by Andy Maslen
“You’ll see on the news, sir. But, basically, smooth as silk. He took the bait, and we got helmet-cam footage of him pointing Tom’s Glock at us. Correct verbal warnings given and clearly audible. Couple of civilians took some phone footage, which we’ve had copied. Sir?”
“What is it, sergeant?”
“The suspensions. The investigation by Professional Standards and the IPCC. I don’t want any of my lads charged with murder.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Leave it to me. The chairman of the IPCC is,” he paused, “a friend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Check your account at midnight. I think you’ll be happy. As will your wife. Where was it she wanted to go this year?”
“Florida, sir.”
“Yes, well, I’d buy her a new bikini if I were you.”
*
A pizza delivery driver looked up at the window of the four-storey house in London’s Belgravia area as he sped northward along Eaton Place. He was a recent arrival from Afghanistan and not entirely legal. What had caught his eye was a trio of faces at a third-storey window, their complexions rendered an eerie pale blue by the screen they were staring at. Then an oncoming taxi parped its horn at him, and he corrected his line and carried on towards his next drop. Had he instead delivered the pizzas to number thirty-one, he would have been greeted by Sir Christopher De Bree QC, although not with any great degree of warmth. De Bree had taken silk ten years earlier and now, as a Queen’s Counsel, was often to be found in this Crown Court or that one, and often the Old Bailey itself, prosecuting the most serious cases of murder, assault, terrorism, sexual violence and arson. He had lost his most recent case, which was why he now hosted six colleagues in his oak-panelled home office.
Between them, the five men and two women gathered round the computer monitor had seven bachelor’s degrees, three PhDs, five law degrees, two knighthoods, and a baronetcy, and personal wealth of over seven hundred million pounds. Several would have been familiar to viewers of television news or consumers of online journalism. They would often be seen on the steps of the Central Criminal Court or the High Court, offering comments to the gathered media on the outcome of this case or that appeal.
As well as senior positions in the law, they shared something else.
They were members of the Executive Council of Pro Patria Mori.
“To die for one’s country” might have been the English translation of the group’s name, but none of its august members had any intention of doing so themselves. Or, at least, not until they had reached a good and well-remunerated old age. No. The people whose deaths for Britain they had in mind were criminals. Or, not precisely criminals. People who, it was quite obvious, were lawbreakers of the most serious and unrepentant kind, but for whom the law was an inadequate adversary. Either because they were wealthy or well-connected enough to afford clever lawyers, or because failings in the chain of evidence hampered a swift and efficient prosecution, or because of witness nobbling, or, simply, because the idiots who so often seemed to turn up on juries were incapable of seeing the evil standing meekly in the dock in front of them.
Their grumbles coalesced around a handful of problems, as they saw them. The parlous state of British justice. The enfeebling effect of the European Union, with its damnable Court of Justice. And the new breed of hand-wringing human rights lawyers. In response, the group of senior law makers, law enforcers and law testers had met in a club in London’s St James’s district the year before and decided to do something about it.
The result was Pro Patria Mori, or PPM as it quickly became known by its members. A club with very few rules, but the strictest penalties for breaking them. Rule number one: members to work for the good of Great Britain at all times, placing country above individual rights. Rule number two: justice is more important than the law and will be sought by members whenever and wherever their talents, connections and abilities allow. Rule number three: absolute secrecy. A handful of others had been agreed upon, including a solemn oath to support the police, but these three formed the group’s credo.
Because the members enjoyed extremely senior positions within the British establishment, they had access to the kinds of resources that allowed them to suborn, cajole, bribe or blackmail such additional personnel as they needed from time to time. Civil servants with gambling problems, politicians with their hands in the till, police officers with larger houses and more expensive cars than their salaries should have made possible: all were under the magnifying glass – and thumb – of Pro Patria Mori.
The people enjoying the helmet-cam video in De Bree’s home office that night were the group’s founders. As Nigel Golding emerged from the back of the prison transport van, one of them inhaled sharply.
“There he is, the little shit,” she said. “He wouldn’t have got away with an insanity plea if I’d been hearing the case.
“No, Jan,” the man beside her said. “You’d have been reaching for the black silk square, wouldn’t you?”
“Shh, you two!” said a second man. “He’s about to get the death penalty anyway.”
Seven pairs of eyes focused on the screen as the firearms officers’ cries of “Armed police!” blared from the PC’s speakers.
They watched as Golding swung his gun arm up and pulled the trigger on the empty weapon.
Then the camera-bearing officer and his four colleagues opened fire.
“Yes!” someone hissed in the room, as blood and brain sprayed from the back of Golding’s head. A dozen or more bullet wounds bloomed scarlet on the front of his blue-and-white-striped prison-issue shirt as he collapsed, twisting clockwise into an untidy pile of limbs, arms flung outward, the pistol still clutched in his right hand.
“Good riddance,” the senior policeman said with a satisfied smile. “What’s that, seven?”
“Eight, George. That teenaged rapist hanged himself in Wandsworth last month, remember?”
“Oh, yes. Silly me. Eight. Not bad for less than a year’s operations, eh?”
As the footage snapped off, the members returned to the sitting room and reclined on dark-green leather sofas to drink De Bree’s Taittinger champagne and eat lobster rolls, thoughtfully provided by their host, who had prosecuted in Crown vs. Golding, and lost. Then won.
CHAPTER FOUR
Back in Harness
6 MARCH 2010
“HELLO EVERYONE. MY name is Stella Cole. And I am,” she sighed, willing herself to complete the litany, “addicted to tranquillisers. And Pinot Grigio.”
The circle of twelve faces – some male, some female, some old, some young, some clear-skinned, some ragged with sores or sunken where teeth had fallen out – turned to Stella. Most managed a smile of some kind.
“Hi, Stella,” they said in dreary unison.
“I haven’t had a pill, or a drink, for two months, three weeks, four days and seven and a half hours.”
The others clapped politely at this, the routine outlining of an addict’s sobriety.
The group were sitting in a circle on grey plastic chairs with the kind of tubular steel legs designed to make stacking easy. The room was in the basement of a church – dusty parquet flooring, an upright piano shrouded in a faded red velvet curtain on one side, posters for mum-and-toddler music classes jostling for wall space with parish notices.
“That’s brilliant, Stella,” Clare, the youngish woman running the group, said with a smile as dishonest as her hair dye. In fact, she’d been at pains to point out to Stella when she’d attended her first meeting that she didn’t so much see her role as to “run” the group as to “look after it”.
“I’m like a shepherd. Or a shepherdess, I suppose,” she’d said, then giggled. “If you’re my sheep, I must be Bo Peep.”
Stella had, briefly, considered punching this earnest, bespectacled woman with her sensible, one-inch heels and neat, blonde bob with half an inch of dark roots. Instead, she’d taken her plastic cup of scalding instant coffee to a chair as far as poss
ible from Clare’s.
Now, she felt she actually had something to share with the group.
“I’ve been to see our occupational health department and the FME, sorry, I mean force medical officer, and I’ve been signed off for return to duty. So, I’ll be chasing the bad guys again starting next Monday.”
Her news brought forth a smattering of applause.
“Well done, Stella,” the doughy, heavily tattooed woman next to her said, turning in her chair. “Just keep coming here, won’t you? I mean, the stress and everything. Don’t want to fall off the wagon, do you?”
Stella smiled. “Don’t worry, Sue. Job or no job, you won’t get rid of me that easily. You’ll still be seeing my ugly mug around here. Even if they do keep serving this shit coffee.”
A few people laughed, and the meeting moved on.
*
Stella walked into the CID office. But why was the whole of the Murder Investigation Team laughing at her? It was her first day back on the job. She was a young widow. A recovering pill-head and alcoholic. Surely she deserved a little pity? A little compassion?
Then she looked down.
No trousers. Her feet stuck into scuffed black mules. And her knickers were on inside out. The label was showing. They were laughing so hard she couldn’t hear herself think.
No. This is ridiculous. Wake up.
Stella groaned and rolled over in bed, flinging out an arm for Richard. It met only cold, smooth sheet. She turned the clock round and squinted at the green numerals: 3:15. Of course. When was it ever any other time? Ten milligrams of generic diazepam would fix this feeling. Or a snort of Smirnoff straight from the bottle under the bed. But they’d all gone down the toilet months ago.
She kicked the covers off and got out of bed. Wrapped her pale-pink-and-white kimono around her bony frame and wandered past Lola’s room, then downstairs, flicking on the kettle on her way through the kitchen to the back door. While it was boiling the water, emitting strange growls and bumps, she lit a cigarette and stood on the deck, one arm round her stomach, the other held out to her side, the fag gripped between index and middle fingers. Her GP, a kind Jewish man with some sort of liver complaint that turned his skin a pale yellow, had almost begged her to give up smoking. But as she’d said, “Look, Doctor Samuels, I’m off the pills and the booze. Give me nicotine or give me death.” He’d smiled at her dreadful misquote of Patrick Henry, but nodded his agreement. “Stella, after what you’ve been through, I suppose the occasional Marlboro Light isn’t such a bad thing.”
She stood now, shivering in the dark, the wooden planks rough under her bare feet, sniffing the tobacco smoke as it curled away from the end of her cigarette. Her grief counsellor had advised her that it was natural to feel anxious going back to work after any sort of prolonged absence, let alone one caused by such extreme circumstances as hers. But now, watching thin spears of pink rocket across the sky, she felt utterly calm. Not at peace. She doubted she would ever feel that again. But calm. No butterflies. No tremors or fluttering pulse. No tingling in the extremities. She was ready.
Except it was half past three.
No point even trying to sleep now, Stel. Best go for a run and compensate for the nicotine, she thought. Lola would be fine with Kristina, the live-in nanny, a sweet Polish girl built like a peasant with sturdy hips and a bosom that would have won her a job as a wet nurse a hundred years earlier.
She returned to her bedroom and pulled on sweat pants, sports bra, T-shirt, hoodie and her faithful Asics running shoes, and was out on Ulysses Road five minutes later.
As she ran down towards the park, feet flowing over the pavement in a familiar and comforting rhythm, she rehearsed her opening lines to Collier.
“Thanks for having me back, sir. I know you could have requested me transferred off Homicide. I won’t let you down. I’m not over Richard’s death, but I’m coping. Managing. I go to meetings. I have my support network. I’m taking care of myself. Now, what shit is there for me to deal with?”
Tyres screeched behind her, and she whirled round, heart pounding. A hatchback was tearing off in the opposite direction. Kids joyriding, probably. Or someone out putting their new toy through its paces.
“Fuck!” she said. Then louder. “Fuck!”
That was the one thing she hadn’t dealt with. Not properly. Cars. She had a problem with them. She didn’t like driving anymore. She hated it. Being a passenger was almost as bad. She’d sit there, sweating, palpitating. Feeling death was about to snatch her. In flames. Screaming. She’d had some therapy with a clinical psychologist paid for by the Police Federation. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, it was called. Supposed to deal with what the young guy treating her had called “limiting beliefs”. It had sort of worked. Enough for her to get a positive report to tag on her personnel file. She’d tackle it when it came up. She could always get Frankie or Jake or one of the others to do the driving. Or most of it, anyway.
Back home, she stripped off her soaking running clothes and threw them in the washing machine. She turned on the shower and, while it was running, lined up her gear on the dressing table. Warrant card. Notebook. Phone. Power pack. And her little helper.
*
Back in training, she’d been rubbish at the unarmed defence tactics course. But her superiors had said, even as a graduate on the fast track, she had to rotate through all the major roles, including firearms. That called for the ability to defend oneself and, if necessary, take down an assailant or a suspect who was resisting arrest, or attacking an officer or an officer’s colleague.
Her UDT instructor, a bullet-headed, ex-army type everyone called Rocky, had taken her to one side after another session where she’d landed on her arse, this time with a split lip into the bargain.
“Listen, DS Cole,” he said. “You’re a woman, so you’re not as strong as the men. I get that. But you’re skinny too. And short. Some of those others, well, they’re on the chunky side. DS Mills over there, she did aikido for team GB at the Olympics. You need a little helping hand. Give me thirty quid and see me here tonight. Six thirty sharp.”
So, she’d fished two creased notes out of her purse, a twenty and a ten, handed them over, and returned to the classroom for the next theory session.
At half past six, she went back to the gym. All the physical education classes ended at six, and the place was dark. She pushed through the double doors and called out.
“Hello? Sarge?” Nobody called Sergeant Doug Stevens “Rocky” to his face. Not unless they wanted to end up flat on theirs. She flipped the light switches down, one after the other, and waited while the huge pendant lamps hummed into life before drenching the gym in cold, white light.
From behind her, a strong, hard hand clamped across her mouth, stifling her scream. She smelled aftershave and sweat. Her attacker wrenched her backwards until she was leaning against his chest. His right hand came round and into her eyeline. It was clenched around a dark cylinder.
Then the man released her, pushed her upright again and came round so she could see him.
“You’re dead, DS Cole,” he said. “Again. Look, I got something for you. A little helper.”
He held out his right hand. Lying across the palm was a dark-brown leather tube about four inches long by maybe an inch in diameter. One end was closed with a circle of the same brown leather. The other had a narrow strap fixed over it with a brass press stud.
She took it from him. It was surprisingly heavy. She looked at him. He was grinning.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Let’s call it a change purse. Undo the strap and take a look.”
She flicked the press stud with her thumbnail and tipped the cylinder over towards her other palm. Out tumbled thirty one-pound coins; a couple rolled off her palm and clattered onto the gym’s wooden floor.
“Sorry. I don’t get it,” she said, bending to pick up the errant coins.
“Don’t you? Load it up again, and I’ll show you what it’s for.” Stella
dropped the coins back into the tube and clipped the strap over again. “Right. Come with me.”
He led her over to a realistic male mannequin. It was a training aid they’d nicknamed “Marv” after a Hollywood film producer who’d gone apeshit on a plane. Some kind of legal high he’d popped in the First-Class lounge hadn’t agreed with the free booze, and he’d attacked a stewardess.
“I don’t want to hit him again, Sarge,” she said. “It really hurts. In case you forgot, I’m not the one representing her country in ai-bloody-kido.”
“Well, I do want you to hit him. But first, I want you to hold this.”
He held out the roll of coins.
Insight dawned in Stella’s brain.
She enclosed the leather cylinder in her palm, then wrapped her fingers and thumb around it. Opened them out again and played with the grip, just a little. Then she squeezed it tight. It felt good: not cold, exactly, just cool, and surprisingly soft. She looked at Rocky. He was grinning again, his eyes twinkling in the light from the overheads, the corners creased with what looked like genuine good humour.
She turned to face the mannequin, pulled her arm back in a short compression then struck out, straight and fast, as she’d been instructed, into Marv’s throat. The soft silicone deformed as her knuckles connected, and the mannequin rocked back on its stand. She looked right at Stevens.
“I like it,” she said, before whirling round and hammering her fist into the centre of Marv’s face, feeling a satisfying click from inside the flesh, indicating that she’d broken his nose.
“Of course,” Stevens said, “it’s not exactly kosher for a detective to carry an offensive weapon, and any defence brief worth their salt would have a field day if their client claimed you’d thumped him with a home-made cosh. But I can’t see the harm in a change purse, can you? I mean, what if you need some tampons from the machine in the ladies’?”
“Yeah, because that’s all us girls ever do with our spare change, you sexist pig!” she said, but she was smiling. “Maybe it’s called a change purse because it changes a person.”
