by Lisa Cutts
My musings were broken by the sight of the M25 stretching out in front of me. It was a road guaranteed to jolt you to your senses. If that wasn’t enough to bring me back to reality, my personal phone started to ring in the centre console. I glanced down to see that Annie was trying to get hold of me. My personal phone wasn’t connected to the car’s hands-free and I wouldn’t have wanted Wingsy to overhear our conversation anyway. Even though they’d now met each other, I still wanted to treat these units of my life as separate. The two should never have crossed in the first place.
The phone bleeped to tell me it had a message, which I would pick up when I was good and ready. I’d have to face her some time, though. I could feel an impending sense of exhaustion threatening to get the better of me. My financial situation was dire, I had more work to do than anyone would have envisaged when they gave me a historic train crash to look at, my boyfriend was measuring my units of alcohol, and now I had to call Annie for what would undoubtedly be another barrage of abuse. Could be worse. At least I was still alive. A close brush with death did that for you: it made you take stock and be grateful for when things were simpler. I’d had my wake-up call. Life was far too precious. Its preservation was number one. Something to remember at all costs.
Finally we got back to the police station and parked in the yard. I smiled to myself as I reversed into the spot next to the mobile incident room, costing thousands of pounds, with signs on the side stating, ‘Warning. Not to be moved. Long-tailed tits nesting inside.’ It never failed to cheer me up that we owned such an expensive bird box. Joe would have liked it, too.
‘Something amusing you, doll?’ said Wingsy. ‘Or have you got wind?’
‘I’m not the one with baked beans down my shirt. And what’s with that awful tie?’
‘My mum bought me this.’
‘She thinks you’re a twat, too, then? How much longer are you staying at work for today?’ I asked, noticing the time on the dashboard clock as I jotted down the mileage from our journey into the car’s log book.
‘Well, as we’re already on overtime and Harry said not to take liberties with the budget, I was going to call it a day. You?’
We got out of the car and, gathering our paperwork, made our way through the patrol wing to the Cold Case office. ‘I may stay for a bit,’ I said. ‘Plan what I’m going to ask Joe tomorrow.’
By the time we’d got to our office, Jemma and Mick were turning off the computers and lights. There was a buzz coming from the two of them which could mean only one thing: a guilty verdict.
There really was nothing which came close in comparison: an investigation you’d worked on for so long, managing to bide your time and watch the evidence amass until you knew you had the right man or woman. Then came the part where you had to almost try the case to get it past the Crown Prosecution Service. The charge was authorised and then the games began. The accused’s legal team didn’t provide a defence statement protesting their client’s innocence as they were supposed to; defence didn’t ask for any unused material they required as they were supposed to; and witnesses, understandably, got very nervous about giving evidence. As a police officer it could be daunting. For a member of the public, it could only be petrifying. Getting a case to court was a massive task, and seeing it through to a verdict was exhausting. I had run up and down the stairs in the Old Bailey hundreds of times.
That thought made me realise how unfit I was. The way things were at the moment, I’d need to take the lift every time.
Jemma’s face was illuminated. Micky’s was still ugly but he had a glow. ‘We’re off to the pub,’ said Jemma. ‘Jury was only out twenty-five minutes. Me and Micky bought a cuppa and never even got to drink it before the tannoy called us back in.’
Her voice dropped and she added, ‘Suzanna was there when the jury came back. She’d refused to be screened from Oakes when she gave her evidence. He stared at her the whole time. He’s such an utter wanker.’
‘Cracking woman, Suzanna,’ said Barry, face softening. ‘We asked her if she wanted to join us for a drink but she’s got a husband and three-year-old. They wanted to get home to their little boy.’
Now I knew I was getting soft. I wanted to cry again. I soon got over it when Jemma said, ‘How about you two coming for a drink?’
Happy to jump on the back of any celebration that had ended in victory, even one I’d played no part in, I shoved my paperwork in my tray and got ready to join them.
Wingsy tilted his head to one side and said, ‘Thought you were staying to do a bit of planning for your prison visit, Nina.’
‘And miss out on toasting a rapist being sent down? Not likely. Oh, and Jemma, you’re right. Where he’s going, he will be an utter wanker.’
34
I woke up with a vague recollection of Wingsy dropping me home the previous evening and a twinge of concern that I had no way of getting to work. While I had been in the pub, Bill had been kept on at work, and once again had done the decent thing and slept in his own spare room when he’d eventually got in. I had no idea when that was, but it was long after the room stopped spinning.
As quietly as I could manage, I got ready for work and checked my job phone for messages. I had only one new one, which read: Be ready at 7.30am. I’m coming to get you. Don’t puke in my car.
A few minutes later, Wingsy pulled up outside Bill’s house.
‘Do you feel OK?’ he asked as I got in the car.
‘Yeah, terrific,’ I lied. ‘What time did you drop me off last night?’
‘About eleven,’ he replied as we got to the end of the road. Pausing at the junction, Wingsy glanced at me and then did a double-take.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You look awful.’
‘Thanks so much. Thought you were my mate.’
‘Really, Nin. You’re going to have to take it easy. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to appear normal to the outside world. You’ve had a bad time and you’re allowed to let your hair down from time to time. Just try and make sure you haven’t got lumps of last night’s kebab in it.’
‘That’s so funny. At least I have some hair. And I don’t have kebab in it, thank you.’ I paused, partly to reflect on what kind of kebab I actually ate, as it was a little hazy, and partly to sound sincere for what I wanted to say next. ‘Thanks, though, for the concern, but I’m fine. Really I am.’
He looked over at me again. ‘When you want to admit that you’re not actually fine, let me know.’
I reached my hand out and briefly touched his arm.
Some time later we got to the station and, to show Wingsy that I appreciated his concern, I went to the canteen to get us both overpriced lattes. Nothing said ‘thanks for being a friend’ like a three-quid coffee in a paper cup.
I sat at a computer and got my paperwork in order for the questions I had for Joe. Mostly I wanted to fill in a couple of blanks surrounding things he’d given me scanty details on, but on the whole I had the statement mapped out in my head. That was if he was ready to put what he’d told me in writing and sign in the right places. It wasn’t a particularly difficult one: anything and everything Joe could tell me about the Chilhampton Express train crash that his father had told him before his death, what type of man his father had been, and what Joe knew about the Rumblys and their involvement in the train crash. I mulled over whether he would stop short of telling all regarding any other criminal associations he knew the family had. He did, after all, want to send Leonard Rumbly down for a long time. As the saying went – might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. The phrase had popped into my head in relation to Rumbly, but I couldn’t help but ponder how much it would also apply to Joe. No one liked a grass. This would make Joe a marked man.
There were ways of protecting someone’s identity if they wanted to give information to the police anonymously. Joe had made it abundantly clear to me, on my initial visit to him, that he would stand up and be counted for what he was doing. I couldn’t fathom out if this was because
Joe had a death wish or if he merely wanted his son to know what he was doing for him. Still, there was no honour among thieves and I couldn’t see him exactly getting preferential treatment on the wing for his actions. Far from it.
Joe, the unlikely hero, had saved my life not so long ago. As I packed my paperwork together into my folder, I racked my brains wondering how I could take the information Joe was giving me, use it, but somehow manage to return the enormous favour I owed him. Exactly how did a police officer set about saving an incarcerated burglar from getting the beating of his life in prison? I must have missed that class at police training school.
Of course, there was the added complication that I was supposed to surreptitiously be Luke Bring’s guardian. Without some kind of reassurance that I would do this, Joe was unlikely to sign a statement. I knew that this left me on shaky ground: police officers couldn’t offer incentives to people to hand over information, unless they were prepared for it to come back to haunt all parties at Crown Court. Informants were supposed to be registered and handled correctly. I wasn’t trained for that, and I wasn’t sure I was the correct person to be dealing with Joe. Professional ethics told me that this was all wrong, but my personal morals wouldn’t allow me to walk away from him. For now, I could justify it to myself by saying that Joe hadn’t given me any information yet and I had done nothing for him or his son.
Folder under my arm, car keys in my hand, I set out on my second visit to Joe. Many lives had been ended by the train crash and many more ruined. What was clear to me was that nothing I did or Joe said was going to alter any of that. Niggling in my brain was the more present danger Leonard Rumbly was causing to the population of Riverstone, and the class A drugs causing death on the streets. My hopes had been pinned on convicting him for the train crash, but the way Rumbly conducted business, even if it wasn’t his drug-dealing, perhaps it would be his links to other parts of the criminal network that finally brought him to justice.
My mind was full of my next task of the day, so much so that I almost walked straight past Ian Hammond. He said my name, but a combination of too much to think about plus a fuzzy head from the night before meant that it took me a few seconds to register what he was saying. My stomach lurched as he repeated what he’d said.
‘Janice Freeman will meet you this afternoon at Riverstone Mortuary. Harry told me it’s been on your appraisal objectives for some time to go to a post mortem. Janice was the SIO on call over the weekend when Lea Hollingsworth was found. It’ll be a Home Office PM, so you’re bound to learn a lot. See her there at four o’clock.’
He looked pleased. I didn’t doubt that I looked green.
35
Once more I found myself being led to a booth on the far side of the prison’s visitors’ hall. Joe was standing up, watching me walk towards him, prison officer leading the way. I was relieved to see that Joe had his hands inside his blue bib rather than his pants. He had a slightly less cocky air about him today, and nodded at me as the prison officer stood aside after opening the door. I went in.
‘Miss,’ was all he said.
I waited until I heard the door shut behind me before I said, ‘You OK, Joe?’ My tone was laced with more concern than I wanted to show, but my feelings were genuine. There was something bothering Joe that hadn’t shown on his face six days ago.
He hooked the chair towards him and sat into it, leaving his feet where he’d been standing. It was the kind of gesture a child would make when trying to appear annoyed. It also looked as though it was putting stress on his spine, but bad posture was probably the least of his worries.
‘Nah.’ He sighed, looking up at me. ‘Didn’t sleep very well. It all kicked off in here last night. We had a lockdown. Some bloke went into one and smashed up his cell.’
Joe straightened up, dragging his legs under the table separating us. He stretched his arms out to the side and gave a yawn, exhaling some terrible breath in my direction.
‘Geezer found out that his girlfriend died of a drug overdose. They’ve got a little ’un together, too. It’s bollocks. Now you know why I want you to keep an eye out for my boy.’
Despite the warmth of the room, I felt goosebumps on my arms. This was not a coincidence; this was the same dead woman. ‘Was she the girlfriend of one of your cellmates?’ I asked, as casually as I could manage.
‘Nah, George’s missus is still very much alive and no one wants to shag Fat Frank, the ugly bastard. It was another bloke’s missus. He’s well cut up about it. Swore she never took drugs even though he did. Told me he owed quite a few quid to someone too. She was apparently always going on about how she was going to get him out of trouble. He’s got no reason to lie to me; I couldn’t give a fuck. I’ve only spoke to him a couple of times during the few days he’s been here. He got moved from Mill End.’
The whole time Joe was talking, I was nodding, appearing to accept what he told me at face value, but really I was storing the information away. There was clearly more to Lea’s death than a simple drug overdose. My problem had been finding the time to look a little further into it, but in a couple of hours I was due to attend her PM. I was finding my return to work enough to cope with on its own, let alone trying to look into suspicious deaths that were really nothing to do with the Cold Case team.
Still, I wasn’t about to walk away from it. And, right at this moment, the only way I could get Joe Bring to make a statement was to help him out with covert babysitting for his fourteen-year-old son so that he would give me information on the Rumblys. Why was nothing ever easy?
‘What’s the fella’s name?’ I asked. A frown creased Joe’s forehead at my question so I added, ‘I’m curious. It comes with the job.’
I could tell that he didn’t want to tell me so I left it there. It shouldn’t be very difficult to find out. It amused me that Joe was willing to tell me as much as he could about the Rumbly family and make himself a marked man for a train crash before he was born, but he wouldn’t tell me the name of a prisoner whose girlfriend had died from a drug overdose and was now suffering the consequences of smashing up his cell. The irony of what people were prepared to tell police officers and what they drew the line at was always fascinating.
‘Fruit and veg,’ said Joe, leaning towards me.
‘Pardon.’
‘You know, fruit and veg,’ he repeated. ‘That’s where this all started. My old man worked for Randalls. They had a stand in the Borough Market, up town. You been there?’
I nodded. I’d been to London for a day out the previous summer and paid the market a visit. I’d loved the coffee shops, stalls and food vendors. I’d been taken by the cheerfulness of the place.
‘It’s shit now,’ he said, shaking his head and hardening his mouth into a grimace. ‘Fucking tourist piss-take, that’s what it is. A fiver for a sausage in a roll. Anyway, the old man, he used to go to the Borough, and another couple of stalls, one in Brighton I think, and one in Brentford, and sell fruit and veg he picked up from farms down in Kent. Bushels, half-bushels, quarter-bushels, whatever – he brought them back full and took them to markets in Essex and Sussex, as well as the Borough.’
At this, Joe paused and shook his head at me. He pointed across the table as if he was about to impart fantastic news.
‘Know what, though?’
It was my turn to shake my head.
‘They didn’t do spuds! In them days, your potato, well, that come from specialist firms, and the spuds, they were in hessian sacks.’
As I began to wonder if Joe had suffered from a blow to the head, he said, ‘You’re wanting to know why I’m telling you this, aren’t you, miss?’ Without giving me time to answer, he said, ‘The takings used to drop drastically in September, see. The prices were so cheap at that time of year. Well, the old man told me that he used to struggle around then. Some stuff was out of season, like the soft fruits – strawberries, cherries – you couldn’t get hold of them, and the fresh veg you could get your hands on was cheap and competition
was fierce. That was when he turned to other ways of earning a living.’
All the while Joe had been telling me about his dad’s legitimate self-employment, he’d appeared pleased to share information with me. Now, he didn’t seem to be so animated. At some point in the Bring family’s past, pride must have had its place, but now it was replaced with drugs, death and incarceration.
‘His gambling debts got bigger than he could cope with,’ continued Joe. ‘He dug himself out of the hole the only way he could think of: he did someone a favour and they was wiped clean.’ Joe paused to run his fingers through his messy hair. ‘Problem was, he never got over what he did. He was only supposed to delay the train, perhaps cause a bit of an accident. My old man, the stupid fucker, didn’t reckon on a 1948 five-ton Bedford truck being such a sturdy old beast and knocking the train straight off the track.’
I had been writing furiously as Joe spoke. As I caught up with him, I glanced up to see that he was watching me write down his last few words. I knew that Joe could read and write from the many occasions I’d interviewed him for shoplifting. I wrote one single word on the top of the next clean page in my notebook – Who?
He gave a short laugh. ‘I think you know the answer to that already,’ he said, ‘Leonard Rumbly was behind it all. The question you should be asking me is, how are you going to prove it.’
‘And how’s that, Joe?’ I asked, pen poised.
‘I can give you the names of five or six people who knew the Rumblys’ business and would have known that it was pre-planned that the truck was on the railway line. Most are still alive and some may not help you, but you probably only need one or two. Am I right?’
He grinned. I nodded.
‘Thing is, miss, you know I’m not going to do that unless you do something for me first. And you’re probably not going to like it.’
36
Joe was right. I didn’t like it one little bit. I left the prison without giving him an answer. I had to speak to Clint Stirling before I went any further, and I wasn’t about to make promises to banged up burglars.