by P. F. Ford
‘Great! Have you had a chance to talk to him yet?’
‘I’m afraid that’s going to be a little difficult.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s done a bunk,’ said Slater. ‘Let me guess. He’s in Spain?’
‘Oh, he’s somewhere a bit more inaccessible than that.’
‘Oh hang on,’ mused Slater. ‘There’s an Eastern Europe thing going on here isn’t there? I bet he’s in Bulgaria or some place like that.’
Jones heaved a heavy sigh.
‘Not even close, I’m afraid. The only way we’ll be speaking to him is through a medium.’
‘You mean he’s dead?’ said a surprised Slater.
‘Apparently he died two years ago, but the interesting thing is his rent and all his bills have continued to be paid on time, just like they always were, so no one has ever questioned what’s going on. Of course, it could just be his ghost haunting the house.’
‘Surely someone like Slick Tony wouldn’t maintain an empty house just on the off chance he might need a bolt-hole for a few days?’
‘It seems unlikely,’ agreed Jones. ‘The utility bills suggest someone has been living there, but we don’t know who or what they’ve been doing. And, of course, we can’t go charging in and talk to the neighbours because the main man’s still in the damned house.’
‘So someone’s being living there incognito for the last two years,’ said Slater, thoughtfully. ‘But doing what?’
‘Now there’s a question we’d all like answered.’
‘The thing that bothers me about all this,’ said Slater, ‘is why Tinton? I mean if you wanted somewhere to hide prior to making an escape, you’d choose somewhere near a port or an airport, wouldn’t you? I just don’t understand why he’d pick on a tiny, nondescript town like Tinton. It’s got nothing going for it that I can see. It’s nowhere near the coast, or an airport, or anything.’
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ agreed Jones. ‘It doesn’t seem to make sense, unless it’s some sort of counter-intuitive thing and he’s picked it because it’s nothing like the obvious hiding place. Anyway, we’re getting off track here. Just keep an eye out for anyone else in or around that house. Perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of our ghost.’
Slater laughed.
‘Maybe we should organise a seance,’ he suggested, as they ended the call.
Once again, he had to admit DI Jimmy Jones was quite good at delivering a bollocking and then raising your spirits afterwards. Perhaps he’d been a bit too hasty judging the man.
Chapter Eight
At last they had their equipment set up. It wasn’t exactly the height of sophistication – they had two small screens set up on a table. One was being fed from the camera at the back of Slick Tony’s house, and one from a camera set up to watch the front from the window of the room they occupied. They were recording what they were seeing, just in case. They also had binoculars and a camera with a huge lens.
The bedroom they had been allocated by Mrs Thatcher was a bit cramped, but it gave them a perfect view, across the green, at the front of number 38. There was only one big drawback as far as DC Richie Weir was concerned – he had to share the space with that young idiot Biddeford. People like Biddeford shouldn’t be allowed to work as detectives. He was so young, and he had a degree. What did you need a bloody degree for? He was just a waste of space.
‘I know you two don’t get on,’ warned Slater, ‘but these are unusual circumstances, so you’ll just have to make the best of it. Steve, I want you watching through the window, using the camera, and Richie, I want you watching the screens. Just do your jobs and try not to balls it up, okay? I don’t want Jones going back to London telling everyone we’re a bunch of idiots. We want to know everything that happens, and we want photos of everyone who comes or goes. Got it?’
‘Yes, Guv,’ they chorused.
‘I’ve got to go and meet up with Jones now. I’ll be back later, and I don’t want to find out you two have been arguing, right? Just do your jobs.’
‘Right, Guv.’
Slater left the room, muttering something about putting his wellies on.
Richie Weir sat in front of the table with the two monitors. Just his luck to get lumbered with the most boring job. He leaned over to one side, farted loudly, and then settled his generous buttocks back on the chair. He sighed happily.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ complained Biddeford. ‘Do you have to keep doing that? It stinks bad enough in here without you adding to it every five minutes.’
‘Better out than in, mate,’ Weir said to the younger man.
‘Not for the rest of us, you dirty sod,’ wailed Biddeford. ‘What have you been eating? Raw sewage?’
‘You can laugh, mate.’
‘I can assure you I’m not laughing. I find nothing remotely funny in having you pollute the atmosphere every few minutes.’
‘Hey, listen. You never hear me complain of gut-ache, do you? If everyone farted when they felt the need, instead of trying to be polite and holding it in, there wouldn’t be half as many stomach complaints, you know. It would save the health service a bloody fortune.’
‘Yeah, maybe, but think what it would do to the ozone layer.’
Environmental concerns were beyond Weir’s sphere of interest. In fact, most things were. If it didn’t have big tits or great legs, it was boring and not worth a second glance. This saved wasting a lot of thinking time on pointless, boring, crappy subjects. The environment was a prime example of a pointless, boring, crappy subject.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Biddeford, sighing in exasperation.
They sat at their positions in silence, and relative harmony, for a couple of minutes before Weir spoke again.
‘It’s a doddle this surveillance lark, you know. We get to sit here in the warm, out of the rain, doing bugger all, while everyone else is running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to keep that poncey DI from London happy.’
‘You speak for yourself,’ replied Biddeford. ‘I’m not doing nothing. I’m watching that house across the green. If anything does happen I’m not going to miss it.’
Weir looked across at Biddeford and gave a pitying shake of his head.
‘Yeah, righto, Mr Goody Two-Shoes. You keep staring out there like that, and it’ll do your head in. That’s why we record everything. You mock me now, mate, but you’ll see. In a couple of hours, you won’t be looking down your nose at me, you’ll be asking me how to make the time pass because you’re so friggin’ bored.’
He’d brought a small personal bag with him, and he rummaged inside it now, eventually producing a crumpled newspaper.
‘You can’t read the newspaper!’ cried Biddeford. ‘You’re supposed to be watching the screens.’
‘Oh cobblers,’ replied Weir. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, is it? I expect the guy’s long gone anyway. He’s not going to sit around waiting for the likes of us. You mark my words – when they eventually move in on that house I bet you a tenner it’s empty. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all a load of old bollocks and he was never here in the first place.’
Having given the young Biddeford the benefit of his years of experience, Weir sat back and returned to his newspaper. He shook the creases out and carefully opened it at page three. He sighed happily.
‘Cor,’ he said. ‘Look at the tits on that!’
Back at Tinton police station, Slater was being briefed by DI Jimmy Jones.
‘We’ve been given some intelligence that suggests our man’s going to disappear tomorrow night, so we need to put a plan together to move in the early hours of tomorrow morning and catch him before he goes,’ he explained.
‘This is your area of expertise, Sir,’ said Slater, respectfully. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Okay. Let’s work it like this. I have a plan, and I’ll explain it to you, but then I want you to tell me which bits might not work. Remember Tinton is your area. You’ll know if there are things that won’t work. Don’t be frightene
d to say. This needs to be right when we go into action, so I’m counting on your local knowledge to make sure it is.’
‘Right, Sir.’
‘Okay. This is my idea…’
Chapter Nine
The plan was in place. DI Jones was taking overall control and would be leading the secondary charge into number 8 once the firearms team had secured it. Slater would be monitoring events from the surveillance house with a direct link to Jones, should it be needed.
Everyone had been briefed and so, in theory at least, everyone knew what they had to do. Slater knew from experience that being briefed and actually understanding what had to be done were often two very different things for some of the Tinton force, so he’d done his best to make sure those who were known to be a little slow on the uptake had been double briefed.
But the firearms team was a different matter. He’d met their team leader and been completely underwhelmed and totally unimpressed. Apparently there was some big security alert going on and the team Jones would usually be able to call on were unavailable. It appeared he was as unimpressed as Slater with the team he had been allocated instead. His advice for Slater to ‘make sure anyone going anywhere near the firearms team was wearing body armour’ seemed to confirm Slater’s suspicions.
It would all kick off tomorrow at 6am. Right now it was 6pm. With 12 hours to kill, Slater was sat at his desk still puzzling over why Slick Tony should choose Tinton. He was poring over the files again. Maybe they’d missed something in his background that would give a hint.
The guy seemed to have just arrived from nowhere, so it seemed probable he had left his past behind him and had entered the UK using a fake identity. Slater could see Jones had submitted a request for information across Europe via Interpol, but there didn’t seem to have been any response yet.
There was a knock on the door. It opened a few inches and a head appeared.
‘I’ve got a fax for DI Jones but I can’t find him. Any idea where he is, Sarge?’
‘A fax?’ said Slater, leaning back in his chair and yawning. ‘Where’s that come from?’
The owner of the head entered the room. It was PC Jane Jolly, better known as Jolly Jane because she always had a smile on her face.
‘1980 I think,’ she said. ‘Apparently there are still some places in the world that haven’t heard of email.’
‘Is it relevant to this case?’
‘Don’t know, Sir,’ she said, with a grin. ‘It’s marked “private and confidential” so I haven’t read it.’
Slater smiled at her.
‘Yeah. Right,’ he said. ‘Of course you haven’t read it.’ He reached his hand out. ‘DI Jones has gone out for a while, but I’ll take it.’ She handed him the fax. He scanned it quickly. ‘You must be psychic, PC Jolly. I was just wondering if there had been any response to an Interpol request, and here you are with a fax for us.’
‘It’s just come in and I thought it might be important.’
‘Whether it’s any use remains to be seen, but thank you for bringing it straight up.’
‘No problem, sir.’ She smiled again and then was gone.
Private and confidential, Slater thought, turning his attention back to the fax. That’s a joke in this place.
Just at that moment Jones burst back into the room.
‘This has just come in,’ said Slater, holding the fax out to him.
‘Anything important?’
‘It’s the first response to your Interpol request.’
Jones took the fax and read through it carefully and slowly before handing it back to Slater.
‘Doesn’t seem to tell us anything we don’t already know,’ he said, disappointed. ‘There’s a name that might mean something to someone, but it means nothing to me. It’s probably a waste of time but here, see what you think.’
He handed the fax back to Slater and retreated to his own desk. Slater set the fax down on his desk and read it through carefully. There was the name – Senka Ilic. Apparently she was significant in Slick Tony’s life at some stage but she had vanished without trace some years ago.
‘What is it with these people?’ he said to Jones. ‘This Senka Ilic is as bad as him. They’re all disappearing and then reappearing as someone else. Why would they do that?’
‘In my experience, people don’t disappear unless they’ve got something to hide, or they’re running away from something,’ said Jones, looking up from his desk. ‘So your question should be, what’s Senka Ilic hiding or running from, and where did she go?’
‘Suppose she’s here in Tinton? Perhaps that’s why Slick Tony’s here.’
Jones looked at him as if he were slightly deranged. ‘Well, well. How could we all have been so stupid? We’ve all been scratching our heads wondering what to do, and all we had to do was check the phone directory for a local resident called Senka Ilic!’
‘Okay, okay. I was only thinking out loud,’ said Slater, defensively. ‘There’s no need to get all sarcastic.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jones, gloomily. ‘I just wish it was that easy. It’s like you said, why would he come to a tin-pot little place like Tinton? It makes no bloody sense. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the real reason why.’
Something was nagging away in the back of Slater’s mind. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but somewhere deep in the depths of his memory an alarm bell was beginning to ring. But why? What was he missing here?
‘Can I ask you something, Guv?’
‘Go on, fire away,’ said Jones.
‘Do you trust your hunches?’
‘Of course I do. Our job relies on us having instincts and hunches. You should always listen to your gut.’
‘Well, my gut’s telling me Senka Ilic is important. It’s telling me I’m missing something that’s right under my nose. It’s-’ His mouth dropped open. The penny had dropped. He knew who Senka Ilic was.
‘Stupid bloody moron,’ he swore to himself.
‘Sergeant?’ said Jones indignantly.
‘Sorry. Not you, Sir. It’s me. I’m the bloody moron. I knew that name rang a bell.’
‘You’re losing me.’ Jones’ irritation was clear.
‘The woman, Sir. Senka Ilic. I know who she is. I’ve met her. She lives right here in Tinton.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes, Sir. She has a new identity now. Her name’s Sophia Ingliss. She’s Alfie Bowman’s girlfriend.’
Chapter Ten
Sophia Ingliss and Alfie Bowman were next door neighbours. In fact, Sophia owned the flat Alfie lived in. She also owned her own flat, and the tea shop beneath it. Ever since Alfie had first moved in, he had been attracted to the mysterious Sophia, who kept herself very much to herself, but it was only quite recently they had become close when Alfie had reunited her with her long-lost niece.
When Alfie had told Sophia about the threatening phone call, she had suggested he do what he was told and keep away from her for a few days. He wasn’t happy about this, but she had assured him she needed a few days to figure out what was going on. And when she insisted he should trust her, what else could he do?
Even so, he’d done nothing but worry about her all day long, and that was exactly what he was doing when his doorbell rang. He rushed to the door hoping it would be her, but was disappointed to find Dave Slater and Jimmy Jones facing him as he opened the door. There were no smiles on their faces.
‘I take it this isn’t a social call?’
‘Can we come in, Alfie?’ asked Slater. ‘We need to talk.’
‘We do?’
There was a restlessness about Slater that Alfie had never seen before, as if he was agitated about something.
‘Please, Alfie,’ he said.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Alfie stepped back to let them in.
Slater led the way through to the lounge.
‘So what’s this about?’ asked Alfie.
‘Is Sophia Ingliss here, Mr Bowman?’ asked Jones.
Their attitudes
, and the mention of Sophia’s name, made Alfie uneasy.
‘This is all a bit formal, isn’t it?’
‘Is Ms Ingliss here, or not?’ insisted Jones.
Now Alfie was concerned
‘No, she’s not. What’s this all about?’ Alfie felt his anxiety rise within him. Was he about to get hauled down to the bloody station again? He wouldn’t go willingly, that’s for sure.
‘Look,’ Slater said, holding his hands up. ‘Let’s all sit down and I’ll explain why we’re here.’
Jones exchanged a look with him that suggested they would be having words later, but Slater ignored him and focused his attention on Alfie, explaining the possible link between Sophia and their fugitive, as told to them by Interpol.
‘We came over to speak to Sophia,’ he finished, ‘but when we knocked on her door her niece told us she came round to see you about half an hour ago.’
‘No. She’s not here. I haven’t seen her since yesterday evening,’ said Alfie, concerned. ‘Are you sure about all this?’
‘We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t sure, Alfie,’ said Slater.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just come as a bit of a shock, that’s all. But now a lot of things start to make sense.’
‘What things?’ asked Jones.
‘Well, it started on the night I first saw Slick Tony. Remember I told you he made the finger gun and pointed it at me? Well, when I got home I didn’t have my keys. Sophia has a spare so I went round there to borrow it. She was upset about something. I thought it was just because I had got her out of bed, but it turns out she’d had a phone call from her ex-husband.’
‘She’s been talking to Slick Tony and you didn’t tell us?’ Jones was aghast.
‘I didn’t bloody know it was him at the time, did I?’ said Alfie, testily. ‘As far as I knew it was just some bloke hassling his ex-wife.’
‘Go on, Alfie. What happened next?’ said Slater, cutting Jones off as he opened his mouth.
‘Next I got a threatening phone call warning me to keep away from Sophia because she’s married and her husband isn’t happy about our relationship. He didn’t threaten anything specific but he said we’d both come to harm if I didn’t end it.’