Shadows

by Conrad Jones

  Mike turned away from the cash machine and walked towards the car park, at the end of the parade of shops. There was a bookie, a chip shop, a café, two charity shops and a bakery where everything was a pound. The smell of baking pastry was normally irresistible to him but today he couldn’t think about eating. He couldn’t think about much except Steff Cain. A dark cloud had descended around him. He felt vulnerable. His confidence as a detective had been shattered. Two men stumbled out of the bookmakers, shouting obscenities. They were arguing with the manager who had bundled them through the door. One of them was drunk, the other paralytic. The manger warned them not to come back until they had sobered up and then slammed the door. They turned on each other, each blaming the other for their expulsion. One threw a punch, missed completely and toppled over. His companion saw the opportunity and tried to kick him in the head but he missed completely too, span around in a circle and landed on his backside. He staggered to his feet and relented. He tried to help his friend to his feet suggesting that they should go to the pub to sort things out. Mike avoided them and walked on, his thoughts with Steff Cain and the organisation that had assassinated her. That is what they had done. No doubt about it. He checked his mobile for messages. The screen was blank. He slid it back into his pocket and walked on. A car door slammed and he turned on his heels. A woman ran from a taxi towards the shops, a toddler ran at her side to keep up. The beeping of a zebra crossing, normally an innocent sound, drilled into his brain. Every noise made his heart skip a beat. His nerves were frayed. He checked his watch and walked on quickly, weaving through the shoppers. Fish and chip wrappers blew in circles around a litterbin; the paving stones were spotted with chewing gum. A black taxi pulled to a halt next to him, its passengers climbed out and stared at him. Mike stopped for a moment, afraid before realising that they were looking beyond him. They walked by on their way to the shops. He may as well have been invisible, everyone around him going about their business. No one saw him because no one cared. Life in the big city raced on, oblivious to his grief. He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. He knew that he was in shock but he also knew that he had to pull himself together and get on with it.

  When he reached the end of the parade of shops, a delivery van mounted the pavement, ignoring the double yellow lines. The engine roared and the brakes squealed. For a moment, Mike thought it was going to hit him. He jumped back out of the way, banging into a woman with a pushchair.

  “Watch where you are going, knob-head!” the woman shouted.

  “I’m very sorry,” he replied, shaken.

  She glared at him as she walked on. His nerves were shredded. The driver of the van jumped out, slammed the door and headed into the bakery unaffected by the comments disgruntled passers-by made about his driving. Mike thought about pulling him, showing him his ID card and giving him a bollocking but decided against it. In the big scheme of things, it mattered not one bit. He walked around the back of the van to cross the road, checking that his car was where he had parked it. It was there and there was no one suspicious hanging around. The lights at the junction changed and the traffic roared by. He poked his head around the van to check for a break in the traffic and a motorcyclist whizzed by, inches from his face. Mike stepped back, his heart pumping rapidly before risking another peek. He heard the van driver opening his door, starting the engine and slamming it closed. Mike was about to step away from the van when he felt a hard shove in the small of his back. He reached out to stop his fall but grabbed nothing but fresh air. As he stumbled from behind the van, into the oncoming traffic, he briefly noted the number of the double-decker bus that knocked him onto the asphalt before running over him, crushing his skull like a balloon full of rice pudding.

  9

  Braddick looked around the room at a sea of faces, some familiar, others not. Familiar or not, he knew that he was briefing the best detectives that their force had. He had undone the top button of his dark blue shirt, loosened his tie. The digital screens behind him showed images from the crime scene at Holyhead. DI Joanne Jones was stood to his right, at the edge of the bank of screens. Her presence had caused quite a stir, especially amongst the male detectives. She showed no sign of nerves and carried herself with a confident gait that few at her rank achieved.

  “I want to break this down into definitive sections so that each team can focus on one aspect of the case. We will put the pieces back together at our four o’clock briefings,” he paused, watching the nodding heads, his team listening to every word. They were coiled like springs, waiting to be released on the case. “Firstly, Malcolm, you are on witness statements and communicating the information from forensics to both departments.”

  “Guv.”

  “Carol, I want you on house to house coordinating with uniform. Someone must have seen our witness and someone in the Mason clan knows who he is. Shake their cages and get someone to talk.”

  “Yes, Guv.”

  “We have a minimum of two dead, possibly eight more. I want to start with the victims we know about first. Let’s look at the importers.” The screens changed to show six faces of various ages. Fishermen who crossed the Irish Sea with best intentions. “We have two bodies. This one is Linus Murphy.” The image of Linus appeared. His tortured corpse hanging upside down. The warning carved into his chest was black and scabbed. “North Wales Police are communicating with Dublin for now. That may change as we progress. Linus Murphy had been a trawler man since leaving school. He had no criminal record. The other five ID’s found at the scene belong to individuals who have never been charged or convicted of anything worse than a parking ticket. The trawler belongs to Murphy and up until yesterday, it was a perfectly legitimate fishing vessel. Holyhead port authorities have no record of it ever docking in the harbour before yesterday. They didn’t fish that area.” Braddick nodded to one of his constables. “Simon, I want you to chase up NWP and follow up anything that you’re not happy with directly with Dublin.”

  “Guv.”

  “We still don’t know who Patrick Finnen is,” Braddick said, pointing to the bloody inscription on Murphy’s chest. “Go direct to Dublin for information about him.” Simon nodded and made a note. “We are working on the premise that he is the money behind the shipment. If this is his real name, they will have come across him before. There’s no doubt about it.” He gestured to Jo to take over.

  “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m DI Joanne Jones. Call me, Jo. I recognise a lot of you from my time in Matrix although you probably won’t recognise me.” She paused while a few eyebrows were raised. “I was known as Lilly during my time with Matrix.”

  “Lilly?” someone gasped. A murmur spread through the room, some expletives, some surprised laughter. “Fucking hell!” someone said a little too loudly. Braddick stared at her, open mouthed. He remembered Lilly. The image of a ravaged junkie, greasy hair, sunken eyes and blackened teeth appeared in his mind. He had met her, years before but didn’t know she was a UC. Lilly had been the most productive UC officer since Matrix had been conceived. Braddick had interviewed her as Lilly and never once suspected that she was a UC.

  “It’s amazing what can be done with contact lenses and false teeth,” she said, smiling thinly. The room fell silent. Lilly was held up as the icon that perspective UC’s should aspire to be. The fact that she had been a successful undercover explained why she had been shoehorned into the top job with the Drug Squad. “Let’s get on.” She waited until she had their complete attention. The screen showed a well-built male in his fifties. “This is Gary Mason,” she said, turning to the image of the second victim. “We think Mason was the buyer. NWP found another three sets of ID belonging to, Frank Farrell, Brian Farrell and Jimmy Farrell, all cousins of the infamous Eddie Farrell who disappeared with his son, Eddie junior a while back.” A ripple of derisory comments broke the silence and she waited for it to die down before continuing. “Our sources reckon that some of the Eddie Farrell estate has been liquefied, giving Gary Mason and
Farrell’s cousins a bankroll. It would appear that they invested it in drugs. We are working on the premise that they set up a deal with an outfit from Dublin. Unfortunately for them, someone else knew about it and hit the handover before stringing them up from the rafters.” She paused. “We have to assume that they are dead. We also have another player and it is imperative that we identify him. The man who made this nine, nine, nine call.” She played the call to the room. “We are working on the premise that he is part of the Mason clan and that he is alive. He is the only witness we have and we need to find him as a matter of urgency. DC Barnes and her team are knocking on doors as we speak but so far, the family are not talking.”

  “Why Dublin and Holyhead?” a DC asked, his hand half raised.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean why import from Dublin to there?”

  “Four hundred miles of unprotected coastline,” Jo shrugged. “North Wales is a smuggler’s paradise. The coastline is impossible to police and once on land, the roads are quiet and you can be in any major city in a couple of hours.”

  “Why would the Farrells change suppliers?” another officer asked. “They’ve been selling gear for years. Why risk a new route.”

  “You’re assuming that it is a new route,” Jo said flatly. “We can’t assume anything at this point. Eddie Farrell could have been importing there for years, we don’t know anything for sure. However, my guess is that when Eddie Farrell vanished, his contacts would have thought that he had been assassinated or that he had cut and run, either way no one would trust the family. I think they liquidated his assets and looked to set up a supply line for themselves, new or not, we don’t know yet.”

  “But can we be sure that someone ripped them off?” an officer asked. “It could have been an inside job.”

  “This wasn’t just a robbery,” Braddick interrupted. All eyes turned to him. “Look at the overwhelming force that was used. Eight men missing presumed dead,” he paused to let it sink in. “They moved in with enough firepower to subdue ten men instantly.”

  “Military backgrounds?”

  “Almost certainly,” Braddick nodded. “They moved with stealth and had the firepower to overpower the men without them having a chance to escape or fight back. They could have taken the money and the drugs without firing a single shot and left everyone alive.” The nodding heads told him that the majority agreed with him. “This wasn’t about money. The men have vanished but they purposely left their ID’s for us to find and process. They have left the families unsure what happened to their loved ones and eight of them have no way of knowing if they are alive or dead. This was about fear. It is about striking terror into the minds of anyone thinking of setting up as a rival outfit. There are only two, maybe three outfits capable of this.”

  “The Turks.”

  “Possibly.”

  “The Latvians.”

  “Two years ago, maybe but not anymore.”

  “That leaves the Russians.”

  “That would be my guess,” Braddick agreed.

  “That narrows it down to the Karpovs, the Vashechkins and the Kuznets,” Jo said, looking at Braddick. Braddick frowned a little. He hadn’t heard of the latter families. She looked at the room and nodded. “Yes, you might be surprised to know that we have three soviet outfits operating in the city now. You DS detectives will be aware of them but they may not have popped up on the MIT radar yet. The Karpovs you are all familiar with, the others are established in London and the south coast and they are creeping north with frightening success. Any one of these three outfits could have pulled this off.” Braddick nodded, impressed. “Obviously we know that the Farrells acted as muscle for the Karpovs so they have to be favourites for this. I’m putting two DS teams on each outfit to see if anyone is in possession of a new delivery. When new gear arrives in the city, it creates a buzz, good if it is quality and bad if it is crap. Once we identify who has new product, we can follow the drugs up the chain. ”

  “Is there any news from the divers, Guv?”

  Braddick shook his head. “They have searched the harbour and found nothing. Wherever they are, they are not in the water.” He changed the images again and the bridges across the Menai Straits appeared. “I want a team on the camera footage from both bridges. We’re looking for at least three vehicles, probably more, vans, people carriers or similar. They will have crossed onto the island and left within four hours tops,” he pointed to a team to his right. They nodded enthusiastically. “If you can find the vehicles, it will take weeks off this investigation.”

  “Guv.”

  “I want a round the clock obs on this man,” Jo said changing the images. The picture of an eighteen stone brute appeared. His bushy black beard was streaked with silver; wavy hair gelled back from a protruding forehead. “Some of you will be familiar with Big Ron Mason, Gary Mason’s brother,” she said, pausing to gauge the reaction. Half the room knew him. “For those of you who don’t know him, Big Ron was Eddie Farrell’s cousin. They didn’t like each other but Ron did a lot of Farrell’s wet work.” Braddick watched the faces around the room. Her terminology belonged to someone who took torture and murder as simply part of everyday life. “If anyone was going to step up into Farrell’s shoes, Big Ron is the man.” The nodding heads told Braddick that the teams were following her in total agreement. “If our witness made it off the island alive, then he will be going to see Big Ron at some point.” She turned to one of her detectives, who was sat near the front. “Donna, I want you and your team on the family’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. It is a big family, lots of cousins, uncles, aunties; someone will be chatting online about Gary Mason’s death. Three of the Farrells are still missing, guaranteed social media will be buzzing about it. Look out for any other names being mentioned. I think we can find out who our witness is.”

  “Guv.”

  Jo looked at Braddick and stepped back signalling that her input was exhausted. He noticed the ACC entering the office to his right. He looked ashen and somewhat panicked. His eyes were fixed on Jo. She noticed his manner and walked around the edge of the room to reach him without disturbing the briefing.

  “Where are we with the Ford Focus?” Braddick asked Ade Burns. His DS held up a piece of paper.

  “The insurance goes back to a limited company based in Litherland. No tax returns have ever been filed at Company’s House and it is listed as ‘no longer trading’. Dead end, Guv. The address is a piece of waste ground.”

  “What about the shotgun?”

  “The serial number has been ground off, no prints or DNA.”

  “I want a team to go back to each of the Farrell and Mason families and put the pressure on. They are all related. Someone knows who our witness is,” Braddick said, clapping his hands. “Everyone knows what they are doing. Keep me updated. If we find the witness and the vehicles used by the hijackers, we can have this wrapped up quickly.” He watched the ACC and Jo going into his office. The door closed behind them. He had the sinking feeling that something bad had happened.

  “Have you got a minute, Guv?” Ade said, approaching. Braddick wanted to hear what was going on in the office. Ade sensed his mood. “Just a quick one. It’s important.”

  “Of course,” Braddick said, apologetically. “What is it?”

  “One of the DC’s from Vice was talking earlier.” Ade lowered his voice. “He has got tickets for a charity gig at St George’s Hall tomorrow night. Something to do with raising money for Alderhey Hospital.”

  “And?” Braddick asked, watching the office door.

  “One of the main sponsors for the night is City Break Hotels.”

  “I’m not following here, Ade.”

  “The City Break chain was bought out last year, remember.”

  “Of course I do,” Braddick said, nodding. The light bulb in his mind snapped on. “The Karpovs bought them out with their umbrella company, right?”

  “Right,” Ade said, taking his arm, guiding him away from prying ears. “Th
is DC reckons that Yuri Karpov was at last year’s event. I know we can’t lift him for anything but I thought…”

  “Get me those tickets, Ade,” Braddick said, patting him on the back. “I think we should go and spoil his evening, don’t you?”

  “My thoughts exactly, Guv.”

  Braddick grinned at the thought and headed to his office. He opened the door without knocking. The ACC was standing next to the window, staring over the river. Jo was perched on the desk, telephone in hand. She looked at Braddick and shook her head.

  “What?” Braddick asked, closing the door behind him.

  “It’s Mike Pilkington,” she said.

  “What?” Braddick sighed. He tensed, waiting for the blow.

  “He was run over by a bus forty-five minutes ago.”

  10

  Ronny Mason walked out of Chester station and wrapped his coat tightly against the wind and rain. He looked around nervously. His eyes fell on a bar directly opposite, The Town Crier and the urge to drink himself into oblivion was overwhelming. He pulled his hood up over his short, dark hair and stepped towards a zebra crossing. A horn beeped across the road and he watched as a young woman ran to meet her lift. Her boyfriend picked her up and swung her around, their laughter infectious. Their embrace made him jealous. He longed for the touch of a fulltime lover, someone who genuinely wanted to spend time with him. Being secretly gay was just another cross that he had to carry. He was surrounded by homophobic misogynous thugs. Women were ‘pussy’ rather than people, their reproductive systems far more valuable than their personalities. Gay men were faggots, queers, arse bandits, and worse. He had heard it all his life. Coming out in the Mason-Farrell clan was not an option. They all thought he was quiet, a shy boy who couldn’t approach girls. He couldn’t tell them otherwise. His sex life was limited to just one man and a few quick fumbles arranged online. He wanted to settle with an older man, someone who would look after him. Maybe it was a father figure he craved because his own father showed him no emotions but disappointment and anger. He wanted the relationship to be stable, his affection reciprocated. He hadn’t found exactly what he was looking for. Most of the men he met casually used him, abused him and then disappeared before he could get dressed and ask for a number. The sordid encounters only added to his sense of being useless and unlikeable. There had only been one regular man and he picked him up and dropped him whenever he felt the urge. Ronny liked him. He liked him a lot and so he ran to him like a puppy dog whenever he called, hoping that one day it might be more than just sex. Whatever developed from the relationship, he could never share it with his family. Never.