What You Pay For

by Claire Askew

  Also by Claire Askew

  All the Hidden Truths

  What You Pay For

  Claire Askew

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Claire Askew 2019

  The right of Claire Askew to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library eBook ISBN 978 1 473 67309 0

  Hardback ISBN 978 1 473 67307 6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For my little brother, Nick

  Contents

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Acknowledgements

  Monday

  Helen Birch watched as the red neon digits on her car’s clock clicked over from 0344 to 0345. Their dim light was the only illumination she had as she felt around for the cardboard cup of coffee she’d brought along, stone cold now, its edges worried by toothmarks.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said.

  Beside her, DC Amy Kato stirred. They’d come together, Birch picking up a yawning Amy outside the stair door of her Tollcross flat at 3 a.m. The idea was that they’d keep each other company, but they’d mostly sat, fidgeting, in a thick silence.

  ‘Shit,’ Birch said. ‘Were you asleep?’

  ‘No.’ Amy twisted in the passenger seat. Birch heard the stab vest she was wearing creak. ‘Um. A little. Sorry, marm.’

  Birch smiled. She was amazed DCI McLeod had allowed Amy to come with her in the CID Mondeo: she knew that he frowned on workplace friendships in general, and her friendship with Amy was doubly distasteful to him given their difference in rank. The other DCs and uniforms were packed into riot vans and manning panda cars, stationed in ill-lit backstreets around the set perimeter. Birch imagined them upright, alert, waiting for the go order. DCI McLeod was out there, too: his own dark-coloured, unmarked car parked somewhere on the other side of the harbour.

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ she said. ‘Just be ready for the go.’

  Birch and Amy had been stationed on the breakwater: a desolate spot far from the main road, beyond the high-rises and away from the lights and moorings of the yacht club. On Amy’s side of the car, the sea wall rose up like a shoulder. Above it, they could see the red pin-pricks on the struts of the Queensferry Crossing. In front of them, the vast darkness of the firth. At the end of the breakwater, a dim green light let boat traffic know the point at which the land ended.

  The rest of Birch’s unit were in a riot van, parked round the corner on Hesperus Crossway. Tucked behind the land’s last stack of buildings, those officers couldn’t see what Birch and Amy could. Through the strait in front of them, a steady stream of boats trailed towards the harbour, the tops of their masts illuminated by the red and white lights of fishing vessels. Among the convoy, a handful had lit the beams of their stern lights, or cast a greenish glow across the inky water from their flanks. They were trying not to look uniform: to a passing night-bus driver or graveyard shift worker, these were just fishermen bringing home the night’s catch. On the eastern harbour wall, fishmongers’ vans had lined up. Men would be hanging around there, waiting to offload cargo from the hulls of the little boats.

  ‘God,’ she said. Her teeth were set on edge. ‘I really hope we’re right about this. There’s a whole lot riding on Glasgow’s informant.’

  In the gloom, Amy smirked. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘All looks a bit fishy to me.’

  Birch made a stifled snort. ‘Oh don’t. It’s too early for the fish jokes. Especially if this all turns out to be a hiding to nothing.’

  Amy was still grinning. ‘On a scale of one to ten,’ she said, ‘how bad can it be?’

  Birch closed her eyes.

  ‘Get it, marm? Scale? Like—’

  ‘Yes, Kato, I get it.’

  The clock ticked over to 0350. The thick silence returned, filling the car like invisible smoke. Stop being such a humourless bitch, Helen, Birch thought. Snap out of the foul temper already. Amy was just trying to lighten the mood. What was this, anyway? Rage over the fact she’d been passed over to head this investigation? No: she didn’t want it, not really. It was just today. It was what today meant.

  ‘It should’ve been you.’ Amy’s voice still had a smile in it, as if she’d read her DI’s mind, and wanted her to know it.

  Birch shrugged. ‘I guess it’s worth praying that it is all a wild-goose chase,’ she replied, trying to ignore what Amy had said. ‘Otherwise who knows what time we’ll all get home.’

  ‘You don’t think we will, then?’

  Birch sipped her cold coffee, feeling the cup’s sponginess against her teeth. ‘Will what?’

  ‘Bring him in.’ Amy nodded backward, in the direction of the back-up vans, the perimeter. ‘Solomon. Folk seem pretty hopeful.’

  ‘Sure,’ Birch said. ‘We all want the big prize, right? I do, too, as much as anyone. But I don’t think it’s likely. This is a guy who’s dicked us around for donkey’s years. He’s always been a step ahead. It looks pretty impossible.’

  Birch felt, rather than saw, Amy’s raised eyebrow.

  ‘Well okay,’ she said, remembering her internal pep talk: enough of the attitude, Helen. ‘Nothing’s impossible. But it’s borderline, you know?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘Not that I’ve been telling anyone that.’ Birch jerked her head, the same way Amy had. ‘It’d be like telling them there’s no Father Christmas.’

  They were quiet again. 0353.

  ‘You’d do it,’ Amy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You. If you were in charge of this investigation, you’d bring him in. No question.’

  Birch smiled. ‘Quit brown-nosing, Kato.’

  ‘Nope.’ Amy took a chug of her own cold coffee. ‘I mean it. I don’t get why you’re not heading this up. McLeod’s decisions make no sense.’

  ‘DCI McLeod,’ Birch said, keeping her voice level, ‘is the SO on the scene. And I was just up on a disciplinary. You can’t possibly have forgotten.’

  Amy looked away. Amy knew fine well: she had been asked to give evidence as part of the hearing.

  ‘That made no sense either,’ she said.

  Birch arranged her face into the well-shit-happens expression she’d practised in the mirror. ‘Oh, I deserved it,’ she began, but the thought was lopped off by a flash of excitement as her phone buzzed: once, twice. Was it McLeod? Was there a development?

  As she scrabbled at her hip and grabbed the phone she felt Amy lean in, wondering the same thing. But no: the name that appeared across her unlocked screen was ‘Anjan C’. Birch flinched the phone out of Amy’s immediate eyeline.

  ‘What’s the deal?’ Amy said.

  Birch glanced at her, then back at the phone as she thumbed in the unlock code. ‘False alarm,’ she said. ‘Non-work text. Stand down, officer.’

  She waited until
Amy sighed and tipped the coffee cup up over her nose before opening WhatsApp to read the text in full.

  Morning. Can’t sleep, making tea. Mind if I use the last of your milk? Then, below: Caught yourselves a mob boss yet?

  Birch tried to prevent herself from blushing. She side-eyed Amy, then typed back: No word . . . will tell you when. Help yourself to anything. She looked at the message for a few seconds before adding a reckless x, and hitting send.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Amy was saying.

  Birch shoved the phone back into her pocket. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Deserve it,’ Amy said. ‘The disciplinary. It was bullshit. And besides, you were cleared.’

  Birch looked down at the steering wheel. She’d tried the tack that Amy was taking: tried it in her own head, late at night when she couldn’t sleep for thinking again and again about the Three Rivers case and what she’d done right, done wrong. She’d really tried for this is bullshit, tried to feel hard done by. But it was true: she’d deserved it, because she’d been stupid, and stupid cops are bad cops. She’d broken all her own rules, too: once upon a time she’d have rolled her eyes at police dramas in which the protagonist threw away the rule book and rode off into the crime scene solo. Who did she think she was?

  ‘No,’ she said, letting her gaze hang in the middle distance, the steering wheel’s Ford logo swimming, refocusing. ‘It was what needed to happen.’

  Something buzzed. At first, Birch thought it was her phone again, and she smiled, imagining Anjan. Maybe he was climbing out of the shower – her shower! – to text and say how impressed he was with the water pressure. Maybe he’d add a kiss back this time. Maybe he’d tell her he’d had a great evening, and could they do it again soon? He’d wanted to stay over in spite of her early start – well, middle of the night start, really, but—

  Birch had to snap out of the daydream. The buzz was her radio, and McLeod.

  ‘Landside units stand by,’ he said. ‘Five minutes till Operation Citrine is go. Marine unit, move to go position. That’s five minutes till go. Over.’

  The coastguard and accompanying police patrol boats were anchored, unlit, on the other side of the sea wall from Birch and Amy’s position. As the fishing vessels’ radar passed them, they’d have looked like moored, static craft. Now they were chugging – still without lights – across the harbour mouth in formation. If all went to plan, there’d be no escaping the net of police personnel, by land or by sea.

  ‘Ready?’ Birch asked.

  Amy nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be, marm.’

  ‘You nervous?’

  There was a pause. ‘A little.’

  Birch gave a short nod. ‘Good.’ Leaning forward in her seat, she patted herself down to check for kit: clip-on radio, baton, cuffs. The kevlar casing of her vest made a weird, hollow sound. ‘Nervous is good. Keeps you on your toes.’

  Amy was checking herself over, too. ‘McLeod said at the briefing we should expect them to be armed. That they’ll have guns.’

  Birch could detect a tremor in her colleague’s voice. ‘Most likely some will,’ she said. ‘But just stay focused. We outnumber them, and they’ll see that pretty fast. We’ve got an armed response unit on standby. Plus, they’ve probably all been educated on how stupid an idea it is to shoot a police officer.’

  Touch wood, Birch thought. Don’t tempt fate. And then, yet again, Stop it, Helen. It’s all going to be fine.

  ‘It’ll go like a Swiss watch,’ she added, as much for herself as for Amy.

  Quiet again: an unnerving quiet. Birch pictured her uniformed colleagues sitting stiffly in their hidden vehicles, holding one long, collective breath. Some had come through from Glasgow, wouldn’t know the terrain, might not know what name to call if they needed help from a colleague. 0358. Birch imagined she could hear the chug of the marine units, the slap of their wake against the breakwater. 0359. Their informant – the person this whole raid was riding on – was in the wind, vanished. They were acting on blind faith in their Glaswegian colleagues, who seemed to know little themselves and had disclosed barely any of that.

  Fish, she thought. These boats are going to be full of fish. There’s going to be no sign of Solomon. We’re all going to be—

  The radio crackled.

  ‘All units go,’ McLeod shouted, making the speaker fizz. ‘This is your go order. Repeat, this is your go order.’

  Birch turned the key in the ignition, and the car lit up. The air came alive with sirens. In the harbour mouth, the police boats’ prow floodlights flicked on almost in formation. The harbour became a ring of white light.

  Birch gunned the engine and peeled right, away from the sea wall. Her job was to command the unit that would block off one possible escape route: a rough-hewn bay area to one side of the harbour, too shallow for moorings but once used as a slipway. If any of the fishing vessels’ crew decided to try to swim for it, this would be where they’d wash up. She knew she’d been all but benched: this wasn’t exactly the thick of things. But still, adrenalin made her head pound as she drove the short stretch, tyres kicking up grit, Amy bracing one spread palm against the dashboard.

  They neared the harbour edge, the boats and, beyond them, the fishmongers’ white vans, now surrounded by panda cars with flashing blues. Men had begun to scatter in all directions, jumping overboard or pelting along the slippery harbourside, flinging cargo into the water.

  ‘Guess it’s more than just fish after all,’ Birch yelled as the car skidded to a halt in the agreed position. But Amy was already halfway out of the door: it seemed she was eager to show that the nerves she’d felt weren’t going to stop her pitching in.

  Outside the car, a cacophony. Birch’s own siren rang in her ears: the many others blaring around the perimeter felt like echoes bouncing back off the buildings and the breakwater. In the prow of his boat, the leader of the marine unit was roaring into a bullhorn. ‘Police! You are surrounded!’ Birch could hear Russian voices: everyone was shouting. She decided she might as well join in.

  ‘Right, lads,’ she bellowed, as uniforms half jumped, half fell out of the back of the van that had squealed up a few feet away. ‘I want a nice orderly line on this slipway, okay? Close to the waterline as you can. Eyes peeled.’

  The officers fanned out, a collective yes marm passing between them.

  ‘Everyone ready? First one to bring me a bad guy gets a gold star.’

  Across the water, Birch could see men being cuffed: pressed against the flanks of vans chest-first while their rights were read. The van drivers were easy, though: on the fishing boats, and in the water around them, there was still chaos.

  ‘Two o’clock!’ one of Birch’s officers yelled.

  ‘Yep, eyes on him,’ shouted another, along the line.

  Birch could see it now herself: a thrash of white water nearing the shore. She jogged along the line. ‘Let’s get some light over here!’ she shouted, and almost as she said it, she saw Amy – on the far end of the formation – had swung round her flashlight to oblige.

  In the water were two men, kicking strongly, pushing a wooden crate. The uniformed officer who’d got eyes on them had broken from the line and begun to wade in down the stone slope.

  ‘Police!’ he yelled, up to his knees in water. More torch-beams swung in his direction. Birch could see the men were white, wearing dark clothing. They were big guys, powerful swimmers. They looked mean.

  ‘Police!’ the uniform bawled again. ‘Come ashore!’

  The men were still in fairly deep, treading water now, sizing up the situation. The uniform moved in further, now up to his waist.

  Birch reached for her radio. ‘This is CA38, Birch,’ she said. ‘I’m on the western flank, two suspects and cargo in the water. Requesting marine unit assistance, repeat, requesting marine unit assistance, over.’

  The radio crackled.

  ‘If you don’t get out here,’ the uniform was shouting, ‘I’ll charge you with resisting arrest.’

  The other of
ficers dithered.

  ‘CA38, Birch.’ The radio was loud with cross-channel interference. ‘Repeat, requesting marine unit—’

  ‘This is McLeod.’ He was panting, she could tell even through the static. ‘No can do right now, Birch. Either hold them there for now or get in and fish them out, over.’

  Birch blinked, and came off the channel.

  ‘Thanks a fucking bunch, sir,’ she muttered. Her team were looking round at her, waiting for her order.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I trust you’re all good swimmers?’

  A couple of the uniforms glanced at each other.

  ‘Good. Everyone between DC Kato and me, fall back. Keep eyes on the water – where there’s one, there may well be more. The rest of you, it’s time to get wet. I want a V formation . . .’ Birch stretched her arms out to show the vague gist of what she meant, but some of the officers were already wading in. In the torchlight – wavering now, as Amy moved to her new position – the men seemed to have conferred, and were making to swim backward, into the centre of the harbour, dragging their box of tricks with them.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ The uniform already in the water lunged forward, and began swimming towards the pair.

  ‘In formation, I said!’ Birch yelled, but the other officers were still a fair way behind. Amy was nearest to her now, shining her torch onto the churned water.

  ‘Kato,’ Birch barked. ‘Who is that?’

  Amy turned, and the torchlight flicked away. ‘I believe it’s Malton, marm. PC Jaden Malton.’

  Someone in the water yelped, then – a sort of wet, strangled noise. Someone else shouted, ‘Light!’

  Amy flicked the torch-beam back up.

  PC Malton had reached the two men in the water, but one of them was now wrestling him, holding his face under the surface as the other perp clung on to the box, drifting, a gap opening between them.