Cut To Black

by Hurley, Graham

  Secretan, alerted by one of his Drugs Intelligence Officers, had sensed this sudden rise in temperature and knew at once the probable consequences. The last thing he wanted was a full-scale turf war, a major nightmare in a city already plagued by drug-related crime. Hence the clarity of the task he’d handed to Cathy Lamb. Get these guys sorted, he’d told her. I want them locked up before it all gets out of hand.

  Cathy, well versed in the difficulties of getting any kind of result in court, had been painstaking in her preparation. The DIO had devoted countless man-hours to establishing supply patterns. The surveillance team had installed a camera in a property across the road and organised a round-the-clock watch. Yet not once had they sussed the house that the Scousers were using as an annexe. Hence last night’s disaster.

  In theory, by now DI Lamb should have had bodies in the Bridewell and a sizeable stash of Merseyside Class A narcotics mainly heroin and cocaine in the property lock-up. In practice, the moment the House Entry boys had done the business, the Scousers had abandoned the late movie two doors along and fled.

  Secretan wanted to know about the later incident at Bystock Road. Who owned the premises?

  “DC Winter was onto the housing benefit people first thing,” Cathy said at once.

  “And?”

  “It belongs to a Dave Pullen.”

  “We know him?”

  “Very well. He’s just done two years for supply. Came out the back end of last year.”

  “He’s had the property a while?”

  “No, sir. Winter says he only signed the contract a couple of months ago. The place was a repo.”

  “So where did he get the money? You’re trying to tell me he stashed it away? Little nest egg for later?”

  “No, sir. Pullen’s big mates with Mackenzie.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Mackenzie staked him when they auctioned the place. Or at least persuaded him to act as nominee. Either way, it puts Pullen alongside Bazza.”

  “And our northern friends would have known that?”

  “Must have done.”

  “Because they wanted to get in Mackenzie’s face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah…” Secretan reached for a sheet of paper and wrote himself a note. “Just what we didn’t need.”

  He paused a moment, staring down at the scribbled names. Then Cathy offered an apologetic cough.

  “I’m afraid it gets worse, sir.”

  “Really?” Secretan glanced up. “How?”

  “The girl we found on the bed, the one that went to hospital. Her name’s Trudy Gallagher. According to Winter, she’s the daughter of a woman called Misty Gallagher.”

  “And Misty?”

  “Is Mackenzie’s shag. Or certainly used to be.”

  There was a long silence. Then Secretan, in a tiny spasm of anger that took Cathy by surprise, screwed up the sheet of paper and tossed it into the bin.

  “I warned you the Scouse kids were trouble,” he said quietly. “Didn’t I?”

  Det-Supt Willard’s Major Crimes Team also operated from Kingston Crescent, a neighbourly arrangement that put the Basic Command Unit and the MCT closer than in practice they really were. While Secretan’s brief was getting on top of so-called ‘volume crime’, the small print of policing a challenging and frequently violent city, it fell to Willard’s squad to take on crimes that attracted a more generous helping of CID resources, unavailable to the likes of Secretan. The bulk of murders, stranger rapes, and complex conspiracies were thus referred to the MCT’s secured suite of offices, which occupied an entire floor in a ne wish block to the rear of the Kingston Crescent site. The largest of these offices, a south-facing room dominated by a long conference table, naturally belonged to Willard.

  Faraday found him in his shirtsleeves, his massive body bent over the phone. Mention of house-to-house parameters and a POLSA search suggested a sizeable operation already underway out at Fort Cumberland.

  Willard nodded towards the conference table and Faraday took a seat. Driving back from the hospital, he’d managed to raise Hayder’s partner on his mobile. Maggie had spent most of the night at the hospital, waiting in Critical Care for some returning flicker of consciousness, and now she was at home, excused classes until she felt able to face the real world again. The conversation had been brief, Faraday offering whatever help he could, but before Maggie had rung off she’d told him that what had happened had come as no surprise. “He’d been working up to it,” she’d said. “Something had really got to him.”

  Quite how this squared with the facts of the case some kind of confrontation, injuries consistent with being run over wasn’t remotely clear, but Faraday understood at once what she’d meant. The times the two men had met over the last couple of weeks, Hayder had struck him as reticent to the point of preoccupation. He felt, he admitted at one point, ‘under siege’, a state of mind that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with his domestic situation.

  Willard had finished on the phone. He left the office without a word and returned minutes later with three mugs of coffee.

  Faraday nodded towards the phone. “How’s it going?”

  “It isn’t. Not yet. Scenes of Crime are talking multiple tyre tracks and we don’t even have a proper fix on where it might have happened. It’s a famous shagging spot. Half the city uses it.”

  Faraday was curious to know who was coordinating the inquiry.

  “Dave Michaels is sorting it out.”

  “SIO?”

  “Me.”

  Faraday nodded, not beginning to understand. Dave Michaels was a Detective Sergeant. Senior Investigating Officer on a case like this was a role for a DI. There were three DIs on the Major Crimes Team. With Hayder off the plot and the other DI flat out on a domestic in Waterlooville, that left Faraday. He had nothing pressing on his desk. He knew Nick Hayder well. So why wasn’t he out at Fort Cumberland, marshalling the troops?

  There was a tap at the door and Faraday glanced round to find Brian Imber stepping into the office. He must have driven over from the Intelligence Unit, Faraday thought. And he must have been expected.

  “Black? Half a sugar?” Willard nodded at the third mug.

  Imber sat down, parking his briefcase beside the chair. A lean, combative fifty-four-year-old with a passion for long-distance running, he’d spent a couple of controversial years banging the drum for an aggressive new approach to the drugs issue, and for the first time Faraday had the smallest inkling of what might lie behind Willard’s early-morning call. There was a sub-plot here, something more complex than sorting out a serious assault.

  Willard had opened his file. He quickly scanned a page or two of notes, then told Imber to get on with it.

  Imber glanced across at Faraday.

  “You’ve seen Nick.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Not good, eh?”

  “No.”

  “OK, so here’s the problem we have.” He reached down for his briefcase and produced a thick file of his own. “Nick has been putting a case together. I’m sure the boss will be going into the whys and wherefores in a minute but the point is this: Nick won’t be around for a while Not the way we’ll need him.”

  “So?”

  “So the boss is after a replacement.”

  Willard’s finger was anchored on a page halfway through his file. He glanced up at Faraday.

  “We’re talking serious covert. You won’t have come across it and neither will anyone else, not if Hayder’s done his work properly.” Willard paused. “We’re calling it Operation Tumbril.”

  Faraday could only nod. He’d never heard of Tumbril in his life.

  “What is it?”

  “Number one, it’s long-term. A year now?” Willard was looking at Imber.

  “Fourteen months, sir.”

  “Fourteen months. That’s a lot of resource, believe me, and there’s days I regret even dreaming we could run with something like this. Tumbril’s
been like the bastard kid no one really wants. I can name you a dozen people in this organisation who wanted it strangled at birth and most of them are still putting the boot in. If you’re looking for serious grief-‘ he tapped the file ‘be my guest.”

  “So what is it?” Faraday asked again. “This Tumbril?”

  Willard abandoned the file and sat back in his chair, briefly savouring this small moment of drama. Normally the most undemonstrative of men, he even allowed himself the beginnings of a smile.

  “It’s Bazza Mackenzie,” he said softly.

  “He’s the target?”

  “Yes. The way we’ve played it, there are other names in the frame, names that’ll make your eyes water, but, fundamentally, yes, we’re talking Bazza.”

  “You finally decided to take him on?”

  “Had to. NCIS were talking full flag level three if we got the spadework under way. Even our lot couldn’t turn that down.”

  The National Criminal Intelligence Service was the body charged with ranking the UK’s major criminals. To Faraday’s knowledge there were only 147 full flag level threes in the country. With the extra funding that came with trying to tackle that kind of notoriety, Willard was right: a major investigation was irresistible.

  Faraday glanced at Imber, beginning to wonder how many other Tumbril files were in his briefcase.

  “But we’re a bit late, aren’t we? Mackenzie’s made his money, gone legit. These days he’s just another businessman… No?”

  “No way.” Willard was emphatic. “That’s what we thought to begin with, but it’s not true. What no one ever takes into account is the nature of these blokes, the way they’re made. You’re right about the money. Mackenzie’s millions in, squill ions in, but the truth is he can’t leave it alone. The guy’s programmed to break the law. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s best at. He’s a local boy, Pompey through and through. He’s done it his way, right from the off, and the bottom line is, he doesn’t care a toss. If it isn’t hard drugs, it’ll be something else. And that’s why we’re going to fucking have him.”

  This, from Willard, was a major speech. In terms of investigative style, the Det-Supt had the lowest blood pressure Faraday had ever come across yet the mere mention of Bazza Mackenzie seemed to put a blush of colour in his face.

  Faraday was about to ask a question about last night, about some kind of linkage to Tumbril, but Willard had already handed the baton back to Imber. According to the DS, there was money-laundering legislation they could use. They’d employed a forensic accountant. They’d acquired truckloads of paperwork from various sources and spent months and months crawling over hundreds of transactions, trying to unpick the web of deals behind which Mackenzie had hidden his profits. None of this stuff was easy, and lots of it to be frank was a pain in the arse, but piece by piece the jigsaw was coming together, and that was what mattered.

  As Imber warmed to his theme, pausing over a page in his file to make a particular set of points, Faraday let the details wash over him. Soon enough there’d be time for a proper briefing. Just now, here in Willard’s office, he wanted to dwell a little on Mackenzie.

  Everyone in Pompey knew the name. Bazza was the man who’d first brought serious quantities of cocaine into the city. Bazza was the onetime football hooligan who’d turned kilos of 9 5 per cent Peruvian into cafe-bars and tanning salons, and countless other legitimate enterprises. Bazza was the guy at the wheel of the latest SUV, at the launch of the latest theme restaurant, in the best seats in the South Stand at Fratton Park. Bazza, in short, was living proof that crime serious crime paid.

  Faraday, unlike many other local detectives, had never had any firsthand dealings with the man, but his control of the city’s cocaine and ecstasy market had been so total, so carefully secured, that it sometimes seemed impossible to come across a drugs-related crime that didn’t, in the end, link back to Mackenzie. Over the years the man had become a legend. He gloried in his notoriety, in his reputation, and the more visibly successful he became, the more it seemed to some that the forces of law and order had simply given up. Bazza, as one DC had once remarked, was a bit like the weather. Always there.

  Watching Imber, Faraday was more heartened by this sudden development that he could possibly express. Like others in the force, he’d been bewildered by Mackenzie’s seeming immunity, failing to understand why he’d never been taken on. Slowly, this bewilderment had turned to frustration, then anger, then to his own quiet shame -resignation. In contemporary policing, he’d finally concluded, certain battles simply weren’t worth fighting. Maybe it was a question of resources. Maybe it was the pressure of a million other things to do. Either way, Bazza seemed to have slipped effortlessly into a prosperous middle age, well connected, beyond reach, a role model for every little scroat in the city.

  Until, it seemed, now.

  Imber was talking about a recent trip to Gibraltar. Faraday touched him lightly on the arm, struck by a sudden thought.

  “How come Nick managed to keep the lid on this?”

  “I’m not with you.”

  “His office is next to mine. I know he’s always shutting the door but there are limits. Surely…?”

  Imber glanced at Willard. Willard hadn’t taken his eyes off Faraday. There was a long silence.

  “You’re telling me Tumbril’s run from somewhere else?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Another nick?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Faraday looked from one to the other. “You’re serious?”

  Chapter 3

  WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 09.40

  Winter loathed hospitals. Ever since he’d been a kid, they’d represented authority. People who’d tell you what to do. People who’d strip you half naked and take the most amazing liberties. People who’d hurt you. A couple of years back, he’d lost his wife to the men in white coats. More recently, after a vehicle pursuit that had gone badly wrong, he’d spent a couple of painful days under NHS care, fantasising about Bell’s whisky and the possibility of a decently-cooked spud. Show Paul Winter a hospital, and he’d be looking for the door.

  The A&E Department, for a Wednesday morning, was already busy. Winter showed his warrant card to the woman manning the reception desk.

  “It’s about last night,” he said. “Girl called Trudy Gallagher.”

  “What about her?”

  “She was brought in by ambulance. Three, half three, this morning something like that. Bit of an incident.”

  “And?”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  The woman tapped a command into her keyboard. The other side of the waiting area, Jimmy Suttle was sorting out small change for the coffee machine.

  “As far as I can tell, she went.” It was the receptionist again, still gazing at the screen of her PC.

  “Went? We talking the same girl?”

  “Here.” The woman turned the screen towards Winter. Trudy Gallagher had been booked in at 03.48. She’d complained of a headache and period pains, and the duty streaming nurse had marked her low priority. The pre-midnight rush had thinned, but with half a dozen patients ahead of her in the queue that still meant a wait of a couple of hours. At least.

  r. Here and here.” Winter touched his ribcage. “She’d been tied up half the night, terrified out of her head. She was in shock. You’re telling me she just walked out?”

  “We can only go on what we’re told. It’s her body, not ours.”

  “Yeah, but…” Winter shook his head. Last night he’d known he should have ridden up to the QA with Trudy but, looking at her, he’d concluded there was no point. She was past talking, past saying anything remotely useful. They’d keep her in at the hospital, bound to. Next morning would be better. Then she’d have something to say.

  “Here…” It was Suttle with the coffees. Winter ignored him.

  “So where did she go?”

  “No idea.”

  “She give you an address?”

&
nbsp; “Yes.” The woman was peering at a box on the screen.

  “And?”

  “No chance.” She gave Winter a withering look. “You blokes ever bother with data protection?”

  Winter obliged her with a smile.

  “Never,” he said.

  He leaned across the counter, trying to check out the screen, but she turned it away. Finally, he gave up.

  “So that’s it?” He pocketed his notebook. “She arrives in an ambulance? She sits here for an hour? Then legs it?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “What about the people who dealt with her? The streaming nurse you mentioned. Where do I find her?”

  “At home, Mr. Winter.” The woman was already clearing her screen for the next patient. “Asleep.”

  Winter phoned Cathy Lamb from the car park. Back from her head-to-head with Secretan, she’d sent him a text message. Secretan was looking for an action plan, some clue to where the inquiry might be headed next, and the DI wanted to know about Trudy Gallagher.

  “It’s fine, boss. Favour?”

  “What does “fine” mean?”

  “We’re setting up to take a statement. Could you do a CIS check for me? Dave Pullen?”

  “What about him?”

  “I need a current address.”

  “93 Bystock Road.” There were limits to Cathy’s patience. “You were there last night.”

  “That’s his rental property. He lives somewhere else. Has to.”

  There was a pause while Lamb accessed the Criminal Intelligence System. Simple checks like these took less than a minute.

  “They’re giving 183 Ashburton Road, Southsea,” she said at last. “Flat 11.”

  Driving back into the city, Winter couldn’t rid himself of the image of Trudy Gallagher crouched in the bare bedroom minutes after Suttle had taken his penknife to the plastic cable ties. Last time he’d seen her, a couple of years back, she’d been a dumpy little schoolgirl with a passion for Big Macs and anything featuring Leonardo di Caprio. Her mum, with more money than sense, had given her a big, fat allowance and let nature take its path.