by Bill Rogers
‘Don’t lose it,’ he said.
The two men walked to the door. The Boxer turned.
‘That rule,’ he said, ‘there’s one exception. When you need the bucket.’ Then he switched off the light and closed the door.
Melissa’s fingers closed over the inhaler. She had no idea if the canister contained the right level of dose for her. She didn’t really care. Whatever it was it had to be better than not having it at all. She wondered what this meant – them bringing it to her. Somehow they must have found out she needed it. And surely it meant they didn’t want her to die? At least . . . not yet.
The cold made her shiver. She pulled the duvet closer, wincing as the cable ties bit into her wrists. She turned back to face the window, shuffled as far as possible from the patch of damp, closed her eyes, and prayed for sleep to envelop her.
Less than twenty miles due north, Jo dreamed she was on a deserted beach on the Isle of Skye. Her parents had first brought her here. But now they were gone. It was dusk. The cliffs rose sheer behind her. The tide had turned, threatening to cut her off. She picked her way across rocks and boulders, slick with mounds of seaweed. Several times she fell and grazed her knees. Gulls wheeled and spiralled overhead. Like parchment shadows, ghostly white against a steel-grey sky, they mocked her with their calls. By the time she reached what she had hoped was the safety of a shingle spur the tide had cut her off.
In desperation she scanned the beach, the cliffs, and the empty expanse of sea. There was no help at hand, no prospect of rescue or escape. How had it come to this? Lost, alone, and abandoned. The last rays of the sun shimmered gold across the incoming waves and came to rest on her face, before dipping beneath the horizon. Darkness fell. And as the freezing wind chilled her to the bone the cries of gulls grew ever louder.
Jo rolled over and reached for the phone. ‘Oh no!’ she whispered. ‘Please no!’
It was 3.32 a.m. Only bad news came in the hours before dawn. She pressed the little green symbol and waited with baited breath.
‘Yes?’
‘Is this SI Stuart?’
‘Yes. What is it?’
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Ma’am. Detective Superintendent Ellis told me to let you know that there’s been an incident on Merseyside which he has reason to believe may be connected to Operation Alecto.’
‘An incident? On Merseyside? What kind of incident?’
‘I don’t have any details but, as I understand it, a shooting of some kind. The victim is critically ill in the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. On the Critical Care Unit. He advises that you get there as soon as possible if you want to speak with the victim.’
‘Who do I ask for?’
‘Morris Arthur Grimshaw.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Please tell Detective Superintendent Ellis that I’m on my way.’
Articulated lorries trundled along the inside lane of the M62. A steady stream of white delivery vans joined the motorway at each of the successive slip roads, rear lights shimmering in the early morning mist. Jo had the outside lane almost entirely to herself. Occasionally she had to use her blues and twos to clear the way.
She flitted between two trains of thought: interpreting the dream and trying to second-guess what lay ahead. The first was the easier to compute. She’d been to Skye with her parents when she was eight or nine, and then again in her teens. That second time they’d gone walking in the foothills of the Black Cuillin mountains and enjoyed memorable scrambles to several of the peaks. It had been a magic time. On both occasions, they had visited beaches, one of which could easily have featured in her dream. But she’d never lost contact with her parents, and certainly never been left alone by them.
On the other hand, she had been abandoned by Abbie, hadn’t she? And now she had the trauma of leaving the apartment they had so lovingly furnished together. Jo gripped the steering wheel tightly.
And then there was Melissa Walsh. Twelve years of age. Snatched from the pavement. Fearing for her life. Lost and alone.
A yellow van veered from the centre lane into the outside one, forcing her to brake. She swore, flashed her lights, and gave him a burst of her siren. It took another hundred yards before the driver finally pulled back into the middle lane. Jo looked across as she sped past. A young woman clutched the steering wheel with her left hand and was texting on her phone with her right. Jo gave another burst of her siren, made eye contact with the startled face in her rear-view mirror, and accelerated away. It took her less than half an hour to cover the thirty miles.
Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as she raced across the parking lot and into the hospital. Two uniformed officers stood guard in the corridor outside the Critical Care Unit. One had a Heckler & Koch semi-automatic slung across his chest. The other held a log on which he entered Jo’s name, before punching a code into the keypad beside the doors.
A tall thin woman with mousey brown hair cut into a short bob stood at the foot of the bed, her back towards the door. It was Detective Sergeant Teresa Coppull from Merseyside’s Major Crime Unit. At the sound of the door closing she turned and smiled wanly at Jo.
‘We should stop meeting like this,’ she said.
‘Terry,’ said Jo. ‘How are you?’
‘Better than him.’ She nodded towards the figure in the bed.
It was impossible to tell if this was a man or a woman. The head was bandaged. The mouth and nose covered by a mask attached to a ventilator. Tubes taped to both arms snaked upwards to IV drips hanging from portable stands. On the far side of the bed a nurse anxiously watched the battery of digital monitors.
‘His name is Morris Arthur Grimshaw,’ said Teresa. ‘He’s a major player in the North West drug scene. Liverpool-based. We netted all of his gang in a major bust. Eighteen of them are banged up on remand. He’s the only one that got bail.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor sod. He’d have been safer inside.’
‘What happened?’ said Jo.
Teresa looked across at the nurse and raised her eyebrows. The nurse checked the monitors, leaned over her patient, straightened up, and shrugged.
‘Let’s take this outside,’ said the Liverpool detective.
When the door was closed she positioned herself so that she could keep her eyes on the bed. ‘I’m not supposed to leave the room,’ she said. ‘But I doubt whoever did this to him had the foresight to get to a nurse on the CCU. Not that there would have been any point. He isn’t going to make it.’
‘That’s official?’ said Jo.
‘It’s what the doctors say. The prognosis is that he’ll be dead within twenty-four hours.’
‘Will I be able to speak with him?’
‘You can speak all you like, Jo, but it’s going to be a one-way conversation. That’s what I was checking with the nurse just now. He may or may not be able to hear you, which is why I brought us out here, but he won’t be able to reply. They’ve put him in an induced coma.’
‘Bugger!’ said Jo.
‘Don’t worry,’ Teresa told her. ‘Detective Superintendent Ellis and I got to talk with him before they put him under.’ She opened her shoulder bag, took out a notebook, and handed it to Jo. It was Teresa’s official PNB. ‘If it’s a list of names you’re looking for they’re all in there. Obviously I need it back but I’ll email you them from my tablet.’
Jo turned to the most recent entry. Timed and dated at 2.45 a.m. that morning, it was a record of a brief conversation between Ellis and Grimshaw. It ended with a list of names. There were twenty-seven in all. She didn’t recognise any of them. ‘Why have you underlined some of them?’
‘They’re all associates of his.’
‘If they’re his pals, why would they want him dead?’
‘Because he’s the only one who got police bail? And that’s because he’s the only one the CPS reckon we don’t have enough evidence against to prosecute. He got lucky. But his mates don’t know that. Or if they do, they may find it highly suspicious. They’ll have worked out we had someone
on the inside. It wasn’t him but they’re not to know that.’
‘They’d have had to get a message out. Arrange for someone else to do this?’
Teresa laughed. ‘Every other day there are drones delivering phones, SIM cards, and drugs over the walls of Her Majesty’s prisons. Not to mention bent screws supplementing their meagre salaries by ferrying messages to and fro. You know that.’
Of course she did.
‘Why aren’t you inside the room?’
They turned to find Ellis, the Titan commander, striding towards them.
‘I came outside to brief SI Stuart, Sir,’ said Teresa. ‘Thought it best the nurse wasn’t party to that. Don’t worry, I haven’t taken my eyes off them.’
That seemed to satisfy him.
‘Where is he up to?’ he asked.
‘No change. He’s in a coma and he’s slipping away. Irreversible multiple organ failure. They didn’t have a clue what it was.’ She turned to Jo. ‘They thought it might be sepsis from the wound on his neck until we told them it could be ricin poisoning. It was too late by then.’
‘I’d assumed,’ said Jo, ‘that the reason you thought there was a connection with my investigation was something to do with how he came to be like this. Now I know.’
Ellis gave Teresa a dirty look. ‘You haven’t told her?’
‘She didn’t have a chance,’ said Jo quickly. ‘I’ve only just got here.’
‘Best do it now then,’ said Ellis. ‘I’ve no doubt SI Stuart will want to see the crime scene. Why don’t you show her while I get someone else to babysit him?’
Chapter 32
‘When did this happen?’ said Jo.
They were travelling in her car because Teresa had arrived at the hospital with Detective Superintendent Ellis.
‘Sunday afternoon.’
‘Two days after Ronnie O’Neill was shot. Today’s Wednesday. When was he taken ill?’
‘On Monday evening he first realised something was wrong. He told his wife he thought he was going down with the flu. Dosed himself with painkillers and over-the-counter remedies.’
‘He didn’t associate it with what happened on Sunday?’
‘Apparently not. He knew he’d been shot because the pellet lodged in the back of his neck.’
Jo glanced across at her. ‘Why didn’t he go straight to the hospital?’
‘It wasn’t that deep. Played the hardman, like they do. Just pulled it out when he got home, swabbed it with TCP, and put a plaster over it. He assumed it was some kid messing around. And he knew if he went to hospital they’d have to report it to the police. He didn’t want the aggro, especially with being on bail.’
Twenty minutes later Teresa instructed her to turn left off the tree-lined avenue of detached houses into a driveway.
‘What is it with this guy and golf clubs?’ Jo asked as she pulled up outside the white-walled red-roofed clubhouse.
‘I take it that’s a rhetorical question?’ said Teresa, unbuckling her seat belt.
‘I thought this was the Royal Birkdale,’ said Jo. ‘Home to the British Open Championship? That’s what all the signs were saying.’
‘That’s just a bit further on. There are quite a few courses on this stretch of the coast.’
Teresa led the way to the professional’s shop.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ the professional told them, ‘but I’m afraid that all the golf carts are already out on the course. Your colleagues have requisitioned them. I can get one of the ground staff to come back and pick you up but you may have to wait ten minutes or so.’
‘In that case,’ said Teresa, ‘I think we’ll just head on out there.’
‘I can show you the way if you like?’
‘No need,’ Teresa replied. ‘I know where I’m going. And it’s only, what, half a mile?’
‘Just over,’ he said. ‘Keep your eyes open. And if anyone shouts “Fore!” . . .’
She finished it for him.
‘Duck down and cover your head. What do you take us for? Just because we come from the city doesn’t mean we’re complete numpties!’
The sun was rising as they set off. Set among undulating sand dunes, covered with windswept grass straw-bleached by the sun, and dotted with stands of pine, Jo found it stunning.
‘How does someone like Grimshaw get to play at a club like this?’ she wondered.
‘They pride themselves on an inclusive policy,’ said Teresa. ‘I guess that means so long as he can afford it and he wears the right gear, he has the same opportunity as anyone else. He may even be a member for all we know.’
‘Can you find out for me?’ said Jo. ‘If he is, it would help to explain how the unsub knew to choose this place as his kill site.’
‘Strictly speaking, he didn’t though, did he? Kill him here? That’s the clever part.’
When they reached the fourteenth tee it was deserted.
‘That’s because he was shot on the green, down there,’ said Teresa. ‘Just as he was putting for a birdie.’
Jo followed her gaze. The beautifully manicured fairway stretched straight as a die in a valley between grass-covered dunes, before swinging gently to the right, where she could just make out the edge of the green, a cluster of golf carts, and people clad from head to foot in white and blue. In the distance, beyond the green, above a wide expanse of pine trees, rose the fells that marked the western outpost of the Pennine Hills.
‘That’s Blackpool Tower,’ said her colleague, pointing northwards. ‘And those mountains beyond it, that’s the Lake District. And if you turn around you can just see the mountains in North Wales. I can think of worse places to die.’
‘Only he didn’t die here, did he?’ said Jo. ‘Strictly speaking.’
‘Touché,’ said Teresa. ‘Very droll.’
Chapter 33
‘There were seventy-six golfers on the course at the time your victim was here,’ the crime scene manager told them. ‘And another forty either in the clubhouse or waiting to start. God knows how many have tramped their way through here since then. Plus there must have been hundreds of locals and dog walkers using the rights of way across the course and over the dunes.’ He eased his hood back from his forehead a little and scratched his head. ‘I don’t like to admit that we’re wasting our time here, but the chances of finding anything useful are pretty remote, I’m afraid.’
‘So why have you roped off the green?’ said Jo.
He pulled a face. ‘Just to stop my lot trampling all over it.’ He pointed to his right. ‘Our search is concentrated on those trees over there, and over there.’
They were two clumps of pine trees. One on a dune about fifty yards away, another closer to a hundred and thirty yards.
‘Why there?’ asked Jo.
‘Because,’ said Teresa, ‘we know that he was struck by that pellet in the back of the neck, and according to two of the witnesses who were with him at the time he was standing with his back to those dunes.’
Jo could see that it made sense. They were the only places that offered cover for a shooter.
‘It’s more likely to have been the ones that are furthest away,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Teresa.
‘Because there’s very little likelihood that anyone would strike a ball so hard and so badly that it might end up among those trees. Whereas with the other ones it would be a distinct possibility.’
‘You play then, do you?’
‘I don’t have time, but I dabbled when I was at uni.’
‘For what it’s worth, I agree with you,’ said the CSI. ‘But you know how it is: we have to cover all the angles. Now we’ve got some daylight we’ll see if your marksman left any trace for us to find.’ He scratched his head again. ‘Though I think we’ve more chance of spotting a pair of those red squirrels mating. And they’re notoriously shy.’
‘If you do, I suggest you respect their privacy,’ Teresa called after him, ‘or you’re likely to have the Green Party com
ing after us.’
She took her tablet from her bag and switched it on. ‘It was still dark when I came out here earlier,’ she said. ‘The boss wanted to make sure that the course was closed today and a cordon set up around this area.’ She grimaced. ‘Case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. But, like the man said, we have to cover the angles . . . and our backs.’
Her fingers whizzed across the keys, then she handed the tablet to Jo. ‘Here’s an aerial view. She pointed with her finger. ‘This is us. As you can see, if someone was in those trees, his best escape route would be to drop down behind the dune those trees are on and follow the valleys either straight out onto the Shore Road or carry on across it into the dunes on the other side.’
‘Wouldn’t that risk his being seen by people walking in the dunes or on the beach?’ Jo asked. ‘He’s going to look a bit suspicious carrying a golf bag to hide his air rifle.’
‘He could disguise it as one of those stunt kite bags. Nobody would give that a second glance on this coast. Of course, the other choice would be to circle round to the left and come out in this estate over here. There are four different access points from these paths that run across the golf course and around the backs of the houses. Once he’s on that estate he gets in his car, then he’s got the choice of the Shore Road or Kenilworth Road. If he goes that way he’s across the rails, and off down any one of these lanes across the fields, none of which have cameras on them.’
‘It’s a nightmare,’ said Jo. ‘Two more or less identical crime scenes, thirty miles apart, under two different police jurisdictions, both of which are basically stone cold. How the hell am I supposed to manage this?’
‘You’re in luck,’ Teresa told her. ‘Detective Superintendent Ellis and my bosses are concerned that Grimshaw’s death could trigger another set of gang wars across Merseyside. They’re prepared to pick up the tab for all the resources needed in the short term in relation to Grimshaw, but I wouldn’t hang about if I were you. If it turns out this is an isolated event this end of the Ship Canal, they’ll bounce it back in your direction like a hot potato.’