I Know You (DI Emma Locke)

by Louise Mullins

  ‘The number plates, where are they?’

  He gives me a questioning look but says nothing. I suppose that’s his defence. Silence cannot be interpreted unless you’ve been read your rights.

  ‘They’re on the vest cam footage and the still images shot during the raid on the chicken restaurant, but they haven’t been written up, and Mr Atkinson is pleading stupid.’

  I’m expecting the Super to say something, reprimand me, anything. But instead he shares a split-second glance with Rawlings, and my pulse grows louder in my ears, my skin instantly cooling with the heart-stopping realisation that I’ve been blindsided.

  ‘What the fuck is going on in this place?’ I don’t give either of them the chance to reply as I lean forward over his desk. Knowing I probably look and sound as hysterical as I feel, but no longer giving a shit how I appear. ‘I joined the Met thinking I was doing good, but the lines appear to have blurred here, and I don’t quite know what the fuck I’m supposed to do about it.’ I straighten my posture and look down at them both with contempt.

  The Super shrugs then says, ‘Tell her. It can’t hurt. She’s savvy, and it’ll be common knowledge soon anyway.’

  ‘What if she says something?’ says Rawlings.

  ‘Uh, hello? I’m still here you know?’

  Rawlings huffs loudly then stands, motioning for me to follow. ‘Not in here. Too many ears.’ The Super remains seated while I exit the office behind Rawlings, making sure to be as loud and clumsy as I do so that others know with whom I’ve left. Because I no longer know who I can trust.

  *

  Almost fifteen minutes later, the streets gridlocked with afterschool SUVs driven by the career-focused, power-hungry parents who can afford to educate their brattish offspring in the local private school, Rawlings finds a parking space. He reverses into the space before it’s stolen by another monstrous vehicle used by another mother to collect her single child.

  The comings and goings of the greasy spoon café on the corner makes the street appear busier than it is. Builders and highway maintenance men and women lean against the wall outside, smoking and talking over steaming Styrofoam coffee cups.

  The engine dies and the air conditioning stops roaring, no longer projecting hot air at my face. I turn to Rawlings to hear him out.

  ‘The arrest team found a large quantity of notes inside the air vent behind the cupboard under the sink of Marley’s flat.’

  This I know.

  ‘While inspecting the chicken shop a large stack of unmarked notes were uncovered. They’d been hidden in a crate of burger buns. There’s no paper trail, so Mr Atkinson can’t prove where the money came from.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘We found more cash, rolled up under the floorboards in his house, along with two ounces of cocaine so we can charge him with possession with the intent to supply class A’s. It’s an odd amount. Eighty-eight thousand so we’re working on the assumption there’s twelve thousand being held elsewhere.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain why we’re ignoring who removed the number plates from, I’m assuming, the same under-floor space, or why. Which is what I came here with you to learn.’

  He stalls as though contemplating what my reaction might be. ‘It’s Pierce. We’ve known for a long time that he’s crooked. How crooked, who he associates with, and what he does, we didn’t know until Natalie walked through those doors. I’ve seen the interview you conducted with her. Pierce was asking closed questions, steering the conversation away from the description of the culprit, and I’m guessing he had some influence in altering Natalie’s statement to fit his agenda and convincing you she was lying, that you should be focusing on a white man who can drive. Only now we know the reason.’

  ‘I had my suspicions, but please, enlighten me.’

  ‘The weed Pierce was purportedly smoking that after a tip-off I discovered inside Sinead’s handbag in her locker here three years ago, matched a missing batch of unrecorded seized goods taken during the raid on Keenan’s brother’s property. The same weed Tyrell was selling for Marley, and which he had on his person in the park when his body was discovered,’ he says.

  ‘When you put Pierce in charge of logging the items found during this morning’s raid on Mr Atkinson’s property as they were brought into the evidence room, you were expecting him to steal drugs. But instead he took evidence that links Mr Atkinson to Mr Newell, who we know has a business relationship with Callahan?’

  ‘Precisely,’ he says.

  ‘So we must assume that Pierce is to some extent, although we don’t yet know how much, involved with Callahan. That’s why you haven’t yet ordered us to bring him in.’

  They’ve got to be arrested at the same time to eliminate the possibility either are informed of the other.

  ‘Pierce’s prints must be found on the number plates we pull out of Callahan’s,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, so Callahan’s going to be fetched first?’

  He nods. ‘I think it might be more impactful and slightly demoralising if he were to be relieved of his liberty by a lower ranking detective than he was when he lost his job.’

  ‘You want me to arrest him?’

  ‘Do you have a problem with that, Maguire?’

  ‘No, but if Pierce is there it might be considered a conflict of interest for his subordinate to handcuff him.’

  ‘Not if you’re not expecting him to be there,’ he says with a wink.

  ‘You’re only going to put Callahan’s name on the warrant because you expect Pierce to be there?’ He nods. ‘Okay, I’ll do it. But I want Benson with me.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll drive us back to the department and you can herd the sheep.’

  SINEAD

  Newport, Wales

  When I call Croydon CID again, I’m informed DC Pierce is not in the office. After a lengthy wait I eventually get put through to DS Maguire, who’s just arrived back from an excursion. ‘Pierce answered the phone when I called earlier, and I told him my suspicions about Robert Callahan being involved in Evesham’s murder. I assumed you’d picked up the call, that I was talking to you.’

  ‘Uh, okay, hold tight. Maybe go next door to your neighbour’s house? And take your phone.’

  I finish the sentence for her: ‘In case there are any others over the bridge who are involved with Peters, Newell, or Callahan, who wish to harm me.’

  I still don’t know the reason I was targeted. I suspect it has something to do with my knowledge regarding Marley, but now he’s locked up in prison pending a court date, I should be safe. So why am I almost crippled with anxiety?

  Aeron’s not returning home tonight. He said the atmosphere in the house was too ‘constricting’ and he can’t sleep in our bed ‘alone,’ so he’s staying in a B&B in Maindee, a couple of miles down the road, until he can collect the keys to his flat. Without a male presence in the house I feel even more vulnerable.

  I head upstairs to grab a jumper, tug it down over my head, and leg it back downstairs to snap my coat off the hook, slam my feet in my trainers, and retrieve my keys from the kitchen counter.

  I have every intention of going next door to sit with Gillian as DI Locke suggested, but confronted with the car Aeron insisted I buy using my thousand-pound overdraft before I discovered he’d decided to leave me and had re-mortgaged the house to buy himself a one bedroom flat behind my back, I get inside it and drive away. I know that if I don’t start taking back control, I’ll lose the confidence I’ve regained in driving over the past few days.

  I hadn’t intended on pulling up outside the office to Delaney Construction. My journey here seems to have occurred naturally. As though it was just yesterday that I last drove here, parked alongside the building, and rode with Gareth out of town.

  An image of him forms in my mind and the harder I stare at my reflection in the glass the more real his form becomes, almost as if…

  I jump back in my seat at a knock on the glass and jerk my head so violently to my passenger window
I go dizzy. Gareth stands there, looking confused, his greying hair sprouting in tufts around his ears, his tanned neck fleshy soft, and glistening from the drizzling rain.

  I wind the window down. He leans his elbows on the frame, rests his head sideways on one forearm. ‘Can’t keep away from me, huh?’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m here.’

  ‘To ask if I wanted a coffee, wasn’t it?’ He smiles, and I can’t help but grin back.

  ‘Hop in.’ I tilt my head towards the passenger seat.

  ‘Won’t your husband mind?’ he says, as he glides into the car, closing the door gently on the cold afternoon mist.

  ‘We’re separated.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since we both realised lying to each other was destroying our marriage.’

  ‘Who’s collecting the children from school? It’s almost kicking out time, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’s doing the school-runs until, well, I can’t really discuss it, and I don’t want to bore you, but the man who smashed his car into mine? He’s been caught. Long story short, he had an accomplice, and it turns out to be someone I once worked with.’ I pull out of the space and do a three-sixty.

  ‘From Croydon?’

  ‘Yes.’ I turn onto the main road.

  ‘Aeron’s running the children to school and back until the men are charged?’

  ‘Sentenced. They were refused bail.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they were detectives?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Watch out!’

  With a screech of tyres, I manage to avoid a woman turning out of Tesco Metro without indicating, barely able to see over the steering wheel. I glance at Gareth’s hand planted firmly over mine, assisting my manoeuvre out of harm’s way. He looks at me, releases his grip and sits back in his seat, straightening his neck with a few uncomfortable clicks. ‘Teamwork.’

  ‘Teamwork,’ I rasp, unable to ignore my pounding heart.

  I dampen my lips with my tongue and try to refrain from glancing lustily at the man who gives me butterflies every time I dart a look into the wing mirror.

  I follow the A48 into Llanwern, towards the only derelict building still part-standing on the old steelworks site that’s now a windfarm replete with wind turbines and solar-panels. Large chunks of the stone walls have fallen into crumbled piles, decorating the scrubby earth surrounding it.

  ‘I almost bought this place, you know,’ he says as we exit the car. ‘But the ground has a high radon level, so I’d never have been granted planning approval. It’s a shame because you could fit an entire estate on this land. It goes all the way back along there.’ He points towards a chimney where thick plumes of grey smoke still chug into the cloudy sky. A small part of the site, nearest the rail-tracks still operating. Further down the road there are new homes being built, as well as a shopping mall, water park, and trading estate.

  Gareth is silent as we cross the barrier to where a field of green has turned to mulch in the rain.

  ‘Did you tell Aeron about us, or give anything away during your time working alongside him that might have led him to suspect we knew one another personally?’

  ‘No, honestly.’

  It bothers me that Aeron suspected I was having an affair before I confessed and didn’t believe me when I said I’d never slept with Gareth.

  I stop walking and stare at the vast expanse of land. The grass flat and the trees still, despite the wind. Though I’m unmoving my mind continues to wander in parallel with a sparrow that appears to be drifting despite its flapping wings. Putting vast effort into going nowhere.

  ‘Sinead?’

  I snap my head round to face Gareth. ‘I don’t know why I came here with you.’

  ‘You need a friend.’

  ‘I can’t be more than that to you.’

  He ignores my comment, saying instead, ‘We always had a laugh, didn’t we?’

  I smile. ‘Remember when we drove to the reservoir and you got stuck in the mud? I tried to drag you out and ended up slipping into it with you.’

  ‘We wrestled ourselves out eventually, but we were clattered in the stuff.’ He smiles and tuts.

  ‘We had to sit on blankets on the drive back.’

  ‘You needed a valet more than the car after that,’ he laughs.

  ‘I had to bung all my clothes in the washing machine in case…’

  ‘Your husband figured out you weren’t at work.’ He looks away and I have the compulsion to reach for him, folding my arm through his as I pull him towards me. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’

  He sighs. ‘I met someone. It seemed right with her, you know. There were no…’

  ‘Constraints?’

  He lowers his gaze without reply and we begin walking slowly, arm in arm.

  ‘I understand. I don’t have any regrets, nor do I resent the time we shared together. It is what it is.’

  ‘Oi, you stole that. That’s my saying.’ He pinches me lightly on the shoulder.

  I look up into the pools of his dark eyes and feel a gentle tug towards him, lips parting, mouth hungry to taste his.

  My phone buzzes from the pocket of my coat. I bite my lip in violent irritation, release him, and thumb the screen to answer. ‘Hello?’

  ‘You’re not at Gillian’s,’ says DI Locke.

  ‘No, I’m out. Why?’

  ‘Where’s Aeron?’

  ‘Picking the children up.’

  ‘He’s not answering his phone.’

  ‘He’s probably driving.’

  I watch Gareth in my peripheral, kicking aside some newly forming scrubby hogweed with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘Keep away from it, it’s poisonous,’ I whisper.

  ‘Is there any chance he could be inside?’

  ‘The house? Well, not if he hasn’t answered the door. Why?’

  ‘Get home as soon as you can.’

  Gareth’s foot stalls in mid-air then splodges down onto a string of nettles, snaking along the grass verge. He looks at me expectantly.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  ‘Your house,’ she says. ‘It’s on fire.’

  DI LOCKE

  Newport, Wales

  The fire brigade caught it before the flames reached the boiler. Had it got as far as the kitchen the house would have blown up.

  A fire safety officer tilts his head and motions for me to follow him onto the patch of grass separating the onlookers across the road from the stinking black plumes of smoke still wafting from the charred remains of the lacquered coat stand that was parked to the right of the UPVC door. Which I imagine acted as an accelerant but is now a molten triangular lump, smoking on the concrete.

  ‘I can’t say for certain what caused the fire, but it looks to me – and I’ve been assessing the sources of fires for almost fifteen years – that it was started deliberately.

  ‘It began, I believe, close to the front door. The net curtain over the glass caught first, spread up and across the papered walls and the cable running down from the entryway light fixture. The coats caught next and spat fabric onto the carpet, enabling the flames to travel into the living room along the floor, up the wooden door, and curtains. That’s when we got the call from Mr Logan Davies. If the homeowner hadn’t kept the kitchen door shut… the oven’s gas.’

  I nod in understanding. The fire-safe door protected the meter housed in the under-stairs cupboard directly opposite the electricity box, which thanks to the wired-in fire alarm shorted out almost immediately.

  Aeron appeared with the children fifteen minutes ago. He’s staring vacantly at the house through the windscreen of his car parked in one of the bays on the opposite side of the road. He doesn’t appear to blink until Sinead arrives in her new car.

  She’s panicked and gasping for breath as she exits her vehicle and jogs towards the house yelling for the children who she’s assured were not inside when the fire struck and are instead seated in the rear of Aeron’s car. One o
f the fire officers points towards them while steering Sinead away from the fumes. Gareth walks slowly from the car but doesn’t make it far before Aeron is stood in front of him, palms raised for a fight. Aeron doesn’t get the chance to shove his enemy in the chest before Sinead has fixed herself between them, demanding they ‘grow up’.

  I’m commanding Gareth to back off while Logan, having hurried across the road to assist my struggle to separate the men, is trying to coax Sinead away from them while they chest-slam one another.

  It’s like a scene from the animal kingdom: two bulls fighting for dominance.

  ‘Cut it out you two. Try and act civilised.’ I motion to the car where Brandon and Mai’s faces are pressed against the glass, the window half-open to allow the cool air to circulate the cabin. ‘For the children’s sakes, yeah?’ Even from where I stand, metres away from the vehicle, I can see the concern on their innocent faces.

  Aeron gives me a scornful look and turns violently towards Sinead. ‘You’re still at it with him?’ he hisses under his breath.

  ‘No, we’re not at it, Aeron. We never were. And it’s highly unlikely we ever will be.’

  Gareth lowers his head a little at this comment and I get the impression though the spark between them has dimmed, he at least still feels something towards her that crosses the line of friendship.

  ‘You’re not having anything to do with my children,’ says Aeron.

  ‘I’d never trample on your role. You’re their dad,’ says Gareth.

  I see his fist before Aeron has considered raising it but when I hear the crack as it connects to Gareth’s jaw, I’m not prepared for the way he handles it. With a stone-cold laugh that deadens the atmosphere.

  ‘Pack it in! Any more violence from either of you and I’ll be arresting you for assault.’ I decide to let the first punch thrown by Aeron slide. Even Gareth’s pride hasn’t been injured. If anything, Aeron appears humiliated by his lack of self-control.