by Alan Carter
It’s Saturday morning and I’m in the DC’s office, having spent a night in the cells at Nelson. Steve and Gary have been released and they’re waiting for me at a cafe down the road. The Russians aren’t pressing charges because they think it’s a great dinner-time story. They’ve already posted on Facebook to that effect, along with a pic of them and the Armed Offenders Squad, and attracted over two hundred likes in the first hour. The DC and the security agencies are relieved. While it would be easy to scapegoat me, as I was behind the devilish plot, I couldn’t have done it without the information supplied by them.
‘You weren’t really going to do that thing with the eel were you?’
‘It was just meant to scare them.’
‘Yeah, that worked well. And you still don’t know who shot the dog.’
I have my suspicions and I’ll pursue them later. ‘Sorry for the trouble this will have caused, sir.’
He shrugs. ‘I think we’ll be taking a hands-off approach with the information flow from here on in.’
Fair enough. Change the subject. ‘Have you seen anything of Vanessa?’
‘I dropped in first thing this morning. I didn’t mention your little misadventure. She’s got enough to worry about.’ He uncaps a bottle of water and takes a swig; it’s his new regime he tells me, less coffee. ‘Did you have your big talk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Went well?’
‘Not as such. But we understand each other.’
He reaches for the bottle again. ‘Fight for her, Nick. Don’t throw it away. Too many cop marriages fail and it’s too easy to blame the job. Give up, and it’s another victory to the scumbags.’
I tell him I’m not ready to give it away yet, and I surprise myself because I mean it.
Latifa comes over to pick us up. We drop Steve and Gary off at the valley. They look like they need a good sleep. I tell them we’ve got a few things to sort out later this afternoon and they perk up. Then it’s back down the valley road, Latifa-style.
‘What the heck are you playing at, Sarge?’ She’s been talking to her Nelson colleagues who attended last night and she’s angry. ‘Russians.’ She taps her temple. ‘Porangi.’
I’ll look it up later but I’m guessing it means crazy. I grab the cissy-handle as she takes a tight turn at seventy. I’m not the only one who’s porangi around here. ‘Ease up.’
‘Why don’t you trust me? I’m not a kid.’
‘What?’
‘If there’s people out to get you, ask for my help. You’ll get it.’
‘Okay. Sorry.’
‘I could have helped ladle the blood.’ She bursts into a laugh. ‘Eels. Jesus.’
I decide there and then to let the guys have their sleep this afternoon. Latifa and I can deal with outstanding matters. ‘Any other business overnight, or this morning?’
‘Jessie James called wanting to know what the ruckus was up your way, last night.’
‘What’d you say?’
‘No comment.’ She drops down to sixty for the next hairpin. ‘And Paddy Smith on the phone, whingeing and wanting his licence.’
‘Think we should give him one?’
‘He is a citizen, I suppose.’ She swerves to avoid the same lamb I encountered yesterday. ‘Careful, baby, or you’ll be on the dinner table sooner than you think. Go back home to mama. Maybe Paddy’ll shoot himself. Do us all a favour.’
‘Unchristian of you.’
‘What he does is unchristian.’
‘You said something yesterday about people expecting me to take sides. Anything specific, or just a generic warning about dealing with the likes of Paddy?’
We slow briefly at the Canvastown junction with SH6 before she turns right and guns it for Havelock. ‘You should sit down and have a talk with Uncle Walter someday.’
No time soon, I fear. Life’s too short to be glowered at.
We take two police vehicles and we do it in broad daylight.
Latifa hauls the shotgun out of the steel cabinet in the boot. Being a rural cop where guns proliferate, she’s allowed to keep one near for occasions just like this.
‘I hope you’ve got this right, Sarge.’
‘Yep, me too.’
I’m pretty confident, and a rental firm background check plus a glance at their social media pages tells me all I need to know. Precious few hunters these days don’t post their successes on Facebook. But these guys? Not a peep. They’re either remarkably modest, or it’s not animals that they hunt.
We’ve left the cars blocking the only track in and out, and walked the last fifty metres, hugging the shade. I have my pistol at the ready and Latifa wields the pump action. It’s a beautiful day, bright and cool and just a soft wind. There’s only one vehicle parked here, it’s still early in the season. Birds twitter and we can hear the river beyond the trees.
As we approach the van, there’s a scrape from inside and a figure rushes through the doorway. Latifa is immediately in hot pursuit. I’m about to shout a warning to her when a second figure emerges, sleepy, tousled. He feels my gun in his neck and lifts his hands.
‘Oh, fuck this,’ says Latifa, halfway across the paddock and puffing under the burden of her shottie. She stands her ground. ‘Police! Stop or I will shoot you!’
The other figure slows to a halt. Turns.
‘Hands behind your head, kneel on the ground.’
No movement.
‘Now!’ Latifa advances, gun levelled.
The hands go up but one seems to be reaching back over the shoulder, fingers curled.
Latifa takes another step forward. Even from this distance I can see her grip tightening around the trigger. ‘Last chance.’
There’s a burst of guttural sounds from my prisoner and Latifa’s quarry does as he’s told.
They are brothers, Joachim and Tobias Otto from Aachen, according to their papers. Cleanskins. No flags on their records and their weapons and hunting permits are all in order. Joachim is the one who spoke to me outside my home and waved his coffee cup at me when parked outside the backpackers hostel across the road from the station. The mountain bikes are propped against a nearby tree. Dusty, no doubt, from the track through the pine forest across the way from my home. Under the bench seat in their Jucy rental van are two hunting rifles with laser sights and night-vision and dum-dum bullets that explode on impact. Latifa is kneeling on the back of Tobias, cuffing him, having taken the hunting knife from the scabbard he had down the back of his shirt. Meanwhile I cuff Joachim.
‘What is this about? You are mistaken.’
Not this time.
On Joachim’s iPad is an email from Marty Stringfellow asking for an update. I give him one:
They’re shite, Marty – amateurs, just like you. I don’t know where you found twats like these – all gadgets and no bottle. You might know where I live but that works both ways. Take the spoils and move on – or I’ll come looking for you.
And I send him a photo of the boys trussed up like turkeys, with Latifa and me standing giving the thumbs up, like a pig hunter on a magazine cover. We drive to Nelson and hand the lads over to DC Ford for processing and prison or deportation. The Jucy rep will come and collect the van tomorrow. Steve and Gary are a bit disappointed to have missed out but I tell them it had to be official this time.
We crack open the Speight’s and cook up some patties for dinner. Latifa joins us but sticks with L&P.
‘To Sonny Boy.’ Gary raises his bottle. ‘Mission accomplished.’
16
Sunderland, England. Three years earlier.
Sammy pours me a whisky from the other side of his new kitchen table. It’s expensive Norwegian wood, specially carved by some ancient revered craftsman up a fjord somewhere. He raises his tot and we clink glasses. ‘Ha’way the lads.’
‘Ha’way the lads.’ I down mine in one. It burns my throat and stings my eyes.
‘Steady on, marra. It’s vintage stuff, made even before Sunderland won the FA Cup and that’s
a fucken long time ago.’
‘Quality’s wasted on me, Sammy. I’m a philistine, no class. Give me a Stella any day.’
He swirls the amber fluid around in his glass. ‘You’re a good lad, Nicky. Solid. That’s important to me.’
I have just lined up a man to be murdered by Sammy. Well, actually by Marty, on Sammy’s orders, but I’m the one facilitating it.
That’s the term my bosses use: facilitating.
They’re just hurting each other, Nick, they say. Not civilians. Why should we care?
Until now I’ve facilitated some nasty bashings and woundings. We even facilitated putting that poor incinerated Middlesborough lad in Sammy’s line of sight a few months ago. But I never envisaged directly facilitating a murder.
Still, it’s the key to putting Sammy away, because I’ve recorded him asking me to do it and making all the arrangements in detail. The kind of detail a jury will love and his defence team will hate. Marty is inside now on remand. He allowed himself to get caught doing something silly so he could be near the target. This is a job that Sammy will trust only Marty to do.
I’ve arranged for Marty and the prospective victim to be on the same wing. The victim isn’t even that bad a lad, not ambitious or hard, just stupid. So stupid he’s serving six months for nutting a copper when he could be back out there muscling in on the outer fringes of Sammy’s turf. Really, he’s no significant threat but these days Sammy is lashing out in all directions. We’ve staged a few disasters and his empire is crumbling. A fortnight ago we closed down his proxy sex-trafficking operation after somebody finally snitched on his Polish mate in Manchester. We’re hoping he’ll snitch further up the chain and give us Sammy. We sent Immigration in to raid the house in Hendon and free the trafficked girls and women. There was one missing: Marty’s Moldovan favourite. God knows what happened to her. Meanwhile the tax office has auditors combing through Sammy’s businesses – determined grudge-bearing grey men and women who don’t know when to stop, and lack the manners and good graces that Sammy has become used to.
‘Some twat even burnt down that new holiday home in the Lakes I bought for our lass. Keep her sweet, like.’
‘Bastards.’ I shake my head.
Sammy feels the world closing in, a loss of control. Have you ever seen the bag jerk when you chuck it in the river and the cat inside realises what’s going on? Frantic, man. Vicious. That’s Sammy Pritchard.
‘Tough times, Sammy but you’ll pull through. You’ll show them.’
‘Fucken hope so. Can I ask you a question, Nicky?’ He refills my glass. Ardbeg. Supposed to be good stuff.
‘Fire away.’
‘D’you reckon Marty’s doing this?’
‘Doing what, Sammy?’
‘Trying to bring me down.’
‘Marty?’ A thoughtful sip. ‘I can’t deny I think he’s an arsehole but I can’t see him having the bottle or the brains.’
‘Don’t underestimate him, Nicky. He might be a twat but he’s a tricky one.’
‘Loyal though, eh? Surely?’
‘That’s what Julius Caesar thought about Brutus, Othello thought about Iago.’
‘You went through to upper sixth with Miss Brown as well, then?’
‘Smartarse. So I shouldn’t have Marty topped?’
‘Your call, mate. Two birds, one stone. Let him do that job for you inside and then see him on his way. I can understand the temptation.’
A laugh. ‘You should be in fucken politics.’
I’ve arranged for a notoriously bent screw who is in Sammy’s pay to be on shift. All of it has been done in such a way as to keep me at arm’s-length and squeaky clean so as not to taint my testimony in court. It’s a fine balancing act and you have to choose your words carefully for the tape. I’m not aiding and abetting, not offering to help, I’m even sounding cagey; it’s all a nod and a wink which won’t get picked up on the audio tape. To really nail it, Marty needs to succeed, to think he’s got away with it, and be allowed out on bail to celebrate with Sammy and for that also to be recorded. A man needs to die on my watch and this has been approved at a very high and very secret level.
‘I’m worried about you, Sammy. You’re losing weight, not that you didn’t need to, you fat cunt. But you know what I mean.’ I dip a cracker into some of his fancy pâté. ‘Four blokes hospitalised in the last few weeks, lads you used to have around on film night. Everybody’s scared shitless, mate. Treadin’ on eggshells.’
A narrowing of the eyes. ‘What’s your point, Nicky?’
‘Where does it stop, and when?’ Another bite of the cracker. ‘Perpetual war. Can’t be good for business.’
He shrugs. ‘I’m well set up. Money isn’t the issue any more. Did I ever tell you my dad worked at Wearmouth Colliery? Forty years. He was on the picket lines at the end there in eighty-four. Marched back with the lads after twelve months of living on fuck all and gettin’ smacked every week by the cops. Best year of his life he reckoned. Two years later he’d taken his redundancy and drank himself to death.’
Pride. That’s what drives Sammy.
Of course the defence lawyers are going to want to know who I am and what my role has been. They’ll be looking for evidence of entrapment. And they’ll want to know how and why it was allowed to go so far when I had recorded evidence of evil intent. It wasn’t meant to happen, we’ll say. Our operative – that’s me – was going to tip us off. Then the masterstroke. Unfortunately I will be attacked by persons unknown, possibly connected with Pritchard, and hospitalised before, during, and after the tragic occurrence in Durham Prison. I will never have got the chance to pass it on to the relevant authorities. Tragic, but there you go. Some of the lads from Northumbria’s finest will give me a beating at a time of our choosing and, hey presto! I’m not really looking forward to the ‘hey presto’ bit, but I’m a consummate professional and ambitious as hell. It’s not the worst crackpot scheme I’ve come across, but it’s up there. The thing is, it’s the only plan we’ve got because, try as we might, we just can’t land a decent blow on Sammy Pritchard. It’s like he’s untouchable.
Sammy refills my glass. ‘Happy days.’
‘Aye, Sammy. Happy days.’
17
A fortnight has gone by since we dispatched the German boys. No telecommunications traffic from Marty. No notice of a diplomatic incident from the Russians. No noises in the night. Steve and Gary have a block of work lined up on a salmon farm out on the Sounds. We’ve given Paddy Smith his gun licence. The lab has confirmed that the bolt that killed Charlie Evans’ alpaca was fired from Denzel’s crossbow. And Dickie McCormack keeps on cutting down trees. The weather is more settled the further we get into spring. Everybody is expecting a hot, dry summer because of El Niño – which means little to me but I’ll take their word for it. We operate on tank rainwater so I’ve shortened my showers and flush the toilet less. I say we, but it’s still me. Vanessa and Paulie haven’t left the safe house at police HQ even though all signs point to Sammy and Marty backing off.
‘We’ve got two more weeks and then some bigwig is coming in from China and needs extra protection. According to David.’ David is DC Ford. Vanessa and he are on first-name terms now. And why not, she sees him a lot more than she sees me. She’s granted me a phone call today. I’ve had a chat with Paulie who wonders when I’m coming back from my trip away, but is keen to return to Spongebob so he’s put his mum back on. ‘You sound a lot more positive, these days, Nick. That’s good.’
Maybe I should roll over and you can tickle my tummy. Behave, Nick, you’re committed to saving your marriage. ‘Yeah, I’m feeling it. I think the boil has been lanced.’
‘Euuwww,’ says Vanessa with a laugh in her voice.
‘And I think it helps having the guys around. Steve and Gary, they’re good people.’
A pause. Have I overdone it? Laid it on too thick? ‘Good, love. That’s great,’ she says.
‘So when do you reckon you’ll be back home?’ I t
ry to keep the plea out of my voice.
‘Like I said, David says we have this place for two more weeks.’ I can hear Paulie in the background, chuckling at the TV. He’s an adapter, that boy, more resilient than I give him credit for. ‘It’s been useful, the time apart. I’ve been able to do a lot of thinking.’
‘And?’
‘I haven’t finished thinking yet.’
I put the phone down on Vanessa and find Uncle Walter standing in front of my desk. ‘If this is about the crossbow charge, Denzel will just have to work it through with the juvenile justice team.’
He shakes his head briefly. ‘The girl said you wanted to talk?’
Latifa puts her head around the partition. ‘Eh! That’s Constable Rapata to you, old man.’
I don’t remember wanting to talk to him. ‘Remind me?’ I say to Latifa.
‘Taking sides in the community.’ She looks at me expectantly. ‘I recommended you talk to Uncle Walter. Remember?’
I do now but I don’t recall any intention of actually following it up.
‘You can buy me a cup of tea down the road,’ he says, turning towards the door. ‘And a date scone.’
We find a table by the bakery window and look out on to the main drag in Havelock. There’s nothing much going on but we’re both looking at it and not saying anything. The tea and scones arrive. Uncle Walter digs in and so do I.
‘So what is it you want to tell me?’
He wipes some crumbs from his chin. ‘What is it you want to know?’
This could take a while. ‘Damned if I know. Latifa reckons I can learn from you.’
‘Learn what?’
I recall my conversation with Patrick Smith. ‘Why is Denzel so angry? Why are you so angry?’
He looks at his watch. ‘Got a while?’
‘No, I’ve got about another twenty minutes.’
Walter sips his tea. ‘Denzel used to be a good boy.’
‘What went wrong?’
The old man sizes me up. Wonders, perhaps, if I’m worth the bother.