“One of the men, we think. The women would’ve kept it as a perfect business partnership, everyone with a theoretical say...”
“Like John Lewis, you mean?”
He gave that a moment before nodding. “Anyway, into the partnership hustles a man, late twenties, Liam Kinsella. The kind of man other men don’t want hanging round their wives, especially if they work away from home. Handsome, polite but not quite sure of himself, according to the wives. Looking for excitement. And he’d just inherited a pot of money which he couldn’t wait to invest. So, cut a long story short, three months later an OCC crime analyst reported that an English firm had blipped onto her screen and was due to bring in a job lot of heroin from Liepaja, a town on the coast of Latvia.”
I shrugged my ignorance of both town and country.
“Baltic Sea, once a fishing port, now a mixture of everything. Very Russian, very windy, very dirty. The heroin was worth 15 million quid on the street and weighed in at 220 pounds. That’s the size of an unfit copper.”
There was a pause as we both thought back to colleagues of that size we’d have cheerfully seen ground into powder and sold for profit.
Blackwell picked up his thread. If an English team was handling this haul, the analyst wondered, how would they get it back to Blighty? Charter or cargo flight, heavy goods vehicles, container ship, overland by horse and cart?
“You smile, but it’s been done,” he said. “This stuff hailed from Afghanistan, came up through Russia wrapped in a consignment of handwoven rugs supposedly bound for some poncy furniture store in Oslo. And, as the rugs arrived in Liepaja, so did our Grimsby trawler, ostensibly to refuel before heading home. Question then for OCC was how to elbow aside the Humberside Crime Squad, and when and how to intercept the target.”
I couldn’t let ‘intercept’ go unchallenged. It was another of those handy euphemisms, a word with a fatter meaning now than it had twenty-five years ago. Back then, ‘to intercept’ meant to nick a letter or get the ball off an opposing player; now it meant to shoot down enemy aircraft or catch a serial killer.
Blackwell smiled and gestured for me to say it my way.
“When to jump in and nail the bastards.”
He nodded. “And OCC spent far too long faffing around, afraid of offending colleagues in Humberside, which meant the trawlermen sailed into Grimsby mid-November, unloaded a meagre catch and feigned disappointment. Later the same night somebody went back to the boat for the heroin, took it to Aaron Flaxman’s father’s farm.”
“Two hundred and twenty pounds of heroin’s a lot to sell,” I said. “How did they plan to get rid of it?”
“In one fell swoop and for half its value, to the Heritage IRA.” He smiled. “When those three letters enter a conversation the temperature usually rises, and this case was no exception. Understandably, the IRA quickly became favourites for the murders...”
“Hang on a tick,” I intercepted. “Have I missed something? What murders?”
“Sorry, sorry. The two trawlermen, up near the family farm. Couple of bullets, very amateurish, very messy, but still rendering the victims very dead.”
He’d hooked me in classic style by holding back a crucial piece of information, the two killings, then dropping it into a lull. In the space of twenty words he’d shifted the emphasis of his story: a family smuggling business had evolved into a major drugs trafficker with links to the Heritage IRA who in turn murdered anyone who got in their way. He reached out for his glass and knocked back what was left in a single gulp. I must have looked surprised and offered him another, but he declined. So did I when I offered myself a top-up.
“The wives had reported their husbands and Kinsella missing, but since they weren’t twelve-year-old kids, a file was opened and left dangling. Until the body of one of the trawlermen was found a couple of weeks later in a ditch. Ten days after that his brother-in-law rose to the surface of a slurry pit. Kinsella’s body still to be found. When questioned the wives didn’t know a thing about heroin, Latvia or the Heritage IRA. They gave up the name Aaron Flaxman willingly, saying he was a top dog sort of bloke, alpha male, gave the orders and woe betide anyone who didn’t follow them. But as for him being a murderer, well...” He smiled. “You know how the rest of it goes: unthinkable, can’t believe he would do that, he’s just an ordinary bloke. Be that as it may, the trawlermen’s blood and brain matter were found in the back of a pickup belonging to Flaxman and he was charged with their murders. He’s on remand in Stamford.
“Then one night, middle of April, the local police got a call to Speaker’s Farm. Aaron Flaxman’s father had shot an intruder, winged him. The intruder turned out to be Liam Kinsella and this was the fourth time the old man had caught him poking around the farm.”
“Looking for the overweight copper?” I asked.
Blackwell nodded. Kinsella had maintained he was just hiding out, had been for weeks, and when asked about the heroin he was deeply offended. He hadn’t signed up to bring in stuff like that, nor had the dead trawlermen. When they’d objected Aaron Flaxman had shot them. How did Kinsella know this? He’d seen him do it!
Blackwell thought he’d better boil all that down so that I could digest it more easily. “In other words, this scruff-bag Kinsella was manna from heaven, the best break the local crime squad had had. He’d been standing thirty feet away when Flaxman pulled the trigger. And for a case that didn’t have much going for it, bar some blood and brains in a Chevy pickup, Kinsella’s willingness to talk was a godsend.”
I’d retained most of what he’d said, aware that none of it was as important as the detail he’d left out. I stood up and went over to the sink, filled a jug and poured water into the coffee maker.
“So where do I fit in?” I asked.
He looked at me, scrunched up eyebrows. “Who said you did?”
“You mean you’ve come all the way from ... where is it you live?”
“Guildford, Guildford.”
“You’ve come all the way from Guildford-Guildford to tell me about two trawlermen who’ve been shot dead? You’ve taken me all round the bloody houses to find out if I’m living here alone and, if so, who visits.” He looked away, and I shifted to get back in his eyeline. “The first thing you mentioned at the gate was through traffic. You went on to Laura, the kids, my lady who does! Why?”
The only thing either of us could hear, once I’d stopped making the point, was the water pumping through the coffee maker, slowly, arthritically. I’d been meaning to descale the thing for weeks, never got round to it. Blackwell was chewing his bottom lip, wondering how to deal with the fact that I’d rumbled his technique if not his purpose.
Eventually he said, “Pupil goes back to teacher. I guess I came for advice.”
“Advice, my fanny!”
For a moment the man behind the long, drawn-out crawl towards me reared up on his hind legs. “For Christ’s sake, Nathan, you never could take anything at face value, never mind a compliment! Why else would I be here? The pleasure of your company?”
After some deep breaths he returned to his main purpose. Aaron Flaxman, he said, was coming up for trial. It had been fast-tracked and was due to begin end of September.
“Trial where?”
“The Bailey. That aside, with Kinsella’s evidence it’s gone from being a possibility that he goes down to an almost dead cert.”
Was I familiar with the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act? I wasn’t and had no intention of becoming so. It was an overloaded ark of bureaucratic fence-sitting and back-watching, Blackwell said. It was designed by twelve-year-old lawyers to make the job of catching scumbags like Flaxman harder than necessary, but in so far as it applied to this case everything had been done; the evidence had been properly assessed and an Immunity from Prosecution agreement for Kinsella was in the pipe-line. Right now he was safely tucked away waiting for the trial to start. As for Aaron Flaxman, he was on remand in Stamford, an old prison near Grimsby.
Blackwell loo
ked at me as if I knew what was coming next. I hadn’t the faintest.
“My advice?” I prompted.
He fumbled for words as I took down two mugs from the dresser, both of us aware of the irony that, having insulted him, I was now going to serve him coffee. I went to the fridge for the milk and once my back was turned to him, he blurted it out.
“I’d like to use this place as a safe house for the main witness, Liam Kinsella.”
I turned back to him, milk bottle in hand, and he waited, some time I imagine, for my mouth to close.
“You’d be paid, of course. Believe it or not, there’s a contingency fund...”
“You want me to put up a murder witness in my house?”
He said yes, that was the gist of it, but like all bare facts it could gave the wrong impression and the truth in this matter was only half the story. I suggested that was a contradiction in terms and asked for the other half. He searched for words that wouldn’t upset me, couldn’t find any.
“We think there a chance someone’ll come after Kinsella before he can testify.”
“Fantastic! When the Heritage IRA turn up, we’ll break open a few cans of Guinness, have a ceili. Who the hell are they, anyway?”
He explained that after the Good Friday agreement in Ireland, when everybody was meant to love each other, it didn’t quite work out that way and split the IRA into factions: Continuity, Real and Heritage. Flaxman’s family had tenuous connections to Heritage. He could see, from the look on my face, that none of that had put me in a better frame of mind. He held up both hands to fend off the immediate future.
“Nathan, if you don’t want it to happen, that’s an end...”
“Why weren’t you straight with me, right from the start?!”
He had an answer for that as well but I didn’t like it. There was a chance the current list of safe houses had been compromised. The situation here in Winchendon, quiet village, no through road, few callers, was perfect, but if at any point I’d said one of the kids was living here, or I was in a permanent relationship, he’d have called it off and I’d have been none the wiser. I translated that for him. He hadn’t wanted me to know that he was reeling me in.
I screwed the top back on the whisky, took the glasses to the drainer, then moved the odd item of furniture out of harm’s way. He must have recognised the signs from the old days. Any second now I would reach for someone’s head and slam it down on a hard surface, and since he was the only person in the room...
“I’d better go,” he said. He took his anorak from the back of the chair and stroked out non-existent creases.
“Before you do, Tom, hear this. Your family might not give a toss if a bunch of Paddies break in and blow your brains out. Mine would. They’d be...” I pretended to search for the word. “...upset.”
“It wouldn’t happen, Nathan. You’d have a top flight team here, armed, experienced...”
“Christ Almighty, now it’s a house party! Listen, you may not figure much in your kids’ lives. Each to his own.” He was shaking his head now, avoiding my gaze. “I mean all you’ve said is that Georgina got married, and you didn’t seem too chuffed about that! What about the boy?”
“Graham?”
“Not a mention. I never knew a man who didn’t boast about his son, no matter how well or badly they got on...”
“We lost him.”
Even though I’d understood him completely I still asked, “What do you mean, you lost him?”
“He was killed, just before Christmas. Big pile-up on the A34. Three cars. I just hope he died before they burst into flames. Strange thing to say, I know...”
I didn’t want him to stop talking because it meant the next words would have to be mine. He spared me.
“It’s difficult telling people. They’re sympathetic, of course, but most of them don’t know when to stop. For Karen it just relives the whole business. For me, I have to go right back to the first days, seeing her through it while grieving myself...”
“Fucking hell, Tom,” I said.
He smiled, faintly. “I knew you’d have the right words, Nathan.”
I slumped into the chair at my end and watched as he put the anorak back on and zipped it up. He gestured for me to stay seated as he stretched out a hand.
“Good to see you. You haven’t changed.”
He went over to the door and as he reached it, grabbed the handle, a hundred voices in my head were begging me not to say what came out of my mouth next.
“Hang on a second.”
The handle snapped back and he turned to me.
“This case is important to you, personally? Have you got drugs in the family?”
“Not that I know of. You?”
“Connor. He got a grip on it but it wasn’t easy. Sit down again.” He protested with a painful grimace. “Take your coat off, switch that bloody coffee maker off, pour us both some.”
He did as I’d asked and came slowly back to the table with two mugs. “This may sound trite, but losing a child does so many things. Graham’s death made me consider the morality of what we do in our job sometimes. I think we fall short too often...”
He broke off as if he’d said too much or maybe not enough. Either way, I could hardly challenge him.
“How long would this Liam Kinsella be here?” I asked.
“Four, five weeks at the most.”
“How many people apart from him?”
“Just two from Special Ops. Fewer the better, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Truth is, I haven’t got the resources.”
I nodded. “No spare box of coppers lying around.”
I asked him to give me twenty-four hours to think it over, which would involve putting the matter to Laura Peterson. He understood my wish to do so completely. She came to my house far too often to be left out of the loop. Besides, he added with a smile, it would give him a day to check on her, the gardener and Jean Langan, my lady who does.
As we drank our coffee he spoke wistfully about his dead son, the things he hadn’t done for him and with him. It wasn’t self-pity, but in the space of twenty minutes he beat himself up so badly that a decent referee would’ve stopped the fight after the first round. When he was done he gave me a couple of chances to backtrack, to say no to the whole dumb safe-house project. I didn’t take them. I had an uncomfortable feeling he’d known all along that I wouldn’t.
- 2 -
I took Laura to The Thatch in Thame that evening and we sat in a corner of the old restaurant, all low beams to crack your head on and sudden mirrors to record the passage of time. It was both the right and the wrong place to have chosen: good because the noise from other customers muffled what I had to say, bad because their conversation tested my legendary tolerance.
The clientele was largely mid-thirties, middle-incomers, and a dozen or so were celebrating a birthday at the next table. One of the women caught my attention immediately with her harsh, painful face, blonde hair framing it on three sides. She wore a black, silky dress that had seen younger, slimmer days, but her defining feature was the rapid gunfire laughter, ten degrees louder than anyone else’s, and the more she drank, the more easily it was triggered. I looked at her critically once or twice until I realised that her friends also found her annoying; indeed they were doing their best to sideline her, a fact which gradually made me change sides in this undeclared battle of wills. At eight o’clock, shortly after we arrived, I could have killed her; by nine I would have laid down my life for her. I digress...
Laura was intrigued to know why there’d been a departure from our normal routine on busy days of a quick supper at the pub in Winchendon. I told her that, much as I loved Annie McKinnon’s home cooking, a private conversation in The Crown always became public knowledge within twenty-four hours. Nobody knew how it happened; it was something to do with English village life being made that way.
She’d had a long, hard day at the surgery and was still concerned about one of her younger colleagues who’d ha
d a lump removed from her breast a month ago. Laura was keen to support this newcomer to the practice and, rather than bring in a locum, she was sharing Doctor Sheila Bright’s workload with another partner. I’d voiced my opinion, in spite of it not being asked for, that the seventy-, eighty-hour weeks couldn’t go on for much longer. Laura said they could and would until Sheila’s health was restored.
Though tired she was looking pretty good, better than some of the birthday crowd close by. She’s one of the few middle-aged women I know who look decent in jeans anyway, and that’s mainly to do with the long legs. Above the waist she was wearing a black velvet jacket and a mass of her favourite silver jewellery.
Over one of the house specialities, devilled kidneys on toast, I told her about the murder of the two trawlermen, then explained what Tom Blackwell had asked for and I’d virtually agreed to. She blinked at me, troubled by some new contact lenses.
“You mean his star witness is coming to stay at Beech Tree along with two police officers for a whole month?”
I couldn’t work out if she was troubled or thrilled by the prospect but opted to assume the latter.
“What sort of chap is this Tom Blackwell? If he’s an old friend, presumably you can trust him?”
I corrected her quickly. Blackwell wasn’t a friend, he was an acquaintance, a man trying to do the right thing.
“So, you believe he’s a ... moral man. Isn’t it odd that we, the general we, find that word so difficult to use these days?”
She sat back in her chair, taking her wine with her. A few moments later she came forward again with another question.
“Why did he come to you, you in particular? There must be dozens of acquaintances he could have called upon.”
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Well, is there anything in your joint past that might explain it? A case you worked on, people you knew?”
Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 3