Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Handyside shoved the glass forward, nodded for a refill, and that really was proof that he was feeling the strain. ‘It’s the big picture. You’re the best at what you do, but you don’t see the whole battlefield, my friend.’ There was no tension in the voice but the rebuke was there. Turner got it immediately and poured three shots into his own glass.

  ‘The girl who survived can identify Dillon and Hunter, though only a miracle could raise them from the dead. She really makes no difference to us alive or dead so there’s no need to take risks getting to her. The police already know about Dillon, Hunter and Gunderson so nothing we can do about that either. They probably know they worked for us, so we’ll get a visit at some point, but if we say nothing they’re beat. The problem is that we’ve done one of theirs, and they’ll want to even that score, which means we need to think carefully before we act. What if the Flemings go down, turn on us? And don’t tell me the cops up there don’t have something running on the McMartins – take that as read. It can all fall like a pack of cards, Max. And last but not least there’s credibility.’

  Turner knew what was coming – it was always the dilemma in their business.

  Handyside shook his head at the problems swirling round his mind as he tried to make sure he’d covered all the permutations. He looked up at Turner and tried to make his right-hand man see it all. ‘You know what I’m going to say. We can’t keep what happened here a complete secret. The undercover and now this fiasco in Edinburgh means that we look like we’ve lost our edge or control, call it whatever you want. We’ve taken care of all the opposition over the years, but there’s always someone else coming of age. The Scousers would love to piss on our dead bodies, and they’ll already have heard what’s happened. If we can’t sort it we look weak, and they start to claw us. You see that, don’t you?’

  Turner saw it but wished it wasn’t the truth. They had to remain stronger than the other guys, but he’d enjoyed the peace when it had arrived. He liked living on the profits of their trade. But there was always another battle to take part in and he was tired of it. He’d committed so many crimes, dished out so much pain and it had never bothered him in the past when they were climbing. Now it did, and it kept him awake at night wondering when he’d be able to sit down in the Med getting fat and tanned like so many of the East End tossers they’d come across in the business. Turner had worked out that it would take a major event to get Handyside to that point. He had to keep proving all over again that he was the man to listen to, the man to go to and the man to fear like no other, and Turner nodded wearily. ‘I know it – just wish to fuck it didn’t have to always be that way. What do we need to do?’

  Handyside looked at him long and hard. ‘If Crazy Horse can’t sort it this time then we need to go up there and do it ourselves. We’ll give them one last chance and then take over. Last thing – get in touch with our bent friend in criminal intelligence and squeeze him. I want to find out everything I can about this Ricky Swan. And I mean everything. Give him a bonus if he produces the goods.’

  ‘Consider it done.’ Turner sat down heavily, full of nagging doubts. Killing the women on the Brighter Dawn had been too much and they were going to pay; he knew it in his gut. The ability to use violence when it was required was the mark of the top men in the game, but drowning those young women had marked them forever even among their own kind, including the bent cops who kept them safe.

  18

  When Fitzgerald arrived at the hospital she was surprised to see Richter sitting in a chair at the side of her bed. She still looked tired but she was making a remarkable recovery. Fitzgerald spoke to her doctor first, who told her that the girl would be fine with another few days’ rest and observation.

  ‘She’s young, strong and determined, Miss Fitzgerald. No medical intervention tops that. Her parents have arrived and she’ll soon be ready to try to get her life back. Not sure what psychological problems her experience will leave but that’s for others to take care of.’

  Fitzgerald sat down with Richter, and if anyone else had told her the story that she listened to over the next hour she’d have been sure they were making it up. She watched as the girl flinched from her memories of the Brighter Dawn. The truth was exposed as much in her pained facial expressions as it was in her words and tears, evocative as they were. Her story had been created in a nightmare world and Fitzgerald was barely equipped to deal with the job she’d been given. McGovern had warned her of that when she’d joined the team.

  ‘You might think you’ve heard it all on the beat and CID but no matter how experienced you are we have to listen to stories that almost beat us. When that happens, remember that this is why we’re here. You have to get the job done, otherwise order another uniform.’

  Fitzgerald did the job, but she would remember her time with Ingrid Richter for the rest of her life.

  The briefing with McGovern was straightforward enough and Macallan felt that very human moment of panic, having gone from months of living without external pressure to the mass problems that face a senior detective every day. There was never the luxury of dealing with one issue or one case at a time; there was always a mass of paper and problems hurtling in every direction. Over the previous week she and Jack had watched a late-night repeat of a detective series where the grim-faced lead hunted the killer without ever putting a word on paper or trying to whip up the energy to write a staff appraisal. It was nonsense.

  McGovern saw the tension in her eyes and knew she was going to find it hard to get back into the chaotic and dysfunctional but very real world they inhabited. She needed reassurance, something that made her feel she was welcome back and that she still had the equipment to face whatever came at her.

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he told her. ‘If it means anything, the troops all feel the same. This thing with the UC and all the attached shit is going to take lumps out of us, but we’ve a great team out there. A few changes since you were last here, but they’re all good material and ready for anything.’

  Macallan sat forward, ready to start assimilating new names and facts. ‘Who’s dealing with Ingrid Richter?’

  ‘Pam Fitzgerald; she’s not been in the team that long, still got a lot to learn, but keen as and we can trust her. She’s probably a bit like you two thousand years ago; just loves doing it and would work for nothing. Remember that time?’ He smiled warmly.

  She did remember it. Sometimes she was sure it had all been a dream or her imagination, but the scars were real enough to remind her of what had passed over the years. She smiled back, thankful she had someone like McGovern at her side.

  His next words brought her quickly back to reality though.

  ‘Now, unfortunately that might all have sounded like difficult stuff, but you know that you wade through one pile of crap only to find another one in this job. Ricky Swan’s handlers are outside and they want to brief us on the situation, and I don’t know what they’re going to hit us with, but they said enough for me to know it’s just more grief.’

  McGovern had hit the right spots on her ego; Macallan sensed her tension receding as her quick mind started lining up the issues and how she’d deal with them. There were plenty, and she still had a day of parading before her own bosses, who’d all say basically the same things then probably ask her to write a report on something they didn’t actually need. While McGovern was briefing her she kept looking at her desk and the heap of paper and sealed envelopes that awaited her attention. She groaned inwardly. If she was lucky there might be one piece of paper that was worth further action or a reply – most of the rest just fed the bureaucracy machine lurking behind the scenes of any modern organisation.

  The two handlers shuffled in and although Macallan recognised them she didn’t know them personally. She felt the slight buzz she usually did talking to people who did what she’d done for so many years in Belfast. McGovern had told her they were good men and that was enough for her. They both looked tired and that was a positive sign in her bo
ok – as far as she was concerned a good handler should look permanently knackered. They sat round the table, did the niceties and some old police leg-pulling with McGovern. Macallan let it happen, knowing it was a necessary warm-up for these types of men.

  Once the piss-taking was roughly a score draw she steered it back towards the business of the day. ‘Okay, guys, Jimmy tells me you have bad news and more bad news. Let’s have it.’

  The lead handler pulled out his notes though he didn’t really need them. They were a prop so he could pick his words carefully. He’d been around a long time and could smell a bear trap a mile away. The Ricky Swan situation was toxic, and he wanted to deliver the message then get the fuck out of it. He was three days from a Med cruise that he’d been promising his wife for years and knew he was getting out of the path of the shit storm at exactly the right time. If bets were allowed on the situation, he’d put a wodge on heavy casualties both sides of the fence. He told her what Swan had said.

  ‘Do you think he means it?’

  The handler looked at Macallan. He could see why so many people wanted to work for her. Within five minutes of being in the room he trusted her, and that was no mean feat. He would have been the first to admit that he was a truly cynical bastard.

  ‘Can I speak freely?’

  ‘If there’s bad news then I’d be annoyed with anything else.’ There was enough in her expression to tell the handler that she meant exactly what she’d said.

  ‘Ricky Swan is a creepy little bastard, and he lacks just about everything he needs to survive on the dark side of life in this city. However, his form of defence is that he’s devious and clever and that’s let him survive so far. He knew that someday it might all go belly up. I think we can safely say that has come to pass and the evidence is lying in the hospital looking like they’ve had a square go with the SAS.

  ‘We’ve picked up source intelligence in the past from girls who worked for him that suggested he might be recording some of his more important customers in their slightly more exposed moments. Nothing much was made of it because, at the end of the day, who’s making a complaint? I know the man pretty well now and my guess is that he has got material, but how much, how bad and who the stars are is only guesswork. Let’s be honest, there’s bound to be a cop or three involved because there always is where there are working girls going for free. That’s certainly how Ricky would get our boys on camera – just offer them something for fuck all and Bob’s your Aunty. The problem is that Ricky knows if you start digging into foreign women being trafficked into the city then his name is going to come up. He wants us to look the other way for all his public-spirited service in the past. It’s simple: we drop him in it, he drops us in it.’

  Macallan looked round at McGovern, who was shaking his head, partly in disbelief and partly at the thought that some numb-brained cops might be hanging over the edge of their careers and families for taking a gift from Swan. Macallan would have guessed without any help that there would be police in the sewer – there always were. She knew enough to work out that if Swan was the man described then he could probably squeeze hard on the balls of people who mattered, and those same people would start calling in their own favours until it all crashed onto her desk. There had been a similar situation in Northern Ireland where a paramilitary team had worked out that blackmailing a dignitary was a lot easier than shoot-outs with the police or army. It got you points. And of course, points mean prizes.

  ‘What do you think, Jimmy?’ She sighed just before saying it, knowing she shared the same sense of frustration he did that a hard investigation had just been elevated to a complete pain-in-the-arse investigation.

  ‘I think it’s a headache we don’t need.’ McGovern gave the handlers the nod to head for the door. He and Macallan needed privacy. They were happy to oblige, relieved that the time bomb they were sitting on could go off now under the arse of a higher rank.

  ‘Fire away,’ Macallan said as soon as the door closed, intrigued to hear what McGovern obviously thought was so sensitive it was for her ears only.

  ‘Thought you might be interested to know how we originally signed on Ricky Swan as a source. You know well enough what happened to Harkins on the Barclay case – Mick saved the bastard’s skin after he messed up an escort and that was how he turned the mighty QC into a top grass . . .’

  ‘How can I ever erase that one?’ She would never forget the revelation that Harkins had been running the advocate for years as an unofficial source. Barclay had been wrongly convicted of murder and Macallan had worked out it had actually been his son who’d been responsible for a string of attacks on prostitutes. Before he was arrested, Thomas Barclay had discovered his father’s relationship with Harkins and nearly killed the detective with his car.

  ‘What you probably don’t know is that the woman Barclay assaulted was one of Swan’s, and that’s how Mick got the call that night.’ He paused and waited for a reaction but Macallan hadn’t yet joined it all up.

  ‘Swan was Mick’s informant as well. Mick was the man who first recruited him and ran him for years before the new dedicated units came in and took over the handling of all sources. Unfortunately for all concerned, Mick handed over Swan but didn’t mention Barclay.’ Macallan shook her head but wasn’t surprised. Although she had been responsible for arresting Barclay she hadn’t been told about Swan’s previous relationship with Harkins. The rubber-heel squad had run that part of the investigation, and this form of sensitive information was need-to-know only.

  ‘How do you know all this? I’m friendly with Mick and that never came up.’

  McGovern shrugged. ‘Why would it? When it came to his sources Mick kept it all close to his chest.’

  Macallan had to nod, because she knew better than anyone that it was true. The DCI stuck an indigestion tablet into his mouth and continued.

  ‘I know because I was a much younger detective working with Mick at the time. When I say working, I mean I was his gofer and driver. Mick did the detecting, and I was there to watch and learn. I knew about Ricky because I would drive Mick to the meets and he was usually half-pissed if it was quiet. He was one of those detectives who seemed to be able to operate even with a skinful, but to be fair, when a job went live he was the most focused DO I ever met. You know how it was back then – one-to-one and nothing written down. Eventually I was able to work out who it was he was speaking to and saw him a couple of times with Ricky.’

  ‘Jesus, I never cease to be amazed at how much ground Mick covered in his career. Anyway, let’s set up a meeting with Swan and see what he’s got to say. As far as I’m concerned, if I find evidence to connect Swan to trafficking or harming women then he’ll go in the same shithole as the rest of them; it makes no difference to me what he holds. After that, I want to meet whoever it is that’s handling things down in Newcastle, then we can see where we’re going. You get up to the hospital and let me know as soon as what Ingrid has to say while I spend most of the rest of the day talking to my betters, probably achieving sweet FA. I should be clear by mid–late afternoon, and I want to really get moving on this by morning at the latest. On second thoughts, if we can see Swan today, so much the better.’

  McGovern already had his jacket on and was heading for the door as Macallan went to the office window and looked out over the green playing fields that surrounded the old headquarters building. She knew there was no going back, and whether she’d made the right decision or not she had to see the case through to success or failure. She grinned tightly, thinking that just occasionally they fizzled out to a kind of score draw. ‘Don’t think you’ll get off that easily on this one, Grace,’ she said to her reflection in the window.

  ‘Pardon, ma’am?’

  Macallan spun round and saw that one of her team had brought in a mug of coffee and an intelligence report.

  ‘Sorry, I was talking to myself. The first signs of old age!’ She didn’t recognise the young detective but thought that he looked about fourteen and she knew
exactly what that meant – the years were passing.

  ‘Please tell everyone I’ll be out in a minute. I haven’t met some of you yet. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m Alan, ma’am, only been in the team a couple of months.’ He smiled broadly; it was an easy, relaxed expression and she thought that he looked like one of the good ones.

  He closed the door behind him and she called Jack’s number. It rang onto voicemail and she left a message telling him she loved and missed him. She asked him to kiss Adam, and shivered even though the room was warm.

  As she took her first sip of coffee Macallan screwed her nose up and promised to stop drinking the bilge concocted in the office. She looked more closely at the cup, which was stained, like it had been dipped in wood tar. Some things never changed. For some reason, that thought cheered her up.