Jain let out a long slow breath. ‘Thanks, Ray.’ He turned to leave, then stopped midway. ‘Ray, you were there when Billy was shot. You saw him …’
Ray’s stomach curled in on itself.
‘If we get you with an artist you could get us an image, right?’
Ray’s stomach felt as though it was about to eat itself and would then throw its contents right up in front of Prabhat. He tried to take a breath before he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, guv, he ran like the wind, and with him having a gun to his side Billy ran with him and they were just that distance too far. All I can say with any certainty is he looked Eastern European, but they were too far away for me to be able to see him properly.’
20
Rusnac had to get rid of the car. Even if that cop didn’t come after him right now, it wouldn’t be long before the entire Metropolitan Police force was on the lookout for it. You don’t kill a kid in front of a cop and not expect them to bring the might of their will down on you.
He swung the steering wheel left onto Choats Road. The cops would come from the west, he needed to head in the other direction and then around.
He was smarter than they were. He always did play one step ahead. You didn’t survive Moldova and then come to London and fail. It didn’t happen. This place was soft and fluffy in comparison.
With one phone call he had a location to get to.
He had to get as far out as he could as fast as he could, and then switch up the car. If it was local it would make it too easy. The site wasn’t close, but if he kept to the speed limit and away from major roads, he should be okay.
He quickly pulled over and soiled the rear number plate. Made it impossible to identify the first and last two letters. If he passed through any cameras that were tasked with the search for his plate before he got to his location, he didn’t want to be stopped. If he completely destroyed the visibility of the number plate he knew he could get pulled up for that, for not having his plate on view, so he played it clever.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His arms vibrated as he held the steering wheel. This was simply a physical reaction to the situation, Rusnac knew that. It threw him back to the days at home when he did his first thefts, the first time he walked into a shop and walked out with a loaf of bread without paying for it. The first time he stole a phone right out the hands of a lad who was probably the same age as he was. Ready to fight him if needed, but he’d been so aggressive in the takedown that the young lad just looked at him with wide eyes and simply watched him leave.
The physical reaction didn’t change the fact that he was still in control and knew what to do. He felt high. Buzzing. It was a natural high. His arms continued to fizz. His legs shook as they worked the car.
As he drove, he wondered what had happened to Borta, Popa, Lupei and the British guy, Weaver. Had they managed to get away or had they been arrested?
He’d love to have someone on the inside. To tell him where they were in the investigation so he could be sure he’d stay one step ahead. It was so easy to get that kind of information at home. Money talked. Pay enough and you got what you needed. Here, you had to be careful who you approached. Many of the cops were the real deal. You couldn’t tell who would take a bung simply by looking at them, and Vova didn’t have the contacts to work that system yet.
Now he realised how important it was to his business that he built up this branch of it.
Rusnac’s arms shook more as he skidded to a halt in front of the row of lock-up garages. Glad to have made it.
The area was quiet. He wound the window down. Listened for voices close by. Assured he was alone, Rusnac got out of the BMW and looked around. There were some houses that overlooked the area, but he couldn’t see anyone in the windows. He counted along the garages and found the one he needed. Felt along the corrugated roof, which was disgusting to the touch, filled with dirt, slime, and who knew what else, until he found the key he was searching for.
Rusnac dusted it off and tried to insert it into the lock but his hand shook so much that it wouldn’t go in.
Swearing under his breath, he jumped up and down and tried to shake the adrenaline out of his body. Then he held his right hand steady with his left and tried the key and lock again. This time it slid in. The garage door groaned in complaint as he pulled it up.
With another look around, Rusnac sat back behind the wheel and drove the BMW into the darkness of the garage.
21
Elaine had a weighty feeling in the pit of her stomach, as though she’d eaten a heavy meal and it was simply sitting there. They’d been standing around for hours, unable to do anything. It wasn’t a case of crime scene investigators doing their thing and the cops present doing theirs. She was a cop and she was frustrated. This time officers uninvolved with the original op had been brought in to deal with the murder scene of Billy Collier because they, the force, the Met, needed to be seen to be beyond reproach. So the team who had taken him on the op, they couldn’t be involved in the crime scene. They couldn’t support the CSIs. They couldn’t do their jobs. Her hands were tied. But she wasn’t allowed to leave either. Not until someone else higher up said she could.
The two offenders that they, the team on the ground, the team from the op – the team being frozen out – had managed to detain had been taken back to the station by a couple of uniform cars.
Elaine had then found an empty bucket, had tipped it upside down and was now sitting on it. Hands on knees, chin in hands. She could hear the hum of the crime scene. The quiet chatter of CSIs as they worked the area. Made decisions. A gentle hum in the background of Elaine’s hectic mind.
Paula approached. ‘He was a good kid.’
Elaine lifted her chin. Looked at Paula. ‘Dammit. I just feel so bloody useless.’
‘Ay, but it has to be done.’
Elaine looked at Ray, still standing off on his own. ‘How’s he doing? You were with him.’
‘He seems … distant. We’ve seen murder before. Maybe it’s because he was there in the final minutes. But … it feels like more than that. He feels dark.’
‘Dark?’
‘Yeah. Like something is brooding in him.’
Elaine looked across at him again. His hands shoved into his pockets. His face closed off.
‘You think you can talk to him?’ asked Paula.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You were in that accident together.’ Paula kicked at the ground and the dust lifted, floated, and coated her boots.
‘It doesn’t mean he’ll talk to me.’
‘No, but you’ve been through something tough together already. You’ve a head start on the rest of us.’
She had a point. Elaine shrugged. ‘I can but try.’
His shoulders were tense, pulled up to his ears. ‘Guv?’ she said from behind him. Though Elaine understood Paula’s reasoning, it didn’t make this feel any easier.
‘Elaine.’ He didn’t make a move to turn.
She could feel the darkness Paula had mentioned. Wondered what was pulling him in on himself so much. More than the rest of them, anyway. She couldn’t get Billy’s face out of her head. Felt sick to the heavy lump in her stomach.
‘It’s been a long day. I wondered how you were doing? If there’s anything I can do?’
Ray turned. His face was grey. He was covered in blood. Elaine winced. Seeing the end of Billy’s life all over Ray like this – it was, well, it was like being in the superintendent’s path when he finally blew his top – which he rarely did, which was why it was so bad to be around when he let loose. You just didn’t want to be there. To be hit by flying debris. The contrast between the calm, mellow man and the seething, top-blowing boss was something to be seen. Or not. And seeing Ray this way, it was like that.
She couldn’t go to Billy, he was now evidence. Much as that term grated on her when she knew him after his many visits to the office, that was what he had been reduced to. Evidence. To be photographed, swabbed, poked, tape
d, collected – when she remembered him as a boyish, sweet, kind, a little angry, determined, and brave lad.
Ray’s face mirrored her own feelings – but yes, as Paula had said, there was something else there.
‘When we’re released from the scene we need to get the incident room up and running as fast as we can,’ he replied. His tone was hard-edged. His words clipped.
‘You think they’ll let us run the investigation?’ she asked.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck what they want. This was on our watch. They can oversee it all and make sure we’re following all protocols, policies and procedures, but we’re running it. I’ll talk to Jain and he can bang heads with whoever he needs to, but this was authorised somewhere else, not by me, so I’m damn well not going to let whoever organised it run it. That, in my book, would be the wrong move. Not us looking at it.’
‘Can I do anything for you?’
He looked at Elaine, the words with which he’d just answered her echoing in his head as he realised she was asking a personal question.
He shook his head. Turned away and looked off, back into the distance.
22
Ray’s journey back to the office had been difficult. He had been driven by a uniform officer who had not been involved in the job, so that there would be no cross-contamination. He didn’t have the energy to remember the guy’s name or any details about him so he sat in surly silence. The officer kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. After a couple of attempts to engage Ray in conversation, he’d received the message and stopped.
Ray stripped out of his clothes as he stood on a brown paper sheet, shiny side up, which crinkled as he moved. There to catch any tiny fragment of evidence that could fall from him as he disrobed. He placed each item of clothing into its own brown paper bag. The air cool on his skin. His mind replayed the events that had led him to be standing here, in his boxers, as a CSI swabbed his skin for trace evidence.
They needed to follow the evidence and make sure the scene matched up to the narrative he provided. He understood the procedure. But he wanted the faceless white Tyvek suit to hurry up so he could shower and get on with his job instead of standing there as evidence. He wanted to wash Billy’s blood off him. Because it was evidence. Evidence of his incompetence and his poor decision-making skills. How had he managed to get this so wrong? It all looked so simple when he’d assessed it in the cold light of day from his home on sick leave; but here, up close and personal with real people’s lives, it was hard. Ray gritted his teeth as the CSI worked.
Will and Paula would be going through the same rigorous procedures.
Once his various areas were swabbed and his nails clipped, Ray was done. He thanked the Tyvek suit and made a beeline for the showers.
He took a minute to gather himself under the lukewarm water that dribbled over his back as he leaned under the trickle. Closed his eyes as the blood slipped down the plughole.
Fuck! He slapped down hard on the wall in front of him, stinging his palm. Anger rearing up inside him at the mess. At the loss.
He took a deep breath in. He had a team waiting for him outside those doors. He had to push himself back into work mode. He needed to have his head on straight if he was going to get through the rest of the day. He needed to remember the visual hooks he’d attached to people so he didn’t screw up, because he needed to lead as they expected him to. As they knew him to be able to. He wouldn’t allow this deficiency to rule him or destroy him.
It would test him. The level of activity and movement, the sheer speed with which his officers would move about, working, would make for problematic conversations, as well as the fact that there would be several officers in and out who he’d be expected to remember. He couldn’t fail, not now.
Ray placed both palms on the wall in front of him, leant into the water, tipped his face up and allowed the water to flow over him. Allowed it to soothe him.
He needed to take control. Find a way to make this right. What he could do was run his own investigation parallel to the one he would run in the incident room. He would work the job himself alongside the official investigation, put in extra hours and follow impossible leads if it meant they could get an ID for the head of this organised group. This killer.
He would rectify his mistake.
Once dressed, back in a clean shirt and tie, Ray walked into the incident room. The cacophony of noise assaulted him. Shrieked inside his head like a colony of seagulls about to be fed.
He paused, watched the room, a hive working. This was where he belonged. This was now where he had to deceive his whole team.
‘Okay everyone, gather round, let’s get this show on the road.’
23
His head hurt. It was like a blunt object was burrowing down into his right eye socket from his brow-bone. Ray kneaded the bone with his knuckle in the hope he could kill it dead before it dug into his eye and scoured it right out of his orbital socket.
The briefing had been frenetic. They had run an operation that had resulted in the death of a civilian – Billy. Many of his staff knew him and the loss was going to hit them hard. The office was thick with unsaid words. Stoically held back emotions. And a solid determination. But he needed them to focus until they had the full team of offenders behind bars. He was glad of the peace he had now. Tamsin, Elaine, Will and Paula were in interview with the two offenders they had locked up. One had been identified by his fingerprints as Darren Weaver of Haringey, with a history of drug and violent offences. The fingerprints of the second male had been sent through to Interpol.
Forensics had been down, seized their clothing and replaced it with plain jogging bottoms and T-shirts after they’d swabbed the men for particle evidence. They’d had no weapons of their own on them other than a knuckleduster and a pair of rather nasty attitudes.
He’d normally like to get involved and do one of the interviews, but he had his statement to type up. Jain was on his back for it. He wanted it as soon as possible. Yesterday if he could. Ray’s mind continued to replay Billy’s murder, which was helpful in that he wouldn’t forget the details; but no matter how many times he watched the scene unfold in his mind, there was always a blank space, a faceless face. There was a vague concept of eyes, nose and mouth, but no concrete image he could grasp.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when there was a knock at his door. Ray prodded the burrowing pain again. It was persistent. Annoying.
He waved the visitors in. One male and three females. Rare to get the ratio this way around, he knew. Curls, Tamsin and Will. One from each interview team; the other two must be Elaine and Paula.
‘What do we have?’ he asked, looking past them both through the office to the windows on the back wall, which were both now reflective like a mirror as the night slid down behind them. Mid-March, the days were lengthening, but they were still short.
‘They tried for a no comment interview,’ replied Will with a grin.
Tamsin and Will grabbed the two chairs that were already in his office.
‘Tried?’
Elaine and Paula walked back out and wheeled in a couple more chairs and sat.
‘Yeah,’ said Tamsin, ‘but much to the consternation of his solicitor, he couldn’t stop himself from answering some of the questions.’
‘He was a bundle of nerves, to be honest,’ Paula chipped in.
‘Nervous of us?’ Ray asked.
‘I don’t think so.’ Tamsin shook her head. Curls swirling around her face. ‘Afraid of the guy who got away. It was when we questioned him about Billy’s killer that he stuck to the no comment response, but if it wasn’t related to him, then he felt he had a bit more freedom to speak.’
‘We don’t think the solicitor is involved?’
‘No, he opted for a duty solicitor.’
‘So.’ Ray looked at his mug, which was empty. ‘What did he give us?’
‘He told us his real name, Ion Borta, where he’s from, Moldova, and that he came to En
gland about two and a half years ago.’
‘So he’s illegal?’
‘Yeah. I think this could help us in our search for the head guy. He also talked a bit about the organ trade. Not much, but enough to know they were involved and people are willing to pay. There are huge amounts of money being exchanged, and kidneys are the easiest organs to trade because you can use live donors. That’s when he got pretty passionate.’ Tamsin pulled a hair elastic from around her wrist, screwed her hair in an untidy bundle at the base of her head and fastened it with the elastic.
Ray wanted to explode at her then and there, as her identifier disappeared before his eyes, until a couple of curls popped out at the front, springing around her face.
‘It’s as though they don’t see it as much of an issue because everyone involved consents. They were very proud that they only use live donors and aren’t one of these shit bastards that kill people so they can take their organs – his words,’ she clarified. ‘They said everyone who goes into it knows all the facts. They provide a service, and one that is crying out for help,’ she continued. ‘He was adamant that the people involved all consented and were all compensated well for their time, trouble and organs. And that they all walked away well. The operations were conducted by good doctors. It was simply a business that fills a need our NHS fails to fill.’
‘Yeah, our guy was the same,’ jumped in Will. ‘Did you know there’s something called transplant tourism now?’ He was incredulous. ‘Can you believe it, transplant fucking tourism. It’s a thing. And these guys, instead of asking patients to travel abroad for their shiny new organs, they do it in their home country. It keeps costs to a minimum and keeps the risk of infection down because they don’t have to travel.’ His mouth nearly hung open at his jaw. ‘They genuinely believed they were the good guys in this scenario.’
‘Did you point out it was against UK law?’
Dead Blind Page 6