“I’ll let you know,” Fletcher said as he went out.
~ * ~
Marian was putting the kids to bed. He knew that from the familiar noises in the house, a nondescript semi on Brunei Road just down from Rotherhithe Overground station. Mark Fletcher sat at the IKEA desk in the spare bedroom, which served as his study. It was after eight when he got home from the job and he was tired to the point of exhaustion. He’d told his wife that all he needed was half an hour’s peace and quiet, and he’d gone up to his study taking the bottle of Old No. 7 with him. After a few minutes he’d broken the seal and poured himself a drink. He nursed the glass for a moment, reflecting on his thickening waistline, the result of too many beers, too many snatched sandwich lunches, the unmistakable evidence of approaching middle age, then swallowed the whiskey in one gulp. Fletcher poured himself another.
It was unusual for him to act in this way. Normally he would never shut himself away from his family, he had precious little time with them anyway. Neither would he dream of drinking alone, he’d seen too many go down that road, but then tonight was different. Tonight he was fortifying himself against a deep melancholy as his memory transported him back across the years and conjured up images from the past... images of Helen Ritchie. Had all those years really slipped by in the blink of an eye? All those years she had dwelt somewhere deep in his memory, waiting for the right moment to return and settle the score. Mark Fletcher massaged the moisture from his eyes. It all seemed like yesterday.
It was back in the heady days of his youth that Mark Fletcher, billeted in the single men’s quarters of a Southwark section house, began to get the feeling that a bright young man could make a name for himself in London’s Metropolitan Police Force. The old adage “in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king” seemed more and more appropriate as he assuaged his sexual appetite on an ample diet of nurses and manoeuvred himself into the CID. It was a time of plenty, a time of golden opportunity, and for Fletcher, breathing the sweet clean air of ambition, promotion to Detective Sergeant in record time seemed a natural reward for his talents.
Within a month he had engineered himself a transfer into the freewheeling Peckham robbery squad, had moved into a stylish bachelor pad and was driving a sports car. His star was well and truly in the ascendant. The squad appealed to his vanity: the swashbuckling image of the elite crime fighter, the absence of regimented routine. He began to affect sharp suits, and allowed his hair to grow longer than regulations permitted. Brash, flashy, aggressive and conceited, that was the veneer, and it gave him a glow of satisfaction, when he walked into a bar for a quiet drink, that a proportion of the patrons would slink away in the direction of the rear exit. In his own impressionable eyes, Mark Fletcher was a “bloody good D” who put the fear of God into the criminal fraternity. So when a policewoman named Helen Ritchie joined the squad for a plainclothes attachment, it seemed only natural in the incestuous world of “the job” that an affair was on the cards.
Helen Ritchie was a doll, no two ways about it, and plainly she had been selected for CID because she bore not the slightest resemblance to the archetypal policewoman. She was petite, fine-featured, with a model’s figure and a natural walk with pelvis thrust forward which brought a chorus of wolf whistles from building sites. She wore her coppery hair in a mass of finger curls, like a burnished halo around her elfin face. Her nose wrinkled delightfully when she smiled. Her first day on the squad produced a desperate contest to see who could tempt her out to lunch. DS Mark Fletcher won by a long head. Pretty soon they were seen regularly together, driving out of town in the MX5 for evenings in country inns. After a surfeit of nurses Fletcher was enchanted, felt a fluttering sensation inside himself when they were together, a mild anxiety when they were apart. It was a unique experience. Like the time they lay together on the Habitat settee in his flat, her head cradled against his chest, Ella and Frank duetting on the hi-fi. A wave of romantic imagery suddenly washed over him.
“Helen...”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I really do.”
“What?”
“Love you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“All right.” Her eyes were closed as she listened to the music.
After a moment Fletcher said: “Helen, I really love you.”
“Howd’you know?”
“What?”
“How d’you know’ you love me?”
“It’s how I feel, I just feel it.” Mark Fletcher floundered for the right words.
“How do you feel it?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Mark,” she said, opening her eyes and smiling as she teased him. “What on earth makes you think you love me?”
“I just know it.”
“You think you love me,” she said a little more seriously. “We’d need to know each other a lot better before you’d really know it.”
“Oh, come on, Helen.”
“Believe me, Mark,” she said, really serious now, “you love yourself more than you love me, and when that changes, I’ll know it.”
“That’s a pretty cruel thing to say.”
“There’s no sense in kidding ourselves,” she said, “give it time, don’t rush it.”
“But I love you now.”
Helen closed her eyes again. “Relax, Mark,” she said, “listen to the music.”
~ * ~
Times like this, he thought to himself, she could be infuriating, but he swallowed his injured pride and tried to imagine what it would need to convince her. He had no way of knowing that the convoluted process of female courtship required edging forward slowly, consolidating each move before surrendering further precious resources of emotion. He had no way of knowing that Helen was already enmeshed in the complicated emotional web that he had spun within her. His feelings were still too shallow for that kind of comprehension, and Helen Ritchie, playing the game dictated by her instincts, would never admit it. As if that weren’t enough, sometimes the job intruded.
They were driving home from a restaurant when Helen, who had been in a pensive mood all evening said, “Let’s just park over there, Mark, and talk a minute.”
Fletcher steered the Mazda into a layby and cut the engine. They sat for a moment in absolute silence.
When he could stand the suspense no longer, Fletcher said: “Penny for ‘em then?”
Helen, who had been staring out of the window, turned to face him. “How serious is withholding information?”
Fletcher was taken aback. “How d’you mean?”
“In the job.”
“Depends.”
She bit her lip. “I mean, do you switch off when you’re off duty, Mark? Can you have a personal life as well?”
Fletcher smiled. “We’re like the Pinkertons, we never sleep.”
“Mark, I’m serious.”
“Well,” he said, “you know the score as well as I do, Helen, particularly on the squad. A good D’s supposed to put the job first.”
“What about us?”
Fletcher shrugged. “We’ve done all right so far, there’s no regulation says you can’t live your own life.” He felt a sense of foreboding, like stepping on to shifting sands. “You’d better tell me what’s on your mind,” he said finally.
~ * ~
Helen was staring out of the car window again, her face turned away from him. “How important is Bernard Goodman?” she asked softly.
Fletcher jerked upright in his seat. “What d’you know about Bernard Goodman?”
“Only that he’s a squad target.”
“Jesus, Helen, that’s the understatement of the year. The top brass at the Yard have been busting a gut over him for the past six months or more.”
“Big deal then, eh?”
“Helen,” Fletcher said, “Bernie Goodman and his little team ripped off two mill in bullion
and artefacts from the vaults of the Bank of Japan in the Strand. He’s not just a big deal, he’s the Met’s number one most wanted.”
“I’m the new girl,” Helen said, still without looking at him. “Tell me what makes him so special.”
“Look, love,” Fletcher said, “Bernie’s a star villain, best lance man in the business. He went though the vault of that bank like butter and damn near caused an international incident. The Japanese Embassy went ballistic. Went in from an old sewer nobody knew was there, clean as a whistle, left us with egg on our face. Vanished into thin air. We never got a sniff on that job.”
“I know where he is,” she murmured.
Fletcher was stunned. “Say that again?”
“Bernard Goodman. I know where he is, Mark.” She turned to face him, her expression sombre.
“Come on...you’re kidding me?”
She shook her head. “I wish I were.”
Fletcher took her hand in his. “Look, Helen,” he said carefully, “this is serious. Are you telling me you know where Bernie Goodman is, right now, this minute?”
She nodded.
“Jesus Christ,” Fletcher exclaimed. “You’d better tell me all about it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Look, Helen, we’re not talking about some toerag here, you know, Goodman’s a major league villain. Any D worth his salt would give his eye teeth to nail him. That’s the stuff reputations are made of.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what worries me.”
Fletcher was still holding her hand. “If you know anything about Bernie Goodman’s whereabouts, you need to tell me right now.”
“As you and me, or as detectives?”
“As you and me. God’s sake, if we can’t trust each other now, it’s a poor lookout.”
“All right,” she agreed. “It’s funny how it happened, you know, Mark. I mean me getting a whisper on a thing like this.”
“Go on,” he urged her, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to prickle, “tell me about it.”
Helen frowned. “Well, when I was doing my initial training at Hendon there was a girl in my class called Carol Dunne. How she ever got past the selection board I’ll never know, you could see a mile off she’d never make it. Anyway, I felt sorry for her and we became friends. Weekends I used to go and stay with her family in Devon. She was a strange girl and I got the impression she joined the police in desperation, to try to bring some sort of order to her life. But it didn’t work and after Hendon she did a couple of months as a pro con then packed it in. We kept in touch for a while but when she started working as a croupier in the clubs I didn’t hear from her any more and I presumed she was breaking all her old ties, one by one, and I was the last. Anyway the years went by, then last week, right out of the blue, she phoned me and said she wanted to see me about something important, something she couldn’t talk about on the phone. She sounded so desperate I agreed to meet her, but you know, if she hadn’t made the first move, I’d never have recognized her. She’d changed completely, and let’s say the years hadn’t been kind.”
Helen paused for a moment and then continued, “Well, to cut a long story short, she told me she was living with this Greek and working nights as a croupier and hostess at the Desert Island Club at the Elephant. She said this boyfriend of hers was a right piece of work who’d get juiced up and knock her about then come crawling back and plead with her when he was dried out again. She said she stuck with him because he needed her, and besides...”
“The Desert Island,” Fletcher interrupted. “That’s Danny Hood’s place - a real nutter. Used to be a pretty fair heavyweight boxer before he got punchy and drifted into bad company.”
“Well anyway,” Helen picked up the thread, “Carol told me she was terrified because this boyfriend had got in over his head with Hood. So I told her I couldn’t help unless she was more specific and she came right out with it. She told me they’ve got Goodman locked up in a back room at the club and they’re squeezing him dry. She said the deal had started off as a hideout, but now he was a prisoner and the thing was getting out of hand.”
Fletcher was suspicious. “How’d she know all this?”
“Apparently the Greek’s inclined to brag when he’s had a skinful and she’s scared stiff they’re going to find out and do something to keep him quiet.”
“Well, she knows the score there all right,” Fletcher said. “That’s about Hood’s barrow.”
“She said she couldn’t think of any way out, and then she remembered me and tried the phone number I’d given her way back.”
“OK, Helen.” Fletcher was still sceptical. “So she comes to you and spins you this yarn. What’s to say it’s not just some fairy tale she’s dreamed up to give her man a hard time? What’s her angle?”
“There’s a kid,” Helen said. “I finally got it out of her. She had a baby by the Greek, that’s what’s eating her up. Just one of our little feminine quirks.”
“All right,” Fletcher said, “you get her to come in and we can put something together. We’re going to need a warrant and that means reasonable grounds...do you think she could handle a wire?”
“Mark,” Helen said, “you haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? There’s no way Carol can be involved, or me either. They’d put it together in no time flat. Why do you think I was asking you about withholding evidence?”
“On a thing like this,” Fletcher said, “we could get her into a witness protection scheme, safe house, new identity, new life, and you’re a squad officer so you’re fireproof.”
Helen shook her head. “No way,” she said. “That bunch of maniacs would be on to Carol like a flash and she’d be in worse trouble than she is now. You know witness protection is Mickey Mouse.”
“I could go to the guv’nor, lay it on the line.”
“Oh, Mark, don’t you see? Then I’d have to deny this conversation ever took place. She’s put me in an impossible position just because I felt sorry for her. We were good friends once.”
Helen looked so troubled that Fletcher cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly. “Well, you got it off your chest, that’s a good thing. Now you leave it to me, I’ll work something out.”
~ * ~
But the prize of Bernie Goodman, the gold robber who had outwitted the Yard’s finest, was too much to resist. The following morning DS Mark Fletcher called his team together for a little off-the-record conference. Laid it on the line for them without revealing his informant.
“The only way around this,” he told them, “is to take that pillock Dan Hood out of the frame and soften him up a bit, then we hit the club and collar Goodman.”
“Nick ‘im official, Skip?” one of the DCs asked, and Fletcher shook his head. “No, this one’s a foreigner. We’ll do it off our own bat and see how it shapes. The fewer know about this the better especially as we’ll be off our manor. We’ll book out on general enquiries tonight, two cars will do... oh, and one of you draw a shooter. Give ‘em the usual rigmarole, OK?”
Working to Mark Fletcher’s instructions they pulled Daniel Hood that night, sandwiched his Merc between unmarked police cars as he left the Desert Island shortly after midnight. The exchange in the New Kent Road was brief and to the point. After forcing the Mercedes to stop, the armed detective thrust a 9mm Glock through the driver’s window into the face of the bodyguard behind the wheel whose eyes immediately took on a glazed thousand-yard stare. Fletcher opened the passenger door and invited Hood to step out. “Congratulations, Danny,” he told him. “You’re the star turn for tonight.”
They took Hood to an undertaker’s off the Walworth Road just as Fletcher had planned and in the prep room, which reeked of death and embalming fluid, stripped him naked and laid him out on one of the freezer drawers. Daniel Hood was a hard man. He had a tough smooth face drawn taut by scar tissue, a legacy of his days in the ring. His heavy body had begun to run to fat a
nd looked strangely vulnerable stretched out on the slab. His cold eyes betrayed no emotion. Daniel Hood was accustomed to playing games with the filth.
Fletcher twisted a toe tag around his finger. “Heard you’ve got yourself a lodger down at the Island these days, Danny.”
“What makes you think that, Mr Fletcher?”
“Just a whisper, Danny.”
“Someone’s pulling your leg, Mr Fletcher.”
“Name of Bernie Goodman.”
“Bernie Goodman? Never heard of him.”
“And he’s outstayed his welcome, Danny.”
“I don’t know where you get ‘em from, Mr Fletcher.”
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