What Doesn't Kill You (A DI Fenchurch novel Book 3)

by Ed James

  Connolly tore off a chunk of skin from his lip and swallowed it down. ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘The smart move would’ve been to dump the gun in the Thames, along with those burner phones.’

  Connolly scratched at his cheek. ‘What phones?’

  ‘You haven’t made any calls on a burner?’

  ‘No.’ Connolly dabbed a finger at the fresh cut on his lip. ‘Suggest you move on, mate. Wouldn’t mind catching the football tonight.’

  ‘Mr Connolly, what’s your connection to Frank Blunden?’

  ‘I work for him. That Merc’s his.’ Connolly smoothed down the shards of gelled hair leaking onto his forehead and nibbled at his cheek. ‘Lovely motor.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Mr Blunden?’

  Connolly rested his hands behind his neck and yawned. ‘Last night.’

  Docherty tapped his watch again and held up a finger.

  ‘That car was seen by a shooting out east last night. You kill for him, don’t you?’ Fenchurch produced a CCTV still of the Mercedes by the crime scene. ‘Where were you at four o’clock yesterday afternoon?’

  Connolly stared at the sheet of paper for a good while, then pushed it away. ‘I’m not answering that.’

  ‘I’ve got a witness saying you were speaking to an Ian Fenchurch at an address in Limehouse this morning.’

  Connolly barked out a laugh and scratched at the scar on his eyebrow. ‘That little hipster? Glen? Len?’

  ‘Liam.’ Fenchurch sat forward, his leg jiggling. ‘What happened after he left?’

  ‘That old geezer’s cracked.’ Connolly twirled a finger round his temple and whistled. ‘You might want to take him to the doctor’s.’ His forehead pulsed a couple of times. ‘I left ten minutes later. Went home for a kip.’

  Docherty gripped Fenchurch’s bicep and whispered into his ear, ‘Time’s up, okay?’

  ‘Just another minute.’

  ‘A deal’s a deal.’ Docherty got to his feet and smiled at Connolly. ‘Thanks for your time, sir. The Custody Officer will take you downstairs for processing.’

  Connolly smacked a giant fist off the table. ‘What?’

  Docherty snatched up the bag containing the gun. ‘You pointed this at two of my officers and assaulted a further three. What did you expect to happen?’ He thunked the pistol down on the desk. Thank God it wasn’t loaded.

  Connolly frowned at Fenchurch. ‘Wait a sec, you’re Ian’s son, right?’

  ‘Didn’t the name give it away?’

  ‘That was you in the paper, right?’ Connolly nodded slowly. ‘That means it’s your daughter who went missing, right?’

  Fenchurch’s breath raced away. He had to keep his hands by his sides. Keith Moon thumped at the drums. ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ . . . ‘Did you abduct her?’

  Connolly inspected his nails, the forefinger of his left hand longer than the rest. Giveaway coke nail. He ran a hand across his nose. ‘I want my lawyer in here. I’m saying nothing till then.’

  ‘If you’re after a deal or something, we need to know what you’ve got to offer.’ Fenchurch’s elbows pressed into the wood. ‘As it stands, we’ve got you for Cassie McBride’s death. You assaulted multiple police officers and fired an illegal firearm at us. All your lawyer’s going to say is don’t speak to us. Which means we can’t offer you a deal.’

  Connolly’s mouth twitched, hard and fast, every other twitch distorting his nose.

  ‘Right, come on.’ Docherty grabbed Connolly’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  Connolly let Docherty take him towards the door. He stopped by the doorway and stared at the floor. ‘Look, a few blokes in Blunden’s crew . . . They used to . . . kidnap kids off the street.’

  ‘They were definitely Blunden’s boys?’

  ‘Hundred per cent. His cab drivers.’ Connolly nudged Docherty away and stepped closer to Fenchurch, propping himself up on the back of a chair. ‘They’d drive around, looking for kids playing on their own. Grab them and stick them in their motors. They’d hand them off between them, so if someone saw a motor driving away, by the time you lot caught up with it . . . well, the kid wasn’t there. We’d broken the chain.’

  ‘What’s your involvement in this?’

  Connolly’s fingers tightened around the chair back.

  ‘You don’t feel anything about this, do you? You destroyed families and created misery.’

  ‘I’ve done so many bad things over the years, I can’t sleep at night.’ Connolly held Fenchurch’s gaze, his red eyes glistening with tears. ‘You got any idea what that’s like?’

  ‘You just lie there, staring at the ceiling. All night. Then you give up, get out of bed. Drink coffee. Eat sugary shit.’

  ‘Right.’ Connolly parted his hair again, smoothing down both greasy halves. ‘When I get drunk enough to drift away, when my eyes shut, I see the kids. I see their faces, feel them kicking.’

  ‘So why’s this the first time you’re speaking to us?’

  ‘Because I see a way out of this for me.’ Connolly’s lip curled up. ‘The number of times I’ve thought about killing myself . . . I came close a couple of weeks ago. Really thought about it. Had it all planned out. Then Blunden guessed what I was up to.’ He collapsed into the chair. ‘Had someone go and have a word with my mother.’ He stared into space, his pupils losing all focus, his shoulders deflating like a bouncy castle full of drunk dads. ‘They threatened my mother and my sisters. Anything I tell you . . .’ He drew a line across his throat. Then he leaned back and exhaled. ‘But then I saw that story in the paper yesterday morning. Made me think if I can do something here, maybe your old man can sort me out.’

  Docherty sat next to him, flashing a smile at Fenchurch. ‘We’re listening.’

  ‘I remember that girl, Chloe. Islington, right? Blonde hair. England kit.’

  That wasn’t in the paper . . .

  Fenchurch’s sinuses burned like someone was holding a lighter to his nose. ‘You took her?’

  ‘I didn’t take her, I swear.’ Connolly squeaked out an ‘A . . .’, then shut up. He looked around the room, then opened his mouth again. ‘Like I said, we used to pass these kids around between us. This time, I was the second driver. Most times, we had three. This woman got in the back with her. Changed her clothes, cut her hair. Supposed to pretend to be the girl’s mother, say she got sick, something like that.’

  ‘Where was Blunden taking them?’

  ‘It was for some gang. Never met any of them. Blunden spoke to them. We were just air cover for the people who took them. Our motors were driving around all the time, innocent as you like. Easy to explain away.’

  Fenchurch tugged at his nose, trying to stop the burning. ‘Who took her?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Never met him in my life.’ Connolly shook his head at the table top. Then up at Fenchurch. ‘I passed her off to this big fella. Think he was a cop. Called himself Johnson or something.’

  The flames licked up into Fenchurch’s brain. ‘Chris Johnson?’

  ‘Mean something to you?’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  So what are you saying?’ Fenchurch took the turning marked BELMARSH & COURTS and trundled to a halt by the lights. ‘Should I have just smashed his face off the table?’

  ‘Thankfully you’ve moved past those days . . .’ Docherty gripped the ‘oh shit’ handle above the door like they were going into orbit. ‘So what now?’

  Fenchurch tightened his grip on the wheel, like it was Johnson’s lying serpent throat. ‘I don’t know.’ He drove off and stopped by the security barrier, winding the window down. A plane droned overhead, probably coming in to land at City Airport.

  The guard appeared and Fenchurch held out his warrant card. He frowned at his clipboard. ‘You’re not on my list for today, sir.’

  ‘I’m meeting someone here.’ Fenchurch grabbed his ID back. ‘Paul Temple. He’s a CPS barrister.’

  The guard checked his clipboard again. ‘Okay, sir.’ He
clicked a button and the barrier started grinding up, wobbling like it’d drunk eighteen pints of craft beer. ‘If you’re not gone in ten minutes, I’ll be calling it in. Okay?’

  Jobsworth wanker.

  ‘Cheers.’ Fenchurch drove on and pulled in next to a turquoise Audi soft-top with ’16 plates. In a prison car park. Like that didn’t scream ‘DRUG DEALER’ in six-foot-high letters. Or screw on the take.

  Docherty let go of the handle and rubbed his forehead. ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘Nah. Come on.’ Fenchurch got out and stretched his back, his vertebrae snapping back into almost the right place.

  The fruit trees flanking the prison hid the orange-brick bulk and its turret-like rounded entranceway. Grey walls surrounded it on both sides, big enough for a stupid-haired American dictator to keep the Mexicans out.

  ‘Simon!’ The Audi’s door opened wide and Temple got out, his head barely up to the top of the door. ‘You got my message, then?’

  Fenchurch held up his phone. ‘You managed to knock back Johnson’s bail?’

  Temple joined them as Docherty got out of the Mondeo. ‘So you think he’s going to talk this time?’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘Hope, eh?’ Temple winked at him. ‘That bastard.’

  Another sting of pain hit Fenchurch’s gut. ‘Not that I’ve got much left.’

  Temple stuffed his document pouch under his left arm and started off across the tarmac, the clicking of his heeled shoes drowned out by the drone of another landing plane. ‘Come on, gentlemen, time and tide waits for no man. I’ve had to call in some favours to get a few minutes with him on a Saturday.’

  ‘You know I’ll wash your car forever.’

  ‘The soft-top needs special attention, Simon.’ Temple winked. ‘But I’ll just settle for seeing you smile again.’

  ‘In here, sirs.’ The prison officer led them into the room and waited by the door. Place stank of bleach, like they’d tried to scour it of all DNA traces. Six tables were arranged in a two by three formation, the barred windows letting shafts of light advance across the red lino flooring. ‘I’ll just be a second.’

  Docherty sat at the table nearest the door. ‘Right, Si, against my better judgement, you’re running this, okay?’

  ‘Boss.’ Fenchurch rested against another table, letting his suit jacket hang open by his sides. ‘I’m calm, I promise.’

  Temple was talking on his phone out in the hallway, facing away. Behind him, the white-walled prison corridor stretched off to infinity. DC Chris Johnson lumbered down it, flanked by two officers who looked like American wrestlers. The guards yanked him into the room, followed by Temple.

  Johnson slouched down opposite Fenchurch, running his tongue along his teeth, a sneer on his face. His curtains hair was all messed up.

  ‘I’m going to cut to the chase.’ Fenchurch cracked his knuckles, enjoying the cartilage popping. ‘We know you worked for Frank Blunden.’

  Johnson tried to smooth his hair into the curtains. The left side jutted up like the hull of a boat. He licked his finger and tried again.

  ‘Okay, so that’s the game you’re playing, is it?’ Fenchurch cracked his knuckles again, the only thing he could do to stop himself from diving across the room and smashing Johnson’s face into the wall. The drums thundered like rapids. ‘You abducted kids for Blunden. You took my daughter.’

  Johnson stopped fussing with his hair and smoothing down his stubble. ‘I know the rules here, okay? All I want to know is, what’s this worth?’

  Fenchurch looked at Temple, pleading with him like he was a dog in the kennels.

  Temple cleared his throat. ‘Mr Johnson, as I’m sure you’ll understand, this whole thing depends on what you’ve got to offer.’ He unzipped his document holder and sifted through papers. ‘At the present time, though no official date has been set, you’re pencilled in to stand trial in mid-April for the death of Steven Shelvey. If you bring in someone else, we might cancel the charges levelled against you.’

  ‘That so?’ Johnson picked at his teeth. ‘How do I know this is on the level?’

  ‘Because it’s over for you.’ Fenchurch battled the urge to reach for his throat and just squeeze. ‘There’s two things you can do to help yourself here. Face trial, or tell us everything you know.’ He crouched down next to him. ‘It’s over, Chris. Your rank, your pension. The money you’ve been taking for what you’ve been doing. We’ll get all of that. And I reckon you’ll get at least thirty years.’

  ‘I want a deal.’

  ‘Everyone does.’ Fenchurch stood and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Was Blunden in charge?’

  ‘I dealt with Frank. That’s it. If he had bosses, I never met them.’

  ‘And Mr Blunden’s dead. Convenient.’ Fenchurch folded his arms. ‘Who did the order to murder Steven Shelvey come from?’

  Johnson clacked his teeth together for a few seconds. ‘Came from Blunden.’

  ‘So you killed Shelvey?’

  Johnson nodded. ‘Sod it.’ He crumbled, almost disappearing into his seat. ‘What you said is true. I was working with this gang Blunden knew. I helped them make sure the law didn’t interfere. They used to move packages around. Drugs, guns. Other things.’

  ‘People?’

  Johnson swallowed a nod. ‘This one day, we was supposed to be shifting some prostitutes, taking them from Blunden’s brothel in Hackney to his new place south of the river. Then I got a call from this bloke. Daniel Connolly. You might want a word with him.’

  Fenchurch winked at Temple, hiding it from Johnson. ‘And what did Connolly tell you?’

  ‘Said the plan’s changed. He pulled up in this street in Camden, right next to me. Had a little girl in the back seat, asleep. Then this woman got out of the back, supposed to be her mother.’ Johnson sucked in a breath and let it out in one long sigh. ‘I remember her clear as day. Cute girl. Always find it funny when girls wear football kits.’

  That one detail, the thing they’d kept from the press all those years. Connolly and Johnson both knew it. The bloody pair of them, they had to be playing us . . .

  ‘Next thing I know, a call came in on my radio. Said an officer’s girl had gone missing near Angel. Now, I had a bag with a load of blonde hair and an England kit, and a sleeping girl in my boot. Didn’t take two and two to—’

  ‘What did you do with her?’

  ‘You think I killed her, don’t you?’ Johnson’s grin slipped away. ‘You should wish I killed her. Let’s just say that some people were going to have a little bit of fun with her.’

  Fenchurch reached over and grabbed hold of his shirt, damp and stinking. ‘It’s either I smash your brains out now or some big bastard in here does when the doors are left unlocked at night. Your choice. What happened to her?’

  ‘Let go!’

  Fenchurch grabbed Johnson by the throat and choked him, squeezing his fingers around his prickly flesh. ‘What happened to her?’

  Johnson’s nails scratched into Fenchurch’s hands, like a feral cat. ‘Let go of me!’

  Fenchurch glanced over at Docherty, who sat arms folded, and loosened his grip. He stalked around the room, prowling round Johnson, and spoke through a lump in his throat. ‘You were the end of the chain. What happened to her?’

  Johnson massaged his throat, then smoothed apart his curtains, a red weal covering his neck. ‘I drove her to Blunden.’

  ‘Frank’s Cabs?’

  Johnson shook his head, his expression darkening, the act slipping from the actor’s face, revealing the terror below. ‘His brothel.’ He swallowed hard. ‘When I got there, Blunden was spitting teeth about who she was.’

  ‘What was Blunden going to do with her?’

  Johnson pulled at his shirt. ‘What I’ve heard, they keep them for about six months. They drug them while they’re . . . You know. At it with them.’

  Ice chilled Fenchurch’s veins. Felt like someone was stabbing a cigarette out on his eyes. ‘Blunden was?’

  �
��Probably.’ Johnson folded his arms. ‘They treated them like little princes and princesses, until they got fed up of them. Then we disappeared them.’

  Cigarettes stabbed Fenchurch’s eyes. ‘You killed her?’

  ‘Aren’t you listening to me? We disappeared her.’

  Fenchurch’s gut flew up, hope raising its bastard head through the burning acid. ‘What do you mean, you disappeared her?’

  ‘The way this whole scheme works, right, Blunden didn’t want to leave a trail of dead kids once . . . You know. Once they’d finished with them. So Blunden ran a fake adoption agency.’

  Fenchurch swallowed bile. ‘He what?’

  ‘You heard. We give these kids to desperate parents at the other end of the country. These people had been rejected from the system for one reason or another. Desperate people, one step away from getting a Romanian or a Chink. Nowhere near London. And they were told never to bring them here.’

  ‘So you gave them children who’d been abused?’

  ‘Not me. Blunden.’ Johnson snarled, pointing out of the room. ‘The adoptive parents wouldn’t know. The kids were drugged when it was going on. We told them their birth parents were dead. Sometimes gave them a little bit of a helping hand. Made sure they’d never visit London again, and if they did, the kids wouldn’t look anything like the parents remembered. There was no risk. It was a lot more effective than killing them. Questions weren’t asked.’

  I should just kill you now, you dirty, filthy pervert.

  Smash your brains in, kick your guts all over the floor.

  Stamp on your heart and your bollocks.

  Fenchurch sat down next to Docherty. ‘How can you live with yourself?’

  ‘What makes you think I can?’ Johnson pushed his chair back and started pacing around the room. ‘Nature’s red in tooth and claw and all that. This civilisation bollocks, that’s just so people can control us. It’s still a wild world. I’ve seen the darkness and, believe me, these are people you do not want to mess with. I did, and I’m paying the price.’