Landslide

by David Menon

  ‘Oh my God’ said Louisa when she spotted someone she really didn’t want to see. It was Freddie’s ex and now current again Sharon. She looked smart in her knee length brown dress and dark blue chanel type jacket. Louisa knew that she was a rep for some kind of fabric company. She must have a call to make round here.

  ‘What?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘Sharon is sitting just over there’.

  ‘Let’s hit the road then’ said Adrian who knew exactly who ‘Sharon’ was.

  ‘No’ said Louisa firmly. ‘I haven’t finished my coffee yet and you haven’t finished your tea. I’m not going to let her drive me out of my regular cafe although I do have to say that out of all the bloody greasy spoons in Manchester she has to walk into this one at the very time I’m here too. I tell you, the fucking universe hates me sometimes’.

  After another five minutes Louisa and Adrian were ready to go. Adrian went up to the till and paid for them both. Then he said he’d see her outside. He didn’t want to get involved in any altercation Louisa might have with Sharon although he’d stay fairly close just in case things did kick off between them. Louisa walked up to Sharon’s table.

  ‘Sharon?’

  Sharon looked up from her Daily Mail. ‘Hello Louisa. How are you?’

  ‘Dumped. How are you?’

  ‘Look, Louisa, I want you to know ... well that we didn’t mean to hurt you’.

  ‘Is that right? Well you decided to go after my man after he’d finished with you and was going out with me and you won him back. So how do you expect that not to have hurt me?’

  ‘Don’t look at it like that’.

  ‘How else should I look at it?’

  ‘Don’t take it so personally’.

  Louisa laughed. ‘God, why do people always come out with shit like this when they’re so in the wrong? Who else did he dump so he could be with you?’

  Sharon was blushing. ‘No-one’.

  ‘Exactly, so of course it was personal. He chose you over me. How much more personal could it get? You’re just too weak to take responsibility for what you’ve done’.

  The waitress brought over the beans on toast Sharon had ordered and placed it on the table. Louisa then lifted the plate and emptied it into Sharon’s lap.

  Sharon gasped. ‘I’ve got three important meetings to attend today and look what you’ve done to my dress. You did it on purpose, you spiteful cow!’

  Louisa couldn’t help smiling. ‘Yes I did. But don’t take it personally and always remember that I never meant to hurt you’.

  It didn’t seem to matter if a crime scene was in the middle of the city or out in the sticks, if it happened at peak time when all the good people of the world were off to spend another day putting in the effort to pay the mortgage or the rent or whatever they did to keep a roof over their head, a crime scene always drew a crowd. Barton wondered how some of the folks he saw managed these days on the money some of them were expected to live on. He remembered that when he was growing up his parents were totally useless with money and the family finances were a stupid joke at times. His father wouldn’t ‘let’ his mother go out to work to support the family income. It was just one of the ways Barton saw his father as living in the twenty-first century but with his head and his heart lost somewhere a century or more before that. When it came down to it, Barton and his brother Lewis saw their father as a xenophobic, racist, sexist, misogynistic pig, not to put too fine a point on it. Only their older sister Linda seemed to be able to overlook their father’s odious and detestable views. That was because, Barton suspected, Linda probably shared their father’s view on the world. His other sister Annette with whom he’d formed a close bond lately was his father’s love child with another woman and hadn’t been brought up in the ‘family’ home and was nothing like Linda. That was probably why Barton got on so well with her.

  ‘Where do they all come from?’ groaned Barton as he looked out at all the members of what he assumed were the general public. ‘As soon as they see a bit of drama to cheer up their otherwise sad little lives they come crawling out of the woodwork as if Steven Spielberg had just landed with a Hollywood Crew’.

  DI Ollie Wright was driving. Or at least he wasn’t for the time being. The traffic jams that the ‘drama’ had caused on these narrow ‘B’ roads were horrendous but what was also occupying his mind was that he’d been elected by the rest of the team to find out if Barton had ‘got off’ with the Chinese girl in the pub last night. They said he had the greatest chance of finding out because he spent the most time with the boss and they were close but Ollie really didn’t know where to start with broaching the subject. Sure he had a close relationship with the boss but did that really extend to asking him to spill the beans about his love life? Ollie breathed in deep and then decided just to go for it. ‘I guess it makes a change from watching Homes under the Hammer, sir. And, by the way, sir …’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right’ said Barton. ‘I’m just anxious to get to June Hawkins. I don’t like it when one of our own gets caught up in something like this and I want to make sure she’s alright. Sorry, did you want to ask me something?’

  ‘No, no, not at all’ said Ollie who’d suddenly lost whatever nerve he’d had. ‘Well these roads were never built for this kind of volume of traffic, sir’ said Ollie. ‘And whichever way I try to go by way of a shortcut I’m going to hit more people doing the same’.

  ‘Unless of course …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Well unless you try out some of what you’ve picked up from watching Lewis Hamilton in all his grand prix glory? I know you’re a fan even though your husband Richard doesn’t share your enthusiasm for the sport’.

  Ollie smiled. The boss knew him well. ‘Well there has to be something to get from staying up until all hours watching him perform all over the world, sir’.

  ‘Yes, I thought you’d look at it like that, DI Wright’.

  Ollie turned on the siren and placed the flashing light on the roof of the car. He edged out of the line of traffic and put his foot down heading in the wrong direction down the other lane. It must’ve been a combination of the siren and the light that made any oncoming vehicles move up onto the side between the road and open fields to get out of his way.

  When they arrived at the crime scene Barton thought it really had actually taken on the look of a Spielberg film. The open Cheshire plains lent themselves well to the view of carnage stretched across the road. Barton thought it always seemed to look worse in open country areas like this than in the centre of towns and cities where the mess could be contained and placed against some sort of substantial background. Looking north he could see the tall buildings of Manchester city centre in the far distance with the Hilton hotel looking supreme amongst them all and the sound of the traffic going up and down the M6 which was only a mile or so away.

  The scene of crime officer, Sergeant Tim Patrick, was quick to greet Barton and DI Wright. Introductions were quickly dispensed with however because there was a lot of serious business to get on with.

  ‘We have a fatality by the name of Gary Makin’ Sergeant Patrick revealed as he led them over to where Makin’s body was lying under a sheet awaiting transportation to the pathology lab. ‘He had I.D on him and so we were able to name him quickly and get some background. He was inside a couple of years ago for petty theft, nothing large scale or even life threatening but enough of course to make a mark on our system’.

  ‘So what was he doing here?’ Barton wondered. ‘I don’t suppose he was up to date with his tax and insurance making his car easy to identify from the plate?’

  Patrick smiled. ‘Well actually that’s where we have a positive, sir. He was using his own car. It was registered to him at his home address in Stockport’.

  ‘Then he must’ve been so low in the gang’s appreciation of him that he could’ve parachuted out of a snake’s backside and still had room to freefall’ said Barton with a slight smile at his own joke. ‘Now what about the other ca
r? I don’t suppose it’s the same story there? I mean, can a lucky break really last that long?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir. The number plate must be a false one’.

  ‘Well now there’s a surprise’ said Barton. ‘Well we’ll look into that, sergeant, thanks’.

  ‘We’re assuming that Makin was driving, sir’ Patrick went on. ‘His body was found slumped on that side of the vehicle and forensics are checking the prints that are all over the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. Now according to our only witness so far, the pathologist Miss June Hawkins who’s sitting over there in the ambulance, there were two of them in the car and the other guy was taken away at gunpoint by another gang who turned up shortly after the accident. There are tyre marks to prove there were three cars here, sir’.

  ‘Has Miss Hawkins given you any descriptions of the other men?’

  ‘No, sir’ said Patrick. ‘She said she’d only talk to you about that and that’s why she’s waited until you got here before being taken into hospital for checks’.

  ‘Okay’ said Barton who wondered why June would only talk to him. ‘I’ll go over and speak to her shortly’.

  ‘Then there’s the question of the second body, sir’ said Patrick who then rubbed his hand across his mouth. It’s not a pretty sight’. He walked them over to where the body taken from the boot of the criminal’s car had been laid on the road and covered with a makeshift tent. He pulled it back and Barton and DI Wright were both immediately shocked and saddened by what they saw. It was the body of a young teenage black girl. She looked dirty, undernourished, her clothes were like rags but what was most striking was that both her feet were missing.

  ‘What the hell happened to her feet?’ asked Wright.

  ‘Looks like somebody chopped them off to me’ said Sergeant Patrick.

  Barton and Wright both winced at the thought of that happening to such a young looking girl. It was bad enough for it to happen to anyone but Barton couldn’t for the life of him work out how someone could do such a horrible thing to a child. Such was the daily life of a police detective. The discovered horrors seemed to grow in terms of the bounds of cruelty. Some people blame the extreme violence seen on video games and films that seemed to have no limits where violence was concerned.

  ‘So how did she end up in the boot of some petty criminal’s car?’ said DI Wright. ‘And what did she do to provoke someone into chopping her bloody feet off for God’s sake?’

  ‘And these wounds are only just healing, sir’ said Patrick. ‘They may even have been her cause of death’.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, Sergeant Patrick, if you don’t mind’ said June Hawkins as she sauntered up to the three men gathered around the body. She’d dispensed with the blanket that had been given her to wrap around her shoulders. She didn’t need molly coddling for fuck’s sake. She looked up at Barton. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘We were just getting into work when the call came in, June’ said Barton who didn’t have to answer to June Hawkins but she was one of those women who made you think like you did, albeit in the nicest possible way. ‘And anyway what’s all this I hear about you doing your best James Bond impression? Shaken not stirred?’

  ‘I have a very mild, with the emphasis on the mild, concussion but they still want to sweep me off into the heart of the NHS to do something called making sure’.

  Then you should listen to the paramedics, June’ said DI Ollie Wright. ‘They know what they’re talking about’.

  ‘Would you like a thick ear, DI Wright?’

  ‘Not particularly’.

  ‘Well then shut up or else there’ll be someone else nursing a concussion around here and this time it won’t be mild’.

  ‘Shock doesn’t cool down your fire then, June’ said Barton.

  ‘And I can see from your eyes that your fire wasn’t cooled down last night or was it just a late night or you just couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘A bit of all of that to be honest’ Barton admitted, blushing and looking sideways at Wright. He hadn’t actually thought about anything to do with Rita since he’d arrived at work despite that natural urge in himself to boast about having pulled someone as attractive as Rita and spend the most wonderful night with her. But then it had all ended so awkwardly this morning that part of him wanted to forget all about it entirely. If she could attempt to be that controlling after only one night of passion then what would she be like deeper into a relationship? He then turned fully to DI Wright. ‘Ollie, you’d better set up a mobile incident room as close as you can, although I don’t know where you’ll find anywhere but I’m sure a man of your talents will prove me wrong. We passed a pub on the corner of the last junction. You might want to try there seeing as they had a fairly large car park’.

  ‘I’ll get onto it, sir’.

  ‘And I’d better put in a call to Cheshire. This is border country and I don’t want them accusing me of treading on their patch on purpose even though to do that would be a bit like a splitting hairs situation’.

  ‘The sooner we get a national police force the better’ said Wright.

  ‘Ooh don’t let the powers that be hear you say that’ said Barton. ‘Their whole professional lives are built around their metropolitan and shire empires’.

  ‘But what does that have to do with effective policing and catching criminals, Jeff?’ June wanted to know.

  ‘Fuck all’ said Barton. ‘And that’s why I’ve always advocated a national force. But now look June, they said you wouldn’t go off to hospital until you’d spoken to me? So what’s up?’

  June led Barton by the arm away from the crime scene and several meters down the B road they were standing in the middle of.

  ‘Look, I was only out of it for a matter of seconds. After that I played like I was out of it but I wasn’t. I even managed to capture some of what happened on my mobile as I’m about to demonstrate’.

  ‘Jesus, June you could’ve got yourself killed!’

  ‘Yes, well I didn’t and what I’ve recorded may be of great use to you’.

  ‘Okay, but don’t ever take that kind of risk again’.

  ‘Do you want to see what I found out or not?’

  ‘Okay, got the point’ said Barton. ‘So what’s of interest to me here, June?’

  ‘The men who came in after the first lot and shot one of those other men whilst taking the other one away with them looked like they were made of pretty hard core stuff to me’ said June. ‘And from the footage I’m about to show you on my mobile you’ll see how uncomfortable this might make life for you’.

  June showed Barton the film and he immediately recognized the ‘boss’ of the operation.

  ‘Bernie Connelly?’ said Barton, incredulously. ‘The last I heard he was in West Africa somewhere and planning to stay there’.

  ‘Well something must’ve changed his mind and brought him back’ said June. ‘And since you put away his sister and you were after him when he disappeared, I’d say he might think he had some scores to settle with you’.

  LANDSLIDE THREE

  As soon as he got back to the station, Barton put in a call to the National Crime Agency to see what the latest was that they had on Bernie Connelly. His contact there, Inspector Ron Tempest had also delivered the briefing Barton had attended two days ago with other senior officers from across the Greater Manchester force about the increasing proliferation of modern and highly sophisticated organised crime syndicates that were squeezing out the more traditional crime gangs run by the likes of Bernie Connelly. But Barton also learned from Tempest that the NCA had been following Connelly across West Africa for the past several months through the Ivory Coast and Ghana, but that the last reported sighting of him had been in the Nigerian capital of Lagos. The trail had gone cold shortly after that but they’d been sure he was still in Nigeria because they have excellent co-operation with the Nigerian authorities who’d know if he’d moved on and would certainly know if he’d left the country.

  ‘Wh
y were you following him?’ Barton decided to ask before revealing that Connelly had been involved in a major crime incident that very morning. It’s always good to pull the rug from underneath those who think they know better. ‘You were clearly interested in him for some reason’.

  ‘I can’t really go into that just now, DCI Barton’.

  ‘Thought not’ said Barton with a knowing tone of sarcasm. ‘Well I can tell you that according to my source Connelly is right back here in the northwest’.

  ‘Are you sure your source isn’t mistaken?’ asked Tempest who needed to verify this development as quickly as possible if this was true.

  ‘Oh my source is impeccable’ Barton asserted. ‘Maybe he bribed his way out of Nigeria? I gather that’s a fairly common occurrence down in that neck of the woods?’

  ‘But I cannot see why, given what we know that he would come back to the UK’ said a confused Tempest. ‘It would be too risky for him’.

  ‘Why would it be too risky for him?’

  ‘Nice try, DSI Barton’.

  ‘Well look, I’ve got the film from the witness’ mobile phone proving that Connelly was involved in both a murder and an abduction near Hale Barns in Cheshire not two hours ago. And there’s clear evidence that he targeted his victims so this was thought out and planned. It wasn’t some random act and I’ll say this, Inspector Tempest, I’ve been after nailing Connelly for several years now and if I get the chance to grab him whilst he’s back on my patch then I will do’.

  There was something of a dubious silence for a few moments from Tempest before he was ready to respond. ‘I don’t doubt that. Can you email me a copy of the report into this morning’s incident?’

  ‘By all means’ said Barton. ‘And I’ll also email you a copy of the film showing Connelly, Inspector. I’m sure you’ll find it useful’.

  ‘Thanks’ said Tempest. ‘Have you passed on the details of your briefing here the other day to your team?’