The Stretch (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  Kelly took out a cigarette, put it to his lips, and raised an eyebrow. Unfazed, Caine took out a slim stainless-steel lighter and lit it for him. Kelly blew a thin plume of smoke at the ceiling, then fixed Welch with his cold grey eyes. ‘I killed Preston Snow,’ he said.

  ‘Like fuck you did!’ exploded Welch.

  ‘Frank . . .’ said Caine with a pained look on his face.

  ‘Shot him twice. Once in the chest. Then the head.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Kelly shrugged. ‘Fine. Don’t believe me.’ He took a long pull at his cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Why? Why did you kill him?’

  Kelly shrugged carelessly. ‘He owed me money. Wouldn’t pay and he bad-mouthed me all over the manor. Had to teach him a lesson, didn’t I?’

  ‘And you’re telling me this, why?’

  Kelly shrugged again. ‘It’s on my conscience.’

  ‘Like fuck it is,’ said Welch. ‘You’ve been in prison longer than you’ve been outside. Armed robbery, GBH, theft, you’re a fucking career criminal, Kelly, you don’t have a conscience.’

  Kelly looked at Welch. He slowly pulled up his sleeve, revealing a tattoo of Christ on the cross. ‘I’ve been born again,’ said Kelly. ‘I’ve seen the light.’

  Welch snorted and faced Caine. ‘He’s taking the piss. Terry Greene killed Preston Snow. We had a witness, we had the forensics.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kelly, grinning, ‘but I had the gun, didn’t I?’

  Welch stiffened. His eyes narrowed as he turned to stare at Kelly.

  Kelly grinned up at him. ‘A twenty-two. Serial number filed off it but you’ll get a match on the bullets. You got the bullets, right? Dug ‘em out of the little shit before you buried him, yeah?’

  Welch had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he kept his face impassive as he sat down on one of the chairs opposite Kelly.

  ‘Got your attention now, haven’t I, Chief Inspector?’ said Kelly. He leaned forward. ‘You know the canal, the one that goes through Regent’s Park? Goes to Camden Lock. There’s a path you can walk along. Nice walk of an evening, before they shut the gates. Last bridge before Camden Lock. Look under there.’ He sat back and watched Welch with amused eyes. ‘Praise the Lord,’ he said, and waggled his hands.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Sam walked down the escalator and turned left on to the Tube platform. The electronic board said that there was a train due in two minutes. She checked her watch then walked to the far end of the platform. There were four seats there, little more than individual plastic mouldings on a metal frame, designed so that the homeless couldn’t sleep on them. There was only one man sitting there, and Sam sat next to him. She was holding a copy of the previous day’s Evening Standard and she placed it on her lap, headline uppermost.

  The man glanced sideways at the paper. He was in his mid-forties, his brown hair flecked with grey, and he wore a green anorak over a black polo-neck sweater. ‘You know that’s yesterday’s paper?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

  Two Japanese tourists walked by deep in conversation, studying an A to Z street directory.

  ‘There was an interesting article that I missed,’ said the man. ‘About cars.’

  Sam passed the paper to him. ‘You can have this one,’ she said.

  The man took the paper. Inside was an envelope. He thumbed open the envelope flap and flicked through the wad of fifty-pound notes. ‘Thought maybe you wouldn’t be needing me,’ he said, ‘Terry being inside and all.’

  ‘Terry says it’s business as usual,’ said Sam. ‘The cars are both Mercs, the registration numbers are on the envelope.’

  The man closed the paper. Air rushed along the platform, warning of the approaching train. He stood up. ‘Let me know when they’re coming over,’ he said. ‘Just in case I’ve got to juggle the rosters.’

  The train arrived. It disgorged its passengers, and the man boarded without a backward look.

  Sam sat and watched as the train pulled away. The man she’d just given two thousand pounds to was a senior Customs officer based at Dover who would ensure that the cars containing the counterfeit money weren’t searched as they entered the country. Terry had explained how and when the man was to be paid, that the car registration numbers had to be written on the envelope, and that Sam wasn’t to refer to the man by name. Everything, even down to the out-of-date newspaper, had been planned by Terry. Sam sighed as the train disappeared into the tunnel. She felt like a puppet, and Terry was the one pulling her strings. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. She stood up and went back up the escalator.

  There were double yellow lines all around the Tube station, so McKinley had parked about a hundred yards away. He saw her walking to the car and had the door open for her by the time she reached it.

  ‘How did it go, Mrs Greene?’ he asked as he climbed into the car and started the engine.

  Sam lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t believe that Terry’s got me doing this,’ she said. ‘Fixing up drug deals, threatening corrupt detectives and paying off bent Customs officers. He’s turned me from a housewife and mother into a gang boss in a matter of weeks.’

  McKinley grinned at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘You’re doing fine, Mrs Greene,’ he said. ‘It’s like you were born to it.’

  Sam took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘That’s what scares me, Andy.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Searchlights played across the surface of the canal, the water splintering the light into a thousand shards. It was a bitterly cold night and Frank Welch wore a sheepskin jacket and woollen hat, his gloved hands thrust deep into his pockets. He stamped several times on the canal towpath like a racehorse impatient for the off. ‘This is bollocks,’ he said.

  Simpson, Duggan and Clarke stood at the mouth of the tunnel, their shoulders together as if they were huddling together for warmth. ‘Sounds far-fetched to me, guv,’ said Simpson. ‘Kelly’s never used a shooter before.’

  ‘Sawn-offs,’ said Duggan, taking a hip flask from his back pocket. ‘He’s used sawn-offs before.’ Welch frowned at the pewter flask and Duggan put it back in his pocket, unopened. Welch was a stickler for his people not drinking on duty. Not in view of civilians anyway, and there were a dozen or so onlookers peering over a police line on the other side of the canal.

  ‘Snow wasn’t killed with a shotgun,’ said Welch acidly. ‘He was shot with a handgun. A twenty-two.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Simpson. ‘Kelly never used a twenty-two.’

  There were two divers in the water, and two more on the side of the canal checking their gear. Other members of the diving team held ropes tied to the men underwater, and another diver waited with an assistant in a rubber dinghy in the middle of the canal. They had been searching the bottom of the canal for more than eight hours and had decided to continue through the night rather than starting again the following day. Welch suspected that overtime payments were the prime consideration of the diving team, but he hadn’t argued. He wanted the farce to be over as quickly as possible so that he could get back to Superintendent Edwards and tell him that Kelly was a lying bastard who should be prosecuted for wasting police time.

  ‘How about I go get coffees?’ suggested Clarke.

  ‘There’s no coffee places around here,’ said Welch.

  ‘There’s a pub back up the road,’ said Clarke.

  Welch gave him a withering look. ‘Do I look like I was born yesterday?’ he asked.

  ‘Worth a try, guv,’ said Clarke, unabashed.

  The canal was only about fifteen feet deep and they could see the underwater flashlights of the divers as they moved slowly along the bottom. Welch stamped his feet again. Another hour, he decided. Another hour and he was going to call off the search. They’d started at the point Kelly had described and worked out from there. Now they’d searched the full length of the tunnel and ten feet outside either end.

  One of the spectators on the other
side of the canal was holding a camera with a long lens and a large flashgun. It looked like a professional set-up and Welch said a silent prayer that the man wasn’t a newspaper photographer. That would just about make his week, his photograph on the front page of one of the tabloids. Welch could imagine the headline, ‘POLICE REOPEN TERRY GREENE CASE.’ He shivered.

  There was a flurry of bubbles in the canal and then a gloved hand appeared, holding something aloft. Something glossy and wet, glistening in the searchlights. Something that looked disturbingly like a handgun.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Welch.

  ‘Looks like a twenty-two to me,’ said Duggan.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Terry hung his towel on one of the hooks by the entrance to the shower room and walked under the steaming jets of water. There were only three other men in the showers and they acknowledged Terry with nods.

  Terry soaped himself down, relishing the hot water as it coursed over his body. One of the many things he missed in prison was being able to take a shower whenever he wanted. The three prisoners finished showering and left, their feet slapping on the green-tiled floor. Terry closed his eyes and let the water play over his face.

  He turned around under the water, raising his arms. He heard footsteps and opened his eyes. Two men had walked into the shower room, fully dressed. Terry recognised one. Rodney Hobson, shaven headed and heavily tattooed, was serving a life sentence for a double murder. The man with him was shorter and more squat with a frog-like face, wide lips and bulging eyes. His name was Byrne, and like Hobson he was a lifer. Hobson had a home-made shiv in his right hand, a razor blade embedded in a toothbrush handle. Byrne was holding a wicked-looking metal spike, at least nine inches long. They moved towards Terry, ignoring the water cascading over their prison-issue denims.

  Terry stepped to the side, away from the water. He knew there was no point in saying anything: Hobson and Byrne weren’t there to talk. Calling for help was out of the question, too. No prisoner would respond, and he doubted that the two men had got into the showers unseen by a prison officer. The staff must know what was going on. Terry was on his own.

  Hobson slashed with his shiv and Terry took a quick step back. Hobson grinned. Terry moved to the side and Hobson moved, too. Hobson stepped into a shower stream and his eyes blinked against the torrent of water. Terry seized the opportunity and stepped forward, kicking Hobson between the legs. Hobson managed to twist to the side and Terry’s foot caught his thigh. Hobson grunted in pain and lashed out with the shiv, almost catching Terry’s leg.

  Byrne lunged forward with his spike, and Terry managed to deflect it with his hand. He tried to grab Byrne’s wrist but Byrne was too quick for him.

  The two men regrouped, breathing heavily. Terry ducked down to his left to a drainhole in the floor. He reached inside and pulled out a foot-long piece of lead pipe. He’d hidden the pipe in the drain soon after Dunne’s warning, knowing that there was a good chance that if he was attacked it would be in the showers. He slapped it against the palm of his left hand, a cruel grin on his face. ‘Okay, boys,’ he said. ‘Let’s dance.’

  Hobson and Byrne exchanged a quick look. Byrne looked apprehensive but Hobson gestured with his chin. ‘Get the bastard,’ he hissed.

  Byrne raised the spike and stepped forward, but he was too slow, Terry lashed out with the pipe and it cracked against Byrne’s elbow. Byrne yelled and the spike fell from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor.

  Terry tried to kick the spike away but Hobson moved in, slashing his shiv from side to side. Terry jumped back.

  Byrne was nursing his injured elbow. ‘For fuck’s sake, man, use your other hand,’ said Hobson. He forced Terry back with slashes of the shiv and back-kicked the spike to Byrne. Byrne knelt and picked it up with his left hand.

  Hobson kept forcing Terry back until he was in a corner. Byrne came up behind Hobson, a manic gleam in his eyes, his right arm hanging uselessly by his side.

  Hobson grinned triumphantly. ‘You’re dead meat, Greene!’ he hissed.

  Terry said nothing. He swung the lead pipe slowly, his feet shoulder width apart, waiting to see who would attack first. Byrne would have to use a stabbing movement, and it was the end of the spike that would do the damage. Hobson would have to slash to use the edges of the blade. Different weapons, different methods of attack, different defences. Terry fought to keep his breathing calm and relaxed, knowing that if he hyperventilated he’d lose concentration. Hobson and Byrne were both breathing like bulls at stud, their chests rising and falling, their lips drawn back in savage snarls.

  Is was Hobson who moved first, slashing at Terry’s stomach. Terry breathed in and swung his pipe at Hobson’s head, clipping him in the mouth and breaking a tooth. Blood spurted from Hobson’s lips and he grunted and stepped back. Byrne stabbed the spike at Terry’s face and Terry ducked to the side. He felt a stinging sensation across his chest and realised that Hobson had cut him.

  Terry dropped on one knee and swung his pipe at Byrne’s shin as hard as he could. He heard a satisfying crack and Byrne pitched forward, screaming. Terry stood up and pushed him away, then he charged at Hobson, bringing the pipe down on the back of the man’s shaven head. Hobson’s eyes rolled back and he slumped to his knees. Terry hit him again on the back of the head and Hobson pitched forward, unconscious. Byrne was moaning and trying to get to his feet. Terry stamped on him over the kidneys, and he kept stamping until Byrne lay still.

  Terry stood over the two injured men, panting. He wiped his face, then put the lead pipe back in its hiding place. Drops of blood plopped on to the tiled floor and streaked towards the drain. Terry examined the cut on his chest. It was about six inches long and ran just above his stomach. It wasn’t too deep and by the look of it wouldn’t require stitches.

  Terry took his towel off the hook, wrapped it around his waist and walked out of the shower room.

  Chief Prison Officer Riggs was standing in the toilet area, leaning against one of the cubicles. He straightened up when he saw Terry, a look of surprise on his face. He stared open-mouthed at the blood on Terry’s chest.

  Terry put his hand on the cut and showed his bloody fingers to the officer as he walked past him to collect his clothes. ‘Must have cut myself shaving, Mr Riggs,’ said Terry.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Superintendent Edwards stood in front of the window, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘I’m not sure I understand this aversion to gift horses, Frank,’ he said.

  Welch was pacing up and down, shaking his head. ‘Terry Greene killed Preston Snow. End of story.’

  ‘You’re off the case, Frank.’

  Welch stopped pacing. ‘Like fuck I am!’

  Edwards stiffened. He looked at Welch coldly and Welch realised that he’d overstepped the mark.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Edwards nodded, accepting the apology.

  ‘But I’m telling you,’ Welch continued, his tone more conciliatory this time, ‘Sean Kelly didn’t do it. No way. He’s lying.’

  Edwards moved away from the window and sat behind his desk, steepling his fingers under his chin. ‘Look at the facts, Frank. Why would Kelly lie his way into a life sentence? He’s doing seven years for armed robbery, probably be out in four. Kelly says he killed Snow and he’s given up the gun. It is the gun, right?’

  Welch nodded. Forensics had shown that the bullets that had killed Preston Snow were fired by the twenty-two they’d found in the canal.

  ‘And we never had a motive for Greene killing Snow.’

  ‘Drug dealers falling out. Happens all the time.’

  ‘But we had nothing concrete, Frank. Kelly has a motive. Solid gold.’

  Welch shook his head, refusing to accept what the superintendent was saying.

  ‘So Terry Greene’s going to be out before you can say “miscarriage of justice”, Frank.’ Edwards put his hands on his desk. ‘Your best bet would be to keep your head down and avoid the flak.’

  Welch s
norted and turned to leave.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, but . . .’

  Welch stormed out of the office before the Superintendent could finish.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Sam was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang. It was Laurence Patterson. ‘Samantha, good news,’ he gushed. ‘The best. Terry’s going to be released.’

  ‘What?’ said Sam.

  ‘Terry’s going to be out. A few days, a week at most.’

  Sam felt her legs start to tremble and she put a hand against the fridge to steady herself. ‘What’s happened, Laurence?’

  ‘Someone else has confessed to the murder. And given the murder weapon to the police. It’s an open and shut case.’

  ‘That’s what they said about Terry.’

  ‘This is different, Samantha. The only real evidence against Terry was the witness, and Morrison’s dead—’

  ‘What about the forensics?’ interrupted Sam.

  ‘Called into question,’ said Patterson. ‘Welch could be out on his ear after this.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sam.

  ‘Believe it,’ said Patterson. ‘It’s on the fast track with the Court of Appeal. We’ll be suing for compensation, the works. We’ve won, Samantha! Terry’s coming home.’

  ‘That’s great news, Laurence,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to him, and he says he can’t wait to see you. And he says to hang fire on the other thing until he’s out.’

  Sam frowned. ‘The other thing?’

  ‘You know. The thing you were arranging for him. The business thing.’

  Sam realised what he meant. The counterfeit money. ‘Right, Laurence. Sure. Thanks.’

  She hung up, her mind in a whirl, and sat down at the kitchen table. She wondered why she didn’t feel elated. It was what she’d been working towards, getting Terry out of prison, but she didn’t feel the least bit happy about the solicitor’s news. In fact she had a sick feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. An image sprang into her mind and she realised why she was so apprehensive. It was Terry, outside the church as he was being led to the van in handcuffs. ‘Keep your chin up,’ he’d said. ‘There’s light at the end of the tunnel.’