Ashes to Ashes

by Margaret Duffy

  More cautiously, we reached the second floor. The torch beam immediately picked out a horror figure reeling towards us, a man with blood pouring from his mouth. Eyes glazed – he looked literally dead on his feet – he plunged headlong down the stairs. Ahead, there was a dim light through a smashed-in door to the immediate left of us. Without saying a word, we stood one on each side of the door and I switched off the torch.

  Shouting outside now, silence here. Like a grave.

  ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of David Bowman,’ I heard Patrick say.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ O’Connor’s voice snarled.

  ‘He was a friend of mine. Plymouth. I’m sure you remember gunning down an obviously unarmed constable in the Devon and Cornwall Police.’

  ‘Oh, him. He got in the way, that’s all.’

  ‘Drop the gun.’

  O’Connor laughed. ‘You’ve got one, I’ve got one. I can easily kill you even with my left hand. Who’s going to shoot first?’

  ‘You won’t escape. There are any number of cops outside. And, by the way, I’m the one you thought you’d cooked.’

  In the next second there was another shot and, not stopping to think, I plunged through the doorway, into a short passageway, through another door and into a room beyond and fired, wildly as it happened, at the bear-like outline standing swaying in front of the window. He went over like a felled tree.

  Patrick was on the floor, struggling to get up.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I cried.

  ‘No, I flung myself down just before he fired and clouted my head on the wall,’ he replied, succeeding in standing. ‘God, you really do see stars. Is he dead?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I whinnied after having had just one fright too many.

  In the dim light from a rapidly fading camping lamp, Joanna had gone over to look at the prone man who suddenly, and alarmingly, flailed his limbs, also trying to get up. ‘How d’you work this thing?’ she shouted at Patrick, her voice a little squeaky with fright.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your other knife.’

  ‘There’s a tiny button at the top of the hilt which you can hit with your thumb as you’re right-handed.’

  Therefore, O’Connor had an Italian throwing knife sprung right in his face, a little too close as it happened, as she had no idea how long the blade was and it nicked the end of his nose. He subsided with a shout of panic and by that time Patrick was there.

  The man was unhurt. He had fallen over, drunk, but my shot could only have missed him by an inch or so.

  We had to wait for a few minutes as medics were carefully removing the man on the stairs – the main staircase was blocked with police – as at this stage it was thought he was still alive. Then, between us we got O’Connor down the stairs and into the open. Patrick formally arrested him and he was taken into custody and virtually lugged away. We took our time, needing a few moments to get our breath back and, as far as I was concerned, composure. As we rounded the last corner I saw that a lot more police vehicles, together with a couple of ambulances, were arriving, presumably having got through the gap in the barricade made by the Range Rover. This had been driven forward again and was parked in the bright illumination proved by the vehicles’ headlights. Radios chattered and paramedics pushed through to tend to the injured. Cops were everywhere.

  ‘Better go and say hello to Masterson,’ Patrick muttered. ‘Thank him for his invaluable support.’

  ‘They are carting them all away for us,’ Joanna pointed out. ‘Oh, do have your knife back. I’m not keen on knives at all.’ She handed it over.

  ‘The British tend to be scared of knives,’ Patrick said absently. ‘God, I need a shower, several showers, in fact, a beer, steak and chips, kidneys, liver, mushrooms, some of Mum’s apple crumble …’

  Masterson was nowhere to be seen and, as we approached it, two other men alighted from the Range Rover.

  ‘That was a neat piece of work,’ said Michael Greenway.

  ‘And you got him alive,’ Richard Daws commented with one of his rare thin smiles. ‘Good.’

  The gaze of both of them came to rest on Joanna and Patrick made the introductions.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ she said sadly, having shaken their hands. ‘James told the interview board that I was ill and couldn’t attend today, but now I’ve met you gentlemen I’d better come clean.’

  ‘Your interview?’ Greenway queried.

  ‘I’m trying to get back in the Avon and Somerset Police. I was James’s sergeant at one time, you see.’

  Greenway and Daws exchanged glances and then the commander said, ‘So you came along as backup for Ingrid.’

  ‘She thought Patrick was dead. O’Connor sent her a boiled head in a parcel.’

  ‘So I understand. Your husband contacted me about that.’

  Daws turned to get back in the car, saying, ‘Well done, everyone. I shall expect you, Patrick, at a debriefing of this case first thing tomorrow morning. It’s been of particular interest to me. Are you coming with me, Mike?’

  ‘No, sir, I’ll find my own way, thank you.’

  The car door slammed and the vehicle moved away.

  Jingling the loose change in his pocket, Greenway looked up at the sky for a moment and then said, ‘Mrs Carrick—’

  ‘Sorry, but it’s Miss Mackenzie,’ Joanna interrupted. ‘I’m keeping my maiden name for professional reasons in the same way Ingrid does – as a protection against criminals who might carry out retribution because they make a connection between us and our husbands’ work.’

  ‘So you’re ambitious.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘I think you’ll find there’ll be no problem with your interview being rescheduled. I certainly won’t say a word and, as far as we’re all concerned, Daws doesn’t inhabit the same planet. Now, can I arrange a lift for you all to a hotel for the night?’

  ‘Just to Leytonstone police station where I left the car, please,’ I told him.

  ‘Should I have called them sir?’ Joanna anxiously asked Patrick on the way first to collect her rucksack. It didn’t appear that he was letting us out of his sight now.

  ‘Not yet,’ he answered.

  As I walked I recollected the scene in that room. O’Connor had fired more than one shot at Patrick, and mostly because he was drunk and had the weapon in his left hand, missed. When I had first seen him in the split second as I had entered the room, Patrick had had his Glock trained on the man but had not fired. What price obeying orders?

  After Patrick had phoned his parents I took the three of us to our favourite hotel in the West End, quite a long way across London, but we all, I think, needed to get right away, both physically and mentally.

  After his shower and shave, Patrick found that he had a large splinter in his left hand, possibly as a result of diving down on to the floor when O’Connor took a shot at him. This soldier of mine can shrug off being shot at but not the removal of splinters so he came in my direction reluctantly. Seating himself on the bed, he gazed everywhere else while I found a sewing needle in my bag, then took his hand.

  ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  Having thought him to be joking and replied in kind, I gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘Because of me you were put in serious danger – again,’ he said. ‘That’s it. No more. And you want out, don’t you?’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to resign without giving it more thought.’

  ‘I ought to – for your and the family’s sake.’

  ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’ I added, a little warily, ‘Your right hand seems OK now.’

  ‘Yes. Dad said a few words over it. Ow!’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet!’

  TWENTY

  ‘There was only one fatality,’ Daws said, gazing at a report in front of him. Although there was an up-to-the-minute computer on his desk he still asks for initial findings on paper so he can
make notes in the margins, and, anyway, hates reading off a screen. ‘The man who you say O’Connor shot in the back as he tried to escape from that room in the derelict flats.’

  ‘I don’t shoot people in the back,’ Patrick said quietly.

  ‘You misunderstand; I was merely referring to your own report which I’ve not had the chance to have more than a quick look at.’

  This had been emailed to him the previous evening, but I had brought a hard copy with me and placed it on his desk as we had entered. I glanced at Patrick sideways, willing him to relax: having to attend a debriefing with Daws was a new departure. It was not taking place the following day as he had originally instructed but forty-eight hours later, as he had forgotten he already had commitments. I was not even sure if I was supposed to be here but reckoned myself part of the package.

  ‘Masterson says they’re all playing being the victims of violence and coercion,’ Daws went on. ‘The two who it would appear were tasked with finding you, Patrick, are keeping quiet, but one of the others has grassed on them. They were told what you looked like, that you probably had a broken arm, where you lived and who you worked for, the information given to O’Connor some time previously by that Judd woman. They discovered that you weren’t at home – apparently they hung around the village for a while then left when they were thrown out of the pub for loutish behaviour. So they abandoned going to London, gave up looking for you and grabbed someone who fitted your description. We still don’t know who he was or where they boiled the corpse. Quite disgusting, if you ask me – both perpetrators are drug addicts. I’ve never come across anything like it.’

  The memory of the contents of that parcel will remain with me for the rest of my life.

  ‘As you now know a large quantity of stolen property was discovered in the flat they were using, together with weapons, ammunition, drugs and currency, a good percentage of which is counterfeit,’ Daws continued. ‘We can only assume that some, or even all of it, was what they found in Frederick Judd’s house in Feltham when they ripped up the floorboards.

  ‘It would appear from what these people are saying that O’Connor was high on drink and/or drugs for most of the time and obsessed with dead bodies. He killed for money and to provide himself with corpses to dispose of as the fancy took him. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t ordered you to bring him in alive – he’ll have probably forgotten everything, or will pretend he has by the time he’s sobered up and off drugs and, his other offences apart, the defence’ll have a grand time.’

  ‘I arrested him for a murder he committed in Plymouth years ago,’ Patrick informed him.

  ‘Really? That’s good news. Witnesses?’

  ‘Several.’

  ‘In my opinion, the work on this very complicated case that you and others have done will have the effect of completely destroying a large but increasingly fragmenting criminal organization. This man, and Frederick Judd, who it would appear O’Connor murdered and took over his gang, were responsible for a large proportion of the crime committed in that area. A good number of his henchmen have been arrested. That’s good work. Thank you. Both of you.’

  Into the silence that followed, Daws went on: ‘This isn’t really a debriefing. I want you to know that I’m retiring, probably next year – although I shall be available to give advice if anyone asks for it – and I’ve put Mike Greenway’s name forward to take over from me. This, you must realize, I’m telling you in the strictest confidence although, obviously, he’s aware of what’s going on. He’ll need support from people with preferably services backgrounds – we know how the police shilly-shally over some matters, don’t we? – in other words, advisers. There will be a number of posts as things are being restructured and a couple will be filled in-house. Are you interested in being considered?’

  Patrick looked at me.

  ‘I think you’ll find the work will be considerably less hazardous,’ Daws added.

  ‘You seem to know everything about us,’ I commented.

  ‘Enough to know that you mustn’t be squandered going after violent low-lifes and that it worries you personally. Yes, don’t look surprised; I have been quietly observing you. You have five children to think of, something that unfortunately has never come my way. But there’s a wayward, almost anarchic sense of humour that you both have that enhances your relationship. I admire that and I don’t want to be responsible for sending you to your deaths by ordering you to arrest insane trash like O’Connor. The new job will be different.’

  ‘And Ingrid?’ Patrick enquired.

  ‘I did say there would be two posts to be filled in-house.’

  ‘Well?’ Patrick said when we had decided to have an early lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. It had been a very early breakfast.

  ‘We mustn’t be squandered,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘He doesn’t want to be responsible for sending us to our deaths. Perhaps I just don’t like his choice of words. And, meanwhile, you have to carry on as before.’

  ‘I have absolutely no intention of carrying on as before. Besides, if he wants us to stay alive long enough to fill those job vacancies it’s in his interest not to, as he put it, send me after insane trash like O’Connor.’ Here, Patrick laughed.

  ‘Wait and see then?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Two months later, when we were having a long weekend in France, an armed intruder broke into Hartwood Castle and shot both Richard Daws and his bodyguard. Neither survived.