He is Watching You

by Charlie Gallagher

  She did. She didn’t agree, however. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that until just a few days before she had been the go-to girl for Major Crime or the Serious and Organised Crime Unit if they needed intelligence gathering on the most dangerous criminals in the North West of England. Now she was a hindrance in a simple missing person enquiry. She kept her reply short so she wouldn’t shed any emotion.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Right, then. That’s good work so far. Back to it!’

  Maddie was glad to leave his office. Back at her desk she had a new email. The details of her meeting the next day were on it. It was a two-hour slot in the middle of her day, with travelling either side. She wasn’t going to be able to get anything more done tomorrow either. She stood back up and grabbed her bag. She needed to get out of here before she really did say something she would regret. She decided on the coffee shop. Her first week in and that place was already becoming something of a refuge.

  * * *

  She sat down with her coffee at a table by the window. It was relatively quiet in there for once, though the street outside was still busy. She always enjoyed people watching; she had damned near made a career of it. The people that passed seemed to be dressed for office work. Most seemed to have a phone pushed to their ear, their eyes glazed to the rest of the world as if they were doing something really important — important to them at least. Maddie longed to feel like that again. Her own phone disturbed her thoughts and she pulled it hurriedly from her pocket in a flash of pink — she needed to get rid of that case. Her screen was lit up with the name Alan Jackson — her old DCI from up north, the man responsible for moving her down here to a job no one cared about, least of all her.

  ‘Sir! I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘I’m sure you were, Maddie. All good I hope?’

  ‘Not really, sir!’ Maddie gave a chuckle but she didn’t detect one at the other end.

  ‘As I expected. You know I’m only trying to keep you safe down there, Maddie. I assume that’s your problem? That you’re all the way down there?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with being somewhere else. You know how much I’ve travelled for work before. My problem is with being somewhere I have no real purpose.’

  ‘These things take time. It won’t take long for them to realise you’re one of the good ones. Good enough to be trusted with the proper jobs. I’d be the same here if I was landed with someone new. I’d put them somewhere they couldn’t do any damage for a while until I was sure they were capable.’

  ‘Landed . . .?’ Maddie exhaled.

  ‘Poor choice of words. You know what I mean.’

  ‘What were they told, sir? Regarding the reason for me coming down?’

  ‘As much as they needed to know. That you might have been compromised as a UC asset and we were moving you out of the area to keep you safe.’

  ‘Any suggestion that I was the reason for that compromise? That I might have messed up?’

  ‘No. Whatever the circumstances of your move, that’s not relevant to them down there.’

  ‘Only that might explain how I’m being treated. You do think I messed up after all.’

  ‘This isn’t the conversation I called for, Maddie. We’re not going over it again.’

  ‘You’re not calling to beg me to come back then, sir? A UC job that only I can help with?’ Maddie lightened her tone and dared another chuckle.

  ‘No, unfortunately. You know I would, though, if there was any other way.’

  ‘So what do you need?’

  ‘We have some intelligence that I need to share. I cannot put across enough how sensitive this intelligence is. You need to keep this to yourself or people could get killed. Am I coming across clearly?’

  ‘Loud and clear. I assume we’re talking source information?’

  ‘Exactly that. We have some new sources that have come to light. It seems that a few of our organised crime groups have not had such a good time of it of late and the riches are not rolling downhill, if you know what I mean. This latest source is good, too. Right in close to Adam Yarwood—’

  ‘Adam Yarwood?’ Maddie spluttered.

  ‘I know!’ Jackson’s excitement was obvious, even down the phone. ‘We’ve never gotten to anyone anywhere near the so-called innocent brother! But this could be good for us. That’s how we know that business is down. There’s a lot of competition by all accounts and we think Leon has involved his brother in expanding the reach.’

  ‘Expanding?’

  ‘Yes. Our intelligence puts Adam down the south of the country over the last few days. Apparently it was a business trip. A bit unusual for a plasterer, right? I’m in no doubt that this is of interest to us.’

  Maddie felt her throat go a little tighter. She was sure it would show in her voice. ‘Did you manage to firm it up? I’m always a bit suspicious of new sources.’

  ‘The same source gave us a new car for him. We were able to track it using ANPR as far as the outskirts of London, close to a car rental place. We know that brother Leon has a past history of changing his car when he gets close to a meet location. We found CCTV from a petrol station that gave good images of the sole occupant — it was him! It was Adam Yarwood. Seems he’s learnt a few counter-surveillance tricks. I think Leon is maybe having some trust issues and had to send his brother.’

  ‘And you’re sure he was doing a meet? Any ideas who with?’

  ‘No specifics when it comes to his contacts, but the word is that he’s got hold of a new supply in the London area and he’s taking on a network who deal in the South — mostly coastal towns. They’re largely untapped, the drug scenes run by locals. You get someone as well organised and as savage as Leon Yarwood in among that lot and he could do some real damage.’

  ‘So why are you telling me this?’ Maddie swallowed again, trying to get her throat to loosen enough to function properly.

  ‘Like I said, I’m trying to keep you safe. You worked Yarwood, right?’

  ‘Leon, sure. A long time ago. I never met the brother.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good. I’m just aware that we had the incident last weekend and then this Adam pops up a few hundred miles closer to where we sent you to be safe. I’ll keep you informed. I know you never worked him specifically, but this might be the warm-up for Leon to come down. You know what these criminals are like around easy money — they’re like sharks in the water. They can smell it from even 250 plus miles away. Stay on your toes, Maddie. I’ll let you know of anything we get that’s relevant.’

  ‘Will do. Thanks for letting me know.’

  The call ended and Maddie sat back. She peered round the café, suddenly aware that she might have been talking without a volume control. No one seemed to be taking any notice of her. As she stood up she could feel her pulse in her temple, strong and rapid. Her breathing was quick too, her breaths shallow. Her place of refuge suddenly felt like anything but. She needed to get out, to go somewhere else. She had no idea where.

  Chapter 30

  Harry pulled onto the neat block paving of his 1930s bungalow. It was in a nice area, quiet and well presented. His neighbours were largely retired. Harry and his wife had bought it twelve years before and their own retirement plans had been part of the decision-making progress. It had never included the consideration that his wife might not make it.

  He tutted at his flowerbeds as he walked to his front door. They needed doing again. They were just beginning to lose their sharpness. You had to look hard to notice but his wife had always been fussy about the garden. He was determined to keep it up.

  The daylight levels were low inside the house. He had left the blinds shut in an effort to block the effects of the blazing sun. Certainly it was the coolest he had been all day. He continued through to the back of the house and into the kitchen. He put his bag down on the bench and ran a glass of water adding ice from the dispenser on the front of the fridge. The warmth of the sun was undiminished when he stepped into the conservatory and
he quickly pushed the double doors open and stepped out onto the bright white patio. The ice clinked and tumbled when he took a sip.

  He took a moment to inhale the scent of his oriental lilies, bunched together beside a straight path that bisected the neat lawn. He took the path up to a small pond and a bumble bee drifted in front of him. He watched it land clumsily in one of the flower heads. He sat on a bench beside his pond. Ivy was crawling up its legs and was now stretching across its back as if nature were slowly taking a firm grip of the thing. Harry put his glass down. He reached out for an ornate wooden robin on a wooden platform that also had a small wooden roof to keep the rain off. Its spindly legs were splayed for balance and its head dipped in a constant bow towards the bright green lily pads. He held it gently, like he had done every day since his wife had grown her own wings.

  The carved bird had started as a romantic gesture back in the days when Harry was a cabinet maker and before murderers became his concern. Life seemed much simpler then. He’d made a robin for his then girlfriend. It was the obvious choice: her given name was Robin, after all. Harry had always loved that, but she had hated it. It was something she confessed for the first time as a reaction to Harry proudly revealing his painstakingly carved tribute. She made her admission and then instantly covered her mouth in horror. There was a pause that wasn’t long enough to become awkward and then there was laughter. Harry laughed so hard it had started to hurt and the smile that was left had lasted every one of their thirty-odd years together. The wooden robin had always stayed with them, spending those years in the living rooms of four different houses, watching their love grow, then their family. Three summers before, it had finally moved outside, where it had taken up his wife’s favourite spot when she no longer could.

  ‘How was your day, Robin?’ He smiled broadly. He had just popped in on his way back to the office. He had paperwork to do, a missing girl to find and a puzzle to solve. But that could all wait. The sun was warm on his face and the flowers drenched his senses with their colour and fragrance. On a day like this, his wife would have been in her element. She was always happiest when the sun was up and her garden was in full colour. Which meant that he was too.

  Chapter 31

  Maddie slept terribly. Her mind was restless. Harry hadn’t come back to her and the conversations she’d had with her new chief inspector and her old superintendent were both on a permanent loop in her mind. And her room was stifling.

  When she finally gave up and parted the curtains, the day’s first light was weak. She got washed and dressed in time to be hanging by the door to the restaurant for breakfast.

  ‘Early start?’ An Asian woman greeted her as she opened up the double doors through to the restaurant and Maddie managed a weak smile. She ate on her own. A few others drifted in but she barely raised her eyes, concentrating instead on the strong coffee that was refilled twice.

  She got to the police station for 7 a.m. She considered that this might mean she could knock off earlier, too, but then pondered what an early finish actually meant: a walk back to the hotel in time to catch some awful afternoon television and then waiting for it to be late enough to go to dinner or maybe run a bath. When she got involved in undercover policing she always knew that her social life would suffer — her life in general. She was warned that it would be lonely at times but it had never really bothered her. She couldn’t recall wishing that she had taken a ‘normal’ nine-to-five job where people knew what she did and where it was safe to have friends and family around her. Now she was in that position she had never felt more alone.

  She made it to her desk. The office was empty. A tired-looking DC nodded at her when she walked in, as he made his way out. Maddie guessed that he had been the night duty cover for CID — the creases in his shirt suggested it might have been slept in. She hesitated at her screen. There was nothing to wake it up for, save for some irrelevant dribble about missing schoolchildren. She stood back up. Maybe Harry was already in.

  He was. He stood at a cupboard-sized photocopier as she walked out onto the floor.

  ‘I thought you might be in,’ she said.

  He turned to her. ‘I didn’t think you would be.’

  ‘When you do a job as important as mine you’ve got to get an early start you see.’

  ‘You couldn’t sleep then?’ He scooped up some paper and walked back to his desk.

  ‘No. I was lying in bed waiting for an excuse to get up.’

  ‘And this place was the only excuse you could think of?’

  ‘Sad, isn’t it? And what about you? You couldn’t stay away?’

  ‘I got a call. I came in to follow up on a sighting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of your missing girl. Someone sent me a report from overnight. Patrols attended a noise complaint at about 3 a.m. They broke up a party of drinkers in a flat. According to the list of people given, Lorraine Humphries was one of them.’

  ‘You don’t seem very happy about it. I assume she wasn’t there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So she’d left. Did they talk to her? Where was it?’

  Harry huffed, his frustration obvious so she fell silent.

  ‘I was late. I got the call at 5 a.m. and got to the address for half past. It wasn’t her. It was some other girl lying there in her own vomit.’

  Harry was pushing buttons on the photocopier. He was losing his patience. He stepped back and kicked out at it. Maddie could see the screen flashing to indicate a ‘jam.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘My team are still going through the standard checks. Wait and see what comes of them.’

  ‘Wait and see? You seem in a bit too much of a rush for someone who is going back to wait and see.’

  ‘Lorraine Humphries isn’t the only case in the world!’ Harry snapped. ‘This morning has been a waste of time so far. I intend on making sure the rest of the day is a little more productive.’

  ‘And that wasn’t my fault,’ Maddie bit back.

  ‘I know.’ Harry seemed to back down a little. ‘That officer at 3 a.m., he should be waking her up and doing his job properly. You can’t just start naming people as being there without checking. I’m upset with him, not with you.’

  ‘No offence taken.’

  Harry stopped to lean on the photocopier, his head bowed. ‘I spoke to BTP late yesterday, too. They’ve got CCTV of Jonathan Lee heading to London on a Southeastern train. They’ve also got him changing to another train and continuing his journey up north.’ Harry seemed exhausted, every part of him.

  ‘So he was telling the truth.’

  ‘We got CCTV from a couple of shops, too, and from the council that shows him in Northampton town centre at around the same time as Ron Beasle was being dragged under a truck. So, yeah, he was telling the truth.’

  ‘Okay. So suddenly I see why you’re upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset! I’m behind. I need to start again. I want to go out and see April Leonard. I’ve only just got address details for her now. Maybe she’ll know something that will take me somewhere.’

  ‘April Leonard? Is she known to us?’

  ‘No. McCall’s are suddenly being very helpful. They provided the address for her. They also insist that they aren’t officially in contact with her. They assure me there’s a box of paperwork to pick up too. I’ve got someone out there for opening time.’

  ‘Okay. What do you think the chances are of me accompanying you to see April?’

  He turned to look at her. ‘Very small. I’d take you out, but I know the guv’nor would get the hump. Trust me, it’s not worth you making an enemy of him at this stage. You need to get to where I am.’

  ‘And where’s that?’

  ‘Where he knows that it’s not worth making an enemy of me.’

  ‘I think I’m a long way from that. He would have to respect me for a start.’

  Harry sighed. ‘Look, he’s just a little old-school.’

  ‘What does that mean? Is it a sexism thi
ng?’

  ‘I don’t think so. You need to prove yourself a little bit. He’s like that with everyone. Especially when you’re an unknown quantity. If I were you, I would play his game for a while. Make sure he knows that you’re nobody’s fool. He’ll see that pretty quick and then you can have a conversation about working somewhere that suits you better.’

  Maddie considered that Harry was being supportive in his own way. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t thank me. I’m not the one who has to do it. When I see him I’ll tell him again that I could use you with what we’ve got going on. He agreed with me the last time but he’s got a bee in his bonnet about something. I don’t know why he took you straight back off it.’

  ‘I don’t know either. Can you remind him that he doesn’t want you as an enemy when you tell him?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘And you do need me. Both these jobs have become a lot more difficult.’

  Harry took his time to reply. ‘These investigations are never easy. Where would be the fun in that?’ His face flickered a smile.

  Maddie snorted a laugh. ‘Harry Blaker having fun. I’m not sure I know what that looks like.’

  ‘Not sure I do either.’ He turned away immediately and Maddie thought she detected a little melancholy in his voice.

  She watched him walk back to his desk.

  Chapter 32

  April Leonard’s address was a smart-looking, whitewashed cottage, with a tightly thatched roof that seemed to droop over at the corners. The windows were criss-crossed with lead inserts. The front door was a solid piece of wood with a shiny brass handle in the middle. The hanging baskets on either side of it were bright with colour. They both dripped onto the block paving underneath. Despite it being early evening the heat was still oppressive. They must only just have been watered. Harry tapped on the door and it opened almost straight away.

  He hadn’t been able to tell April Leonard he was coming. He only had an address for her. She looked at him questioningly. She was a slim woman. She wore long, black shorts and a white vest top that was spotted with moisture. She had marigold gloves on both hands and pulled at the fingers as Harry spoke.