Best Friend, Worst Enemy

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Best Friend, Worst Enemy Page 12

by Menon, David


  ‘I could have you for harassment’.

  ‘Really? I wish you luck’.

  TWELVE

  Nina Barry went to Alec Heath’s flat and waltzed straight into the bedroom where she began to take her clothes off. But she quickly realised that her enticement wasn’t being appreciated. ‘Have you gone off me?’ Nina asked as she hesitated over unclipping her bra and saw that Alec was making no move towards her and hadn’t taken any of his clothes off.

  ‘I don’t need this tonight’ said Alec. He’d been standing in the doorway and turned to go back into the living room. Nina followed him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked as she stood in her knickers and bra. ‘Have I done something to upset you?’

  Alec looked at her with a mixture of pity and contempt. He hadn’t expected her to start sounding needy.

  ‘No, no, you haven’t’ he answered. He poured them both a scotch and handed one to her. ‘The editor, James Henderson, hasn’t turned up for work for two days now’.

  ‘So what’s that got to do with us?’

  ‘There is no us, Nina’.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I thought that sleeping with someone meant a certain kind of togetherness even if it wasn’t love’s young dream?’

  Alec decided to ignore her entreaty. It sounded a little desperate and that was creepy coming from her. ‘Robert Jackson was abducted, tortured and killed. Now the editor has vanished. Nobody knows where he is. He lives alone and his neighbours haven’t seen him. His mobile goes to voicemail. We’re all scared fucking shitless that someone has got enough against the paper to pick us all off one by one to go the same way. I’ve seen what they did to poor Rob. Death must’ve been an act of mercy’.

  ‘I didn’t know’ said Nina. ‘I’m sorry’.

  ‘Well you know now’ said Alec. ‘Look, please just get your clothes back on and go home, Nina. Can’t you see that I’m just not in the mood tonight?’.

  He turned back and moments later he felt her hands go down the back of his trousers. He’d rarely been able to resist that.

  ‘Maybe you don’t get to decide that’ she whispered as she ran her hands round to the front of his crotch and covered his cock with her long fingers.

  ‘Nina ...’

  ‘ ... a certain someone down there obviously thinks it would be the best way to forget all your troubles for a while’ she said as she rubbed him gently in the palm of her hand. ‘And you know how much he enjoys being inside me’.

  Alec turned round. Her eyes searched his face for signs of encouragement but she didn’t find any.

  ‘Nobody turns me down, Alec’ said Nina as she began to undo his tie and unfasten the buttons on his shirt. Then he stopped her.

  ‘I said no’.

  Nina slapped his face. He grabbed her wrists and held them tightly together. Suddenly she looked frightened. She’d pushed Alec too far. She could see that from the dark look in his eyes.

  ‘Get out’ he said.

  ‘But Alec this is not fair’.

  ‘I said get out! Do it before I throw you out’.

  ‘You’ll regret this’.

  ‘I doubt it’ said Alec as he watched her getting dressed. ‘What can I say? It’s been fun’.

  ‘Fuck off! I only needed you for what’s in your pants. I’ll find somebody else for that but you won’t find a source at the Labour party as good as me’.

  ‘You want to bet?’

  ‘I’d like to see you try’.

  *

  Sara had got up especially early to negotiate the traffic from Jacob’s place in Boothstown, Salford. She’d hated leaving him. Whilst she’d been in the shower he’d got up and made her tea and toast so that she wouldn’t be going on an empty stomach. He was so kind and thoughtful. She’d never really had that before. She’d never really had a relationship like this before. She’d always wanted to make sure she was in control right from the start but this time it was different. This time she couldn’t care less about being in control. She’d met her match and despite the pressures on them she was determined not to let go. Going out with a man like Jacob made her realise just how many boys she’d been out with before. He understood everything about her work and how that made her late sometimes for things they’d arranged to do. He had the hairiest body she’d ever known and it was even on his back and his bum. It sometimes tickled when he held her in bed and she loved it. It was all part of the man she’d fallen in love with and at her ripe old age she was finally learning the difference between having sex and making love. Their nights together were proving to be wonderful.

  Whilst she was waiting to proceed in heavy traffic on the edge of Salford her mobile rang. She had a hands free cradle on her dashboard and she saw from the caller indicator that it was Tim Norris. She pressed the answer button.

  ‘Yes, Tim?’

  ‘Sara, it’s to do with Andy Masters, my mate in the anti-terrorist unit?’

  Sara noted that Tim’s voice sounded grave. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s dead, Sara’.

  ‘Dead? Fuck’s sake, how?’

  ‘A bomb had been placed underneath his car’ said Tim who was feeling pretty raw. He’d been friends with Andy for twenty years and he couldn’t quite get his head around the fact that he was never going to see him again. Andy’s twelve-year old daughter Nicole had been waiting inside the house. He’d been about to drive her to school and when Tim told Sara that she almost burst into tears.

  ‘Is his daughter alright?’

  ‘Physically she is but emotionally she’s pretty much in a mess as you can imagine. She’s just seen her father blown up in front of her’.

  ‘It wasn’t my father but I know what that feels like, Tim’.

  ‘Yes, I know. Rachel’.

  Sara felt a shiver go down her spine when she thought of her sister-in-law and how she’d met her death in a similar way to Andy Masters.

  ‘I spoke to Andy a couple of nights ago’ said Tim. ‘And we’d arranged to meet tonight’.

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘More nervous than usual about what he said’ Tim recalled. ‘And that scares me but look, at the risk of ruining your day even further I’ve got something else to tell you’.

  Sara stole herself. ‘Go on?’

  ‘The editor of the Manchester Evening Chronicle, James Henderson, has disappeared. Nobody has had sight or sound of him for three days and everyone at the paper is in a panic because they’re wondering who will be next’.

  ‘The Chronicle has been running the Nicholas Trent stuff and looking into how Faisal Hussein may have been turned into a terrorist. It could easily have exposed them to the dark forces at work here. But this is Manchester and this is Britain. Journalists should be able to print what they like without fear’.

  *

  Sara carefully closed the door behind her. The squad room was packed. Her lead officers, Tim, and Adrian, were at the front ahead of a number of other officers and support staff. Sara walked up purposefully to the white board on which all the known details of the murders of Robert Jackson, Melanie Sanders, Jim Mortimer, and Stefan Wright were pinned. Next to it she pinned a photograph of Andy Masters who she announced as ‘victim number five of the same killer or killers’. Tim took a purposely supportive looking stance just behind Sara as a number of bemused faces looked back at her. She started to explain.

  Earlier that morning she’d received a call from the wife of Andy Masters who’d asked her to drive over, alone, to see her. Vicky Masters was in a pretty dark place trying to come to terms with the grief over the loss of her husband in such a violent way, but she wanted Sara to know what had been happening to Andy lately. She said that the part of the anti-terrorist unit that Andy belonged to had been stood down last week. No reason had been given other than the usual bollocks about money and resources but it had made Andy suspicious. None of his senior officers had been able to explain to the team why they’d been stood down and it soon became clear that they didn’t know themselves
. But Andy hadn’t been satisfied with that. The leaders of the world’s richest nations were to descend on Manchester for the G20 summit and to stand down part of your anti-terrorist team at a time when the city was on high alert following the bombing of Piccadilly station and the shooting of Raisa Hussein and her son? Well it just didn’t seem to make sense. So he started doing what he shouldn’t do. He started asking questions and poking around in matters that were meant to be hidden from officers of his rank. And what he found had profoundly shocked him, so much so that he was about to go to the press with it. He’d decided to take that road rather than go higher up his chain of command because he knew the latter would be a complete waste of time. He said he’d be risking his entire career but he’d told Vicky that this was so massive, and involved people right at the very top, that he felt it was his public duty to make sure it got out in the open. The only trouble was that he wouldn’t tell Vicky what it was all about. He said that it was better if she didn’t know. All he would say is that he knew who murdered Robert Jackson and Melanie Sanders, he knew why they’d been murdered, and he knew that the killer or killers would strike again if they saw the need.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that Andy Masters was murdered because he was about to expose the murderers that we’re looking for’ said Sara. ‘He was silenced just like Robert Jackson was. They both knew and they were both silenced’.

  ‘So who are we dealing with here?’ Adrian questioned.

  ‘That’s what Operation Daylight is going to find out’ said Sara. ‘All the investigations we’ve got active at the moment will be brought under this one definition because I believe they’re all linked in some way and for some reason that is ours to find. I believe that whoever is pulling the strings on this thinks that they can get away with whatever they’re doing. But if that is the case then who is giving them permission to make arses of us? And now there’s the question of James Henderson’. She then pinned a photo of the editor of the Manchester Evening Chronicle on the white board alongside Andy Masters. ‘We now have several witnesses who will confirm that they saw a black transit van ambush Henderson’s car, a red BMW, on Lauderdale Avenue in Didsbury at just after 7.30 on Monday evening. They saw a man answering Henderson’s description being dragged from the BMW and into the back of the van before it headed off at speed in the direction of the city centre. Now we don’t know if James Henderson is dead. But I think it’s a pretty fair bet that he’s a victim of the same individuals who abducted and murdered Robert Jackson’.

  ‘But why, ma’am?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘Because I think that they’re worried about just how much the paper knows about what’s really going on here, Adrian’ Sara answered. ‘That’s why they’ve taken James Henderson but he’s not as young as Robert Jackson. We need to find him before its too late. Andy Masters was trained to withstand the more intense interrogation techniques which is probably why they dealt with him in the way they did. But Henderson is not part of that world’.

  The room went silent as they all brought to mind what June Hawkins’ report had said had been done to Robert Jackson before he died.

  Sara went on. ‘Henderson told officers Norris and Bradshaw that Robert Jackson had what he called a ‘dynamite’ news story to tell him. Andy Masters was about to go to the press with what he’d discovered was going on inside the anti-terrorist unit. It seems obvious that Jackson was going to tell Henderson the same story as Masters was going to tell the press. That’s why they were got at. We need to go through every snippet of information, every lead however flimsy and every interview again and again and again if need be. There’s got to be something in what we already know that we’ve missed. Because right now James Henderson is still missing, Joe Alexander is still in hospital, and both Professor Abrahams and Craig Sutherland MP are vulnerable to more threats’.

  ‘So we’ve made what happened to Joe part of Operation Daylight then, ma’am?’

  ‘Officially, no’ Sara answered. ‘But unofficially, I want the truth about the bastards who nearly cost Joe his life. I want you to bring straight to me or DI Norris anything you find out in that regard. Now get to work, people, we’ve got a lot riding on how good our basic police work can get’.

  *

  Craig Sutherland was absolutely seething with anger. He’d been ambushed good and proper by the Labour party machine.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere until you calm down, Craig’ said Nina Barry who was stood with him in his Failsworth Heights campaign office.

  ‘Whether I’m calm or not makes no difference!’

  ‘It might make me feel a little less in the firing line’.

  ‘Yeah, well if you can’t stand the heat and all that’.

  ‘Look, Craig, you knew there was a commission at work re-drawing the boundaries of all constituencies throughout the country and that we were due to lose one of the Manchester seats. You knew that your seat was vulnerable’.

  ‘I also know that you threatened me if I didn’t tow the party line’.

  ‘I had nothing to do with this decision, Craig’.

  ‘Well I don’t believe you’ said Craig. ‘I fucking knew you were up to something. My constituency of Manchester North has been split up with one half going to Manchester West and the other half going to the new constituency of Bury East. And I can’t go for the nomination of either, even though I’ve held this seat since the 1997 election, because I’m a man. I’ve been stitched up by a party that I’ve remained faithful to for decades and it doesn’t feel very good, Nina, let me tell you that. In fact, this whole thing insults my intelligence’.

  ‘Well from where I’m standing there isn’t much of that left!’

  ‘A cheap shot in the circumstances!’

  ‘Yeah, well you know me and I’ve got plenty more of them up my sleeve’ said Nina. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I’m just asking the question, Craig’ said Nina. ‘Look, I can understand your bitterness ...’

  ... well that’s big of you’.

  ‘Craig, I ... ‘

  ‘ ... Nina, you understand fuck all! All you understand are the results you think will further your career. I’ve worked fucking hard for this community, sometimes when other Labour elected representatives did everything they could to stab me in the back because they thought I was too much of a moderniser. But now I find that the fixers who go on television saying that everything in the Labour party is now above board and out in the open, have gone behind my back and cut my political legs off just because I’m not a woman’.

  ‘It’s your choice to see it that way’.

  ‘You patronising bitch!’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Maybe’.

  ‘There’ll be other seats for you to fight, Craig’.

  ‘Unless a reason comes up to kick me in the bollocks again’.

  ‘Craig, we’re friends’.

  ‘I thought so’.

  ‘We still are as far as I’m concerned’.

  ‘Easy for you to say given the circumstances’.

  ‘We need to get more women into parliament, Craig’.

  ‘Oh here we go. And if I make a fuss you’ll accuse me of sexism and misogyny even though I’ve championed equal rights for women all my political life’.

  ‘It’s about a representative democracy’.

  ‘This has got about as much to do with democracy as the generals who rule North Korea!’

  ‘You’re way off course here, pal’.

  ‘Oh no, I’m very much on course. We criticise foreign regimes for their Stalinism and yet we practice it ourselves’.

  ‘You really have no idea what it’s like for women in the Labour party’.

  ‘Oh I do’ said Craig. ‘And I’ve seen enough behaviour from women in the Labour party to know what it looks like when someone acts like a complete cunt’.

  ‘And does that include me?’

  ‘My jury
on that one has just gone out’.

  ‘I will help you find a seat, Craig’.

  ‘Really? Only if I decide I want one’.

  ‘What, you mean you’d give up politics?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I’ve had a gut full of the whole fucking scene. And I’ve had a gut full of manipulative liars like you’.

  *

  Sara had got one of her old friends, a colleague from another police station who was bored stiff on sick leave with a broken leg, to go through hours and hours of CCTV tapes, not just from Piccadilly station on the night of the bombing, but also from the area surrounding it. And he’d struck gold. Sara ran into the squad room and put the relevant tape into the machine beneath the TV set that was suspended from the ceiling in one corner of the room. Her own inner circle of Tim and Adrian were there but they were missing Joe who was still in hospital. But they were joined by more police officers who’d been assigned to the investigations that Sara was leading.

  ‘Okay, everyone, pay attention, please’ Sara commanded as she picked up the remote control. She watched as about twenty faces turned in her direction. ‘I’ve got something to show you. Just take a look at this’.

  Sara then played the piece of CCTV footage that she knew was going to be a game changer in the investigation. This particular piece showed the far end of the station but from the direction of the car park to the left of where the great cavernous hall of the station ended. It was used by car hire companies to park their vehicles whilst they waited for customers. Sara then paused the tape.

  ‘Now, people, watch very closely’.

  She pressed the play button and two figures could just about be made out jumping over a perimeter fence and running between the cars that were parked there. One of them could clearly be seen holding up his gun, aiming and then firing. His accomplice held up his hand as if to say the job was done and then the two of them turned and ran back into the darkness and out of reach of the camera. A ripple of excitement ran through the room.

 

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