by Sarah Flint
*
Brenda Leach gripped the rose tightly as she fell through the air. A vision of her father’s face flashed before her, his eyes glinting malevolently with glee, his mouth turned up in a vicious grin. She remembered his rabid delight, as he swore that she could never truly hide from him; that he would always find her. As the sky swallowed up her scream, she smiled inwardly. Maybe it was meant to end this way. Maybe it had always been an illusion that she could win.
As the pain shot through her whole body, the last things she recalled, before blacking out, were the petals of the rose, battered and torn at her side and the hatred in her father’s voice as he sang the last line of the nursery rhyme slowly in her ears.
*
Charlie heard the thud as Brenda Leach’s body hit the surface below. At the same time, she saw Ross Naylor aim the gun towards his own head.
With a shout of her own, she launched herself into the air towards the man, hitting him straight in the chest as the firearm exploded in his hand. For an instant, everything was noise; the gunshot reverberating against the walls, the shouts of warning, the rumble of thunder, the clatter as the firearm hit the concrete and spun off across the painted bays.
After a few seconds, the commotion died away and all was still. She opened her eyes and stared down at a small pool of blood forming on the ground beneath them and then through the silence came a noise that took her breath away. It was the sound of a man crying, a sound that she hoped never to hear again. She turned her head to see Ross Naylor sobbing, as if he was the only person left alive in the world.
Chapter 41
The scene turned blue within seconds. All around, squad cars and ambulances were arriving, their tyres squealing and strobe lights flashing as they navigated the ramps of the multi-storey. Ross Naylor lay on the concrete curled into a ball, his hands tightly clasped across his face as he continued to sob. Charlie lay across his body, holding him down, but he wasn’t struggling. If he’d ever had any fight within him it had disappeared, washed away with the rain that had started to fall; all will to carry on living gone.
Armed officers with guns and flashlights were running towards them now, taking possession of the firearm, making it safe, unzipping first aid kits, detaining Ross Naylor, securing the scene, taking control of the situation. Charlie rolled away from him on to her back, her arms held high. The rain falling on her face was cool and welcome. She closed her eyes momentarily and inhaled its freshness, letting the tension drain from her body, as it was from the sky. A shadow passed across her eyes and she opened them to see Hunter looming large above her, his face creased with concern. The handcuffs were off him and he held a hand towards her.
‘You OK?’ he asked, as if it was the most normal question in the world.
‘Yeah, I’m OK, I think,’ she said, remembering the small pool of blood from a minute previously and the way it was now splashing pink with the raindrops. She spun around to see Hayley Boyle sitting against the wall, her arm red with blood and several paramedics in attendance.
‘She’ll live,’ Hunter smiled, pulling Charlie to her feet. ‘It’s only a surface graze from the bullet Ross Naylor fired before you took him down. Luckily it missed any vital organs and just caught her arm.’
‘I’m getting a bit slow in my old age. I should have realised what he was about to do a lot quicker.’ She bent down and brushed at her trousers, knocking some of the dirt from her knees.
Hunter turned away at her words, looking skywards as a large jet lifted into the air above them. The rain so quick to fall was already starting to ease.
‘I should have realised what was going on a lot sooner too. I was too busy with my own worries to listen to your concerns.’
‘You had a lot going on, guv… and anyway, you know me, always getting carried away on wild goose chases, or mad hunches, with my head in the clouds.’ She didn’t mention the conversation she’d had with Mrs H. Hopefully no one else ever would. Following the direction Hunter was still staring, she watched as the aeroplane disappeared from view into the stormy sky.
He turned back towards her, suddenly serious. ‘You’ve got a good head on those shoulders of yours, Charlie. You should think about promotion. You’d make a good guvnor.’ He paused, his voice catching. ‘And perhaps I’m getting too old for this job.’
His last sentence was nearly drowned out by the sound waves of the jet but she could read them on his lips. She pretended not to have heard. They were words she didn’t want to hear… and anyway, he’d regret saying them when he got his teeth into the next job.
‘We’ve already got a good guvnor and I’m quite happy to keep it that way,’ she bobbed her head from side to side and grinned. ‘Though I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to get you to write me up for my sergeants’.’
‘Of course. It would be my pleasure. I owe you one.’
‘I owe you for last time, so let’s call it quits.’
‘No, Charlie, I do owe you.’ His voice was still serious.
She was about to open her mouth to argue but thought better of it. Hunter didn’t often speak from the heart and it seemed wrong to disregard the earnestness of his opinion now, however much she disagreed. As far as she was concerned, that’s what teamwork was all about; Paul, Naz, Bet and Sabira all understood it too, only Nick didn’t. He probably never would. The thought brought her back to earth and she moved towards the parapet, leaning over to see what was happening. She saw Paul immediately, five floors below, marshalling a couple of uniformed officers in the process of setting up a cordon. Naz and Sabira were standing to one side, clipboards in hands. As if sensing he was being watched, Paul looked up, waving towards her, Naz and Sabira quickly joining in too. She waved back, grinning. It was good to know they were close by.
A queue of police cars, fire engines and ambulances were lined up in the road, their blue lights combining with the red and white of brake and headlights to give the impression of a long thin union flag scarf wrapping itself around the car park.
A bridge stretched across from the third floor of the car park to the terminal, constructed of grey metalwork, with beams zig-zagging across its roof and railings at each end. A rectangular foyer jutted out between the walls of the car park and the bridge, its concrete roof directly under where she stood. In the centre of this was the figure of Brenda Leach, stretched out, her legs splayed at abnormal angles, her hair matted down in a pool of her own blood. Lying in her outstretched hand was the red rose, its stem still caught between her fingers, the flower broken and torn, with individual petals stained darker in the blood and rain. Her eyes were closed and a plastic tube protruded from her mouth, held in place by one of three paramedics who were gathered around trying to save her life. From where she stood, Charlie could see they were still working on her.
Hunter came up beside her and peered down.
‘What about Leach?’ she asked him.
‘Alive, just. Luckily for her, she only fell two floors. It looks to me like she’s fractured both her legs and could well have spinal injuries. Hopefully, if she survives, she’ll never again be able to wreak the sort of havoc that she has.’
‘Thank God,’ Charlie agreed truthfully, thinking back to her recent fears for Hunter. ‘By the way, you need to check that personal phone of yours, wherever you have it hidden. You might find a few more missed calls on it.’ She grinned at the comment, watching as Hunter rummaged deep in his pocket and pulled out his phone, unwrapping it from inside his handkerchief and squinting down at the display. ‘Oops, eight missed calls from Mrs H.’
‘I had to phone her when you were missing,’ Charlie admitted, saying nothing further about his wife’s concerns. ‘I said I’d ring when we located you. She’ll be worried sick.’
‘I’m going to be well and truly in her bad books then. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to sweet-talk her back, especially after the last few weeks’
Charlie looked up as a jet roared over them. ‘If it was me, nothing short of being taken on h
oliday to somewhere with sun, sea and…’
‘No senior officers,’ Hunter butted in, laughing.
A loud wail came from behind them and they turned to see Ross Naylor being led to a police van, his arms handcuffed behind his back. Tears still seeped from his eyes and his nose ran constantly as he climbed up into the rear cage.
Charlie left Hunter to make his call and walked across to see the man, broken by the one person he’d completely trusted. He sniffed hard and pushed his face against the bars of the cage.
‘Officer,’ his eyes bored into hers. ‘Were you lying to me when you said about losing your brother?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I wasn’t. Everything I told you was the truth. My brother drowned in front of my eyes and there was nothing I could do. He was an innocent victim who should never have died. That’s why I do this job, to try to get the justice for other victims that I never had. I do miss him though, every day.’ She stopped talking. Even after all the years she still found it hard.
Naylor looked away from her, his eyes searching the ground. ‘I still miss Ricky too. He wasn’t innocent, but he was a victim.’
She could see the vulnerability in his face. ‘Just like you are, Ross. Brenda Leach used you to do her dirty work and then she betrayed you. She was going to leave you all on your own. She had no intention of staying with you any longer.’
‘I know that now… but I still killed a policeman and I’ll get sent to prison for the rest of my life.’
‘Not necessarily. You did commit a serious crime and you will have to be punished, but Brenda Leach is the real murderer. What did she tell you, Ross?’
‘She told me that the policeman at the lake was an armed officer who had killed a defenceless man. She said that he was bad and I believed her.’ He started to cry again. ‘She told me what to do and I did it. I had to say and do exactly what she told me or else she said she would leave me on my own. She said that Ricky didn’t need to have died but the police wanted him dead so they shot him, not once but three times, just because they could and because they knew they would get away with it. They killed my brother. He was all that I had.’
‘Apart from Brenda?’
‘Yes, apart from her. She promised to be the mother I never really had and said that if I did what she instructed she would look after me forever. She gave me my orders and, when it was time, she provided me with what I needed.’
Charlie thought back to the cabinet of physical evidence in Leach’s address. If they were to get convictions for all the murders they would have to prove it was Brenda Leach calling the shots and not Samson Powell or Ross Naylor forcing her to follow their commands. They would need Ross’s testimony, explaining her exact methodology. If Leach survived, Charlie wanted her convicted of every single murder she’d instigated, not just the one that Ross Naylor had committed and the conspiracy to murder Hunter. Every friend or family member of Powell’s three victims deserved no less. Even Lisa Forrester deserved it. Without Ross’s testimony they might struggle to even convict her of Jason Lloyd’s murder. She was an evil psychopathic killer but she was also a credible and convincing liar. She would be more than capable of sweet-talking reasonable doubt into the minds of twelve well-meaning jurors.
‘Do you believe I’m telling you the truth, Ross, about my brother dying and about Brenda leaving you?’
She took hold of the bars between them and stared deeply into Ross Naylor’s eyes, connecting with the man who had, so recently, held a gun to Hunter’s head. For a few seconds she was lost in the same black void that was forever present in her own life, the despair, the emptiness, the grief… before forcing herself to blink.
‘I do believe you,’ he answered flatly.
‘In that case I promise to do everything I can to help you to deal with losing Ricky and to get you back on your feet again. There are people and organisations out there who can really assist.’
Ross Naylor was still staring at her as she spoke.
‘But I’ll be straight with you, Ross,’ she said gently. ‘I can’t promise I can keep you out of prison, but I assure you I will do everything in my power to make sure the courts understand the circumstances of the case and they treat you fairly. To do that, though, I need your help, if you’re willing to trust me.’
She nodded towards him and he nodded back. ‘I do trust you.’
‘In that case, I need you to tell police everything you know about Brenda Leach. How long you’ve known her, where you first met and how she works. I need to know every little detail of what she’s said to you and every single thing she told you to say and do. Do you understand?’
*
It was gone midnight by the time they started the journey back to Lambeth. Everything was in place that could be and the events of the evening were starting to take their toll. The atmosphere in the car was pensive, each person considering the part they had played in the run-up to the night’s operation. Paul was still in the driving seat with the DCI next to him. Charlie sat quietly on the backseat next to Hunter, now replacing Hayley Boyle, who had been whisked away to the local hospital for treatment on her arm. They were all deep in their own thoughts when, halfway down the M4, the radio sparked into life.
‘All units, standby. Shirley Sangster out, out, out of bar at the rear of “Hair Today”. Still wearing red shirt and dark leggings. Talking to a group of males.’
‘Bloody hell,’ DCI O’Connor said. ‘I didn’t realise this was still going. I would have thought they’d have stood down a long while ago.’
‘I wouldn’t have stood down without your express permission,’ Charlie laughed suddenly. ‘Not after the bollocking you gave both teams earlier.’
‘Nor would I, sir,’ Hunter grinned. ‘Having been on the receiving end of one of them too.’
‘Don’t “sir” me, Hunter. The only time you do that is when you’re just about to totally ignore what I say and disobey a lawful order.’
Charlie sniggered.
‘And you can stop laughing, DC Stafford. You’re just as bad. What was the last thing I said to you?’ He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Paul. ‘I don’t know which one of them is worse, the older one who should know better, or the younger one who chooses not to.’
Paul shrugged back and grinned. ‘They’re both as bad as each other, boss. The guys in the office all say they’re like two PC’s in a pod.’
The tension was broken and the atmosphere lightened, all now interested in what exactly Shirley Sangster was up to, now she wasn’t trying to kill them. Paul slipped the blue lights on and they shot along the quiet streets in an effort to get back to assist. Both surveillance teams were in full shout, Dennis Walters too, having mysteriously popped up in the town centre.
As Paul steered the car closer, they listened as their two subjects started moving towards each other again. Sangster, apparently, appeared slightly drunk, her gait relaxed and her high-heeled shoes not helping her attempts at walking straight. She was heading through the town centre in the direction of home.
The teams were converging. Walters was standing by the police station as Sangster passed, nodding in his direction before crossing over the side street towards her estate. Walters fell in behind, catching up as she took her first few steps into the nearby Max Roach Park. They walked together for a few paces before Walters took a rucksack from his shoulder, delved deeply into it and pulled out a black plastic bag, handing it to Sangster, who shoved it straight up under her shirt.
‘Wait for them to split and then get them both stopped,’ DCI O’Connor instructed down the radio. ‘Let’s see what they’ve been up to.’
They were just around the corner now. Paul switched the blue lights off and coasted up the main road towards them as the stops were put in. On one side of the park Charlie could hear shouting as Walters protested his innocence. They turned instead to where Shirley Sangster stood, at the passageway that led into her estate. Several plain-clothed male officers stood with her, holding her by the arms, h
aving just radioed for a female officer to assist with searching. They pulled up alongside and Charlie climbed out, coming face to face with the woman whose image and reputation was so familiar. Shirley Sangster was smaller than she’d remembered and far quieter. Charlie expected the same raging ball of spitting, fiery resentment, but instead the woman stood silently, resigned to what was about to happen.
‘It’s Spice,’ Shirley Sangster said wearily, as Charlie identified herself and pointed towards the bulge in her shirt. ‘Take it. It was for Troy, to keep him going.’
Charlie donned her gloves and carefully took the bag from under her shirt, peering into it to see the herbal substance that was the current, most popular, drug of choice.
‘It’s Sunday,’ Sangster added. ‘Visiting day.’
Charlie handed the bag to one of the team and opened the car door. ‘I’ll do a statement and let you have it later,’ she said in hushed tones. ‘Nick her for possession with intent to supply… and make sure Walters gets nicked for supply too. He’s already on bail for a drug offence from Friday night. This should ensure he’s kept in custody for a good long time.’
She climbed in and leant her head against the upholstery. It had been a long day, but despite all the drama, in a strange way, it was good to know that some things would never change.
Chapter 42
Monday 10th July 2017
The motorcycle outrider was the first to show, riding slowly under the stone archway at the entrance to Streatham cemetery. The rider came to a standstill just inside the gates, waiting for the procession to form up behind.
Charlie, Hunter and the team stood upright, in full ceremonial uniform, Hunter’s adorned with a clutch of medals pinned to his chest, bright against the dark blue serge of the jacket. The strain had lifted from his shoulders and he stood straight and tall but his cheeks were still ruddy and he had clearly not regained all his previous health. Perhaps the pride in his uniform would be enough to banish the last of the demons that still lurked behind his eyes. She hoped so. Maybe when this day was done they would finally disappear.
