39
Fran waited till the door closed behind the two SCD7 detectives, slowly counting to ten. ‘Arseholes!’
‘Now, now.’ Groombridge closed the report and placed it atop his creaking in-tray. ‘You can’t say they haven’t looked into it.’
‘And now they’ve stopped!’ cried Fran.
‘“Deprioritized pending new information”,’ Groombridge corrected.
‘They’ve bloody parked it!’
‘They can’t access Dawson’s accounts or raid his offices without probable cause, which they can’t establish unless someone goes on the record.’
‘Stop arguing their side!’
‘What would you have me do instead?’ demanded Groombridge, losing his cool. ‘Kick down doors, knock heads together, is that it? What those “arseholes” were too polite to say was that the reason witnesses are too frightened to talk is because I let my ego get the better of me and tipped Dawson off that he was under suspicion. He’ll have covered his tracks by now anyway. All they can do is keep tabs on him in the hope that he eventually slips up. So until then I’d say our indignation was worse than useless, wouldn’t you?’
Fran kept her big mouth shut, wondering when she would ever learn that railing against his mild manner was as unwise as it was cheap. All the more foolish, given that she wanted Dawson so badly because she could see it eating at Groombridge. Dawson had walked on the van heist killings, and nothing burnt like a cold case. Now the bastard was getting away with half-killing Naveen, helping Nikki, supplying drugs, loan-sharking, racketeering and God knew what else. And he was laughing at them. She’d diverted all the resources she could in the last few weeks to uncovering something, anything, but Cox was starting to sniff around the timesheets and Groombridge couldn’t turn a blind eye much longer.
The DCI sighed. He looked tired. Fran ground her teeth.
There was a knock at the door and Dixon peered in cautiously. ‘Sorry, Guv. Just got a call from Belmarsh prison. You’re not going to like this.’
Stark read the last page of his book, closed it and tossed it on to the coffee-table. He stood with a grunt and limped to the window, considering another turn around the block. The rain was getting heavier.
He slid open the door to the balcony, letting the humid air and summer-rain-hiss roll in over him. Lightning strobed to the west, silhouetting the jagged skyline on his retinas. He counted seconds: one, two, three, four … The crack-rumble accompaniment shook the air.
He breathed in a long draught of ionized air, savouring the storm’s wild freedom. He ached to be out in it, drenched and laughing, running till his lungs burst.
It was two weeks since he’d escaped his mother’s claustrophobic care, but the walls of his flat offered scant liberty. Being cooped up felt like purgatory, a limbo life relieved only by Kelly’s heavenly visitations. Alone in the day, he was still on another sick-chit with only the discomforts of exercise, physio and psych appointments to break the monotony of books, straight-to-TV movies and rolling news. Little reinforced a sense of isolation and boredom more than daily makeshift bloke-lunches eaten before the unblinking flat-screen accusation of daytime television.
Behind him the landline rang but he let it go to the machine. It would only be another round of motherly clucking or, worse, another interview request or offer to publish his ghost-written autobiography. The caller rang off without leaving a message.
Then his mobile phone began its own song and dance, crabbing angrily across the coffee-table. He let that go too. But a few seconds later it rang again. Muttering, he turned and scooped it up, frowning at the caller ID. ‘Sarge?’
‘Where are you?’ demanded Fran.
‘Guess.’
‘Moping about in your flat.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Then get off your bony arse and meet me downstairs in ten. I’m off to ask your pal Maggs why he keeps getting stabbed.’
Maggs was sitting up in his hospital bed, a prison officer outside his door. ‘Is it just me or have we been here before?’ he asked wryly.
‘I wonder if it’s something about you personally that incites people to stab you,’ mused Fran.
Maggs shrugged. ‘You gonna charge me with attempted murder this time, Sergeant Hardarse, or will you settle for assault?’
‘That depends,’ said Fran. It didn’t seem likely, from what she’d told Stark on the way. As different categories of prisoner, Maggs and Gary Cockcroft should never have met, but Maggs had been attending the prison dentist in weekly penance for years of underwhelming oral hygiene and Gary had feigned toothache to engineer a coincidental visit, attacking Maggs with a plastic shiv fashioned from a broken chair. ‘We’re assuming his motive was revenge for implicating his little sister Nikki, and to prevent you testifying against her in court.’
‘He could’ve just asked nicely,’ joked Maggs.
‘Would you have listened?’
‘No.’ Maggs grinned. ‘But I’d have enjoyed saying so a lot more if he hadn’t stuck me first. How’s he doing anyway?’
‘You broke his cheekbone, nose, wrist, two ribs and – I know I shouldn’t laugh – several teeth.’
Maggs smiled at the irony, but when he looked at Stark his expression hardened. ‘You’ve less to say for yourself than last time we met.’
Stark shrugged. ‘Officially I’m still on the sick ’n’ lame.’
Maggs didn’t look at Stark again. He was still angry. Stark had expected as much. When Fran had what she needed, she announced she’d wait in the car and left them alone, probably her plan all along.
Stark and Maggs watched each other, like cats strayed into uncomfortable proximity.
‘Fancy cane,’ said Maggs, eventually.
Stark offered it for a closer look. ‘A gift.’
‘Friends in high places.’
Stark let that go. News of the gift had made it into the tabloids. It apparently dated back to the 1890s Buddhist revival in India. It was valuable. He ought to get something more everyday but it fitted his hand and height so well he was loath to seek another and he had been given it to use, not admire.
‘So what are you doing here? Guilty conscience?’
‘How about esprit de corps?’ suggested Stark.
‘Thought you’d been discharged.’
‘Officially I’m still waiting on that.’
Maggs nodded. ‘You’re too useful to them. They’ll lose your paperwork if you let them.’
‘There’s not much I can do about it for now.’
‘So much for friends, eh?’ agreed Maggs. ‘Talking of which, I had a visitor.’
‘Yes?’
‘Tasty captain. Two words I’m not used to putting together,’ said Maggs.
Pierson. That was quick. ‘Times change.’
‘So it seems.’ Maggs was watching him carefully. ‘She told me when I get out I’ll be entitled to thirty years of uncollected pension.’
‘You never collected?’
‘Wasn’t worth the bother. Only now I’m told there was a clerical error. I should’ve been in a higher category. Backdated, it adds up to a pretty penny.’
‘The off-licences of Greenwich can lay in extra champagne.’
Maggs ignored the gibe. ‘Interesting timing, I thought.’
‘Well, you did make the papers.’
‘I’m not the only one, though, am I? This was your doing.’
Despite the firm assertion, it was still a question. ‘Partly.’
‘When are you going to learn to mind your own damn business?’
‘When are you going to learn to accept help when it’s offered?’
‘When you show me a world where help comes without strings,’ riposted Maggs.
‘Wake up, Dorothy, there’s no such place.’ Stark flung Maggs’s own line back at him. Maggs looked away. Stark could have sworn he was masking a smile. ‘How’s the food?’
‘I’m on liquid bloody food till my guts heal up.’
‘Nothing new there.’
‘I’ll bring you some soup.’
‘Piss off.’
Clearly Maggs wasn’t in the mood for jokes; understandable, thought Stark. ‘How’s prison?’
‘It only hurts if I laugh.’
‘Will you appeal? You should never have got more than three. With good behaviour you’d be out in eighteen months. You’ve made your point.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Maggs gruffly.
‘We’ll see’ if he’d made his point yet, or if he’d reconsider appealing – Stark couldn’t tell which. He’d leave that for next time. ‘I brought these for you.’ He held out the bag.
‘That’s not grapes.’ Maggs eyed the bag warily, perhaps guessing the contents. He pulled out three slim leather cases, nodding. ‘Where d’you get the boxes?’
‘The tasty captain.’ Pierson had come up with originals, of course.
‘Should’ve guessed.’ Maggs opened all three and stared at his medals, lost in thought. ‘Haven’t looked at these in years. You’ve polished them. Still can’t walk past a button without shining it?’
‘Said the man who carried his field first-aid kit around for thirty years,’ responded Stark.
‘They never gave me a third stripe, though, Sergeant Weekender.’ Maggs snapped the boxes shut. ‘These are no good to me inside. Some scrote would thieve them if a screw didn’t first. Put them back where you found them.’
‘Languishing in some personal-effects locker?’
‘Better than an old sock.’
‘It’s not right.’
‘If you’re that soft-hearted why don’t you hang on to them till I get out? They’d be in good company. I’d salute but the MoD didn’t procrastinate with my discharge.’
‘I’ve had enough salutes,’ said Stark, thinking of Margaret Collins.
Perhaps something of that showed in his face. Maggs nodded gravely. ‘Medals glitter, but also cast their shadows.’
‘Quoting Churchill now?’
‘I’ve heard it said yours casts the longest,’ added Maggs. ‘Personally, I don’t think it’s the medals that cast the shadow at all.’
‘No,’ agreed Stark. There was plenty of shadow without glitter.
They both sat staring out of the window for a while. A grey-studded sky rolled slowly past, carrying the rain away with it.
‘Still,’ said Maggs, ‘you get a little pension with it too. We’re both quids in.’ He was right: the VC came with a £1,500 annuity. ‘And how much compensation did you get for getting blown up and shot?’
‘Enough,’ admitted Stark, conscious that Maggs had received little or nothing back in 1982.
‘What will we do with our new-found riches, eh?’ mused Maggs, mocking them both.
Stark had already donated his compensation payment equally between Help for Heroes and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association. The annuity would go to the British Legion. He hoped Maggs wouldn’t do something similar: he needed it. ‘Soup and champagne?’
This time Maggs couldn’t help chuckling. ‘Don’t make me laugh, you sod.’ He winced, holding his bandaged stomach.
A beginning, thought Stark. Rapprochement, if it were possible, would take longer, and depend in no small part on what happened with Pinky. But laughter, however painful, was a good start.
‘Kiss and make up?’ asked Fran innocently, sipping takeaway coffee as Stark slid into the passenger seat with a grunt. ‘That’s two you owe me.’
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your sentimental streak,’ replied Stark. They hadn’t spoken since the Kelly conspiracy was revealed.
‘You’re very welcome.’ Fran grinned. ‘Talking of which, I thought you were supposed to be a corporal?’
‘Sorry?’
‘They kept calling you Sergeant Stark, on TV.’
‘I was acting sergeant when our patrol was attacked. The powers-that-be decided to make it official.’ Stark still wasn’t sure whether this was because they felt it only right or that they thought it good PR. Perhaps it was both.
‘Well, don’t get any funny ideas about equal rank. You’re still Trainee Investigator Stark around here.’
‘Sarge.’ He saluted sloppily.
‘Don’t push your luck.’ She checked her watch. ‘Right, I’m done for the week and you owe me a drink.’ She held up a palm before he could respond. ‘And don’t say you’re under doctor’s orders not to imbibe because the important part of my previous statement is that you owe me a drink.’
‘Actually I was about to say I’m gasping.’ Friday drinks in Rosie’s sounded like a splendid notion.
‘So long as you’re buying …’
On the way back she grilled him about his visit to the Palace but didn’t ask about the citation, which he’d thought she would. Was she starting to respect his boundaries? Surely not.
They were into their second round before the pub began to fill with coppers. People covered their surprise at seeing him with varying levels of over-enthusiastic welcome and hesitant congratulations. Groombridge, however, frowned at finding them sitting together. ‘Good to see you, Constable Stark, though I must say, I’m a little surprised.’ He looked pointedly at Fran. ‘Coincidence?’
‘Disobedience,’ she confessed candidly. ‘I’m told I have a sentimental streak.’
‘And was your interview assisted in any way by dragging our trainee investigator from his sickbed despite my ordering you not to?’
‘Nope.’ She smiled, un-contrite.
Groombridge sighed and went to the bar. Harper strode in, talking loudly with others, including Bryden. When one nodded Stark’s way Harper turned and his latest anecdote died on his lips. He turned back to his friends, didn’t look at Stark again and left soon after. Fran and Groombridge saw this but said nothing. Most people would’ve seen through Harper’s latest fib but chalked the bad arm up to another domestic. Fran knew better, but Groombridge? For the moment Stark was content just to see Harper go. Only time would tell whether anything could be salvaged there.
Some – including Bryden, Stark was pleased to see – made a point of joining him for a drink, but few lingered long in his company. Stark was not dismayed: he’d been through this before. Even close friends had to find common ground anew. It was just another facet of being a veteran.
‘When do your doctors say you can come back to work?’ asked Groombridge, sipping his pint thoughtfully.
‘Another week, Guv,’ admitted Stark, reluctantly. ‘Then light duties only.’
‘And what do you say?’
‘I don’t like doctors.’
Groombridge laughed. ‘Then sod them. Clearly both you and DS Millhaven here think you’re better qualified in medical matters anyway so get your arse in the station first thing Monday, if you must. I’m sure we can find some use for you.’
‘Thanks, Guv.’
‘A man knows his own limits.’
‘And a copper knows when it’s their round,’ added Fran. ‘Get them in, Stark.’
Monday morning shone with a golden sunrise. Fran had offered to pick him up but Stark, keen to reassert his independence, declined. Instead he caught a bus, his first since moving to London. He’d even purchased an Oyster card. The shiny red double-decker dropped him at the bottom of Royal Hill and he managed the short climb at a leisurely limp. He paused across the road from the station, staring at the entrance ramp, the very spot he’d given himself the limp, the very spot he’d arrested Maggs just eleven weeks earlier. It seemed longer. He looked up at the building, ruminating on all that had transpired. In policing terms, at least, there was satisfaction to be drawn from his part in events. A helicopter clattered noisily across London’s busy airspace and, for a moment, Stark was transported back to that night-flight into Combat Outpost McKay and the cocksure clarity he’d felt. Suddenly, fleetingly, something of that young fool’s surety reached out across the gulf and touched the new Stark, mocking his pride and self-pity with a soldier’s laugh. No fucking sym
pathy! Stark chuckled.
He turned his head to let the warm sun kiss his face. Leaning on his cane and closing his eyes, he took deep breaths of warm English-summer air, laced with pollen, car fumes and life. Nearby a small child laughed with his mother. Stark caught a waft of the verdant Helmand river valley, and smiled. He felt a swell of pleasure, that sudden irrational breath of euphoria that fills you sometimes with little apparent cause, or serendipitous overlapping of small causes, real or imagined, of hope, no strings attached. Whatever Maggs said, there was such a place.
Hazel had accused Stark of imbalance. Here and now, redressing that seemed simple. He would fix one side of the scales and raise the other to meet it, merge duty and desire and be whole. If the last few weeks had demonstrated anything, it was that he was no longer a soldier, no longer able or willing to procrastinate behind that. Give it a year, he’d thought. What did he realistically think would be different a year from now? And what did he think he was good for if it wasn’t service? Green or blue, he was a man of uniform. His Queen. His country. He was entrusted to protect, keep peace. He’d sworn, and he would keep covenant. That was who he was. And this was where he would do it.
40
It felt good to be back in the office. Everyone did their best to act normally and Stark had high hopes that they’d pull it off, given time, say, ten years or so. Only Fran, Groombridge and, perhaps surprisingly, Maggie remained unmoved by the whole business. He would be for ever grateful to all three. Someone had stuck a newspaper cutting of him with his VC on the wall, to which Harper nodded with a snide remark, but Stark wasn’t about to let that dampen his spirits. At least Harper had spoken – another start, perhaps. Groombridge had preloaded Stark’s small desk with a big stack of files but desk-bound was better than sofa-bound. Light duties beat crushing boredom.
And so it proved for the first week, but as the second ground on, Stark’s interest in data-input palled, and watching the rest of the team go about their business made him feel like a spare wheel. Even so, he was pleased to observe people slowly relaxing enough to tease him and make jokes, and even if Harper’s were barbed, at least he felt confident enough to make them. Stark was grateful no one had witnessed their one-sided tussle. To confront a bully was one thing but to crush their self-esteem was dangerous. That no one had seen his belittlement allowed Harper room to recover. They might never be friends but Harper had been right in one thing: Stark wanted no man as his enemy.
If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) Page 38