The Detective Jake Tanner Organised Crime Thriller Series Books 1-3 (DC Jake Tanner Crime Thriller Series Boxsets)

by Jack Probyn

  At that moment, Elizabeth returned, holding Ellie in her arms. She wore a stern expression on her face, and her cheeks were flushed. ‘Did you leave the gate open?’ she asked, even though the tone of her voice told him she already knew the answer.

  He had. It had been an accident – a mindless, careless mistake, but he knew the consequences of what could have happened. And if Ellie – or even Maisie – had fallen down the stairs and injured themselves, he would never be able to forgive himself.

  Before Jake could respond, his phone rang.

  ‘Sorry it’s early, fella, but we need you here. By the farm factory. ASAP. We’ve got a major development. It’s Garrison. Something big’s happened.’

  Liam hung up, leaving the words to echo around Jake’s mind. Farm factory. Garrison. What had happened to him?

  ‘Sorry, hun,’ he said, setting Maisie down on the floor. ‘I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you when I can, OK?’

  As Jake leant in to give Elizabeth a kiss, she turned away and sighed a deep, frustrated breath.

  CHAPTER 69

  EMBASSY

  Jake ordered the taxi to The Head of the House so he could pick up his car and drive down to North Ockendon from there. It was an extra leg in the journey, but it was better that he was late than arrive in a cab.

  On the way, he tried not to think about all the possibilities of what could have happened to Garrison. There was no point dwelling on hypotheticals – not until he knew for certain what was going on.

  As he approached the spot that had been chosen for their stakeouts, Jake eased his foot off the accelerator. Two thick lines, like runways, stretched from the gravel into the road, dust and stones kicked up behind them. Jake quickly glanced away from the bush and thought he saw a white stick – perhaps a pencil or a pen – on the other side of the road.

  Paying it little heed, he continued driving, made a right turn at the junction and started down another long stretch of road. This time, at the end of it, before it curved round a bend, he saw a convoy of ambulances, fire engines and police vehicles, their lights flashing and dancing on the tarmac.

  Jake pulled up to the police tape, showed his ID, signed in at the attendance log, donned a forensic suit and then ducked beneath the cordon.

  Ahead of him, thirty yards away, surrounded by an army of road traffic police and the local crash investigation unit, was a car wrapped around a tree. Glass and debris lay everywhere, strewn across the strip of road. Jake recognised the car instantly as Garrison’s new Jaguar and flinched – the sight bore too many significant similarities to Michael Cipriano’s collision.

  Already, Jake’s suspicions and apprehensions were screaming at him.

  He approached the wrecked car in disbelief and peered round the bend in the road. An ambulance crew were driving off in the other direction. To his left, Liam, Drew and Charlotte were hovering around the boot of the Jag.

  ‘What the fuck happened here?’ Jake asked, trying to dissociate himself from the personal aspect of what he was experiencing. He tried to forget that it was Garrison who’d been inside the car. That he was – and there was no doubt in Jake’s mind – the subject of another corrupt and ruthless killing.

  ‘Garrison,’ Liam began. He sounded normal. Too normal. ‘Garrison was involved in a collision in the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘No shit, sir,’ Jake said, staring at the wreckage in front of him. ‘I can see that. He hit a fucking tree.’

  He was trying to remain calm, but it wasn’t working.

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Charlotte asked. She was standing beside Jake with her arms in her pockets, protecting herself from the bitter chill that swept across the asphalt.

  ‘He’s alive and breathing,’ Liam replied. ‘The paramedics are rushing him to hospital now. They’ve said there’s no way of knowing what condition he’ll be in when he wakes up…’ A pause. ‘If he wakes up. The other person with him wasn’t so lucky…’

  ‘Who?’ somebody asked. Jake didn’t know who. He was too focused on Liam’s moving lips to notice anything else.

  ‘Nigel Clayton. The ID found in his wallet confirms it’s him. Paramedics announced life extinct as soon as they arrived.’

  Nigel Clayton. Nigel Clayton. Nigel Clayton. Jake repeated the name in his head in an unsuccessful attempt to clear his mind of every other thought. It didn’t make sense. Why would Garrison be in a car with Nigel Clayton?

  The answer struck him far later than it should have done.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Drew said sheepishly, breaking Jake out of his stupor. There was no emotion in the man’s voice – no sorrow, no empathy, no sympathy.

  ‘I know it’s tough,’ Liam said. ‘But Garrison’ll pull through. He’s a tough biscuit, our Pete. I just wish we’d found him sooner. Terrible accident. Poor guy – he’s been trapped inside that car for hours.’

  Jake squinted. ‘Who found him?’

  ‘I did,’ Drew replied immediately, holding his hand in the air. ‘I was coming over to do the morning shift at about six to relieve him of his duties when I realised he wasn’t there. I called his mobile about fifteen times, but there was no answer. So I drove around the block and saw him like this. Glass everywhere. Blood everywhere, gushing from his face, his temple, his nose. He was still trapped inside the car when I found him. I think it was his legs. And one of his hands was trapped too. I tried to get him out but couldn’t – the doors were locked. So then I called the fire service. It took them about twenty minutes to get here, and they’ve just spent the past hour trying to get him out of the car. It was horrible. I felt so helpless.’

  Textbook. The over-explaining. Providing too much information. Giving the most complete story possible to try to overwhelm and prove their innocence. It was obvious Drew was lying.

  ‘They must have been arguing or something inside the car,’ Drew hypothesised, attempting to fill the silent void between them all. ‘It looks like he lost control and careened off into the tree.’

  Jake looked at the tarmac. ‘How do you explain that? If he’d lost control, he would’ve swerved and applied his brakes. There’s not a single skid mark in sight.’

  Drew opened his mouth but was interrupted by Liam.

  ‘People do funny things when they’re face to face with life or death situations.’

  ‘Wh…? How can you…? Are you…? I don’t believe this.’

  Liam raised his hands in the air in a sign of surrender. ‘There’s not much point arguing, Jake. Not when one of our own is in intensive care. But his being with Nigel Clayton raises more questions than it answers. I hate to say it, but we now need to treat Garrison as a suspect in this case. It’s very possible that they were working with one another.’

  Jake muttered something under his breath.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Liam took a step closer to Jake. ‘I know you’re emotional. I get it; I am too. But there’s a time and place for it. Garrison was one of my closest friends – you don’t think I’m feeling hurt? Fuck you. This hurts like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, and I’d love to have him here with us right now if we could, and I’d love for it not to be true. But it is, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  Jake moved closer to the car, turning his back on Liam, his mind trying to piece together the sequence of events that had led up to the accident. If they were both in Garrison’s car, then where was Nigel’s? He hadn’t seen one on the way down. And how had this happened? He’d been in the car with Garrison in the past; the man was an accomplished driver – he’d never do anything as reckless as this. Why hadn’t Garrison swerved? How had he lost control that badly?

  A whole lot of questions, not a lot of answers. Yet.

  Jake wandered round to the passenger side of the car and leant into the vehicle. While removing Nigel’s body from the seat – so that he could be taken directly to the mortuary – the firefighters had been forced to rip away the door frame. In doing so they’d kicked away and removed a lot of the debris from the
footwell and transferred it onto the asphalt. But not all of it.

  It was an Embassy cigarette, as the helpful little script on it said – Drew’s brand. Could he have been in the car at some point? Why?

  ‘I want you to get back to the office,’ Liam said, distracting him. ‘You and Charlotte. Carry on what you’re doing. Focus all your efforts on Jermaine Gordon. He’s the only connection between all of these people right now.’

  Liam turned to Drew. ‘And I want you to bring him in. Take some uniforms with you as well, just in case.’

  ‘On it,’ Drew said, already starting towards his car.

  Jake and Charlotte took it upon themselves to follow, each heading to their own vehicles. Jake jumped inside his and slammed the door behind him. Resting his head against the steering wheel, he closed his eyes. Over – he just wanted it to be over. But until then Liam and Drew would continue to ruin the reputation of the Metropolitan Police and get away with their deceit and corruption.

  Jake waited until Drew and Charlotte had left the area before starting his engine. There was something he wanted to check out; something that had caught his eye earlier – and he needed to be alone.

  Jake drove towards the farm factory, turned left at the junction and idled towards the stake-out point. He slowed to a halt beside it, making sure he was fully concealed by the overgrowth, and then stepped onto the tarmac. The sun was rising and the birds were beginning to sing, but still, the slight chill in the air remained. Perhaps it was nerves. Perhaps it was the fact that he was petrified at what he might see. Or perhaps it was because he felt like there was an unrelenting sensation of someone following him, watching him, observing his every move.

  He crossed to the other side of the road, crouching low and gazing down at the ground, his eyes scanning the minutiae for any detail. And then something caught his eye. The same thing he’d seen before. It glimmered in the sun, licked with a layer of dew. Jake approached; his intrigue and curiosity and excitement building.

  Hidden within the undergrowth was another Embassy cigarette.

  ‘What the—?’ he said to himself, cut off by his own bewilderment.

  He crouched down and removed his phone, taking several photos of the cigarettes and chiding himself for using the last of his evidence bags the day before. He’d have to get more and come back before it disappeared.

  And then he remembered what Liam had said only moments ago.

  That it had all been an accident.

  Jake was calling bullshit. He just needed to be able to prove it.

  CHAPTER 70

  SCANS

  The warm smell of coffee welcomed Liam like an old friend and reminded him of what it had once been like to drink from the reusable coffee cup that was currently in his office. Good, was the answer, before the alcohol began to nullify the taste of it. He was in a local café, five minutes from the crash site – thirsty and in need of a drink. His head was spinning slightly from the night before, but more than anything he was hungry; he hadn’t eaten anything in over fourteen hours, and he was beginning to shake.

  The proprietor was busy working behind the counter, tending to another patron and seemingly managing the orders of everyone else in the shop. Liam waited in line and gazed up at the menu.

  After a minute of waiting, the woman in front of him received her drink and left.

  ‘Next, please.’

  ‘Good morning,’ Liam said cheerily. ‘Could I have a double shot espresso and a croissant please?’

  The owner smiled and asked, ‘One of those days?’

  ‘Now you mention it, make it a triple.’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  As he watched her make the coffee, Liam couldn’t help but stare at her. She seemed oddly familiar – as though he knew her from a past life. In a way, she reminded him of Charlotte – the blonde hair and the gigantic glasses that swallowed her face and detracted from the size of her forehead. And then he quickly realised the longer he stared, the weirder he looked.

  ‘Here you are,’ she eventually said, placing the IKEA mug on the counter. ‘I’ll bring the croissant over to you shortly.’

  Liam paid and found himself a seat by the window.

  For a while, he sat there and thought about the clusterfuck he had to deal with. Danny. Michael. Richard. Nigel. Jermaine. Garrison. The accident. The hospital. The list was growing. The accident hadn’t gone to plan. Garrison wasn’t dead. Sure, there was a chance his friend wouldn’t wake up. But there was too big a risk that he would. And what would happen then? Would he remember everything, or would he have suffered irreversible brain damage and memory loss? Liam hoped the latter. Garrison had rapidly become a problem that needed silencing, but right now, he was untouchable – in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospital with no way of knowing when anyone would be able to see him again.

  There was nothing Liam could do except wait until Garrison woke up. Then he could silence him again. The dynamic of their relationship had changed and gone past the point of no return. With any luck, Garrison would take his secrets to the grave with him. Although, upon reflection, there was one secret Liam wanted access to most of all: the identity of The Cabal. It was clear to him that Garrison and The Cabal were close, had been in recent months, so it was possible he knew the person’s true identity.

  His phone rang, breaking him from his reverie. He sighed heavily before answering.

  ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Don’t flatter me,’ the voice said.

  ‘Everything’s done. It’s sorted. Richard. Danny. Michael. We’re even getting Jermaine soon. That should help everything you’ve got going on with Henry. I want my share now. A hundred K, just like we agreed.’

  ‘You’re not finished yet.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Danny and Michael have both been taken care of. And I’ve even thrown Garrison into the mix too.’

  ‘What do you mean… Garrison?’ The Cabal asked. ‘What have you done to Garrison?’

  ‘Taken care of him too. He was becoming too much of a threat. He was nearing retirement – who knew what would spill out of his mouth once he was out of all this.’

  There was a lengthy pause.

  ‘You idiot. He never would have been out of it. He would have come crawling back.’

  Of course you’d say that.

  ‘You never had to work with him. He was becoming complacent. He’d given up. I couldn’t afford for him to make mistakes. Don’t forget I’m the leader of this team.’

  The woman arrived and set a plate on the table. Her arrival startled Liam, and as he pulled the phone away from his face, he accidentally hung up.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said, smiling at him. He knew it was probably her customer service smile, but it turned him on.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling back at her. God, he needed sex. A release. Something.

  As Liam picked up his phone again, it started ringing.

  ‘Yes?’ he answered, thinking it was The Cabal.

  ‘Is this DCI Liam Greene?’

  ‘Speaking?’

  ‘Hi, this is Patricia, I’m calling from Thurrock Community Hospital, on behalf of our patient, Pete Garrison. I understand you told our paramedics to keep you informed on everything that’s been going on with regards to Mr Garrison…’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice filled with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.

  ‘I’m just calling to let you know that he’s undergoing surgery at the moment. His legs and ankles were badly injured in the collision.’

  ‘Will he walk again?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. We won’t know the full extent of his injuries until we’ve finished surgery.’

  ‘Is he going to wake up?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but early scans of Mr Garrison’s brain indicate that he may be in a coma.’

  CHAPTER 71

  MOST TO LOSE

  Jake burst into the office and made a beeline for Charlotte, w
ho was already typing away on her computer, holding the phone to her ear.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.

  Charlotte looked up from her screen and gazed at him. She told the person on the phone that she’d call them back.

  ‘What is it?’

  Jake pulled a chair from beside her and leant in close. He kept his voice low so that it was almost a whisper. A part of him thought it would be wise to speak about it in private – outside, in the briefing room – but the other part of him didn’t want to waste unnecessary time.

  ‘Listen,’ he began, ‘something’s not right about Garrison’s collision.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same.’ She removed a sheet of paper from her pocket. ‘When I was on the drive down, I called my supervisor and told him what the latest was. He’s given me the green light for access to all call history and financial records.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Everyone in the team.’

  Jake’s heart stopped. ‘Including me?’

  Charlotte nodded.

  Fuck. If she saw them and realised that he was in financial trouble, she would have no choice but to report it – worse, assume that he was secretly involved with all the corruption.

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘It’s a shitty process. It takes a while. Hopefully, by tomorrow, we’ll have everything. I’ve requested Liam’s info as a priority.’

  I hope I’m at the bottom of the pile.

  ‘I definitely think he’s hiding something,’ Jake said, wanting desperately to change the subject. ‘What happened to Garrison certainly wasn’t an accident. There were no skid marks on the road, and…’ Jake paused to look around him; there was no one in sight. ‘I found a cigarette inside the passenger footwell of Garrison’s Jag, and another on the floor by where he was parked up originally.’

  She looked at him confused. ‘And…?’

  ‘They’re Embassy – and Drew’s the only one who smokes them. The others rip into him for it.’