by Conrad Jones
“Hold on a minute!” Rick stood up and held out his hands. His face blushed red. Stirling noticed a tremor in his fingers. It was obvious that Fletcher had spilled the beans and tracing that a call had been made between them wouldn’t take long if it hadn’t been done already. “I didn’t know anything about a Mercedes van and I didn’t know anything about a Volkswagen. I made a phone call for a customer and nothing else.”
Stirling shook his head and walked to the rear of the house. He looked out of the window. The back garden was quite large but overgrown. A child’s tricycle was abandoned in the long grass, its paint blistered and rusting. “Have you got kids Rick?”
“A daughter.”
“How old is she?”
“She’ll be seven this December.”
“Seven,” Stirling eyed the tricycle again. It had been there a long time, neglected and unused. “You haven’t seen her for a while have you?”
“Her mother won’t let her come here, the bitch.” Rick moaned. “I have to go to a contact centre for supervised visits.”
“Why is that?”
“What the fuck has it got to do with you?” Rick protested. The questions about his daughter had put him on the back foot but then Stirling knew that it would.
“I don’t like you. I don’t like what you do but I’m concerned for you,” Stirling shrugged. “We’re investigating a very serious series of events including murder.” He paused for effect. Rick looked like he was about to vomit. “The courts are very strict nowadays and you can be guilty by association. It looks to me that you’re involved in our case, doesn’t it?” Stirling asked Sykes.
“Definitely,” Sykes agreed. “In a case like this, every one linked to it is looking at hard time and the rats will begin to turn on each other. The ones that turn first are the ones that don’t do as much time.”
“So, if you want to see your daughter without any bars between you before her twenty-first birthday, then you had better not lie to me again.” Stirling handed him a copy of a vehicle registration certificate. Rick read it and sat down heavily in his chair. His hands were visibly shaking. “Now do you want to tell us your side of the story before we arrest you?”
“Once lawyers get involved it will be out of our hands, Rick,” Sykes added. “We won’t be able to help you once that happens.”
“You say that you didn’t know anything about the vans, Rick but according to this you sold the Mercedes to the Fletcher brothers a couple of months back.” Stirling watched the expression on Rick’s face as he spoke. “Paul Fletcher told us that it had a busted head gasket. They fixed it up ready to be sold on but there were no takers until you brokered the deal with a gang of very nasty drug dealers that is. It was your van.”
Rick put his head in his hands and closed his eyes tightly but the problem didn’t disappear. “I never actually owned this van,” he said with a wobble in his voice. “I just buy and sell vehicles on. People use my name and I get a percentage, honestly!”
“Honestly?” Stirling spoke to Sykes again. “Honestly is an unusual word for a bloke like him to use, isn’t it?”
“Very unusual,” Sykes nodded. He took his glasses off and pointed them at Rick. “I bet you couldn’t spell the word never mind understand its meaning.”
“Fuck you,” Rick snapped. “I’m not saying anything else. You had better arrest me and take me in. I want a lawyer.”
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.” Stirling nodded slowly and shrugged. “Have it your way. You’re under arrest for conspiracy to supply. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence, understand?” Rick nodded. “Of course you do. You’ve been here a few times before, Rick but never for something this heavy. If I was in your shoes, I’d have a serious think on the way to the station because the next few sentences that pass from your lips could determine how old you are the next time you get to hold your daughter.” Sykes took him by the arm and pulled him towards the door. Rick didn’t put up much of a struggle. He reckoned that Sykes would rip his arm off and beat him to death with the sticky end if he misbehaved. Stirling took a quick glance around the room and then followed on. He made sure that the door was locked and then headed down the path.
Sykes paused at the edge of the pavement. Their Volvo was parked across the road. It was a busy street lined with terraced houses and the odd row of shops and there was a big pub on the corner to his right. To his left was a pedestrian crossing. There was a bus lane nearest to him and then two lanes of traffic to navigate to reach their car. He decided to wait for Stirling. He couldn’t see a gap in the traffic and he would need an extra pair of hands to open the vehicle and put Rick into the back. A double-decker bus crammed with commuters crawled by on the opposite side of the road. A number of the passengers held their phones to the glass, filming the man in handcuffs. Others looked on, their faces impassive. Sykes was distracted by them. The public’s ghoulish fascination with uploading images of other humans suffering in some shape or form rankled with him. He was distracted by the curios expressions on their faces and didn’t hear the Range Rover approaching. He didn’t hear it accelerate. He turned his head only when he heard it mount the kerb by which time, it was too late. Rick screamed and Sykes’s voice blended with his, both cut short and silenced in an instant. Stirling stood frozen to the spot and watched helplessly as the four wheel drive behemoth mowed them down on the pavement and then sped off into the traffic.
CHAPTER 30
Julia Fox had been an editor on the Daily Post and Liverpool Echo for five years and she was still not thirty. She left university with a first class degree and climbed the promotional ladder quickly, trampling her opposition along the way. Although it was a regional rag, it was the ideal job to cut her teeth before a more permanent move to one of the nationals in London. Julia was as sharp as a razor and cruel with it. She was being groomed for greater things but in the meantime, she intended to manipulate and squeeze her journalists for every ounce of news that she could. Antonia Barrat was one of her freelancers; one of the better ones. Julia knew that she had been involved in an incident that dwarfed anything that they had covered for months but she couldn’t speak to her. She knew that Toni had been taken back to Canning Place but not why. Whatever had happened, it was dramatic and drama sells newspapers. She had received snippets of information but not enough to make a coherent article. It was too early to run with what she had. She needed corroboration before she could go to press.
It had been a long arduous day that had produced a number of mediocre half-page stories and the usual mundane crap about how long the city’s football mangers would last. With both teams knocked out of the cup competitions and staring at mid-table finishes, all that mattered was which of the two would finish higher than the other. She didn’t give a toss either way but the city was football mad and they had to balance their coverage so that one team didn’t have more exposure than their bitter rivals. Julia had decided to brighten her day by taking a group of her finest journalists to a new restaurant for cocktails. Panoramic 34, situated on the 34th floor of the West Tower had views across the estuary to the Welsh mountains to the west and the tall buildings of Manchester city centre to the east. She had used the place a few times to reward employees or impress contacts. Night or day, the view was impressive.
As the cocktails flowed, her team was beginning to loosen up. She took her Samsung out and checked her messages. One email jumped out at her. It was a Dropbox notification. It informed her that several files had been deleted from an image sharing folder, which wasn’t unusual but the name of the person that had deleted them was. They had been deleted by Antonia Barrat. Julia accessed the account and opened the folder. She could feel her breath shortening. Adrenalin pumped into her veins. There was only one reason why Toni would delete images while she was in police protection and that was because she had been told to. Julia clicked on th
e recently deleted folder and opened the seven images. Her head went into a spin. The national news was focused on Syrian refugees drowning in the Mediterranean. Every day brought a new story of the human tragedy that was unfolding as millions tried to migrate and here she was looking at digital images of drug dealers unloading African women from a dinghy.
“Finish your drinks,” Julia clapped her hands together. Her employees fell silent, the smiles falling from their faces. “Antonia Barrat has uploaded some diamond images.” She held up her phone. “The women in these photographs are being held somewhere. You two, get yourselves to the Royal and find out if any of them have been treated there and better still, any of them admitted. The rest of you, I want the river police, the border guys and all of your contacts on the force spoken to tonight. Get me some substance to back up these pictures.” Her team exchanged glances, some excited and some confused. “What are you waiting for?” Julia grinned wildly. “This is the biggest scoop that we’ve had this year. Get gone!” Despite not speaking to Antonia Barrat, Julia would make sure that the images were on the front pages of the morning nationals.
CHAPTER 31
Stirling checked the injured men and clicked into autopilot. He made a mental note of the registration plate, called for ambulances and backup and then communicated the vehicle’s details to the traffic division. They put an instant ‘be on the lookout’ alert against it and informed him who the registered owner was and that the vehicle wasn’t listed as stolen. The name of the owner, Jason Greene was bizarrely familiar but now was not the time to debate the connections in his head. He kept at the back of his mind the fact that a colleague was down. There were some essential processes that needed to be put into motion. As he did so, he knelt and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Richard Grainger was dead; his broken and twisted body was buckled above the waist. He had been given no chance against a ton of metal moving at speed. His face was frozen; a mask of fear. Anger boiled to the surface as he approached his colleague. Dalton Sykes was face up, his head tilted at an abnormal angle to his body. Dark red blood ran from his right ear. His glasses were shattered, eyes wide open, glassy, lifeless and staring. A different sequence of events, a moment’s hesitation or one step in a different direction and he could have been lying next to Sykes, broken and bleeding and dead.
Members of the public approached and offered help. He showed them his ID and explained that there was nothing that could be done unless they had seen the driver. None of them had. It had happened too quickly. A uniformed patrol arrived first on the scene. Their grim expressions showed that the responders were aware that an officer had been killed in the line of duty. They took plastic sheets from their vehicle and covered the bodies. Two ambulances arrived in quick succession and a number of traffic cops and community support officers arrived.
“I want every mobile phone off that bus,” Stirling ordered a uniformed officer. The bus driver had pulled in on the opposite side to offer help, not realising that he had also handed over thirty witnesses to the police. “If any of them have filmed what happened, get them to Bluetooth the videos to your phones and get them sent to me at the MIT.”
Stirling knew that at least one of them would show them who was driving the Range Rover. He also knew that it wasn’t a random hit and run. They very rarely happen on the pavement. He was convinced that the Latvians had silenced Richard Grainger and murdered a Detective Sergeant in the process. Stirling walked back to the ambulances and watched as the two men were loaded aboard. His mobile buzzed. The screen showed that it was the DI calling.
“What happened?” Annie asked. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, Guv.”
“Sykes?”
“He’s dead. He didn’t stand a chance. The bastard came out of nowhere, mounted the pavement and mowed them both down.”
“Grainger?”
“Dead, Guv.” He sighed. “I got the plate. It is registered to a Jason Greene.”
“The witness from the pawnbrokers?”
“Traffic sent me his licence photograph. It is him.”
“Was he driving?”
“I couldn’t see. It happened too quickly but I’m sure that we’ll have video footage of the driver. There was a busload of people filming the arrest. Some of them must have captured him.”
“While you were arresting Grainger, Toni Barrat gave me his name as her informer.”
“Jesus,” Stirling growled. “He’s not going to tell us anything now. I suppose it makes sense that it was him. He made the call to arrange the vehicle exchange, or so Fletcher would have us believe.”
“Exactly. Makes me ask why Jason Greene would want to kill him,” Annie said exactly what Stirling was thinking. “I’ve got their records, both are low level criminals on the periphery, dealing, handling stolen goods but nothing major. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that they knew each other.”
“He wouldn’t have done this, Guv. He just wasn’t the type,” Stirling said. “He took photographs of Andris Markevica leaving the pawnbrokers. If Markevica knew that he had photographed him, it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that he would go after him. We need to look for Jason Greene, but my guess is that he is already dead.”
“Markevica takes Greene out and then uses his vehicle to make sure that Grainger didn’t talk to us.” Annie knew their scenario was solid. “Miranda will be devastated; they worked together for years. How are you doing?”
“It’s all a bit surreal, Guv,” Stirling sighed. “One minute he was next to me the next he’s gone. A couple of seconds either way and...”
“You can’t think like that. There’s no way that we could have seen that coming and even if we had, what could we have done?” Annie said. “We’ve dealt with ruthless bastards before and we’ll have to again, but we’re not psychic.”
“These bastards play by different rules, Guv.” His voice sounded flat and emotionless. Annie knew that what he had seen would knock him sideways. Watching a fellow officer die in front of his eyes could only highlight how fragile his own mortality was. Stirling was a brute, hard as nails and difficult to rattle but he was still just a man beneath. His wife and daughter were his life and seeing death up close made him appreciate that fact. It accentuated the fragility of life. “I need to call home; you know how it is, Guv. I need to make sure that they’re alright.”
“Do that,” Annie said. She felt a little bit sad that she had no one to call but her career was her spouse. “I’ll need a quick drink when we’re done today.”
“Me too, Guv. I’ll finish up here and then come back to the station. See you later.”
CHAPTER 32
23.00
Gary Powell was the man who posed as the mechanic. He orchestrated the theft of the zombie from the Fletcher Bros premises and the job had gone well. Gary ran through the day’s events in his mind. He opened his fridge and reached for a can of Stella. He closed the door and leaned against it as he opened his beer and drank thirstily from it. The disguise of overalls and work boots had been exchanged for faded jeans and Reebok trainers. His greying blond hair was still damp from the shower. He emptied the tin in three visits and then crushed the can and tossed it into the bin. Gary opened the door and grabbed another Stella. He needed to drink to slow down his mind. It had been racing on full throttle for over twelve hours. Closing the fridge, he turned and leaned against it and thought about what had happened. He stared at the briefcase and holdall that were on his dining table; one full of cocaine, the other full of zombie. It had taken him half an hour or so to sort the bags out; it had been a crazy day. Working for Ivor in any capacity made him edgy but he paid well; too well to turn him down. Lifting the drugs had been simplicity itself. The Latvian gang were not expecting anything untoward to happen. They had caught them off guard and the heist had gone as smoothly as it could.
Once they had ditched the Mercedes, they switched vehicles twice and drove around for an hour before he was happy that were not being followed. He d
ropped off his associates at different locations and then went to one of his properties. There, he showered and then left the house via an internal garage door. He walked through the back garden to the rear gate where he removed the weather shield from an innocuously parked motorbike. He climbed on and rode ten miles across the city to a long stay car park where he parked the bike and switched to a black Vauxhall Corsa. Nobody could possibly have followed him without being seen and he arrived home without incident. It was a well practised method of neutralising any counter-surveillance. The shipment was intact and he was safe but despite being at home he still could not relax.
Home was a two bedroom detached on a new housing estate near the city centre. He had three other houses but this one was where he felt most at home. It was close to where he sometimes worked on the doors of the city’s busiest clubs. He moved jobs as often as possible, never wanting to be identified with a single employer or venue. It paid the mortgages on the various properties that he owned. Since leaving the Marines three years earlier, he had worked in close personal protection in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The money was phenomenal but he limited himself to one tour a year. Recently he had found that doing the odd job for Ivor could be worth more than his legitimate incomes combined.
They had met the year before when Ivor, his wife Marika and brother Andris were enjoying a night out in the city. They were ordering champagne from the bar of the VIP lounge in one of the more exclusive venues, when Andris became involved in an altercation with a local man. Within minutes, the argument had escalated and Andris was on his back looking at the sharp end of a broken bottle. Ivor was impressed when Gary disarmed the man, locked his fingers painfully against his wrist in a manner that made it simple to escort him to the fire exit without any further fuss. Most of the customers were oblivious to that fact the there had been an altercation. Ivor had thanked him and they chatted for a while. The offer of occasional work was made and Gary agreed to think about it.