Death and Deception

by B. A. Steadman

  He knew he had to make sure there was no one else there. Shock was protecting him now, but it would wear off. He placed Gould’s head back onto the rolled up jacket, and wiped a small trickle of blood and fluid from his chin. Rising to a crouch, he checked the other smaller rooms and found they were empty.

  Lastly, he went to the Post-production video room and was not surprised to find that it was also completely empty. No DVDs, no CDs, no recording machines, nothing but empty shelves, a table and a chair. Abrams had emptied it already, or there had never been anything there in the first place.

  Dan sank back down next to Gould and held his hand while they waited. He could hear the rasp of his breath and the rattle of fluid in his lungs as he struggled for air.

  It slowly seeped through his dulled senses. Chas had set them up. He had been a total, gullible idiot. She had probably rung Abrams when she went to the Ladies. Why had he not seen that coming? Jesus, had he been that easy to deceive?

  But then, in the middle of the shooting, she had tried to save his life, and had quite possibly given her own whilst she did it. Hard to make any sense of that. She must have thought the shooter had shot him rather than Ian. He stared around him at the bodies on the floor. Two of the foreigners were not here, just the big guy. Where were they? Was this a warning to keep out? Had the gunman thought that Ian was armed? His torch could have looked like a gun, he supposed. So many questions banged against his brain. He couldn’t begin to process them.

  But the truth was inescapable: there was nothing here that could help them with their investigation. It had been a total red herring.

  From his position in the entrance of Blockbusters, across the road from the studio, Grigor Pelakais watched, rigid with shock, as police cars and ambulances arrived. What had gone wrong? It should have been a simple warning to the Police to keep out of their business. They were behaving illegally by breaking in. Abrams just had to pretend he was working late, and then make an official complaint when he found the officers on his premises. It should have been simple.

  He felt impotent as he watched his friend being carried into an ambulance. There seemed to be a drip being supported by a medic next to Filip’s arm, so maybe he wasn’t dead. And by the size of the body on the second stretcher, the little girl Chas, had also been hurt. Jed Abrams had been shoved into a police car and driven off.

  He should have gone in with Filip, no matter what Irina had said. And now… What if Filip died? How could he carry on living without him? It would suit Irina if he died. She would have Grigor to herself. Filip would be too frightened to tell the Police anything even if he lived. As usual, she would be safe from the chaos she caused.

  Grigor turned his head away as the police car reversed onto the main road, and then he ran for the van. He didn’t know which of the policemen was on the last stretcher to come out of the studio but he didn’t want to hang around to find out about him. He had to follow the ambulance with Filip in it to find out where they would take him.

  Chapter 25

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 23:35 Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

  Marilyn Gould sat on a hard plastic chair at the other end of the corridor from Dan. She stared at the linoleum floors, polished to an unnatural shine and winced at the slap of rubber clogs and the squeak of rubber wheels. She wrinkled her nose at the attempt to disguise death with a flowery curtain and a can of air freshener.

  Dan kept trying to catch her eye, but she avoided his gaze. He thought she was wondering why her husband had been shot and not him. And now the Superintendent was in with Ian and wouldn’t let Marilyn in to see her husband. He checked his watch, 11.35 p.m. Marilyn had been in bed when he rang. He gave her no details, just told her that there had been an accident and that someone would pick her up in an area car and take her to the hospital. The one question she had asked him was how someone gets shot taking the new DI out for a drink in Exeter. And that question he could not answer. So she blanked him.

  The door to the side room opened and Julie Oliver came out. Dan watched her go up to Marilyn Gould, sit next to her and take her hand. They talked for a few moments until Marilyn stood up and went in to see her husband.

  Oliver turned and looked at Dan. He couldn’t make out the expression on her face. She walked back towards him, and seemed to be struggling with what she was going to say. Her voice, when it came, was a flat monotone.

  ‘Ian has given me a statement. He insisted that I took it down there and then.’ She waved a piece of spiral notebook paper at him, the torn edges fluttering. ‘He claims full responsibility for the little prank you pulled this evening. He says it was all his idea, that he had to force you to go along with it and that you only agreed because he would have gone to the studio on his own anyway.’ She looked down at him. Dan started to speak but she cut him off. ‘Don’t even try. I know this whole mess wasn’t just Ian’s idea. I’m not stupid, but he has saved you from instant dismissal. There will, however, be serious consequences for your actions, Detective Inspector. I’m going now. Be in my office at 9.00am tomorrow.’

  Oliver turned, body erect, head held high, and strode away. Watching her back as she walked, he saw her shoulders slump as she passed through the swing doors.

  Dan leant forward in the plastic chair and rested his elbows on his knees. He scrubbed his face with his hands. He should go but he didn’t really have anywhere to go. He had been in to see Chas Lloyd, who was alive but had fractured her back when she had landed on the corner of the Reception desk. It was too soon to tell if she would walk again. She would be operated on in the early hours of the morning. He had held her hand until the doctor told him to go away and let her rest.

  He’d been in to see Claire Quick. She was sleeping peacefully, lying on her back. They were going to let her out in the morning. The first bit of good news he’d had all day.

  Abrams was in custody. If Chas had told him about the proposed nocturnal visit as soon as she left Dan in the pub, he’d had two hours to shift any stuff before they got to the studio. Thinking about it logically, Dan knew there had to be more to find and that they had been on the right track, otherwise why would one of the foreign gang have been there waiting for them? And why would he have been armed? What were the other two up to and where were they? Why had Chas betrayed him, and then tried to save him? Where was the van that Abrams had used to move the stuff? It had been outside the studio yesterday. He shook his head and rested his burning eyes in the heels of his hands, pressing his eyeballs until streaks of blue and orange light lit the darkness.

  The injured foreign gang member was also in ICU. The blow to his temple had caused bones to crack and a small piece was embedded in his brain, causing a bleed. Part of Dan still wished he had killed him. On the other hand, it would be cathartic to see him punished for shooting Ian Gould. And it would be far better for Dan if he didn’t have an unlawful killing charge to face. He hadn’t bothered going to see the foreigner, who was under guard.

  He switched his phone back on and scrolled through the messages, trying to determine their importance by who had sent them. He sat back in his chair as he stared at Sally’s message from seven o’clock. He couldn’t believe it. Another one in hospital. Shaking his head, he slowly walked the short distance to the other end of the Intensive Care Unit. Concerned about him, the nurse at the desk called out the young PC who had been set to guard Miles Westlake until he came round, or died. It was Lizzie Singh.

  ‘You alright, sir?’ she asked. ‘Only you’re not looking too good.’

  ‘No Lizzie, not alright at all. How is Westlake?’

  ‘Pretty good. He’s breathing on his own so he’ll live, but he swallowed all sorts of stuff, so they don’t know about organ damage. I think we got to him quickly, though, sir. And he’s young and fit.’

  ‘I’m sure you did everything you could. When are you being relieved?’

  ‘In about 10 minutes. I’m pooped, I can tell you.’

  ‘You shou
ld go home and get some sleep then. I’ll see you in the morning. Briefing at 8.00 am.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Sir, who’s in the bed down the corridor? There’s a guard on him, too. Is he something to do with our case?’ She looked up at Dan. She trusted him. Trusted that his decisions were wise ones, expected him to act as the leader of their team, to protect them and support and guide them. What a joke.

  ‘Yes, Lizzie, he’s got something to do with our case, but I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Here’s your relief, off you go.’ He nodded at the newly arrived officer and set off back towards Ian’s room.

  The sound of a quiet but insistent bell and urgent, whispered voices brought him round the corner at a run. The crash unit was in the side room. Marilyn Gould stood outside, the back of her fist in her mouth to stop herself from screaming. She glared at Dan with such venom he took a wide arc around her.

  He got to the door just as the crash team disengaged the paddles from Ian’s ruined chest. One of them gave the time of death as 00:04, Wednesday, 26th April.

  Dan walked home. He didn’t know what else to do. He took off his shoes, lay face down on the bed and let exhaustion drag him into oblivion.

  The slow creep of dawn in the Intensive Care Unit disturbed the sleeping sick, setting up a chain reaction of groans, coughs, murmurs, sighs and turnings over. The staff nurse on duty rose from her chair, padded round the

  table and looked out along the corridor. A tired constable smiled up at her from the chair outside the door. She looked in at Mr Westlake and saw that he was awake. It was never easy to predict whether they would survive the night, and even harder to predict how they would cope with still being alive if they came round. Thanks to the Police, the team had dealt with him promptly, a couple of hours or so after he’d taken the stuff, and he was young and fit. Suppressing a sigh, she opened the door.

  Miles could only move his eyes at first. He felt like he was under water, with a great weight on his limbs. The slow rise to consciousness had been the hardest part. Most of him was fighting to crawl back down again. Because he couldn’t, really couldn’t, think about what he had done to his wife, to his daughter, and to Carly. Beautiful, talented Carly.

  He also couldn’t work out how he had ended up in hospital. Somebody must have got into the house, yet he was sure he’d locked all the doors. He’d obviously made a mistake somewhere in his planning, but nothing would come clear.

  They would take him to prison as soon as he was well enough. It would be in all the papers. He could see how it would pan out. His name in the papers, his reputation ruined. Sophie’s reputation ruined. No, he couldn’t cope with that. He couldn’t cope with that at all. He tried to move his arms and felt them fight against him.

  A nurse entered the room smiling at him.

  ‘Glad to see you’re awake, Mr Westlake,’ she said. He couldn’t answer. His voice was still refusing to respond and his range of movement was minimal. ‘Just take it easy, you’ll get a bit more feeling back over the next few hours. Then the doctor will be in to see you. You’re a very lucky man.’ She lifted him up onto the pillows and gave him water, which he kept down. She adjusted the speed of the drip to help rehydrate him more quickly.

  He could see another shape behind her in the background, standing near the door. As the nurse moved to write on his chart, he saw it was a policeman. He was being watched, but they hadn’t handcuffed him or anything. The policeman left with the nurse and he saw him sit down outside the room. If he was to get out of here, and he was determined to get away one way or another, Miles was going to have to be a lot cleverer than the Police. With gentle persistence, he began to flex his fingers and toes.

  Two floors down, Chas Lloyd was also awake, having swum up through layers of nightmare to face the dawn. She would swear that she could feel the waves of morphine entering through the drip and strapping her as effectively to the bed as any material restraint. She knew that was a bad thing. You would only give someone morphine if they were seriously hurt. It was weird then, that she was seriously hurt but couldn’t feel anything at all. She flexed one hand and then the other. So, she had some movement.

  With an effort, she remembered everything from the night in the studio up to the point where that Latvian monster had shot the policeman that she had thought was Dan. After that it was emptiness.

  Chas knew that Dan had been to see her in the night, and held her hand and stayed with her. She felt tears prickle and leak from her closed eyes when she thought about how she had betrayed him. Betrayed him for so little. A few pathetic thousand quid towards her course at college. How cheaply that Latvian bitch had bought her.

  Her mother had always said Chas would come to nothing, and this time she’d be right. She knew full well what the Latvians were like, and how scared of them Jed was. None of it was worth the taking of a life. None of it was worth betraying Dan for. In the deepest, darkest part of her, she had to admit she had done it for revenge, to ease her anger at the way he had responded to her the night before. And look how it had turned out. What kind of woman was she, that she could want revenge on a man who had simply treated her with respect?

  Chas looked towards the doorway. She could see a doctor in scrubs talking to someone. Her mother and father had arrived. They would be operating soon. She felt the tears begin again.

  Chapter 26

  Date: Wednesday 26th April Time: 07:03 DI Dan Hellier

  Dan woke up. A great lurching, falling thump into the day. Seagulls were strutting on the roof, calling out threats and bragging to other birds across the water. He rolled over to sit upright on the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. Just for a second, he forgot about what had happened the night before and looked down in confusion at the rumpled clothes he still wore. Just for a second. Then the gunshot and the blood and Ian shuddering for each breath on the floor flew back in through the little gap he had left open and pinned him back down onto the bed, under the duvet, shaking and shivering with the shock of it all. It took all his effort and all his will to force himself up from that place of safety into the shower.

  The face in the mirror gave so little away. If you ignored the black rings under his eyes, he still looked fit and healthy and ready to face the day. His own thriving, alive image made him feel sick as he ran the razor over his chin.

  After he had dressed, he ate cereal and toast and drank tea on the balcony, feeling strangely and unreasonably disloyal to Ian for taking time to eat when there was work to be done. But, he was starving, and self-preservation had set in. He might well end the day suspended and under investigation for gross misconduct or, worse, incompetence. He knew that he had to be calm and rational when he arrived at the station. He wanted to break the news about Ian to the team himself and he needed to have a plan of action ready for the team to get cracking on, even if he wasn’t going to be leading them. With Carly’s murderer still not charged and a violent gang running free, there would be no point in them sitting round feeling miserable.

  The morning sun caught the edge of the tiny metal table as Dan planned how to tell his team that he had been responsible for the death of their friend and colleague.

  Lizzie Singh arrived first. She threw her bag in the corner and got started on a fresh pot of coffee. She gave the brown-ringed, stained mugs a scrub and dug a packet of Hob Nobs out of her bag. She didn’t need to be told that ‘last in’ made the drinks.

  Dan arrived to find her standing at the wall, tracing possible connections with her finger. It almost hurt to see her so keen to be part of his team. He guessed he was not more than ten years older than her but it could have been fifty the way he was feeling at the moment. He slipped past into his own office and waited there until they were all assembled before going out.

  As usual, Sally was last to arrive, rushing to drop her bag and smiling her thanks at Lizzie as she placed a steaming mug in front of her. Sally liked to take the twins to nursery when she could, but it meant she was always cutting
it fine. She opened her notebook and looked around . ‘Where’s Ian?’ she asked of no one in particular. ‘You can never get the bugger to do overtime but he’s usually in early.’

  At just after eight o’clock, Dan appeared from his office and began the briefing. He motioned to Lizzie to sit down when she attempted to pour him coffee. He stood at the head of the table and spoke:

  ‘Last night, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Gould was shot and killed in the line of duty. He died bravely…’ He didn’t get any further for the gasps and denials around the table. Bill Larcombe, who had been one of Ian’s closest friends, laughed in disbelief.

  ‘Shut up, all of you,’ shouted Sally, and into the abrupt silence she asked the most important question, ‘How?’

  The thing that had become most clear in his quiet hour of thinking that morning was that he had to tell the team the absolute truth. They had to know now, before the press and the station gossip got hold of it and twisted everything. They also needed to know what they had to do next. The bit he couldn’t do was to reassure them that he would still be leading them in an hour’s time.

  ‘Ian and I were pursuing a hunch about Jed Abrams. So we went to the studio last night to have a look round to see if there was anything dirty there. We thought porn, or maybe rip-off music. Ian also had a thought that Jed Abrams might have killed Carly and used his van to transport her body.’

  ‘So it was a legitimate part of our investigation then?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Yes, it was. But… we didn’t want to wait until we had a warrant. No magistrate would have granted one simply on a ‘suspicion’ of illegal activity, and we knew that Abrams would empty the place if we left it any longer. The plan was to pass it straight on to Vice if we found anything. It should have been a quick in and out.’ He flushed as he heard the crack in his voice. ‘I got the key from Chas Lloyd, the girl who works there. But, she evidently tipped off Abrams and the gang of foreigners who Ian and Sam had seen at the Studio earlier in the day.’