by Andy Maslen
Stella logged them against the same serial number, hit ‘save’ and moved back to continue the test firing.
After a day out to Hounslow and Heathrow, the rogue pistol was safely back among hundreds of its fellows, bearing a brand-new-but-fake serial number that should ensure it was never tracked back to its original consignment. She inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a sigh.
Her watch said twenty past five.
She tapped Hutchings on the shoulder.
“I have to go,” she said. “Appointment with Collier. I think he wants to check I’ve been getting on with my filing like a good girl. Can we keep today quiet? I don’t want it to get out I’ve been off having fun. He might banish me to the admin task force for ever.”
Hutchings winked. “My lips, as they say, are sealed.”
Then she left, to the sound of Hutchings and his assistant unloading a second pair of Glocks into the targets.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A Friend
STELLA SAT FACING Collier at 5.30 p.m. For once, he looked less than perfectly groomed. He had a black bead of congealed blood on his chin where it appeared he had shaved too hurriedly. She noticed a second nick on his neck, close enough to his collar to have left a red smear on the folded white edge of the otherwise pristine, herringbone-patterned cotton.
He looked up from a sheet of paper he was apparently reading with great interest, frowning as he scanned its contents. He turned it over and moved it to one side. To Stella, the whole act looked contrived, as if he might have grabbed a random folder from his in-tray and started reading at the same moment as he barked, “Come!” before she entered.
“Ah, Stella,” he said. “Thanks for coming in to see me.” Like I had a choice, she didn’t say. “I wanted to see how you’ve been doing.”
What, since you dumped me where you thought I’d go crazy inside of two weeks, you mean? “Thank you, sir. For your concern, I mean.”
“Come on, Stella, you can drop the “sir” business. Why so formal?”
Because yesterday I discovered you were the SIO when Richard and Lola were killed, and I’m starting to wonder whether that fuckup with the evidence was more than just Reg the Veg and his sausagey fingers and actually something to do with you. “Sorry. Adam. I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, it’s not detective work. But you were right. I was away for a long time, and I went through,” she hesitated, calculating the precise number of seconds she should wait before continuing, “some fairly major avoidance activities, didn’t I?”
“How’s that side of things? Are you still on an even keel? Still attending AA meetings?”
She nodded, and parcelled out a little smile for him. An ‘I’m doing my best for you, Adam’ kind of smile. “Every other day. The only surprise is I haven’t met any other coppers, you know?”
He nodded and gave his ‘I understand’ smile: downturned lips that still appeared to look as if he found something humorous, and his trademark crinkle-eyed stare. “Just so long as you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, really.” Although I’m a little closer to finding the person who murdered my family. And I have at least one new way of dealing with them. “Was there anything else, sir – sorry, Adam?”
He shook his head and Stella pushed her chair back, getting ready to leave. He drew in a quick breath, loudly enough for Stella to stop, mid-movement. “Actually, there was one more thing,” he said. “You’ve been spending time with Danny Hutchings, I understand.” He stared at her, eyes bland, no more crinkles.
She felt a wriggle of doubt twirling in her stomach, and shrugged to cover her discomfort.
“You know, just trying to be helpful. Filing’s not all it’s cut out to be, and I will admit I get bored. He said he needed some help, and I volunteered.”
Collier maintained his stare. Then offered the briefest of smiles.
“I think, all things considered, it would be better for you to keep to the exhibits room. Can’t have you distracting our armourer, can we? Not while his marriage is, what shall we say, precarious? No, you keep on with your task force duties. If Danny needs help counting bullets or signing out weapons, he can come to me, yes?”
Stella nodded, striving to maintain a neutral face, even while her guts were jumping around like Paddington tarts on low-grade crack. “Absolutely. Sorry if, you know, I acted outside my remit. It won’t happen again, Adam. I promise. Just looking forward to the day I can start working cases again.”
He leaned back and favoured her with a warmer smile this time.
“I understand, Stella. Nobody wants to see you back hunting down bad guys more than me, you know that.”
*
At eight o’clock that same evening, a mobile phone vibrated in its owner’s pocket. The club had strict rules on phone conversations being conducted in its restaurant, so the Crown Prosecution Service official to whom it belonged excused herself from the table and walked through the crowded dining room to the marble-floored hallway between the restaurant and the members’ lounge.
“Hello,” she said, having gained the safety of the hall. “What is it?”
The voice at the other end of the line was male. Elderly. Its tone was papery, as if the lungs and larynx producing it had a struggle to force enough air between the lips. Yet she heard the authority there.
“I hear there’s a member of the fourth estate sniffing around.”
“Yes. A Guardian journalist, apparently. We’re tracking her down, sir.”
“You’d better. And when you do, you should find a way to steer her into safer investigative territory.”
“Absolutely, sir.” Despite herself, she began chewing and biting at her lower lip, tearing little slivers of skin away until she felt one pull at the soft flesh beneath and draw blood. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, tasting the salty, copper tang of her own blood in her mouth. “We’ve managed before; we will this time too.”
“Just see to it that you do.”
The line went dead.
*
Eight miles away, in a terraced house in West London originally built to house brewery workers, and now worth more than ten thousand of them would have earned in a year, a freelance journalist named Vicky Riley was sipping from a glass of South African Chenin Blanc. In front of her on her desk was a battered black laptop. On its screen were notes relating to a story she’d been researching, on and off, for three years.
The document title visible at the top of the screen was Star_Chamber_2010_VR_1. In the main working area of the screen was a bulleted list of short phrases, sentences and questions:
Extra-judicial killings in Britain exposed by Vicky Riley.
Is there a conspiracy inside the UK legal establishment?
Ultra-conservative agenda – pledged to combat human rights law.
State-sanctioned death squads?
Collusion between CPS and police?
Richard Drinkwater/Edwin Deacon. What links their deaths?
Her mobile lay beside her laptop, and behind the glass of white wine, which was beaded with condensation. Beneath the phone was a slim, white envelope with a single word written across the front: “Stella”.
She took a large gulp of the wine and picked up the phone, dialled a number and then waited. The phone at the other end rang eleven times. Just as she was getting ready to hang up, it was answered.
“Who is this?”
“Is that DI Stella Cole?”
“I repeat, who is this? You’ve got three seconds, then I’m hanging up.”
Riley inhaled and spoke on the outbreath. “My name is Vicky Riley. I was a friend of your husband’s.”
She waited. The silence was filled with sounds. Her heartbeat, loud in her ears, like the surf rushing in and out through the coiled corridors inside a seashell. Clicks and whistles on the line as cell towers between Hammersmith and Stella Cole’s house in Kilburn swapped the packets of ones and zeroes that constituted the call. And the steady breathing at the other end of the line, as she
listened to her friend’s widow deciding what to do next.
“What kind of friend?”
“The good kind. The kind he trusted with important information. The kind that was devastated when he was murdered.”
“Richard wasn’t murdered. It was a death-by-careless. Equivalent to manslaughter.”
“I believe he was murdered. I’m a journalist. He confided in me. He said he suspected people were out to get him. Can we meet, please?”
“Who do you write for? What people? Why?”
“I’m freelance. I’ve pitched a story to The Guardian. About a conspiracy. High up in the law. I need to meet you. I really do. I’ll come to you, or you can come here, to my house, I mean. Or a café, or the middle of Trafalgar Square, anywhere. You tell me when and where, and I promise I’ll be there. There’s stuff you need to hear. Stuff from Richard.”
Another long pause: Riley waited it out. Slid the tip of her right index finger around on her laptop’s trackpad.
“I’ll come to you. Address?”
“It’s thirty-one Overstone Road in Hammersmith. The postcode’s–”
“Don’t need it. What time?”
“Can you come now?”
“Give me half an hour.”
*
Stella hung up. Put her phone down on the desk in her office. Closed her eyes. “Friend”. It was such a simple word. Lola would have gone on to have friends. She would have had best friends. Then fallen out of love with them and hated them. Come home weeping onto Stella’s shoulder about the betrayal. Then they would have made up. But this lady says she was a friend of Daddy’s, Lola. Sometimes grownups say “friend” and it’s not a good thing. Let’s go and find out.
It had started to drizzle. Stella thumbed the bike’s self-starter and gave the right grip a slight twist. Recently, it hadn’t been catching on a closed throttle. As the Triumph’s engine fired and settled into its comforting off-kilter idle, Stella looked up. Dark grey clouds were pressing down on the city, pregnant with rain. She kicked the bike into first and pulled away.
*
The two women faced each other on Riley’s doorstep, Riley standing back from the threshold in tight, faded jeans and a white shirt, Stella in bike gear, holding her helmet in her left hand, shaking out her ponytail.
Stella took the journalist in at a glance. She was Richard’s type. He’d always sworn he didn’t have a ‘type’. “You’re my type!” was his stock answer whenever she teased him about ogling other women. But here was another representative. Dirty blonde hair. Streaks of brown amongst the sand rather than an even expanse of pale yellow tresses. Tall. Long legs. Why were men so predictable?
“Stella, I mean, can I call you that?” Riley looked down then back at Stella, scratching her scalp through the long hair Stella had already clocked. “Come in, please, it looks horrible out there.”
She moved aside to let Stella come in, realised they’d end up squashed together in the narrow hall and turned to lead Stella down to the kitchen.
Pert little arse too. You’re definitely his type. “You said you were a friend of my husband?” Stella asked. Emphasise the possessive pronoun. Just to remind you who’s who in this situation. I’m the one who gets to call him Richard, for now.
Riley looked back over her shoulder as she reached the kitchen.
“Yes. I interviewed him a few times for stories I was working on. I specialise in miscarriages of justice. Police brutality, corruption, things like that.”
“Which is supposed to endear you to me, is it?”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry! I didn’t–, I mean I know most police officers are honest, and do their best, but you know, the bad apples…”
“How good a friend were you? To Richard?”
“We used to keep in touch about his cases and my stories. We’d buy each other lunch once a month. Didn’t he mention me?”
“No. Funnily enough, he didn’t. He never mentioned you once.”
Riley’s eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth for a second.
“You don’t think we were–?”
“You were what?”
“Oh, God! You think we were having an affair, don’t you? Look, we were friends, that’s all. There was never anything between us. I wouldn’t have minded, if he’d been single. I mean, he was a good-looking man. But he wasn’t. Single, I mean.” Her fingers were raking through her hair now. “I’m not a slut who sleeps with people to get stories, and I don’t go after other women’s husbands, either. Plus, he spent half the time talking about you, anyway. I’m sorry if you thought–”
Stella felt the steel clamp squeezing her chest loosen, then vanish. She inhaled deeply.
“Look, Vicky. It’s me who should be apologising, not you. I was always a little jealous. Women naturally took to Richard and I used to feel insecure. No chance of that now, though, is there?”
“Why don’t we sit down? I have a lot to tell you. I’ve got some wine on the go.” Riley pointed at the opened bottle. “Do you want a glass?”
“No, thanks. But a coffee would be good. Milk, no sugar.”
Riley made the coffee; ground, Stella noted, not instant, another tick in the credits side of the ledger she was keeping. She checked out the kitchen. It was a habit she couldn’t break, assessing every room she sat in as a potential crime scene. The place was a mess. Plates and mugs piled up by the sink, even though there was a dishwasher tucked under the kitchen counter. Papers strewn over the table. A pair of deck shoes by the back door, and a pair of wellington boots, tumbled over as if drunk.
“Here you are,” Riley said, finally, pushing a mug of steaming coffee across to Stella.
Stella took a sip, letting the smell of the really very good coffee drift into her nostrils. “Mmm. Good.”
“Costa Rican. Fair trade, organic.”
“And harvested by disabled lesbians, no doubt.”
There was a pause, then both women laughed. The sound was loud in the little kitchen, and it broke whatever lingering tension lay between them. Riley spoke first, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
“I’m sorry about Richard. And Lola. Really, I am. He gave me something and told me to give it to you if anything ever happened to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
From Beyond
RILEY HANDED STELLA the envelope.
“He said to wait at least a year. To make sure you and Lola were OK. I don’t think he ever imagined they’d go after Lola as well.”
Stella took the envelope. Her fingers were shaking as she ran her thumbnail under the glued flap. “Who are ‘they’? What are you talking about?”
“Read it. Then I’ll answer your questions.”
Stella’s pulse was throbbing in her throat as if something was trying to push its way out. Her stomach was tight and the anxiety was making her crave a drink, or a pill.
Her thumb and forefinger were pinched round the edge of the sheet of paper inside the envelope so tightly the nails had turned white. She pulled it out, smoothed it flat on the table then held it up to read. The top edge fluttered.
My Darling Stella,
I am so sorry. You’re reading this, and that means I am dead. By now, I hope the dust has settled and you and Lola are doing OK.
You’ve met Vicky. She is a friend, and someone I hope you will work with, as I have. She and I have been investigating a series of cases where people found not guilty, freed on appeal, or given non-custodial sentences, have turned up dead a few weeks later.
There is something going on in the legal system. A conspiracy, a secret society, a star chamber – we’re not exactly sure what. They are acting as a parallel justice organisation, as judge, jury and executioner.
I can see you now. You’re frowning and pulling your head back like you always do when you think something’s bullshit. Talk to Vicky. She’ll show you the evidence we’ve collected.
But be careful, my darling. These are dangerous people. They got to me. You have to keep Lola safe. And yourself. But
you’re the tough one. I know you can do it. Bring them down, Stella. Arrest them and get them in the dock. Expose them all.
I love you. I always will.
Richard
Stella folded the letter and pushed it back into the envelope. Looked across at Riley, who was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks, leaving greyish trails where her mascara had run. She pushed her palms against her own eyes and screwed them around, wiping away the wetness.
“He didn’t know about Lola. It would have killed him,” Stella said. Then she laughed, a cracked bark of a noise. “Poor Richard. They killed you before you could expose them, and they took our baby as well. I’m going to get them, darling. I’m going to get them all.”
Then she sniffed and shook her head, blew her nose on a tissue and stared straight at Riley.
“I want to know everything you and Richard found out, dug up, suspected or just wondered about. Starting with, who, or what, we’re looking for?”
Riley took a sip of her wine. “Since Richard was killed – murdered – I mean, I’ve developed a contact in the police force. He won’t give me his name. I call him Deep Throat.”
“What? After that old sex film?”
Riley shook her head. “After the mole in Watergate. When Nixon was bugging his opponents?”
Stella shook her head. “American politics isn’t my thing, I’m afraid.”
“It doesn’t matter. Deep Throat told me he works in SCO19. That’s–”
“Firearms, yes, I know. I’m a police officer.”
Riley blushed. “Sorry, force of habit. He told me he overheard colleagues in the locker room talking about a job they’d done. It wasn’t official police business. One of them said, ‘We gave him PPM’s message,’ and the other one said, ‘Die for your country’. Then they both laughed, apparently.”
