by Tim Ellis
Well, what goes around comes around – that was her motto.
She had to go shopping to replace everything she’d lost, open a new bank account in the name of Mindy Moore, re-install all her hacking software and basically put her life back in order, but now she was ready to go. She’d already been in the clinic’s system once, so she knew how to proceed, but this time she tip-toed instead of clod-hopped. She copied everything she could find that would incriminate them – hospital notes; tests; a list of donors, recipients and the financial transactions involved; and a link to the numbered offshore account at Shamrock.com. While she was there she emptied the account of a million and a half pounds and sent it round and round the world to eventually end up in Mindy Moore’s account that she’d opened earlier, and which she’d make magically disappear in a short while.
She smiled.
That’ll teach the bastards to mess with her.
Once she’d helped herself to everything there was to steal, she opened a free email account in the name of “Olive the Hacker”, and sent it all to Assistant Chief Commissioner Honey Lister.
It hadn’t solved her problem though. She was still left with an ugly pitted scar in her lower back, and the torture marks her father had made. No, even though she’d told Kowalski that she’d never set foot in another cosmetic surgery clinic, she had to get it sorted.
She’d met a sailor. And don’t all the girls love a sailor? His name was Perry. It was a pathetic name, and she’d told him so, but names could be changed as she very well knew. She’d been looking for a toilet – any toilet, and found one. The trouble was – Perry was in there taking a pee when she came out of the cubicle buttoning her coveralls up.
That was as far as she got. The unbuttoned double extra-large coveralls the crew of the Marguerite had given her left little to his imagination, and he was suitably impressed at what he saw. But after they’d had sex in a cubicle he wanted to know what the marks on her back were. He hadn’t seen the scars, but he’d felt them. She’d told him to mind his own business, so he’d backed off. But she really had to do something about them.
‘Be my girlfriend?’ he’d suggested.
‘Girlfriend! Do people still have those?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘You live on a battleship.’
‘Not all the time.’
‘I need regular sex.’
‘I can do that.’
‘How does that work when you’re in another country?’
‘We don’t have to be exclusive.’
‘Ah! You have a girl in every port. Will I be the only one in the UK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’ She wrote her email address on his arm. ‘Let me know when you’re in port and I’ll see about fitting you into my busy schedule.’
‘Wicked.’
‘Do people still say that?’
‘We’re a bit behind on the ship. What’s your name?’
‘Jessie.’
‘I’ll email you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Gotta go now. I’m on duty.’
And that was it.
When she’d got back on deck, the others were getting on the helicopter.
***
‘Sit down, Ray.’
He sat down on the opposite side of the mahogany coffee table and put his letter of resignation down on the wood. He’d thought about turning up with a Police Federation representative and a team of lawyers, but they would only have delayed the inevitable. He’d gone too far over the red line this time. He knew it, the Chief Constable knew it . . . In fact, anyone with half a brain knew it. There were no regrets. Jerry was still alive – that was the only thing that mattered. He wished he hadn’t lost a three-million pound helicopter, but there it was. He had lost it, and there was nothing he could do about it now.
‘Thanks, Ray,’ William Orde QPM said, tapping the envelope with a manicured middle finger. ‘If there was another way . . .’
‘I understand, Sir.’
‘I spoke to people on your behalf. They said, if you go quietly, they’ll let you keep your pension.’
‘Very generous. I thought they might want to use it as a down-payment on a new chopper.’
A shadow of a smile crossed his face. ‘Believe me, the bean counters did.’
‘No, I know I went too far this time, Sir. I’m grateful not to be in Wormwood Scrubs. Keeping my pension is a bonus. Thanks for your support and all you’ve done for me. I’m sorry I embarrassed you.’
‘I think we both know you made the right choice in saving your wife, but the wrong choice for your career. You were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t.’
‘There wasn’t any choice, Sir. Jerry will always come first.’
‘Which is as it should be. Have you any plans for the future?’
‘I wouldn’t necessarily say plans, but there’s an idea that Jerry and I have discussed.’
The Chief Constable stood up and offered his hand. ‘Well, whatever it is, I wish you luck, Ray.’
‘Thanks, Bill.’
He hadn’t expected to keep his pension, so that was a result in itself. He took out his phone, found the number in his phonebook and dialled.
‘What do you want?’
‘That’s the thanks I get for saving you?’
‘Maybe I’ll take out a centre spread in The Times thanking all the people who saved me. Lordy, lordy, I’ve been saved.’
‘Come and work for me?’
There was a long silence at the other end. ‘You’re fucking joking. I’m not joining the police force.’
‘I’m no longer a police officer.’
‘I see, so an ex-copper without a job wants me to come and work for him?’
‘You’ll have to stop swearing, and smarten yourself up a bit . . .’
He heard the echo of false laughter. ‘You can go fuck yourself, Kowalski.’
The line went dead.
He smiled. She’d come and work for him. He had plans, and he was more excited now than he had been for a long time.
His phone vibrated.
‘The job centre?’
‘I’ve got a better idea, Kowalski. You come and work for me?’
‘Or, we could be partners?’
‘I’m vaguely interested. What have you got in mind?’
He told her.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘You’ll need to invest money if you want to be a partner.’
‘I have a little bit put by in a rainy-day account.’
‘I’ll wait for your call.’
He drove back to Hoddesdon. It was nearly lunch time when he walked up to his office.
‘Hello, Sir,’ Lydia said. ‘I have . . .’
‘Come in, Lydia.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘You don’t need to call me “Sir”, I don’t work here anymore.’
‘Oh! Have you been transferred?’
‘I’ve resigned with immediate effect.’
‘But . . .’
‘I’d be grateful if you could call a meeting of the detectives and support staff in the squad room in fifteen minutes, before they get called away to the pub for lunch.’
‘Of course, Sir. I’ll be sorry to see you go.’
‘And I’ll be sorry to go, but I have my reasons.’
She went out to arrange the meeting.
He packed up his things. Most people brought boxes, but he’d brought two “Bags for Life”. If he’d stayed here driving a desk for much longer, he’d have probably died of boredom or had another stress-induced heart attack, so the bags really were “Bags for Life”.
They were all waiting for him in the squad room. Jed Parish and Mary Richards; Xena Blake and Rowley Gilbert, Toady and Di Heffernan . . . Out of the corner of his eye – in the grey areas between the shadows – he could see the old Chief Superintendent Walter Day smiling; his dead partner Ed Gorman toasting him with a beer in his hand: “Good one, Ray”; and Lola Laveque holding a ju-ju doll and chanting a g
ood-luck charm. They were all there – the people he had loved like family for a large chunk of his working life. Tears rolled down his face. He’d miss them, miss them all.
Richards came up sobbing and hugged him. ‘Please don’t go, Sir.’
‘I have to, Richards.’
He peeled her off, turned and walked out. There was nothing he could say that would make it any easier for them or for him.
***
Saturday, February 6
ACC Honey Lister had received everything that Ray Kowalski had promised her – the anonymous witness statements; the hijacked satellite recording of five bodies being removed from the clinic to a container truck; a statement from Captain Nils Juul of the container ship Marguerite, a whole shitload of stuff from Olive the Hacker, and a post mortem report from Doctor Megan Riley at King George Hospital with a DNA profile of the killer, which wasn’t held on the National Database – although, as Ray had said, it didn’t seem to fit into the overall scheme of things.
She’d checked with legal, and even though the evidence had come from a number of suspect sources, the dead body gave them justifiable cause to carry out a raid. And if that raid happened to be at 2330 hours on Saturday, February 6 and they happened interrupt an illegal organ transplant operation – so much the better.
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About the Author
Tim Ellis was born in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital, London, on a dark and stormy night, and now lives in Cheshire with his wife and three Shitzus. In-between, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at eighteen and completed twenty-two years service, leaving in 1993 having achieved the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major). Since then, he settled in Essex, and worked in secondary education as a senior financial manager, in higher education as an associate lecturer/tutor at Lincoln and Anglia Ruskin Universities, and as a consultant for the National College of School Leadership. His final job, before retiring to write fiction full time in 2009, was as Head and teacher of Behavioural Sciences (Psychology/Sociology) in a secondary school. He has a PhD and an MBA in Educational Management, and an MA in Education.
Discover other titles by Tim Ellis at http://timellis.weebly.com/
Also, come and say hello on his FB Fanpage:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tim-Ellis/160147187372482
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Genghis Khan
Warrior: Path of Destiny
Warrior: Scourge of the Steppe
The Knowledge of Time
Second Civilisation
Orc Quest
Book I: Prophecy
Harte & KP
Solomon’s Key
Parish & Richards
A Life for a Life
The Wages of Sin
The Flesh is Weak
The Shadow of Death
His Wrath is Come
The Breath of Life
The Dead Know Not
Be Not Afraid
The House of Mourning
Through a Glass Darkly
A Lamb to the Slaughter
Silent in the Grave
In the Twinkling of an Eye
A Time to Kill
Deceit is in the Heart
The Fragments That Remain
The Kisses of an Enemy
Quigg
The Twelve Murders of Christmas (Novella)
Body 13
The Graves at Angel Brook
The Skulls Beneath Eternity Wharf
The Terror at Grisly Park
The Haunting of Bleeding Heart Yard
Includes:
The Enigma of Apocalypse Heights (Novella)
The Corpse in Highgate Cemetery
Tom Gabriel
Footprints of the Dead
Whispers of the Dead
Souls of the Dead
Stone & Randall
Jacob’s Ladder
The Gordian Knot
Josiah Dark
Dark Christmas (Novella)
Inigo & Tig
As You Sow, So Shall You Reap (Novella)
Cyrus Kane
An Ill Wind (Novella)
Collected Short Stories/Poetry/Anthologies/Non-fiction
Untended Treasures
Where do you want to go today?
Winter of my Heart (Poetry)
With Love Project – The Occupier
The Killing Sands (Anthology)
Raga Man (Short Story)
The Writer’s A-Z of Body Language (Non-fiction)
Summer of my Soul (Poetry)
Also planned for 2015/2016:
Dark Matter (Josiah Dark 2)
Chains of Illusion (Cyrus Kane 2)
Mortis Obscura: Scavenger of Souls (Farthing & Trask 1)
The Timekeeper's Apprentice
Orc Quest Book II: The Last Human
The Sword of Damocles (Stone & Randall 3)
The Song of Solomon (Harte & KP 2)
Evidence of Things Not Seen (Parish & Richards 18)
The Charnel House in Copperfield Street (Quigg 9)
