Shadow State

by DEREK THOMPSON

  Sheryl’s smile evaporated when he entered the saloon. She leaned over the bar a little to show off some more of her suntan, but her performance was below par.

  “What can I get you?” she asked between chews of her gum.

  “Orange juice with ice.”

  “Tangy.” She popped a bubble.

  He took the glass and left her attitude behind him. He was halfway up the stairs when it hit him like a thunderbolt. She was pissed off with him — blamed him — because of Heick’s threats. Maybe she had a point. He stood there, mid-flight, wrestling with a question. Heick could have contacted Karl through Sir Peter, so why involve him?

  Two words came to mind before he’d reached the top stair: scapegoat and insurance.

  “Anybody home?” He knocked on Miranda’s office door.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I believe I owe you a secret service?”

  The door opened. “You’d better come in then.”

  * * *

  Miranda started the car. “Why can’t we go back to my place?”

  “You know why — because it may not be safe to talk there.”

  “Then why don’t you sweep it for bugs?”

  One sigh was all it took.

  “Fine. Walthamstow it is then. At this rate I might as well move in and be done with it.” She glanced sideways and relented with a smile. “Don’t panic, I was only kidding.”

  “It’s not that. Sometimes I think I made a mistake, getting so involved in Karl’s world.”

  “Huh, it’s a bit bloody late for that! Anyway, I know you, Thomas Bladen — no one can make you do anything you don’t want to. I still have the handcuffs to prove it!”

  Chapter 9

  Thomas felt his shoulders tense by the second ring. How quickly he’d come to hate calls on his personal phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Relax, it’s Karl. The 4x4 with the wee kiddie inside — the one you bugged — it’s on the move.”

  “And no one is intercepting it, I s’pose?”

  “Course not. They’re hoping it’ll lead to another piece of the puzzle.”

  Thomas smiled. “But you’re still tracking it separately, as a weekend hobby.”

  Karl was slow to reply. “Listen, it could be coincidence, but it’s on Manor Road now, approaching Canning Town.”

  Canning Town — where Miranda’s brothers owned a breaker’s yard. Thomas cut the call and made another.

  “Sam, are you expecting delivery of a 4x4 today?”

  “Blimey, Thomas, you must be psychic! A bloke rang up late last night and said he was bringing it over for parts — no questions asked.”

  Thomas rubbed at his temple. “Do me a favour. Close your gates and lock them. Sam . . . SAM! Just listen — when it arrives, tell me if it’s a Honda CR-V.”

  “The geezer didn’t say. Hang on. Terry — it’s Thomas. You wanna take it?”

  Thomas breathed a little easier. Finally, the brains of the operation. Terry was more guarded when it came to business, always had been. Thomas heard him sending Sam out to the gates.

  “He’s doing it now. What’s the problem, Thomas? Do you know something?”

  “Why’d they pick your yard?”

  “Dunno. Bloke said he was ringing around and the first place didn’t answer.”

  “And did you check with the other breakers?”

  “Christ, you’re a paranoid sod. Fair enough, the car is going to be dodgy, but we could do with the business. Wait a sec — Sam’s back . . .”

  Thomas could hear them arguing. From what he could tell the vehicle had arrived and the driver was none too pleased.

  “Terry!” He shouted so they’d both hear him. “What’s the car?”

  “Lemme get my binoculars . . . It’s a Honda CR-V and it looks in good nick too.”

  “Don’t do it. Wait it out.”

  “Bloody hell, Thomas. The geezer’s banging on the gates now. He looks well pissed off. Sam — stay out of the way. Fuck’s sake.” The line went quiet, as if a hand were pressed against the mouthpiece. “Still there, Thomas? Sam reckons the driver’s done a runner. And he’s blocked the gates. What do we do?”

  “You might wanna sit down for this, Terry. I think you should call the police.”

  It took over two hours for a patrol car to turn up. Much as Thomas had expected, the car had false number plates. Sam had climbed the gates and relayed them to him. They were different to the ones he’d captured on film. The police had plenty of questions but their punctuality had given Thomas ample time to coach the brothers.

  “Better to plead ignorance than try to lie your way out.” One day he’d try practising what he preached.

  The problems started when the rear door was forced. The body bag contained the car thief he’d seen at the storage facility. This was the car syndicate, or whatever they called themselves, cutting loose threads.

  He rang Karen Edwards.

  “Thomas? I thought you weren’t in until Sunday. What can I do for you?”

  To her credit, she listened for at least a couple of minutes before speaking. And she agreed that the car’s legal owner ought to be moved, as a precaution.

  “Good work, Thomas.”

  He shrugged, phone in hand. “I’m just passing information. Unofficially. I don’t want to get involved.” He smiled for an instant. Since when had that ever stopped him?

  A thought hit him square in the face — the caretaker! He searched his mobile’s list of contacts.

  “Listen to me. You need to get out of that place. It’s not safe there. You know who I am?”

  “Yeah. But I can’t leave. Mr Moretti wouldn’t like it. I have to be here to receive any merchandise.” There was pride in the voice. The silly old bastard felt loyalty to his employer. This was no time to walk on eggshells.

  “Remember the bloke who drove the car?”

  “It’s been moved and the driver’s been dismissed. Mr Moretti said he’s most particular about that sort of thing.”

  Thomas swallowed. “The driver is dead. His body bag was found in the back of the car.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re trying to trick me. Mr Moretti has always looked after me. I’ll be alright.”

  Thomas urged him one last time and then cut the call. He stared at the screen for a long time afterwards. This could only end badly.

  Chapter 10

  Thomas couldn’t settle for the rest of the afternoon, despite Miranda’s offer of athletic sex and a home-cooked meal. He talked himself out of going to see the old-timer in person, on the grounds that it might ruin the surveillance operation. And so he waited with the phone beside him, even during sex and dinner. He felt he owed the guy that much.

  A call came through at six-fifteen. He would always remember the time. At first there was an echoing silence and then the sound of metal scraping against metal. A single breath followed.

  “Who are you? I know you rang here before.”

  Thomas stared at the wall, compelled to stay on the line. Bang. He flinched and caught his breath. His mind raced ahead, picturing the old man slammed against the roller gate.

  “I’ll ask you again, but this time I’ll give you an incentive.”

  He concentrated on the voice, as if it could obscure what he knew was happening. Another bang, sharper than before and then a scuffing, like a heavy weight being dragged across the floor. Partway through, he heard a voice pleading, the same way the old guy had pleaded with Thomas when he’d come for the child. Silence again, and then a heavy click, reminiscent of the hammer on an old-school revolver.

  “I’m waiting.” The calm facade shattered like a mirror. “You think you can hide from me? I have you on camera.”

  Thomas’s heart sank. Bollocks. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Of course they’d have CCTV to protect their merchandise. Rookie mistake. He forced himself to focus. What could he bargain for the old man’s life? He gambled with the only thing of value he had — a name.

&nbs
p; “I know who you are, Arlo Moretti.” He said the words slowly and deliberately, as if he understood their power. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Time’s up.”

  “Wait!”

  The gunshot filled his head. Moretti’s voice quietened, as if he had the phone at arm’s length. “Clean it up.”

  In the silence that followed, Thomas’s brain went into overdrive.

  “Well,” the voice carried a confident edge. “Whoever you are, you’re a dead man.”

  It took Thomas a few seconds to realise he was alone on the line. He put the phone down and flexed his rigid fingers. Rage and helplessness battled inside him. Rage emerged victorious.

  He stood there a while longer until the hiss of the water pipes brought him back. Miranda had finished her shower. He gazed down at his hand and imagined a gun. Miranda exited the bathroom with a towel on her head and nothing else.

  “How do I look?” She stopped pouting. “What’s wrong, Thomas?”

  “I just heard a murder.” A murder he would struggle to explain to the police, as only Karl knew he’d taken the caretaker’s number.

  “Tell me what I can do.”

  He loved her for that, although there was only one person to ring — Karl. There wasn’t much to say and he said it quickly.

  Karl’s was the voice of reason. “I hear you, but you’re not responsible, Thomas. Call it in if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Jesus, Karl. A man died. I’m a witness to it.”

  “Maybe. He was a liability to them, much like the driver. Face it, they’re cleaning house.”

  “If I let Edwards know, they’ll raid the place and that’ll blow the rest of the investigation.”

  “Then you’ll have to live with it for now. Can you do that, Tommo?”

  He glanced up at Miranda walking off to put some clothes on. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll come over if you wanna talk about it.”

  “Nah, it’s fine, Miranda’s here.”

  “Okay then. Call me if you change your mind. Look, you did your best.”

  “And what if that’s not good enough?”

  Karl paused before answering. “You try harder for the next one. Listen, perhaps we ought to speak to Edwards about being moved from the observation site — as a precaution.”

  * * *

  Sleep was a land of nightmares where Moretti’s voice whispered from the shadows, morphing into strangers’ faces. He emerged as a black-hatted cowboy ready for the draw. Thomas felt the pistol but his arm wouldn’t move, fixed at his side as Moretti slowly pulled his six-shooter level, cocked it and . . . BANG.

  Thomas woke gasping for breath with cramp in his leg. He threw back the covers to massage the pain away. It was still dark. Miranda held on tightly to a sheet.

  “Go back to sleep.” He drew the cover over her, grabbed his clothes and pulled the door to behind him. Six a.m., and strong instant coffee seemed like a good idea. His phone sat beside him like an unlucky charm. No two ways about it, he’d have to change his number once all this was over.

  He leaned back, sipped his coffee and thought about his situation, the top of the chair back pressing below his shoulder blades. He let his arms hang and stared across the dark kitchen. Karl had said learn to live with Moretti’s actions. Easier said than done. Even if he wasn’t directly responsible for the caretaker’s death, wasn’t he complicit?

  Jesus, he needed a change of scenery. Fortunately, Miranda’s parents — John and Diane — had invited them over for the weekend. With a Sunday shift to look forward to, he’d bartered that down to a Saturday afternoon, planning to return to the flat alone afterwards.

  Miranda surfaced around nine. Her tousled blonde hair made him want to start looking for hay barns. They picked up a six-pack of beer, a bottle of wine and chocolates — all bases covered. He let Miranda drive his car, and spent the journey — when he wasn’t tapping an imaginary brake or shifting in his seat every time the gears cried out for attention — wrapped in thought.

  Working for the Surveillance Support Unit had brought him face to face with death before. He’d watched a gun-for-hire, Yorgi, die on the Moors a few feet away — but he’d deserved it. What did this old duffer do, other than keep an eye on a few stolen cars? Thomas thought he knew the answer. The caretaker had let Thomas in and had seen him walk away with the baby. The fact that the police hadn’t come charging in didn’t cut the poor bastard any slack, or the unfortunate driver.

  He rubbed at his neck and touched the sweat under his collar. It wasn’t sadness he felt exactly, more a sense of outrage. And there was something else too — fear. These bastards had thought nothing of killing two nobodies. Thomas would be just another minor inconvenience. The thought tingled in his veins like caffeine.

  There was a time when he used to think of Karl as some sort of talisman. Bad stuff still happened around Karl, but he had connections, experience. Guns. Thomas’s attitude had shifted a little after one of Jack Langton’s rivals abducted the pair of them. He’d seen Karl in a new light ever since — a good man, certainly, only not an invincible one. And now he was slipping further into Karl’s world. Would he end up dragging Miranda along with him?

  ‘People die every day,’ Karl had told him once when he was still unsure about their extracurricular work. ‘Only sometimes we can do something about it.’

  Well, they’d fucked up royally this time. He’d failed to protect the old guy. So what did that leave? He smiled for the first time that day — it left justice. Not the letter-of-the-law, unless he planned on jeopardising the day job. No, he’d have to be smarter than that. He checked his phone for a signal and sneered at himself. Yeah, good luck with that.

  Miranda relied on the radio for company as she drove to Dagenham. Once she’d parallel parked with perfection she grabbed the chocs and wine, leaving him the six-pack of beer.

  “You can be the masculine hunter.” She locked the car and handed him his keys for later.

  Going to the Wrights’ house always felt like coming home. Back when there’d been no Surveillance Support Unit in his life, and no scumbags like Moretti, or Jack Langton, or Sir Peter Carroll. Except . . . there always had been people like that — only he hadn’t known about them. On balance, it was always better to know.

  He sighed a little when Miranda twisted her key in the front door, and shifted the beer to his other hand. He used to have his own key.

  Diane Wright responded to Miranda’s call as only a mother can. “Pizza’s on, and a lasagne — we’re eating early for a change.”

  Sam and Terry sat firmly in front of the massive TV screen, mesmerised by a football match with titles in Russian. Thomas didn’t ask. On the far side of the double room John was dispensing plates and cutlery like a pro.

  Miranda dug Thomas in the ribs. “Mum’s got him well trained these days.”

  John nodded. “She has that.” And then let out a cheer as Thomas brought the six-pack into view. “Good man.”

  Thomas followed Miranda through to the kitchen, where Diane perched at a breakfast bar, coffee in hand.

  “Shouldn’t be long — all timed to perfection. Everything all right, Thomas?” The female radar ran in the family.

  “Yeah, just . . . stuff from work, you know . . .”

  She took a slow sip of coffee. “Careless talk?”

  He flashed a smile. “Something like that.”

  Dinner was a raucous affair. Terry and Sam retold their version of the body in the car, followed by a Dickensian rendition of their statements to the police and their ignorance of how the car came to be parked outside their breaker’s yard. “No need for a warrant, officer, happy to oblige. After you. Like Dad always says, you pick your battles.”

  Beer, wine and spirits flowed freely as Saturday evening got into full swing. Thomas watched from the sidelines, subdued by the dual tyranny of his mobile phone and the countdown to a Sunday morning shift. And even though neither John nor Diane pushed him about whose bo
dy had ended up in the car, or why, he knew them well enough to read their concern. Recent history had shown that whenever his work mixed with the family it usually caused trouble.

  At ten p.m. he weathered the chorus of protests and called it a night. Miranda saw him to the door.

  “I’ll be thinking of you in my bed.”

  “Me too.” He pulled her close and tasted lasagne and Merlot. So much for dessert.

  The clunk of the front door reminded him that he was leaving sanctuary for that other, more uncertain domain. He stood for a moment, breathing in the taint of petrol and pretentiousness. Working class made good, writ large in paved driveways and spotlighted faux Corinthian columns. He took a last look and then unlocked his car. Miranda was right — he was a snob.

  It took longer than usual to reach Walthamstow, thanks to a three-car pile-up on the A13. Speeding, judging by the tyre marks and the way the debris was strewn across the closed section of carriageway. He recalled an assignment with an Accident Investigation Team — the first time he’d seen a dead body outdoors and the way it had been encased in the wreckage. Framed by an indifferent God, if he still believed in such things.

  He put the light out before midnight and plugged his phone in at the wall. It showed its appreciation at two a.m., waking him to share a message from Heick: ‘Text me back when you get this.’ Twat. He followed the rules, sent a bleary, one-word reply and turned over.

  Chapter 11

  London turned down a couple of notches on a Sunday — less traffic, no city commuters and a chance to breathe again. Well, apart from a mobile phone that was practically thundering.

  Karl was already on the street, carrying two bags.

  “Packed lunch?”

  “Funny man, Tommo. More of an insurance policy.”

  One look from Karl confirmed his suspicions. Thomas blenched.

  “We can’t turn up for work armed.”

  “We’re not — I am. And it’s for your benefit. I acquired some intelligence on Arlo Moretti last night. He’s part of a European business network, which is almost certainly a subsidiary of . . .”