no answer he could give.
‘Let me tell you something, Mark.’ Gwen sat back. ‘I once thought you two were right for each other. But, for whatever reason, it hasn’t happened. So, for both your sakes – and for the sake of Operation Sledgehammer, I might add – this can’t go on much longer.’
‘Ma’am … we’re fine. It’s business as usual.’
‘It isn’t, Mark. That’s the problem. We’re under the microscope like never before.’
‘It won’t interfere with anything.’
‘Just make sure it doesn’t, hmm? And think about growing up a little. You both have separate lives … time you started living them.’
Heck was about to respond, when he spotted the object of their conversation approaching.
Gemma and Reed had been en route to the exit, but having seen them together, Gemma now veered towards their table.
‘Don’t you two look cosy?’ she said.
‘Just reminiscing about the good old days,’ Heck replied.
Reed offered his hand to Gwen. ‘DI Reed, ma’am. Jack.’
She shook hands with him. ‘Pleased to meet you, Inspector.’
‘Heard some amazing things about you, ma’am.’
‘And I you. Well done on the Black Chapel arrests.’
‘Well … it was a team effort.’ Reed indicated Heck. ‘I particularly couldn’t have done it without this fella’s groundwork.’
Heck said nothing, but inwardly seethed. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Reed had been a pompous idiot, or a boring fart. But instead he was basically a good egg. The guy wasn’t just tall and handsome, with a natural aristocratic bearing, he was pleasant, clever, witty, and he always gave credit where it was due. It was no small challenge when you’d set your stall out to loathe someone like that.
‘Let’s hope we can call on the same level of effective teamwork when Sledgehammer gets under way,’ Gwen said.
Reed nodded. ‘We’ll all be pursuing different targets, of course. But ultimately, we’re the same outfit. We can always call on each other’s expertise or assistance. I was thinking we should video conference twice a day, just so we can keep each other informed.’
‘We’ll be doing that, anyway,’ she replied. ‘It’s part of the strategy.’
‘I don’t just mean with Silver Command, ma’am. I mean all of us. Filing our updates together, keeping each other appraised of where we’re at. If nothing else, it’ll be good for morale.’
‘I agree,’ Gwen said. ‘It might even boost progress. For example, Heck, if you felt that one of the other teams – I’m not thinking of anyone specifically, of course – was making real headway on their case, and you were still on first base …’
‘I’m not sure that turning this thing into a competition between the investigation teams is necessarily the way we want to go,’ Gemma said.
‘Nevertheless, that’s what’ll happen,’ Gwen replied.
Gemma clamped her mouth shut, biting down on a riposte. Heck eyed her with interest; it was rare to see Gemma voice a concern and have it so airily brushed aside. He’d been wondering how he was going to cope having Gail Honeyford along, but now he wondered how Gemma would do playing second fiddle to Gwen Straker.
‘I don’t think it’ll be a case of competition,’ Reed said, ‘as much as mutual encouragement.’
‘So long as it gets the best out of everyone,’ Gwen replied, stan
ding up. She turned to Gemma. ‘You ready? We’ve got a long session ahead.’
Gemma nodded. ‘I’ll not be a sec.’ As Gwen left the canteen, Reed sauntering after her, Gemma turned to Heck. ‘How are things going with DC Honeyford?’
‘Sweet,’ he said. ‘We went for a drink last night, and it’s just like we’ve never been apart. I think she and me are going to get on very well.’
Gemma nodded as if satisfied to hear this. Otherwise, there wasn’t a flicker of emotion.
Chapter 10
‘Right … there’s no way to sugar-coat this,’ Gemma said to the assembled staff of Operation Sledgehammer. ‘You all know the crisis we’re facing in the police service at this present time. And you know that it’s a very serious crisis indeed.’
There were over seventy of them crammed into the conference chamber, and on a hot August morning like this, it was an uncomfortable crush. Fans whirred overhead, but it was stuffy and stale. Many jackets and ties had been removed; foreheads gleamed with sweat.
Gemma Piper, not atypically, seemed oblivious to this, looking cool and unruffled as she pirouetted back and forth in her slacks and heels, her only concessions to the temperature that her blouse’s sleeves were rolled to the elbows and her collar button unfastened.
In contrast, Gwen Straker was seated on a stool to one side, next to the conference room’s large VDU, fingering her collar uncomfortably. Alongside her, sat Director of the National Crime Group, Joe Wullerton. In his late fifties now, burly in shape with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and a thick if droopy moustache, he normally preferred cardigans and open-neck shirts to the grey suit he affected currently. It was smart enough, but it wasn’t ideal for these conditions and made him look awkward and restless.
‘In short,’ Gemma said, ‘money is tighter than a duck’s you-know-what. There are cutbacks everywhere. Many forces haven’t recruited since what feels like the Stone Age. People are having to work longer and longer just to get their pensions. And, inevitably, sections like ours are under ever greater pressure to produce, and I quote, “impressive results”.’