by Conrad Jones
“Thanks, detective,” Mr Evans said after a few seconds of silence.
“You’re welcome, this is a difficult time so look after each other,” Braddick said leaving the room, holding the door open for Mark to follow. He glanced back at Barbara and she glared at him but he knew that he couldn’t win the hearts and minds of all. Taking Mark by the arm, he guided him down the corridor where they could speak unheard by others. “What do you know about the Farrells?” he asked in a no nonsense manner.
Mark looked around. “I’ve heard of them, mostly through boxing circles. They’ve sponsored quite a few local title bouts over the years. It goes hand in hand in this city, boxing and gangsters, always has.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Braddick lowered his voice. “The last fight I went to see at the Echo Arena, the bar was like a line up for most wanted.” He smiled. His voice turned serious again. “You’re going to have to look out for your family. The Farrells will come after Bryn for certain and they’ll probably come after you too, all of you.”
“They’ve already put the fucking window through in here and sent a wreath to my mum! What more do they want?”
“They were warnings, nothing compared to what is coming, Mark,” Braddick warned. “I’ll do what I can for you but my hands are tied financially, whatever we do won’t be much and it won’t be long-term. The onus will be on you to protect them. Is there anywhere else you can go for now?”
“I’ll take them to my house tonight,” Mark said concerned. “It’s the best I can do today. We don’t have the money to go away.”
“Here is my number,” Braddick handed him a card. “Text me your address and do not tell anyone else even if they ask. Make sure all your windows are locked and I need you to screw your letterbox closed from the inside.” The implication of accelerant being poured through it registered on Mark’s face. “I’m not trying to scare you but this is the brutal reality.” Mark nodded; his face pale. “Make sure you have something heavy or something sharp near your bed and have an escape route clear in your mind in case you have to get out of there quickly.” Mark looked worried but listened intently. “Your mother and father can’t jump out of windows so make sure that you can get out of the ground floor.” Mark nodded again. “I’ll make sure we have a uniformed police car there tonight but I don’t know how long we can keep that up. I’ll put an urgent response marker on the address so if you make a call, you’ll be the priority.” Braddick looked back at the theatre door. “Bryn will be under armed guard here so don’t worry about him.”
“Thanks, detective,” Mark said with a nod. “I appreciate the advice.”
“If there’s any sign of anything dodgy, you ring nine-nine-nine and then you ring me. Keep your eyes and ears open and take care of them,” Braddick patted his shoulder firmly and headed off down the corridor. Mark watched him go, his mind racing and his heart thumping a steady rhythm in his chest. Braddick didn’t look back. He needed to get back to the station but he couldn’t help but think that the Evans family were in dire trouble.
14
Big Paulie was feeling unwell. His clothes were saturated in sweat, a sickly sweet musk pervaded from his body. He knew from experience that within an hour, he would stink. His mind was struggling to compute the amount of shit that he was in and just how deep it was; deeper than he had been before and then some. He had been in custody less than two hours and already his shaky confidence was beginning to crack. The day that he had always dreaded had finally arrived. All the excuses and credible denials that he had planned for years had turned to dust, simply because they all involved pointing the finger at the Farrells. Now the time had come, blaming his employers and claiming he was forced into it was clearly a death sentence. Whenever he had plotted his escape from the law, his excuses seemed so plausible but now they appeared ridiculous. Coercion was not going to fly. The truth was that he was far more frightened of the Farrells than prison and as for the Karpovs, there wasn’t a word for how frightened he was of them. He had seen what they were capable of.
The lock on his cell clicked noisily and the door opened with a clang. “Your brief is here, Williams,” a custody officer snapped. The policeman looked at Paulie as if he was taking the piss by having a lawyer at all. “Stand up man, stand up!” he shouted. Paulie stood and a wave of nausea hit him. A bald man stood behind the officer looking on angrily, “DI Cain is waiting to talk to you in the interview suite so if you could be as quick as you can, I’d be grateful,” the officer said sarcastically.
“We’ll be as long as it takes, constable,” the bald man in a brown pinstripe suit said, squeezing through the door. The police officer looked like he had been slapped. “Now fuck off and leave us in peace.” The officer made to reply but thought better of it. Colm Boyce wasn’t a man to annoy. He could have an internal investigation started every day of the week and the Police Complaints Committee was on first name terms with his secretary. The brief frowned and waited for the door to be closed before speaking to Paulie. “My name is Colm Boyce.” He introduced himself with a brief nod of his head. There was no warmth in his eyes. “I’ve been instructed by Fenton Holdings to represent you.” He handed Paulie a business card, which listed Nicolai Karpov as the Managing Director of Fenton Holdings and then placed the card back in his pocket quickly. “It is your choice but I’m recommending that you say nothing except to confirm your name and address,” Boyce said placing a pair of black rimmed glasses onto his nose. He leaned close to Paulie’s ear. “If you say anything at all, Nicolai will have your testicles removed with a hacksaw before your throat is slit and then he will feed you to your parents,” he whispered so quickly that Paulie wasn’t sure if he had really heard it. He stepped away. “If we stick to a no comment interview we can bide time until they reveal all their evidence, okay?” he said politely, although his eyes were fixed and threatening. Paulie looked down wringing his hands together nervously. Boyce spoke with acid tinged words. “I said, is that okay with you?”
Paulie nodded and turned around, feeling uncomfortable and in need of fresh air. He was about to speak when he felt a rush of blood to his brain. His chest felt like he was being squeezed by a giant hand. He had the strange sensation of floating and then nothing. Big Paulie Williams fell like a toppled tree, unconscious before he hit the floor.
Liam Johnson had stayed beneath the barges for nearly twenty minutes, surfacing and clinging to the hulls to catch his breath whenever possible. Eventually the cars moved on and the search of the canal bank was abandoned. He could barely climb out of the water. His hands were so cold that the pain in his fingers was unbearable. He slumped onto the far side of the bank and crawled on his hands and knees along the line of moored boats looking for a window with weak spots. His search paid off when he spotted an aluminium framed window, big enough for him to crawl through. The seal was degraded and the edges, spotted with rot. With numb fingers, he pulled the window out and then slipped inside the barge head first. He dragged the quilt from a single bunk and wrapped it around his shivering body. He took off his shoes and socks, curling up in a foetal position in an attempt to raise his body temperature. He could feel his ankle swelling and knew that he wouldn’t be able to walk far unaided. Exhaustion seeped into every cell in his body. His eyes closed and as he lay shivering, the need to sleep overwhelmed him.
It was dark when he woke up and it took him a while to recall the day’s events and where he was. Checking his watch, he realised that he had slept for three hours while his body recovered from the shock and the cold. His mind focused on Ray and spurred him into action and he knew exactly what he was going to do. He kept the quilt wrapped around him tightly while he fumbled his way to the galley and searched in the darkness for the cooker. His fingers found a two ring hob and he twisted the switches on and off and listened for the sound of gas. There was nothing. He reached down and opened a cupboard door, fumbling inside to find the Calor gas canister. Turning it on, he switched on the cooker which ignited with
a blue flame and illuminated the interior of the barge with a weak blue glow.
He reluctantly dropped the quilt and searched through drawers and cupboards, finding a t-shirt and a thick black jumper which he pulled on. A first aid box provided an elastic crepe bandage and he carefully wrapped it around his injured ankle fastening it tightly before pulling his socks and shoes on. The cutlery drawer held a selection of carving knives of which he chose the two longest, sliding them into his belt. He was hoping to find a mobile phone but his luck was out. Feeling strong enough to move, he turned off the cooker and climbed back through the window onto the muddy towpath, his sense of direction took him left towards home where he knew he would be able to get help for Ray from a very unlikely source.
15
The traffic was heavy and Braddick flicked through the channels and settled for a local station which, played ballads in the evening; he needed to wind down, his nerves on a knife’s edge. The news of Big Paulie Williams keeling over in the custody suite was a blow but not exactly a surprise. He was a heart attack waiting to happen and his chances of dying went through the roof when he ingested three dozen packets of heroin, several of which had dissolved in his stomach. The doctors said that he had no chance of pulling through although he was still technically alive. A death in custody was a nightmare, every step that the police had made would be scrutinised and analysed for signs of culpability. Internal investigations would begin and it would be for Braddick and his team to prove that they were not at fault or didn’t contribute to the circumstances of his collapse. Every link in the chain would be tested. There would be weeks of arse covering and finger pointing until the furore died down and the focus shifted elsewhere. His collapse would increase the workload massively.
They had missed the chance to interview him for now, which would save a few hours of labour costs but the information that could have been gleaned was lost, not least what provoked Farrell to attack a teenager; the repercussions of which could resound for a long time yet. Bryn Evans, his family and their vulnerability were top of his mind. He had witnessed the cruelty of organised crime families and in his experience, revenge attacks tended to be the most brutal. The murder of Anthony Farrell, intended or not, would not go unpunished. The vulnerability of the family concerned him deeply and shadows of his past whispered warnings in his mind. ‘You can’t protect them, no one can. You couldn’t even protect me could you?’
His past was etched into his present and it would be a constant in his future too. It couldn’t be left behind, forgotten or rationalised. He had broken the rules by falling in love with Karin and her death was his fault. He crossed the lines by trying to protect her off the books and reaped the rewards for his mistakes by attending her funeral on his own, her only mourner. The only people that knew she was dead were her murderers, the local authorities, who cremated her as a female unknown and Braddick. Her family and the few friends she had stayed in touch with over the years had never heard from her once she left Essex. They had no clue where she had gone or why and no idea that she was dead. After a few months of no contact, her parents had reported her as a missing person and her file was sitting online with millions of others and that is where it would stay, unsolved and un-investigated.
Braddick first laid eyes on her behind the bar in the notorious Essex nightclub, Rachel’s, which put Basildon on the map when it was linked to the ‘Essex Boys’ murders in Rettenden in December 1995. Braddick was leading a squad for the NCA, who were focusing on Essex because a brutal war over the territory, which had been simmering for years, had erupted. The body count was rising and entire families were being targeted, no matter how loose the relationship to gang members was. The targeting of innocent people brought the violent struggle into the spotlight and the NCA were tasked with aiding the local constabularies to bring the situation under control. Essex was an incredibly lucrative territory for drug dealers and its closeness to London made it simple to service and control. The amounts of money involved made it a stronghold that was always vulnerable to attacks from rival gangs from the city. Just a few months in control of Essex could make enough money to exit the game completely.
Parts of the seaside towns of Southend, Clacton and Jaywick, once thriving Victorian holiday resorts had become bedsit land for London’s homeless addicts. There were entire estates of addicts trying to feed £100 a day habits, which made rich pickings for the dealers. Jaywick had become the focus of several documentaries about addicts living on benefits. One documentary stated it had a population of four thousand people, at least half drug users. Dealers watching did the maths; two thousand people with a habit, all living within a few square miles of each other meant that Jaywick was worth thirty-five-million a year to whoever controlled the drugs. It was a captive audience that needed supplying. Southend and Clacton were bigger still and rival firms tried to muscle in. The documentaries had highlighted the opportunities of supplying the small rundown towns on the coast. Rival suppliers from the city clashed as several of them wanted a piece of the business and the wars began.
During the investigation, Braddick met Karin Range. She was a nineteen-year-old barmaid with the looks of a pop star and the ability to attract men with trouble running through their veins. Her ex-boyfriend had paid for her to have breast implants and then threatened to cut them out when she finished with him for shagging her best friend in the club’s disabled toilet. When the threats were ramped up and became more frequent, Karin turned to her employer for help. The ex-boyfriend had his legs broken and still walked with a limp but he never bothered her again and her employer took her to Paris to get over it. She became involved with him very quickly and the relationship became serious but it wasn’t long before she realised that she had made a huge mistake. Her lover was a much older jealous narcissist with a violent streak and a cocaine habit. Karin was dragged along to a whirlwind of parties, boozy beach holidays and business dinners with leery strangers, who stunk of cigars and expensive aftershave. She was a trophy on his arm, a slut in his bed and a punch bag when things didn’t go his way. As time went by, he became less secretive about his business dealings and it was clear to her that he was mixing with some very dangerous characters. Some of the most notorious names in Essex were his associates, names that she had only ever heard whispered because talking about them could land you in hospital. It was only later that she realised that they were all in business together and their business was drugs. Some of the conversations that she was party to, especially when they holidayed in Spain, made her feel very frightened indeed. They talked about burying people as if it was a football result. She had stepped into a world that she didn’t belong in but she couldn’t see any way of walking away from him unhurt.
Three months later, she was with her boyfriend and four of his colleagues and their partners, drinking champagne in a nightclub in Southend when two men approached their table. Words were exchanged and then one of the men pulled out a gun. He aimed and fired but the gun jammed. The failed assassins, who turned out to be bitter rivals, were overcome by the group and the security staff from the club. They were beaten senseless, bottled and stabbed before the women were taken away from the club, their men remained behind. Karin knew that they would take the rivals somewhere and murder them. Over the following months, it was an event that was frequently brought up when the group were drunk. They laughed and joked about it as if it was nothing, more gruesome details revealed each time. The men were dismembered with a power saw and disposed of in barrels of acid. One of the limbless men was still screaming when they lowered him into the liquid. The incident terrified her and she couldn’t look at her partner after that. She became an automaton, going through the motions to remain alive.
When the Essex investigation began and the NCA swooped, Karin was secretly relieved when her boyfriend was arrested and charged. She wasn’t twenty years old and yet she felt tired of the world. The pressure, the violence and the drugs had taken their toll. She was only too happy to make a statement and was in
terviewed for hours but she didn’t recount the nightclub incident and she refused to go into the witness programme. Karin didn’t think that she had said anything that the police didn’t know already and she didn’t believe that her boyfriend would see her as a weak link. It was the biggest mistake of her short life. While the gang was locked up on remand, she tried to make her own way again but no one wanted to know her. The good people that she knew thought she was damaged goods, a gangster’s moll and the bad ones thought she was a grass for cooperating with the investigation. Karin was oblivious to the fact that she was a witness, a loose end that needed to be tied up.
Braddick was tasked with working on her, making sure that she didn’t bolt and trying to squeeze her for more information. He fell for her the first time that he saw her but he resisted his urges because of her age and the job. The more he talked to her, the harder he fell and the harder it became to ignore the fact that he was completely smitten. As they spent time together it became clear that she felt exactly the same. They had a powerful chemistry. The magnetism between them was too strong for either of them to resist and they fell in love. They spent their days walking, eating and laughing, comfortable with each other despite the age gap. Their nights were long and hot and when their lovemaking was over they would talk until the first tweets of the dawn chorus drifted to them. Karin spilled her heart out about her time with her ex and eventually the story about the murders came out. Although they didn’t realise it then, their fate was sealed. Braddick convinced her to make a statement, promising her that the firm would be jailed for years and that he would help her to start over with a new identity and she trusted in him. She loved Braddick but she underestimated how feared her ex and his firm were and how far their reach stretched; so had Braddick.
