Behind Closed Doors

by Michael Donovan

  He closed the file and looked up.

  ‘Is that it?’ he said. ‘You were going to bust us with this?’

  ‘It’s more than enough,’ I said.

  McAllister turned to Ray Child.

  ‘Any trouble?’

  Child sneered.

  ‘None. Snoopy’s partner stayed home. His lucky day.’

  McAllister stood up.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘No mess at their place. Better that way.’

  He gestured to me with the gun. The wavy stuff again. Up and down. Very casual. Like he was inviting the dog out for a piss before bed.

  ‘Second time lucky,’ he said. ‘I think we can finalise things this time.’ He looked at me. His eyebrows floated like cumulus clouds under his golden locks. ‘Unless you’ve any other little ruses to slow things down.’

  I was out of ruses.

  ‘Good,’ McAllister said. ‘So let’s take a walk. And one funny move and I’ll pop you. You understand, Flynn?’

  I understood. McAllister tilted his head towards the door.

  ‘Go out, Ray,’ he said. ‘Cover us.’

  Child looked at me. ‘You’re going to dig this time, Flynn,’ he said. ‘Exercise is good for you.’ He laughed and headed through the door.

  Everyone’s a comedian when they’ve got a gun.

  CHAPTER forty

  Child went out first. McAllister followed behind me, out of reach and out of Child’s line of fire in case I did something stupid.

  I didn’t think of anything stupid to do.

  Once we were all outside Child pointed his flashlight at the ground and walked ahead of us to the gate. McAllister stayed two yards behind me, lighting our footsteps with his torch. Off we went. Back to the woods.

  Heigh ho.

  We didn’t make it.

  I’d got ten paces clear of the cottage when McAllister yelled fit to scare your granny’s pants off. His flashlight dropped. I turned and saw him going down sideways as a silhouette pulled the shotgun out of his hands then stepped sideways out of the doorway’s light. The gun snapped up, pointing at me. I hit the deck. Child turned by the gate but all he could see were shadows. A voice yelled at him to drop his weapon.

  Child’s answer was to loose off two shots like bombs going off. Shot fizzed over my head and smacked into the side of the cottage. The parlour window exploded. Child pumped the weapon to refill the chambers but he never pulled the triggers. The shadow rose from its crouch by the door and two booms shattered the night so close to my head that they nearly took my hair off. Child went backwards and down. By the doorway McAllister was rising up, ready to come back into the game, but whatever had hit him had hit hard. He moved too slowly. As he lurched in the Mossberg was lifted clear and its stock came down on the back of his neck with a force that nearly put him through the ground. He lay there face down, groaning. Out by the gate Child was face up and quiet.

  I stood up, feeling to see which side my hair had parted. My ears were ringing like the bells at a vicarage orgy.

  ‘Am I late for the show?’

  Shaughnessy’s voice was faint through the cacophony.

  He walked past me to Child.

  ‘Late?’ I said. ‘You nearly missed the finale.’

  McAllister was trying to get up but his heart wasn’t in it. I walked across and put my foot on his back. Pressed hard. It was unlikely that he had another weapon but there was no point taking chances.

  Shaughnessy retrieved Child’s flashlight and checked the body. Came back. The way he ignored Child’s gun saved me a question.

  ‘Looks like your pals were about to cut up rough,’ Shaughnessy said.

  ‘They told me we were just going for a walk,’ I explained.

  Shaughnessy smirked.

  ‘They have a spot,’ I said. ‘Up in the woods.’

  McAllister was still squirming under my foot and I was still pressing. My leg was beginning to cramp but I’m tough. The pressure held.

  ‘Watch his jacket,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘Linen’s hell when you crease it.’

  I lifted my foot and stooped to take an arm. Shaughnessy stayed clear so that McAllister couldn’t make a grab at him, but McAllister was not in a grabbing state. He managed some words but he let me haul him back into the cottage without resistance. Shaughnessy tossed me a pair of cuffs. Plastic. Strong as steel. The cuffs help occasionally with citizen’s arrests. Our arrest technique was that I kicked his ankles out and Shaughnessy pressed on his head and he went down on his arse by the wall. I got his wrists in the cuffs and looped them around a central heating pipe. The pipe wouldn’t stop a determined man, but I rooted around and cut the cable off a vacuum cleaner. Used it to bind his arms and ankles. Then I rooted again and snipped the TV cable, added more loops. Electric cabling has many uses. By the time I’d finished McAllister wasn’t going anywhere, with or without the central heating.

  Once he was trussed up I relieved him of my mobile phone whilst Shaughnessy dialled 999 and informed the operator we had a shooting incident. He had our location ready when the operator asked. The advantage of not riding in a car boot.

  I satisfied myself that McAllister was trussed and weaponless. He’d kept quiet for a bit but as I finished he looked up.

  ‘I’m going to kill you, Flynn,’ he snarled.

  I guess he’d forgotten that that was what he was trying to do in the first place. I considered pointing it out. Decided against it. By the time McAllister was free to do any revenge killing he’d have to chase me with his Zimmer frame. I’d have a Zimmer too, but mine would have racing treads.

  ‘McAllister,’ I said, ‘do you know the first thing they’re going to do to you in jail?’

  He looked at me.

  ‘They’re going to cut your hair,’ I said.

  Petty, but it felt good.

  We took a look around the cottage.

  An upstairs bedroom had a metal bed with a sleeping bag on top. The floor was littered with food wrappers. A chamberpot was pushed into the corner. Alongside the sleeping bag was a metal chain and two large padlocks. The chain would have been secured to the iron bedstead. The other end was probably around Rebecca’s neck. Five or six plastic fasteners were scattered on the mattress. Ties for Rebecca’s hands when they left her. We looked in the second bedroom. Empty. Nothing to show that Tina Brown had been babysitting, which tied in with what I now knew - Rebecca had been on her own. Child probably called once a day to feed and water her.

  ‘How many have they had here?’ Shaughnessy asked.

  ‘Probably just Rebecca and the Hanlon girl,’ I told him. ‘But McAllister had long-term plans. My guess is he planned to run his scheme a couple of times a year. That’s one to two million a year, tax-free. Not a bad earner.’

  Shaughnessy pursed his lips. ‘All revolving around the fact that the families keep quiet afterwards.’

  ‘Repeat business,’ I said. ‘McAllister thought he could keep it going forever. Why are the smartest criminals always the stupidest?’

  Shaughnessy shrugged. ‘Did he say how they kept the families quiet?’

  ‘It’s what we figured,’ I told him. ‘Heavy threats backed up by photos of hubby misbehaving. Belt and braces. It almost worked.’

  ‘Photos starring our girl Tina Brown.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But she wasn’t in on the scheme. She just thought she was being hired to show business clients a good time. She knew nothing about the blackmail. Or the abduction.’

  We went back downstairs.

  ‘Do we know where Tina is?’

  ‘Let’s take a walk,’ I said.

  I checked McAllister again but the way I’d tied the knots he was going nowhere. I wasn’t thrown out of the Boy Scouts for nothing.

  We took the flashlights and went out through the garden, giving Child’s body a wi
de berth. Crime scene contamination and all that.

  We went back into the woods and I took Shaughnessy up the hill to the place where Child’s spade was sticking out of the ground. I shone the light on the mound of earth beside it.

  ‘Poor woman,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘What did she do to get in their way?’

  ‘She found out,’ I said. ‘She was the thing McAllister is denying – the flaw in his perfect scheme.’

  ‘He’s denying that his scheme’s gone bust?’

  ‘He figures it’s just bad luck,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was. First he had bad luck with Tina Brown then he had bad luck with us.’

  ‘An unlucky kind of guy,’ Shaughnessy said.

  ‘McAllister thought he had the whole thing covered,’ I said. ‘Take the kid, take the money, then shackle the family by blackmailing the husband. A perfect tie-up. McAllister missed just the one flaw. He didn’t keep Tina isolated. He wouldn’t have made that mistake again.’

  ‘The question is how did Tina find out?’ said Shaughnessy.

  ‘I need to talk to Larry Slater,’ I said. ‘The police will get it anyway but I want to hear it from the man himself. Maybe Larry will talk when he realises that he got Tina killed.’

  We gazed down at the grave, barely visible in the torch light.

  The half-dug hole next to it was harder to look at. Shaughnessy didn’t ask and I didn’t say.

  CHAPTER forty-one

  Blue lights strobed through the trees as we walked down. When we came out into the lane two East Sussex patrol cars and two vans were pulling up a hundred yards short of the cottage and an armed response squad was dispersing behind cover.

  One of them yelled at us to identify ourselves. I yelled back that it was all over. The bad guys were out of action. The cops were not the trusting types. They brought me and Shaughnessy forward and patted us down under the muzzles of a dozen semi-automatics. Then they had us wait with our hands on a patrol car roof while four of them moved through the cottage garden and went inside the building. A couple of minutes later they gave the all clear. A guy introduced himself as the squad sergeant and told us to start talking.

  We handed him our IDs. Gave him the gist of what had happened and told him about the body up in the woods. He wasn’t interested in the woods. He was focussed on whether there was going to be any more shooting. I reassured him, asked what McAllister had said for himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ the sergeant said. ‘He’s clammed up.’

  I grinned. ‘The guy’s waiting for his lawyer. Sign of a guilty conscience.’

  They radioed in the details and called for support and once the cops had decided that the scene was safe they relaxed. Two of them stayed in the house with McAllister. They gave me and Shaughnessy the back seat of a car each. I didn’t know if we were arrested or not so I guess that meant we weren’t. It was nearly eleven thirty.

  I pulled out my phone and saw three missed calls. One number. I dialled.

  ‘Bel,’ I said, ‘I got caught up here.’

  ‘Caught up?’ There was an edge to her voice. We hadn’t spoken in nearly forty-eight hours. And our night out was well and truly in the sink. Change of plans was nothing new to Arabel but I should have called before I rushed off to Kent. I apologised and told her that things had blown up fast. She’d see how much they’d blown up when she saw my face and my new wheels.

  ‘Another fun night with the detectives,’ Arabel said. ‘Are you going to make it at all tonight?’

  I looked at the uniforms milling around outside the car.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be tied up for a while.’

  I promised I’d call her tomorrow. We’d set something up. I threw in a sweetener and told Arabel that Rebecca Townsend was safe.

  Arabel’s voice lifted. ‘You got her, Flynn?’

  ‘She’s safe back home,’ I said.

  There was a pause. ‘What about the bad guys?’

  ‘We got the bad guys,’ I said. ‘We’re just tidying things up.’

  The news must have passed muster in Arabel’s valid-excuse almanac because her voice softened. ‘Be careful, babe. I don’t need you to get hurt.’

  I was touched. Wait till she saw the Citroen.

  ‘It’s all over,’ I said. ‘I won’t get hurt.’ I didn’t mention my face.

  I closed the line and cleared my text inbox whilst we waited. The single text there had served its purpose. The one saying that Shaughnessy was planning to call in at the office to check the Slater file. The one that took Ray Child back to London and bought me the reprieve.

  Shaughnessy and I don’t text each other. I’d sent the text to myself from Lucy’s phone.

  Neither were we the types to chase off to a remote farm where someone might be waiting to spring a trap. We always have backup. It’s usually on scene, but tonight things had happened too fast and I took a risk I shouldn’t have. I’d had a tug on the line that couldn’t be ignored. I’d briefed Shaughnessy on where I was going and he agreed to wait for my call. If he didn’t get it by eight p.m. he’d come to the farm. If there was nothing at the farm he’d go back and wait at the office until one of the bad guys showed up there.

  The clever scheme didn’t paper over the fact that I’d misjudged things. I’d expected trouble at the farm but I didn’t expect to walk right into McAllister’s gunsights. And if something went wrong I expected the action to stay at the farm, where Shaughnessy would gatecrash when I didn’t call back. The phoney text ruse to send one of the bad guys chasing back to the office if I ended up in trouble looked more desperate the longer I sat in the patrol car. What if McAllister had decided to do the dirty deed first before checking out Eagle Eye’s offices? I’d caught a break I didn’t deserve when he decided he needed me alive in case of complications.

  More headlights approached and suddenly the lane was crowded. Two plainclothes men appeared and were shown around the garden. They spent a while there and then came over to the cars. Asked us to step out. The man in charge introduced himself as DCS Skinner of the East Sussex police. His buddy was DS Parch. He asked to see our IDs again. Skinner was a stocky guy in his mid-fifties with a taut face halfway to fat. I recognised a lifestyle thing. His eyes were smart, though. He listened to a rerun of our story and then the two of them went back to take a look at the house. McAllister’s conversational skills must not have improved because they were back out in ten minutes. Skinner was trying to figure which way to play this. We were going to be taken in. Private detectives don’t go around shooting people no matter how the heat turns up. Skinner had a mess that only a good deal of paperwork could salve. He nodded towards the woods.

  ‘Show me,’ he said.

  We picked up a couple of flashlights and set off back into the trees with two SOCOs carrying portable lighting. When we got to the spot Skinner took a gander, careful not to disturb things. It didn’t take him long to recognise the mound of earth for what is was.

  ‘You say this is a woman?’ he said.

  ‘Her name’s Tina Brown. She was mixed up in this but we don’t yet know exactly how. Apparently she became a liability to McAllister. He decided that she needed to be silenced.’

  ‘Don’t yet know?’ Skinner was sharp. ‘Are you two figuring on carrying on with this? Am I interrupting something here?’

  ‘We just want to close a few loose ends.’ I said.

  Skinner looked at his sidekick then moved up to me and his eyes in the lights weren’t friendly.

  ‘Consider the case closed,’ he said. ‘If I believe your little tale you’ve done a nice job of digging out some nasty people. It would have been much nicer, of course, if the nasty people were all still alive. If there are any loose ends we’ll be taking care of them now.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘You’ll get everything we have.’

  ‘Technically,’ he said, ‘I need to arrest you both. You’
ll need to spend the night in our hospitality suite whilst we check out your story and decide how the shooting will be played.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘You going to cuff us?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Skinner said. We walked back down to the cottage.

  Skinner went through the arrest formality and sat us in the back of separate cars whilst he organised things outside. He didn’t say anything more about cuffs. He went into the house and brought out McAllister. Hands cuffed. Must have said something wrong. McAllister was pushed into the back of another patrol car.

  Skinner and his partner stooged around for an hour with the SOCOs. At one point Skinner pulled me and Shaughnessy out separately and had us go through the exact sequence of the shooting. Our descriptions seemed to tie in with his notes.

  Skinner and his buddy finally put us in their backseat and we drove south in convoy with McAllister’s squad car. Twenty minutes later we were in Brighton.

  They took us up to the CID room. Skinner sat us in separate interrogation rooms but offered coffees before we went in. Shaughnessy asked for a glass of water. I asked for black, extra strong, plenty of sugar. McAllister was brought through and taken to another room. I didn’t hear anything about coffee.

  Skinner took my statement and asked me to sign it. Then he told me to sit tight whilst he had another chat with McAllister. Now that McAllister was arrested I guess there was a little more formality behind his refusals to talk. Skinner was in there fifteen minutes getting the no comment line. When he came back he grinned a weary grin.

  ‘The bastard wants his lawyer,’ he said. ‘That’s fine by me. We’ll have him here first thing tomorrow. My real problem is how to play it with you two.’

  ‘Check us out,’ I said. ‘There are people who will vouch for us.’

  I gave him Karl Dewhurst’s name. Karl was a commander in the Metropolitan Police. Skinner raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You were in the Mets?’