The Last First Time

by Andrea Bramhall

  “Something like that.” Kate carried on reading as the three of them swapped war stories about bad partners they’d had in the past. Kate didn’t think it would be conducive to a good working relationship to say that Mel had been worse and gotten her into more punishment jobs than Collier had. So far, at least. She supposed he still had time, though.

  Skimming page after page, Kate highlighted a few sections that might be of significance, but there was still nothing to give them any idea of a location to search. Until she got to the tenth page in her handful.

  “Saba took me to the lock-up today,” she read. “An old garage at the back of their house. It’s covered in graffiti. Crude penises, and women with huge breasts, but there’s a swastika on there too. Clearly the thugs who drew it all don’t get what’s offensive to Muslims, but still. They shouldn’t deface property that isn’t there. She said it was better not to clean it off, because leaving it there makes the kaffirs think he doesn’t care, so they won’t set fire to it. She had to pick up some stock. I don’t know what stock, though. They don’t sell things on the market like my dad does. I tried to ask her, but she just said it was his business and she just had to get the bag and take it to the mosque.”

  “Address?” Mallam asked.

  “The Ayeshydi house is on Diamond Street,” Vinny said as Kate jumped out of her seat and ran across the room to Timmons’s office. She knocked on the door and didn’t wait for a response. Collier was slouched in a chair, looking sullen, and Timmons’s face was crimson, spittle collected at the corner of his mouth. She almost felt sorry for Gareth. Almost.

  “Sir, we’ve got something,” she said before he could start to berate her. “The diary mentions a lock-up that Ayeshydi has at the back of his house. An old garage where Saba took her one day. Apparently they kept stock there.”

  “What fucking stock?”

  “Not a clue. As far as we know, he’s unemployed and she was a student.”

  “Brilliant, Brannon.” He looked at Collier. “If you bothered to fucking show up, you could learn a lot from an officer like her. Do not let me see you skulk in here late again, Collier. Now get out of my sight.” He looked at Kate. “I take it you don’t have a specific address for the lock-up.”

  “No, sir. But we have a description of the graffiti that covers it.”

  “Outstanding. Get over there, and get me a unit number.” He picked up the phone. “I’ll have a warrant ready for it by the time you get there.” He pointed to Gareth as he slunk towards the door. “You. Don’t fuck this up acting like a child who’s had his legs slapped. Grow up and grow a pair.”

  Kate let her gaze drop. Now she did feel a bit sorry for Collier. Just a bit.

  “Well? What are ya waiting for?” Timmons asked, and they both shuffled out of the room.

  Vinny, Mallam, and Mel were all waiting for them. Mallam had his phone to his ear.

  “Warrant’ll be ready by the time we get there.” She nodded in Mallam’s direction and looked at Vinny, holding her hands up in question.

  “Porter. They’re calling in that Dalton dude from CTU.”

  Kate sighed. “So, not so much on the little look-around and see if this might be something, then?”

  Vinny sniggered. “Go big or go home, Kate.”

  “Apparently.”

  Mallam turned back to them and slid his phone away. “Shall we, ladies?” He pointed to the door.

  Vinny and Collier scowled at his sickeningly sweet grin.

  “All units are mobilising.”

  Kate stepped through the door and fished her keys out of her pocket. “Yippee.”

  Chapter 17

  “Hello, Reman Unit,” the voice said.

  “Hi, it’s Gina Temple. Is Jodi available?”

  “Let me see. Hold, please.”

  A panpipes version of “Nights in White Satin” stuttered through the earpiece, and Gina shuddered. Really? On a mental health ward phone line? It wasn’t the choice of song…it was the bloody panpipes!

  “Hello? Gina?”

  “Hi, Jodi. Thanks for taking my call.”

  “No worries. You caught me between appointments. What can I do for you today?”

  “I wondered if you had a slot I could steal.”

  “Having problems?”

  “Well, it’s been a busy few days.”

  “Indeed. I’ve got a ton of extra people to see after what happened in Lynn—”

  “I was in Ann Summers when it happened,” Gina said quietly.

  Jodi was quiet for a moment. “This afternoon? Four o’clock?”

  “Sammy will have finished school then.”

  “Bring her along. We’ve got a playroom she can hang out in. It’s got a TV and some video games in there.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. Half the staff brought kids in today. We’ve had to cancel days off and, well, trying to get childcare was becoming a hindrance to providing the support we needed to, so we’ve hired someone to watch all the kids in the playroom. Ages seven to twelve, all in one big, happy room.”

  “Sounds like hell.”

  “Meh. For some.” She chuckled. “So, four?”

  “See you then.”

  The screen on her phone said 12:02 p.m. when she rang off. Almost time to go to the school as it was. The day had gotten away from her. She hadn’t even had a chance to open the mail, never mind get started on paying the bills, noting the invoices on the account spreadsheets, or looking at the bookings for the beginning of the new year. She wanted to figure out how much time off she could realistically take to spend with Sammy and Kate, doing nice things, fun things. Like lounging around on the sofa and throwing popcorn at each other while still in their pyjamas at three in the afternoon. Or walking Merlin on the beach at sunset and holding Kate’s hand. Or kissing her. Or maybe even more…no, definitely even more. Not on the beach, but definitely more.

  She grabbed the stack of mail and opened the first envelope. Telephone bill. Water bill. Invoice from the coal supplier, another from the plumber who’d serviced the boiler, and yet another from the guy who supplied the kindling they sold in the shop. Gina set each one to the side, carefully stacking them in date-payable order. She slid open the tab on the next envelope and pulled out a card. The picture showed a sad-looking dog with droopy eyes and a real hang-dog expression on its face. Gina smiled. They sometimes got thank-you cards from guests. Not as often as they got negative reviews on a certain review website, but enough to make her remember that there were still some nice people out there.

  She opened the card and read.

  Gina,

  I know you’re going through some difficult times at the moment. And I want you to know that I’ll always be there for you. You know you can count on me. I think I’ve proven myself to you now. I’ve done so much for you. Time and again, I’ve been at your beck and call, and it’s like you don’t even see me. Like you don’t even realise how much I do for you. You don’t even realise I’m alive.

  I know you think she’s good for you. She isn’t. Ever since she showed up, everything has gone wrong. Think about it, and you’ll see I’m right. Before she showed up, your life was perfect. We would have been perfect. I’m so much better for you than she is, Gina, and it’s time you started to wake up and realise that. It’s time you stopped seeing her and started to see what’s really good for you. Me.

  All she’s brought you is trouble.

  We belong together, Gina. You know we do.

  X

  Gina shivered as she dropped the card to her desk and plucked from her pocket the scrap of card that had come with the flowers. The handwriting was the same. The same scrawling arrangement of capitals and lower-case letters that were not ordered correctly. The first three letters in a word capitals, before they slipped to lowercase. It was a bizarre mixture, and something about it niggled. It itched at the back of her mind. She’d seen something like that before…a long time ago. But where?

  She picked up the envelop
e again. She turned it over and looked closely at it. The address was clearly written, but there was no stamp on it. No postmark. It had been hand delivered. She tried to remember if it had been at the bottom or the top of the pile when she’d picked it up earlier, but she couldn’t recall.

  “Fuck,” she cursed her lack of attention to detail and wished she’d figured out earlier how important a little something like that could be, but it was too late for that now. A cold hand wrapped itself about her heart and squeezed. The panic was rising. Why did this cause her more fear than a fucking bomb going off right there in front of her? Why was this so much more terrifying? A severed woman’s hand disturbed her less than a bunch of flowers. Pat’s death didn’t grab her like this card did. Why? What was wrong with her?

  Gina rested her head on the edge of her desk and focused on her breathing. She didn’t have time to have a panic attack now. She had to get to Sammy’s nativity play. She had to be strong…for Sammy. The card, the flowers, the bomb… It could all wait till later. It could all wait for Jodi.

  She stuffed everything into her bag, shut down her computer, slung the bag over her back, and headed for the door.

  Will was in the barn, filling the trailer with various tools, buckets, bin bags, and the plant pots she’d told him to use over at Mrs M’s. Scowling and muttering to himself under the sodden brim of his ever-present beanie, Will worked the cigarette between his lips as he straddled the quad bike and towed the gear outside. “Do you mind getting the door for me, G? Save me getting off again.”

  “No worries.” Gina grabbed the big, heavy door and swung it shut behind him. “Thanks for this. Mrs M was going to wait for her daughter to come and tidy up, but she’s got no idea when she’d be able to come up from London, and she couldn’t get in there to get to her medicine.”

  “You mean her weed.”

  “It’s medicine for her, Will. You know that.”

  Will grunted and blew smoke into the air. “Do know how long this’ll take?”

  “No worries. I’m heading over to the school now, then I’ve got an appointment in Lynn later, so I was going to take the rest of the day off. Why don’t you call it a day when you’re done at Mrs M’s?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t afford to be taking a half day.”

  “I’ll pay you a full day, Will. You’re doing me a favour, after all.”

  He grunted again. “Tell Sammy she better smash it.”

  “Oh, no. She might take that literally.”

  He sniggered. “True. Better tell her to be good, then.”

  Gina laughed. “Why? She’ll only ignore that. Oh, before I forget, was this delivered at the same time as the rest of the post, do you know?” She showed him the envelope.

  He pursed his lips, giving it no more than a cursory glance. “I can’t say as I noticed anything. Why?”

  “No stamp. No postmark. It was hand delivered.”

  “Really?”

  Gina nodded.

  “Don’t remember seeing anything.”

  “Did you notice anyone hanging around while you were around the gas cage?”

  “Nah. Too busy humping bottles to pay attention to anyone else.” He frowned. “Actually, I did see old Ed Sands hanging about for a bit. Looked like he was picking up pinecones, but I wasn’t paying much mind to him.”

  Edward Sands—the farmer who owned the property next to the campsite she and Will were working on, the campsite Ed and his son Rupert had been wanting to buy before Connie Wells had died. And as far as Gina knew…still wanted to buy. She tried to conjure up a scenario in her mind that would have the seventy-year-old Ed Sands shimmying over a six-foot fence to ransack roses from Mrs M to send to her as some sort of…what? Mind game to get her to hand over a campsite that wasn’t hers to hand over? Nah. That didn’t make any sense. And his forty-something-year-old son Rupert would be more likely to bring the fence down than scale it. His excessive bulk did not lend itself well to feats of acrobatic cat burglary as far as she could tell.

  Still, it was worth bearing in mind. Maybe. “Okay, thanks, Will.”

  He nodded, revved the engine, and set off for Mrs M’s.

  Gina walked to her car and set off for the school and an hour of mind-numbing religious regurgitation of the birth of Christ as told by children. And one Sammy Temple. She considered stopping by Mrs M’s and seeing if she had any special cakes she could take with her. That would make it a bit more entertaining.

  Ah well. At least it would keep her mind off cards and flowers and her mother for a while longer. Oh, and the bombing, of course.

  Chapter 18

  Mel sniggered. “Do we take the penis-covered garage on the left, or the boob-covered garage on the right?”

  “Neither, the swastika-wielding garage in the middle is the one we’re going for,” Kate said, dialling Timmons’s number. “Lock-up unit five, sir,” she said when he answered.

  “Got it. One second.” She heard him talking on a different line, then come back to her with “you’re good to go. Watch your back, Brannon.”

  “Sir.” She looked around at the team about her.

  Mallam leant against the gable end of the row of terraced houses that made up Diamond Street. A slew of two-up and two-down houses with little by the way of garden or parking space. The garages sat on land reclaimed when indoor toilets were invented…possibly only a few years ago, judging by the stench in the alleyway. Clustered around them were a dozen new faces. Well, helmet-covered faces, so Kate couldn’t be sure what was underneath the heavy masks of the tactical squad of the counterterrorism unit.

  But she did know it was Commander Jack Dalton and his team—every single one of them kitted out in black tactical gear and cradling their weapons more lovingly than their firstborn sons.

  Kate met Dalton’s fierce gaze and was supremely grateful she wasn’t facing him down today. “Good to go, sir.”

  They didn’t know if Ayeshydi was in the lock-up, they didn’t know if he was armed…or even if this truly was his lock-up. Either way, CTU was taking their job of kicking down the door seriously. And Kate was happy to let them lead on this one. Something about this place was making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Dalton drew himself up to his full height and waved his finger in a neat circle beside his head, silently commanding the eyes of every officer to fall on him. Without question they did. Silence settled amongst them—not that they’d been noisy before, but now it seemed even breathing was cut to the absolute minimum. He pointed at his own eyes, then sliced his arm through the air, separating his team in two, directing the left flank to take up positions to the left of the unit and the right flank to circle around the front of the street and take up positions to the right of the unit, moving in from one end—a standard pincer movement to trap any suspects that might flee the unit once they set the raid in motion.

  One of his team had already scouted around the back, and there was no rear exit, simply the roller door at the front that appeared to be locked, the handle in the centre of the shutter and in the lower third portion seeming to be the only thing securing it.

  Dalton moved closer. The only sound was his boots crunching on the ice beneath his feet. He and Palmer moved cautiously, but with surprising speed, covering the ground in what seemed like seconds. They ran fingertips along the edge of the shutter. They’d mentioned checking for tripwires or failsafe devices that would destroy the unit if not deactivated before entering. Just in case, the bomb squad was on standby… Well, Clare had them on speed dial. Was that what they were doing? They hadn’t gone into the minute details, and having never served in a tactical unit, Kate was guessing. An educated guess…but still a guess.

  When Palmer froze, his hands over his head by a few inches and on the right hand side of the roller door, Dalton seemed to find the same spot on the left at the same time.

  “Green? You there?” Dalton’s voice crackled over the airwave radio.

  “Go ahead, Dalton.”

&n
bsp; “Suspect the unit to be rigged. Probably just an alarm, but let’s play it safe. Requesting optical unit to get eyeballs on this before we open it up.”

  “Roger that. Optics are rolling to you. Hold position.”

  “Understood. Do you have an ETA on those optics? Position is exposed here. Repeat, position is exposed.”

  “ETA two minutes.”

  “Roger that. Waiting on optics.”

  Kate glanced up at the curtains twitching in the houses overlooking their positions. Dalton was right. They really were exposed. Ishman Ayeshydi’s bedroom overlooked the unit that they were stood in front of. If he was in there…they were totally blown. He could be running down the front of the street in his birthday suit and they wouldn’t know it. Not likely, granted, but still… She moved away from her position and across the alleyway to give her an angled view of the unit and most of the street in front too. At least of Ayeshydi’s front door.

  But a more disturbing thought emerged to displace the one she’d found a semblance of a solution to. Any one of the people looking out at Dalton and his men could be friends, confidantes, or brothers-in-arms with Ayeshydi. And on the phone to him right now, telling him what they were doing.

  What if the garage was booby-trapped and not just alarmed—if it was rigged to explode …who was to say it wasn’t rigged with a remote detonator? Christ, her mind was running at a million miles a minute through quicksand, unable to keep up with each one, even as she slogged through the possibilities and the fear each one brought with it. I’m fucking losing it.

  “Chief Inspector, this is…Brannon. Just had a thought: what if that thing’s not just an alarm. What if it’s booby-trapped with explosives?”

  “One of the reasons we want to get an eyeball on it, Brannon.” Dalton glanced at her over his shoulder. She could almost read the ‘we’re not fucking amateurs’ look under his face shield.

  “I see. But, what if…well, what if the explosives are set to detonate with a physical trigger or detonated remotely? Can they do that sort of thing?” She pointed to the windows while Dalton continued to stare at her. “Sorry, over,” she said into her radio, and shrugged her hands in question at him.