Walk On By: DI Ted Darling Book 7

by L M Krier

While he was downstairs, Ted decided to put his head round the Ice Queen’s door for a catch-up. There was always the prospect of good coffee if he visited her.

  ‘Come in, Ted, I was just about to call you,’ she said, as she looked up from her paperwork.

  It sounded ominous. Or maybe he was still wary after the run-in with Jim. He had phoned him to put things right, but he’d still had to accept a further tirade before the Big Boss calmed down enough for things to be back to normal. Ted had a suspicion his painkillers weren’t strong enough.

  ‘Mr Marston has called another briefing for this afternoon. Much smaller, this time. He’s planning the arrest of Dorian Bacha so he wants input from you and me, from Armed Response and from the surveillance team.’

  ‘He’s jumping the gun, there, pardon the pun. We’re a long way from being ready to move. We still have only the shakiest of evidence against him, and we really are doing all we can.’

  She’d stood up to produce the coffee. She was always the soul of discretion, but Ted detected a note of something like irritation in her voice as she replied.

  ‘You and I both know that but mounting armed operations is not his speciality. I just hope that between us, we can make sure the operation is not rushed and badly managed. I suggest we go in my car, then we can discuss strategy in more detail on the way there.’

  ‘This is probably going to be impossible, but I desperately need to get away for about four hours, possibly tomorrow. Green is still on our patch and wanting somewhere to train. As he’s got the drop on me, twice, he’s insisting I should go too. It would mean going to my club over near Sheffield, so I’m an hour or so away if the Chief Super calls yet another briefing. Or if he decides to go ahead with the arrest with indecent haste, before we’re ready.’

  ‘We need every member of the team on peak form for this operation, with whatever update training is necessary for their specialist skills. Leave it with me.’

  It was a much smaller team which sat around a table in a briefing room, rather than using the large conference room. Marston had taken his position at the head, flanked by a Firearms inspector, Alex Porter, whom Ted knew well, and Neil Smith from Fraud, whose team members were involved in keeping the house in Stretford under surveillance. Marston invited Smith to speak first.

  ‘Sir, we still have no definite sightings of Bacha at the house. What my team have noticed is that there’s one room at the front of the house where the curtains have stayed closed the whole time it’s been under observation.’

  ‘Who lives at the house, sir?’ Porter asked.

  Marston was passing round a folder with all the available intelligence to date.

  ‘Mother, father, three daughters and now, we think, Dorian Bacha.’

  ‘And what weapons do we think are in there, sir?’

  ‘We believe he has used a knife and may still have it. We have no information to suggest firearms are involved.’

  ‘Sir, with all due respect, we do have information which could suggest there might be. Bacha’s father’s firm is under surveillance in France in connection with suspected drug smuggling and gun running.’

  Once again, Ted found himself in the position of having to confront the Chief Super. At least this time he was with two other officers with firearms experience, who were nodding their heads in agreement at what he was saying.

  ‘Suspected, suggest, might be. It’s all a bit tenuous, Darling.’

  ‘Sir, with respect from me also, this is my team I’m sending in. I need as much information as possible to make the risk assessments and plan the best way to proceed. All of that takes time and careful planning. Sir.’

  The hesitation was pointed, the most Inspector Porter dared do to make his objections clear.

  ‘For instance, do we have plans of the interior of the house yet, sir? It’s vital that I know which way the stairs go, for one thing. If Bacha is in the room at the front of the house and the stairs rise towards the back, that makes it all the more tricky for my officers to approach without alerting him. And is this going to be a Fahrenheit op, sir, or is our brief to bring him in alive for questioning?’

  Fahrenheit was the shoot to kill code, normally only used if the suspect was thought to represent a real and present danger, as in the case of a suspected terrorist. It would be highly unusual for such an operation to be coded as Fahrenheit. Ted hoped even Marston would not be stupid enough to do it for a suspect on whom they had so little information.

  ‘Not at this stage, Inspector.’

  Marston was beginning to sound irritated. He hated to be challenged. But if this operation was to go smoothly, with minimal risk of loss of life, especially to civilians, he needed to be made to listen to the firearms experts present.

  ‘Chief Superintendent, if I may, since I, too, have firearms experience,’ the Ice Queen began, her tone measured but her message clear. ‘I agree wholeheartedly with DCI Darling and Inspector Porter. This is an operation with the potential to go badly wrong.

  ‘Bacha is a French national, but the family is of Algerian origin. We must, of course, do all we can to bring in a murder suspect. But if we go in mob-handed and unprepared, we run the risk of accusations based on ethnicity. When were you planning for, sir?’

  ‘Sunday morning, bright and early, when everyone is still tucked up in bed.’

  The four other officers exchanged looks of barely concealed horror.

  ‘Sir, we don’t even have enough for a warrant yet ...’ Ted began, but got no further.

  ‘Then get me something,’ Marston barked. ‘You’ve had nearly two weeks and nothing to show for it. Shake your team up a bit. There must be something. Find it.’

  ‘Sir, I’m going to need much more intelligence to go on ...’

  Porter got no further than Ted had.

  ‘There’s too much negativity here. Stop telling me what you can’t do and tell me what you can and how you’re going to do it.’

  ‘Sir, I say again that we need to exercise the utmost caution with this operation.’

  When Superintendent Debra Caldwell used that tone, everyone sat up and listened. Even, to Ted’s surprise, Marston. He looked at her with barely concealed annoyance while he considered. But he was at least listening and seemed to be weighing up her input.

  ‘All right, I am prepared to modify my plans to the extent of saying that the expectation is to go ahead on Sunday. That will be subject to full risk assessments being carried out after further intelligence gathering, all of which are to be signed off by me then countersigned by the ACC (Crime).

  ‘I’ll leave you now to come up with a workable plan before any of you think of leaving. I suggest at some point you send out for food; ask the front desk to organise it for you. Prepare yourselves for a late one. And make sure I have your full proposals before you leave here. Good day.’

  Once he’d left the room, the Ice Queen looked at her companions with a wry smile.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, this is the first time in my life that I have been kept in after school.’

  Ted always said that a difficult case was like playing dominoes. Once the first tile fell, others quickly followed. Between the four of them, they had a lot of experience to bring to the table and they were making the best use of it.

  It was the first time that Ted had worked side by side with his Superintendent in the planning of a big operation and he was impressed. He also suspected she was enjoying herself. It was a far call from her usual largely administrative role.

  Ted had phoned through to Steve to get him to find out what he could about the house and its interior and he had come up trumps in short order. The house was in a road of semi-detached properties. Their target was a right hand one. He’d found a similar one in the road for sale and sent the link through so they could look at it from the inside and out while he was tracking down detailed architectural plans to work from.

  ‘They may not all be identical, of course, but this confirms what I was most worried about. To get to that front roo
m, my team have got to go upstairs then double back along the landing. It looks like there’s no room to swing a cat, so protective covering is going to be difficult.’

  Porter had voiced the first thing that Ted and the Ice Queen thought, looking at the pictures.

  ‘With luck, you’ll have the element of surprise,’ Ted reminded him. ‘We definitely need to know more about the occupants, and most importantly, if Bacha is there or not. We don’t want to go storming in on a perfectly innocent family.’

  Smith’s team had been tasked with finding that information. He read from the messages he’d received.

  ‘The father works in the accounts department of a firm in town, usually Monday to Friday. The wife doesn’t work. There are three daughters, sixteen, fourteen and eleven, all living at home. Let’s hope they’re like my kids and don’t stir early at the weekend. At least if they’re tucked up in their rooms, we may be able to keep them safe, even if we do scare them a bit.’

  ‘If it’s a three-bedroomed house and Bacha is there, does that mean all three girls are squashed into one bedroom? I’d be happier if we knew for sure the likely location of the occupants.’

  ‘That’s the logical conclusion, ma’am, unless perhaps one of them is sleeping downstairs while Bacha has their bedroom,’ Smith suggested. ‘I’d be happier, too, if we knew more. And if we had more time to prepare.’

  Even Ted’s stickler of a boss let the implied criticism of the Chief Super pass without comment. She was probably feeling as frustrated as they all were, with the pressure they were under. She surprised them all further by paying for the Chinese takeaway they sent out for as the evening wore on, which they ate companionably, still working away at the table.

  It was her idea, too, of a possible way to get more information, and a feeling for whether or not Bacha was at the house. With her suggestion, and Ted’s input, they arranged for DC Megan Jennings to visit the road the following day, with a set of suitably impressive papers, to do some door-to-door canvassing, supposedly a poll about traffic calming measures. Ted would be nearby at all times in case of problems.

  They were enjoying their food when Rob O’Connell phoned Ted’s mobile with just the breakthrough they were needing.

  ‘Boss, sorry to disturb you, but we’re finally getting somewhere with CCTV. We’ve got a silver Vauxhall Astra tailing the blue Peugeot closely on the M56, then heading for the M60. Going in the direction of Stretford. Same thing again, cloned plates.’

  ‘I’ll give that to my team and get them to start looking for it,’ Smith said when Ted relayed the information.

  ‘Observe, but not approach, at this stage, I would say, Neil. If the Chief Super does want this to go ahead on Sunday, we don’t want to do anything to spook Bacha into running, if he’s there.’

  ‘We could maybe get it clamped? Wouldn’t look too suspicious and at least it would stop him driving off in it before we can collar him.’

  It was nearly eleven o’clock before Ted got home. Trev was watching a news channel, buried under cats, looking extremely pleased with himself. Ted planted a kiss on his cheek as he sat down next to him.

  ‘How did the teaching go?’

  ‘Fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I should have done it ages ago. I’m going to do a lot more of it. Have you eaten? Do you want me to make you something?’

  Ted shook his head, then kissed him again.

  ‘I’m very proud of you, you know that? It’s a really good thing you’re doing. And I have eaten, thanks. We had a late-running briefing and the Ice Queen bought us all a Chinese.’

  ‘How tired are you, on a scale of one to ten? Because I’m feeling wide awake and pinging like Tigger, after having so much fun, so I have plans for you.’

  Ted smiled as he rose to his feet, pulling his partner up by the arm.

  ‘Suddenly not tired at all. Tell me about these plans.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trev was still spark out, dead to the world, when Ted got up early for work the next day. Ted had expected objections when he’d told him he had to work most of the weekend. Instead, to his surprise, Trev told him he was taking Bizzie Nelson shopping.

  ‘She’s going on a hot date. With my cardiac consultant, Douglas Campbell, can you believe it? They’ve known each other forever. They just drifted apart at Cambridge when she had that disastrous affair. He married someone else but is now a widower so thought he’d try again. And she’s been off the dating scene for so long, she asked me for help in what to wear.’

  Ted smiled to himself at the thought as he drove towards the station. He was pleased his partner would be having fun. Trev adored shopping. Ted only went under sufferance. He was also glad there was the prospect of someone nice for Bizzie, if only for the occasional meal out. He knew she had been especially lonely since her elderly dog had died.

  Working this weekend meant he would need a solid excuse to bail out next Saturday and he wanted more than anything to escape the ordeal of singing in public. In case it proved impossible, he put We’ve Got Tonight on as he drove to the station and sang along with it to practise.

  It didn’t sound too dreadful within the confines of his Renault but just thinking about doing it in public made him squirm. He played it a couple of times, then, as he parked his car and finished the last note, he let his head fall forward on to his steering wheel and groaned aloud. The things he did to keep his partner happy.

  There was a tap on his side window and Megan’s voice asked him anxiously, ‘Are you all right, boss?’

  Guiltily, Ted sat up straight and smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way, undoing his seatbelt and getting out of the car.

  ‘Yes, fine, thanks, Megan. I was just summoning my thoughts. I’ll nip in to the office to check if there’s anything new, before we go. Perhaps you could get my car, and I’ll be out again in a minute. Don’t forget your vest.’

  Ted had insisted she wear a stab vest, hidden under a bulky outer coat, in case she came face to face with Dorian Bacha. He wished he knew more about the likelihood of firearms at the house. But risk assessments had been prepared and would be signed off by both Marston and the ACC (Crime) one today’s intelligence had been gathered. It was scant consolation to Ted to know that if something happened to one of his officers, the blame would not rest solely with him.

  He got Megan to park the black Ford well back from the target house, but where he would be close enough to keep an eye on her as she went from door to door. He’d clocked a surveillance car with two officers in plain clothes sitting inside it. He also knew that there was a team in the house directly opposite, a camera trained on the target property, hoping for any sightings of Bacha.

  Ted and Megan had decided between them that she would do the houses on the same side of the road as the target, then report back to the car and see if it was worth continuing. The team in the surveillance house had already got quite a bit of information on the family from the owner of the property they were in. They described her as an older woman with time on her hands, who loved standing in the downstairs bay window, watching the comings and goings of her neighbours. They weren’t surprised to hear that she was an active and enthusiastic member of the local Neighbourhood Watch. She wasn’t aware of a visiting relative or any young male at the house, although she did confirm that it was unusual for the curtains in the small upstairs room to remain closed all the time.

  Megan was perfect for the role she was in. She had an open, honest face which inspired confidence. Jezza had once rather unkindly referred to her as ‘mumsy’, but in a way it was true. She was so convincing as a concerned young mother wanting something done to make the road safer for children that she was constantly having to turn down invitations to ‘come in and have a cuppa’.

  She got to the target house and rang the bell. She had to ring it a second time before the door was opened, but only as far as the safety chain would allow. A teenage girl, long, dark hair loose around her face, peered suspiciously through the crack as Mega
n showed her clipboard with the petition on it, and her specially prepared photo ID.

  ‘Hello, sorry to bother you. Is your mum or dad in?’

  ‘They’re busy at the moment,’ the girl told her.

  ‘It won’t take long. I’m just talking to parents of children about road safety issues in the area. Could one of them spare me five minutes, perhaps?’

  A woman’s voice called out from the back of the house in a language Megan didn’t recognise. The girl replied with a rapid stream of incomprehensible words then turned back to the door.

  ‘Not today, thank you,’ she said politely enough, before shutting the door firmly in Megan’s face.

  Megan carried on to do the rest of the houses on the same side, to avoid looking suspicious, and in the hopes of picking up more information. Then she walked on round the corner at the end of the road and waited for the boss to drive round to pick her up.

  ‘Very cagey response at the target house, boss. I don’t know if you could see from where you were parked? A teenage girl, one of the older daughters I would think, although it’s impossible to tell age these days, opened the door, but only as far as the chain. There was an exchange, in Arabic, I imagine, I didn’t know the language, but that was as far as I got.

  ‘The neighbours know them but don’t know a lot about them. They say they’re a quiet, close family who keep to themselves. No one knew anything about a visitor. It’s still not a lot to go on, is it, boss?’

  ‘And there’s no sign of a silver Astra in this road, or a dark blue Peugeot.’

  ‘I did think of something else, although I’m sure you’re ahead of me there. If Bacha is a regular drug user and has been holed up there for a couple of weeks without his regular supplies, he’s going to be even more dangerous, isn’t he?’

  ‘Good point, Megan. Can you include that in your report? Get it written up and mailed to me as soon as we get back, please. Are you on a day off tomorrow? Got anything planned?’

  ‘Felix wants to go on a picnic, boss. He’s obsessed with them. Maurice has the twins, so we thought we’d make an afternoon of it and take them and Tommy too. They usually get along well together, although, of course, Tom can be unpredictable. What about you? Any chance of a break for you before tomorrow?’