A Handsome Stranger

by P. F. Ford

  ‘Or maybe two pints. Can I get off out of the rain now?’

  ‘Yes, you get off home. And I’ll carry this little baby with me.’ He tucked the portable screen inside his jacket to keep it out of the rain. All he had to do now was meet up with the other two and add his contribution to their collection of surveillance equipment.

  In the back bedroom of number 38, Slick Tony was lying on the bed watching early-morning TV. But this was no ordinary early-morning TV. The programme he was watching featured two guys setting up a camera in a tree beyond the garden of this very house.

  Slick Tony had managed to build an empire and stay out of trouble by making sure he was always one step ahead of everyone else. And even now he was on the run, his escape plan included staying ahead of the police.

  ‘So.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Now they’re watching the back garden.’ He had expected that, so there was no need to panic.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At last, Slater and Weir had reached terra firma in the form of the patio outside Mrs Thatcher’s back door. The rain had now settled to a steady drizzle and both men were soaked to the skin. A trail of muddy footprints led across the lawn and patio. The unfit Richie Weir was exhausted and wondering loudly why they were still out here in the rain when they could be inside getting dry and drinking tea.

  He took a step towards the back door, but Mrs Thatcher held her ground.

  ‘Shoes!’ She pointed down at their shoes, covered in sticky mud. ‘You’re not coming in my house with your shoes in that state. You’ll have to leave them outside.’ She took a good look at both of them. ‘And look at the state of your trousers. You look as if you’ve walked across a ploughed field. Fancy turning up in that filthy state and expecting to come into my house. I’m telling you now, you’re not coming in here until you clean yourselves up.’

  ‘But we need to get set up as soon as we can, Mrs Thatcher,’ pleaded Slater. ‘It’s important-’

  ‘Oh rubbish! It’s taken years for anyone to bother about doing this. And anyway there’ll be no kids out on the green in this weather.’

  Slater was momentarily confused, then he remembered the cover story they had used to convince Mrs Thatcher to let them use her house. Weir looked totally confused, having no knowledge of any cover story.

  ‘Kids?’ he said, looking at Slater. ‘What bloody kids?’

  Slater immediately regretted the oversight of not telling Weir about their cover story.

  ‘It’s okay, Richie, I’ll explain later,’ he said.

  ‘But I’m friggin’ soaked,’ Weir hissed, ‘and I’m bloody freezin’. And my leg’s throbbing from where that little sod bit me.’ He glared hard at Bobby, still hiding behind his owner.

  ‘I may be a bit hard of hearing, young man,’ snapped Mrs Thatcher, ‘but I can hear your bad language clearly enough. I’ll ask you not to swear in my house.’

  ‘We’re not in your bloody house yet, are we?’ muttered Weir under his breath, his face being to turn purple with rage.

  ‘Is there somewhere dry we can wait for our colleague to arrive with clean, dry clothes?’ asked Slater, trying desperately to keep everyone happy. The last thing he needed was a war of words that might end up with Mrs Thatcher turning them away.

  ‘You can wait in the garage.’ She pointed the way. ‘I’ll bring you over a cup of tea in a minute.’

  As Slater led the grumbling swearing DC Weir to the garage, he fumbled for his phone and called Steve Biddeford.

  ‘I’m just on my way, sir.’

  ‘I need you to make a detour,’ explained Slater. ‘We need clean clothes and shoes. Oh, and you’ll need wellies. We all need wellies.’

  ‘Wellies?’

  ‘Wellington boots. For wet and muddy conditions.’

  ‘I know what wellies are. I just didn’t think they were necessary equipment for surveillance.’

  ‘Trust me, it’s a long story, Steve. Just don’t drive into that bloody field behind us. Leave your car outside the gate and walk from there. You’ll see why, and why you need the wellies. Just be as quick as you can, please.’

  As he ended the call, Slater thought things couldn’t really have got off to a worse start, but then, he figured, they could only get better from here on in, couldn’t they?’

  They’d been waiting half an hour for Biddeford to come back with their clean, dry clothes. At least they had found a heater in the garage, and having been fed bacon sandwiches and tea by Mrs Thatcher, Weir’s mood had finally improved to the point where had stopped swearing and muttering to himself. Slater’s phone began to ring.

  ‘DI Jones here,’ said the now familiar voice of Slater’s temporary boss. ‘Would you like to fill me in on why your partner’s been sneaking about downstairs gathering dry clothes, shoes and wellington boots? You’re supposed to be on a stake-out, not parading about in a bloody fashion show.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, sir. I can explain that,’ said Slater, cursing their luck. He was rather hoping Jones wouldn’t find out.

  ‘Please do, Sergeant. I’m all ears.’

  And so Slater explained about the ploughed field, and how they’d had to carry the equipment, and how it had rained.

  ‘It was bad luck the field had been ploughed just the day before, sir,’ he finished.

  ‘Of course it could simply have been bad planning,’ said Jones. ‘Why didn’t anyone check?’

  ‘Errr. Right. Yes, I suppose I should have checked. Sorry, sir,’ Slater agreed reluctantly.

  ‘So you haven’t even got set up yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid Mrs Thatcher won’t let us into her house until we’re in clean clothes and shoes, sir.’

  ‘And I can’t say I blame her, can you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Slater. He was wondering how much more demoralised Jones wanted him to become. Didn’t the DI think he was feeling bad enough already?

  ‘Well, let’s hope the bugger’s still in there when you do get set up,’ said Jones. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I really wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Sir?’ Slater wondered what he was going to get blamed for now.

  ‘What do you know about the person listed as the tenant of that house?’

  At least this wasn’t something Slater could be blamed for.

  ‘Nothing really. Only the guy’s name. Fletcher and Silcock are tracking him down.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jones, and Slater was sure he could hear Jones smiling. ‘They’ve found him.’

  ‘Great! Have you had a chance to talk to him yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s going to be a little difficult.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s done a bunk,’ said Slater. ‘Let me guess. He’s in Spain?’

  ‘Oh, he’s somewhere a bit more inaccessible than that.’

  ‘Oh hang on,’ mused Slater. ‘There’s an Eastern Europe thing going on here isn’t there? I bet he’s in Bulgaria or some place like that.’

  Jones heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Not even close, I’m afraid. The only way we’ll be speaking to him is through a medium.’

  ‘You mean he’s dead?’ said a surprised Slater.

  ‘Apparently he died two years ago. But the interesting thing is his rent and all his bills carried on being paid on time, just like they always were, so no one has ever questioned what’s going on. Of course, it could just be his ghost haunting the house.’

  ‘Surely someone like Slick Tony wouldn’t maintain an empty house just on the off chance he might need a bolt-hole for a few days?’

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ agreed Jones. ‘The utility bills suggest someone has been living there, but we don’t know who or what they’ve been doing. And, of course, we can’t go charging in and talk to the neighbours because the main man’s still in the damned house.’

  ‘So someone’s being living there incognito for the last two years,’ said Slater, thoughtfully. ‘But doing what?’

  ‘Now there’s a question we’d all like answered.’

  ‘The thing that bothe
rs me about all this,’ said Slater, ‘is why Tinton? I mean, if you wanted somewhere to hide prior to making an escape, you’d choose somewhere near a port or an airport, wouldn’t you? I just don’t understand why he’d pick on a tiny, nondescript town like Tinton. It’s got nothing going for it that I can see. It’s nowhere near the coast, or an airport, or anything.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ agreed Jones. ‘It doesn’t seem to make sense, unless it’s some sort of counter-intuitive thing and he’s picked it because it’s nothing like the obvious hiding place. Anyway, we’re getting off track here. Just keep an eye out for anyone else in or around that house. Perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of our ghost.’

  Slater laughed.

  ‘Maybe we should organise a séance,’ he suggested, as they ended the call.

  Once again, he had to admit DI Jimmy Jones was very good at delivering a bollocking and then raising your spirits afterwards. Perhaps he’d been a bit too hasty in judging the man.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At last, they had their equipment set up. It wasn’t exactly the height of sophistication – they had two small screens set up on a table. One was being fed from the camera at the back of the house, and one from a camera set up to watch the front from the window of the room they occupied. They were recording what they were seeing, just in case. They also had binoculars and a camera with a huge lens.

  The bedroom they had been allocated by Mrs Thatcher was a bit cramped, but it gave them a perfect view of number 38 across the green. There was only one big drawback as far as DC Richie Weir was concerned – he had to share the space with that young idiot Biddeford. People like Biddeford shouldn’t be allowed to work as detectives. He was so young and he had a degree. What did you need a bloody degree for? He was just a waste of space.

  ‘I know you two don’t get on,’ warned Slater, ‘but these are unusual circumstances, so you’ll just have to make the best of it. Steve, I want you watching through the window, using the camera, and Richie, I want you watching the screens. Just do your jobs and try not to balls it up, okay? I don’t want Jones going back to London telling them we’re a bunch of idiots. We want to know everything that happens, and we want photos of everyone who comes or goes. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ they chorused.

  ‘I’ve got to go and meet up with Jones now. I’ll be back later, and I don’t want to find out you two have been arguing, right? Just do your jobs.’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  Slater left the room, muttering something about putting his wellies on.

  Richie Weir sat in front of the table with the two monitors. Just his luck to get lumbered with the most boring job. He leaned over to one side, farted loudly, and then settled his generous buttocks back on the chair. He sighed happily.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ complained Biddeford. ‘Do you have to keep doing that? It stinks bad enough in here without you adding to it every five minutes.’

  ‘Better out than in, mate,’ Weir said to the younger man.

  ‘Not for the rest of us, you dirty sod,’ wailed Biddeford. ‘What have you been eating? Raw sewage?’

  ‘You can laugh, mate.’

  ‘I can assure you I’m not laughing. I find nothing remotely funny in having you pollute the atmosphere every few minutes.’

  ‘Hey, listen. You never hear me complain of gut-ache, do you? If everyone farted when they felt the need, instead of trying to be polite and holding it in, there wouldn’t be half as many stomach complaints, you know. It would save the health service a bloody fortune.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but think what it would do to the ozone layer,’ said Biddeford.

  ‘You what?’ said a puzzled Weir.

  Environmental concerns were beyond Weir’s sphere of interest. In fact, most things were. If it didn’t have big tits or great legs, it was boring and not worth a second glance. This saved wasting a lot of thinking time on pointless, boring, crappy subjects. The environment was a prime example of a pointless, boring, crappy subject.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ said Biddeford, sighing in exasperation.

  They sat at their positions in silence, and relative harmony, for a couple of minutes before Weir spoke again.

  ‘It’s a doddle this surveillance lark, you know. We get to sit here in the warm, out of the rain, doing bugger all, while everyone else is running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to keep that poncey DI from London happy.’

  ‘You speak for yourself,’ replied Biddeford. ‘I’m not doing nothing. I’m watching that house across the green. If anything does happen, I’m not going to miss it.’

  Weir looked across at Biddeford and gave a pitying shake of his head.

  ‘Yeah, righto, Mr Goody Two-Shoes. You keep staring out there like that and it’ll do your head in. That’s why we record everything. You mock me now, mate, but you’ll see. In a couple of years, you won’t be looking down your nose at me, you’ll be asking me how to make the time pass because you’re so friggin’ bored.’

  He’d brought a small personal bag with him, and he rummaged inside it now, eventually producing a crumpled newspaper.

  ‘You can’t read the newspaper!’ cried Biddeford. ‘You’re supposed to be watching the screens.’

  ‘Oh cobblers,’ replied Weir. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, is it? I expect the guy’s long gone anyway. He’s not going to sit around waiting for the likes of us. You mark my words – when they eventually move in on that house I bet you a tenner it’s empty. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all a load of old bollocks and he was never here in the first place.’

  Having given the young Biddeford the benefit of his years of experience, Weir sat back and returned to his newspaper. He shook the creases out and carefully opened it at page three. He sighed happily.

  ‘Cor,’ he said. ‘Look at the tits on that!’

  Back at Tinton police station, Slater was being briefed by DI Jimmy Jones.

  ‘We’ve been given some intelligence that suggests our man’s going to disappear tomorrow night, so we need to put a plan together to move in the early hours of tomorrow morning and catch him before he goes,’ he explained.

  ‘This is your area of expertise, sir,’ said Slater, respectfully. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Okay. Let’s work it like this. I have a plan, and I’ll explain it to you, but then I want you to tell me which bits might not work. Remember, Tinton is your area. You’ll know if there are things that won’t work. Don’t be frightened to say. This needs to be right when we go into action, so I’m counting on your local knowledge to make sure it is.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Ok. This is my idea…’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The plan was in place. DI Jones was taking overall control and would be leading the secondary charge into number 38 once the firearms team had secured it. Slater would be monitoring events from the surveillance house with a direct link to Jones, should it be needed.

  Everyone had been briefed and so, in theory at least, everyone knew what they had to do. Slater knew from experience that being briefed and actually understanding what had to be done were often two very different things for some of the Tinton force, so he’d done his best to make sure those who were known to be a little slow on the uptake had been double briefed.

  But the firearms team was a different matter. He’d met their team leader and been completely underwhelmed and totally unimpressed. Apparently there was some big security alert going on and the team Jones would usually be able to call on were unavailable. It appeared he was as unimpressed as Slater with the team he had been allocated instead. His advice for Slater to ‘make sure anyone going anywhere near the firearms team was wearing body armour’ seemed to confirm Slater’s suspicions.

  It would all kick off tomorrow at 6am. Right now, it was 6pm. With twelve hours to kill, Slater was sat at his desk still puzzling over why Slick Tony should choose Tinton. He was poring over the files again. Maybe they’d missed something in his
background that would give a hint.

  The guy seemed to have just arrived from nowhere, so it seemed probable he had left his past behind him and had entered the UK using a fake identity. Slater could see Jones had submitted a request for information across Europe via Interpol, but there didn’t seem to have been any response yet.

  There was a knock on the door. It opened a few inches and a head appeared.

  ‘I’ve got a fax for DI Jones but I can’t find him. Any idea where he is, Sarge?’

  ‘A fax?’ said Slater, leaning back in his chair and yawning. ‘Where’s that come from?’

  The owner of the head entered the room. It was PC Jane Jolly, better known as Jolly Jane because she always had a smile on her face.

  ‘1980 I think,’ she said. ‘Apparently there are still some places in the world that haven’t heard of email.’

  ‘Is it relevant to this case?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir,’ she said, with a grin. ‘It’s marked “private and confidential” so I haven’t read it.’

  Slater smiled at her. ‘Yeah. Right,’ he said. ‘Of course you haven’t read it.’ He reached his hand out. ‘DI Jones has gone out for a while, but I’ll take it.’

  She handed him the fax. He scanned it quickly. ‘You must be psychic, PC Jolly. I was just wondering if there had been any response to an Interpol request, and here you are with a fax for us.’

  ‘It’s just come in and I thought it might be important.’

  ‘Whether it’s any use remains to be seen, but thank you for bringing it straight up.’

  ‘No problem, sir.’ She smiled again and then was gone.

  Private and confidential. That’s a joke in this place.

  Just at that moment Jones burst back into the room.

  ‘This has just come in,’ said Slater, holding the fax out to him.

  ‘Anything important?’

  ‘It’s the first response to your Interpol request.’

  Jones took the fax and read through it carefully and slowly before handing it back to Slater.