'What about my guys? You know what it's like. It doesn't take much for a beating to go wrong. I can't afford to have another death on my hands.'
'You've been in the business a long time, my friend. Why are you getting cold feet now?'
'It's not cold feet.' The pint glass slammed down on the table. 'I'm never a coward.' He paused again. 'It's just that I'm tired. And you know, the money on the table. I could reinvent myself.'
'That never works, you know. We are what we are.'
'Look at you though. Promotion. Desk job. Leaving all of this behind.'
'I'm still police though, aren't I.' He paused to make sure that Billy King was properly listening. 'And I'll still do the right thing by Bradwick. No matter what, I'll be protecting the town.'
There was an awkward pause. Then King nodded grimly, finished his pint and stalked out of the pub.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Emma and Lukas sat side by side on the bench and stared out to sea. On the beach in front of them, families played, all staking out their territory with towels and handbags.
'Do you know any more about King than you've said already?'
'King? What do you want to know? Runs the biggest taxi firm in the area.'
'Lukas! You know what I mean.'
'And you said you wouldn't press me for information.' He sounded hurt. 'I thought I'd be coming to you offering information.'
'Yeah, but there was that murder the other night. Something big is going on and I need to know what.' When Lukas didn't complain, Emma continued. 'The guy who was killed was a director for King Kabs. I don't know if it was a nominal position or if he actually worked. But I am getting the impression that the company is the only game in town. If you want to deal drugs, they all go through him.'
'Aww, babe! I'm not that high up the chain. If I'm honest, I just buy a bit now and again.' He paused as if considering what to reveal. 'Occasionally a few of us might club together, you know, all chip in a bit and buy a bigger amount cheaper and split it up. But you know, that's as far as it goes.'
'What about your dealer though? He has to buy from somewhere, doesn't he?'
'I suppose, I've never asked.'
'Never? Not been interested?'
'Listen, darling, it's a whole other world. I'd only have two reasons for asking my dealer where he buys from. Firstly, I might have come into some money and be looking to move up the chain. If I know who his dealer is then I could buy from him, then cut him out of the equation.'
There was an uncomfortable pause. Finally Emma cracked. 'You said two reasons.'
'Well,' Lukas looked awkward. 'It's you lot. It's what you do. Nick us for a small amount of blow, then offer up a caution if we snitch on someone further up the chain. The bottom line is that either reason is bad news. If I go around asking questions, then I'll be a risk and folk will stop selling to me.'
Emma nodded and processed this. 'I get that. But, suppose I wasn't trying to work my way up the chain. I need to go right to the top. We're back to Billy King. Have you heard anything about him?'
'Apart from Kings Kabs, I'm guessing.'
'Yeah. Anyone who works for him seems to be charmed.'
'Like I say, it's all in compartments isn't it? Need to know, all of that. I know who to buy from. I know other people I can ask if my dealer drops out, so I can find someone else. But I'm low level. I've no idea where the stuff comes from and where the money goes.' He paused, studied Emma closely. 'It's not like a rigid structure thing with percentages passed up the chain. It's just guys who buy in bulk, split it down and make a profit.'
'Yeah, I'm sorry, I just feel a bit shut out by work. Something big is happening and I don't know what.'
'I meant what I said before, you know. You need to be careful.'
'I know. I still haven't seen any proof of skimming either cash or drugs.' She shook her head. 'But I know what you said before and I think you're right.'
'And what would you do if it was all true? If you found proof? Turn on them or look the other way?'
Emma shook her head. 'I dunno. No one knows until they're faced with the decision. I really can't see there being any situation where I'd take cash under the table though. I mean that's just the end of your career right there. I wouldn't do it.' She paused, stared at the sea. 'But I work there, you know. I'm making friends. Not sure I could throw them all under the bus.'
'Even if they are corrupt?'
Emma just shrugged. 'The problem is that corrupt cops usually do bad things. Look at all the cases where they've let killers go free because they got fixated on the wrong suspect. That's a tangible wrong. But whatever's going on, look around you. They've kept this town right.'
'To a point. The bodies are starting to stack up though, babe. And I don't see your lot making many arrests, either.'
Chapter Thirty-Nine
DC Angel had been sent over to Traffic again. She had been surreptitiously working through a list of cars while Haines wasn't looking. But then Haines had sent her over to Traffic for a car. Apparently, the officers from West Midlands were on their way down for a case conference. As a courtesy, they were to be collected from the train station. She could see a useless day ahead, running senior officers around to see the crime scene. At least she'd been promised a nice lunch on expenses but she was basically the chauffeur. Although Haines tried to persuade her that she would be making good contacts, she'd rather be doing real police work.
On top of all that, she thought, she had to deal with Traffic. She still remembered the humiliation of the awful LDV van and while she hadn't heard from Dave, she assumed that he would still be annoyed. She wondered what the latest trick would be.
On the other hand, she reasoned, she still had to work with the Traffic division. So, she squared her shoulders and wished she was more than her five foot three.
With a completely straight face she slid her warrant card over the desk. The sergeant in charge of car allocations looked bored as he picked up her card and started filling in the details on a clipboard.
Then he stopped and looked at her again, with narrowed eyes. 'Good to see you again, DC Angel.'
DC Angel nodded and smiled and wondered when the trick was going to be played. She decided not to prejudge though and take him at face value until something happened. Then she would come down on the lot of them with righteous anger. She was fed up with being messed around in the name of workplace banter.
Instead of the usual handing over of the keys however, the desk sergeant fetched them off the rack and walked her over to a BMW. Last year's model, she noticed. How bad could it be?
She settled in, under the gimlet eyes of the desk sergeant. The seat slid easily forward, the clutch felt light, she slipped easily into first. She sniffed cautiously. No dead fish or three-week-old cheese sandwich under the seat. Just the aroma of the air freshener hanging from the mirror.
'All okay for you?'
'Yes, thank you. This is fine.'
She started the engine and just as she started moving, she heard the sergeant say, 'Give my regards to DCI Haines.'
She drove away with her mind whirling. It appeared to be completely genuine – the car was not only fine but in far better condition than she had any right to expect. She also decoded the final message – the sergeant hadn't said Haines or Rob Haines, he'd definitely mentioned rank.
The anger slowly built as she navigated her way through the streets of Bradwick. She was not a little girl any more and the last thing she needed was her boss wading in and sorting out her own fight. If news of that spread through the force she'd have to move areas, even change to a different force. Her whole career was a series of steps she had taken, each one designed so that people would take her seriously. Since she'd broken away from her parents to take her A-levels, she'd prided herself on being independent, solving her own problems by herself.
Now all of that could be swept away. She'd be back in the seventies where the pathetic WPC would be saved by the big burly detective.
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She had enough common sense though to keep quiet and act like the dutiful DC and do everything required of her. She kept a lid on her simmering anger until the out of area officers were back on the train and the car was back in the pound.
Then she went to Haines and sat down in front of his desk. 'Boss, did you say anything to Traffic?' DC Angel's tone was dangerously neutral.
'What if I did?'
'Did I ask you to? What's between me and Dave is personal.'
'It's not personal.' DCI Haines was matching her neutral tone. Voices were not yet being raised. DC Angel raised her eyebrows, inviting him to continue. 'When it affects my team and how efficiently it's running, then it becomes work, not personal.'
'But--'
'Nope. You don't get this one. I saw you the day after you drove that LDV and you were in terrible shape. I can cope with you sitting at your desk swallowing Nurofen like Smarties, but what would've happened if we'd had a suspect that day and you had to give chase? Would you have hobbled after them?'
'I don't want what happened between me and Dave all over the force though! I won't be the next piece of office gossip.'
'Either you will or you won't.' Haines shrugged. 'The truth of it is that all stations, probably all workplaces, have banter. I've been in the force since before you were in school. I've seen it all. We all gossip. We all go out with each other, fall out, argue and make up. There has been banter, before it was even called that. Jokes, wind-ups, nicknames, all of that. And trust me, the minute a station stops doing that, it's dead. Folk stop caring, they stop being a team, they don't have each other's backs.' He paused to make sure DC Angel was still listening. 'But what happened to you was beyond all that. If you weren't a woman or if you were taller, you'd have been all right. The point is that you weren't suitable to drive that van. Hell, that van should've been into the mechanics by now. But in my book that makes giving you that vehicle bullying, and I won't have that.
'You have a lot to learn. I run a team, that means we look out for each other. And I will not tolerate one member of my team being bullied, especially when it impacts on the efficiency of the whole team.'
DC Angel felt her mood lightening a bit when she realised that it wasn't just her, Haines would react the same way with anyone under his command. 'Sir, you sound almost enlightened. Did they send you on diversity awareness training?'
'As a matter of fact, they did, as part of my promotion strategy. You know what, you can always keep on learning. I'll be honest with you, I don't know what happened between you and your boyfriend, or even if it was a boyfriend or girlfriend or long term, gender fluid life partner. It doesn't actually matter. What matters is how you were treated and that was unfair.'
'Well, I suppose I owe you some thanks then.'
Chapter Forty
DC Angel kept her promise to herself. She had developed a habit of changing her routes around Bradwick, partly to keep an eye out for dark Fiestas and also to occasionally swing past the house of Gregory Watts. She didn't know what she hoped to achieve but he irritated her. He had to have a weakness somewhere, and she was determined to be the one to find it.
Sitting in her own car after spending the day running the West Midlands officers around, she had to choose what to do on the way home. She decided to take a detour and see what was going on at Gregory Watts' house.
She slowed down as she went past and saw the door open. But where she was expecting either the man himself or a pregnant teenager to come out, she was surprised to see an older woman with a heavy bag.
Making a sudden decision to see if she could salvage anything from the day, she slowed down until she was alongside at walking speed. She opened the passenger window and called across. 'That looks heavy, do you want a lift?'
'My mum always told me to never accept lifts from strangers.'
Angel glanced forward then flashed her warrant card at the woman. 'Police.'
'I figured that already,' she said with heavy sarcasm.
'Let me give you a lift. Otherwise I'll be following you all the way home.'
The woman considered her options, then nodded curtly. She settled into the passenger seat, bag under her knees. 'You can give me a lift if you want, just don't expect me to talk.'
For a minute or two they drove in silence. Then DC Angel said, 'You look a bit old for Gregory Watts. Not his type.'
'Show's what you know, I was the first. Same class at school.'
DC Angel frowned. 'What were you doing back there then?'
'Housekeeper. I don't mind, it means I can still work around the school holidays.'
'Isn't that a bit of a come down?' The woman turned to look at DC Angel, so she continued, wondering how hard to push. 'I mean, one minute you must be thinking you're going to be Mrs Watts. The next, you're paid to scrub his toilets. Gotta hurt.'
'It's not just cleaning, you know. I've learnt how Gregory wants it done, how he likes his house set up. So it made sense. I'm not just a cleaner. No, I'm more like...' she trailed off mid-sentence, aware that she'd nearly said too much.
'More like what?' Emma asked, but the woman refused to answer. They drove on in silence.
'Over here. By the railway bridge.'
DC Angel pulled up by the footbridge over the railway. This led to the Coopers End estate and she realised it meant that no one would see the woman arriving home in a strange car. Emma had one last chance. 'More like what?'
The other woman didn't move or speak. Finally she said, 'More like a big sister to the new girls. Like I said Gregory is very particular and I just smooth it over.'
Angel wondered what that meant and was about to ask what happened when things didn't go Gregory's very particular way. But before she could say anything, the door opened and the woman disappeared with her bag over her shoulder.
As she drove back to the station, DC Angel considered all she had just learnt about Gregory Watts. Everything pointed heavily towards grooming but she had nothing that was either admissible or evidence of any legal wrong doing.
As long as he kept to girls over sixteen and didn't have a job like a teacher where he was in a position of trust, it seemed he could continue unimpeded. That didn't mean that DC Angel would let the matter drop though.
Chapter Forty-One
Emma came home from work and grabbed a beer straight from the fridge before collapsing on the sofa. While she was happy in her own space, the decision not to convert the living room into another bedroom was one of the best she'd made.
Everyone in the house worked shifts but even so the communal area meant that the housemates had somewhere to chat. Once she'd had half her beer, she realised that Lucy was sat there too, swiping through her phone.
'You look like you've had a rough day.'
'Tell me about it,' Emma said. 'I've spent the day ferrying around senior officers like a taxi driver when I'd rather be looking for a dark coloured Fiesta.'
'Dark coloured Fiesta?'
Emma quickly filled her in on what she knew about Dark Car Man.
'And you don't have the number plate?'
'No, it's been running around on false plates. And the cameras aren't good enough to give us a proper colour either.'
'No wonder your boss told you it was a dead end. How far have you got?'
'Well, I started with a list of thousands and then removed those that were SORNed and those that were from the seventies, eighties and nineties.'
'And?'
'Down to a manageable one thousand five hundred and thirty-one in Wootenshire.'
'Oh my God! That's next to useless.'
'Yeah, but I'm staying after work and just running them in batches of ten, checking to see who owns them, if they've been arrested, any previous convictions that kind of thing. You never know.'
Lucy frowned for a minute and swept her fringe out of her eyes. 'What are you doing tomorrow night?'
'More of the same.' Emma shrugged. 'Unless there's an emergency, stay late, run number plates, hope for a break. W
hy?'
'Well, I'm on a team that runs a car club. You know those teenagers that drive too fast, have lowered cars and loud exhausts who hang around McDonald's scaring the locals?' Emma nodded; every police officer had moved them on at some point. 'Well we've got a club where we have permission to use a factory car park. We get them down there to show off their cars. Police are there to chat to them, sometimes we get Traffic to come down.' She caught Emma's expression. 'It's all right, Dave's never shown an interest. And we get MoT testers to pop in, tell them what modifications are good and what's dangerous.'
'And they go for that?'
'Yeah. We bribe them. Two or three times a year, we do track days or factory visits, that kind of thing. But they can only go if they haven't been in trouble with the police in the previous six months.'
'Okay. Sounds very worthy. How does it help me?'
'Once you get beyond the spotty teenager thing, these guys know so much about cars. They are proper car geeks. Half of them work at dealerships or garages. Bring some photos of your mystery car, see if they can help at all.'
* * *
With no better leads, the next evening DC Angel found herself in a factory car park. It was still light but the sun was going down. There was a police van with display tables and a gazebo on one side. On the other side, close but not too close, was a collection of about half a dozen cars, parked with flagrant disregard for the parking space markings. The vehicles were all modified to some degree or another. Some were lower, with wide tyres and flared arches. There were stickers and custom paint jobs, along with extra lights and spoilers.
Doors were open and headlights on, with music playing from stereos. There was obviously a degree of compromise as the volume was audible but not at the shaking bass levels that DC Angel would've expected. The teenagers hanging around struck deliberately bored poses. The odours of Lynx aftershave mixed with exhaust and oil.
She was following Lucy as she walked through the boys, chatting quietly, and looking at their cars. Before she'd become a police officer, she'd have found this crowd intimidating with their baseball caps, sportswear and gold jewellery. Now she could see through the image to the insecurity underneath. She was checking out the teenagers – there were some on bicycles and scooters as well as passengers so there was quite a crowd. She also noticed one of the drivers was a woman. Her car was low and purposeful looking, but still with a pink fluffy interior.
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