He is Watching You

by Charlie Gallagher

  ‘Ah, thank God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank God!’

  She sighed — part relief, part regret. This was not the outcome she had envisaged and it certainly wasn’t the one anyone wanted. But her three-year operation was over.

  Chapter 7

  The buzzing sound was the first thing she was aware of this time. She was still wrapped tightly and could barely move any part of her body. She could wiggle her fingers and toes, blink her eyes and open and close her mouth — that was all. She was on her side and her head was hanging a little so her forehead rested on the metal floor. The flies seemed to have increased in number and felt massive as they crawled on her face and neck. She thought there was something wriggling on her belly but she couldn’t be sure. Otherwise, she felt nothing anywhere else. Whatever it was that was wrapped so tightly around her covered everything except her face.

  The smell was still strong and it was getting worse. It mixed with the stale, unmoving heat making her feel dizzy and she could feel the throbbing pulse in her temple. She kept waking then dozing off again soon after. She seemed totally bereft of energy; just trying to move any part of her body or to roll onto her side brought on complete exhaustion. She couldn’t give up though; she had to keep trying. She knew she was in a lot of trouble. She couldn’t recall how she had ended up in this place and that added to her distress. She tried calling out for help but her throat was so sore she couldn’t manage the faintest sound.

  She had been focussing on the tiny spots of light above her. She was pretty certain it was daylight shining through. At times they were so bright it was as if the slenderest of lasers were shining down. At other times they were far dimmer or couldn’t be seen at all.

  Another sensation was new to her: dampness. She could feel it around the tops of her thighs. Her legs seemed to be slightly freer too. She didn’t think she had soiled herself but she couldn’t be sure; her normal bodily functions seemed to have shut down — or at least she was unaware of them.

  She smacked her lips together. They were so dry that they were sore as she parted them again. She longed for some water. Her thirst was driving her to fidget more, to push harder to try and free herself. She had worked out that her hands weren’t tied together as she had originally thought; they were moving independently of each other though held tight against her body. She was trying to focus on her hands. If she could just work them free. She could pull them up a centimetre or two and then they would fall back, but when she’d first started trying there had been no movement at all. It was slow, painful progress but she used it as something to focus on. She kept on pulling her hands up and letting them fall until exhaustion took hold again. Her last thought was of the wriggling sensation in her abdomen. But the darkness reclaimed her.

  Chapter 8

  ‘What the hell was that, Maddie?’ Superintendent Alan Jackson bawled the moment DS Maddie Ives crossed the threshold of his office. He was seated at the desk directly in front of her and there was a meeting table to her left with chairs tucked in under it. She didn’t attempt to sit. She got the impression this wasn’t that type of meeting.

  ‘Can you be more specific, sir?’

  ‘Don’t be smart, Maddie. Yesterday, on the canal bank. You blew an operation that was years in the making. We were nearly there. You just needed to keep your nerve for a few more days — a week tops.’

  ‘Keep my nerve?’ Alan Jackson was not a man who was used to being interrupted. She stopped herself making it instantly worse. His expression was stoical. She got the impression he was trying to make her squirm. She was too angry to squirm — too stupid maybe. Jackson had never worked a covert job in his life, not as a player, not as a detective receiving information from a live subject that blew a job right open. He’d overseen them, sat on the other side of a radio — maybe worked a fixed observation point at best, but anyone could sit in a house overlooking a front door and call up when a subject left. Maddie’s speciality was getting right in among them, right in harm’s way. She’d never been compromised in over a decade and even this time it had been for all the right reasons.

  ‘Yes. Your nerve, Maddie. You were given a very specific task and at no point did your instructions include chasing down a canal path after our main subject and putting the lives of every one of your support team in danger.’

  ‘And what about Eddie Flint’s life? They were going to kill him. He was a dead man walking. They were waiting until he got to the best place for them to dispose of his body. He knew it. Somehow the bastards had made sure he was aware of their plans. He told me in the bar he was having his last drink. The search teams found weights for his feet on the can—’

  ‘I know what we found! I know what he told you! I was back here listening to every word. I was making decisions based on every word, as is my job. Your job was to get information off his phone. A quick data transfer, pure and simple. I’m the man tasked with keeping him alive. But you decided that getting his phone wasn’t enough for you — you wanted to be fucking Wonder Woman or something, so you went stomping after him. There were contingencies in place. We were going to intercept, but in a way that didn’t blow us all out. That didn’t ruin three years of covert work. That didn’t put all of our undercover assets at increased risk of coming to serious harm.’

  Maddie took a step back. His words hit her like the slap in the face had. Pure and simple struck her the hardest. Like getting hold of the phone of one of the most dangerous men in the North West was either pure or simple. It could easily have gotten her killed. She swallowed hard. The events were still a turmoil in her mind. Maybe she had been too quick to react? Maybe this was her mess?

  ‘So what now? There are other subjects working with him that I can get to. They will still have incriminating—’

  ‘Maddie, stop! You’ve fucked up. The operation is one thing — I’ll need to pick up the pieces around that. But now I have to consider you. Your personal safety. You’re at risk. A target. I need to make sure the risk to you is nullified.’

  Maddie had a bad feeling. It had started when she’d first gotten the phone call instructing her to come into a central Manchester police station for a meeting and it had been intensifying ever since. In the previous ten years, she had been in a police station only a handful of times and all of those were when she’d been arrested to keep her cover. Covert assets didn’t report to police stations, and they certainly weren’t summoned there by senior officers who knew this rule better than anyone.

  ‘Okay. So, again, what now?’

  ‘I need to move you. Away from here. A long way from here.’

  ‘What do you mean, away from here?’ Maddie was tired. She had been filling out paperwork pretty much since the incident the day before. Her long day was taking its toll.

  ‘I’ve put out a few feelers. I’ve managed to come up with something. I want you to consider it, but I think it’s the best option for you.’

  ‘Come up with what?’

  ‘There’s a force down south. They have some posts for sergeants going begging. They can provide one that suits you. I’m not entirely sure of the details yet.’

  ‘It’ll be whatever shit no one else wants, I assume?’ Maddie snapped. She wished she hadn’t the second it dropped out of her mouth.

  ‘You’re probably right. But what else would you have me do? Your covert career is over, Maddie. You must recognise that. You’ve been gathering evidence against high-level OCGs. You always knew that being burnt would mean you were out of the arena. Instantly.’

  ‘Who says I’m burnt? I used the safety word. There’s nothing to say it was me that called that strike. It’s not a big leap to assume that Flint was under surveil—’

  ‘Maddie, please!’ The superintendent was shaking his head. He held a sneer. ‘These people are not stupid and we should not assume that they are. This is your life we are talking about and I cannot be putting it at risk. And, trust me, Maddie, you were burnt.’ He rifled through some papers that were laid out on his desk. He pulled o
ne specific piece and read from it. ‘The male was detained on the floor. I could see DS Ives had a visible injury. She was bleeding from her bottom lip and it was also swelling. She addressed the male, telling him what her heels were for. She then stepped onto his crotch area.’ He looked up. Maddie could hardly argue with the account. ‘The same officer does go on to write an assurance in his statement that the placement of your foot was purely accidental, of course — you were merely trying to step over him so you could go and check on the other male and the welfare of Eddie Flint. But let’s be honest, if you wanted to make sure you stuck in someone’s mind, Maddie, stepping on their testicles might be in the top three ways of accomplishing that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why name me? And as a DS? I’m never normally named in police statements? That’s a basic, surel—’

  ‘MADDIE!’ His raised voice caught her out. ‘You’re not a covert officer anymore. It’s that simple. I told them to include your name because he’s complaining about the nature of his arrest and making an assault allegation. Specifically, this is against — and I can quote him here — the slutty whore who stepped on my bollocks. That allegation I should be able to make go away but his memory is another thing altogether. We will redact your name and your role. We’re already feeding our sources that you were a female escort caught up in the incident. That might limit the effort they put into finding you. But it’s a fair bet that they’ll still try. Certainly you cannot pop back up with the same legend. You are finished as an undercover asset. Is that now clear enough?’

  ‘So I just go down to the Met and take up a post doing whatever keeps me quiet. Which probably means going out and about introducing myself as a copper. And that makes me safer down there does it?’

  ‘No. You go further south than that. Lennockshire have a role. Your old force, I believe. The Met won’t have you — seems they also see you as a massive risk to yourself. Lennockshire have just the job. They mentioned something about missing persons, a sort of single point for the force. It sounds interesting and you shouldn’t have any concerns about meeting any members of organised crime groups down there.’

  ‘Lennockshire! The force I left just as soon as I could to go and get some action!’

  ‘Yes. And the last thing you need right now is any sort of action. You need to get your head down and disappear for a while. If that’s true of Lennockshire then it sounds like the perfect place for you. Look, I know this is a bit of a change but you have to understand the situation you have put yourself in. I’ve struck a deal. You will still be a Greater Manchester Police officer. You will go down to Lennockshire and take on this job as a secondment, not a permanent transfer. While you are down there, Lennockshire will support you in getting through your Inspector’s board. You just need to make sure you pass your exams and then you’ll be back up here with some cushy, non-customer facing, inspector role. I know a lot of people who would love this opportunity, Maddie. Covert policing takes a toll on your life. I know you have had to make a lot of sacrifices. You haven’t really had much of a life at all these past three years. This is your payoff. I see this as a good thing for you. How old are you now?’

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Nearly forty, right? You don’t see many UC officers at forty years old, not doing the sort of work you were doing. And an inspector by forty is not to be sniffed at. With your experience, your CV, you won’t need to stop at inspector.’

  ‘I’m thirty-five. Proper washed up, aren’t I, sir? With respect—’

  ‘LET me stop you there, DS Ives! All of the most disrespectful things I have ever heard from subordinates have started with that phrase. Consider what you say while this offer remains on the table. The alternative is a suspension while the assault allegation is dealt with and then being grounded to a rural outpost in the arse end of the Pennines. Think hard.’

  Maddie gave herself a second. She flopped in one of the chairs, no longer caring about formal etiquette. ‘But I like customer facing.’

  ‘You’ll still have that. Just a different sort of customer. The sort that aren’t going to get you killed.’

  Maddie sighed again. This was happening. He was still trying to push the positives but she couldn’t see past leaving a job that she loved in a town she adored.

  ‘When you said there was an option you wanted me to consider, you didn’t really mean there was a choice, did you?’

  Jackson huffed. Some of his earlier anger had dissipated but there were signs it was coming back. ‘This hasn’t been easy, Maddie. The options up here were to get you wiping the arses of the new recruits in a training environment or out counting sheep on a night shift. I still can’t guarantee your safety in either of those roles. You know these people, Maddie — you better than anyone. What do you think they would do if they realised who you were and what you had been doing? I want you out of the North of England. Simple as that. You can refuse. In which case I will look to have you removed from the force in some other way so that when you turn up dead or dying I can at least tell myself that I did what I could to prevent it. So, no, this is not a choice.’

  Maddie got to her feet. ‘Then, with respect, sir. I need to get going. I’ve got a lot to do.’

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Maddie Ives stopped to take in the frontage of the police station in the city of Canterbury, despite the steady rainfall. It was still very warm, like a storm was brewing. It felt ominous in more ways than one. The station stood next to a far larger, more modern building that announced itself as South East College in huge letters. There was a compound on the left side where cars were parked, some marked Police, some not. Most looked like civilian cars — the officers’ own. It was a far cry from her Manchester experience, where huge, block-shaped stations were stuck up in out-of-town industrial estates with grilles over the windows and vicious, impregnable fencing.

  She had travelled down the previous day, the same day as the conversation with her superintendent. It was perhaps a sad reflection on her life that she could just pick it up and move it to the other end of the country without a second thought. She had learned to live lightly. Her work had demanded ultimate flexibility and she had never complained because the work was always good; she was making a difference. But this was not the same. Her hotel was booked out for a month by Greater Manchester Police. They reckoned a month would give her enough time to find somewhere more permanent to live. She was pretty certain they had plucked that figure out of the air. She certainly didn’t foresee spending four weeks in a hotel. She couldn’t stand such places.

  The city centre was a stone’s throw from where she stood. She was from this county originally, but not this area. She had been to Canterbury when she was much younger: a school trip to the impressive cathedral that had dominated the skyline for the best part of a thousand years. The previous night, Maddie had made a brief exploration. There was a subway entrance just a short walk away that ran under busy roads and a roundabout she could see to her right and came up pretty much where the High Street began. Canterbury was a pretty city: the streets were cobbled and tight and its medieval origins were clear. It still managed to maintain the look of a place that had been built around the horse and cart.

  The reception area of the police building was empty. Maddie dropped the hood on her jacket and ran her fingers through her hair. Her shoulders were dusted with spots of rain. A woman walked from a back room to greet her and looked blank when she explained who she was and what she was supposed to be doing here. She had a name to quote — Detective Chief Inspector Julian Lowe. That seemed to get a spark of recognition at least, but nothing more. Maddie sat down. The woman made some phone calls but none of them were hurried. At one point she got into a conversation about her recent four-day stay at a holiday camp. Maddie had to stop herself getting up to remonstrate.

  Eventually she was walked through the station by a PCSO who didn’t seem to be any better informed.

  ‘I’ve just got instr
uctions to take you to the range, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘The range?’

  ‘Yeah. It used to be the firing range, see. Where firearms trained before it all moved to headquarters. Now it’s offices.’

  ‘I see. I was wondering if you just put all of us from other forces up against a wall and shot us,’ she quipped. She got no reaction.

  They walked up a steep, windowless staircase, the only light coming from a weak, circular ceiling light at the top. She turned left and was led through a door where space opened up in front of her. Its origins had been rather crudely papered over; it was still a long, thin, open floor. She could see right to the other end. Desks were scattered in between. Photocopiers and shelving had been stuffed in wherever there was a gap and even where there wasn’t. She was led the full length of the room, and people stopped to look up and over as she passed. Some offered awkward smiles, most faces showed no expression at all. They were all dressed in smart, plain clothes. Their desks were covered in white files. Some of the dual screens played CCTV footage or showed legislation websites. The whole place stank of detection, something Maddie had never wanted to go back to in her own career. As she was led through a door at the end and into a small office, her feelings were a blend of foreboding and the anxiety of being the new officer — despite a decade of dealing with some of the worst criminals the country had to offer. The PCSO announced DCI Julian Lowe as if he was some sort of lord and then scuttled away.

  ‘DS Ives?’ the DCI said. He stood behind his desk and chair, pushing books around on a shelf. His office was small and windowless — at the opposite end to the stairs but with the same atmosphere.

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘You suppose so?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. The DS bit. I’ve never gotten used to it.’