If I Should Die (Joseph Stark)

by Matthew Frank

  ‘Still glad to be back?’ asked Groombridge, dumping a fresh stack of files on Stark’s desk.

  ‘There’s nowhere I’d rather be, Guv,’ lied Stark.

  ‘Remember the ancient Chinese curse, Trainee Investigator. “May you live in interesting times.”’

  ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for. The happiest policeman in the world would be the one with nothing to do.’

  ‘As he queued at the job centre,’ commented Stark.

  ‘Good point.’ Groombridge laughed. ‘Perhaps the honest policemen would prefer little to do and a high conviction rate.’ He was still chuckling as he closed the door to his office.

  The following week Stark settled on the bench in the public gallery of Woolwich Crown Court with relief. It was nearly four weeks since he had ditched crutches for cane, but the better the hip got the more he asked of the muscles. It didn’t matter. Today would be a good day. The beginning of an end, and a validation of his new beginning. The gang were back in court, Nikki facing all of her charges and the others the sexual-assault charge, for which the CPS were going after them as joint principals under the common-purpose doctrine.

  The clerk entered and required all to stand as the judge took her seat. Judge Penelope Carmichael-Brown – with a name like that, she’d probably convened her first court aged three, wig, gown, teddy-bear barristers, the lot. She had a reputation for severe sentencing. In an ideal world Stark would wish for uniformity but today he felt less pious. So much for ideals.

  After brief preliminaries the gang were led in and lined up in the dock behind the tall polycarbonate screen. They presented a miserable conglomerate of fear, shame and denial. Naveen, separated from the rest in his own area, endured murderous looks. Martin Munroe looked like he might vomit. Stark felt little in the way of sympathy. It was believed Munroe was the one heard calling out for Gibbs to stop but there was no evidence of him doing so on the non-sexual assaults. Even Nikki appeared agitated. Stark was not displeased. So much for mercy.

  This was the danger Groombridge had warned him of – the desire to see justice done leading to the desire to see punishment meted out. Goodbye, idealism and mercy; hello, Schadenfreude? That way lay darkness, Groombridge said. Stark wasn’t unduly worried. He knew his way through darkness well enough.

  The clerk of the court called the names one by one and read out the charges against them. She saved Nikki till last. Hers was a long list. Stark watched the jury members’ faces darken as it went on and on. At some point he would be called upon to testify. He had been warned that the prosecution would attempt to suggest he had somehow influenced Maggs to identify Nikki’s photo in that interview. He might have to endure their whole conversation being shown in court, his insomnia and its cause, his physical and mental decline, his medicinal abuse, all twisted to undermine his credibility. So be it. He was ready.

  ‘Lies!’ Everyone’s head turned. To Stark’s right a woman was on her feet. Callie Cockcroft, Nikki’s mother. ‘You’re all liars!’ She gripped the gallery rail, white-knuckled fingers bedecked in gold rings, gold hooped earrings quivering, lank hair scraped back. Shiny gold tracksuit and thin cheeks, gaunt and lined, she was the image of Nikki aged. ‘You’re all liars! You stole my boy and now you’re tryin’ t’ steal my girl! You’re all liars!’

  ‘Remove that woman from my court!’ ordered the judge.

  The door guard, from a private security firm, tried to shuffle along the front row to restrain Callie but she shuffled further away, still shouting. When he did reach her she tried to hit him with her mobile phone, shrieking that she would sue him for assault.

  From the corner of his eye Stark caught a movement. Some of the accused were on their feet. Their guard was keeled over. Tyler had cupped his hands together. Nikki put a foot on the makeshift platform and was boosted smartly to the top of the screen. Tyler held up a hand for her to pull him up, but she ignored it and dropped down the outside. He stared in disbelief and fury, then jumped on a chair and leapt for the top of the screen, with Colin Messenger following his lead.

  ‘Guards!’ yelled the judge.

  A rotund guard came to meet Nikki but she lashed out at him with something and dashed past. Stark and Fran were already out of their seats and heading for the door, Fran first with Stark struggling down the stairs behind, cursing.

  They were too late. Nikki was already out of the court, heading for the main door at speed. A tall man in dark clothing and baseball cap was running with her. Behind them a guard lay on the floor clutching his eyes and face, gasping. Tyler and Colin were grappling with two more. Colin broke free and took off with Fran on his heels.

  Useless in pursuit, Stark stopped and kicked the back of one of Tyler’s knees. The boy went down with a guard on top of him.

  Stark turned to the downed guard. From his agitation it was obvious he had been the victim of an incapacitant spray, OC, oleoresin capsicum or pepper spray from the smell, rather than CS. ‘Water!’ he pleaded.

  ‘No good. It’s not soluble,’ replied Stark. ‘Just keep blinking. It’ll wear off. You’re going to be okay. It will wear off. Try not to rub – that’ll make it worse. Just keep blinking and breathe calmly.’ He knew from training how hard it was to do so. ‘Call an ambulance!’ he shouted down the corridor to the front desk.

  Tyler was pinned face-down now.

  ‘Are you a medic?’ Another guard stood over him.

  ‘Police. Why?’

  ‘Ryan’s been stabbed.’

  Ryan, it turned out, was the rotund guard. It had been a blade in Nikki’s hand, a shiv. It was more slash than stab, a wide, thick cut in the left forearm. The clerk already had a first-aid kit out and was pressing a dressing to the wound. There was little Stark could add. There wasn’t enough blood to fear anything arterial. He said so, and that an ambulance was on its way.

  ‘Little bitch!’ spat the wounded guard.

  Paul Thompson had made it over the screen but was now cuffed to the witness stand.

  ‘Need some help here!’

  In the dock, the remaining accused were corralled in one corner under the watchful eye of two guards, while another knelt over his fallen colleague, hands bloody.

  Cursing, Stark clambered awkwardly over the tall balustrade, falling on the other side with a pained grunt. He moved the guard aside. ‘Hold his arms, keep him still!’ He lifted the injured man’s shirt. A small circular puncture wound. The dock guard really had been stabbed. Punched in the gut with the shiv. He looked up into the man’s panicked expression and remembered the Bastion medics. ‘You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine.’ Confident tone, confident smile, sugar-coating. The man was in trouble. Gut wounds were bad news, and if the point had angled up towards a kidney … ‘Get me that first-aid kit,’ he ordered.

  He was running low on reassurances and dressings when the paramedics eventually arrived.

  Powerless he watched the blood drying on his hands, as the man was stretchered hastily away.

  ‘Stark!’ Fran’s voice. She stood beckoning from the doorway, mobile pressed to one ear and hung up as he approached. ‘Nikki and her accomplice got away in a blue Ford Focus driven by another. I got the plate. Messenger hoofed it on foot. Wantage is being sat on outside.’

  ‘Thompson made it over but no further. They …’ Stark looked around and realized the room was all but empty. ‘I guess they’ve been taken down.’

  Fran noticed him rubbing at the dry blood. ‘You hurt?’

  Stark shook his head. ‘The guard. Nikki used a shiv.’

  ‘We’ve got Messenger, sir!’ said a sergeant, from the door. ‘Transport Police picked him up jumping the barrier at Plumstead station and trying to board a train to Dartford, just like you said.’

  ‘Granny’s house,’ said Fran.

  ‘Never the brightest spark,’ added Groombridge. ‘Thanks.’ There was no sign of Nikki and her accomplices, though. This isn’t going to go down as our finest hour, he thought. Despi
te the private security, the police would shoulder all the blame if the absconders weren’t recaptured swiftly. He shook his head, still incredulous. ‘Jumped the bloody dock.’

  ‘Hasn’t happened in a while,’ agreed Fran. ‘And I doubt they’d have made it out the door without help.’

  A poor consolation. Groombridge stared at the paused image on the CCTV monitor in the court’s security suite. The accomplice had kept his head down as he entered the building, using his cap and a hand to hide his face. The security firm should’ve made him remove it but he’d waited in the lobby until the commotion had broken out, then pulled a tube scarf up over his face, vaulted the gates and sprayed the guard before anyone could stop him. A big man but nimble, black jacket, boots and cap.

  ‘Has to be Dawson,’ said Fran, standing beside him. ‘But what the hell is he thinking? Taxiing her around is one thing, but this?’

  ‘It’s a strange move,’ agreed Groombridge. ‘Get me a list of everyone who visited Nikki inside … and Gary.’

  ‘You think big brother had a hand in this?’

  ‘Maybe. Plan B after his failed attempt to silence Maggs. And he’s got Her Majesty’s perfect alibi.’

  They all stared at the paused image. ‘How did Dawson know when to make his move?’ said Fran.

  ‘Callie Cockcroft had her mobile in her hand when she kicked off, Guv,’ said Stark.

  ‘Did she now? Where is she?’

  ‘Uniform have her in a car,’ replied Fran. ‘Not sure whether to arrest her.’

  ‘Arrest her. Suspicion of assisting escape from custody. Bag her mobile and bring it here.’

  ‘Guv.’ Fran disappeared.

  Groombridge stared at Stark, wondering if they were thinking the same thing – the ancient Chinese curse. ‘I don’t suppose it would do much good to remind you that you’re still on light duties?’

  ‘You tell me, Guv.’

  In other words, it’s up to you, Guv, as long as you tell me to stay, Guv. The problem with authority was that it only counted for anything if the other person accepted it. Stark was one of those people who saw through it, knew when to say yes and when to invite you subtly to reconsider. In that, he reminded Groombridge of his younger self, and being on the receiving end had its piquant irony. In other respects he remained an enigma. Officially he was still signed off sick yet here he was in suit and tie, defiant as ever. He’d washed the blood from his hands but there was some on his shirt cuff. ‘Sit down at least. You’re no use knackered.’

  ‘Guv.’ The boy slid into a creaky office chair. It was hard to think of him as a boy now. He’d aged in the short time he’d been around, not just in himself but in Groombridge’s perception of him. His deterioration had peeled away the lad with scars and left the man with his past etched on him. Not to mention how hard it was to look at him now without seeing khaki, crimson and bronze. One day Groombridge hoped to sit down over a drink and hear the truth behind the sterile citation and the papers’ sensational interpretations of what had happened that day. But he wouldn’t try to coax it out. There was little probability of success anyway. Stark was an easy guy to like but a hard man to know. Maybe in time.

  ‘Got it, Guv,’ said Fran, when she reappeared. ‘She texted another mobile, listed just as L, at eleven nineteen. One word – go.’

  Stark rewound the film. ‘There.’ He pressed play. The accomplice took something from his pocket, looked at it, put it away, got up and jumped the gates. The time on the monitor read eleven twenty.

  Groombridge phoned HQ to request a ping on the mobile number’s location.

  Fran’s phone rang. The news was clearly mixed. ‘We’ve got the Ford, Guv. Ablaze on the Abbey Wood flyover.’

  The column of black smoke rose high in the windless sky, pinpointing their destination. It was a short journey, a little over two miles, mostly dual-carriageway, a smart escape route in a busy city. And it was an interesting place to dump the car. The flyover carried an arterial road over a railway line. In the centre of the flyover there were bus lay-bys either side, with staircases and ramps down to ground level either side of the railway. Worse, the car was actually parked at the foot of the flyover where it was less conspicuous and footpaths angled off each side. Uniform were already canvassing pedestrians but it was a futile gesture. Anyone waiting at the bus stops would long since have travelled on. By simply walking under the flyover the suspects could immediately be out of sight of anyone who’d seen them get out of the car; leaving it alight provided a distraction and destroyed evidence. They could flee in several directions and either side of a railway. They might have caught a train or a bus or simply got into another vehicle.

  ‘Smart,’ commented Fran.

  ‘They all make mistakes, DS Millhaven,’ replied Groombridge, looking about him thoughtfully. It makes the mistakes harder to spot when the sodding criminals knew what they were doing, he didn’t add. The phone ping had already come back as pay-as-you-go and switched off. Savvy villains knew the tricks. Bloody thing probably had a new SIM card already.

  The Fire Brigade had the blaze out and the local SOCO team were waiting for the steaming wreck to cool down. Groombridge chose the first and most obvious of the footpaths, which turned under the flyover and came out below by a smaller road.

  Tucked under the flyover there was a small public car park encircled by security fencing. They crossed to the nearest concrete staircase, went up on to the flyover and down the far side to the railway station. There was another car park on this side too. Both had CCTV, limited but worth checking, the station, too, and most buses these days. ‘Train or bus wouldn’t have been smart – too easy to see where you got on and off.’

  ‘The car parks, Guv?’ suggested Stark.

  ‘Nice and dark under those flyovers,’ agreed Fran.

  They checked for signs of broken glass, evidence of breaking into cars, and found a depressing number in both car parks.

  ‘Guv.’ Stark was pointing at the CCTV camera on an eight-foot pole. It had been sprayed out with black paint. A quick scan showed there were no other cameras covering that car park, the surrounding streets or buildings. Stark squinted towards the railway station. ‘What about those, Guv?’

  The platform cameras were high on a pole. They tramped back up and over to the station side. Stark was noticeably slower this time, his breath laboured when he thought no one was looking. Groombridge shook his head but said nothing. The man in the ticket office reluctantly let them in to see the monitors. They were not of the finest quality, but the relevant camera had sufficient elevation to pick up the distant entrance/exit of the car park.

  They rewound to roughly when the Focus had been dumped and three figures in caps appeared, entered the car park, then disappeared into the gloomy undercroft. A minute later a dark grey saloon exited.

  ‘Ford Mondeo,’ suggested Fran.

  Groombridge nodded. ‘They all make mistakes.’

  They returned to the station with all of the footage. The car-park camera had been fine until five forty-five the previous afternoon when a hand had appeared from below holding a spray can. The platform camera showed a man arrive on foot, spray, and leave the way he’d come. A minute later the grey Mondeo came around the same corner and disappeared into the car park. A black Mercedes pulled up outside and what looked a lot like the vandal emerged, got in on the passenger side and the car drove off. Too far for faces or plates.

  ‘Can we enhance it?’ asked Stark.

  ‘Not on this,’ replied Dixon.

  ‘Email a copy to FSS and see what they can do,’ said Groombridge. ‘What else have we got?’

  ‘Just spoken to the crime-scene manager, Guv,’ said Fran. ‘Melted remains of a toothbrush handle found on the floor of the burnt Focus.’

  Groombridge nodded. Nikki’s shiv – anything a prisoner could grind to a blade on brickwork or a concrete floor. Toothbrush handle was a common choice.

  ‘The car’s plates were cloned but the engine compartment serial number showed
it was nicked in Chatham this morning. Some prints found on surviving paintwork. Officers have been sent to fingerprint the owner and her family for exclusion. We’re collating footage from traffic cams in the area but they’re few and far between. We’ve got incident signs up in case anyone wants to call and uniform are still canvassing.’

  Exactly the kind of work Stark didn’t miss about uniform. Not that sitting in front of a monitor was much better. He, Dixon, Williams and Bryden were left to search the traffic-camera footage for signs of the Mondeo and Mercedes under the watchful eye of DS Harper while Groombridge and Fran spread the net nationally.

  ‘Christ, talk about a needle in a haystack!’ complained Williams.

  ‘Look for both cars together,’ suggested Stark. ‘If they were lazy they might’ve convoyed there.’

  Harper huffed. ‘Another clever idea from Trainee Investigator Goldenballs. Listen to this one, lads, he’s destined for greatness.’ Masquerading as a joke, there was enough poison in the sarcasm to raise Stark’s hackles. Harper looked to Bryden for laughter but received only a smile of acknowledgement, not a convincing one. Tolerance for his humour was wearing thin. There was a frayed look to the man this week. He hadn’t turned up with any new cuts or bruises but he was clearly tired and stressed. It was impossible not to feel sorry for him. Stark had kept his own mental health and family apart; Harper’s wife could not do the same and it was important to remember that, even as the man pecked away with his petty revenges.

  ‘Got them, I think,’ said Williams, suddenly. ‘Here.’ His screen showed the Mondeo following the Mercedes turning right. A rear view so no faces, but the licence plates of both were discernible.

  ‘Where is that?’ asked Stark. Williams gave the location and they traced the direction towards the nearest camera.