Burning Greed

by Diane M Dickson

  They gathered around the noticeboards.

  “Anyone with any input speak up,” Tanya said. “This has been staring us in the face. She told us he was away, we believed her. We didn’t check, Christ we didn’t check. Why not?”

  Nobody had a response and they all knew that down the line there would be questions to answer and none of them would come out smelling of roses. Yes, Tanya would carry the can and to a lesser extent Charlie, who had been in nominal charge while she was away, but they had all missed it. What hurt most of all, and none of them verbalised it, was that maybe, just maybe, Colin the Cartman could have been saved if they had been more on the ball. It was a subdued gathering and a frustrating day that took them nowhere.

  A report came in from Harrogate. The stolen Honda was seen once only, in the streets near to where it was taken, and then, if it was on the road, it had false plates thus wasn’t picked up. They had no help to offer.

  They went over it and over it, but it took them nowhere. They viewed CCTV from Birmingham airport, East Midlands, Liverpool, concentrating on flights to Dubai and the UAE. They called in passenger manifests from everywhere else. It made them feel as though they were doing something but knew that they weren’t even scraping the surface of the possibilities. If they had missed him there was no way to bring him back from those countries and they all knew that they had probably missed him. Tanya managed to have a watch put on Parker’s house. In the end, when they could go on no longer, chastened and depressed they trailed out of headquarters feeling like failures. Paul and Sue headed for the pub but none of the others had the heart for it.

  Chapter 58

  For a while they drove in silence and then Tanya rubbed a hand over her face and turned to Charlie. “Bloody hell, how did I miss this? Has it all been him?”

  “We don’t know yet. We can’t know until we find him, and we can’t do any more than we have done with that. You’ve got an all ports alert out. Traffic and foot patrols are aware, we’ve got his picture on the websites and Twitter. Tomorrow first thing it’ll be on the news bulletins. Unless he’s left the country already, we’ll find him. And it wasn’t just you, was it? None of us picked up on it. It’s all so vague. Why? Was she blackmailing him because he’d used her services? I don’t see that. I don’t think his wife would care, she knew about that side of his life. It’s not that he was in a job where it would matter. No, that doesn’t gel. So, what did Roper know? We just have to wait until we find him. Then we can ask him, can’t we?” Charlie said.

  “If we find him. You said it yourself, Charlie. He could be gone already, and Charlie – where the hell is Freddy Stone?”

  He had no answer for her but he knew she was thinking about the riverbank, and poor dead Colin. They walked into the warmth and comfort of her hallway.

  “Whisky I reckon?” Tanya said.

  Charlie nodded, went into the lounge to bring out the bottle. “Do you want anything to eat?”

  “I don’t think I can face anything right now. Let’s have a drink, talk it though a bit, if you don’t mind. You know, doing it at home.”

  “It’s fine, it might help. Let me just call Carol.”

  “Okay, and I’ll see what this is.” She pointed at the answering machine, bleeping on the hall table.

  It was Fiona, tearful and indecipherable. Rambling about Graham, Serena, misunderstandings, there was a sort of an apology lost in the confusion. She was drunk, there was no doubt. It was unsettling to hear her older sister in such a condition, but right then Tanya had no time or left-over sympathy. She put down the receiver and deleted the message.

  * * *

  They talked it through into the early hours and it all came back to Alan Parker and their monumental cock up.

  “I’m going to have to go and see the DCI in the morning. I’ll have to explain. I reckon he’ll throw the book at me,” Tanya said.

  “No, no he won’t.” But even as he said it Charlie knew that there was going to be trouble. “Look we all missed it. We believed what we were told.”

  “Yes, but if I hadn’t been haring off to Scotland we’d have been more organised.”

  “You’re being overdramatic. Look, explain that we were lied to.”

  “Yeah, like that’s going to help. We’re lied to all the time, it goes with the job. It’s our responsibility to check and we didn’t. This is the end for me I reckon. Career’s on the skids. I’m sorry, Charlie. I hope this doesn’t screw things up for you.”

  “Tanya, you’re blowing it out of proportion. You’re done in. Take some of your painkillers, go to bed and tomorrow we’ll deal with whatever comes, right?”

  There was nothing else they could do.

  * * *

  She couldn’t sleep. The calming effect of the painkillers had been overridden by pumping adrenaline and her brain wouldn’t settle. She tried music, lying in bed with her earphones on so that she didn’t disturb Charlie. She tried reading, but the words were meaningless shapes on the page. Every time she closed her eyes the re-run started again. She saw the charred and blackened body of Suzanne Roper, the burned-out cars and the pools of water lying on the floor. She saw Colin dead beside the river, his face smeared with glue, and the worn-out trainers which had rubbed up blisters on his filthy heels.

  The thoughts jumbled with flashbacks from Scotland. With her emotions in turmoil she shed a few tears for her niece whose charmed life had been tarnished forever. She remembered that Fiona had rung but it was far too late to call her back, and anyway she still had to decide whether she wanted anything to do with that side of her life any more.

  She slid out of bed and dragged her dressing gown over her shoulders. In the kitchen she had a drink of cold water. The garden was dripping. Moonlight shone on wet leaves and shimmered in puddles on the flagstones, but it had stopped raining. She watched the chase of silvered clouds for a while, tried to calm her racing thoughts, but then she was pacing again, between the kitchen and the living room.

  Her arm throbbed, the stitches pulling as she moved it. That was something else that had to be sorted. She had to go and see the force doctor so that they could decide if she would need physio. She stretched and bent it, trying to convince herself that it was healing well enough on its own. She could flex all her fingers now without the shooting pain that she’d had just yesterday. She looked down at her hand. She could probably drive now. Her car was an automatic, she could clutch the wheel okay, surely.

  Back on the landing she stopped and listened outside the spare bedroom. There was no sound, she whispered his name, “Charlie”. He would tell her to wait until tomorrow anyway, and he’d be right, but this inactivity was torment and the house was closing in around her.

  She didn’t expect to find Freddy Stone, but maybe she could find the rough sleepers, have a word. Maybe she could talk to them about Colin, perhaps they’d remembered something. She put on her jeans and a thick sweatshirt, her leather jacket and boots.

  It was easier than she had expected, driving the car. Not much pain at all and it was such a relief to be out, to be doing something. She reversed into the road and headed towards the car park in Crowell Road.

  Chapter 59

  The town was quiet, it was mid-week. One or two student types rolled home from some gathering or another but apart from that, the streets were deserted. The car park closed at 6:30 in the evening so Tanya pulled aside the crime scene tape and drove into the narrow road opposite.

  The car splashed through puddles, jerking and jumping on the uneven surface. She tucked it in as close as possible to the boarded frontage of Alan Parker’s storage unit.

  She climbed from the car and left it with side lights reflecting on the wet pathway. She replaced the tape, it was unsafe and she didn’t want injured pedestrians added to the mix.

  There were no street lamps here, a couple of security lights gave some patchy illumination but the area around the fire site was in deep darkness and she considered turning her headlights back on. But she was out
now, and she wouldn’t be here long. She lifted the hatchback to fish out her torch and her can of PAVA spray, it was night in the city after all. It was cold, and the air felt damp.

  Back at the main road there were no rough sleepers. The churchyard was dark and deserted and under the pedestrian bridge there were just a few empty lager cans and a fast food container. They’d been, and they’d gone. Wasn’t that the way this whole bloody case had been? Chasing shadows and missing opportunities.

  She glanced back and forth along the road, it was empty, and she was wasting her time. Instead of being at home sleeping so that she was ready for whatever tomorrow might bring, she was shivering in the cold wet outskirts of the city on a fool’s errand with no real purpose. Her eyes filled with tears of frustration and she closed the lids and pressed her fingertips hard against them. She would not cry, not now and not tomorrow when she was sacked for incompetence.

  She turned and walked back to the car. Coming nearer to the burned-out unit she could still detect the smell of scorched wood and charred plastic. She leaned a hand against the boards rattling them in the frame.

  She almost missed the thud against the chipboard. She stood for a moment, listening. There was nothing more. She pushed against the boards again, banged on them with the side of her fist. She listened, there was nothing. Maybe it would be useful to go around the back and check that all was secure. She shone her torch down the alleyway. It was all potholes and puddles and she would have to walk to the end of the block before she could gain access to the backs. What would be the point?

  There came another thud. Louder this time, beside her, against the chipboard. She stood side on and put her ear to the soaking surface. She thumped and waited, listening. There were two more thuds. She called out, “Hello, police. Is there someone in there?”

  The response was another thud, a shuffling sound, another thud.

  The boards had been nailed closely together to ensure a weatherproof seal and shining the powerful torch up and down the joins showed her no space where she could peer through. She ran back to the car and dragged out the heaviest thing she could find.

  She banged again on the wood with the wheel wrench, the metal making dents and splinters where it connected. This time there was no response. She tried to find any small gap where there might be a chance to pry off the hoardings but with her weakened arm and the carpenter’s excellent work it was impossible.

  She could call for backup – get a crew down to break in. But then, if she was wrong, it would just be more fuel added the already smouldering failure of her handling of the case. It could have been anything, a strange echo, a reverberation in the wooden frame. What did she know about this stuff?

  She ran down the alley, passed the fronts of the other units, stumbling on uneven ground, splashing through puddles and tripping on discarded cans and bottles. She turned left at the top corner, down the width of the last unit and into the deep blackness of the narrow walkway behind the block. She couldn’t run now, it was too uneven and full of rubbish, but she slipped and staggered by the light of her torch until she came to the rear of the fire-damaged store.

  She shone the torch onto the wired glass of the small rear window. It was blackened with soot and streaked with dirty water and she could see nothing.

  She never heard the approach from the other end of the narrow path. She didn’t see the glint of metal in the moonlight. It was a moment of pain and then everything went black.

  Chapter 60

  Nausea was the first sensation, followed by pain, followed by fear. Tanya opened her eyes to gloom and heard herself moan, before cutting off the sound as her senses returned. She turned to look around and felt the grate of grime against her head. The smell was awful, and it was this which told her where she was. It was the same stink that she had detected outside, but greater, stronger.

  She moved her limbs and was surprised to find that she was free to push herself into a sitting position. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the meagre light. The nausea was abating, and she didn’t think that she would puke. She swallowed hard, raised a hand to her head and felt the sticky residue of blood in a tangle of hair at the side. She hissed with the sharp pain of it as her fingers touched the injury.

  There was no movement anywhere around her; it puzzled her. She curled her legs and raised to her knees. Dizziness held her for a while but eventually she was able to stand, leaning against the wall with one hand, and taking several deep breaths.

  “Hello.” As she called out she turned to peer around the unit. It was empty of the burned-out skeletons of the cars and the various bits of detritus that had been there before. That had all been taken away for forensic examination. In the rear she could make out the shape of scaffolding against the mezzanine. It had been put there to make it safe for access, she supposed. She took a couple of steps forward and that was when two sounds, almost simultaneous, stopped her. One was unmistakably a groan, which came from the corner nearest to the boarded-up frontage; the second was her car, she recognised it immediately. The rumble of the engine and then the sound of tyres splashing through the puddles outside as it was driven away. She panicked, fought against it and calmed herself.

  Tanya moved towards the source of the groan: a dark shape slumped in the corner, curled into a ball on the filthy concrete floor.

  Kneeling in the muck she reached out a hand, touched the head, moved her fingers downward to find the carotid pulse. Weak but regular. She leaned closer.

  “Can you hear me?” There was no response. She shook the hunched shoulders carefully. “Hello, can you speak?” There was a groan and a little movement: the feet lifted and dropped, thudding against the temporary wooden wall, echoing the sound that she had heard outside – louder now at close quarters. Again, there was a groan, a mumble.

  She bent closer.

  “Freddy, is that you?”

  The body tensed briefly.

  “It’s okay, Freddy, you’re okay. I’m going to get us some help. You’re going to be fine.” She pushed her hand into the pocket of her jacket but of course the phone was gone. The can of PAVA spray was gone, the car keys were gone.

  “It’s okay, Freddy, we’re getting out of here now.” She sounded unconvincing to her own ears, but she heard him try to mumble a response. She ran her fingers through his hair but found no lumps, no sticky blood. “Are you hurt?”

  There were no ropes or ties, no restrictions at all, so the only explanation that she could come up with for his condition was chemical. That was good. If he’d been drugged then even now he’d be moving towards consciousness, surely. She rolled him further onto his side and bent his leg and arm to support him, she tucked his hand under his face. Once she was sure he wasn’t going to choke, she moved away and staggered to her feet.

  By now her night vision made it possible to find her way around the space and she went to the small back door. It was closed – locked and immovable. She wasn’t surprised, but she gave it a kick anyway. The shock screamed through her skull and brought back the dizziness.

  “Stupid,” she told herself.

  Slowly she turned back to the scaffolding and, holding the cold metal bars, moved to the front where a ladder had been fixed alongside the burned wooden staircase. She rattled it back and forth. It was firm, and she gripped the sides and began to climb.

  There was no logic to what she was doing, but her phone was gone, she believed her car was gone and there was nothing that she could find on the empty ground floor to help her. The office was the only hope of finding something, anything, that might break the glass in the rear window or hammer a hole in the wooden boards in the front.

  Chapter 61

  In the dim light upstairs Tanya could make out the shape of a desk, filing cabinets, and an office chair. It was still wet there and when she leaned on the chair seat she felt moisture squeeze from the cushion and dampen her jeans. The steel cabinets were cold but dry. When she tried to pull out one of the drawers the metal screeched like a banshe
e. “Shit!” She closed her eyes and waited for the pounding in her brain to ease. It must have been considered too dangerous to remove this equipment and there was, as yet, no sign that the SOCO team had been able to search up there. It made her wonder just how damaged the mezzanine was. She stamped a foot on the floor and felt it shudder under her weight, and heard debris falling into the room below. She should get back down the ladder.

  There were papers scattered on the floor, it was too dark to make out what they were, but anyway they were creased, sodden, and disintegrating. There was no point trying to pick them up. She already had a good idea what had been going on there, and none of it would be written down on paper.

  On top of the desk there was what at first she had taken as a box, but closer inspection showed to be a black, zippered bag. She lifted it, it was heavy, but it was dry. This had not been in the unit during the fire and the onslaught of the brigade hoses.

  She pulled open the zip and tugged the top apart. She couldn’t see what was inside so she dragged out one of the packages. There were many. There were other bags that rattled quietly as the pills inside were jangled together. This was like Suzanne’s cache of drugs, it was just more of the same.

  So, now she had confirmation –not that it had been needed –of the connection between Alan and Suzanne. More importantly, she had enough to arrest Alan, to look into all his dealings, find a connection between him and Colin, and then put him away for a long time. It would give Julie a chance to sort out her life. The thought was cheering.

  All she had to do was get out from this locked unit before he came back for his bag. Plus, call an ambulance for the bloke downstairs, prove the connection between Suzanne, Alan Parker and Colin the Cartman –join all those dots –and all before they threw her out of a job. No problem.

  She probably hadn’t got long before he came back to deal with the loose ends, of which she was one, so she zipped the bag closed again, from habit more than anything, and climbed back down the ladder.