The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  ‘Pull over here please.’

  The Taxi slowed to a stop in front of his town house. Rainer paid and stepped out. He dropped his overnight case inside the front door of his house and stooped to pick up a single letter lying on the floor. He opened it and scanned its contents before slipping it into his jacket pocket, turning and walking back out.

  Rainer made his way along the street to a pub on the corner. He pushed through the doors into familiar dark-wood paneling, bronze railed bars and quiet booths.

  He took a stool at the bar. The owner, David, waved to him from behind the pile of receipts he was working through.

  David pulled a scotch glass and a bottle from under the counter and poured a measure.

  ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Busy.’

  David knew Rainer well enough to know when he wanted to be left alone. He drained his glass.

  ‘Leave the bottle?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  David returned to the other side to continue his paperwork.

  Jones had not gone down without a fight. He paid with his life.

  Kamal had been hit. He would survive, but he wouldn’t be able to use his shoulder for a few months.

  Rainer pulled the letter from his pocket. He opened it and flattened it on the bar. He smiled thinly as he read through his retirement options. He had refused it for as long as possible. Now the word ‘mandatory’ had been added and he no longer had any choice. He put the letter aside and pulled the picture of Sophie Gail from his jacket pocket. It had been taken the morning she disappeared. She was pretty, thin, undernourished. He placed it on the bar and picked up his drink. His reflection in the mirror behind the bar looked back and he raised a toast to Miss Gail. He closed his eyes and let a little bit of the liquid trickle down his throat.

  In his mind’s eye he imagined a different future for Sophie - a split from the path that she had been on, one that had not ended so abruptly. In this one she finished the week and was in the final group photo with her new friends. She went home and found her mother had finally cleaned up and was no longer injecting. Rainer opened his eyes. The dark reflection gazed back. They moved house and Sophie’s mother got a steady job. Sophie was a bright kid; she won a scholarship to university to study veterinary science because she loved animals.

  Rainer took another sip.

  Fast-forward ten years. Sophie graduates with an honours degree. She and her vet boyfriend from her first year are going to get married. They both find jobs working together in the same surgery. Rainer’s head swam slightly as the whiskey hit his bloodstream. Another ten years go by. Sophie and her husband have two beautiful, healthy children. They go on three holidays a year. Sophie’s mother has remarried and lives close by and looks after her grandchildren when mom and dad want to sneak off and be alone.

  Rainer twirled the amber liquid, ice clinking. Many years pass. Sophie lies in bed, her husband, her children and grandchildren surround her. She is ninety-seven years old and she’s had a happy life. Her family are all at her bedside when she passes away. Rainer held his glass up to the man opposite. This was how he would remember her. He would forget the police dog handler trying to hold back the dog as it strained at the edge of the lake. He would forget the basement and the tiny scrap of material caught in the door, the steel tables and the computer workstation which, when linked to the police technician’s laptop opened a series of video feed windows showing a warehouse exterior and interior rooms. He didn’t want to ever again think of the way the technician zoomed in through the interior feed to a shelf where three small stacked bodies were visible under translucent plastic.

  ‘Goodbye, Sophie,’ he whispered, gently folding the picture, along with the letter, placing them in the ashtray and lighting them.

  David watched from across the bar as the flame flashed colourfully for a moment, and then died. He’d seen Rainer perform the same ritual many times now. He didn’t know what it was about. He had never asked. He knew not to. David turned back to his paperwork. When he looked up again Rainer had gone, leaving behind the small pile of ash on the bar.

  The city lay hot under the hazy summer sky.

  Rainer turned off the busy street into a narrow access road between two old, tall buildings. He pulled up behind a refuse container and got out of his car. He walked to a door, unlocked it and stepped in.

  He made his way wearily up a flight of wooden stairs to the first floor. Every part of his body felt almost too heavy to lift. Just being in a block this fetid in an area this deprived was enough to lower a man’s spirits. Pulling out a key he glanced around him before unlocking a scuffed door, which looked as if it had been kicked in more than once, and stepped into a disused kitchen area. He walked on into a dark, empty bar. The air was thick and stale with the smell of drink slops but he knew better than to try to open the dust-filmed window. Instead he rubbed a small piece of the glass clean with his fingers and looked down at the deserted street below. He heard the door click open behind him and turned to face a man in his mid-forties. His long hair was dyed black and his scowling face was smudged with stubble. He was wearing cowboy boots, black jeans and a white shirt with the buttons undone to below his sternum. His fingers were encrusted with rings. Everything about him screamed, ‘predator’.

  ‘Michael,’ Rainer said.

  ‘You look like shit, Rain,’ Michael grinned, all traces of the predator immediately dispelled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Drink?’ He gestured towards the bar.

  ‘You have no idea.’

  Michael leant over the bar and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of scotch. ‘Sorry to hear about Jones,’ he said, pouring two shots, ‘He was a good man.’

  Rainer took the proffered glass and raised it in a toast. ‘To good men.’

  Rainer emptied his glass in one swallow and Michael re-filled it. ‘Anything on Caldwell?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Michael pulled a memory card from his shirt pocket and handed it back. ‘My report.’ He looked at his watch and drained his drink. ‘Gotta go.’

  ‘Good hunting.’

  Michael pushed back from the bar and walked out. Rainer drained his drink. He was about to pour another when his phone beeped. He took it out and read the message.

  Rainer stepped from his car outside the fire damaged warehouse and weaved through the police cars and a forensics van. He ducked under a yellow cordon tape which marked the perimeter to the recent events.

  He entered the warehouse and walked to the corridor where the crime-scene team was finishing up, packing bits of equipment and removing their protective clothing. He spotted the bulky frame of Captain Charles O’Riley talking intensely to a forensics woman. O’Riley nodded to him but continued his conversation.

  In the middle of the corridor lay a rubber body bag. Rainer knelt down and unzipped it. J-Mac’s flame blackened face stared out at him. Rainer didn’t even flinch, merely staring back, lost in thought. O’Riley finished his conversation and came over.

  ‘How’s Kamal?’ At six foot four the captain towered above him, a figure of authority in every way.

  ‘He’ll live.’

  ‘Caldwell?’

  Rainer shook his head.

  ‘How the hell did he get away, Rain?’

  ‘You read the report. The man we tried to arrest wasn’t Caldwell. We found the real Caldwell’s body in a sub-basement, under the floorboards. Been dead for seven years. Whoever was impersonating him had his face altered to get access to his estate and his wealth.’

  ‘Seven years?’

  ‘Without hard evidence a man like Caldwell was always going to be above suspicion. We had no idea what we were dealing with. Jones never knew what hit him. This guy almost severed his head from his shoulders.’

  O’Riley took a deep breath. ‘DNA? Prints?’

  ‘We got both,’ he shook his head. ‘No match.’

  ‘You hear from Mike?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing.’

 
‘Fuck.’

  ‘We’ll get him.’

  ‘With your team down two?’

  ‘We’ll manage.’

  ‘It’s not enough to manage, Rain.’

  Rainer could see where O’Riley was heading even before he pulled a file from his valise and handed it across to him.

  ‘What’s this?

  ‘Your new recruit,’ replied Rainer.

  Rainer opened the file. The first page dominated by a photograph. Josie Stott. Thirty four. Pretty.

  ‘My department is no place for a woman. You know that. You know what happened last time,’ said Rainer closing the file and moving to give it back to O’Riley. He ignored the outstretched file.

  ‘Don’t worry she’s tough.’

  ‘Doesn’t change a thing.’

  ‘It’s the 21st century Rain. You have no choice. She’ll meet you at Rosco’s.’

  Rainer closed the file.

  ‘This is a mistake.’

  Rainer had watched her from the window as she sipped her coffee waiting for him. She couldn’t have been more than five feet four, physically delicate. He shook his head in despair. What was O’Riley thinking?

  Josie had spotted him but chose not to make him aware. Let him think she couldn’t spot a mark as she watched him in the cafe window. Her estimation of him jumped up a notch when he slowly locked eyes on her in the reflection. Wily old fox.

  ‘You’re married,’ he said, the pleasantries over. Her file sat open on the table before him.

  ‘Old news,’ she replied, sipping her coffee and looking at him with wide blue eyes. ‘Separated.’

  ‘Likely to get back together?’ Rainer asked as he continued flipping the pages in her file. She knew this was all for show. She’d done her research on the man sitting before her. She knew he’d have read everything in her file before meeting her. His feigned casualness was designed to unbalance her.

  ‘Not sure that’s relevant.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ Rainer said. ‘What would you say if I told you that a year with me and your husband won’t even recognise you?’

  ‘I’d say you’d be wrong.’

  ‘We deal with the worst of the worst. I’m not wrong.’

  She said nothing more as he looked over her file, waiting calmly for him to speak again, watching curiously, as if trying to read his mind.

  ‘You’ve got good instincts,’ he said eventually, closing the file, ‘but stick to conventional profiling. You do not want what’s in here rattling around your head.’ He tapped his own forehead and picked up his coffee.

  ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ she said, undeterred by his brusqueness.

  ‘Why do you want this?’ asked Rainer.

  ‘The truth?’ she replied.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I was inspired by a man who fought for justice in a profoundly unjust world.’

  ‘Your father.’

  Josie nodded.

  ‘Your father fought us. Fought the police.’

  ‘The men sent to break them were thugs in uniform. Sent to break the will of working men. They weren’t police.’

  Rainer was a teenage boy when Thatcher had sent an army of blue on horseback to break the miners. He had no quarrel with this young woman’s interpretation of that dark period in the country’s history.

  The union man,’ said Rainer, without having turned to that page in her file. ‘Tough times…’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it. I remember one night they carried him in, beaten so badly he could barely walk. He called me over and sat me on his lap and he held me even though it hurt him. I wasn’t old enough to understand what was going on, the injustices, the political war that was being waged in the streets of our town. I didn’t know what was at stake and that the only thing holding the line were men like my father. I just asked him to stop. And you know what he said?’

  Rainer stayed silent.

  ‘I can’t. They’re not strong enough. They need someone to stand behind. And while they have that they’ll fight’.

  ‘And you choose to stand?’

  ‘I’m my father’s daughter. What do you think?’

  Rainer smiled at her, drained his coffee and stood up. ‘I’ll send you something to help you make up your mind. If, after that, you still want this, then report to me tomorrow. Personally, no offence, I hope you don’t.’

  He held out his hand and she took it. As she watched Rainer walk out her phone buzzed in her handbag. She pulled it out and glanced down as the name ‘John’ flashed up.

  CHAPTER 10

  the test...histories and becoming...modus operandi...not enough...

  The meeting with Rainer continued to play on her mind as Josie busied herself in the kitchen of her apartment. Through the floor to ceiling window the waning sun painted the sky a brilliant orange above the landscaped gardens. It had made her think of her father and a familiar sadness squeezed at her chest. Sitting on his lap on warm summer evenings and watching the colours that the sun made as it set beyond the hills. Now when she saw those same colours she always thought of his strong arms, the smell of tobacco and soap, the beat of his heart in his chest and the tiny shiver she felt as the last of the warmth drained from the sky and he pulled the blanket tighter around her. He was there. She could feel it. In the dying light, watching over her.

  The buzzer sounded and she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She turned to the smiling face on the video entry screen, wondering if she had been wise to invite him round tonight when she had so much work to do. She pressed the intercom.

  ‘Come on up.’

  Josie had stayed for a while in the café after Rainer had left, doing her own research. He didn’t know but she had called in a considerable number of favours in order to get hold of Rainer’s file. It was quite a read. Orphaned as a baby, he’d spent most of his formative years in one children’s institution after another. Josie recognised some of the names from ongoing case files involving serious allegations of abuse. Whatever he had witnessed or endured he had survived and as soon as he was old enough, he applied to be a police apprentice. That was over forty years ago. Things were very different then; police careers were still highly regarded. She knew that Rainer’s background would have exempted him had he not found unlikely sponsorship from a former Assistant Commissioner, now deceased. It seemed the Commissioner, then a Detective Constable, saw something in Rainer that the others didn’t. Rainer’s rise through the ranks after that was nothing short of astonishing. Five years in he was the youngest DC in the history of the force. Josie had traced her finger down a list of names that Rainer had brought to book which read like a ‘who’s who’ of the underworld.

  Then came the assignment as head of the newly formed Serious Crimes Unit. The file suddenly got very thin from that point forward. Almost nothing on what he had been doing for the last fifteen years. The fact that his team grew steadily in size over the years was the only indication that he was actually doing anything; that and a number of commendations. It seemed he had been offered promotion a number of times, but Rainer had declined.

  He had also lost eight people during his career. Two before heading up the Serious Crime Unit and six after, the most recent being Jones. Three more were on long term sick leave with a variety of cases of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Another three had been injured and had either taken desk jobs or were unable to continue work.

  The first person he had lost was seventeen years ago. Dina Jonson. She was also the only woman that had ever been in his team. No woman had served with him since. It was hard to believe. Josie had searched the file copy she had and accessed the PNC database, unable to accept that he had been able to keep the discrimination under the radar. But it was true, every application from a female officer for his team had been turned down. Some of them, she could understand, but there were two that were far better candidates than the men he had chosen in their place.

  Even more surprising was that none of the women had complaine
d about this obvious discrimination. They had quietly withdrawn their applications after their initial interviews. No reasons were given. Josie had tried to get more information on this but so far there had been nothing. She had been given short shrift when she tried to speak to the two female officers about it. Trying to get anything from any of Rainer’s former colleagues risked giving the game away, they were uniformly tacit about anything to do with their boss, but not in any fearful way. The overwhelming impression she got was of unflinching loyalty. The two occasions that she had directly approached members of his team she had left feeling like a chided schoolgirl.

  She wasn’t going to let him put her off. She’d made her mind up. No matter how much psychobabble bullshit he came out with. She had worked hard to get where she was. She had sacrificed her marriage, her friends, even her family. Now she had her shot. She pulled the records of the five officers that had since left. Each of them now headed their own teams. One of them was deputy assistant commissioner. Rainer remained the anomaly though. Josie flipped the few photocopied sheets that marked the last decade and half of Rainer’s work and smiled. There was more, there had to be. But it seemed the favours she was owed, which had got her this look at his file, had just not been big enough.