At Risk

by Stella Rimington

  In Pakistan, Liz guessed, a European was a European. Different by definition. In Essex, however, there was an infinity of subtle distinctions in the way that people presented themselves. Liz had brought her work wardrobe with her, and had changed into the leather jacket and jeans. The jacket, in particular, was cheap-looking and unfashionable. Single mum doing the shopping. Dab of make-up, lank hair, sharp expression. Invisible in any high street.

  Soon they were making their way southwards towards the town of Swaffham. Liz drove carefully, pointedly observing the speed limits.

  “Tell me again why Zander should exert himself on our behalf,” said Mackay, reaching back to adjust the Audi’s headrest. “What’s in it for him, apart from your approval?”

  “You don’t think that’s enough?”

  He grinned ruefully. “Well, I guess it’s not so easily won; I could certainly do with a little of it myself. But yes, apart from that.”

  “I’m his insurance policy. He knows that if he comes across with good product then I’ll stir myself on his behalf if the drugs squad or the CID march in and scoop him up on a charge. That’s why he wouldn’t talk to Bob Morrison. Morrison’s the kind of hard-nosed Special Branch officer who despises the Zanders of this world on sight, and Zander knows it.”

  “Seems a bit short-sighted of Morrison.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s a point of view. My suspicion is that sooner or later the police are going to pick up Melvin Eastman and make something stick, and when that happens they’re going to need someone like Zander to go into the witness box and testify against him.”

  “From what you say, this guy Eastman wouldn’t be too happy about that. He’d take out a contract on him, and Zander must know that.”

  “He does, I’m sure. But if he trusts me—and I’ve always played fair with him—then maybe I can still persuade him to give evidence.”

  They arrived in Braintree with forty minutes to spare, and followed the signs to the railway station.

  “Can we just run through again how you want to play this?” asked Mackay.

  “Sure. He’s expecting me to arrive alone on the top level of the multistorey car park, so I’m going to drop you off a couple of minutes’ walk away, outside. I’ll drive up to the top storey and park; you follow on foot, install yourself near the staircase, and start logging incoming cars. As soon as I see Zander I’ll call you and describe his car. As soon as you’re sure that he wasn’t followed in you call me back, and I’ll approach him.”

  Mackay nodded. This was standard tradecraft. Frankie Ferris was a naturally cautious man, but it was just possible, given the events of the last couple of days, that Eastman might have put a tail on him.

  Liz pulled up at the kerb outside the station, and they switched their phones to silent vibration and loaded in each other’s numbers. Mackay then zipped up his jacket and slipped off into the shadows, while Liz drove up to the top floor of the car park.

  In the course of the next half-hour, as she sat there, three cars left the top level. Several others entered the car park, but all occupied vacant bays on the half-empty lower levels. Finally, at five to eight, a silver Nissan Almeira climbed to the top level, and Liz recognised Frankie Ferris’s pale features at the wheel. Quickly, she thumbed the speed-dial button on her phone.

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” came Mackay’s voice, muted. Frankie parked in the corner furthest from her, and she saw him glance at his watch before turning off the Nissan’s engine and lights.

  At three minutes past eight her phone rang.

  “He was followed,” said Mackay.

  “I’m aborting, then,” said Liz immediately. “Meet me on the pavement outside in five minutes.”

  “No need. Go ahead with the meet.”

  “The meet’s compromised. Get out of here.”

  “Zander’s tail met with a problem. He’s immobilised in the stairwell. Go ahead with the meet.”

  “What have you done?” hissed Liz.

  “Secured the situation. Now go for it. You’ve got three minutes.” Her phone went dead.

  Liz looked around her. There was no sign of any movement. Deeply apprehensive, she climbed out of the Audi and crossed the concrete floor. As she approached the silver Almeira she saw the driver’s window slide down. Inside the car’s plush interior Frankie looked thin and scared.

  “Take these,” he said, his voice shaky. “And make like you’re paying me.” He handed her a small paper bag, and Liz reached into her pocket and pretended to pass him money.

  “Mitch,” she said urgently. “Tell me.”

  “Kieran Mitchell. Transport man, fixer, enforcer, whatever. He’s got a big place outside Chelmsford on one of those gated estates.”

  “Works for Eastman?”

  “With him. Got his own people.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Seen him. He drinks with Eastman. Nasty-looking bastard. White eyelashes like a pig.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, he carries. Now get out of here, please.”

  Liz walked quickly back to the Audi and drove to the ramp. A level down, she picked up Mackay, who was leaning against a barrier. “What the hell is going on?” she asked angrily.

  He jumped into the passenger seat. “Did you identify Mitch?”

  “Yes, I did.” She turned the steering wheel to full lock to negotiate the downward spiral ramp. “But what the bloody hell were you up to?”

  “Zander was followed. Eastman obviously suspects something’s up. The tail parked on this level. He arrived about a minute after your man went up to the top.”

  “How do you know he was a tail?”

  “I followed him to the stairwell, and he went up, not down. So I zapped him.”

  She braked sharply, the Audi’s tyres squealing on the ramp. “What do you mean, you zapped him?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Mackay extracted a slim black plastic object resembling a mobile phone. “The Oregon Industries C6 stun-gun, aka the Little Friend. Delivers six hundred thousand volts straight into the central nervous system. Result: target incapacitated for a period of three to six minutes, depending on physical constitution. Ideal for cell clearance, resisted take-downs or the restraint of violent mental patients.”

  “And completely unlicensed for use in the United Kingdom,” retorted Liz, furious.

  “Undergoing trials with the Met as we speak, actually, but let’s not get too anal about all that. The point is that zappers are established criminal accessories, which is why I relieved our man of his watch and wallet. My guess is he’s going to keep quiet about the whole thing. He’d look pretty stupid admitting to Eastman that he failed to do his job because he was mugged in a stairwell.”

  “You hope.”

  “Look, Zander was blown,” said Mackay. “The fact that there was a tail at all tells us that. The essential thing was to identify Mitch. We certainly wouldn’t have had another chance. Right now I suggest that we get the hell out of here before our zappee finds his feet again.”

  Letting out the clutch with deliberate force, Liz spun the Audi forward. “If that was a member of the public you electrocuted …”

  “If it was, he’ll be fine,” said Mackay. “These things do no lasting damage whatsoever. They’ve tested them on the Los Angeles Police Department—not the most highly evolved form of life, I grant you, but …”

  “And what do you propose we do with that watch and wallet you’ve pocketed?”

  “Run a check on the owner and see if they belong to one of Eastman’s people,” said Mackay. “Then, if you like, we can post them back to him with an anonymous note saying we found them in the car park. How’s that?”

  She kept her eyes on the road.

  “Look, Liz, I know that you’re pissed off that I’ve come busting into your case, especially after you’ve done all the groundwork. I really understand that. But in the end we both want the same thing, which is to nail this bastard before he takes any more lives, agree
d?”

  She took a deep breath. “Let’s get this straight,” she said eventually. “If we’re going to work together we fix the ground rules now, and the first of these is that we employ proper tradecraft. No freelancing, no cowboy weaponry. You risked the life of my agent back there, and with it the whole operation.”

  Mackay began to answer but she overrode him. “If this case ends up with an arrest, and we’ve broken the law, the defence lawyer’ll have a field day. This is the UK we’re in, not Islamabad, OK?”

  He shrugged. “Zander’s a dead man, and you know it.” He turned to face her. “You think Bob Morrison’s on the take from Eastman, don’t you?”

  “You worked that one out, then.”

  “I was wondering why you insisted on getting Zander to identify Mitch, when it would have been much easier just to go to Essex Special Branch. But you were worried that Morrison would slip Eastman the word, and Mitch would run.”

  “I thought there was an outside chance,” admitted Liz. “A less than one per cent chance. I’ve got no proof of any kind against Morrison, nothing at all. It’s purely instinct.”

  “In future, can we share your instincts?”

  “Let’s see how we go, shall we?” Taking a hand off the wheel, she reached into her pocket for the paper bag Frankie Ferris had given her, and handed it to Mackay. “Zander was very jumpy,” she said. “He made me pretend that I was there for a drugs buy, so he must have suspected Eastman would have someone keeping an eye on him. Check these out.”

  “They’re Smarties,” said Mackay. “Excellent!”

  B y the time Kieran Mitchell reached the Brentwood Sporting Club, he knew that he was enjoying his last evening of freedom for a long time. His wife Debbie, frantic with worry and Stolichnaya vodka, had rung to say that the police had called at the house mob-handed, and voice-mail messages had piled in from contacts in at least half a dozen pubs and clubs. They were looking for him, methodically eliminating all his usual haunts. It was only a matter of time.

  Looking around him at the familiar surroundings—the punters crowding the oxblood leather banquettes, the croupiers in their tight red dresses, the cigarette smoke hanging in the lights over the blackjack tables—he tried to impress its details on to his memory. He would need something to draw on in the months ahead. Wryly, he raised his glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label to his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. An ugly bastard, sure—he’d always been that—but a man who could hold things together when the situation called for it.

  “You on your own, love?”

  She was about forty, probably. Blonde streaks, glittery top, desperate eyes. You got them in every casino, the women who, having blown whatever they’d managed to scrape together that day, hung around the male punters like pilot fish. For a handful of chips, Mitchell knew, he could have taken her down to the car for ten minutes. Tonight, though, he just wasn’t in the mood.

  “I’ve got people coming,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Anyone nice?”

  He laughed at that, and didn’t answer, and finally she walked away. From the moment he’d walked into the toilet at the Fairmile and seen Ray Gunter’s body lolling against the tiles, he’d known that the people-smuggling racket had been blown to the four winds. The police wouldn’t have a choice; they’d have to go all the way with this one—follow as far as the trail led. And the short answer, of course, was that it led to him. He’d been seen with Gunter, he was a known confederate of Melvin Eastman … He took a deep slug of the Scotch and refilled the engraved tumbler from his private bottle. He was fucked, basically.

  What the hell had Eastman been thinking of, getting into bed with those Krauts? Before they’d come calling he’d had a sweet little franchise running, bringing in illegals for the Caravan. Asians, Africans, working girls from Albania and Kosovo, all of them properly cowed and respectful. No trouble, no argument, and everyone going home happy.

  The moment he’d clocked that Paki, though, he’d known he was going to be trouble. A rough crossing usually shook them down nicely, but not this one. This one was a psycho—a real hard nut. Mitchell shook his head. He should have drowned him while he had a chance. Nudged him overboard, rucksack and all—he’d heard that most Asians couldn’t swim.

  Ray Gunter, of course—idiot that he was—had spotted the rucksack and decided to take it off the Paki. He hadn’t said anything about stealing it, but looking back it was blindingly obvious. And so the Paki—psycho nutcase that he was—had taken him out.

  All of these events leading him, Kieran Mitchell, in his slate-grey silk suit and his midnight-blue Versace shirt, to this moment. To this glass of Scotch that could be his last for years. Conspiracy, immigration offences, terrorism, even. It didn’t bear thinking about. Not for the first time, he considered cutting and running. But if he ran, and they found him—as they surely would find him—it would go worse for him. It would cancel out the one card that he held. The card that, if he played it properly …

  In the mirror he saw what he had been expecting for the best part of an hour. Movement near the entrance. Purposeful men in inexpensive suits. The crowd parting. Downing his Scotch in three measured draughts, he felt in his trouser pocket for the coat-check disc. It was cold out, so he’d brought the dark blue cashmere.

  L iz sensed the quiet excitement in the place as soon as she walked into Norwich police station. The Gunter murder investigation had been going nowhere fast and suddenly here was a solid lead in the shape of one of Melvin Eastman’s senior associates. There had been some talk of taking Kieran Mitchell to Chelmsford, where all the Eastman files were held, but Don Whitten had insisted on Norwich. This was his murder hunt, and every aspect of the investigation would be carried out under his jurisdiction.

  When Liz and Mackay walked into the station’s operations room, the place was crowded with bullish-looking officers in their shirt sleeves taking it in turns to congratulate an uncomfortable-looking Steve Goss. Amongst them, sent over as an observer by the Essex force, was the Special Branch officer Bob Morrison. Don Whitten, Styrofoam coffee cup in hand, presided over the mêlée.

  Seeing Liz, Goss waved and extracted himself. “They think I lined up the arrest,” he murmured, running a hand through his scrubby ginger hair. “I feel a total bloody fraud.”

  “Enjoy it,” suggested Mackay.

  “And let’s pray it’s not a dead end,” agreed Liz.

  She had called Goss with Kieran Mitchell’s details as soon as she and Mackay were clear of Braintree. Then they had driven north to Norwich, stopping on the way to pick up a pizza and a bottle of Italian beer each. For the time being, perhaps as a way of acknowledging Liz’s earlier fury, Mackay had shrugged off his romantic seducer’s skin, and without it he proved a surprisingly entertaining companion. He had a near inexhaustible fund of stories, most of them concerning the extreme behaviour—or misbehaviour—of his service colleagues. At the same time, Liz noticed—and however much she tried to lead him on—he never actually fingered anyone directly. When names were named, they were never those of the actual perpetrators of the cowboy operations that he described. They were those of their friends, colleagues, or superiors. He gave the impression of extreme indiscretion, but actually gave away little that wasn’t already reasonably common currency in the intelligence community.

  He’s on to me, thought Liz, enjoying the game. He’s aware that I’m watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake. And he’s playing up to my expectations of him as a reckless freelancer, because if he can convince me that that’s what he is, then I’ll stop taking him seriously. And the moment I stop taking him seriously he’ll find some way of stitching me up. There was even a certain elegance to it all.

  She had briefed Goss over the phone about the conversations with Cherisse Hogan and Peregrine Lakeby that had led her to Kieran Mitchell’s name, and suggested that he set up the arrest. Impressed by her investigative work, and understanding her need to keep a low profile in the affair, he had agreed.
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br />   Liz had considered sharing her concerns about Bob Morrison with Goss, but had finally decided to let the matter lie. It was only her instinct that suggested that he might be in the pay of Eastman—she had no evidence of any kind beyond his dilatory attitude and a general impression of venality. Besides which, Eastman would know with or without Morrison that Kieran Mitchell had been arrested, and would make his arrangements accordingly. And if Mitchell came up with solid information and was prepared to go the distance in court, then Eastman would be out of the game anyway.

  With the return from the custody suite of Mitchell’s solicitor, a sense of order and restraint reestablished itself. The solicitor, a silkily exquisite figure with an established reputation as a “gangster’s brief,” was named Honan. Thanking the custody officer who had accompanied him to and from the cells, he asked to speak in private to DS Whitten.

  As Whitten and Honan took their places in one of the interview rooms, Goss ushered Liz and Mackay into the adjoining observation suite, where half a dozen plastic chairs faced a large rectangular panel of one-way glass. A moment later, with the faintest of nods, Bob Morrison joined them.

  In the interview room, on the other side of the one-way glass, the overhead strip light cast a hard, bleaching glare. The off-white laminate surface of the table was pitted with cigarette burns. There were no windows.

  “Could you repeat what you’ve just said to me,” Whitten asked Honan. Amplified by the speakers in the observation suite, his voice sounded harsher and clearer than usual.

  “Bottom line—and without prejudice—my client doesn’t want to go down,” said Honan. “In return for a guarantee of immunity from prosecution, however, he’s prepared to go into the witness box and produce the wherewithal to put Melvin Eastman away for offences relating to narcotics, immoral earnings, and conspiracy to murder.”