by Paul Finch
But that was enough to show him that it was white.
Spencer stood rigid, gun arm cocked, eyes bugging frog-like in features suddenly dotted with sweat.
‘The fuck …?’ he muttered.
Frantic thoughts fell over themselves inside his head.
It didn’t matter … this was OK … it wasn’t the end … it had happened before … tough shit … mistaken identity … casualties of war … collateral …
‘The fuck!’ His voice turned hoarse as the question struck him like an anvil: if he hadn’t just downed Dante Brown, where the hell was the guy?
Spencer turned and gazed back along the pavement.
Dante – the real Dante – had come to a stupefied halt some forty yards behind him. He was wearing his red hoodie top, yes, but not doing music. He wasn’t carrying a book under his arm, but the usual pizza box.
And he wasn’t alone.
A buxom black girl in a vest, slacks and fluffy slippers had come out of the shop alongside him. Drawn by the sound of gunfire, she too stared along the pavement. Further back along the road, others were doing the same. But Dante was the first to move; slowly backtracking, taking longer and longer steps, before dropping his pizza, turning and running for his life.
Spencer ran a couple of yards after him before common sense kicked in.
Dante was older, taller, stronger. He also had longer legs. There was no possibility of catching up to him.
‘Try outrunning a bullet, motherfuck!’
Spencer aimed two-handed like he’d seen in American cop shows. He still had three bullets left. He wouldn’t miss.
But he did.
The first went awry somewhere. The second whacked the black girl in the throat, her chin flying up as she staggered backward.
Even in the midst of his panic, Spencer was wise enough to know not to waste the third.
He spun around, looking for the pickup crew. Not that they’d be keen to admit knowing him now that Dante – who had seen him, had locked eyes with him in fact, clearly recognising him – had got away.
Oh, Jesus … oh JESUS!
Spencer pelted across St Ann’s Road, zoning in on the mouth to the alley, where the pickup car, a stolen Ford Mondeo, was due to meet him. On cue, the Mondeo was waiting. The youngster on the mountain bike should be there too, the wannabe with the open haversack on his back, into which Spencer could deposit the gun, the gloves, the jacket. But he was still twenty yards from the meet-point, when he saw the wannabe pedalling away fast down Tottenham High Road, his backpack empty.
So young and yet so wise, so neatly equipped with hair-trigger survival instincts.
The pickup crew didn’t wait either. When Spencer was ten yards short, the Mondeo pulled off.
His protracted cry narrowed to a tortured, despairing screech.
But the Mondeo accelerated away.
This had nothing to do with them. They were just a couple of guys out for a late-evening drive. They hadn’t even seen what had happened.
Not that it would be quite so easy for them when the Trident pigs visited later, carrying a whole checklist of names because suddenly Dante Brown had reached a decision that it was no longer worth his while holding anything back.
Spencer Taylor ran down Stamford Hill, sweat blinding his eyes, breath sawing at his ribs, his world collapsing around him in a quake-style cataclysm.
Chapter 12
‘We don’t take the fact that Eddie Creeley’s sole living relative is on our patch lightly,’ DC Barry Hodges said.
‘No?’ Heck replied.
‘No way.’ Hodges shook his head as he drove them onto the housing estate. ‘Even before all this, we were keeping an eye on her. He robbed a lot of banks here on Humberside.’
Hodges was young for a detective, even by divisional standards, fresh of feature, with short-cropped blond hair and a trim blond moustache. He was one of Heck and Gail’s two official liaison officers, and from the moment they’d been introduced to him he’d seemed eager to please. Most likely this was because he was still young and naïve enough to be intrigued by the prospect of attachment to a specialist operation like Sledgehammer. But it made a nice change; it wouldn’t have been the first time Heck had arrived in ‘Counties’, as certain NCG officers liked to refer to the UK’s provincial police forces, and been greeted by a wall of unhelpful indifference.
As such, it didn’t concern him that Hodges’ affability had been counterbalanced by the more traditional attitude of the other official liaison, DS Vic Mortimer, currently riding in the front passenger seat. Mortimer had said nothing of consequence since Heck and Gail had first shown up here, and even now, as they were chaperoned around the infamous Orchard Park estate, he seemed uninterested in conversing. Mortimer was somewhere in his late forties, and of a squat, heavy build. His face was pale and pitted, his greying hair collar-length and greased back. Whereas Hodges was regulation-smart in blazer, crisp, clean shirt and pressed tie, Mortimer’s tie was loose, his collar unfastened, and his leather jacket crumpled.
‘That’s where she lives,’ Hodges said, pointing.
Heck and Gail, both in the back of the Jag, glanced left.
One block of low-rise flats in this rather desolate district looked much like another, but this one was horseshoe-shaped, and Heck recognised it from the intel file.
‘Hellington Court,’ Hodges added, rather unnecessarily as Heck and Gail had both been able to go through the fine details of the case while taking turns to drive up here from London. ‘Nanette Creeley lives at number 26.’
‘How much attention have you been paying to the place?’ Heck asked.
‘Well … more since we heard about Sledgehammer,’ Hodges said. ‘We keep tabs on her on and off all the time, though. Normally just to see if there’s any sign her brother’s been around.’
‘What does “keep tabs” involve?’ Gail wondered.
She and Heck turned to watch as the grotty block of flats fell slowly behind them.
‘We’ve had obbo points on the surrounding roofs,’ Hodges said, turning down a side street. Heck assumed he was doubling back so they could see Hellington Court from the rear. ‘Lots of good vantage round here. We’ve tailed her sometimes too, when she’s been out and about … you know, in case she was going to meet him, or something.’
‘So … nothing intelligence-led?’ Heck said.
‘Well …’ Hodges’ cheek reddened, ‘it’s only in the last week it’s become a priority. This is a high-crime area. We have lots of other stuff to do.’
‘Have you made a lot of drive-bys like this?’ Heck asked.
‘Three or four times a day this last week. Nothing to report thus far.’
‘Why?’ Mortimer wondered, sounding suspicious of the question.
They approached Hellington Court again, now from a different angle. It sat beyond a litter-covered green, and from this side, its bleak façade was little more than a towering, pebble-dashed wall with numerous TV aerials along the top.
‘Because it seems to me,’ Heck said, ‘that if you’ve suddenly started making regular drive-bys in a divisional car, it’s likely the local hoodlums will have spotted it ten miles off. I’m guessing there are quite a few living round here?’
‘More than average,’ Hodges admitted. ‘They make the proper residents’ lives a misery.’
‘The point is,’ Heck said, ‘if they’ve clocked you, which they almost certainly will have done, word could now have reached Creeley’s sister that there’s more police activity than usual in the vicinity of Hellington Court. Which may mean that if the offender has been around here recently, he won’t be now.’
‘Creeley’s not around here,’ Mortimer said simply. He didn’t bother looking at them as he spoke. ‘We’ve got informants too, you know. And he hasn’t been seen for two years. Not in this neck of the woods, not anywhere.’
This much Heck already knew, so he didn’t comment.
‘What about the sister, Nanette?’ Gail asked. ‘Wha
t’s her pattern of behaviour like?’
‘Fucking dim-bulb,’ Mortimer commented.
‘What does that mean?’
Mortimer smirked. ‘What I say. You can tell just by looking at her.’
‘Bit of a lonely soul, too,’ Hodges chipped in. ‘Whenever we’ve obbed her … apart from going to see the old lady next door, she never seems to interact with anyone.’
‘She must go out sometimes?’ Heck said.
‘She works at the local Spar. So, there’s that. Like I say, she sometimes goes around to assist her neighbour, an infirm old girl called Maggie Stoke, who’s bedridden most of the time. Apparently, Maggie gave her a spare key. That’s usually first thing in the morning. In the evening, Nan goes to the pub.’
‘Which pub?’ Heck asked.
‘This one.’
They looked right and saw a red-brick building standing alone on a street corner with wasteland behind it. It looked as if it had once been physically attached to a row of houses that had all now been demolished. The shield over the front door depicted a faded image of a figure in a sou’wester, and said that it was called The Crewman. As they passed it, a burly woman with short dark hair, and tattoo-covered arms exposed by a sleeveless vest, came out with a watering can to tend the boxes of flowers under the frosted windows.
‘That’s her local, eh?’ Heck said.
‘It’s the only pub left in the neighbourhood,’ Hodges replied.
‘She goes in there at night, you say?’ Gail asked.
‘Has been doing lately.’
‘Most nights?’
‘Near enough every night recently. And she’s regular as clockwork – it’s nearly always eight-thirty. I know, because I tailed her a few times last week.’ Hodges appeared to sense Heck’s scepticism about this. ‘You don’t need to worry, Sarge. I dressed down for the occasion. She didn’t clock me.’
‘She’s too fucking dim to clock anyone,’ Mortimer grunted.
‘Does she speak to anyone when she’s in the pub?’ Heck asked.
‘Nah. Never. That’s what I mean about her not interacting. Stands on her own at the end of the bar, same place every night … has half a bitter and writes a letter.’
Immediately, the oddity of that struck home.
‘How do you mean “writes a letter”?’ Gail asked.
‘Well … she doesn’t always do that,’ Hodges admitted. ‘She did it a couple of times last week. Tuesday and Thursday. The other nights she just stood there on her own.’
‘And she didn’t talk to anyone?’
‘Only to order her drink.’
‘Just the one drink?’ Heck said.
‘That’s all I’ve seen her with. She makes it last about an hour.’
‘She literally stands at the bar and writes a letter?’
‘Yeah. Posts it on the way home. Least … she did on those two occasions.’
‘It has occurred to you lads that this is off-the-wall behaviour?’ Heck said. ‘So off-the-wall that … I dunno, maybe she’s writing letters to her brother?’
‘Way ahead of you,’ Mortimer said, sounding smug. ‘That’s why in the early hours last Friday morning, before the dawn collection, we got a warrant and opened the pillar box.’
‘Good thinking,’ Gail said.
‘Trouble is, we found nothing useful.’
‘Every letter in there was addressed to a legit party.’ Hodges pulled off the estate onto a main road. ‘We checked them all on the voters’ roll, cross-checked with the database and so on. None of them even had form, let alone links to Eddie Creeley.’
Heck and Gail pondered this as they rode back towards Clough Road police station.
‘There’s no law against writing letters,’ Gail eventually said.
‘No,’ Heck agreed, but his suspicion was firmly aroused.
One would normally write letters at home, though he supposed it wasn’t impossible that certified ‘lonely soul’ Nanette Creeley might go to the pub in the evenings to find some company or a cheerful atmosphere, and just happened to write her letters while she was there.
‘You say this pattern repeats itself?’ he said. ‘I know she doesn’t write a letter every night, but she always goes at the same time and stands in the same place?’
‘Well, we’ve only been watching her closely this last week or so,’ Hodges said. ‘But it’s been more or less the same, yeah.’
‘Sounds weird enough to warrant some further investigation,’ Heck said.
‘Time for a front-on approach?’ Gail suggested.
He glanced at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nanette Creeley’s got no form. If she’s a law-abiding citizen and she’s been drawn into this through misguided family loyalty … I don’t know, maybe she’ll talk to us?’
‘This is her brother. You think she’ll collaborate in sending him down under a full-life tariff?’
‘Maybe. When she hears what he’s done. I mean, it’s some of the vilest crime I’ve ever heard of. The murder of that bank manager’s wife in particular …’
Mortimer chuckled aloud. ‘She already knows what he’s done. She won’t help.’
‘Maybe I should try?’ Gail said.
The DS chuckled again. ‘Think that southern softie accent will win her over? Be my guest.’
‘Eddie’s her only surviving relative,’ Heck said. ‘She isn’t going to gift-wrap him for us.’
‘She must know this can’t go on.’
Mortimer shook his head, even more amused.
‘They never think that far ahead,’ Hodges replied. ‘None of them.’
Gail said nothing else, but looked frustrated rather than abashed.
It struck Heck again that she had plenty to learn. Except for a brief interlude in London, when he and she had ended up making arrests in a pigsty of a flophouse, she’d so far spent all her service in Stockbroker Land. OK, there were villains there, and not just the white-collar sort. But she couldn’t have experienced inner-city sprawls like this very often, where the code of silence was all-consuming, mainly through a kind of underclass loyalty, but also through fear – in districts like this, you turned your fellow oppressed over to the oppressors at your extreme peril.
There was no further conversation until the Jag pulled up in the personnel car park at Clough Road, which itself was a bleak, soulless structure. They got out and Hodges locked the car, but as Mortimer trudged away, the younger Humberside cop hung around.
‘Me and Vic have just put a full shift in, but we’re at your disposal so long as you need us,’ he said. ‘So … just wondering what your plans are for this evening?’
Heck glanced at his watch. ‘Well … we’ve got a Skype conference with Silver Command before anything else. That’ll be fun.’
‘Thing is,’ Hodges said awkwardly. ‘DCI Bateson’s our gaffer. He’s been wondering how long we need to keep tabs on Nan Creeley for. The overtime’s costing us an arm and a leg.’
‘You can’t charge it to Sledgehammer?’ Gail asked, surprised.
‘Maybe … I don’t know.’ Hodges shrugged.
Heck knew that they could and would charge all overtime to Operation Sledgehammer, but that Hodges was only doing what Mortimer had primed him to: looking for an evening off. It wasn’t completely unreasonable of them. If they’d been putting in lots of extra hours watching Nanette Creeley’s flat, they might rightly have expected the reinforcements from SCU to take at least some of the weight.
Which, of course, they would – because this was also what Heck was looking for.
‘We don’t need any of your lads tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll take care of the obbo.’
Hodges looked surprised, though not displeased. ‘You’ll need some support, though …?’
‘As long as divisional Comms know where we are, we’ll be OK. We’re just sussing the lay of the land.’
‘You’re certain about this. I mean …’
‘They’re sussing the lay of the land, Bazzer,’ Mortime
r called from over near the personnel door. ‘That’s what they do. They’re experts at it. So, let ’em crack on.’
‘OK.’ Hodges shrugged again. ‘Your call.’ Mortimer had already gone inside, but the personnel door was still open, and Hodges edged towards it. ‘Make sure you check some radios out, and that Comms and the duty officer know what you’re doing.’
Heck nodded.
Once the two liaison officers had gone, Gail sniffed with irritation. ‘That Vic Mortimer’s the biggest wanker I’ve ever met.’
‘Only at local level,’ Heck said. ‘Trust me, there are bigger ones at Scotland Yard.’
‘So … we’re running the obbo ourselves tonight?’
‘Nah, we’re going to the pub. Let’s see the Nan Creeley show, eh?’
She pondered this. ‘You think that’s a good idea, going alone?’
‘We won’t be alone. We can call support if we need it.’
‘We’re strangers here, Heck … don’t you think it’s a bit of a risk?’
‘The trade-off is we won’t have the local lads involved.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’
He headed for the personnel door. ‘Course it is.’
She fell into step alongside him. ‘Hodges and Mortimer know this territory way better than we do.’
‘Yeah, and the local crims know them way better than they know us. Listen, Gail … this is one area where being new faces gives us an edge. We can go where we want on this plot, so long as we dress the part and you keep your BBC English to yourself. No one’ll bat an eyelid. But these lads are the neighbourhood fuzz. So, even if none of the firms in this neck of the woods have heard a dicky bird about Sledgehammer—’
‘How can they? We haven’t gone to press with it.’
‘Don’t be green …’
‘I’m not being green!’
They entered the building and headed past a row of lockers towards the canteen.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘even though there’s a press embargo on Sledgehammer, the word’s likely to get out. It always does somehow. But even if it doesn’t, Mortimer, Hodges and co. have already made it obvious that something’s afoot. It’s not just the daily drive-bys in known CID cars. There’ve been spotters on the roofs surrounding Hellington Court, and yet there are windows just about everywhere round there. Hodges even followed this Nan Creeley to the pub. Don’t get me wrong, he seems like a willing lad, but he’s another one who sticks out like a sore thumb. If the bad boys of Hull aren’t thinking by now that there’s a bit more police activity on Orchard Park than usual, then they’re not worthy of the term “bad boys” … and something tells me that won’t be the case.’