A Time For Justice

by Nick Oldham

  After much patience he managed to remove three screws from the ventilation cover, which then swung free on the remaining screw, revealing a square hole in the wall about eight by six inches.

  Karen dragged a wooden kitchen stool across for him. He stood precariously on it and put his arm all the way into the ventilation cavity. He immediately found something. He gave a cry of victory and carefully, so that he would not drop it, extracted what he’d found.

  ‘How did you know where to look?’ asked Karen, impressed.

  ‘Cheated,’ he confessed. ‘Did the place a few years ago for dope and found this hidey-hole then. There’s a sort of lip a couple of feet down where she stored her stuff. Very tricky and pretty secure. I couldn’t quite remember how far down the lip was.’

  What he’d pulled out was a brown A4-sized envelope. He opened it and shook out the contents on the cupboard top.

  ‘Jane’s nest-egg,’ he said sadly. ‘Her passport to the better life.’

  There were three bundles of Bank of England notes totalling about £2,000. What was more interesting was the wad of dollar traveller’s cheques, a driving licence and six credit cards.

  Henry handled them carefully. ‘Voila,’ he said. ‘Recognise the name on the driving licence?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Karen sheepishly. ‘It’s that poor guy I locked up after raiding his house with the support unit.’

  ‘The innocent man, you mean?’ said Henry wickedly.

  ‘Don’t rub it in. It’s the driving licence Hinksman used to hire cars with. Don’t recognise the names on the credit cards.’

  ‘No, I don’t either. Hinksman probably has plenty of identities, but he’s used his own name on the traveller’s cheques.’

  ‘So she stole all this from Hinksman?’

  Henry nodded and sat down on the settee. ‘What we’ve got here is this: a dangerous man on the loose who will not tolerate anyone getting the better of him. Jane got the better of him by stealing from him - so he murdered her; I got the better of him by arresting him, and shooting him, and he’s tried to murder me. The question I ask is this: has he finished yet? Has he made his point?’

  Karen slumped down heavily next to him. ‘I’d like to say yes.’

  ‘But we know what the real answer is, don’t we?’ Henry said grimly. The terror was creeping up on him again.

  ‘I’ll say this for you, Joe, you’re one hell of a cool son of a bitch.’

  It was Ritter talking. He was sat next to Kovaks in the back seat of the Bucar. Ram Chander was in the front passenger seat; one of Corelli’s men was driving. Behind them was another car in which Damian was being transported. They were heading south towards Miami.

  ‘This must be a pretty big shock for you, after all.’

  Kovaks gave Ritter a contemptuous sidelong glance, then gazed back out of the window. He’d decided that to lose his temper would lose his life. Inside though, he seethed with anger and sadness. After a pause he said, ‘How long you been working for him?’

  ‘Long enough,’ admitted Ritter. ‘Long enough to have a healthy bank balance and a bolt-hole in the Caribbean.’

  ‘Lucky ole you ... and you, Ram? How about you?’

  Ram twisted round and dangled his right hand across the seat-top. He was holding a gun which jerked dangerously around as he talked. Kovaks thought bleakly about the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction. ‘A long, long time, Mr Joe,’ he said.

  Kovaks shook his head. ‘Sad ... fucking sad. So, Eamon, why kill Sue?’

  Ritter’s mouth twisted down at the corners. ‘Simple - she was on to me. I had to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, I really enjoyed sticking my knife up her cunt.’

  ‘Sick bastard.’

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Ritter crashed his gun into the side of Kovaks’ head.

  ‘Aaah!’ It felt like his brain had come loose from its fittings.

  ‘Never ever call me that,’ said Ritter angrily.

  ‘She wasn’t onto you,’ Kovaks mumbled. ‘You were paranoid.’

  ‘Crap,’ said Ritter, dismissing the statement. Suddenly he became buoyant. ‘Hey, that Lisa Want! What a fuck, man! She gives head ree-al good ... But you already know that, don’t you?’I

  ‘Right, so you’ve been feeding her stuff too,’ Kovaks grumbled through the palms of his hands.

  ‘Couldn’t resist, man. Just could not resist. She needed an inside source, so she got me. A fuck for information. Fair trade, I’d say.’ He laughed heartily.

  ‘You have very high morals,’ said Kovaks. His mind rattled: so that was how Ms Want was always up to the minute with Bureau news and information. Wow - she was really scraping the barrel with Eamon Ritter.

  ‘I even fed her all that stuff about Karl Donaldson and his English buddy screwing those policewomen. Y’know, that sex-crazed FBI Agent shit?’

  For a moment Kovaks wondered what he was talking about. Then he remembered. And recalled how Ritter had joined the two agents for a drink one night soon after Karl had returned from England a few months before. No doubt killing two birds with one stone: picking up information for Corelli as well as titbits for Lisa.

  He looked at Ram, then Ritter. ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘Sit back and enjoy the ride,’ Ram suggested.

  ‘It’s the last one you’ll be takin’,’ laughed Ritter.

  Ram looked quickly at Ritter - his expression puzzled Kovaks, for it seemed to have a significant meaning - then turned to face the front.

  Kovaks settled down and began to figure out how he was going to get out of this ... if he was going to get out of this.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At the same time as Henry and Karen had entered the bedsit, the national and international news had just finished on BBC1. A couple of minutes of local news followed; the lead story concerned the death of John Abbot in a police pursuit. The item showed a clip of FB being interviewed about the incident, recorded earlier on the steps of Blackpool Central police station. FB was fairly vague about everything, though he did state that Abbot had been driving a stolen Metro which actually belonged to a police officer. FB offered no explanations as to the cause of the explosion. ‘We’re keeping an open mind at the moment,’ he said. ‘We don’t really know anything for sure until tomorrow.’

  The reporter pressed him for details of why the Bomb Squad were looking at the car.

  ‘Just routine,’ he said patronisingly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me.... ‘He walked out of shot, revealing the officer who was standing directly behind him: Henry Christie, looking rather ill.

  Hinksman, sprawled in a chair in the safe house in Blackburn, sat bolt upright. Up to the point where Henry appeared on screen he hadn’t really been taking too much notice.

  ‘Motherfucker. You’re still alive then.’

  He threw himself back into his chair in frustration, clenching and unclenching his fists angrily. Finally, however, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Sergeant Christie,’ he said to the ceiling. ‘But I ain’t finished with you yet.’

  There was a knock at the front door. For a second, Hinksman froze. He checked through the curtains before answering and letting Lenny Dakin in.

  Dakin looked flustered and agitated.

  ‘It’s tomorrow. The ship’ll be coming through tomorrow. We’ll meet it in the Irish Sea, collect my consignment and hand you over. From there it’ll sail to Eire and you’ll be able to get a flight from Dublin to Paris, then to New York. It’s all arranged - false passports, money, everything.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What a fuckin’ day I’ve had,’ breathed Dakin. He helped himself to a Scotch and soda. ‘I’ve had cops crawling all over my property looking for you. It’s a damn good job I didn’t put you up at the farmhouse.’

  ‘Have they got you all worked up?’ Hinksman chided.

  ‘You bet they fucking have!’

  ‘I thought you were a no-nonsense big-time criminal who could h
andle the pressure,’ he teased.

  ‘I can handle the pressure when necessary, but this isn’t. You are a right royal pain in the arsehole at the moment and I’ll be glad to get shut of you. You be here at nine tomorrow and you’ll be picked up, OK?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? What the fuck do you mean?’

  ‘Things to do, people to see ... lives to wreck,’ smiled Hinksman sweetly. ‘You just tell me where and when you’ll be sailing and I’ll be there, probably with a passenger.’

  ‘What?’ screamed Dakin. ‘Who? Are you fucking mad?’

  Hinksman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t call me mad.’

  By the time Dave August got back to his office at police headquarters it was midnight. He’d had a long, tiring day visiting grieving relatives, being bombarded with tears, questions and disbelief. He was worn out by the effort of appearing sympathetic on the surface whilst having to deal with his own inner turmoil at the same time. Once or twice he’d had the urge to blurt out, ‘Blame me - I’m the one responsible.’

  He’d been informed of John Abbot’s death during the evening but had left it to FB and the ACC (Operations) to deal with. He’d look at it tomorrow. He couldn’t believe it - what the hell else could happen? He was presently the head of a police force under mounting pressure and it didn’t help that he was going through his own agonising crisis.

  August sat down at his desk. He pulled a small bottle of Bell’s out of a drawer and took a sip. The heat of the spirit seemed to revive him. He looked at the large pile of papers in front of him which constituted Hinksman’s file. He opened the first folder and began to read by the light of his table lamp.

  Somewhere in here, he hoped, was the answer.

  At five minutes past midnight, a delayed flight from Miami touched down at Manchester Airport. It was some eight hours behind schedule, held up by ‘technical problems’ - a vague term which did not endear the company to the passengers in any way.

  Tired and disgruntled, they disembarked and filed woodenly through the terminal building towards Passport Control.

  Near to the front of the queue was a middle-aged woman who was in heated, but subdued, conversation with her timid husband. They were having a disagreement of sorts. She wanted him to do something, and as usual he didn’t want to get involved. All he wanted to do was I get home and get to bed.

  ‘You are useless!’ she told him - and not for the first time.

  When they reached the desk and handed their passports over, the woman said icily to her husband, ‘Well, if you won’t, then I shall have to.’ She looked at the Customs officer and leaned towards her with a conspiratorial air. ‘Is there someone I can talk to?’ she hissed, so that other passengers would not overhear. ‘In confidence?’

  ‘Yes, of course, what about?’

  ‘One of the other passengers, who I think is on drugs.’

  Henry Christie and Karl Donaldson completed their witness statements relating to John Abbot’s death at about one o’clock that morning. The process had taken a couple of hours over numerous cups of sweet white coffee. Both men were exhausted, Henry in particular. He hadn’t slept properly for almost two days and his mind was beginning to play tricks with his eyes.

  He finished rereading his statement, blinked repeatedly and said, ‘I’ve got to get some kip. My head’s a complete shed.’

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Donaldson, yawning and stretching. His clothing reeked of smoke.

  They were sitting at desks in the deserted CID office at Blackpool Central. Karen had left them about an hour before, completely wrecked herself.

  Henry stood up. His joints creaked and clicked like an old man’s. He walked across to a window, rolling his shoulders. He watched his reflection as he approached; he hardly recognised himself, wasn’t sure I who he was seeing. A stranger. Someone who had changed drastically in the last eight months. A man who’d gone from being happily married with two beautiful daughters and a beautiful wife, a contented lifestyle and good job, to a rundown adulterer who hardly saw his kids and lived like a hermit in a shit-hole of a flat that smelled of cat piss.

  The only constant was that he still had the same job.

  He tried to pinpoint the exact moment at which his life had changed for the worse. He reckoned it was that bomb on the M6.

  He gazed blankly out of the window; in his mind’s eye was every detail of that explosion and the faces of those kids. He knew now they were images that would stay with him for ever. And now he’d come full circle. Another explosion. Another motorway. And the link was I the same two men: himself and Hinksman.

  You’re out there somewhere, he thought, and I want to find you. I want to hunt you down, but I don’t know where to start.

  He sighed and turned back to Donaldson. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  Before the FBI man could reply, the phone on the desk where he was sitting started to ring. Henry walked across and answered it. Two minutes later he hung up.

  ‘Delete that last question,’ he quipped. ‘I might just have the answer to it. C’mon, grab yer coat.’

  ‘Just one of those lucky things, really, if it turns out to be of any use that is,’ the detective said to Henry and Donaldson as, forty minutes later, he led them through Manchester Airport to the police holding area.

  ‘Initially we just thought she was a run-of-the-mill punter - y’know, trying to get a bit of stuff through. We searched her luggage and found some coke, a bit of crack, some heroin. Then we searched her body orifices. Well, not me personally, but I’m told there wasn’t anything there that shouldn’t have been.’

  ‘So why call us?’ Donaldson asked. He was beyond exhaustion. Really irritable.

  The detective wasn’t to be fazed. He had a bit of a story to tell and he was going to tell it, no matter what. ‘Anyway, it was while a couple of female officers and a doctor were trying to search the girl that she started dropping names. She was scratching, kicking, all that shit, see, and she had to be forcibly restrained. Now she’s threatening them, saying they’ll get wasted for this, that she knows a hit man. A lot of rubbish on the face of it, but not when the names start coming.’

  ‘Names like?’ asked Donaldson.

  The detective smiled. ‘Hinksman? Well, we didn’t attach much importance to that one. Every bugger in Britain knows his name. But then she was bawling about Corelli, Dakin, Stanton, you, Sergeant Christie, someone called Kovaks and you, Mr Donaldson.’

  ‘Oh,’ Henry and Donaldson said together.

  ‘Starting saying things like the Mafia are giving you the run around. It was a lucky chance, really - she could easily have slipped into the system. It’s just that one of the female officers she was wrangling with remembered the names from the last time you two guys were down here.’

  ‘And what’s the prisoner’s name?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Er, Janine something-or-other. Fit little piece. If she wasn’t a druggie, I’d give her one.’

  ‘Has she said anything else?’ asked Henry.

  ‘There was one thing. She said she’d fucked your Chief Constable’s brains out. A lot of crap, like I said.’

  ‘Let’s talk to her,’ said Henry.

  The detective shook his head. ‘She’s still floating in the stratosphere.’ He pointed up to the sky. ‘Not fit to be interviewed.’

  ‘But this is urgent,’ Henry said.

  ‘Then you’ll need a Superintendent’s authority.’

  Henry turned to Donaldson. ‘Karl, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Superintendent. Do you accept this?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘May I interview the prisoner?’

  ‘You may.’

  Dave August was getting nowhere slowly. He had spent over an hour leafing through the Hinksman paperwork, and his eyes were getting gritty, his concentration drifting.

  He closed the folder he was reading and picked up the next one, headed Unused Material. It contained all sorts of scraps of information, intelligence and musings even, which hadn�
�t been used in the court prosecution. It was a real mish-mash of stuff.

  August swore softly and flicked through the contents with a grimace on his face. Then he closed the file, clasped his fingers, knuckles down, palms up on the desk-top and laid his forehead on the soft cushion they formed.

  Within moments he was asleep.

  The interview room had three chairs and a sturdy table with a tape recorder on it. Janine was sitting on one of the chairs with her elbows on the table, hands held loosely over the sides of her face and ears. Henry sat down opposite her. Donaldson remained standing, arms folded, like a sentry.

  Henry placed an unopened pack of tapes on the table, together with a sealed plastic bag containing the drugs seized from her. ‘Janine, we’d like to have a chat with you.’ He spoke softly, seductively.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’re here to help you.’ Henry noticed, with pleasure, that her hands were shaking. She was coming down.

  ‘I’m up shit creek,’ she said. ‘I’ll go down for this - importing or whatever. You can’t do fuck-all for me.’

  ‘Oh yes, we can,’ countered Henry. ‘But you’ve got to help us first. You see, this isn’t a recorded interview.’ He held up the unopened tapes. ‘It’s totally off the record.’

  She gazed defiantly at him. ‘Oh yeah?’ she said disbelievingly. ‘So what can you do?’

  ‘Two things actually,’ Henry said, matter-of-fact. ‘First we can give you a fix - I can see you need one - and the custody officer needn’t know about it; secondly, we can get all the charges against you dropped.’

  Her eyes seemed to come alive. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘Trust me, Janine, we have the power. All you need to do is answer some questions. When you’ve done that, we’ll slip you a fix. When we’ve verified what you say is correct, we’ll arrange for you to be released without charge.’