by Robson, Roy
For her, Justin was everything H was not, and that was exactly what she needed. Talking to a man who was open about his feelings was a new experience; there were not many of those in the south London she knew. She didn’t love Justin, not in the way she had loved H. She knew she never would. But she liked him, she liked him just fine and that was enough. That was the best she could hope for, as she stoically pulled her life back together.
The only time H and Justin had previously met was at the divorce hearing and only Ronnie’s presence had prevented a bloodbath.
‘How could she leave me for that prick, that complete and utter prick’, H had said to Ronnie after the hearing. Many other people who knew them wondered why it had taken her so long.
For a moment an awkward silence reigned as the three protagonists stood rooted to their respective spots in the triangle of love and loathing. Amisha, who had been following H as unobtrusively as she could, did not need to lean too heavily on her detective’s instincts to realise H was in the presence of his ex-wife. He had mentioned her once or twice but mostly avoided talking about her. As he mostly avoided talking about any part of his personal life.
‘Where is he?’ said H.
Julie said, ‘Not sure, Inspector Marshall won’t allow us access.’
As if on cue Marshall entered the waiting area. He was another of the university recruits, fast tracked into his position, a highly motivated moderniser determined to make a successful career. H looked him up and down; he did not much like what he saw. Shoes shiny enough to see his face in, tie knotted and arranged to perfection. A good crop of neatly cut black hair sat atop a soft-featured, pleasant face.
Looks like a fucking newsreader.
‘Chief Inspector Hawkins, can I point out it is highly irregular for you to be here and ...’
‘Room number?’
‘Your son is in interview room four but I’m afraid I cannot allow...’
H shoved Marshall out of the way and barrelled on to see his boy.
‘Same old H’, Julie whispered to Justin.
24
Little Ronnie was hunched over the white table that adorned the otherwise bare surroundings when H entered the room.
Ronnie turned to see who had entered the cell. Father and son looked at one another. H tried unsuccessfully to hide the disappointment in his face. Ronnie tried desperately to subdue the sense of guilt, the shame and the anger that surrounded and trapped him.
‘So what the fuck is this all this about?’ said H.
Little Ronnie looked his father in the eye for a brief moment. His shame was vying for supremacy with the anger for the man who had let him down, the so called hero who had disappeared when he needed him.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Ronnie son, this is serious. This is heroin. You could go down for years.’
‘As if you could give a fuck.’
‘What do you mean? Do you understand the depth of trouble you’re in? I’m... your father.’
The anger in Ronnie’s heart was turning to contempt; bitterness framed his response.
‘So where the fuck you been all these years?’
Ronnie’s words were razors, slicing through H’s heart, the heart in his body and the heart of his belief system in the strength and unity of family - a belief system that had collapsed around him like a deck of cards in a gale. They hurt far more than any beating he had taken in the line of duty.
They left him momentarily speechless. He didn’t want to get into a blame game about the breakup of his marriage.
‘The past is the past. It’s complicated.’
‘Too complicated to ring. Too complicated to pick up a fucking phone and press call. What the fuck happened to you Dad?’
H simply wasn’t equipped to deal with this line of conversation.
‘But son, why heroin? Of all the things in this fucking world to get into. Heroin smuggling. Please tell me it was a plant; something, anything we can use to get you out of here.’
Ronnie had never spoken to his father as he was doing now. In fact he’d never sworn at him before. He was finding it liberating.
‘No dad. I smuggled it in. I did it. I’m totally bang to fucking rights. Just fuck off and deal with it.’
He saw the pain in his father’s eyes. It was a victory of sorts, the first time in his life he’d come out on top in an argument with the big man. He savoured the moment, for a second, but as victories go this one was about as hollow as they come. As H walked out of the room a solitary tear fell from Ronnie’s eye.
It had been a long day. For everyone.
25
When the cab pulled up Olivia went out to meet it and, without saying anything, eased H out of the back and into the house. She led him upstairs and put him, like a boy who’s been out to play for too long on a hot summer’s day and can no longer keep his eyes open, into a hot bath, and went downstairs to get his scotch.
She’d seen the footage from the park, and had spent the rest of the day wondering how bad it was. H had put up the shutters before - she knew better than anyone how taciturn and moody he could become - but this looked different. Like he couldn’t face what reality was throwing at him and had gone somewhere else. And in front of all those people, all around the world…
When she got back to the bathroom the big man was dozing. Good. Let him rest - but not too much. She stripped off and got in opposite him, with the taps at her back, and gave him a little stroke where he liked it. She knew she’d have to ease out the tension before she’d get any sense out of him. He groaned as she finished him off, and opened his eyes.
‘Ready for your scotch, Mr Bear?’ she said.
‘Yes please doll. I’m gagging.’
He gulped from the tumbler like there was no tomorrow, asked for a refill, and gulped again.
Like some great animal finally reaching its watering hole. How I love him.
‘Better?’
‘Much.’
‘Busy day, by the looks of it. How are you?’
‘Fucked. Can’t remember the last time I was so tired.’
‘Talk to me H. I know you’re tired, but…do I need to be worried? I saw you on the telly this morning, in the park. It didn’t look good. Are you just overworked, or…’
H stared at her, and then into the water, for what seemed an age. In the old days he’d have toughed this one out and given her the strong and silent routine. But she’d worked on him for years now, opened him up, and these days he found it harder to keep things from her than to keep them in. It wasn’t true that Ronnie was the only person in the world he trusted.
‘Liv…remember when I told you what I was like when I got back from the Falklands? How I used to get panicky, and really angry, and really tired, and feel like crying, and not want to go out, and sometimes struggle to figure out what was happening around me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well…I felt a bit like that in the park. I just lost it when I realised it was Tara Ruddock. Her head was nearly hacked off, there was blood everywhere…but it was Tara. I just couldn’t…How’s Ronnie going to handle it? What’s he going to do? What…’
For the third time in a day Harry Hawkins was lost for words. Instead, to Olivia’s astonishment, he began to cry. And cry. And cry, like a baby, like a blubbering, vulnerable small thing with no one to protect it. She held him. He shook, and wailed, and cried until his face was raw.
When he was finished she emptied the bath, took him out, wrapped him in his bathrobe and led him to bed, tucking him in and kissing him on the forehead.
Little man you’ve had a busy day.
‘Sleep tight, Mr Bear. Let’s see how things look in the morning.’
26
Graham Miller-Marchant rose at 5.30, went for his morning run around Wandsworth Common and the streets around Northcote Road, showered, dressed and was at his breakfast bench for 7.00. He prepared his pot of decaff and opened his phone. There’d been a lot of activity while he’d been out. Mu
ltiple signs were directing him to the stir caused by Joey Jupiter’s latest blog piece, so he went there before checking the mainstream media coverage of the previous day’s events.
Beneath a Youtube clip - which appeared to be a mash up of the already infamous ‘slags’ fragment and a silent H giving his thousand yard stare above the heads of the assembled media in St James’ Park, with ‘The Laughing Policeman’ as the soundtrack - Graham read the following:
PANTOMIME IN THE PARK –
THE PLOT THICKENS
News has reached us that Harry ‘H’ Hawkins – ‘London’s Top Copper’ – covered himself in glory in more ways than one yesterday. After his sterling work in the park, sleuthing for all he was worth despite clearly being the worse for wear, and giving his best impression of a startled meerkat at our impromptu press conference, the great seems to have assaulted a colleague back at the Yard.
Is the pressure getting to ‘H’? Or is it all part of his elaborate masterplan to return the rule of law to the capital’s increasingly chaotic and blood-spattered streets? This blog, at least, would like to know more about his methods and overall strategy, but unfortunately his superiors appear to have decided that he is not the man to lead the investigation into the sickening murders of the daughters of Sir Basil Fortescue-Smythe and one of Her Majesty’s ‘special’ policemen.
Not that Graham Miller-Marchant, who is to head up the investigation, inspires much more confidence than the ‘big man’. Known at the Yard, we understand, as Little Manbot, he is said to be more desk jockey than action man. But let’s hang fire for a while on this one, folks: he can’t be worse than ‘H’, can he? The estimable Sir Basil can, at least, look forward to a job done thoroughly, and rest assured that all of the stops will be pulled out for this one – as they always are for people of his kind.
Graham was mortified; the mist cleared, and he could now see that, rather than being given a chance to shine he was in a lose-lose situation. No database on earth, it seemed, had ever heard of, seen or so much as suspected the existence of Aliyev. It was as if he were a ghost. As yet there was no lead, nor suggestion of a lead of any sort on yesterday’s killings.
This was going to be a tough investigation, what Hawkins would call an absolute bastard. He would have to engage with the upper echelons of the British establishment, and face the brunt of their withering contempt for people like him; he would have to scour the earth for traces of the killer himself, as well as look for dirt in the secret lives of two daughters of the aristocracy; and he would be, at all times, under the scathingly watchful eye of Joey Jupiter and his ilk, who would portray him either as an ineffectual, dithering clown - ‘Little Manbot Miller-Marchant’ - or as part of a conspiracy to serve the interests and protect the privacy of the most powerful people in the country.
So this is what Hawkins has been putting up with.
His phone rang. It was Hilary Stone.
‘Hello Graham, how are we this morning? Had a good night’s rest? Ready to go?’
‘Yes maam, I most certainly am. Just getting ready to leave.’
‘Good. We really need a result on this one Graham. We don’t have much time before the media starts to hang, draw and quarter us. I don’t want this ship sinking any lower.’
‘Understood. Leave it to me maam.’
‘Fuck’, he said to himself after hanging up, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Part 2
27
It was the day of the funeral, and it could not have been bleaker. The wind was howling and the slate grey sky bore down on H like a lead weight as he waited outside Ronnie’s riverside flat in his car. They were driving down to Tara’s ancestral home in Wiltshire, not far from Chippenham. Sir Basil had arranged a small service in the family chapel. Family and close friends only.
It had only been six days since the sisters had been butchered. There was no need for an autopsy, the whole world knew the cause of death, and Sir Basil had been insistent on an early funeral. At Hilary’s insistence H had taken a few days off to come to terms with the momentous events of that day. Despite his protests Hilary had insisted he go nowhere near the Tara case, which was in the not-so-capable hands of Graham Miller-Marchant.
‘H, if I get a sniff of you getting involved in the St James’ Park murders you’re finished. Have I made myself absolutely clear?’ she’d said as she packed him off.
‘OK guv’, H had said meekly.
For now.
H stayed in contact with Amisha as she concentrated on the carnage in Bermondsey. She had worked relentlessly, piecing together every known reference to the two firms involved. Never one to waste a moment, he had a paper copy of Amisha’s latest files on his lap that so he could work on them whenever he got a moment. She had learned that it was pointless advising him everything was now online, if only he would learn how to use the latest Police IT system; a system that contained every detail of the investigation; a system that could run multiple fast paced data matches in an effort to find links and clues amid the mountains of information it contained.
‘Guv, the system even runs various “what if” scenarios based on configurable algorithmic parameters that can be entered via numerous online user interfaces’, she had told him when they had first become partners. Both the language and approach to working with H didn’t survive first contact.
‘What if, what if, what fucking if. If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a fucking bus’, he’d replied.
When he rang her from his rest bed to ask for the printouts she knew it was pointless to tell him to log on from home. And anyway, even before giving her the chance to go into her spiel he had pre-empted her.
‘What if, what if I buy you a nice cup of tea and a doughnut will you get the printouts for me?’
She laughed out loud as she agreed to meet him for lunch, the wry humour signifying to her that he was starting to refocus on the case. Truth was, the investigation team were starting to gather some sound evidence and develop a detailed knowledge of the new eastern European firm on the block. But they needed H. They needed H to get in amongst it, to get amongst the dirt and dig around in it the way only H knew how.
As he sat waiting for Ronnie he opened the file and took out its contents. Amisha had put the pictures of the top two protagonists at the front. He studied the pictures of Basim Dragusha and Vladimir Agapov and read the basic notes. As far as they could tell Dragusha had arrived in London about six months before. Not long after, the violence had escalated. H didn’t believe in coincidences.
Dragusha had taken up residence on The Island, which was now under 24 hour surveillance. He was ruthless, yes, but also smart and ambitious. He was no thug sent by his masters to manage low level gangster business. He was here to get a firm foothold, no doubt about it. H flicked through an assortment of photographs of Dragusha’s more recently arrived strength, read what information Amisha and the team had amassed on them and committed it all to memory.
He then turned to Agapov, who had been a player in London for some time and was already well known to H. Him and his small army had taken control of significant parts of the London underworld and, in particular, cornered the market in people trafficking. For H this was truly the vilest of all gangland activities, a modern slave trade at the heart of the capital. He was determined to bust the thing wide open.
I’ll give these bastards what they deserve.
Various parts of Agapov’s organisation had been under surveillance for months. No arrests had been made so far. H had wanted to move on their setup in Peter Street and take Agapov out of the picture, but Hilary insisted on playing the long game. She had an inkling there were bigger fish to fry so H was told to wait it out and gather evidence.
He then turned to the pictures of the two headless bodies that had been washed up in the Thames, in Deptford; bodies that fitted perfectly with the two heads the Russians had tossed into the mix in Bermondsey. It had taken a while but both men had been formally identified as being known associates of D
ragusha.
Ouch! Must be some serious revenge being planned. Surprised it hasn’t happened already.
H read through the rest of the notes. It seemed Amisha had been very thorough in gathering evidence and perhaps soon some major police assault and arrests would be prepared, hopefully before it all kicked off again. He wanted to get back to work, to make sure he was involved in whatever was being planned.
Good girl Ames, good work.
He turned to the second file on his lap. Amisha had taken a big personal risk in doing what he asked but the update on the Tara case sat before him. He opened the file and started reading. His mood worsened. It was clear that there had been no progress. No progress whatsoever. Nish. Nada. Nic.
There was no information on the identity of the nutter in the park. No connection to the gangland war ravaging London’s streets. In all his years of coppering H had never known anything like it. A murderer is taken out at the scene of the crime and six days later not a single thing about him or his motives is known. Had it really been just a random act of violence? An indiscriminate killing by a lone wolf, a solitary, highly trained killer who had sprung organically from the St James’s Park undergrowth?
Not fucking likely.
Sir Basil, drowning in grief, was all but unapproachable. And despite the grand public shows of support from Old Shitbreath’s friends, they appeared to be treating the hapless Miller-Marchant with utter contempt. He seemed incapable of penetrating their clique in order to garner even elementary facts about Tara’s personal life. Anything that might provide the most basic of clues seemed beyond him. Rather surprisingly H felt a ripple of sympathy for Little Manbot. H knew these people, with their private clubs and associations, their old school ties, their walls of silence.
He knew these people alright; and he knew he didn’t like them. He hated them.
28
