by Iain Cameron
They arrived in Gloucester at two-thirty and by the look of shoppers in heavy jackets and thick coats, it was as every bit as cold as Sussex. They found the headquarters of Gloucester Constabulary, a glass and steel edifice resembling the home of a software gaming company or an international design consultancy, to the south of the city.
They assembled in a meeting room on the second floor, the two detectives from Sussex, two detectives from Gloucester and four members of an Armed Response Unit. The senior of the two Gloucester detectives, DI Mike Abbott, stood at the front addressing the small team. Abbott didn’t speak with a broad West Country accent as he expected, but with a course Birmingham burr and Henderson had to concentrate hard to understand everything that he said.
‘We have confirmed the woman DI Henderson seeks is still at the house as we’ve done a number of drive-bys in unmarked vehicles at regular intervals and established her car is still there. We will approach the house as follows.’
He hoped the heavy-set lads in the armed response team could decipher Abbott’s thick inflection, because as observers, the Sussex detectives didn’t want to get shot or bowled over by a fifteen-stone monster in a Kevlar jacket. Henderson was then invited to tell them more about their target.
He’d already sent a picture of Melanie Lewis to DI Abbott, and her face loomed behind him on the large screen. ‘This is Melanie Lewis, wanted for serious assault and kidnap of her boss, identity fraud, one murder we know about and suspected of killing two other people. Don’t let the pretty face fool you. She’s cunning and smart and will use every trick in her arsenal to escape capture. She is dangerous. She’s never used guns to my knowledge, knives and a claw hammer are more her style.’
He looked around at the faces of his small audience, they were listening.
‘If we catch her by surprise, and I have no reason to think otherwise, we should be in and out in a matter of minutes. If we don’t make contact for a time because the door won’t open or she’s hiding somewhere, don’t take any chances when you finally catch up with her. Put her on the floor and handcuff her at the first opportunity. Is this clear?’
They all nodded.
‘Thanks for your time men. Good luck.’
They set out from Gloucester, the ARU in a van, the detectives in a car and a patrol car with two officers inside. It was still light as they left the city, but the local detectives assured the Sussex officers it would be dark when they reached the cottage where Lewis lived, a village to the north-west of Cheltenham called Southam.
‘You’re not from around here, are you Mike?’ Henderson asked DI Abbott.
‘It’s that obvious, eh? No, I cut my teeth in Aston, in Birmingham. A few years later I got married and had a young kid, so the thrill of tackling some punk with a knife didn’t have the same appeal.’
‘What’s it like in Gloucester? Does it suffer from the same big city problems as everywhere else, or maybe a bit less being in a rich part of the West Country?’
‘It’s not as relentless as Birmingham for sure but we still get our fair share of sexual assaults, drunken fights, drugs and the occasional murder. What’s it like in your neck of the woods?’
Henderson went on to tell him about Sussex with Walters piping up occasionally, but no matter what they talked about during the journey: police, sport, bosses, colleagues, it didn’t encourage their driver, DC Phillip Willis, from joining in, who only spoke to confirm directions.
They passed the Ellenborough Park Hotel and turned left towards the target village. In some ways Southam reminded Henderson of Steyning, narrow streets with houses either side but the streets and houses here were more recent, their design and layout more orderly.
They drove past a farmer’s field on Southam Lane when the driver slowed, before pulling into the field entrance, secured by a sturdy wooden gate. The ARU van turned in behind them.
DI Abbot turned in his seat to face Henderson. ‘She lives in a house about one hundred yards up the road. Are you ready for this?’
FORTY-ONE
They walked along a dark and deserted road, the only sound the clunking boots of the armed response officers and the clank of the scarred and battered door opener as it banged against someone’s trouser buckle.
All radios and mobile phones had been silenced and this policy extended to mouthy gobs and noisy spitting or coughing. It didn’t present a problem for Henderson, but in a tense situation Walters became nervous and tended to talk too much. If he felt nervous, the last thing he wanted was a wittering colleague in his ear asking a question that had been answered in the briefing. Tonight, he was glad to be in the company of his own thoughts.
They reached the house, one of four small detached properties in a little row. The heavily clad men and the two Gloucester cops moved towards the door. Henderson and Walters walked round the house to the rear as agreed at the briefing. It was a good place to put observers as it made them feel they had a role to play. However, when four beefy men burst into a house, most people gave up on the spot, as the target’s whole focus would be on not getting shot, and the prearranged plan of legging it out the back door would soon be forgotten.
Henderson waited until he heard the thump of the door opener before unlatching the gate to the rear. He counted the thumps and was surprised to find they reached four. Either the big lad wielding it was all padding and no muscle, or Ms Lewis had added a few bolts of her own. His money would be on the latter.
No lights were shining in the kitchen or in any of the upstairs bedrooms, only the lounge which they could see as they approached the house. Nothing illuminated the rear garden. They stood in darkness, in silence, waiting for a sign to indicate the Gloucester men had apprehended their fugitive.
Seconds later, an officer from the ARU walked into the kitchen and switched on the light.
‘Right Carol,’ Henderson said, ‘let’s make a move.’
He didn’t receive a response and turned round. With the assistance of the recently switch-on kitchen light, he could see the garden better. Melanie Lewis had DS Walters in a tight grip with an arm around her throat and a Glock 9mm pistol pointing at her head.
‘Tell those fuckers in my house to get out, go back to their van and head straight back to where they came from.’
‘Keep calm, Melanie, we can talk about this.’
‘Listen Henderson, I don’t want to talk about anything. Now go and tell them what I said or I’ll shoot her, you know I will.’
Henderson walked down the path and into the house. He relayed the suspect’s message to DI Abbott who took it with a straight face. ‘Any chance we can get a shot at her?’ he asked.
‘It’s too risky as she’s got my DS in a real close hold. I think you should do as she says.’
Abbott thought for a minute. ‘Not much more we can do here. You’re right, we should get out. I’ll call in air support to track her movements and set up roadblocks.’
‘Good idea.’
Abbott turned to face the room where members of the ARU had gathered. ‘Right lads, we’re finished here, back to the van. Thanks for all your help.’
‘What d’ya mean?’ the sergeant said coming towards Abbott, trying to intimidate him with his bulk and height. ‘That fucker out there’s got a gun at a colleague’s head. We can’t just leave her here to die or be taken hostage.’
‘The only other option is a bloodbath and it’s not going to happen while I’m in charge. This operation is over.’
There was a tense standoff, Abbott and the sergeant eyeballing one other, neither blinking.
‘Fuck it, on your head be it,’ the sergeant said. He turned and waved to his men. ‘C’mon lads, you heard the inspector. We’ve been told we’re no longer needed, so let’s get the hell out.’
The ARU, trooped past, the sergeant at the rear. He pointed a finger at the Gloucester DI. ‘If this goes pear-shaped, Abbott, it’s your head mate, not mine.’
Henderson walked outside and watched as the armed response officers
trooped back to their van and the Gloucester detectives to their car. A small crowd had gathered, people from neighbouring houses, and Henderson called on a couple of waiting uniforms to hold them back.
He turned and walked through the gate into the back garden, Walters and her assailant were still in the same position. To Walters’s credit she looked calm, even though he was sure she must be scared. She realised now wasn’t the time for heroics and kept still.
‘They’ve done as you asked,’ he said to Lewis. ‘All the officers from the house are now back in their vehicles and are heading off.’
‘Good, now you walk back and stand where I can see you. If you’ve laid an ambush, I’ll shoot her then you. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now go and walk slowly with no sudden movements.’
Henderson did as she asked and glanced around to see they were moving at the same pace. He passed through the open gate and was pleased to see, if anything about this situation could bring pleasure, the only people close to the driveway were a couple of uniformed coppers, a small group of rubberneckers behind them.
He approached the first cop and stood beside him facing Lewis’s car, parked at the front of her house, about five metres away. He turned his head and said from the corner of his mouth, ‘Are you armed?’
‘With this,’ he said opening his jacket for him to see.
Henderson looked down. ‘It’ll do. When she gets into her car give it to me.’
‘Who are all these people?’ Lewis demanded as she approached.
‘They’re your neighbours,’ Henderson said. ‘The cops in the house have left and the guys here are unarmed, only here to keep these people back.’
‘Get the hell out of it, you ghouls,’ she said to her neighbours. She waved the gun at them, ‘If you don’t, you’ll get this.’
‘Christ, she’s got a gun!’ Henderson heard someone say, and didn’t express surprise when seconds later, the sound of rapidly receding footsteps echoed into the night.
‘Let me see your hands!’ Lewis said to the little group of Henderson and the two uniforms, before taking a good look to make sure no weapons were in evidence. Satisfied, she scanned the surrounding area, the field opposite her cottage, the gardens of neighbouring houses and up and down the road, looking for snipers. She moved Walters towards her car.
Lewis was being clever, walking sideways and keeping Walters’s body in front of her, her back facing the house, all the time watching like an owl looking for danger. The DI knew the walk from the garden to the road had been straightforward, but getting a kidnap victim into a car while making sure no one was trying to make a move on her wouldn’t be easy, and Walters knew how to make it difficult.
Henderson nudged the constable beside him. The handle of the pistol felt cold in his hand but it felt good to be armed.
Lewis struggled to get Walters into the passenger seat as she had stiffened like a two-year-old, complaining all the time, ‘you’re hurting my arm’, ‘my leg’s caught in something’. Lewis leaned in to move something out of the way when a boot flew out and hit her in the stomach, throwing her against the fence. She recovered faster than Henderson expected and got up, her hand still clutching the Glock.
Henderson stepped forward, lifted his weapon and fired. The dart from the Taser struck Melanie Lewis in the neck and 50,000 volts zapped into her muscles, sending them into spasm. She fell to the ground writhing. Walters leapt out of the car and rushed over. She scrambled around, found the gun, and stood, pointing it at the suspect’s head.
For a ghastly moment Henderson felt sure she was about to pull the trigger. Time stopped and the hubbub of a Gloucestershire night ceased: no cars on the road, no howl of foxes in the woods nearby, no planes overhead from Bristol airport and no sniffing from PC453 beside him.
Like a cloud moving across the sky on a light zephyr, the anger waned and the steady hand holding the gun lowered. The professional detective had returned.
Henderson ran over.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine apart from a bruised neck where she grabbed me.’ She looked down at the prostrate figure of Lewis. ‘I didn’t know my kicks were so lethal, maybe I should take up martial arts.’
FORTY-TWO
Henderson strolled back to his office after a quick lunch, a brisk step for a man who had spent the whole weekend working. In fact, most of the Marc Emerson murder team had been in over the weekend, feeding on information from his extensive interviews with Melanie Lewis.
The interviews he’s done with this strange woman proved very interesting. Never had he come across a more engaging suspect, keen to share her triumphs and disasters and exhibiting, in over eight hours of interviews, every human emotion he could think of; all the way from giddy happiness to abject despair. If her brief had not yet considered introducing a plea of insanity, the man was an idiot.
Talk of Marc Emerson brought on her despair as she had hit rock-bottom when he decided to finish with her. Marc refused to participate in her scam to steal money from their employer, despite receiving large sums of money, the mysterious ten-grand deposits the DI had spotted in Marc’s bank statements, and threatened to tell Francis Quinlan. She’d set him on fire because no way could she let him spoil her nice little earner and prevent her reaching a lifetime goal of becoming a millionaire before the age of thirty-five. She also said that Marc once told her he wanted to be cremated when he died, therefore by killing him in a fire, she reasoned, gave him exactly what he wanted. When Henderson pointed out that he probably meant when he died of natural causes around the age of eighty-four, she didn’t respond.
Lewis killed Cindy Summer because Cindy broke into her house, not because she thought her boss a murderer or a thief, but because she’d used a falsified CV to obtain the top finance job at Quinlan’s. The poor girl had been killed by a single blow from the claw hammer found under the sink in the Steyning house, and Lewis had buried her body in her garden that same night. Lewis smiled when talking about the hammer. It made a lovely crunching noise, she said.
On Sunday, they finally discussed Lewis’s old boss, Christine Sutherland, and here at some point around midday she attained giddy happiness. She hated Sutherland with a passion as she was all the things she wasn’t: happily married, a mother, a qualified accountant and popular with staff, and claimed to have dispatched her with the same hammer used to kill Cindy Summer.
Walters had informed Norfolk Police of their findings and this morning in Reception, a large bunch of flowers awaited the Detective Sergeant. They had been sent by Mr Kenneth Sutherland with a card bearing the message: ‘For finally laying my wife’s soul to rest.’
If this didn’t sum up what he and his team tried to achieve every day of the year, he didn’t know what did.
About the Author
Iain Cameron was born in Glasgow and moved to Brighton in the early eighties. He has worked as a management accountant, business consultant and a nursery goods retailer. He is now a full-time writer and lives in a village outside Horsham in West Sussex with his wife, two daughters and a lively Collie dog.
For more information about books and the author:
Visit the website at: www.iain-cameron.com
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Also by Iain Cameron
Night of Fire is the sixth book in the DI Angus Henderson series. Check out the others.
One Last Lesson
The body of a popular university student is found on a golf course. DI Angus Henderson hasn’t a clue as the killer did a thorough job. That is, until he finds out that she was once was a model on an adult web site run by two of her tutors.
Driving into Darkness
A gang of car thieves are smashing down doors and stealing the keys of expensive cars. Their violence is escalating and the DI is fearful they will soon kill someone. They do, but DI Henderson suspects it might be cover for something else.
Fear the Silence
A missing woman is not what DI Henderson needs right now. She is none other than Kelly Langton, once the glamour model 'Kelly,' and now an astute businesswoman. The investigation focuses on her husband, but then another woman goes missing.
Hunting for Crows
A man’s body is recovered from the swollen River Arun, drowned in a vain attempt to save his dog. The story interests DI Angus Henderson as the man was once a member of an eighties rock band. When another band member dies, exercising in his home gym, Henderson can’t ignore the coincidence.
Red Red Wine
A ruthless gang of wine fakers have already killed one man and will stop at nothing to protect a lucrative trade making them millions. Henderson suspects a London gangster, Daniel Perry, is behind the gang. He knows to tread carefully, but no one warned him to safeguard those closest to him.
For information about characters, Q&A and more: www.iain-cameron.com
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