by Faith Martin
He cringed, imagining the sarcasm as he tried to explain. Oh, like an eel, was he? Slithered through the window before you could catch him, did he? Greased, was he, like one of those pigs at an old-fashioned fair, was he? Brian was so agitated he was almost sobbing. Where the hell had the bastard gone?
Janine ran along the towpath, keeping her eyes fixed on the back of Mel’s head. From the back of the boat, the first of the suspects emerged, handcuffed and wearing, comically, a pair of pyjama bottoms with some sort of kiddie characters on them.
Boy was he going to be embarrassed later, when the pictures came out. Then something hit her.
Hard.
One moment she was running, the next she simply wasn’t. She was skidding painfully along the towpath, her hands, knees and cheeks flaming as if they’d been torched. In fact they’d been scraped, on the rough stone mix that the River Authority used instead of concrete or asphalt.
She didn’t have time to yell. She didn’t really know what was happening to her. All she knew was pain, and sudden, stark fear.
From her spot behind the parked car, Hillary Greene saw exactly what happened. Seeing a break in the line of coppers running along the towpath, a pale figure emerged at the edge, and stood upright, holding something long and thin — no doubt a pipe, or some other such piece of metal that had been tossed in the canal who the hell knew when. The swimmer couldn’t have seen it, not in the gunge that passed for canal water. He could only have felt it with his fingertips as he’d swum along.
What Hillary couldn’t understand was why he used it in the first place. Panic? Hatred of cops? More likely hatred of women. Whoever the suspect was, he must have known, in his heart of hearts, that there wasn’t any getting away.
For a start, the stretch of canal-side where Hillary stood was lined with corrugated iron, and too steep to climb. Even if he’d managed it, there were cops all along this side of the street. And the side he was on now was even worse. The towpath was lined with them, from Mel to Regis, to the PCs now emerging, victorious, from the boat. Even if he’d managed to get out of the canal unseen, he was hardly likely to blend into the background and slip away unnoticed. Skinny, white, and dripping foul-smelling canal water, he looked like nothing on earth.
But, as Hillary well knew, his adrenaline would be up. He’d be feeling pumped and pleased with himself for getting off the boat at all. He’d be feeling like superman. So why not floor the silly bitch copper running by? Perhaps he even thought her colleagues would all be so filled with chivalrous concern that they’d go to her aid and forget about him.
Who the hell knew what was going on in his mind?
Hillary knew what was going on in hers. He was out of the canal now, on his knees, but with the weapon still in his hand. And Janine, stunned, was an easy target and the closest to hand. One swing of that metal bar on her head and . . .
‘Hey, you! You bastard, look at me!’ Hillary bellowed, her furious voice cutting across the air, making everyone, including the perp, look her way.
It was Regis’s sergeant, the silent, unimposing Colin Tanner, who saw him first. He yelled, a nameless word that seemed to be yanked out of him, and he spun round and sprinted towards the woman police officer lying on the ground, her golden hair spread around her, looking wildly out of place.
Then everyone was moving. One of their own was in trouble. They absorbed the fact by osmosis, without thinking.
The perp looked confused for a moment, and then he began running for all he was worth. Away from Janine.
Hillary, too, was moving, hardly aware of doing so. She knew, vaguely, that there would be someone coming across the bridge ready to tackle the fleeing suspect — it simply wasn’t procedure to have everybody together in one place. There was always backup.
And so there was. Even now she could see two uniformed cops, not in armoured gear, true, but both men of a good size, running across the bridge to intercept the perp. She was just coming up behind them when the suspect did a crazy dodging manoeuvre that made her think of a ferret.
Brian Herbert, still watching from the back of the boat, felt justified in losing him in the first place. See, he could say, I told you he was like an eel. The sod must be as double-jointed as a bloody snake.
Tommy Lynch was the first to see the obvious danger — that Hillary was now directly in his way. And being on the boat, he could do nothing to help her.
Hillary had very little time to feel dismayed. She watched, wide-eyed, as the white-skinned perp dodged a lunge, and then ducked under the unloving embrace of the second cop, like a manic limbo dancer. She heard both of her colleagues curse, even had time to see them bang into each other, fumble and start to turn.
But by then the perp was almost upon her. He looked young, desperate. And mean. Very mean. Worse, he could taste freedom. She could almost hear his thoughts. He’d been on the boat, trapped like a rat, but he’d got off it, hadn’t he? He’d given that tart of a cop a good whack, and dodged those other two like some ace footballer shrugging off a whole Arsenal-load of defenders. Now all he had in front of him was one middle-aged, suit-wearing, desk-jockey, woman cop and he’d have the whole city to get lost in. No doubt it stretched out behind Hillary like the promised land.
Hillary knew there must be other colleagues behind her, some probably no more than a few yards away. There had to be.
But that didn’t help now.
He came at her with the swiftness of youth high on adrenaline, all the strength his situation conferred on him, his fear robbing any finer feeling he might normally have had. All he wanted was to steamroller over her and be away.
Hillary briefly contemplated just stepping aside and letting him steam on past her. She doubted that anyone would blame her if she did. The two cops behind him were nearly on him anyway. And she could hear angry shouts behind her, telling her that backup was indeed on the way.
Some might even argue she’d be right to do just that. The brass didn’t like it when women officers got hurt — especially not detective inspectors.
But she couldn’t just stand there and let him pass, could she?
Of course she couldn’t.
When he was just the right distance away from her, she lifted her foot in a classic high-kick, stylish as a veteran of the Folies Bergère, and kicked him squarely in the balls.
CHAPTER 9
He didn’t seem to like it much. His face went white and then suddenly suffused with blood, and his mouth formed an ‘O’ of agony. He bent double, unintentionally head-butting her in the stomach. She took a hasty step back, but he was down on one knee now, heaving and retching.
The two uniformed officers were already reaching out for him, cuffs at the ready. Behind Hillary, a ragged cheer went up.
Mel, puffing a little from his dash across the bridge, pulled up beside her, grinning fit to make even the Cheshire cat look at him askance. ‘Shit, Hill. That was the best kick in the goolies I’ve seen in a long while.’
‘Yeah, nine-point-nine for artistic merit.’ Mike Regis joined them on the bridge, not at all out of breath as he looked down at the gasping, red-faced perp. ‘He reminds me of a guppy I used to keep as a kid.’
‘A straight ten for technical expertise,’ Mel added, straight-faced, and suddenly Hillary found herself embarrassingly and gratifyingly surrounded by laughing colleagues, all competing to see who could tease her the most.
* * *
From the opposite side of the bank, Tommy watched with relief as his DI dealt smartly with the danger, then with jealousy because he didn’t dare go over and join in the teasing. He walked instead to where Janine half-sat, half-sprawled on the towpath, surrounded by burly constables not quite sure what to do with her. One was radioing for an ambulance.
Tommy crouched down in front of her. ‘You all right?’
Janine swore at him, loudly and roundly. ‘Of course I’m not sodding all right. Do I look all right?’
She could feel nothing but pain. All over. She wasn’t used
to it. Worse, she hadn’t expected it. Not really. The concept of being injured in the line of duty had always been pretty abstract.
And she simply hadn’t realised it would make her feel like this.
Janine wanted to puke. She was shaking, and somewhere deep inside her head, she knew she was in trouble. She wanted nothing so much as to cry her eyes out, and then ask to be taken home to her mother.
But of course, she could do neither of those things.
Her skin, where it was scraped, burned and stung, making her want to rub it. But she knew that if she took her hand off the towpath, she’d collapse back onto her nose again.
She didn’t know where to put her face. Why did all these men keep hanging around her, looking like shamefaced, worried sheep?
How had this happened to her?
‘An ambulance is coming,’ Tommy said, making her feel ten times worse. ‘Just take it easy.’
‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ she said, and started to get up. This time the pain was like a lash from a red-hot whip. It flickered across her back where the perp had swung the iron bar and caught her across her shoulder-blades.
The world swam.
She lay back down on the towpath, and concentrated on not being sick.
The thought would not go away. She was in trouble.
* * *
Within minutes, they brought the sniffer dogs and their handlers in from the vans still parked in Walton Street, while the crew from the boat — all five of them — were being carted off, as arranged, to the nick in St Aldates.
Tanner went with them to start the interviews and coordinate things from that end, but Regis, unsurprisingly, wanted to hang around and see what they came up with. Thanks to the great Houdini, as they were already calling the one who’d made a bolt for it, they were sure there had to be something on board, and some of the tension began to dissipate. It disappeared completely when the dogs, big professional-looking Alsatians, went crazy the moment they were led onto the barge.
Hillary, back at her perch by the purple Mazda, watched the ambulance pull up, and the attendants transfer her sergeant to the stretcher. She’d had quite a whack, but Hillary was pretty sure her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. She would have liked to go over there, but she knew from past experience that she was probably the last person Janine would want to see right now. She’d be feeling humiliated enough without having a living, breathing, I-told-you-so in the form of Hillary to rub it in.
She knew what it was like to take a beating. She’d once got on the wrong end of a domestic, where a wife-beating hubby decided to give Hillary a taste too.
She’d have to keep an eye on Janine, make sure she didn’t lose it and never get it back again. She would try and show her that what had happened today wasn’t the disaster it felt like, and that people weren’t laughing at her behind her back. Reassure her that it was just one of those learning experiences that everyone has to go through.
Of course, there would always be sexist prats, like Frank Ross, who would rub it in. But with a bit of luck, that would only have the effect of stiffening her sergeant’s backbone. She refused to believe that the likes of Janine Tyler, blonde harridan extraordinaire, would ever let Frank Ross or turds like him put a dent in her self-esteem. Or so she’d tell Janine, once she was back at her desk.
A sudden yell of triumph from the boat told her the good news. They’d found something.
* * *
That something was very big indeed. All morning, along with photographers and SOCO, they retrieved what would later turn out to be the sixth-biggest drugs haul in Thames Valley history.
Regis and Hillary sat in her car, eating hamburgers. Hillary would have liked fries and a big chocolate milkshake to go with it, of course, but when you had a high like this morning to carry you over, even she, she supposed, could do without a chocolate fix for once.
‘Fletcher must be chewing off the wallpaper by now,’ mumbled Regis through his burger.
Hillary shook her head. ‘Poor chap.’
Regis took another bite. ‘Makes you want to cry for him, don’t it?’
* * *
Everyone back at the Big House had heard about the bust, of course, and its mammoth haul of crack, coke, heroine, ecstasy, and assorted other goodies not even tested yet. Hillary, Tommy, Regis and Mel walked into the nick to the sound of loud applause. The cheers and hails had begun in the hall, with the desk sergeant giving them cheerful grief, and continued with ribbings from everyone they met on the stairs. By the time they reached the office, Hillary was feeling all warm and gooey inside.
Until she realised they still hadn’t found out how The Pits had met his end. It was now almost certain that he’d fallen off a second boat, with or without assistance. Regis and Mel would be throwing everything into finding this boat, although she thought their chances of making a second spectacular haul were just about zero. Fletcher would be on his mobile the instant he learned of the Oxford bust, and any drugs on the second canal boat would be offloaded faster than a stereo from a car parked in Blackbird Leys.
* * *
Paul Danvers and Curtis Smith weren’t immune to the atmosphere of celebration either. The jubilation had spread through the canteen like the scent of frying bacon. Not surprisingly, the dynamic trio received a heroes’ welcome when they walked in. Mel lapped it up, of course, but Regis, after giving a smile that looked like a crack in a tombstone, seemed to shrug it off.
Paul glanced at his colleague. ‘She looks a bit embarrassed, don’t you think? I told you she was a good copper.’
‘She can do her job.’ Curtis was busy spearing an egg yolk with a satisfyingly thick chip. ‘I never said she couldn’t.’
Paul looked at his partner. ‘You heard from Scotland yet?’
Curtis nodded. ‘Yep. It’s confirmed.’
Paul sighed heavily. Shit. Still, he supposed it had to be done. ‘Let’s leave off confronting her until after this dies down, yeah?’ He looked around a shade apprehensively.
Hillary was heroine of the hour at the moment. Stepping the investigation up a notch wasn’t going to go down too well.
Curtis nodded. He wouldn’t have been human — or a cop — if he hadn’t felt an echoing sense of pride. They’d done good. And, like every other cop in the place, he liked the thought of a big-time drug dealer going to the wall. ‘Sure, we can wait a while.’
Paul caught his eye. He knew damned well what Curtis was thinking. Hillary Greene might be a good cop, but if she were as bent as her husband, she’d be going down.
Paul pushed his uneaten vegetable lasagne aside and wished he still smoked.
* * *
Gary Greene pulled off at the Bicester straight and signalled left. The old grey metallic railway bridge hove into sight, and he sighed. He signalled left again, and drove his marked patrol car into the new, pale, gleaming nick that was supposed to be Bicester’s answer to the rising crime statistics.
He hadn’t been here before. He’d spent some time in the old Bicester nick, at the bottom of the road from the sports centre and Bicester Comprehensive, now called something more ‘academic’. His dad had worked out of that nick, and Paul still had a lot of friends in this one.
He just wished one of them hadn’t called him last night and told him he might like to pop around when he had a moment. Like, soonish. Feeling apprehensive, he parked the car, walked in, and asked for Sergeant Pete Glover.
Glover turned out to be one of those men who looked like a professional wrestler and couldn’t stop talking about his kids. After the mandatory ten minutes of reminiscing about Ronnie, and what a good bloke he was, a real copper, and how sorry Glover was about him being dead, the sergeant eventually took him to the locker room.
Glover glanced around, although the room, which smelt habitually of dirty socks and aftershave, was completely empty. ‘See, thing is, son, old Ron liked to keep a locker here. Not strictly legit, see, seeing as he wasn’t serving here, but what the hell? Right?’
&n
bsp; ‘Right.’ Gary, totally miserable, put on a bright smile.
‘So when I heard there were some nosy parkers sniffing around up the Big House, I thought I’d better check, see, just to make sure . . . well, that there weren’t nuffin’ hanging around that you wouldn’t want your old lady to see. See?’
Gary nodded, trying to dismiss the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘Turns out there was nothing much. Well, a bit of porno, got off a raid years ago, but you can buy worse than that in WH Smith nowadays. Get me?’ Glover gave him a painful nudge in the ribs with his elbow, and laughed like a blocked drain. ‘But I thought I should clear it out anyway. Just in case them sods from down your way get to hear about Ronnie’s little arrangement here. I bagged it up.’ He opened the locker concerned and dragged out a Tesco shopping bag. ‘I, er, got rid of the porno.’ Glover avoided Gary’s eyes. ‘Didn’t think you’d want to run the risk of getting caught with it. You still being a nipper of a constable, and all that.’
What he really meant was he’d sold it to some sleazy geezer he knew.
Gary nodded, relieved. So that was it. Just some wary sergeant wanting to cover himself. Fair enough. He took the bag, admired Glover’s youngest, an unprepossessing brunette of around ten, and left, feeling like laughing.
Being big bad Ronnie Greene’s son was both an asset and a liability. He knew damned well he’d have to keep his nose extra squeaky clean to get promoted. The brass would always see his name and wonder. On the other hand, a lot of the troops in the trenches secretly admired Ronnie Greene, who’d made a few spectacular collars in his time, before things turned sour.
So he walked a tightrope, and prayed for the memories to fade soon.
He drove off, and then pulled up in the nearest layby. The bag contained a pair of old trainers, a wallet with no money in it but credit cards that he was sure Hillary knew nothing about, some toiletries, caked around the rim with green, pine-smelling ooze, and a paperback novel.
