by Jill McGown
She drove out of the hotel courtyard, through the early-morning streets in which the rush hour was building up, but not to any real extent, not yet, and out, on to the motorway, looking clean and bright in the already hot summer sunshine. She made good time once she was free of the city; the motorway was quiet, going north, the lines of slow-moving cars all heading into London. She took the turn-off that led to the new Ml link road, and just over two hours after leaving the hotel, she was driving up to the farm gate. She had told Bernard that she would be back at ten; one of the farmhands was waiting to let her in, and she gave him a wave of thanks as she drove past.
She parked in the courtyard, and got out of the car, walking slowly up the steps towards the unusually closed door, outside which Nell sunned herself. She stepped over the dog, letting herself into the hallway, closing the door again. The office door was also closed, as it always was when Bernard was working in there, a strip of light showing from under it. She took a breath, and opened the living room door.
The smell hit her first, then the heat, and then her whole body went rigid with fright, her hand flying to her mouth, when she saw Bernard. He was lying on the sofa, quite dead, and there was blood, blood on his shirt, blood on the sofa. For a moment, she stood motionless, not even able to think, then gasped painfully as she breathed again, and her heart began to pound, hurting her. But she could move now. She backed out of the room, into the hallway, and stared at the phone, trying to remember how to use it. Her hand trembled as she punched three nines.
‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’
‘Police,’ she said. ‘Police.’
They seemed to want to know a dozen things before they would do anything, but at last they said they would be there, and she should stay where she was. She pressed the cradle, and stared once more at the phone. Nicola. She had to tell Nicola. Gus answered, listened in shocked silence, then told her that Nicola was on her way to an emergency, and was uncontactable until she got back, because he didn’t know where she was. He offered to come over.
‘No – no, you stay there, in case she rings you.’
Steve. She had to get Steve. She forced herself to calm down, to think what she was doing. He would be at the café now, having breakfast; he didn’t eat with the other farmhands, never having quite got over losing his own farm. She knew the cafe number; she had rung the cafe daily when she worked in Bernard’s shop, which supplied June with eggs and poultry, and she still rang her now and then, just for a gossip. But her brain wasn’t functioning. She would have to look it up.
Jack Melville was in the café-cum-newsagent, buying illicit cigarettes. He was supposed to have given up.
‘Can you give me change of a tenner?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ said June, the plump, pretty proprietrix, taking his money and going to the till. The phone rang just as she got there; naturally, answering it took precedence over his transaction. He looked over at the tables, and saw Curtis Law and his cameraman. The cameraman was eating breakfast; Law was engrossed in the crossword.
‘Is Steve Paxton still here?’ asked June, trying to peer round the partition.
‘Here!’ shouted Steve, like a child at school.
‘You’re wanted on the phone.’
Steve performed the waltz steps necessary to get through the tables in the little shop, and lifted the counter flap, letting June out as he went in, there being room only for one person of reasonable bulk behind the counter.
Jack resigned himself to a wait for his change. ‘ No demonstration after all,’ he said to the cameraman. He had been deeply relieved when Sunday had passed without a whiff of civil unrest. He tore the cellophane off the packet. Better smoke it here.
‘No. I pointed the camera at everyone that went near the farm. There were a couple of long-haired weirdos, but if there were hordes of rabid road protesters, I didn’t see them.’ He shot a look at Law. ‘If some reporters got their facts right, it would help,’ he said. ‘He swans off for the weekend, and leaves us with the demo that never was.’
‘Don’t blame me,’ said Law. ‘I just report what I hear. And I was entitled to a weekend off after all that work on Mr Big.’ He took out cigarettes and matches.
‘Do you mind?’ said the cameraman. ‘Some of us are eating.’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Law, putting them away again.
Jack looked sadly at his packet, and wished Paxton would hurry up and let June get him his change.
‘So here we are again,’ the cameraman went on. Golden Boy here reckons they’ll still be coming, and no one’s going to argue with him, not now he’s a hero who took on the mob single-handed.’
‘Pack it in,’ said Law, good-naturedly.
‘It’s all right for some.’ June looked round her little shop. ‘Don’t any of you lot have work to do?’
Law grinned. ‘We are working.’
‘I can see that. Getting to grips with one across must be hell for you.’
He laughed. ‘ But we’re ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.’
‘Your demonstrators won’t be demonstrating in my shop,’ June pointed out, and turned to Jack. ‘ What’s your excuse?’
‘I’m a professional gambler,’ said Jack. ‘I can work with a phone and the starting prices. And if it’s a hot, sunny day and I fancy a walk, I can take one.’ It was just as well, he thought, that he didn’t have to punch a clock, the time Paxton was taking on that phone call. ‘Would you rather we weren’t here?’ he asked her, with a grin.
Steve Paxton was pale when he put down the phone and came out from behind the counter.
‘Is there something wrong?’ asked Law.
Paxton blinked a little, looking round at the assembled company. ‘Bernard Bailey’s dead,’ he said. ‘Mrs Bailey’s just found him.’
Jack saw Curtis Law fold his paper, slide it into his jacket pocket, then he and his cameraman moved like greyhounds, out of the little shop, into their estate car and off, with a squealing of tyres and puff of exhaust.
They were ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, Jack thought, as he watched them drive off.
‘I’m going back to the farm,’ Paxton said to June, then looked at Jack, his eyes widening, and jerked his thumb at the door. ‘That’s where those bloody vultures have gone, isn’t it?’ he said, in sudden angry realization.
Jack nodded.
‘If they’re bothering Mrs Bailey, I’ll knock their bloody heads off!’ Steve banged out of the shop, into the pick-up truck parked outside.
‘I’ll be off, too,’ Jack said absently, opening the door.
‘Hang on,’ said June, waving his tenner at him. She opened the till. ‘I thought it was Rachel,’ she said. ‘But I wasn’t sure – she sounded so odd. Must have got a terrible shock, poor lamb.’ She handed him his change. ‘Well, God forgive me,’ she added, in a loud, defiant tone, ‘but I won’t be sorry to see him six feet under.’ No, thought Jack. Not many people would.
Lloyd and Case were in the Assistant Chief Constable’s office at HQ once again. The last time, Lloyd had made his feelings clear on the matter of the various break-ins, and Case had agreed with him. They were, he had declared, separate, unconnected incidents. Last week, Bartonshire police had arrested someone whom the police of three counties knew to be deeply involved in organized crime, but on whom they had never had so much as the proverbial parking ticket. Now, the drug-trafficking and extortion charges alone would probably net him life.
As a result of Aquarius Television’s activities, they had been able to trace and target Curtis Law’s contacts, mounting a huge observation exercise which led them right to the very top, with more than enough evidence to arrest and charge the man at the centre of it all. They were still arresting the smaller fish swimming round in the ripples made by that arrest.
That, their youthful ACC felt, was a coup that should not have been left to a television reporter to bring off, and Lloyd and Case could not but agree with him.
But what could they do about it now? These whizz-kids worked too hard and worried too much, in Lloyd’s opinion. Didn’t get out enough, if the young man’s pallor was anything to go by. Fewer of them sitting behind desks and more officers on the ground, that’s what they needed if they didn’t want TV reporters upstaging them.
The ACC held up a videotape. ‘This is a preview of a programme which will be going out tonight on Aquarius Television,’ he said. ‘It’s an account of the events leading up to the arrests made, with their not inconsiderable assistance, over the last few days. I’m far from happy with it.’
‘Well,’ said Lloyd. ‘We knew they’d be doing that – that was the point of the exercise, after all.’
‘What we didn’t know,’ said the ACC, pouring himself some water from the carafe on his desk, ‘was that they would be offering it to the network. But they did, and as a result, it will be shown nationwide in due course.’ He put the video in the machine. ‘You are quite widely quoted during this programme, Chief Inspector. The impression given is … unfortunate, to say the least. I want to know if remarks have been taken out of context, if interviews have been unfairly edited, that sort of thing. If they have, we could possibly get an injunction to stop it being shown as it stands.’
He pressed the play button, and after a few moments of blank screen, the station call sign came up. Then Lloyd saw himself in close-up.
‘These are random break-ins, not the work of some Mr Big,’ he said, his voice sounding very Welsh, and very scornful. The picture froze. Over the still, the words MR BIG? WHAT MR BIG? were apparently typed out letter by letter. Then A Law on the Law Special.
The three men watched in silence as the fifty-minute programme unfolded. Curtis Law detailed the various break-ins in the Stansfield division in which drugs had been stolen, with quotes from Lloyd, as the then head of Stansfield CID, as to how the various investigations were being handled, showing clearly that ho overall strategy had been adopted, that each one had been regarded as a one-off.
True, they were giving the impression that these break-ins were occurring daily, one after the other, in an area the size of a postage stamp, and that Lloyd had been too dim to notice what was happening, whereas the investigations had sometimes been weeks, months apart, in towns miles apart, and carried out by a dozen different officers from three different stations, but Lloyd didn’t think the slight misrepresentation actionable. They were giving the dates and locations on the soundtrack. Certainly, most viewers would not be aware of that, but he doubted that they could object.
The programme pointed out that at this point all serious crime in East Bartonshire had been given to Stansfield CID, and that this had resulted in Detective Superintendent Case being brought in to head the department. Had this reorganization of resources helped? The question ended part one.
The commercial break was heralded by Lloyd’s freeze-frame close-up, with his words, now given a slight echo, played over it, and MR BIG? WHAT MR BIG? typed out once again. The second half opened in similar fashion.
No, was the answer given to the question asked before the break. Case’s role was to direct the efforts of the personnel under him, and to take command of major investigations; he had left the day-to-day investigation of serious crimes to his second-in-command.
So Curtis Law had decided to put his theory to a practical test. In disguise, using the name Roger Wheeler, driving a Jaguar, he had set himself up as a man looking for a good, reliable supply of prescription drugs. The audiotapes of his various meetings with sundry shady characters were played, and his request for specific drugs, some widely available, some less easily located, was subtitled, in case the sound quality made it difficult to catch. The subsequent break-ins in which such drugs were stolen were detailed. Then the covertly filmed meeting at his flat was shown, when his order was filled. His contact’s just visible handgun was highlighted, the still shot enlarged until the pistol butt filled the screen, and part two ended as part one had, and as part three began, with Lloyd’s dismissive response.
The programme then covered the resultant major investigation mounted by Case which in the end had involved not just Bartonshire, but two neighbouring counties; the dawn raids carried out the previous week, and the arrest of the man behind the organization, all of which Curtis Law had been invited to witness, and to film.
In silence, over a black background, the most serious charges being brought against the man arrested were rolled up the screen, with a note of the maximum sentence allowed on each, followed by the number of other arrests made as a direct consequence. Over this rolling list of iniquities, Curtis Law’s voice-over said that perhaps the problem society had to face in the twenty-first century was less one of organized crime than one of disorganized policing.
The black faded up to the freeze-frame of Lloyd’s face, and the silence in which the credits went up was broken by his voice: ‘These are random break-ins, not the work of some Mr Big, now with multiple echo effect, so that the last seven words repeated several times as the soundtrack faded to silence again. An Aquarius Television Production rounded the whole miserable thing off.
‘Well, gentlemen?’
Lloyd had been mocked once before, in his childhood, because he had a first name that other children found hysterically funny. The mockery had made him want to cry then, and now he had discovered that it still made him want to cry. But he was a fifty-year-old man, and his colleagues would find it more than a little odd if he did. Besides, he had embarrassed them enough already by making the bloody remark in the first place. He was aware that his face was flushed, and wished he smoked, like Judy did in times of emotional stress. He knew why now.
‘It’s a bit slanted,’ said Case. ‘And sensationalized. But I imagine they’ve made damn sure they’re watertight.’ He did light a cigarette, having waved the packet at his senior officer by way of asking permission, the gesture answered by a brief nod. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I think that the programme’s presentation amounts to a totally unwarranted personal attack on Chief Inspector Lloyd and I would urge the Chief Constable to seek an injunction on those grounds.’
The ACC nodded, and turned to Lloyd, his eyebrows raised, waiting for his comments.
Lloyd swallowed a little. ‘I …’ he began, and cleared his throat. Mr Law’s programme had exposed a nerve that hadn’t seen the light of day since he was thirteen years old. He took a breath. ‘I said what I said, and I said it in reply to a direct question about organized crime – there is no misrepresentation there. As to the other point – Mr Law wanted to make a fool of me, and he has. But if it’s up to me, I would rather we didn’t try to stop them showing it for that reason.’
The ACC ejected the video, and put it carefully back in its slip cover. He looked from Lloyd to Case and back again.
‘Mr Law’s approach may be objectionable,’ he said. ‘But he has indicated a huge hole in our defences. No overall pattern was seen because the cases were buried among many others being investigated, and the large network of thieves and suppliers muddied the waters as far as MO and so on. No individual is to blame for that, but as a service, we must address the problem.’
As far as MO and so on was concerned, Lloyd corrected him, silently. The man used so many bloody words in the first place, you wouldn’t think he’d balk at two more. He watched as the ACC poured another glass of water. Oh, God. The man was going to give a speech.
‘Other industries are using new technology to produce better results with reduced manpower,’ the ACC went on, ‘and we must do the same. The system must be made to work for us, not against us.’ He picked up two sets of papers, and handed one each to Lloyd and Case. ‘To this end, as you will see when you read this document, it is proposed to set up a service-wide system to be known as LINKS, which stands for Local Information Networked Knowledge System.’
Acronyms. Everything was fine as long as you could think up a good acronym. Lloyd glanced at the document and mentally filed it under waste-paper basket as the ACC des
cribed how it was intended to work. There was, of course, to be a working party.
‘The composition of the working party will have been decided by the end of the month,’ said the ACC. ‘It will be given twelve months to complete its task, and it is proposed to second a CID officer full time to head it. I feel it’s important that it be headed by a working detective who knows what is and is not feasible with regard to investigation practices, whose experience will enhance and inform the entire project.’
Yes, yes. Get on with it.
‘I think that one officer in particular has that experience, the necessary authority; and the analytical skills that we need for the job. Before offering the post to her, however, I would welcome your comments. I’m referring, as you may already have worked out, to WDI Hill.’
Lloyd stared at him. He hadn’t already worked it out; he had hardly been listening, still smarting from the treatment he’d received at Curtis Law’s hands. This had to be the worst Monday morning he had ever endured. They couldn’t take Judy. He would fight it. He needed her at Stansfield. Besides, she wouldn’t want to do it, and she would blame him if he didn’t try to get her off the hook.
But someone had to do it, and her logical mind would ensure that whatever system they came up with was as simple and as effective as possible. If the scheme had flaws, which it surely would, she would find them. She was, in short, perfect for the job.
‘I think she would be an excellent choice,’ he heard his own voice saying. It sounded traitorous. She would kill him. But it was true, and it would do her career no harm to get a bit of administrative experience.
‘Couldn’t do better,’ said Case. ‘She’s got a good head on her.’
The words ‘for a woman’ hovered in the air, but weren’t actually spoken. Possibly because Case assumed that that qualification would be taken for granted.