Dead and Gone

by D. L. Michaels

  ‘And?’ asks Nisha.

  ‘And – according to the local council records – he still pays the council taxes.’

  She pulls a face. ‘Then why when he came up here this week did he stay in a hotel?’

  I can’t help but smile. ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Because he was bedding Jo Matthews and didn’t want to take her back to his grubby flat?’

  ‘No, idiot. Because Colin Richardson and Callum Waters were using it as a bolthole. We didn’t find any evidence of them living at Sharon Croft’s place, did we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that’s because they’d only gone there so Richardson could see his grandchild, his son and Sharon.’

  We park up at a disused garage, out of view of the target premises. Already assembled is the strike team: four armed officers, a police-dog handler and a plain-clothes brunette with big hair and hopefully big enough balls to go knocking on York’s door. They’re all being given their orders by DI John Hammond, the steely-eyed leader of the local Tactical Firearms Unit.

  ‘Hello, John,’ I say casually. ‘This is my sergeant, Nisha Patel.’

  They nod respectfully at each other.

  ‘Everyone’s briefed, Annie. We’re just waiting for your go.’

  ‘Do we know whether there is anyone in the flat or not?’

  He waves the brunette over. ‘Mandy, tell Detective Inspector Parker about your obs.’

  She swishes over, her brown raincoat flapping in the wind, a clipboard and mobile phone in her hands. ‘Ma’am. I went into the butcher’s shop half an hour ago and said I was a TV licence inspector and needed to know if the flat above was occupied. They said there was a separate entrance around the back, which I knew about, of course. I asked if the owner was in and they said they’d seen him yesterday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘They weren’t exactly sure, ma’am. They said just after lunch.’

  I look to Nisha. ‘Sounds like about the time I spoke to him on the phone.’ I turn again to Mandy. ‘Did you describe DI York to the people in the butcher’s?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. They confirmed the description matched that of the man they believed to be the occupier. They knew him to be a copper, ma’am.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ I ask John.

  ‘We still have an eyeball on the property. It’s a first-floor flat at the back of a corner building. Access is through a gate in a wooden fence and up some fire-escape-style stairs. There appears to be no view of the entry point and no security camera overlooking the approach, so it’s straightforward. Since we plotted up about an hour and a half ago there have been no comings and goings. Our suggestion is that Mandy stays in her TV licence inspector guise and goes, clipboard in hand, to the door. She knocks. If he opens up, we pull her out of the way and overwhelm him at the door. If he doesn’t, then she steps aside and we put the door in.’

  ‘Where do you want us?’ I ask.

  ‘As far out of harm’s way as you can be. I would suggest at the foot of the stairs, at the back of the team.’

  ‘Understood.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Then let’s do this. The sooner it’s over, the better.’

  John turns to his team. ‘Okay, everyone. Weapon checks, radio checks, start positions, please. Come on now, focus, focus, focus.’

  Operational control is now out of my hands and will stay that way until we’ve made entry to the flat and Charlie is a prisoner. Or worse. All the shots, literally, are now being called by John Hammond. Nisha and I slip into the back of a bogus TV detector van, driven by Mandy. She parks up, grabs her clipboard, emblazoned with logos, and slowly makes her way to the flat. Through a blacked-out window on the side of the white van we see an old blue Transit in the middle of the road, ready to turn down the other side of the target building.

  ‘Approach in progress,’ announces Hammond in my earpiece. ‘Stand by Blue Team.’

  ‘Blue Team standing by,’ comes the reply.

  ‘You ready?’ I ask Nisha.

  She tugs nervously at the straps of her armoured vest. ‘Ready.’

  ‘White Team, you’re cleared to proceed,’ says John.

  ‘Out we go,’ I tell Nisha.

  We step onto the street. Cars, buses and cyclists stream past. We dodge quickly through the traffic and cross the road. Someone leans on a horn in anger. We pass the front of the butcher’s. Blue Team are out of their van. Armed officers in black assault gear are running from the van and piling through the gate. It’s hard to hear instructions because of all the street noise. ‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ shouts Hammond. We enter the back garden and see a TFU officer smash open the front of the flat. ‘We’re in!’ shouts Mandy.

  Nisha stops at the foot of the stairs where we were advised to halt.

  I can’t help but rush in.

  I’m aware of the silence ahead of me. My hunch is going to have turned out wrong. All this planning and effort and Charlie Bloody York isn’t going to be here. I’m going to look a right idiot.

  Mandy has stopped in a narrow hallway.

  Something’s wrong.

  An armed officer has a gun raised at someone in the room.

  I slow down.

  Maybe Charlie is here.

  Maybe this is a stand-off.

  Through a crack between the edge of the door and the architrave I see who the TFU officer is aiming at.

  Charlie York is slumped on the sofa.

  He’s been shot in the face.

  I mentally fast-rewind. I didn’t hear a gunshot. No bang. I’m absolutely certain of that. I walk into the room. My pulse quickens. I smell death. It’s like burned sweat and day-old vomit. I see now that an entry wound is off-centre in the forehead, to the right. There’s almost no forward spatter. He’s been shot at close range. There are blow flies buzzing. Some of the Calliphoridae have settled in his eyes, lolling, fat and feasted in his sockets. Others crawl in the cave of his mouth.

  ‘He’s dead, ma’am,’ says the armed officer at my side.

  ‘Well spotted,’ I reply to the unnecessary observation.

  I’ve seen a lot of corpses. Freshly murdered. Long murdered. Knifed. Hanged. Shot. Strangled. Poisoned. Abandoned. Buried. Mutilated. I’ve been in the job long enough to have seen examples of every category. I should be hardened. But I’m not. The first glimpse of an extinguished life, one I knew so well, still punches the wind out of me.

  Charlie’s body is slumped on a red velour sofa. What’s left of his head is leaning towards his right shoulder. The lower part of the wall behind him is spattered with blood and brains. He’s been shot by someone standing above him and to his left. There’s no obvious sign of a struggle. It wasn’t an intruder. It was someone he knew and was comfortable with.

  There’s a cheap, tiled-top coffee table in front of the settee. Standing on it is a full mug of cold coffee and an over-full ashtray. At my former boss’s feet, there’s a matching brown mug, lying on its side.

  ‘Pathologist and SOCO are on their way,’ says Nisha from behind me. ‘I’ve called Goodwin as well.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, in something of a stupor, and carry on staring at the corpse.

  Just a few days ago my heart skipped a beat on learning this man was back in my orbit. Since then he’s put my life in danger. Broken some of my faith in people and now he’s dead. Reduced to crime-scene detritus. A clue for us to ponder.

  ‘That ashtray will have been Richardson. Get the stubs DNA’d,’ I tell Nisha. ‘Charlie didn’t smoke. Swore like a trooper, played around with other women, drank like a Viking, but he never smoked. One of the coffee cups will also have Richardson’s DNA on it.’ I walk to the side of the table, stretch out my hand and point a finger gun at Charlie’s head. ‘I’m betting Richardson made the drinks, put them down while Charlie was sitting there and as he picked up a mug, Richardson shot him. He probably put a silencer on the same gun he was going to kill me with.’ For a second, I’m back in the pub, staring into Richardson’s eyes, reliving th
e fear as he took aim at me. I shiver at the thought. But the fear doesn’t go. Instead, it breeds more frightful memories. Takes me back to my car when it was stranded behind Richardson’s Range Rover and he was shooting at the tyres and engine.

  I close my eyes. Try to think of nothing. I gaze into the chocolatey blackness of my mind. Stare into the velvety brown richness until all the violence disappears.

  I open my eyes. Nisha is watching. She knows better than to ask me if I’m okay. I stand on my tiptoes, look over the sofa, over the top of Charlie York’s bullet-blasted brain. ‘There’ll be a slug in the wall,’ I tell her. ‘Low down near the skirting. It’ll be a nine-millimetre matching the Glock Richardson had.’ I swat away a swarm of corpse flies. ‘Time of death will be late afternoon, early evening, just before Charlie was due to leave to meet me in the pub.’

  ‘Why would Richardson shoot him?’ she asks.

  ‘Someone told him to.’

  ‘We have the phone records of Raurie Crewe and Colin Richardson,’ says Nisha. ‘We can get a geo-location fix and timing on calls to see if they fit with that theory.’

  ‘Then do it. I need to look around. See if something other than this bloody smell catches my attention.’

  101

  Danny

  If you’ve ever seen someone drinkin’ beer at an airport at seven a.m. and not fancied one yourself, then you’re going to struggle to understand alcoholism. To addicts like me, that first drink of the day is like clockin’ off early on a Friday afternoon. I can’t describe the joy, the relief, the freedom it brings.

  Stress is swept away. Every atom in your body is now dedicated to not worryin’, not carin’ and solely to huntin’ down the Golden Fleece of drinkin’ until you feel the way that you imagine ‘normal’ people feel.

  Well, right now, I’m halfway to normal. A six pack of cider and two doubles of a very fine twenty-year-old Scotch down the road to normal. Normal is visible on the horizon, showin’ itself teasin'ly like a red risin’ sun over a bleached-white holiday beach. What normal isn’t is my mobile ringin’ all the time. Ringin’ with messages left by that voice from the past. Four, five, six messages. One voice. The voice of menace. The voice I never wanted to hear again:

  Danny talk to me.

  You better pick up, for your own good.

  Danny, don’t you go speaking to anyone.

  Pick up! Or so help me God, I’m going to have you killed.

  I down a drink and remind myself that when I was in jail, a real hardcase told me I should never be afraid of anyone who threatened to kill me. ‘Real killers don’t gob off about what they’re going to do,’ he told me. ‘They don’t piss around warnin’ you. They just fuckin’ do it. Bam! You’re dead and they’re gone.’

  I’m okay now. The booze has made me okay. I’m even okay enough to cook eggs. I scramble them in a pan on Paula’s big six-ring cooker. Slide the soft and fluffy yellow protein cloud onto a pale blue plate. Slap slivers of succulent Scottish smoked salmon and slices of buttered brown toast alongside it.

  Life ain’t so bad after all.

  If this baby turns out to be mine, I’ll go back on the wagon and try – really try – to be a good dad and make a go of things with Paula. If the child isn’t mine, then I’m going to drink myself into forgetfulness. Shackles off, feet away from brake, I’m going downhill at breakneck fuckin’ speed without a care in the world. I’m going to drink and drug myself into oblivion. Maybe I’ll survive. Maybe I won’t. Who gives a fuck?

  The phone rings again.

  I’m not going to be frightened by it.

  I’m not.

  I pick up. ‘Listen you, fucker,’ I snarl, ‘I’m not scared of you. Do what you want. Do your fuckin’ worst. But know this – I’ll be ready for you. I swear to God, I will—’

  ‘Danny!’

  It’s not him.

  The voice is male. But different. Male.

  ‘Are you all right, mate?’

  It’s Stevie.

  Stevie, my AA sponsor.

  ‘Paula phoned and asked me to call you. D’you fancy meeting up?’

  102

  Annie

  Back at HQ, I shed the body armour and freshen up. Getting rid of the bulletproof vest and pulling on a comfortingly baggy blue sweater makes me feel human again, rather than just a moving target.

  I brush my hair and touch up my lippy before heading in for what we, in Historic Crimes, call ‘The Shredding’. This is the soul-searching process where we sit around a table and throw in everything we think we can stick on our prime suspects, sit back and watch it get legally torn apart.

  At the top of the conference-room table is DCI Goodwin. He’s showing the strain of dealing with the chief constable, the national media and the local politicians, all of whom are scrutinising how an escaped prisoner came to be shot in a pub by undercover police officers.

  Opposite Goodwin is Sabrina Taylor-Woodhouse, a CPS chief prosecutor. She is a tiny, grey-haired woman in her mid-fifties with milky skin and a hook nose. Predictably nicknamed Sabrina the Witch, she is noted for having a whiplash tongue. She’s also known for killer clothes, which today consist of a dashing burnt-orange jacket and black flared trousers that I am sure are hiding enormous heels to make her taller.

  ‘Way I see it,’ she says, as though blind tasting a glass of wine, ‘you’re best charging Crewe with the drugs offences. A conviction for importing 250 kilos, a quarter of a tonne of Class A drugs is likely to snag a sentence as big, if not bigger than, attempted murder.’

  ‘What about murder?’ I ask. ‘Crewe had Richardson kill Charlie York before he turned up in The Brown Bear.’

  ‘You can’t prove that,’ she tells me. ‘You may be correct, but you have no proof. And without it, any lawyer worth their licence will tell the jury Richardson acted alone, that he was the ringleader and that Crewe was frightened into taking part.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ I say, frustratedly.

  ‘Raurie Crewe has a brother in prison, serving life for a drugs-related murder,’ says Goodwin. ‘We can—’

  ‘You can both save your breath,’ says Sabrina. ‘That’s what you can do. From the files you’ve shown me, if I were acting for the defence, I’d say Richardson, Waters and Kieran Crewe were running the gang, with outside help from DI York and possible other police and customs officials on the take.’ She reads Goodwin’s fears. ‘There will be more, Ray – you know that. When a bad apple lies against good apples, they get spoiled as well.’

  The phone I’d put on silent and laid on the table flashes with a text. I pull it over to read:

  No call from RC to CR. Checked all records. But there was a call on CR’s phone two hours before he went to the pub.

  I take the phone off the table and type back:

  Who made it?

  ‘Would you like a break, Inspector?’ Sabrina glares at me. ‘I did you the courtesy of turning off my phone while talking to you and DCI Goodwin. Perhaps I may beg reciprocity?’

  ‘It’s case relevant,’ I answer, sharply. ‘Confirmation that we can’t show Raurie Crewe called Richardson just before he killed York.’

  ‘Then am I right?’ she asks. ‘Was Richardson the gang leader?’

  ‘No, I’m fairly sure not. Richardson did receive a call, but it wasn’t from Crewe.’

  ‘Then who?’ asks Goodwin.

  I look down at the phone to see if Nisha’s answered my question.

  New burner number. No trace yet.

  ‘My sergeant’s been unable to fix the location, but it’s another pay-as-you-go from the look of things.’

  ‘Sounds like a prisoner to me,’ says Sabrina. ‘So, are we agreed, DCI Goodwin – you charge Crewe with the drugs offences, we oppose bail given his international connections and flight risk, and that gives you time to find enough to pin the attempted murder and murder charges on him?’

  Goodwin gives me a resigned glance. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Good. Then let’s move on to number two on t
he agenda. The murder of Ashley Crewe.’

  I jump in. ‘A certificate of presumed death was obtained by his parents after he’d been officially on the Missing register for the statutory seven years. In fact, we have testimonies and strong circumstantial evidence that he is alive.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ she says and prepares to write in her small red book. ‘Any charges for fraud against Crewe’s parents, family members, et cetera for claiming death benefits?’

  ‘The only surviving parent is the father and he is senile and in a care home,’ says Goodwin.

  ‘No action,’ declares Sabrina. ‘Next, I have Martin Johnson.’ She frowns at me. ‘Shouldn’t this be a Thames Valley case – given he lives in Chipping Norton?’

  ‘I discussed it with their CID,’ I answer. ‘And as it is tied in with the Ashley Crewe investigation and has resulted in our recommendation not to proceed, they were happy for us to do the clear-up.’

  ‘Why no action?’ queries Sabrina.

  ‘Victim withdrew his testimony and refuses to cooperate.’

  ‘Nobbled? Paid off? Intimidated?’ she asks.

  ‘Persuaded, I believe – by his wife.’ I take a breath and explain, ‘By the way, she is also the wife of the attacker. It’s the bigamy case, last on your list.’

  ‘So, no action against Johnson?’

  ‘None,’ confirms Goodwin.

  ‘Good. The courts will be pleased. Daniel Smith – what about him? I see you’ve marked the item for discussion – is this one of those rare moments where you ask for advice rather than just fight me over the severity of the charge?’

  ‘It is,’ I concede with a smile.

  ‘What a pleasant surprise. Now I’ve read your notes, so we don’t need to waste time on what Smith did and didn’t do. Can you prove collusion with any of the Crewe family to fabricate the death of Ashley?’

  ‘DNA harvested from hair found on the jacket in the grave where Crewe was supposed to have been buried matches that of Danny Smith. He’s an ex-con and we had his profile on record.’