A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour)

by Smith, Anna

  For two pins, Rosie would have volunteered, but she knew she couldn’t.

  ‘I’d love to help you, but I’m up to my eyes with this story now, it’s moving so fast.’

  ‘No, no. I wasn’t expecting you to. You’ve done enough. Really.’

  They stood for a moment in silence, then a thought came to Rosie.

  ‘Ruby. Remember I asked you about Roddy Thompson? You said you didn’t know him?’

  Ruby gave a confused look.

  ‘I vaguely remember you mentioning a name. But I don’t think I do know him.’

  ‘Can I ask you something? Just curious. How did you finance your way through university?’

  Ruby folded her arms and leaned back on the worktop.

  ‘You really want to know? The truth is I’ve no idea. I was told by my social worker that when I turned eighteen, I had access to a trust fund that had been set up for me. Christ knows where it came from, because my ma had nothing, and I was raised in children’s homes. But when I was seventeen I got a letter sent to the home telling me to go to a solicitor, and there they told me there was a trust fund. For my university education. The lawyer said I had a benefactor who wanted to remain anonymous. No idea who it was and, honestly, I was always waiting for some pervert to come out of nowhere, but they never did. I just took the money and ran. Went to uni for a couple of years. I got part-time jobs, too, but the money helped a lot. I wouldn’t have been able to go to uni without it.’

  ‘I think I know who it is.’

  ‘You’re kidding. How would you know something like that?’

  ‘During part of my investigation I came across a retired detective. He was very close to your mum. I mean, very close. She gave him tips about things.’

  ‘My mum grassed to the cops?’ Ruby looked aghast.

  ‘Well, I think it was one particular thing – what got her killed. Rab Jackson.’

  Ruby said nothing.

  ‘So who is this cop, this retired guy?’

  ‘I think you should meet him. I know he’d want to see you. I can call him, and perhaps he can even help you get away.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why he’d want to do that.’

  ‘I think he was in love with your mother. He was already married.’

  Ruby said nothing, shook her head.

  ‘How would you feel if I got in touch with him? He remembers you and Judy as little girls. I mean, you’re leaving anyway, and I think he would be a good connection. Why not? You have nothing to lose. He’s out of the force for five years now, but from what I hear he was a good cop. I think he was your secret benefactor, but he didn’t admit it. I think you should meet him.’

  Ruby shrugged and sighed.

  ‘Sure. What harm can it do?’

  Rosie looked for Roddy Thompson’s number and rang it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Rosie glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat as she drove to the Grosvenor Hotel and her heart sank. The dossier that Hawkins had died for was now about to be handed over to Boswell-Smith to be buried or destroyed. Sure, she was doing it for all the right reasons, and she also knew there was no other way. But it still felt as if something precious was being ripped from her. As she turned into the car park she spotted the captain loading up two small cases into the boot of a Range Rover, then get into the driver’s seat. Boswell-Smith emerged from the hotel and pulled up the collar of his raincoat as he crossed the car park. When he noticed Rosie he beckoned her to park next to them.

  ‘Morning, Rosie,’ he said as she got out of her car with the dossier under her arm. ‘How’s the face?’ He grimaced. ‘Looks a bit sore.’

  ‘Yeah. It is. But I’ll live.’

  ‘Climb in the back.’ He opened the door and closed it after her, then went round to the passenger seat.

  ‘So how’s your story going?’ He turned around. ‘You must have some good material now, after all that chaos yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rosie knew she sounded downbeat. ‘A few questions have been asked by the police as to what we were doing there – but I’m hoping we got away with it. Dunn is in hospital under guard. I was hoping he’d bled to death, the bastard. They had to remove his spleen and a good bit of his stomach. So he hasn’t actually been charged yet – well, not with the murder of the prostitute. But he’ll get done for that no problem, because the girl’s friend is going to testify. She saw it all. Plus, so-called hardman Devlin is singing like a canary to keep himself from being an accessory to murder. So it’s all good stuff.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There was an awkward silence, then Rosie held out the dossier.

  ‘So.’ She glanced at the captain, who was watching her through the rear-view mirror. ‘Here are the incriminating documents . . . Tom Mahoney’s inside story of everything that happened. The names in the frame. All the people who were part of the corruption.’ She handed it to Boswell-Smith and they made fleeting eye contact.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He opened it up and took out the bundle of papers, firstly turning over the black-and-white pictures and examining the captions, then reading briefly over the first page of Mahoney’s notes. Rosie shifted about in the back, opened the window, feeling the damp air and soft rain cooling her face. Eventually he put the papers back into the envelope and sat silently staring through the windscreen for a few moments. Rosie wondered if she should just go. Then he turned his body around so he was facing her.

  ‘Okay, Rosie, thanks for being as good as your word. Much appreciated.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Her hand went to the door handle. She just wanted to get out.

  ‘Right,’ Boswell-Smith said, ‘here’s the deal.’

  Surprised, Rosie turned to face him. He tossed the envelope on the back seat beside her.

  ‘This conversation never happened. You understand what I’m saying?’

  Rosie glanced at the document for a second before the penny dropped, then she nodded slowly, her eyes automatically going to the captain, who looked through her.

  Boswell-Smith straightened his tie.

  ‘Here’s how this is going to play out. We drive back to London and, by teatime, all going well, I’ll meet with my boss at Whitehall and tell him the following . . .’ He paused, sniffed. ‘My journey north was largely a waste of time. No dossier. No information. No buried stories. They weren’t there – or if they were, then I couldn’t find them.’

  Rosie swallowed, afraid to speak as he went on.

  ‘I’ll tell them the whole thing was fucked up by whoever went in and did Hawkins over in his flat that night.’

  Rosie looked at him, not sure how to react.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t us, if that’s what you’re thinking. But someone was sent there, and fucked up. That’s how we ended up on the scene.’

  ‘What do you mean, fucked up?’ Rosie asked tentatively, terrified to say the wrong thing in case he took the envelope back.

  ‘Just that,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me the finer details, because I don’t know, but I can tell you that someone in the shady-bastard-department that is MI6 thought it would be a good idea to come up and eliminate Hawkins, as he was the only one they believed had the dossier. They saw you going into his flat and coming out at some stage, and at that point they thought perhaps you had it. Hence the reason you were run off the road that night.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Rosie said. ‘They tried to kill me?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure really. But they wanted to stop you doing what you were doing. Frighten you. Without really knowing what the hell you were doing. It was ham-fisted, to put it mildly. Christ! Spies can be bloody thick at times. It’s not like the movies, you know.’

  ‘So who was this? Who tried to run me off the road?’

  ‘Don’t know. Someone from the other side.’

  ‘What other side?’ Rosie was bamboozled.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t one of ours, put it that way. It was someone from
the Russian intelligence service, I think. Someone looking at the investigation into the gunrunning and organized crime. They sent one of their men to mop up the mess after the failed operation in Berlin and the murder of Mahoney. But they didn’t do it very well. All they did was bump that poor old bastard Hawkins off, and still come away empty-handed.’

  Rosie shook her head, confused.

  ‘I’m not sure I really understand it.’

  ‘No. Me neither. But that’s how these guys work. Anyway, bottom line is they had wind that the newspaper might have the dossier. So they sent me up to try first of all to establish if you had it and, secondly, to get it from you . . . by whatever means it took.’

  ‘What do you mean, by whatever means?’

  Silence. Then Rosie felt her mouth drop open in disbelief.

  ‘Hang on a minute! Jesus Christ! Don’t tell me it was you who kidnapped Judy?’ She shook her head. ‘You have to be joking. Christ almighty! Why?’

  Silence. The captain opened his window and let out a little steam that was rising on the windscreen.

  ‘Leverage,’ Boswell-Smith said. ‘We needed leverage. We couldn’t demand the dossier from you – that’s if we even established that you had it – because we couldn’t actually be seen to be involved in anything at all, or even to acknowledge that there was a dossier. Best-case scenario for us was just to return with the document and no questions asked. But you and your editor wouldn’t give us it.’

  ‘So you kidnapped Judy and handed her over to Devlin? I mean . . . you can’t be working with him? Surely not!’

  ‘No. But one of his minions is working for us now – Del Boy, I believe he was called.’

  ‘Wee Derek. The one who got captured during the Berlin shoot-out?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘People do all sorts of shit when their life is at stake, Rosie. Especially if you throw in a few quid and a new identity and a new life far enough away from here. Del Boy is all set up.’

  Rosie shook her head, incredulous.

  ‘But how the hell did he know about Ruby and her sister?’

  ‘He was in Ruby’s company about eighteen months ago – in a photograph we had of her with that plonker Jackson during an earlier surveillance job. Then, we had CCTV pictures of her coming off the Eurostar when we were trying to trace the mystery women who left the café. Del Boy was also in the earlier photograph and now we had him in our hot little hands. We established, or at least had good enough suspicions that it was the same woman who came off the Eurostar as the woman in the picture with Jackson eighteen months ago.’

  ‘So why connect her to Devlin and all this stuff?’

  ‘Del was able to tell us that she is the accountant for Jackson and his mob, moving his money around the world. And he told us that she was also involved with Devlin. So it was a question of bringing them together. By the time we put the screws on Del, he would have done anything to save his skinny little neck. He got in touch with Devlin to tell him he’d managed to give the cops the slip and was on his way back from Europe – all bullshit, of course. He knew that Devlin was desperate to get Ruby to move on the money – and that she was stalling – and he needed to get control back. So Del told him that the only way to get to her was to take the sister – that was sure to bring her running.’

  ‘So where did I fit in?’

  ‘Well, you were the one with the dossier. You were seen with Ruby in the bar that night and a couple of other times.’

  ‘You’ve been watching me?’

  ‘Well, the good captain here has. I don’t do that kind of stuff any more. Too old for stake-outs. But yes, you were being watched.’

  ‘So are you seriously saying that when you came to our office that day at the Post you knew that we had the dossier and you had to find a way to get it because you knew we wouldn’t give you it? So you arranged for Judy to be kidnapped? How?’

  ‘Del Boy told Devlin that was the best way to get to Ruby. So we kept track of her, then when the time was right got the word to Devlin of where she was. He did the rest.’

  ‘Christ.’ Rosie could hardly take it in.

  ‘But how did you know I’d be with Ruby when she went to meet Tony?’

  ‘Well, we did advise you that you should be . . . or don’t you remember?’

  Rosie recalled the conversation they’d had when they’d promised her she’d be safe if she went in with Ruby. She shook her head.

  ‘But you couldn’t have known that Tam Dunn was going to turn up and how it all went after that. You couldn’t have known that, surely?’

  ‘No. We didn’t know that. It did get a little messier than we’d expected. We’d hoped you would be grateful enough that Judy was safe to give us the documents. Then, when Dunn came in, it got more difficult.’

  ‘Jesus! All to get this dossier.’ Rosie shook her head.

  He raised his eyebrows, glancing at the envelope.

  ‘The dossier, which, of course, you don’t have.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ She almost smiled. ‘The dossier I don’t have.’ She folded her arms and looked him in the eye.

  ‘But, Superintendent, we nearly got killed in that bloody place the other day. Dunn was ready to kill us all. Why in the name of Christ did you not come a few minutes earlier, before he beat the shit out of us?’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, Rosie, but these things happen. We had a bit of a logistic problem getting discreet access to where you were inside the building. Yours wasn’t the only bottom that was twitching. It was a pretty close shave that we got there at all – I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll bloody say it was.’ Rosie shook her head. She glanced at the envelope beside her.

  ‘But why? I mean, why give it back? After everything?’

  ‘Give what back?’ He said, deadpan.

  Silence. Boswell-Smith examined the back of his hands.

  ‘You know something, Rosie . . . I reckon I’ve had a few good breaks in my life. My old dad was a newspaper editor, and he’d come from Fleet Street back in the tough old days. He left the front line for family life and took the editorship of that paper down in Eastbourne. But he never lost his sense of determination or justice. He was working for a paper where the main stories of the week were reports about coffee mornings, tourism and parish councils, but now and again his young reporters smashed a few stories, and one or two of them went on to better things. So, put it this way, maybe it’s the frustrated journalist in me . . . Maybe I did it as a nod to his integrity, or maybe I’m just too old for all this crap and it’s time I retired to pruning my roses in the home counties. But the truth is, once I met you and that mad bastard of an editor, McGuire, it restored my faith a little. I took a view of this entire caper and thought, Fuck it, I’m going to do something else for a change – rattle a few cages that need to be rattled.’

  ‘Jesus! I can’t believe this.’ Rosie picked up the envelope and held it close to her. ‘Now I’m not even sure if, when I walk out of here, if I’m going to get arrested or shot. There’s so much underhand shit going on. I don’t know whose side anyone’s on any more.’

  ‘You know what, Rosie? Neither do I. And that’s maybe the real reason I’m doing this. Because the bastards at Customs, and the civil servant who was working with Dunn, turning a blind eye and faking licences – they should be in jail too. They collaborated with a firm which brings guns in for gangsters, as well as exporting them to places where they are used to kill innocent people. These bastards are part of the establishment, and they’re supposed to be on our side . . . But they’re not. Especially the high-ranking civil servant who was smoothing the way. It’s all about money and how much he can stick away in his offshore account while he’s pretending to be one of us, and getting away with it. And when the powers that be found out about it, they were prepared to cover that up. Well, that’s not on in my book.’

  Rosie pushed her luck a bit further.

  ‘Do you know
who he is?’

  His lips curled to a smile.

  ‘I thought that might be your next question.’ He put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out a piece of paper and handed it to Rosie.

  She read the name, afraid even to say it aloud. Written down was his full name, his extension at work, his home address in central London and his home telephone number.

  ‘I can hardly believe this is happening. I honestly don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Believe it.’ He winked, then nodded at the captain, who started the engine.

  ‘Off you go now. I’ll be looking out for your story when the shitty house of cards starts to collapse.’

  ‘I’m speechless. But thanks . . . I suppose that’s the only thing I can say.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. This never happened. Good luck, Rosie.’

  As she opened the door, the captain turned and smiled at her.

  ‘See you around. All the best, Rosie Gilmour.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She closed the door, got out and into her car and watched as they drove out of the car park and onto Great Western Road. Almost dizzy, she rang McGuire.

  ‘Mick, you’ll never guess what’s just happened.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Rosie read over her story one last time, making the final changes as she prepared to send it over to McGuire’s private email. She’d listened to Olenca’s tape-recorded account of the murder so many times it was sure to bring another dimension to her already frazzled nightmares. But she ran the tape once more as she sat back in her chair, gazing out through the window of her flat across the city as a watery October sun slipped behind the office blocks. Olenca’s soft tones in fractured English somehow made the picture more graphic each time she listened to it. The images brought back dark memories of the voice of Emir, the Kosovan refugee, and Rosie was transported to the café in Central Station that day when he’d come to her, a ghostly, terrified figure, beaten and bruised. He had fled his captors in Glasgow only to be murdered while he was being protected by the police. And her mind drifted to the hospital bedside where she’d held his hand and told him not to be afraid as he slipped away. Her shrink had told her over many sessions that Emir’s death wasn’t her fault, that she had to rationalize it and put it somewhere in her head where she could manage it. Even the Bosnians she’d spoken to recently in Sarajevo had talked about their own guilt because of everything they’d been through. Everyone in Bosnia carried guilt, not for what they did but for surviving when so many had perished. They’d found a way to rebuild their lives, and so must she, they told her. She’d be helping Emir by exposing the people who’d murdered his best friend and were killing refugees and selling their body tissue. She knew Emir hadn’t died because of her, but the guilt still hung like a shadow over her life. Of course, she had to function, and she could keep the darkness at bay, but now and again it would sweep over her like this. She closed her eyes and massaged her head, trying to push the thoughts away. Her mobile rang and shuddered on the coffee table.