Sandman

by David Hodges

  ‘Me?’ He coughed, clearly not expecting this kind of conciliatory reaction from her or to find himself so easily out-manoeuvred. ‘But – but, yes, of course. Good idea. So – er – what’s our strategy then?’

  ‘Strategy?’

  He sighed his irritation. ‘Well, you’ve set up this meet, so you must have some idea what you are going to do when our man turns up?’

  She shrugged. ‘I thought that as soon as he produced the goods, we’d nick him for possession with intent to supply and, once we’d got him inside, we’d be in a position to interrogate him about Ellie Landy’s death.’

  He pursed his lips in a low whistle. ‘I never realized my wife could be so devious – Roscoe will do his crust, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘He can spit and fart all he likes, but he can hardly criticize us for nicking a pusher.’

  Hayden nodded, then looked suddenly dubious. ‘Chap could have a blade – or worse – on him. We should arrange for backup, just in case.’

  She shook her head firmly. ‘No way. First sign of a plod and he’ll be on his toes.’

  ‘You’re putting a lot on me.’

  She smiled thinly and, reaching into her coat pocket, produced a small metal cylinder. ‘But I also have this.’

  He gaped. ‘CS? Are you mad?’

  Another shrug. ‘Not as far as I know. They’re official issue, aren’t they?’

  He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Yes, but only for use in exceptional circumstances. Roscoe would blow a gasket if he knew what you were at.’

  She returned the gas spray to her pocket with a soft chuckle. ‘Well, I won’t tell him if you don’t,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 10

  Toliver’s seemed just as deserted as before – even the tortoiseshell cat was nowhere to be seen – and it was raining heavily when Kate and Hayden pulled up outside. They were an hour early – hopefully getting there well before Leroy, who they guessed would turn up at least half an hour before the appointed time, to ensure the meeting wasn’t some kind of a trap.

  A strengthening wind was driving the rain almost horizontally across the concrete apron as they ran for the loading bay entrance and the building breathed a death rattle welcome, its whole fabric shaking and a door banging with a steady ‘thump, thump, thump’ somewhere deep inside as they flicked on their torches to probe the gloomy interior which lay beyond the reach of the grey light filtering through the skylights.

  Kate selected a spot close to the door through which Polly had made both her entrance and her exit, leaning against the wall, while Hayden found a convenient space behind a couple of massive steel drums and settled himself on a pile of sacks to await developments.

  It proved to be a long wait too, and Kate soon came off her wall and began shuffling up and down in an effort to cope with the bitter cold that was seeping into her bones from the concrete floor. At the same time, however, she showed little sympathy for Hayden in his confined hiding place; glaring in his direction and issuing a sharp hiss every time his heels scraped the floor, as he shifted his cramped limbs into a more comfortable position.

  But, after what seemed like an eternity, the sound of an approaching car became audible and Kate tensed as the engine died outside the factory. A strained silence followed. No door slammed, no footsteps crunched on the loading bay floor; there was nothing save the sporadic whistle of the wind and the rattle of the rain on the corrugated iron roof. If the new arrival was Leroy, he seemed to be in no immediate hurry to join them – probably studying the building for any sign of a reception committee.

  In fact, the dark figure emerged from the mouth of the loading bay without warning, rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the floor as it picked its way carefully into view, the beam of a small torch masked in one hand.

  Kate tensed and stepped away from the wall to face the new arrival. ‘Leroy?’ she queried, her quivering voice and shivers not entirely manufactured, and coincidentally adding substance to the part she was playing as an addict desperate for her next fix.

  ‘Yo’ Sally?’ he responded, coming closer.

  In the grey light penetrating the place through the skylights she saw that he was a black man she judged to be in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a brown hooded coat and blue jeans. He was carrying a holdall and Kate caught the glimpse of gold on his wrist as he raised one arm to wipe his nose on the back of his hand.

  ‘Got the bread?’ he said.

  ‘See the stuff first.’

  Leroy shook his head. ‘Don’t work like that, babe.’ He held out his free hand and rubbed the fingers together. ‘Loot, now or I split.’

  Kate’s body convulsed in an involuntary shudder and Leroy laughed. ‘Yo’ got it bad, babe,’ he mocked. ‘Yo’ need jenny more’n I need bread.’

  What Kate would have done next stayed a mystery, for it was at this point that Hayden chose to – quite literally – put his big size elevens in it. Seized by a sudden spasm of severe cramp, he carefully moved his leg, but not quite carefully enough and the next instant he caught one of the drums he was sheltering behind with his heel. The reverberating bang had a dramatic effect on the dynamics of the situation. Jerking his head round briefly in the direction of the sound, Leroy lunged at Kate, with a narrow-bladed knife in his hand.

  ‘Bitch!’ he snarled – a second before the explosive hiss of Kate’s CS gas spray brought him to his knees, gagging, retching and clawing at his eyes in agony, the knife clattering to the concrete floor, as his temporarily paralysed diaphragm shut down his respiratory system.

  Before he could fully recover, Hayden was on to him, his heavy frame crushing Leroy face downwards against the concrete floor. ‘I think the phrase is, “you’re nicked”,’ the detective said close to his ear as he whipped a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.

  Leroy ignored the mug of coffee on the table in front of him and seemed more interested in the antics of a heavyweight fly which had become trapped in the interview room and was now head-banging the closed window. Kate and Hayden sat silently in their chairs on the opposite side of the desk, waiting patiently for him to answer the question Kate had just put to him.

  The vicious little pusher showed no inclination to answer, however, and as the minutes ticked by, Kate finally broke the silence. ‘I asked you where you got the heroin,’ she said.

  Leroy turned and stared her out. ‘Got noffink to say, bitch,’ he replied and waved a hand towards the tape machine in the corner behind him, which was recording the interview with a delicate humming sound. ‘’Cept yo’ be sorry for settin’ me up, ‘cause I gonna sue that tight little arse off.’

  ‘Bit difficult trying to do that from stir,’ Hayden commented drily, ‘especially if you’re on a six-year stretch for supplying.’

  Leroy tensed and the dark eyes that swung on Hayden radiated pure hate. ‘Yo’ got big mouth, fat man,’ he snarled. ‘An’ I got a long memory for what yo’ done.’ He pointed to the still raw abrasion and heavy bruising to one side of his face. ‘I don’t never forget.’

  ‘Good,’ Kate continued. ‘So maybe you can tell us where you got the heroin. You’re banged to rights on this one and your only way out is to co-operate with us.’

  Leroy snorted. ‘Get real, bitch!’ he spat. ‘Help the PO-lice? I like breav’in’ too much.’

  ‘So did Polly and Ellie Landy,’ Kate said grimly, studying his face.

  She was rewarded by a definite narrowing of Leroy’s eyes. ‘Dunno what yo’ on about,’ he replied and, like the politician on television who reaches for a glass of water when presented with a difficult question, he picked up his mug of coffee and took his time sipping it.

  ‘I think you know exactly what I’m on about.’

  ‘Don’t know no Ellie Landy.’

  ‘But you knew Polly?’

  ‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you waste her?’ Hayden said abruptly.

  Leroy didn’t bat an eyelid, showing no surprise at the revelation th
at she was dead or any sense of indignation that he was being accused.

  ‘Don’t waste nobody, man. I a businessman. Ain’t no killer.’

  ‘Just pumped a bit too much H into her veins, did you?’ Hayden persisted. ‘A nice mind-blowing overdose to shut her up? Now, that’s not a six-year stretch – that’s life!’

  For the first time Leroy looked uneasy and his eyes flicked from Hayden to Kate, like a cornered animal. ‘You ain’t got noffink on me. I weren’t nowhere near her bloody boat.’

  ‘How did you know she died on a boat?’ Hayden went on, leaning forward across the table towards him.

  Leroy swallowed hard. ‘Yo tol’ me.’

  ‘I said she likely died of an overdose. I didn’t say where.’

  Leroy was really agitated now. ‘I want a brief. Yo can’t ask me all these fings wiv’out a brief.’

  ‘Someone put you up to the job, did they?’ Kate said, ignoring his demand. ‘Who was it, Leroy? The guy who fixes you up with the stuff for your punters?’

  Leroy shook his head several times and there was a flicker of fear in his eyes this time. ‘I ain’t sayin’ noffink wiv’out a brief. Yo savvy?’

  Whether the detectives would have persisted with their questions, regardless of the legal constraints on the interviewing of suspects, was not put to the test, for at this point the process was rudely interrupted by Ted Roscoe, who suddenly burst into the room with the force of a JCB, his slab-like face set in a ferocious scowl.

  ‘DI Ted Roscoe entering the room,’ he announced for the benefit of the recording machine. ‘Interview suspended at 1730 hours.’

  Crossing to the tape machine, he switched it off and turned on Kate, his boot-button eyes boring into her like twin lasers. ‘My office, Sergeant,’ he snapped. ‘Now, if you please. And for the moment, you can lodge Leroy here in the detention room. I’m sure he hasn’t any other pressing appointments!’

  Kate was hit by a mixture of surprise and apprehension when she finally pushed through the main doors of the CID department and was momentarily confronted by ‘Horse’ coming out.

  ‘Sergeant,’ the NCA man acknowledged, easing past her, and there was a contemptuous sneer on his face as he added, ‘You’ve really excelled yourself this time, haven’t you?’

  Roscoe was pacing his inner sanctum at the far end of the big open-plan office and he glared at her when she entered his domain after a brief knock, his head thrust forward in a familiar, belligerent fashion and the veins standing out like tight blue cords on both sides of his forehead.

  ‘What did I order you not to do?’ he demanded and drew heavily on a cigarette as he waited for a reply.

  Choosing not to remind him again about the smoking ban, for fear of winding him up even more, Kate answered, ‘Go anywhere near the Sapphire Club, and I didn’t.’

  He snorted. ‘I told you to concentrate on the Ellie Landy inquiry and forget about everything else – so what do you do? You stick your nose into the same business I specifically ordered you to leave alone.’

  Kate met his gaze without flinching. ‘With respect, sir, I had no choice. The girl, Polly, was found dead on a canal boat and I was sent to deal with the job.’

  He shook his head. ‘Then why have I got some bloody pusher from the Sapphire Club in my bloody nick, as a result, eh?’

  So Kate told him, her tone brittle and uncompromising, and he threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of despair, smoke trailing from the cigarette between two fingers.

  ‘Not this bloody murder conspiracy all over again. You need to see a shrink – OCD, they call it, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.’

  ‘This is no joke, Guv,’ she snapped.

  ‘Do you see me laughing?’ he retorted, stubbing out the cigarette on the desk top. ‘Or your mate, Horse? According to him, this Leroy character has close links with the syndicate he has been investigating, so he was not in the least bit amused to find him banged up here. I doubt whether his commander will see the funny side of things either if, by nicking the little toe-rag and taking him off the street, we sever that link and foul up the whole NCA operation.’

  Kate was ahead of him now and she gaped. ‘You’re not going to chuck him out, are you?’

  He shrugged, weary now rather than angry. ‘I’ve already instructed the custody sergeant to release him on police bail. That gives your mate, Horse, a month’s grace to tie things up before his man has to report back here, following a final decision by CPS.’

  ‘But he’s a dealer – he tried to sell me heroin!’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘after you had set him up. How do you think that will go down in court? It’ll be the same old agent provocateur defence these bastards always use and he will walk, believe me.’

  She shook her head desperately. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. We’re just an hour or so away from getting a cough and we just dump the one chance we have.’

  He snorted. ‘A cough? A cough to what? We don’t have anything he can cough to – except being a dealer. Forget it, Lewis. Get with the real world – and this is your last warning.’ He waggled a short stubby finger. ‘No more private adventures, OK? And I mean it. Stay with reality.’

  She took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Fine but I’m really disappointed. I thought you were the bee’s knees as a DI. Seems I was wrong.’

  ‘Piss off!’ he grated.

  ‘With pleasure, sir,’ she replied and walked out.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Hayden stared at Kate in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘How many warnings do you need?’

  Back at their thatched cottage in the village of Burtle, the pair had finished a meal of steak and chips and they were already on to their second bottle of red wine.

  Kate, clad in just a knee-length cotton nightdress, stretched on the settee beside her husband and studied him in his striped boxer shorts and T-shirt. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said defensively. ‘I can’t just let this thing go. You know as well as I do that both girls were murdered. We have to get to the bottom of this business. We owe it to them, if nothing else.’

  Hayden refilled his glass from the newly opened bottle and sighed. ‘We know nothing of the sort, old girl,’ he replied. ‘We only suspect something dodgy. We can’t prove anything and our last lead died with that Polly girl.’

  ‘So we try a different approach.’

  Hayden eyed her long slender legs, then locked on to an expanse of bare thigh that her rucked-up nightdress had now exposed. ‘Er – like what?’ he queried, taking a quick gulp of his wine.

  Kate cast him a mischievous smile. ‘Will you stop undressing me with your eyes?’ she said.

  He looked away, staring into the spluttering open fire. ‘Not much left to undress, is there?’ he retorted, then quickly changed the subject. ‘You were saying we try a different approach?’

  She nodded, suddenly serious again. ‘We find out where Ellie Landy went into the water, which neither Roscoe or Horse can object to – after all, it’s a logical step for us to take in our inquiries.’

  He frowned. ‘And how do you expect to do that? She could have gone in anywhere.’

  Kate shrugged, returning her half-full wine glass to the coffee table in front of her. ‘By a bit of old-fashioned legwork,’ she replied. ‘We get some pics run off from her press card then show them to folk living near where the body was found – see if we can get any positive sightings. There’s a farm and a collection of cottages a few hundred yards from the pumping station, so that would be a good place to start.’

  ‘So why haven’t these “folk” contacted us already? The drowning has been in all the papers, on radio and TV. Someone would have been in touch long before now if they were going to be in touch at all.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. Maybe they don’t take a newspaper or just didn’t want to get involved in the first place?’

  ‘Unlikely – and if they didn’t want to get involved at the start, how do we get them to spill the beans to us now?’

&nb
sp; Kate stretched even more and rubbed one bare foot along his leg. ‘By using all our natural charm and chemistry,’ she said, exposing even more thigh. ‘And since I plan to make a start first thing in the morning, it might be a good idea to get an early night.’

  Hayden grinned broadly. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he exclaimed enthusiastically.

  Kate chuckled. ‘Drinking isn’t really what I had in mind,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 11

  The first part of Kate’s ‘brilliant new plan’ was an immediate success. Photocopying Ellie Landy’s photograph on her press card and producing a bundle of enlarged pictures was accomplished within an hour and getting out to the scene took just half an hour more. But the second part of the plan proved more problematical. The weather was the principal factor. Vast tracts of the countryside were still flooded several feet deep and Kate soon discovered that even her knee-length leather boots would have been of little benefit in the deep water.

  After visiting half a dozen accessible properties and one isolated inn, they were halted by what resembled an inland sea of murky, grey water, traversed by a criss-cross pattern of drowned trees and hedgerows, where the lower moor stretched away to a misty horizon and the slight hump of the marooned village of Lowmoor.

  For a moment Hayden just stood there in his Parka and gumboots, shoulders hunched against the driving rain, staring down at the water lapping the foot of the slope in front of them. ‘Gordon Bennett, this is futile,’ he shouted above the sound of the rain, anger evident in his tone but, true to form, refusing to resort to the usual expletives others might have used in such circumstances. ‘We’re getting nowhere.’

  Kate tightened the cord strap of her black anorak under her chin and chuckled, turning towards him. ‘Poor old Hayd,’ she said loudly. ‘Don’t like the rain, do you, my love?’

  He snorted. ‘They say a good copper never gets wet,’ he retorted, ‘and I’m drenched – all for nothing.’

  ‘Not nothing,’ she corrected, waving an arm towards a couple of the cottages that lined one side of the lane in which they had parked the car. ‘We’ve eliminated a few possible witnesses anyway.’