by Andy Maslen
Help Wanted
Stella stepped back with her right leg, adopting the fighting stance taught her by Rocky. Soft through both knees to stay flexible and prevent her attacker using her own legs as levers. Weight borne equally left and right, up on the balls of her feet, ready to counterattack after her first feint. Her assailant threw herself at Stella, wrapping her arms tight around her middle.
“Oh, Stella, thank God you’re here!”
Heart still thumping, Stella relaxed and returned the hug, little helper still clutched in her right fist. Riley seemed in no hurry to release her and so she stood, feeling the other woman’s breath coming in fast gasps against her own ribcage. Finally, she prised herself free.
“There’s nobody here, Vicky. It’s OK. Come on, I’ve got reinforcements waiting at the front door.”
Riley pulled the front door wide and then did a double take. Stella smiled, enjoying the fast-changing range of emotions taking turns to move Riley’s features around.
“You’re–” Riley managed, in the end.
“Vicky Riley, Barney Riordan,” Stella said dryly.
“Hi Vicky,” Riordan said, extending a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Leaving the journalist and the footballer in the kitchen drinking coffee, Stella opened the door to the sitting room. At first, she didn’t move; her training had been explicit on this point. You didn’t contaminate a crime scene. Ever. The days of clueless plods marching through puddles of blood and smearing latent prints were, thankfully, a thing of the past.
Ah, what the hell, it’s only a crime scene if there’s going to be an investigation. If there’s going to be a hunt, it doesn’t matter. She stepped into the room. Splinters of glass were scattered on the pale green carpet like ice thrown across a frozen pond. Lying on one of its flat faces was a brick. Tied around the brick with string was a piece of ivory paper. Stella retrieved the brick and took it back to the kitchen, placing it dead-centre on the table between the three mugs of coffee Vicky had made.
“Present from your prowler,” Stella said.
“That’s old-school, that is,” Barney said.
“How very post-modern,” was Vicky’s take.
Stella cut the string with her penknife and discarded it.
“Shouldn’t you be, like, bagging that, or something?” Barney asked. “You know, for evidence.”
She stopped, and turned to Barney. “Absolutely. Listen, Barney, you’ve been fantastic help, getting me here so quickly, but from here it’s police business, as you said. This is going to take a while. You can get back to the ball and press the flesh a bit more. I’ll be sure to mention you to my boss. You never know, there might be a commendation in it for you. Look good to be on the front page for a change, instead of the back. And we’ll find a way to pay for your car to be fixed.”
He frowned. “No need. I’ll get it done on the insurance.” Then he smiled. “If you’re OK, then?”
“I am. And Barney,” she said, putting out a hand to touch him on the arm as he was turning to go. “Thanks for inviting me. It was fun.”
With Barney gone, Vicky looked at Stella, her gaze steady, unblinking. “You aren’t investigating this, are you?”
Stella nodded. “I am. Just not through official channels.” She unfolded the note and read out the short, printed message.
“Riley. You think you’re doing good. But you’re threatening justice. Beware. Justice may retaliate. Find another story. Before you become the story.”
“It’s them, isn’t it?” Vicky said. “Pro Patria Mori.”
“Looks like it. You need to move out for a while. It isn’t safe here. Not now they know this is your home.” Vicky nodded. Glad that she wasn’t dealing with a weepy, what-about-my-cats kind of victim, Stella gave her standard speech. “Do you have someone you could stay with? Someone they wouldn’t connect with you?”
“My godmother. She lives in Wales. On a farm. She rears pigs. Gloucester Old Spots.”
“OK, good. Pack a bag and leave now.”
“I don’t know if she’s there. I’ll have to ring.”
“No! Don’t ring. Don’t use your phone at all. She’s a farmer, she’ll be in. They always are. If she isn’t, find a hotel or a pub with rooms. And don’t drive. They’ll have your registration number. The ANPR cameras on the bridges will pick you up and then they’ll have you again.”
“The what?”
“Automatic–”
“Number plate recognition, OK, got it. So, the train, then?”
“Then a taxi. Get a disposable phone on the way if you can. Here’s my number. Text me when you’re safe.”
At six thirty the following morning, Collier and four other senior members of Pro Patria Mori were sitting round his kitchen table. The others were Sir Leonard Ramage; Charlie Howarth QC; Debra Fieldsend, a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer; and Hester Ragib, a barrister.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem,” Collier began. “Stella Cole, one of my officers, is pursuing leads that will, in all likelihood, take her to Leonard’s role in the Drinkwater affair.”
Howarth spoke next.
“Are you about to propose what I think you are, Adam? Because that goes against the grain, you know. Defending the police is one of our founding principles, you know that. It’s who we are.”
Ramage opened his mouth to speak, but Collier glanced at him, signalling with a minuscule shake of his right hand to stay quiet. For now.
“I’m fully aware of that, Charlie, since I am a police officer. But sometimes we need to forget the founding principles and concentrate on what’s right in front of us.”
“Which is a meddling detective trying to put one of PPM’s members in handcuffs,” Fieldsend said. “I’m with Adam on this. If Leonard had run down an innocent passer-by, or if you, Charlie, knocked down a yummy mummy out for a post-school-run jog, I’d say, ‘You should have been more careful. Nobody is bigger than justice. Nobody is more important than PPM and the work we do’. But that’s not the case here, is it? Leonard removed a very real and potentially devastating threat to our very existence. He deserves our support.”
“Say he does,” Howarth said, looking at Ramage, “and I accept what Debra says, Leonard. Offing a detective…”
“Inspector,” Collier said.
“Offing a detective inspector isn’t the same as delivering justice to some celebrity paedophile or a con artist charming old ladies out of their life savings.”
“Au contraire, Charlie,” Ramage said in a quiet, trembling voice, finally breaking his silence. His tanned skin was a pale, jaundiced yellow; all the blood appeared to have retreated from his face. “It is exactly the same. Drinkwater was poised to expose us. So, now, is his widow. We killed Drinkwater to silence him. We do the same to her.”
“It’ll take some thought, Leonard.” This was Ragib.
“Then, with the greatest respect, Hester, might I suggest that we get our fucking thinking caps on?” Ramage’s voice had risen to a harsh bark. “Because I am not going to go quietly into that good night that is our justice system, except as one who administers it. Needless to say, though, were I to find myself enmeshed in the arms of the law, long or otherwise, I cannot guarantee how long I’d be able to hold my tongue against what I’m sure would be expert interrogation.”
“What are our options?” Fieldsend asked.
“She rides a motorbike,” Collier said. “Sauce for the gander, etc.”
“Too many variables,” Ragib said. She took a sip of her coffee and placed the mug in the precise centre of the cork coaster. “She could be put into a coma then wake up a month later and blab to the doctors. We need something certain. Something fast, I think. Leonard?”
Ramage nodded his assent. “Yes. I don’t know how far she’s got, but I think it’s fair to say she knows it was a car like mine, if not actually mine. And my alibi won’t stand up to a solid examination, Adam, since you are it. Dare I say, three members of the same family being killed by
hit and run drivers within a year of each other might raise a few eyebrows.”
“Rape-murder,” Collier said, wiping a croissant crumb off his cheek with a napkin. “Brutal. Messy. Unprovoked. Random.” He looked at each of the others in turn, ending with his piercing eyes fixed on Ragib. “Certain.”
“Who do we have who could do it?” Fieldsend asked.
“Something like that, I’d rather use a villain than a member. Too much DNA splashed about. We’ll use him like we used Deacon. Get the job done, then dispose of him. And that’s when we use a member. My attack dog, Leonard, remember her?”
Ramage smiled. “Drilled that little tart from a dozen streets away, and cleared up after herself.”
“Exactly.” Collier made a quick note on a sheet of notepaper, folded it into four and slipped it into his wallet. “Leave this one with me. I have someone in mind who’ll jump at it.”
Later that day, just after two in the afternoon, a car pulled into the visitor parking beside a low-level building in the Kent countryside, brick-built, with high, barred windows. Demarcating the perimeter was a double fence of galvanised steel stanchions, five metres high and three metres apart. Strung between the stanchions was 8mm chain-link fencing, several grades superior to the stuff municipal councils used to enclose playparks and housing estates. And adorning the tops of the stanchions, in a four-kilometre ring, were thousands upon thousands of loops of razor wire, glinting in the weak sunshine.
HMP Hemsleigh was a category A+ prison. Its inmates were deemed not just a threat to society or national security, but liable and in fact likely to reoffend within twenty-fours of escape. One man, in particular, was known throughout the prison. Feared throughout the prison. His name was Peter Moxey.
Moxey was fifty-three, though he looked much younger. His appearance was striking: pale, blue-white eyes like a husky’s, deep-set each side of a sharp-ridged nose. High, protruding cheekbones, a pointed chin and a prominent Adam’s apple. His face looked like a collection of blades. He was a wiry five-feet-ten in his stockinged feet, with corded muscles in his arms and legs and a flat stomach tautened into a solid sheet of muscle from thousand upon obsessive thousand of sit-ups. On his arrival a year earlier, having received a thirty-three-year sentence for sexually aggravated murder, the prison boss – not the governor, who tended to stay as far away from his charges as possible – decided to re-establish his right to rule.
Moxey was unpacking his few possessions in his cell when Dennis “Marley” DuCane, nicknamed for his passing facial resemblance to the dead reggae superstar, slipped silently through the open door and closed it behind him. That was all the only eye-witness to the event – a multiple rapist – was able to swear to in the subsequent police investigation.
The pathologist’s report on DuCane made queasy reading. DuCane’s muscular, fourteen-stone body bore evidence of multiple bite wounds, from which chunks of flesh had been removed. No biological material, barring blood – a great deal of blood – was discovered in Moxey’s cell and it was assumed he had eaten what he had bitten free of DuCane’s body. Both DuCane's tibias and fibulas were broken, as were his right humerus, his lower jaw, his cheekbones, the left-hand of which had been pushed back so hard it had popped the eye from its socket (the eye was also not discovered in the search) and the occipital bone at the back of his skull. His liver, spleen and both kidneys had been ruptured, “reduced to the status of a semi-liquid,” according to the pathologist. Agonising though all of these injuries must have been, they were not the cause of death. That was reserved for a blow from a toothbrush (unsharpened), which had been pushed into the right eye so hard that it had shattered the thin bone of the socket and penetrated four inches into the frontal lobe of the brain.
A tall prison officer approached Moxey at a table in the recreation room, where he was reading a magazine. “Moxey, you’ve got a visitor,” he said, keeping a respectful distance between himself and the prisoner. Moxey looked up from his reading, the fleshy brow ridge above his eyes dropping still further. “I never get visitors,” he growled.
“Well, you’ve got one today. He said to tell you these exact words. ‘I have something you will want to hear about. Something you desire more than anything else’.”
Moxey stood, fast, causing the prison officer to step back too quickly and almost tumble over a chair behind him.
Five minutes later, Moxey was sitting at a small, red-topped table in the visiting area, his bare, muscular forearms resting on its cracked and worn surface. Both arms were tattooed with swastikas. In addition, the left bore a lifelike portrait of Al Pacino as Scarface, while the right was decorated with the words, “The devil makes work for idle hands” in a heavy, gothic script. He eyed the smooth-cheeked man opposite him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
In a low voice, the visitor spoke. “My name is Adam Collier. I represent some very powerful people. We’d like you to do something for us, and in return we can arrange for you to disappear from this place and start a new life somewhere else.”
Moxey’s eyes narrowed. He scowled. Then spoke.
“What people? What thing? Where else?”
“Take a look at this,” Collier said, and he slid his warrant card across the table.
Moxey reached for the polished black leather folder with stubby fingers tipped with long yellow nails, slid it the rest of the way to his side of the table, and opened it. He studied it for a few moments, then closed it and pushed it back towards Collier.
“What are you, then, some club for bent coppers?”
Collier smiled, and shook his head. “At the moment, there is a person who’s causing us a lot of trouble. She needs taking care of. We thought you might be interested in performing the task. Do what we ask, and I can guarantee you a swift exit from the UK to the destination of your choice, with a new identity and a new face, if you want one.”
Moxey pushed his lips out and breathed in, deeply, through his sharp-edged nose.
“How do I know this isn’t some kind of set-up?”
“No point. You’re already inside, aren’t you? You'll probably die in here.”
“And when you say take care of, you mean what I think you mean, right?”
Collier nodded. “Do what you did to get sent to this place.”
“How are you going to get me out of here? We can’t exactly go out through the main gate holding hands, can we?”
“We’ll arrange a transfer. We’ll have our people in the van. We have a safe house in London. You’ll stay there until the job’s done, then we’ll put you on a boat to France and after that, the world’s your oyster.”
“I haven’t got any money. Can’t do anything without cash in this world, can you?”
“A hundred thousand. On completion. In low-denomination, unmarked notes.” Collier checked his watch. “What’s it to be, Moxey? You’re not the only person we’re considering for this.”
Moxey turned his head to look at the prison officer standing at ease by the white-painted door to the visiting room. Then back at Collier. He nodded. A single, terse bob of the head.
Collier stood. “I’ll be seeing you in London. Goodbye, Moxey.” Then he held out his hand. Moxey shook it, in a grip that made Collier wince.
The following day, Moxey was sitting on a leather sofa in a four-storey townhouse behind London’s Harley Street. Dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt and a brand-new pair of Nike running shoes, he was drinking a quarter of a pint of cognac from a cut glass brandy balloon and listening as Collier briefed him.
“Her name is Stella Cole. She’s a DI. Here’s what she looks like, and here’s her address.” Collier pushed a photo and a sheet of A4 paper across the table towards Moxey. “She likes running. Follow her and do it somewhere out of the way if you can. And if you decide to have some fun with her first, just make sure she’s secured. I don’t want her rocking up at Paddington Green with you in handcuffs, all right?”
Moxey glanced down at the photo then back at
Collier.
“Skinny little thing like her? Don’t worry. I’d probably break her if I tried anything too exciting. I’ll just do what needs doing and then, what? Back here?”
“No. Call the number on this phone.” He handed over a cheap feature phone he’d bought in a local supermarket earlier that day. “We’ll come and get you and start the process of getting you out of the country. When can you do it?”
“In a hurry, are we?” Moxey asked, a smirk sliding across his face like an eel. “I can do it tonight if you want.”
With Moxey out of the house, working his way across London to Hammersmith in an old car they’d given him, Collier poured himself a tumbler of malt whisky that filled his nostrils with peaty fumes. He called Ramage,
“You should leave London for a few days. Just to be on the safe side,” Collier said.
“Why? It’s not as if she’s going to attack me or anything.”
“She suspects you were involved in her husband’s death. We’re sending someone after her. He’ll succeed, I’m sure of it. But if he doesn’t, well, I don’t want her barging into your chambers with an arrest warrant or a posse of reporters, that’s all.”
“Who is it?”
Collier paused. “Best you don’t know.”
“Very well. My next case isn’t scheduled to start until next week. I can go up to my place in Scotland.”
Collier smiled. “Perfect. Do a bit of fishing. Catch up on your reading. I’ll let you know when matters are resolved, and then we can resume our operations.”
29
Moxey's Mojo
Stella approached the black-painted front door of Ramage’s house in Egerton Crescent, London SW3. The road was equidistant between Knightsbridge and the King’s Road in Chelsea, and, at ten in the morning, it was quiet. Anyone working had left long since, and anyone not working would by now have disappeared to their yoga class, shopping trip or brunch with similarly monied, at-leisure friends. Her heart was thudding in her chest as she leaned on the doorbell. From some distant part of the house, she could hear its chimes. While she waited for the appearance of the man she was certain had killed her daughter and husband, she fingered the trigger of the Glock. She’d loaded it that morning, and now it was snug in the bottom of her backpack, which she held by the nylon carrying strap.
