In for the Kill (A DI Fenchurch novel Book 4)

by Ed James

  ‘I’m afraid that Mr Pickersgill isn’t here.’ The owner rested on the counter, the glass misting around his fingers. ‘Asked for a few days off. Told me he’s moving flat on Saturday. Needed a few days to sort things out.’

  ‘You believe him?’ Nelson waited for a response, snorting mist out of his nostrils. Just got a shrug. ‘Got an address?’

  ‘Just a second, sir.’ The owner reached down and picked up a ring binder, stuffed full of paperwork, pages hanging out. He flicked through it, the pace betraying his hidden anger at the cops visiting his shop. ‘Sorry, no. I’ve got his old one.’

  Nelson put a business card on the counter. ‘The second he comes through that door, give me a call, yeah?’

  ‘Sure thing.’ The owner slid the card across the desk and stuffed it into his ring binder. No chance that was getting looked at again.

  Fenchurch led out onto the street. ‘Well, Jon, thanks for getting me out here for nothing.’

  ‘Guv, I know how you—’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jon, we’re just running a murder case. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

  ‘Guv, I can’t—’

  ‘It’s fine. I’m messing with you.’

  ‘Right.’ Nelson’s vape stick was already in his mouth. He took a suck then started rattling it. ‘Bloody cartridge is empty.’ He patted himself down and found one in his coat pocket.

  The owner was already on the phone. Fenchurch hadn’t heard it ring, so it was outgoing. Better not be warning his mate Pickersgill . . .

  Something caught his eye. A pink HP laptop sitting in the window. With a Charlie the Seahorse sticker on the lid.

  Fenchurch was through the door before he even thought about it. ‘You!’ He jabbed his finger at the owner, then at the window. ‘I want that laptop, now!’

  ‘I’ll have to call you back.’ The owner frowned at Fenchurch. ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  ‘That HP, the one in the window.’

  ‘It is mine, sir.’

  ‘I need it for evidence.’

  ‘But I only bought it yesterday. For a lot of money.’

  ‘This is a murder case. Get it now!’

  The owner flipped up his counter and sidled over, huffing. He got out a jailer’s key set and unlocked the window display. ‘This one here, sir?’ He treated Fenchurch like any other customer, full of contempt.

  Fenchurch snapped on a pair of evidence gloves. ‘The one with the sticker on it.’

  The owner took it from its mount and rested it on the counter.

  Fenchurch grabbed the laptop and spun it round in his gloved fingers, searching for anything pinning it to Hannah. ‘We’ll need to take this into evidence, sir.’

  ‘I’ll need a receipt.’

  ‘Jon?’

  Nelson groaned as he got out his notebook and started scribbling. He held a page up for the owner.

  ‘You’ll get nothing off it.’ The owner took the receipt from Nelson. ‘I zeroed it this morning and rebuilt it with Windows 10.’

  Fenchurch glared at him. ‘At least you didn’t take the stickers off.’

  The owner shrugged. ‘Why bother? It’ll leave a mark. Some people think these things are funny. Sometimes that’s why they buy the machine.’

  Fenchurch reached into his jacket pocket for an evidence bag. Looked big enough to fit. ‘Who sold it to you?’

  ‘Just one second.’ The owner huffed as he lifted up a bulky ledger, then flopped it open at a page. His finger traced across a line. ‘His name is Troy Danton.’

  ‘They what?’ Fenchurch drove along the South London roads, following Nelson’s pool car, engine roaring. ‘They let that little shit go?’

  ‘Sorry, guv, but yes.’ Reed sighed down the line. ‘Not enough to hold him.’

  ‘But Danton confessed to dealing!’

  ‘They’re going to formally interview him tomorrow. Sent him home for the night.’

  ‘So much for taking a tough line on drug crimes.’ Fenchurch braked hard and let a Fiesta trundle round the junction. ‘Can you get his address?’

  ‘Guv.’

  Fenchurch scanned around as he set off, tearing through Camberwell, the sort of place where new streets were going up every week, new developments dominating areas still struggling with their history. ‘You got it yet?’

  ‘Neville Court, guv. Twenty-nine.’

  ‘Peckham, right?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Cheers, Kay.’ Fenchurch killed the call. He battered the horn and indicated left.

  Nelson ignored him, staying on the main road.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Fenchurch dialled Jon’s number but it kept ringing. ‘Have to do everything myself.’ He took the first left, then the next right and pulled up in a tight space surrounded by low-rise brick buildings on all sides. Enough to give you claustrophobia. He got out and assessed the area. Never knew when you needed to be prepared.

  Garages filled the ground floor on both sides, propping up three storeys of flats on the right, just one on the left. The lane kept on going, no signs of any turnings up ahead.

  Fenchurch found a set of buzzers in a door. Number twenty-nine. He grabbed his phone and noticed a text from Reed. Flat four. He jabbed the buzzer for three and waited.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Police. Need access.’

  ‘Sure thing.’ The door buzzed and Fenchurch pushed it open. He set off up the stairs, two flats on the first floor, another two above. Stank of cats and mould and piss and skunk. At the top, the door on the left was open a crack. Fenchurch showed his warrant card and it clicked shut. He thudded the door to flat four with the heel of his hand. Caught a blur of movement in the eyeglass. ‘Mr Danton, it’s DI Fenchurch. Need a word.’

  The door slid open. Danton stood in a fug of dope smoke, his navy tracksuit zipped up to his chin. A bright light shone straight at Fenchurch, almost blinding. ‘What’s up?’

  Fenchurch could make out a couple of faces in the gloom behind Danton. Doubtful they were staying there legally. ‘You didn’t happen to sell a laptop to a shop on Tower Bridge Road, did you?’

  Danton shrugged. ‘Might’ve done.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Fenchurch thumbed behind him. ‘Need you to come with me.’

  Danton’s shoulders collapsed, together with his resolve. He pulled the door shut behind him and trudged alongside Fenchurch. ‘You know I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Do I?’ Fenchurch stopped at the top of the stairs. Some of Danton’s fizzing energy from the morning interview had returned, climbing over the cannabis wall. ‘Come on, son.’ He gripped Danton’s arm. ‘Maybe you can work out your story by the time we get there.’

  Danton lashed out with his foot and cracked Fenchurch’s left knee. Bastard thing spasmed. Fenchurch windmilled backwards, bouncing off the wall, then tumbled forward, landing on the carpet tiles. His fingers bore the brunt of the fall, his weight pushing them flat, his chest thumping off the floor. Felt like the tendons in his wrists had snapped.

  Danton’s foot dug into his back. Twice. Again. Then he was off, his footsteps rattling round the stairwell.

  Fenchurch pushed himself up onto all fours and sucked in a deep breath.

  Stupid, stupid bastard.

  Schoolboy error. No matter how little they weigh, it’s always the scrawny ones you’ve got to watch out for.

  His left knee tingled, could barely move it. He grabbed the banister and pulled himself up to standing. Searing pain burnt up from the knee, like it’d been stuck on a hotplate. He put some weight on it and started down the stairs, each step burning with fresh blasts of pain.

  Can’t let that little bastard escape.

  Another step, more pain.

  Shouting that he didn’t kill her.

  Why’s her laptop in the shop, you little bastard?

  Fenchurch had to take a break at the bottom. Tried stretching out his knee, but it wouldn’t move past halfway. He hobbled over to the door, keeping his left leg straight, and jerked it open.

&
nbsp; Danton lay on the ground outside, face down, wriggling and lashing out with his feet, scratching with his fingers. Nelson had a knee in his back, pushing his face into the cobbles. ‘—in evidence. Do you understand?’

  Fenchurch collapsed against the door. ‘Jon . . .’

  Danton twisted round. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Come on.’ Nelson pulled Danton up to his feet. ‘Don’t run off again, guv.’ He scowled at Fenchurch. ‘You okay?’

  Fenchurch hopped over towards them, each step feeling like his leg had fallen off. ‘Little shit got my knee. Sent me flying. Lucky it wasn’t on the bloody steps.’

  ‘Wish I’d seen that.’ Nelson grinned wide, his teeth glinting in the light. ‘I’ve cautioned him.’

  ‘Good to know.’ Fenchurch grabbed Danton by the scruff of his tracksuit. ‘Why did you nick her laptop, you little shit?’

  ‘I never!’ Danton was bracing himself for a punch in the face.

  Fenchurch tried to pick him up but his knee wasn’t having it. So he growled at Danton instead. ‘The truth. Now.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘So why the hell did you sell her laptop to a shop!’

  ‘She . . . Hannah . . . She . . . swapped it . . . I sold her some dope and MDMA.’

  Fenchurch clocked Nelson’s frown. ‘You serious?’

  ‘Yeah, ten Q of resin and thirty ecstasy pills. Good stuff, too.’

  ‘Did you steal the drugs from her room?’

  Danton’s head lowered. ‘I panicked when I found the body. Didn’t want to get caught. So I nicked it back. Most of it. She’d smoked most of the dope. Taken a couple of Es.’

  ‘I’m going to need that as evidence.’

  ‘Ain’t got it no more.’

  ‘Like you didn’t have the laptop, either?’ Fenchurch wanted to smash the lying little shit’s skull off the pavement, crack it into a million fragments. ‘You sold it to Graham Pickersgill, didn’t you?’

  ‘Who?’

  Fenchurch frowned. ‘The guy at the shop? Go Fix Yourself?’

  ‘It was this Sikh bloke, I swear. Big fella, cheeky bastard was smoking in the shop.’

  Fenchurch stepped towards Nelson. ‘Jon, get him down the station. He’s not leaving until we get the truth.’

  As if driving back wasn’t hard enough, the stairs are killing me.

  Fenchurch had to stop on the first floor of Leman Street station. His left kneecap felt like it was hanging off. Max-dose ibuprofen and paracetamol could only do so much. He rubbed it, popping a little back into place with each stroke, gritting his teeth and swallowing hard.

  Then a sharp pulse of pain made him gasp. Never had that before, no matter how many times he’d had the shit kicked out of him or vice versa. Usually just dusted himself off, got some fresh trousers and he was good as new.

  Need to see a doctor.

  Fenchurch hobbled over to the door and pressed against it. The corridor did that horror-film thing where the lens turned itself inside out to make it look twice as long as it actually was.

  Need to get halfway. That’s all.

  He set off, bracing himself against the wall, taking it a step at a time.

  Stupid bastard. Should’ve gone to hospital.

  He was making slow progress. So bloody slow. He put his right foot down first. Then placed the left. Seemed to be okay. His right, then his le—

  ‘Aaaah!’ Another dart of pain in his knee, stabbing his thigh, hip, back.

  Fenchurch leaned against the wall, waves of pain up the whole left side of his body. He pressed his thumbs into the kneecap until something popped. Another throb, then it dulled down to less than half. He touched a finger to it. Nothing. So he pressed down, followed by a wash of quick panting. Something didn’t quite click, but it felt better. He set off, taking it slow, hobbling along, but at least twice as fast as before. He opened the Obs Suite door.

  On screen, Nelson and Bridge were interviewing Troy Danton, getting his confessions about the drugs and the laptop on tape and in the case file, where it couldn’t escape.

  ‘There you bloody are.’ Docherty was sitting in the room’s sole chair, leaning back, feet on the desk.

  ‘Boss.’ Fenchurch hobbled over to the table by the back wall and rested on it. Docherty was blocking out a thin strip of the screen. But Nelson and Bridge didn’t need any management support.

  Docherty pushed himself up to standing and immediately doubled over, coughing like he’d got something stuck in his throat. He rubbed at his mouth and stood up tall. ‘I told you to stop that nonsense, Simon. Bloody hero cop going after the suspect on his own.’ He waved at the screen, teeth bared. ‘Christ, you’re lucky that boy’s a skinny wee clown, otherwise we’d be looking down the barrel of another police brutality case.’

  ‘He assaulted me.’ Fenchurch straightened out his leg. The ache was a dull twang now. ‘Buggered my knee.’

  ‘Least you deserve. This reminds me of when I worked with your bloody father. He was the same. Pair of clowns.’ Another battery of coughs racked through his body.

  Fenchurch didn’t know whether to go over and thump his back. ‘You okay, boss?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Docherty picked up a bottle of water and slugged it in one long drink. ‘Last thing I need, Si. Last bloody thing. I told you Loftus is on my neck about this exact thing, so why the hell did you go in on this kid like Graeme Souness in the first minute of an Old Firm game?’

  Fenchurch folded his arms. ‘I thought Nelson was behind me, boss.’

  ‘Bullshit. You knew he wasn’t. I spoke to him when he came back. He was heading to’ — his cough sounded like it had scraped flesh off his lungs — ‘to the uni. You went off on yet another Rambo crusade on your tod.’

  The truth was the only option here. ‘Boss, I wanted to speak to him, get ahead of—’

  ‘Hero cop.’ Docherty shook his head, panting like a dog stuck in the back of a car. ‘Si, the pressure we’re under on this case. We took it from South London, okay? Loftus said I could’ve passed it to West or Central, but no, we’ve stood up and, boy oh boy, are we being counted here. And all the shite that goes with it.’

  ‘Boss, I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Sorry?’ Docherty glared at him. Looked like his eyes were going to pop out of the sockets. ‘As my Deputy SIO, I need you to be on top of your anger issues. Once and for all. You really want me to hand this case to DI Mulholland?’

  ‘She’s the last person.’

  ‘You keep saying this but I don’t get what it is she’s ever done to make you so angry at her.’

  Fenchurch stared hard at him for a few seconds. Bugger it, time to give him the truth. ‘When we found Chloe, I did some digging into that whole operation. There was this bloke, one of the scumbags who . . . kidnapped kids. His name rang a bell and I couldn’t work out where from. He was a taxi driver, part of that whole pass-the-parcel thing they had going. He didn’t take them off the street himself, but he had these kids in the back of his cab. Anyway, I worked out where I remembered the name from. Eleven years ago, Mulholland was a DC, working the case. Remember?’

  Docherty stifled a cough. ‘Jesus Christ, Si. You can’t blame her.’

  ‘She had a bloody lead, boss. This guy knew who took Chloe. And she let him go without him giving up anything.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I’m not making this up, boss. I mean, yes, I’m being petty. She made a mess on the case involving my daughter. But her screw-up cost us finding Chloe for eleven years.’

  ‘It’s been going on for years, though.’

  ‘I just don’t like her, guv. She’s a smug git.’

  ‘Well. This has to stop.’ Docherty folded his arms, grimacing like he was going to tear the flesh off Fenchurch’s legs. ‘You’ve got to’ — another cough — ‘stop buggering about with’ —COUGH — ‘chases and fights and—’

  Docherty collapsed, sending the chair spinning round, and toppled to the floor.

  Chapter Ten


  Boss?’ Fenchurch lurched across the Obs Suite and grabbed the chair by the arms. Stopped it spinning.

  Docherty lay slumped beneath it, tongue hanging out, eyes shut.

  Fenchurch stuck an ear to Docherty’s chest and held it there. Thought he could hear a faint heartbeat. Maybe it was his own.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Fenchurch reached into his pocket and dialled Control on his mobile. Answered immediately. ‘This is DI Fenchurch.’ Pressed a finger against Docherty’s neck. Still a pulse. ‘Someone’s collapsed in Leman Street police station.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s an incident in central London and—’

  ‘Then I’m taking him to the Royal London. Have a doctor meet me at the entrance!’

  ‘Of course. I’ll stay on the line.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Fenchurch pocketed his phone, then reached down to grab Docherty’s body. A fifty-year-old sack of bones, as light as Chloe had been when she disappeared. He put him over his shoulder and staggered towards the door, every step sending jabs of pain through his knee, right up his body.

  No choice but to be a hero cop.

  Fenchurch pulled past a hissing bus and tore on down Whitechapel Road, the row of shops with their Arabic squiggles, then old East London with its betting shops and hipster bars. The Royal London hospital’s old facade hid behind a row of shops.

  Need to take that turning.

  Fenchurch waited for a break in the traffic, a steady throng of taxis heading into the centre. Behind, the Gherkin glowed in the sky, flanked by new towers.

  Docherty lay on the back seat, his chest barely moving. Fenchurch reached round and shook him. Got a slight grunt in return.

  Fenchurch spotted a gap and hit the accelerator, pulling across a pair of motorbikes into the side street.

  A dead end, no sign of the bloody hospital. Siren stabbed his ears. A small road led through a tunnel in a sixties building. A red sign. EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT.

  Fenchurch picked up his phone from the passenger seat. ‘Nearly there. Two seconds.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The Royal London hospital’s new section rose out of the ground next to him, the blue and green windows glowing in the night sky. A row of cars blocked the entrance. Fenchurch got out into the biting cold. ‘I’m here now.’