by Jack Probyn
‘Luke…’ Danny trailed off.
‘Danny, listen to me,’ Jake began, taking another step forward.
But it was too late. Danny had already made his decision: he dropped the phone, letting it smash on the deck, and then sprinted to the side of the boat, where he climbed over the edge of the barrier and vaulted two hundred feet into the English Channel.
Bridger’s heart pounded against his chest, willing itself to break through as he sprinted to the side of the deck. Danny Cipriano had just jumped, and his last chance at salvaging the operation had gone with it. The man would almost certainly die on impact: the fall too great, the water acting like a brick wall as soon his head or neck collided with the surface. Nothing to be done. Two brothers dead, one inside a custody cell.
Today had been a fuck-up from start to finish.
And it was all thanks to one person.
The man standing beside him. The man who, only hours ago, had been shy, timid, reserved, unable to voice his own concerns and convictions but was now the shining light of the investigation capable of handing out orders to senior officers. Jake Tanner had become the true puppetmaster of the operation, and not in the right way.
The job was supposed to be easy. Stall, stall, stall. Allow The Crimsons time to escape and wait for the proverbial dust to settle. But nothing about it had been straightforward. The murder, the abduction, the collar – all just a long list of shitty breadcrumbs he was supposed to follow and cover up, blind. How could he be expected to do a complete job if he only knew half the information?
He couldn’t wait for the absolute hiding he was going to receive later on.
Shit. Show.
But there was one saving grace, one opportunity at redemption. In the two seconds that had passed without his realising, Jake had climbed over the ledge and was positioned precariously on the top, wavering for balance and support. Whether Jake was going to jump, he didn’t know. But a little help in the decision-making wouldn’t hurt.
Just a nudge. That was all. A little nudge. Not too obvious, but not too weak. Finely balanced. Nothing your overactive imagination can’t lie about.
The sound of Danny’s body hitting the water finally made its way up to them. It was a long, long, long way down.
Bridger raised his head, stepped to the side behind Jake and placed his hands around Jake’s waist. He opened his mouth to tell him to be careful but decided against it. Hands clutching the folds of Jake’s love handles, he pushed, and suddenly his hands were supporting nothing but air as Jake plummeted into the water.
CHAPTER 63
OVERBOARD
Jake’s eyes ripped open as the rush of water assaulted his face. The force of the dive had sent him deep into the cold abyss of the Channel, surrounded by a wall of black, the pressure squashing down on his head.
He searched the murky water for Danny, fearing the worst: that the man had been swept underneath the boat. That he had been knocked unconscious upon impact. That he had vanished completely.
Jake allowed the current to carry him, hoping that it would somehow lead him to Danny. As his natural buoyancy lifted him towards the surface, he flailed his arms and legs about, trying to remain submerged. The body vest and clothes on his back weighed him down but not enough.
And then it struck him. Another one. Worse than before. At first it was the intense claustrophobia. Then the fear of imminent death, followed by the crushing pain in his chest. Jake thrashed his arms violently, kicking out, now clawing for the surface, then opened his mouth in an attempt to scream for help. Water flooded in and he swallowed, coughed, ingesting more salty water. He gasped for breath, choking, gagging, running out of oxygen. But there was none. There was only water, surrounding him from every angle.
Yet the surface was still so far away, just out of reach.
Jake stared vacantly at the sunlight burning through the Channel, as the tide overhead rippled and distorted the light into a dozen different rays. Jake lowered his arms to his side, ready to let the water take him wherever it needed to.
And then he felt something behind him. At first he thought it was the boat running him over, trampling him, crushing him. But then he felt a pair of hands wrap around his chest. The hands removed the Velcro from the body vest, threw it off him and then heaved him upward. The pressure in his head released and a barrage of bubbles distorted his vision.
A few seconds later, he breached into the open, gasping for air and spluttering and coughing water out of his lungs and mouth. Then he scrambled his legs and arms to keep himself afloat. Breathing rapidly, he turned to face his rescuer.
There, wearing a wig of seaweed across his head and brow, was Danny. The man’s head bobbled just above the surface and dipped below every now and then as the current pulled him this way and that. How long had he been under there? It had only been a few seconds, but it had felt like minutes, hours. Everything had come at him fast. He didn’t know how it had happened – the last thing he remembered was a slip of the foot and Bridger holding on to him. But right now he was grateful he was alive.
‘Th-Th-Thank y-you,’ Jake said, his body going into shock. He began to shiver as the freezing temperatures of the Channel numbed his skin. His teeth clattered. ‘Wh-Why did you s-s-save me? Why didn’t y-you let me d-d-drown?’
It was then Jake realised how close he’d come to dying, and how he’d betrayed his promise to Elizabeth that he would stay safe and out of harm’s way. If it weren’t for Danny, he would have left his daughter in the same position he had been in when he was younger: fatherless. And for that he would be grateful to Danny. Forever.
‘Too many people have died today. I’m not adding another to the list,’ Danny replied, spitting goblets of water back into the sea.
Jake thanked his saviour again and together they waited, both struggling to stay afloat, until less than a minute later a RIB made its way towards them, bounding over the waves. Their rescuers – consisting of the firearms unit that Grahams had deployed earlier – launched life rings into the water as they approached. Jake was first to be saved. One of the armed officers threw his weapon over his back, leant over the side of the RIB and hefted Jake onto the solid flooring of the boat. For a moment, he just lay on his back, catching his breath, allowing the dark and depressing thoughts of suffocating under mountains of snow to pass from his mind.
He opened his eyes. Light flooded into them and he stared into the sky. In the top-right corner of his vision was a small cloud, thin, delicate, floating through the air, carrying with it the hope of a better day.
The man who’d lifted him to safety suddenly came into view, a wide grin on his face.
‘You took your time,’ Jake said as the officer helped him to a seating position on the side of the boat. The officer placed a space blanket over Jake’s body and handed him a bottle of water.
‘We can drop you back in if you’re going to be ungrateful about it.’
‘You couldn’t pay me enough to get back in there.’
‘There’s a price for everything, lad.’
The remaining officers loaded Danny Cipriano onto the boat and wrapped him in a space blanket of his own. The sun reflected off the aluminium sheet and dozens of shards of foiling danced in Jake’s eyes as he stared at Danny while he was arrested and read his rights. The fight in the man’s eyes had gone.
He had lost, admitted defeat.
It was over.
And Jake had won.
CHAPTER 64
CONFIRMED SUSPICIONS
A few hours later, after he’d completed the post-incident procedures following the police shooting – which consisted of several tedious and mind-numbing reports, and several rounds of questioning and fact-finding interviews – Jake returned to the office. He’d been given the once-over by paramedics, fed some strawberry and banana glucose in plastic sachets for energy, warmed with a change of clothes and then sent on his way.
For most of the hour-long journey back to Guildford, he, Bridger and Pemberton t
ravelled in silence, the morbidity of the past few hours hanging over them like a heavy cloud. Jake’s mind was blank, bereft of any thought while he attempted to process the day’s events – the spiked collar, the keys, the bent cop, the gunshot, the death, his near-death experience. It was a lot for his mind to go through, but as he sat there watching the green hills and trees roll past the window, he felt oddly serene, at peace.
At 7:15 p.m., Bridger pulled into Mount Browne and killed the engine. The three of them exited the vehicle and entered the building, signing in their attendance at the reception desk. Jake avoided the receptionist’s scowl as he wandered past. It was the same man from that morning, and judging by the disparaging look he shot Jake, he wanted to reprimand him for leaving the polystyrene cup on the table at the beginning of the day.
As soon as the Major Crime Team noticed their presence in the Incident Room, they stopped what they were doing and rose to their feet, clapping. Someone in the background whistled. Jake slowed as Bridger and Pemberton entered, separating himself from them. Despite everything he’d done, how he’d almost single-handedly solved the investigation, it wasn’t his place to accept the praise, even if it was bittersweet. He was just training to become a detective. The DCI and DS were the senior rank – they were the ones responsible for the success of the operation, they were the figureheads, they were the ones who should take the credit. Instead he was just going to act as the embodiment of being humble in victory.
As Pemberton and Bridger moved deeper into the room, members of the team rose out of their seats and continued to congratulate them, patting them on the back and shaking their hands. Keeping his head low, Jake stepped to the side and searched for Danika. His friend. His colleague. His closest ally.
He found her at the back of the room where he’d left her. She was on her feet, applauding.
‘You all right?’ he asked, wandering up to her.
Danika looked like a weakened person, as though the day’s events had completely taken their toll on her. A stiff drink was beckoning her, and as she recognised his voice, her eyes widened, and she threw her arms around him.
‘You’re alive!’ she screamed in his ear, drowned out by the cheers of support around the office. ‘I heard about what happened to you. I was worried.’
Jake pulled away from her, smiling. ‘I won’t tell Elizabeth. She thinks you’ve got the hots for me already.’
Danika rolled her eyes and slapped him on the arm playfully. ‘Don’t get too cocky, mate. Just because you stopped the bad guys doesn’t mean you get the girl as well.’
‘Mine’s already waiting for me when I get home.’ Jake scratched the back of his head and sat on the edge of Danika’s desk, folding his arms. ‘I’ll be honest though, mate. I couldn’t have done it without you. You really helped me out there. For a while it felt like I couldn’t trust anyone, but you really pulled through and proved yourself.’
Danika brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and joined him on the edge of the desk. She leant closer, touching his shoulder and kept her voice low. ‘Have you… have you worked out who it is yet?’
‘Still working on it.’
Sort of. For most of the journey back to Mount Browne, he’d been processing everything, but on the way back to shore from the cruise liner, he’d dedicated some serious thought as to who the bent cop could be. And he’d come up with a name.
Danika licked her lips and rolled her wedding ring around her finger nervously. ‘Was there ever a point where you thought it was me?’
Jake didn’t want to lie to her – couldn’t lie to her.
‘There was a moment, yes. Someone suggested it, opened my eyes to the possibility.’
‘What? How?’
Jake dropped his head, avoiding her gaze. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Dan?’
‘Tell you what?’
Jake met her eyes. ‘About how bad things are at home with you and Tony? I had no idea...’
Danika’s brow tightened. ‘What’s that got to do with me being a bent cop?’
‘Because of Roger Heathcote, the family lawyer. With everything you’ve got going on, I thought you might have been roped into it somehow. Maybe you were going to take home a large cut of the profits for your help.’
A small grin flashed on her face. ‘Dammit. Maybe I should have done. Could have potentially saved me a lot of money in legal fees.’ Danika chuckled. ‘And I would have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!’
Jake felt a laugh escape his lips, the first in what felt like a long time. It was a strange sensation, one that felt almost alien to him, yet he was grateful he was able to share it with Danika, whom he realised now he should never have doubted.
‘I do think it’s weird though,’ Danika began, ‘that an image of his letterhead was on the first set of instructions. Seems like a really strange coincidence.’
Jake tilted his head, as if to drain imaginary water from his ears and check the efficacy of his hearing. ‘What letterhead?’
‘Heathcote and Sons. The one you photographed and sent in for graphology… Remember, I said on the phone – the impression of the letterhead on the instructions.’
Jake bit his tongue and pulled out his phone from his pocket. He’d forgotten that part of their conversation given everything that had happened. He unlocked the device – which Bridger had retrieved from the deck for him – and scrolled to his camera roll. There, he found the photo of the instructions Candice Strachan had given to him. Pinching the screen, he zoomed in on the image and held it in front of Danika’s face.
‘Where’s the logo gone?’ she asked, as if that was the correct question to be asking.
‘It was never there.’
‘You mean someone added it?’
That was better.
‘Who told you the logo existed?’ Jake asked.
Danika’s response came after a few moments of hesitation, almost as if she were afraid to tell him the answer. Her head slowly turned towards the office, eventually settling on one person, an imaginary finger pointing at the suspect in a line-up.
DI Mark Murphy was standing in the corner of the room, speaking into the handset pressed against his ear.
‘You… you don’t think that means it was him, do you?’ This time the essence of fear was apparent in Danika’s voice.
She knew the answer. And so did Jake.
Before Jake was able to respond, the doors to the Incident Room opened and a man Jake vaguely recognised entered. His head was long and narrow, as if someone had pinched the sides of it and let the excess skin and bone and brain matter stretch. The officer spoke with Pemberton and, after they’d finished, her eyes searched the room until they fell on Jake.
‘Tanner,’ she called. ‘With Bridger. Danny Cipriano’s just arrived in the custody suite at Guildford Police Station.’
‘You want me to come?’
She nodded from across the room.
Jake hesitated a moment and stared into Pemberton’s eyes for longer than necessary, contemplating, deep in reflective thought. His gaze moved towards Danika to his left; they glanced at one another quickly.
‘If it’s all the same to you, guv, I’d like to sit this one out,’ he said. ‘The guy just saved my life – I’m not sure how I feel about interrogating him right now.’
‘You sure?’
Jake nodded, angled his body towards Danika. ‘Would DC Oblak be able to take my place instead?’
‘I don’t see a problem with that,’ Bridger said, appearing from nowhere with two cups of coffee in his hands. He passed one to Danika. ‘Come on then. Seems like you’re with me.’
Before heading off to the interview, Danika had left Jake with a lump in his throat that immediately made him discount everything he thought he knew. The name of the corrupt officer he’d had in mind had been wrong. DI Mark Murphy was the one who’d been working against him, manipulating everything from behind the scenes – and behind the desk. Not only had he tried to lead the team
down the wrong path with the addition of Roger Heathcote’s logo to the instructions, he’d also used up valuable time and resources.
Murphy stood for everything Jake hated in the police force. It was the ultimate betrayal of trust. But there was still an issue, something niggling at the back of his mind that caused the knot in his stomach to return.
A word. A phrase. A sentence. Something someone had said to him that made him think it wasn’t possible for Murphy to be the bent copper – or to be the only bent copper.
Someone else was involved, a tag team, a duo of corrupt officers working together to help The Crimsons flee the country. One on the ground, one in the office.
Jake recalled what Danny had said to him – about Candice mistaking him for someone else. His conversation with her had struck him as odd as soon as she’d started talking about his watch and how he wore it on the same wrist as one of her sons. In the moment he’d thought nothing of it. Until…
The watch.
The G-Shock.
The sheer unlikeliness of them both wearing the same piece on their wrist.
Bridger.
Then he sat and considered it further. The smell of bleach inside Bridger’s car and the obvious attempts to clean Candice’s bathroom before anyone entered. The amount of time he’d tried to delay and stall the investigation – with the bomb squad and forensics. The numerous phone calls. Trying to pass the blame onto Danika. The interview with Michael that, it later transpired, hadn’t been cleared with Pemberton and was subsequently ruled unlawful.
It all made sense now, but there was just one final piece of evidence he needed in order to confirm his suspicion.
Without realising it, an hour of sitting and contemplating had passed, and Danika returned looking happy with herself – the happiest he’d seen her in a while. It was what she needed right now – a welcome distraction, something to take her mind off everything that was going on in her personal life.