by Robson, Roy
At the centre of the picture was another face, one he didn’t like the look of; a moody, foreign looking big shot he didn’t recognize, or vaguely half-recognised but couldn’t put a name to.
H was perplexed. What did all these paragons of virtue have in common, from such different sides of the political spectrum? This was no official function; this was a bunch of chums on a night out.
Fuck me. This lot are right at it. Sir Nonce and his noncey pals. Who else is on board? How far up does it go? And who’s this moody looking bastard in the middle?
Questions, questions, questions. It was time to get some answers. He studied the photo again, looking for the weakest link in the chain…
Carruthers. Carruthers first. He could dish it out, when he was giving it large in the courtroom; but could he take it?
Let’s see him try and talk his way out of this one.
H left the flat quietly, looking outwardly composed. But inside he could feel his moorings slipping. It took all his strength to keep himself from screaming. He’d had enough. Of this hidden, never ending evil, of this sickening ruination of young lives. Of old Basil and his disgusting ilk, arrogant and untouchable, year after year.
Well someone was going to touch them now, and put the fear of God into them.
56
H had crossed swords on a number of occasions with Oswald Carruthers, QC; usually either being cross examined by him in the witness box or sitting mute while he talked a jury out of administering proper justice to some horrible villain. Carruthers had got more scoundrels off on technicalities than H had had hot dinners. H considered that this might be an appropriate point in their relationship for their roles to be reversed.
Time for me to ask the fucking questions.
Back in his car the big man called Amisha, the phone shaking in his hand, and began to channel his rage.
‘Hello guv, how are you doing?’
‘Ames, Oswald Carruthers QC. Address.’
‘I’ll have to go into classified records...’
‘Now Ames, NOW.’
It was past midnight but it didn’t take Amisha long to login into the police network and bypass the security protocols. In fact breaking the protocols of the Metropolitan Police was becoming something of a habit since she’d been teamed up with H. She felt she had the strength to resist his demands, if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. By the tone of his voice she knew he was onto something important. She gave him the address.
‘So guv, what you got, what’s happening?’
But H had already hung up.
Twenty minutes later he found himself sitting outside the gate of a large detached house in a private road in leafy Richmond, home to rock stars, media types and superstar lawyers.
He felt like a volcano moments before its eruption, ready to blow and bring its vengeance down upon an unsuspecting populace, but collected his thoughts and stayed calm for a few moments. He realised he’d just performed an act of breaking and entering, but had still only gone so far. Nobody knew. As he considered the immense implications of what he was about to do even H felt the need for a few moments’ reflection. A last minute review before he went past the point of no return, before he himself became an outlaw.
Two absolutely mental firms were waging all-out war on the streets of London. One of the murderous bastards was getting hold of his best mate’s wife, who then gets slaughtered in St James Park by someone nobody on planet earth has ever seen before.
Did Dragusha have her killed for revenge, or out of simple spite to undermine his foe? Having met Dragusha H knew it wouldn’t be beyond him.
Did Agapov have her killed? Why? Fucking around with posh birds was one of his things.
Amidst this welter of chaos and uncertainty he discovers Tara was badly nonced by the old man. And as soon as he’d gone anywhere near Old Shitbreath and his chums he’d been suspended within ten minutes. Those guys had power, real power; they’d had various police enquiries shut down over the years. An old friend in MI6 had told him that.
Now, as he sat outside Carruthers’ house his coppers intuition was zinging overtime. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
The more H considered it the more apparent, in his own mind, his course of action became. His path was clear, as clear as an open road with no exits. If he stayed this side of the fence this fucking mess was never going to be cleared up. These people had already shown their power, their reach. He didn’t doubt they had the ability to close down whole lines of investigation - and get him kicked off the force.
H’s moment of calm, if not his confusion, was passing. He had always played it close to the line but he was about to throw away a lifetime of coppering. It was an illegal choice but, in his world at least, the only choice. Good was good and evil was evil, whatever the legalities.
H was about to go rogue. The calm before the storm was over. Time for the volcano to erupt.
57
H stepped out of the car, opened the boot and had a look at his tools. He always kept a crowbar and a 14lb sledgehammer in the back. You never know when they might come in handy. He tucked the crowbar inside his jacket, took out the hammer and walked purposefully over to the wrought iron gates. He lifted the heavy hammer, slung it behind his shoulders and brought it down with all the power and accuracy he could muster. Crash! The lock on the gate managed to resist the first blow. The second was more powerful, and more accurate. Bang! Still the gate resisted. But H had got his eye in. Wallop! The third blow was decisive.
The gate flew open and H marched up Oswald Carruthers’ driveway with a crowbar in his jacket, a 14lb hammer in his hands and hatred in his eyes.
Inside the house Carruthers stirred. He’d fallen asleep, as usual, on his luxurious leather sofa whilst watching late night TV. He was a lonely man, his wife having divorced him some four years ago, since when he’d never searched for another partner. For years his habit had been to fall asleep on the sofa with a bottle of wine in hand.
He half registered the noise of hammer on iron. Was that coming from some late night horror film or was someone making a racket outside? Not here, he reassured himself, not in Richmond. His peace of mind was instantly destroyed, though, when H smashed through the lock on his front door. H’s accuracy, timing and power were improving with each blow; the lock shattered instantly and the door burst open.
Carruthers sprang to his feet, scared and confused, and tried to grasp what has happening. As he pulled open the heavy oak door of his reception room a hand grasped him around the neck, lifted him a foot off the floor and let him go. He fell to the floor, clutching his throat and looked timidly into the face of his attacker.
‘Inspector Hawkins. May I ask what on earth you think you’re doing? You are suspended as an officer of the law and...’
H’s fist moved with the speed and accuracy of Mohammed Ali in his prime as he brought it down on the lawyer’s s nose. He felt the nose break as a mixture of bone and blood gushed outwards and splattered against the embossed floral wallpaper that adorned the walls.
H took the picture of Old Shitbreath and his chums from his back pocket and opened it.
He pointed to the man in the centre of the picture.
‘Name?’
‘It’s Kyril Kuznetsov. What’s this all about, Detective Inspector?’
‘Fuck,’ said H, realising he had seen the Russian several times in the papers. He should have been able to recall that.
‘And what is he to do with you?’
‘Nothing. It was just a social event, I meet all types of people.’
H wasn’t in the mood. He really wasn’t. He brought his fist down in the same spot of Carruthers’ face as before. Carruthers passed out.
Oh shit.
H made his way to the kitchen, found and filled a bucket with cold water, returned and threw it over his prone victim’s face . The lawyer came to.
H took out the other pictures he had found at Sir Basil’s.
‘Do you know anyt
hing about these?’
‘Oh God’, said Carruthers.
If H had expertise in anything it was in reading people. He was in no doubt about Carruthers’ involuntary facial spasms, the gasping in his throat, the closing up of his body. He’d revealed himself.
‘You sick little bastard. Who else in this group is involved with you and Sir Basil Fortescue-Fucking-Smythe. Where do you get these kids from?’
Carruthers was scared and in pain but his thirty years in the legal profession steered him into auto-lawyer mode. ‘Detective Inspector Hawkins, you have no evidence … Do you really think it’s appropriate to come to my house without a warrant. In a court of law...’
H couldn’t stand it. He’d been cross-examined and outfoxed by Carruthers one time too many. He knew he’d lose in a court of law, no question.
But this was no court of law. He took the crowbar out from the inside of his jacket, extended his arm to its limit and smashed the crowbar into Carruthers’ face with maximum force. It was a face that was never going to look the same again, as Carruthers’ cheeks split open, his skull fractured and his jawline splintered in multiple locations. For the second time that evening the distinguished Queen’s Counsel passed out.
Cunt.
58
It was 3 am by the time H pulled up outside Amisha’s place in Greenwich. The adrenalin that had been surging since he’d made the entry into Sir Basil’s place, and that had peaked during his hammering of Carruthers, had ebbed and flowed away. Now he was exhausted - manic still, but exhausted.
Was the lawyer dead? If he was alive, how long would it be before he could speak and identify his attacker? Had there been any CCTV cameras he hadn’t seen? As it stood, H did not know the answer to any of these questions. But he’d crossed the line. He’d been driven over the line. And now he would be a fugitive himself, and get a taste of his own medicine. The hunter would now be the hunted.
She’s good as gold, this girl. She’ll never grass me up. But they’ll use her to try and get to me.
‘People are so stupid’, Amisha had told him not long after she’d come on board with him, ‘they put their whole life on their phones. They don’t seem to know, or care, that we can get to almost all their data now, and often as not figure out where they are.’
She’d schooled him long and hard on all that stuff, and in the end the penny had dropped.
H switched his phone off, removed the battery and eased himself out of the car. The street was quiet. Nobody about. He crept, bulkily but skilfully, round the back and into Amisha’s garden. He peered in through the ground floor window and saw a dark kitchen but a light on in a room, or a passage, beyond it. He tapped on the widow.
Amisha appeared within seconds, dressed in silk pyjamas and wielding a whopping great baseball bat. H liked her style, and for the first time the sight of her triggered a severe stirring in his trousers. He pressed his face to the glass so she could see he was not some random burglar or sex monster. She recognized him with relief and motioned him towards the door.
H burst in. As she always did now, Amisha spent a few seconds carefully appraising his condition. Was he in control of himself? Where was his head at?
She assessed him as wired but rational. ‘What the hell is going on H? Phone calls in the middle of the night, human rights lawyers, and now this? What the hell are you up to?’
‘I need your help Ames. I’m onto something. Something big.’
‘But you’re suspended from duty guv.’
‘Fuck that Ames. I haven’t got time to fuck about. No time. I’ve got to go missing.’
‘Again?’
‘Again. But this is serious now. Something’s coming together. In my head. Some sort of conspiracy. Nonces. Some big names involved. Very big names. I need you to help me join up the dots. The Dark Web, I remember you telling me about the Dark Web.’
‘Guv… I don’t know. You’re suspended. We’re not even supposed to talk. And you’re creeping around finding conspiracies and asking me to help you? Have you lost the plot again? I…’
She’s not up for it. She needs a persuader.
H held up his hand to slow her down before she could build up a head of steam, and fished the envelope containing Old Shitbreath’s photos out of the back of his trousers. He handed it to her. She got as far as the second one before her eyes filled with tears, and she began to weep.
59
They sat at the kitchen table. Coffee for her, scotch for him. Amisha had regained her composure.
H brought her up to speed. He talked her through the sequence of events: his meeting with Ronnie, Ronnie’s collapse, the search of Sir Basil’s place. He showed her the group photo: Old Shitbreath and his pals, all merry and bright. The best he saved for last.
Amisha could not believe what she was hearing. ‘What? You did what? Oswald Carruthers? Fucking hell H…is he even alive?’ she shouted.
Fuck. I’m dragging her down into my world.
‘Don’t know. Don’t care. You’ve seen the photos, Ames. I’m not having it. Not anymore. I’m going to bring this fucking lot down. If it’s the last thing I do. That evil old bastard was abusing Tara when she was a little baby girl. And now he’s got a whole bunch of these cunts round him, and they’re doing whatever the fuck they like. All those kids…I’m not having it.’
‘But guv…what are you now…judge, jury and executioner?’
H fixed her with the look. ‘Ames, listen to me. These are the fucking judges and executioners. We’re talking about the House of fucking Lords, the High fucking Court, and God knows what else. We can’t even get an investigation into Tara’s murder off the ground properly. They’ve shut the shop up. They’ve had me suspended. Look at the fucking picture.’
He dragged the group photo to the centre of the table.
‘Look at them, Ames…Sir Basil Fortescue-Smythe, Lord Timothy Skyhill, Sir Peregrine Blunt, Oswald Carruthers QC, and the rest of them. And this moody looking fucker, Kyril Kuznetsov, one of the richest men in the world’, he said, pointing at the face at the centre of the group. ‘If this ain’t some sort of massive nonce conspiracy…they never hung Crippen’.
Amisha took it all in. She updated her assessment of the big man’s condition.
He’s finally lost it. It’s all been too much. He’s surged off the edge of the cliff, and he’s hurtling towards the rocks like a character from the old cartoons.
And yet…everything he’s saying makes sense.
‘I don’t know, guv. If Carruthers is alive you’re a fugitive now. Being thrown off the force will be the least of your problems. You haven’t just crossed the line - you’ve shat all over it so badly you can’t even see where it is anymore. And what about me, my career. My life?’
Uh oh. I’ll have to let her sleep on this one.
‘OK Ames. Got it. Fair enough. I hear what you’re saying. But I need information on their connections, all the stuff they hide. I won’t be able to do it without you. And there’s no one else I can trust. Look at those pictures of the kids again. Have a little think.’
He rose from his chair and headed for the door.
‘Guv’, Amisha said, ‘don’t come here again. They’re going to be all over me like flies on a Richard the Third.’
He smiled at her use of his kind of talk. She was still onside.
Good girl. Fucking good girl.
‘And if you need to contact me - I mean really need to - don’t use your phone. Use a burner. And don’t email me.’
60
Graham, just back from his morning run, showered and set himself up at the breakfast bar. In a change to his former morning routine, these days he sparked up the tablet first and went straight to Joey Jupiter before he hit the decaff and grapefruit. He had developed a morbid fascination with the torrents of ridicule and abuse now being regularly swept over him by Jupiter; and he liked to try and guess beforehand, on any given day, whether it was to be himself or Hawkins who would bear the brunt of Jupiter’s viciou
s sarcasm.
The page came up; it was headed by a new graphic, which showed Miller-Marchant and Hawkins comically entwined, gurning and drooling for all they were worth like an utterly deranged Punch and Judy. Graham scanned the screen quickly and breathed a sigh of relief: it was, on balance, an H day, as it had been for the last week or so:
‘BIG MAN’ AND ‘LITTLE MANBOT’:
THE CHAOS CONTINUES
London’s descent into chaos continues. Not content with allowing a murderous gang war to run the streets of the metropolis ankle-deep in blood, the Metropolitan Police now seem incapable of securing the safety of even the most respectable and highly regarded members of the city’s elite. This morning Oswald Carruthers QC, whom as far as we know has never harmed a fly, lies in intensive care in the Richmond Royal Hospital, after being beaten to within an inch of his life during a home invasion.
We do not yet know which of the Met’s titans will be leading the investigation into this deeply unsettling crime. For how long, in the continuing absence of Harry ‘H’ Hawkins, ‘London’s Top Copper’, are we to be left without a defender? Are the streets of our great city going to be allowed to melt down while this noble sleuth kicks his heels in Eltham, hammering the scotch and dribbling over his puzzle book? We should be told.
Meanwhile Detective Inspector Graham Miller-Marchant, of whom little more needs to be said – indeed, about whom there was not much to be said in the first place – remains in charge of the ‘investigation’ into the carnage in St James’ Park. Can it be long, given this, before public demand begins to grow for a reinstatement of the mighty ‘H’? Might it be, after all, since we appear to be restricted to the shallow end of the gene pool when it comes to the recruitment of our defenders of law and order, that a dinosaur with a brain the size of a walnut is preferable to a sleek but utterly useless invertebrate?
