False Witness (John Steel series Book 3)

by syron-jones, p s

  The voice echoed around the room as it leaked through more than one loudspeaker. It appeared that the newcomer was talking through some kind of tannoy system. Chief Doyle made a slight nod towards the DJ booth, hoping that one of the SRU team had seen and understood that the man must be in there.

  “But something went wrong, didn’t it?” the voice went on. “The bus missed its mark, it was too wet. But it didn’t matter, did it?”

  Doyle laughed to himself at the theatrical absurdity of the situation.

  “Humour me, Detective Steel,” he called out. “Tell me why it didn’t matter?”

  Chief Doyle was standing still, aware that his men were close by and would soon kill the British detective.

  There was a muffled grunt, then another. Doyle listened carefully, hoping to see the lights come on and Steel lying on the ground with a blade in his chest. But after that there was nothing—just silence. Then from the other side of the room there was another muffled grunt, then the clatter of something metal hitting the ground. Then more silence.

  “Detective Steel,” Doyle was taunting his enemy. “I hope you have made plans to get out of here. Because how do you think it is going to look when you and your team walk out of here with me dead on the ground? Surely you realise that’ll make you the criminal.” Doyle was now beginning to sweat, and his collar felt like a noose.

  “Answer me, damn it!” he yelled out. “I am your superior officer!”

  The silence was broken by another muffled noise to the rear of McCall, whose eyes were firmly fixed on Chief Doyle and his men.

  “Okay, I’ll answer,” Steel’s voice went on. “It didn’t matterbecause their escape afforded you another opportunity, to tie off loose ends.”

  Chief Doyle smiled cockily, as if Steel’s ramblings were mere speculation and theory.

  “An ex-teacher, a journalist and a judge?” the Chief answered. “Really? How would killing them benefit me?” Doyle motioned for the rest of his men to surround him.

  “It became clear when we got the financials from everyone.Oh, by the way, you made a brilliant job of clogging up the works with pointless stuff.”

  Doyle began to sneer, but it turned into a snarl.

  “Anyway,” Steel continued, “when I got the figures I found that our first vic had no income. So how was he paying for the apartment, his food, everything?” His voice still echoed through the speakers, making locating him impossible.

  “The answer was that he was being paid off. His career as a teacher was coming to an end due to an injury, so you found him and recruited him. His task was simple: he had to be a false witness.”

  Chief Doyle and the others said nothing, each man looking around in case of a surprise attack.

  “The journalist. I liked that guy. You fed him false information and he put it to press. The trouble was he found out he was being used. What could he do? He could hardly say that a dirty cop had given him false information, he would be laughed out of a job, and his integrity as a journalist lost forever. Then you found out he was going to do a story on Brian Armstrong. And this you could not allow.”

  Doyle began to clap, a smile on his face, as if he was almost impressed by Steel’s deductions. “A brilliant story, Detective, most brilliant. However, why did I kill the judge?” Doyle felt confident that Steel had no concrete evidence: all of his ramblings were nothing but pure conjecture.

  “The judge? Well, for her we have to look back. You see as a cop you had to make yourself shine, so having several criminals who you could not put away just wasn’t looking good, so you set them up, quite well in fact.”

  Chief Doyle nodded as if he had been complimented.

  “The first one was difficult. Hell, you had never done it before, frame a crook. And then what? You needed a prosecutor, a damned good one, one who was going places so her record would shine, especially if she had a slam dunk case against Tyrell Williams. You found Julie Armstrong.”

  Brian felt the cuffs tighten round his wrists. All he wanted to do was leap across the room and rip the Chief’s throat out.

  “Then you had to deal with Darius Smith. You had done it before, you knew the lawyer would jump at the case, hell, she had been told she was being considered for the job of Chief Justice. Another slam dunk. She makes the press once more.”

  A sudden silence was followed by another muffled sound.

  “They had a witness each time who could place them at the scene. The trouble was, she recognised Andy Carlson as the witness from the Tyrell Williams case. The tabloids had been blowing up the hype quite nicely and it was only one reporter who had the facts.”

  Doyle wiped his brow with a handkerchief from his breast pocket as the sweat cascaded down.

  “Julie worked it out, didn’t she? She threatened to come clean. But that would destroy everything she had worked for. Cases would be called into question and the cost on retrials would be in the millions, and you reminded her of this. Didn’t you, Chief?” Steel spat the words viciously.

  “How long had you had her followed before that perfect opportunity arose, Chief? An argument in a packed restaurant,with plenty of witnesses to tell of the row between the married couple. But you had to be sure, so there was one last job for the witness who would see Brian Armstrong enter the alleyway.”

  There was another pause but this time there was pure silence. The men surrounding Chief Doyle looked around them, their weapons held at the ready.

  “Sorry about breaking off like that,” Steel began again. “I just had to get a drink from the bar. It’s very warm in here.”

  Doyle’s men swung round in the darkness to where they remembered the bar was and opened up with their guns. There were flashes of light as sparks flew and the sound of mirrors and bottles being smashed.

  “Stop shooting, you idiots!” yelled the Chief, as the sound of the last shell casing hit the floor.

  Then they heard a new sound—that of laughter.

  “Sorry, gents,” Steel taunted. “I could not resist testing out to see how dumb you really were.” DC flicked ‘the bird’ hand signal towards the darkness as a ‘thank you’ for cremating his bar.

  “Anyway, back to the case,” Steel continued. “Where was I? Ah yes. Your problem. Now you needed another prosecutor. A hungry one, and so came Counsellor Mathews, or as she was then known, Baker.

  “She was everything you needed. But, crucially, you had something she needed. A case that would make her visible to the people who mattered.”

  McCall looked over at Armstrong, who was taking it all in. Everything was becoming clear now, and he hated himself for believing that his wife had cheated on him.

  “She won the case and was quickly propelled into career mode, she became a puppet for you. You would decide who lived and who died and after a while she couldn’t take that. She kept the files from the Armstrong case because it would prove that you handed her thirty pieces of silver, not a life-changing case. In fact she kept a lot of files, including those of the Tyrell and Darius cases.”

  Chief Doyle could feel the veins in his forehead throb and the warmth of his skin, as his blood felt as if it was boiling.

  “WILL SOMEONE PLEASE SHUT THIS ASSHOLE UP?”he roared.

  McCall and the others dived for cover as the remaining gunmen opened up into the darkness that surrounded them. Sparks flew, signalling metal against metal as the solid shot impacted against the metal beams, railings or just about anything.

  The firing stopped eventually, since all the shotguns and pistols were empty.

  “Did we get him?” asked one of the armed men as he fumbled for a fresh ammunition magazine from his belt’s pouch.

  “Not quite!” said Steel. Everyone looked upwards in time to see a black form drop down onto one of the men, sending him to the floor. The sound of his leg snapping as he broke Steel’s fall was drowned out by his screams of pain.

  Steel, who was still crouched down, spun and swept the legs of another man who crashed down onto his back onto th
e hardened glass floor. The glass splintered as his head impacted onto it. This was now a four-on-one fight and none of them were going to wait for their turn, they just piled in.

  The leg of a tall stocky cop swung up as he kicked upwards, hoping to catch Steel under the chin, but John fell and rolled backwards, just as another swung down a barstool he’d found. The stool met with the stocky man’s leg, breaking it at the knee.

  The stocky cop screamed and fell backwards against the railings of the seating area. His hand fell upon something metal, and he grasped at it to find it was one of the SRU’s M4 rifles. The cop screamed and opened up on the cop who had shattered his leg.

  The cop was pushed backwards by the close range impact of the weapon. Pieces of bone and flesh filled the air as the metal-jacket rounds punched holes through the parts that the man’s Kevlar vest could not cover. What was left of the cop fell to the floor, and a fountain of blood shot upwards as his remains smashed down onto the ground. Blood oozed from the masses of exit wounds, turning the glass dance floor red. The Chief turned towards the broken cop, drew his service Glock, and put a hollow point round through the man’s head.

  “Stop shooting my men, you idiot!” the Chief yelled, spitting the words as he put his weapon back into his shoulder holster.

  McCall looked over as a huge man stepped from the shadows and grabbed Steel. The giant—who stood nearly seven foot tall—was a mix of flab and muscle, and his face was covered in shadow.

  The giant lifted Steel off his feet, then threw him like a rag doll against what was left of the bar. Sparks and flashes of broken electrics now illuminated the bar, and there were small fires from the broken spirit bottles.

  “My bar, you set fire to my goddamn bar, you motherfucker! I’ll—” DC never got to finish the sentence, as Steel was thrown past him towards the shadows.

  “Your boy’s not doin’ too well, is he?” DC said to McCall before she spotted her mark: Bennett. She ran full pelt at him as he searched his pockets for more cartridges.

  Her target looked up just in time to see McCall’s boot swing round in a roundhouse. His head clicked to the side from the impact, knocking him to his knees. He spat a mix of plasma and saliva then looked up at her with evil in his eyes. Blood and spit hung from his mouth in a long strand which he wiped away.

  “Is that any way to treat a friend, Sammy?” he snapped.

  McCall threw a punch but he grabbed her fist, but he failed to see the extended leg kick upwards, making him a soprano. Bennett fell forwards, the air pushed out of his body, but he had enough strength to give her a back-hand slap across the face, which sent her sideways. McCall used the force of the hit to carry out another roundhouse to his jaw, which took him by surprise. There was a spray of blood and teeth before he collapsed, unconscious.

  “You ain’t no friend and you ain’t no cop.” Sam stood over him and spat a mouthful of blood at him.

  The giant who was now swinging punches at Steel was backing out of the way—something he knew he could only do while he had the ground. As they came into a lighter area Steel’s heart sank as he recognised the giant from a previous encounter. That had started with Steel hanging upside down in a warehouse and ended with Steel dropping several full barrels onto him.

  “I remember you,” said the giant. “You’re that guy from the steelworks. You’re the only man to best me, you fucker.”

  Steel smiled and shrugged. “Well, small word, isn’t it? I guess you must be Monster?”

  John was now hitting the rail to the seating area. He had several choices: jump it or roll out of the way and start this dance again.

  “Why don’t you just kill him, you big dumb fuck?” yelled the last remaining one of Doyle’s men, who was now backing away while he reloaded his 9mm Glock. “We didn’t break you out just to dance around like a fairy!”

  Monster turned around towards the guard and headed for him.

  “Uhm, I wouldn’t shoot him,” Steel yelled, but the warning came too late as a shot went off, followed by a scream. Steel shook his head as he imagined the giant tearing the man’s arms off and then clubbing him to death with them.

  Suddenly the doors burst open and a team of SRU filed in, with Tooms at the rear

  “Nobody move! Hands in the air!” yelled Tooms, taking no chances until all the lights were on and they could see who was who.

  As the darkness disappeared Tooms found his colleagues and his quarry.

  “Oh, Detective, just in the nick of time,” called out the Chief. “Arrest Detective Steel and the others. We have found out that they have been working with the killers all along.”

  Tooms looked down at Chief Doyle’s extended hand of gratitude.

  Joshua Tooms hesitated for a moment, then smiled and slapped the cuffs on him, to the Chief’s utter astonishment.

  “What are you doing, you idiot?” he called out. “It’s them you want!”

  Steel walked over to Monster, as he stood there, ready to take on the whole police force.

  “It’s okay, this guy was with us,” Steel lied to the SRU sergeant.

  Monster looked down at Steel, almost lost for words.

  “You know, Tiny, you have potential, don’t waste it. Now get out of here.” Steel handed the man a business card and watched him leave. McCall walked up to Steel, who was watching as the real cops were taking the Chief’s men into custody.

  “Why did you let him go?” she asked. John didn’t move, he was busy watching the bad guys being corralled.

  “Because guys like him aren’t bad, they are just made to think they are because they’re big. You give them a purpose and they could amaze you with their ability and their loyalty.”

  They both watched as Tooms led out the criminals, with Chief Doyle in the lead.

  “You want in on this party?” McCall asked Steel, but she knew the answer would be no. Publicity and the press wasn’t his thing. Steel stood and watched them disappear out of the door and smiled with a sense of relief that it was over.

  As they came out into the night, Doyle was screaming his innocence to the masses that now lined the street. Camera crews from news stations stood ready to film anything.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I can assure you that this is a misunderstanding and I will be back in office tomorrow,” the Chief called out. “The facts behind events that happened inside this building tonight will come out for all to see.”

  Suddenly the image of DC yelling at Steel about the damage to his bar appeared on the large monitor above the front door, for the masses to see.

  “To answer your question, sir, yes we saw everything,” called out Captain Brant.

  The Chief looked round to see the captain standing by a large police prisoner transport with a large grin on his face.

  Steel walked out to meet Tony, McCall and Lloyd, their clothes torn and blooded but all of them alive and uninjured. He stopped and sucked in a lungful of clean air.

  “So,” John Steel said, “case closed. The three prisoners will go back to jail until their hearing but I don’t think they will be there long.”

  McCall smiled. At least something good had come out of this. She followed him as he made his way to the three escapees.

  “So, what happens now, Detectives?” Armstrong asked with a ‘glad-to-be-alive’ look.

  “Well, I am not sure but you can bet there will be another investigation. Until that time you three will have to go back to jail but this one is going to be more like the Ritz.”

  The men laughed while they watched the others being loaded on to the transport.

  “In the meantime I know of someone who wants to say hello,” Steel said, turning towards McCall’s car and waving. Armstrong looked round to see a young woman approach slowly. A tear ran down his face as he realised who she was. Megan’s pace quickened to a run.

  “Daddy!” she called out, and Armstrong ran towards her. McCall went to stop him, but Steel put an arm across her path. She looked over at him with an accusatory expression.
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  “They have been apart too long,” Steel told her. “Give them this, he deserves it.”

  McCall nodded and smiled.

  Agent Lloyd walked up to Steel, who was feeling pretty good about himself.

  “So mission complete,” Lloyd said to him. “Just like old times,eh, Steel?”

  John nodded but didn’t look at Agent Lloyd, who was now standing next to him.

  “Yeah, just like old times,” he agreed. “You using me and not telling me what the hell is going on. So who the hell is Agent Dalton?”

  Lloyd smiled as she wondered how long he had known. “He works for me at the company. He is quite new and green so he was the perfect choice,” she said with a smug grin.

  Ever since she had taken part in the case he had thought something was wrong, for the company don’t usually get involved in such things, they leave that to the Feds.

  “So are you Echo or is he?” he asked. Steel nodded towards Brian.

  Cassandra Lloyd stood for a moment before answering. She could lie but then he probably already knew the answer and was just playing with her.

  “He is, or rather we are,” she said at last. “I have known him for a long time. He has done a lot for me in the past. Friends help one another out, remember?”

  Steel nodded as he watched father and daughter reunite.

  “He was in the company for a long time, they say he was the best.”

  John Steel watched with a mixed feeling of happiness for them and jealousy. Brian Armstrong had something he would never have. A reunion with his family.

  “He probably still is the best, apart from you of course, Mr Steel.” She smiled as she took pleasure in saying his name again. They turned to watch the press as they rushed to take pictures of the police transport before it took off back to the precinct. Steel felt relieved and happy: that was the case closed apart from the paperwork.