The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  ‘There is a garden but there’s no access from there to the street; you have to go through the house. The gardens back on to each other, so we’ll have to come at it via the neighbours’ houses to seal it off. But it will work in our favour as he can’t escape easily that way either. We’ll approach it through the front. The armed officers will take the lead. Follow their orders or take the consequences.’

  ‘Drew is the talker; Lee is bigger. Don’t trust either of them,’ Derwent said. ‘They’re into bodybuilding and they hang around the kind of gyms where there’s sawdust on the floor around the boxing ring to soak up the blood. I would guess they know how to handle themselves in a dirty fight. Don’t get too close unless you’re prepared to tangle with them.’

  Godley held up a picture of a plump woman with dark hair and eyes. ‘This is Patricia Farinelli as she was when she was last seen eighteen months ago. She may not look like this now. We will be arresting anyone in the flats with the brothers as a matter of course, but keep your eyes open for someone who looks like Patricia. We have to take into account that she may be a willing participant in their games, free to come and go as she wishes, so if you spot her in either area, pick her up. It’s more likely that she’s their captive, and I doubt she was in the Hampstead flat since the brothers chose to meet you there, Josh. Wherever she is, finding her is our top priority after arresting these two safely.’

  Nods all round, serious faces. No one had taken this case lightly from the start, but something about seeing the video had made it real for all of us. It was the way Lee had touched Cheyenne. He had treated her like a thing, like she was his to display. He had seemed to be having fun. I was fairly sure I wasn’t alone in thinking it was past time for the fun to stop.

  ‘We’ll leave at eleven. No need to travel in convoy but stay on the radio for updates. We’ll be meeting the armed officers at the rendezvous points I’ve indicated for both addresses.’

  We shuffled out of the briefing room, chatting and yawning and generally acting as if we weren’t on edge. It seemed to help with the nerves. I walked straight into Maeve who was cutting through the crowd with an unseeing look on her face. In one movement I took her arm, drew her into the small meeting room nearby, and shut the door. I doubt anyone else even noticed. She didn’t resist, but when I turned around she was standing where I’d let go of her, staring into space.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  A tiny shrug. ‘Not really.’ Her face was as white as paper, her eyes huge and troubled.

  ‘We’ll find him, Maeve. You don’t have to worry. He’s not going to get away with following you around any longer.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She sounded vague. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘What else? The PNC check?’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t let Derwent upset you. Anyone could have done the same thing. And the chances are it wouldn’t have made any difference.’

  ‘Lee has a record.’ She said it clearly but I could tell it cost her something to admit it. ‘He was put in a juvenile detention centre when he was fifteen.’

  ‘What for?’ I was hoping for something like vandalism.

  ‘Rape. On a twelve-year-old girl in his school, according to the CRIS report.’

  ‘Behind the bike sheds?’

  ‘More or less. The report isn’t very forthcoming. There’s a note from the officer who investigated, asking anyone who wants to consult Lee’s record to contact him, so I’m waiting for him to call me back.’

  ‘That sounds serious.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think Lee is a very pleasant person.’ She gave me a tight smile. ‘So it might have made a difference if I’d looked him up properly yesterday.’

  ‘Move on. There’s nothing you can do about it now except torture yourself, and there’s no point.’

  ‘Right.’ She managed to get a world of sarcasm into that one word.

  ‘You don’t seem too worried about being watched.’

  ‘I’m trying not to think about it.’

  ‘I can’t think about much else,’ I said truthfully. ‘It bothers me, Maeve.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Act as a bodyguard?’

  ‘If I have to.’ I paused for a second before I went on. I knew what I needed to say, and I knew what her reaction would be. If I pushed her too far, too fast, she would put up the barricades again and I would lose any advantage I’d gained by giving her more space. But I couldn’t let that stop me from doing what was right. And in the end, the choice between keeping her safe and persuading her to trust me wasn’t a hard decision at all. ‘I don’t think you should stay in your flat on your own. I want you to move in with me.’

  She looked startled, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her. ‘Have you been talking to Derwent?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘He has all sorts of rules about it,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Good for him.’ I put my hands in my pockets, keeping the distance between us so I didn’t seem to be crowding her. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t mean that you should move in with me permanently. Just for a while, until we’ve got him off the streets and out of your life.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just—’ She stopped. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, go on.’ I was braced for her to say something cutting.

  ‘I never thought you would ask me to move in with you like this. Not for security, or as – as flatmates, or whatever you have in mind.’

  ‘I can’t win.’ I sat down on the edge of the table, defeated. ‘I’m just trying to do the right thing.’

  ‘Of course you are. You always do.’

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. ‘Did you have an answer in mind?’

  She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I have to say no.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just can’t.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? You move back in with your parents? Try and find somewhere else in a hurry? Stay in some crappy hotel? You can’t stay in that flat. I’m not having it.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not having it. In that case, let me go and pack.’ Sarcasm. Her eyes had narrowed. I recognised the warning signs. She would be losing her temper in roughly thirty seconds. I wasn’t far off it myself.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s so hard about this. I’m not asking you for anything.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the reason I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘Look, what do you want, Maeve? The truth?’

  The word landed between us like a grenade. The room was so silent I could hear my watch ticking. Maeve had gone very still. She pushed her hair back and I could tell she was steeling herself for what I was about to say. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You could have fooled me. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it, though.’ I took a deep breath. Cards on the table. ‘The truth is, I want you to live with me so I can spend every minute with you. I want you to be there in the evening, all night long and in the morning when I wake up, and if we ever have a day off, I want to spend it with you without even having to think about it. I don’t want to waste a single minute worrying about where you are and what’s happening to you. I know it’s not what you want, so I’ll take what I can get, which in this case is peace of mind. I’m not asking you to make a commitment; I’m asking you to be with me because it’s safer that way. And you can go whenever you like, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All right, I will come and live with you. But on my terms.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing else.’ I waited, resigned, to hear the conditions. It was enough, I told myself, that she had agreed to the basic idea.

  ‘No half measures. If we’re moving in together, it’s for real.’ The colour had come back into her face. ‘I was going to suggest it anyway. Before this came up.’

  ‘You were?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘It’s just that I’ve been thinking. About us. And I’v
e realised that being with you isn’t the worst thing I can imagine. The worst thing I can imagine is being without you.’

  All I could think to say was, ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I was waiting for the right time.’

  Time. I checked my watch. ‘Oh, shit. I have to go.’

  She laughed shakily. ‘Now this is romantic.’

  ‘I really want to kiss you but the blinds are open.’ The entire team had a grandstand view of us through the meeting-room windows and shutting the blinds was the only thing more likely to draw everyone’s attention than sweeping her into my arms.

  ‘Save it for later.’

  ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Yours, obviously. I have to work out where I’m going to put my stuff.’

  I couldn’t leave her without touching her; I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards me so the solid wood of the door hid both of us from view. It was a brief kiss but it had all of the weight of a promise fulfilled.

  I held on to her for a moment, my cheek against her hair. ‘Stay safe until I get back.’

  ‘You too. Don’t get shot.’

  I had the greatest difficulty in keeping the grin off my face as I left the interview room, and I was certainly the only person in the locker room to be whistling as I pulled on my stab vest.

  ‘Are those yellow feathers I see poking out of your mouth?’ Derwent had just come into the locker room, even later than me, and was ripping his tie off, preparatory to getting changed into something a little less formal than a suit for kicking-in-doors purposes.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You look like the cat that got the canary. What’s up?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just really enjoy arresting people.’

  He gave that the look it deserved. ‘Don’t kid yourself. You’re not going to get close to Drew Bancroft unless it’s because you’re holding the boss’s coat.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said serenely. Derwent pulled his shirt off, revealing a torso corrugated with muscle. I was pretty sure he was sucking his gut in to get that effect, though.

  ‘Well, whatever’s making you so happy, take it elsewhere.’ He hauled a navy-blue T-shirt over his head. ‘Godley’s waiting for you.’

  I finished getting ready in a hurry and made it to the car park on the stroke of eleven, to find the superintendent already in the passenger seat of his car. I jumped into the driver’s seat and fumbled for my seatbelt.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ I risked a look at the dashboard clock. ‘Technically, though, I am still on time. And DI Derwent hasn’t come out yet.’

  ‘Josh is a law unto himself and it’s one minute past the hour.’ He shook his head. ‘Just drive.’

  I did as I was told and made time on the journey with some moves that had the boss grabbing for the fuck-me handle above the door, so-called because that’s what’s going through your mind when you’re hanging on to it for dear life.

  ‘I want to get there in one piece, if that’s okay with you,’ Godley said mildly as we had a bit of a close encounter with a lorry.

  ‘I thought you wanted fast driving.’

  ‘So did I, but I’ve changed my mind.’

  I pretty much ignored him. Driving recklessly was the only way I had to let off steam. Godley’s car was a sleek Mercedes that knew what I was thinking before I did and had the horsepower to back it up. We had a temporary blue light stuck to the roof and I took full advantage. I almost wished the rendezvous point was twice as far away; I was having a blast. From the look on Godley’s face after I cruised to a stop, though, I was unlikely to be behind the wheel on the way back.

  He was out of the car before I’d switched off the engine, conferring with the head of the CO19 team who were waiting to put in the door. I joined them at a more leisurely pace and listened in to the final discussions. We were standing around the corner from Bancroft’s address, about a couple of hundred yards away, and the boys in boiler suits toting large semi-automatic weapons attracted a fair number of worried looks from the neighbours.

  ‘We’ll run the van into the street so the boys can use it for cover. We don’t want your guy to know we’re here until we’re ready for him.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Any info on weapons?’

  ‘Firearms are unlikely. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Well, we’ll try for non-lethal force initially.’

  ‘Send the guys with the Tasers in first?’

  ‘That’s about it.’ The two men laughed, a momentary relief from the tension that always built up before a raid.

  Bancroft’s maisonette had its own front door so we didn’t have to worry about running across a neighbour in the hall. The plan was to go in fast, zap him into submission with fifty thousand volts if he showed any signs of not cooperating, and then search the place for any trace of the missing woman. Simple. And as Derwent had said, I would be doing nothing more taxing than standing around.

  It was sort of hard not to envy the CO19 guys their firepower. I joined a little group of our lot who were cooing over the MP5s. Moving to CO19 would be fun, I thought, doing my fair share of perving. Spending all day kicking in doors and taking down targets had its good points.

  Since the main thing we had to remember was not to get in the way, Godley and I hung back a bit once the order came to move, watching the scene from a distance. The CO19 team had the procedure refined to an art: they slid around the corner, invisible in their unmarked van, and slipped out to their positions without anyone so much as twitching a curtain in Bancroft’s road. I heard rather than saw the moment when they put the door in: one shouted warning and a single blow that sent the door crashing back. They wouldn’t be used to doors that weren’t reinforced, I reflected. It was probably in bits.

  The silence stretched for an uncomfortable minute while I wondered what was going on. I wasn’t the only one.

  Godley was patting his pockets, looking for something. ‘I left my radio in the car,’ he said at last.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What use are you?’

  ‘You didn’t say I had to bring one. You just said I had to drive.’

  Maitland was behind us and he had his earpiece in. He reached forward and tugged on Godley’s arm.

  ‘Boss. Something’s wrong.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It sounds as if they’ve found a body.’

  We started to run at the same moment, pounding down the street hampered by our heavy, unwieldy stab vests. Godley was fast; I only had to hold back a little bit to let him get there first. He almost collided with the CO19 team leader in the doorway.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s a DB in the bedroom. Looks like your target. The rest of the place is clean. No sign of any other occupants.’ The officer was pale and he rubbed a gloved hand over his mouth before he went on. ‘He was shot. Afterwards.’

  ‘After what?’ I asked, but Godley didn’t wait to hear. He shouldered through the gang of armed officers in the narrow hallway and pushed into the bedroom. I was right behind him, reckoning that if I didn’t step on it I would never get inside.

  ‘Ah, Christ.’ Godley sounded disgusted and as I came around the door I saw why. Drew Bancroft – at least, I presumed it was him – was spread-eagled on the bare white-painted floorboards of his bedroom, naked, and very dead. His face was a mass of injuries, the product of a beating as determined as any I’d ever seen. The pictures I had seen of him showed a handsome, cocksure man with white, even teeth. All of that was gone, obscured by blood that was still fresh enough to be bright red. His knees were slightly bent, his elbows too so that his hands lay by his shoulders, and his limbs were held in that position by the nails that had been hammered through his palms and feet. His mouth sagged open, presumably because whoever shoved a gun into it and shot the back of his head off hadn’t bothered to close it again afterwards. The splatter of blood and brain and bone fragments fanned out
from the top of his skull like a Jackson Pollock knock-off.

  ‘Smell that?’ I turned to Godley. ‘Cordite. This is recent.’

  He was still staring at the floor, too much in command of himself to react by retching, as Chris Pettifer was behind me, but unable to tear himself away from the somewhat surreal dismantling of the body that was lying in front of us, the unmaking of what had been close to physical perfection.

  ‘Skinner.’ It was said almost to himself.

  ‘Huh?’

  He made himself look at me with a palpable effort. ‘This is John Skinner in action. What did he say? There’d be a reckoning?’ He pointed. ‘There’s your reckoning. Justice, Skinner-style.’

  Maitland, crowding in the doorway behind Pettifer, got there a second before I did. ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘The other one?’

  ‘Lee Bancroft,’ I said, already starting to move, anticipating what the boss’s reaction would be. ‘If they started with Drew …’

  ‘Lee would be next. And Josh was running late.’ He checked his watch as he strode towards the door. ‘His team won’t have got started yet.’

  But when they did, there was a good chance they’d be walking into an ambush.

  ‘Harry, see if you can get through to the CO19 commander – tell him what’s going on here.’ Godley took his phone out and started looking for Derwent’s number. I made a path for him through the armed officers who were clogging up the hall, watching where he was going so he didn’t have to.

  ‘Do you want me to get the car?’

  ‘We’ll both go.’ He had the phone to his ear. ‘He’s not picking up.’

  The two of us went flat out to get to the car, and this time I decided getting there as quickly as possible was more important than being diplomatic. I’d left my radio on the dashboard tuned to the main set, the force-wide channel. It was a habit I’d picked up in uniform so I could keep track of serious incidents running on my patch, mainly so I didn’t blunder into the way. It was always good to know what else was going on.

  What was going on currently, I discovered when I picked it up and tucked the earpiece in, was bedlam. At first, all I could hear were odd words, the rest drowned out by background noise and a flat, repeated crack that could have been fireworks. The voices were loud which was both unusual and worrying: sounding like you were bothered was something most coppers tried to avoid, and it was a fairly clear indication that the shit was hitting the fan somewhere.