by Ellis, Tim
‘Oh, I see, you think my car is a pool car?’
‘No. I won’t be going far. It’ll just be for a couple of hours.’
‘And what if you disappear into the same black hole as DC Kline? How will the three of us get home?’
‘I won’t, and you will.’
‘And then there’s the petrol.’
‘You can put in a claim.’
‘And wait months to be reimbursed while I have no petrol in my car.’
‘I’ll give you the money for the petrol and then I’ll claim.’
‘Then there’s the wear and tear on the car.’
‘How much?’
‘And the insurance will probably be invalid if you use it for high-speed car chases.’
‘What will it take, Coveney?’
‘I’ll drive.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘And I still want the petrol money . . . up front . . . thirty pounds.’
‘THIRTY POUNDS? You should have your own gang of muggers, Coveney.’
Amies snorted like a pot-bellied pig again.
‘Are you going to be all right here on your own, Amies?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be okay, Sir. Helen Hanson isn’t far away.’
‘Come on then, Coveney. You’ve got a satnav, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
He passed her the two addresses. ‘That’s where we’re going.’
Coveney grabbed her handbag and headed for the door.
‘I hope we haven’t got far to walk,’ he said as he followed her down the steps.
‘It’s just outside.’
Coveney’s car was parked behind the truck.
‘This is it?’ he said as he stood behind a multicoloured wreck.
‘What were you expecting, a Rolls Royce?’
‘Well no, but probably a little less rust, maybe not so psychedelic and slightly larger.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ She climbed in, leaned across and opened the passenger door. Then set up her satnav and stuck it on the windscreen.
The car reeked of perfume. There was a collection of pay-and-display parking tickets stuck all across the top of the windscreen and down both sides.
She saw him looking. ‘Bastards.’
‘Who?’
‘Parking attendants.’
‘I’m at a loss.’
‘The law requires that I have to make a parking ticket visible. It doesn’t say that it has to be the only parking ticket on the windscreen, or that it has to be the right way up. I make the bastards work for their money. If they want to see whether I have a valid parking ticket, they have to find it first, and then stand on their head to read it.’
‘Did you come from a broken home, Coveney?’
‘Yes. What’s that got to do with anything? I hate parking attendants, they’re the dregs of humanity.’
‘They’re doing a job like we are,’ he said, yanking the seat belt forward and slotting the tongue into the latch.
‘You believe what you want to believe, Sir, and I’ll continue to hate parking attendants.’
She turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed and spluttered.
‘What?’ she said, glaring at him.
‘I didn’t say a word.’
The car jerked forward. Black smoke belched out of the exhaust.
Once they’d left the grounds of the hotel, Coveney had to navigate carefully through the park crowds towards the exit. Normally, private vehicles were not permitted beyond the main entrance. Hotel guests had to leave their cars outside and be ferried to the hotel by a park train.
It was six-thirty and the light was beginning to fade.
‘Stop.’
‘What?’
She skidded to a stop as they were skirting round the car park towards the main road.
He climbed out, strode half way down a row of parked cars to a red Audi TT RS Roadster and stood staring at it.
Coveney came up behind him. ‘What’s wrong, Sir?’
‘This is the pool car Kline conned out of the garage yesterday. Look . . .’ He pointed to the badge stuck in the windscreen, which stated that the car was the: Property of Hammersmith Police Station.
‘If the car is here, where’s DC Kline?’
‘You’re asking all the right questions, Coveney.’ He walked to the front of the car and felt the bonnet. ‘Cold.’
‘I’m confused, Sir. Didn’t DC Kline leave early this morning? Has she come back? If she has returned, where is she? And where are the hobnobs?’
‘It’s like having an echo in my head.’
‘Sorry, Sir. Did she even make it to the car this morning?’
‘I would guess not. All the time we thought she was out and about in South Acton, she’s been in the park.’
‘Where? Doing what?’
‘I’m beginning to regret bringing you, Coveney. You have one chance to redeem yourself.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kline’s got the key. Can you hotwire a car?’
‘I don’t know about these new-fangled sports cars. As you can see from my car I’m not exactly a girl racer.’
‘But you can try?’
‘It depends.’
‘What on this time?’
‘Who’s going to get the blame for the damage?’
‘Kline – who else? She’s not here, so we can easily blame her. I’ll swear under oath I saw her do it. One thing’s for certain, we can’t leave the damned thing here overnight.’
‘I suppose not. And you’ll drive mine back?’
‘If I must.’
‘You won’t damage it, will you?’
‘Ha!’
After pulling the steering column apart and exposing a spaghetti junction of wires, she managed to disable the alarm and start the ignition.
‘That was more dumb luck than judgement,’ she said, revving the engine.
They drove back into Grisly Park, through the crowds to the Waterbury Hotel and parked the two cars up.
‘What now, Sir?’
‘If I’m not mistaken, Coveney, isn’t it nearly time for you to knock off?’
‘I can stay if you want.’
‘And do what?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Thanks, but there’s no need. You go home . . . Who are you going home to?’
‘A husband and three children.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You have the figure of a celebrity, and you definitely don’t look old enough to have had one child never mind three.’
‘You can’t help yourself, can you, Sir?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Coveney.’
***
It was warm. She didn’t need a coat, but she had a thin one wrapped around her anyway.
She looked like a whore.
As he watched her exit the taxi company office, he wondered what she had on underneath.
Where she worked wasn’t exactly the Ritz. In fact, it was at the opposite extreme. A place run by immigrants for the Russian mafia. Taxi firms were excellent outlets for drugs, prostitution and for moving everything from A to B and back again. Was that the only job she could get?
He guessed it must be. The best he could do was a security job working nights – a job nobody else wanted. Quigg had a lot to answer for, and he would. First though, Monica had to die. It was a sad fact of life that you could know too much. Hadn’t that been the root cause of his sacking. He had looked in Kline’s files and shifted from not knowing enough to knowing too much. And knowing too much could be dangerous. Well, for Monica it was more than dangerous, it was deadly.
She’d been given a chance, but had declined his offer. Monica, of all people, knew that you were either for him or against him. There were no half measures, no grey areas, no sitting on the fence. Quigg had always been against him, but he had expected more from Monica. They’d had a thing. He’d given her gifts. Made her happy. Quigg had always been enemy number one.
&
nbsp; He climbed out of his car and began following her on the opposite side of the street. She even walked like a whore. What had he ever seen in her? Well, nothing really. She was a way of getting to the Chief, of keeping in the know and she was a reasonably good shag. If he was being truthful though, she was a bit of a slapper, wore too much make-up, tended to wear clothes that cheap whores might keep in their closet and was a bit too eager to spread her legs. She definitely wasn’t marrying material.
As usual, she turned left down Jingle Pot Alley – a short-cut home, but tonight it was a short-cut to hell. He smiled as he dodged the going-home traffic to cross the road.
The light had nearly gone, and the street lights weren’t on yet.
‘Wait up, Monica,’ he called as he entered the alley.
She stopped and turned. ‘What do you want? I thought we’d said all there was to say.’
‘I forgot to tell you something.’
‘What?’
‘This.’ He pushed the long-bladed hunting knife he’d bought for a tenner at the Cash Exchange into her stomach. He could have slid it between her ribs and into her heart, or severed the jugular vein in her neck, but he wanted to keep her alive for a little while longer – he had one last thing to do.
‘Oh God!’ She opened her mouth wide to say more, but he pressed a gloved hand over it to stop her, and then he walked her backwards until her back was against the wall of the alley – between two metal dumpsters. There was the heavy stench of rotting food, urine and dog faeces.
‘If you scream, I’ll give you something to scream about. I can easily jiggle the knife round and round, or pull it slowly across your lovely flat stomach.’ He removed the hand from her mouth.
If her eyes had opened another couple of centimetres, the eyeballs would have popped out and dangled by their stalks. Instead, tears ran down her cheeks, and she took short sharp breaths but didn’t let any out.
‘Sorry Monica, but you’ve become a liability. I want you to know that you won’t be dying in vain though. I’m going to get my revenge on Quigg. You should have realised that I’m not the kind of guy who lets a stab in the back go unpunished.’
He slid his hand between the flaps of her coat and under her skirt. ‘How did I know that you’d be wearing stockings and suspenders? You’re such a fucking whore.’ He tore at her lace knickers, unzipped himself and pushed into her. ‘This is what you were good at, Monica. I wouldn’t say you were the best I’ve ever had, but you’re up there – in the top ten.’
‘You bastard,’ she gasped.
‘The one and only. Think of it as my final gift to you’ He hadn’t had sex with anyone since the last time he’d been with her. He’d had the idea that he might get a prostitute in. Just call a number and order one like a pizza, but he objected to paying for something Monica used to give him for free. He could feel himself coming. ‘I was just thinking of that time in the gents toilet when the Chief nearly caught us. God, you were hot.’ He put his mouth over hers and emptied himself into her.
She turned her head away.
‘Oh, and don’t worry. You and I have been seeing each other since we were both sacked. I’m going to your flat after this to leave traces all over the place. The DNA I’ve left inside you will lead them directly to me, but they’d have got round to me sooner or later. This way, I’ll just tell them we had sex during your break. I’ll be devastated by your death, of course, but knife crimes are two a penny in London – just like whores.’ He twisted the knife upwards. The point pierced the bottom of her heart and she died in his arms. After wiping the blade on her top, he slipped it into his pocket – he would need it again soon.
He let her drop to the ground. After helping himself to her handbag he strolled back to his car. He kept her keys, the money in her purse, and threw the handbag out of the window onto some waste ground on the way to her flat.
***
‘I’ve lost Kline, Chief.’ It had crossed his mind to keep it to himself, but the Chief would have found out sooner rather than later and then the proverbial would have hit the fan.
‘Still got the faecal touch, Quigg.’
‘I’m sorry, Sir?’
‘Everything you touch turns to shit.’
‘No, this time it’s not my fault, Chief.’
‘You say that every time.’
‘But this time it’s true.’
‘You say that as well. You’ll never move up the promotion ladder until you learn to take responsibility for your actions.’
‘Let me tell you what happened, you’ll see that it wasn’t my fault.’
‘I have the Commissioner and his . . . lady friend canoodling in the dining room. Mrs Bellmarsh is five minutes away from putting the evening meal on the table, so that’s how long you’ve got to tell me your tale of woe.’
He told the Chief what had happened. ‘I need to search for her, and it would . . .’
‘Your time’s up, Quigg. All I can say is that you’d better find her alive. You know what it’s going to look like if you lose two partners in as many months. I’ll keep the Commissioner abreast of the shit you’ve got yourself into – he likes a good after dinner story.’
The line went dead.
He sighed. All the Chief wanted was for him to solve the case in the shortest possible time utilising the least amount of resources, so that he could take all the credit. He didn’t even get a chance to ask for the armed support teams from CO19 again and it was no good phoning them direct because they’d just ask who had authorised him to phone.
‘Things not going well?’
It was Magdalena. She sat down on the sofa next to him and put a hand on his thigh. He wondered what she was after. Most people were after something. What did he have that she wanted?
‘I’ll need the room I was in last night for another night, if that’s all right with you?’ He couldn’t go home when Kline was missing. Not that he would be able to mount search parties, or wander about all night calling out her name. In fact, he had no plan. He had no idea where she was or what had happened to her. There were so many possibilities that he couldn’t even hazard a guess about where to start looking for her first.
Maybe it was time to close the park. He couldn’t really do anything with thousands of civilians wandering about.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ she said.
‘I need a change of clothes as well. I must smell like a worker at a landfill site.’
‘You smell fine. Mr Frye has some spare clothes in his office, which should fit you. I’ll have them taken up.’
‘Thank you. I could also do with a toothbrush, a razor and some aftershave.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘You’re an angel.’
‘That’s what they say.’ She stood up. ‘What about the room for your partner?’
‘She’s missing.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like coffee?’
‘No thanks, I have work to do. When are you off duty?’
‘Eight o’clock.’ He checked his watch. It was ten to eight. ‘Well, have a good night off, and thanks for your help.’
‘It was my pleasure.’
She walked back to the reception desk.
He’d expected her to ask about coming up to his room again, even though he couldn’t recall her being there the first time. If it was so special, and they had a thing going on, why hadn’t she asked? He really wanted to go home, but he needed to be here if Kline made an appearance, or somebody found something – like Kline’s dead body. God, he hoped she wasn’t dead. He was getting used to her being his partner, her youthful exuberance and her crazy behaviour.
They’d be doing the shift change in the command centre now. He pushed himself up, but before he was standing his phone vibrated. He sat back down.
‘Yes.’
‘You’d better be on your way home with an erection the size of an elephant’s trunk.’
‘I have a situation here, Lucy.’
‘You have
a situation here, Quigg.’
‘I can’t get away tonight. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Do you want to know what those builders have promised to do to me tonight?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘When you do get home there’ll be nothing left for you, you know. I’ll be all shagged out:
One builder, two builder, three builder four
Five builder, six builder, seven builder more
Fat builder, thin builder, builder on his knees
Big builder, small builder, more builders please!
I’m gonna pig out on builders, Quigg. You fucking bastard.’
The call ended.
Hi sighed and wandered outside.
The night had taken a foothold. The sky was clear and the stars were in full bloom. Somewhere off to his right fireworks were bursting and popping, and he wondered what the occasion was for.
He heard a commotion on the other side of the truck.
‘Hello, what’s going on here then?’ The corner of his mouth went up. He sounded like a copper. Yes, he was a copper, but he didn’t expect to sound like one.
‘Security found this . . . journalist snooping around,’ Coveney said.
Two security guards were holding an arm each. Both arms belonged to Jessie Tolliver from the Hammersmith Examiner.
Tolliver smiled. ‘You remember me, don’t you, Inspector?’
He signalled for the security guards to release the woman’s arms, and then he walked round inspecting her. She was in her late twenties, with bottle-blonde hair that needed the roots re-doing, and a mouth that was too large for her face.
‘Hello, Miss Tolliver. What brings you to South Acton?’
‘I could ask you the same thing?”
Coveney interrupted. ‘She’s a bit scrawny, but I could organise a barbecue for the command centre staff. I expect she’d taste okay with some barbecue sauce.’
‘You think you’d be able to push the skewer up her arse and out of her mouth?’ Quigg asked.
‘We could at least try, Sir,’
Tolliver laughed. ‘Someone told me there’s been several murders here.’
‘Someone?’
‘You know I can’t reveal my source.’
