The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  Soon enough it was the defence barrister’s turn to question me, and he began without preamble. ‘PC Bell, am I right in thinking that it was you who seized the knife in question, after PC Holdsworth had been removed in the ambulance?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ I didn’t like his tone, he sounded like he was about to unleash something nasty at me.

  ‘And did you follow the correct procedure when you seized this knife?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I placed it in a knife tube, sealed the tube and wrote out an exhibit label, which I then applied to the tube. I then placed it all in a clear plastic bag which I sealed with a cable tie.’

  ‘So, PC Bell, would you say that you are confident that the tube has not been opened since you sealed it?’

  I thought for a second, realising that the only option the barrister had was to discredit the evidence; the rest of the case was too strong to touch. ‘I haven’t had hands on the tube since it went into the store at John Street. I would have no way of knowing, but I presume that if someone had opened it then they would have followed the correct procedure.’

  Let him work his way around that, and still find a way to blame me for whatever was coming.

  ‘Your Honour, I would like to produce exhibit GB/250308/1355, which should be a black-handled kitchen knife, stained with the blood of PC Holdsworth.’ The judge motioned with a lazy hand, indicating his approval.

  The defence barrister, with slow, deliberate movements accepted the exhibit from the court usher with both hands, holding up the clear plastic bag for the jury to see. Inside the bag sat a knife tube, a plastic cylinder of two halves that screwed together to make varying lengths of tube for holding sharp objects.

  ‘So, PC Bell. You are saying that this is the knife that you claim my client used to stab PC Holdsworth, is that correct?’

  A cold feeling blossomed in the pit of my stomach, trying to claw its way up into my throat and stop me from speaking. What the hell was he playing at? Of course it was the knife.

  ‘Uh, yes.’

  The barrister slowly undid the plastic bag, then pulled out the knife tube. From this distance I could see the knife within, but not make out any details. Was it my imagination or did it look different somehow?

  He unscrewed the knife tube, stripping off the tape that sealed it first then tipping the knife onto the desk in front of him. Instead of the clatter I was expecting, there was a dull thud, as if the knife was made of rubber.

  Which, somehow, it was.

  He held the knife up, wiggling the rubber blade from side to side with one finger, while I stood there with my jaw hanging open almost to my chest. ‘So PC Bell, you are saying that my client stabbed PC Holdsworth with a rubber knife, which you then seized and exhibited falsely as a real knife? Would you like to tell us what really happened that day, Officer?’

  I could only stand there stunned, unable to work out what had happened. Then it clicked. Davey must have someone inside the police station on his payroll; it was the only thing that made sense. I looked over at him, seeing him almost doubled up with repressed laughter and something inside me snapped. I swung back to glare at the barrister, standing there triumphantly waving a rubber knife at the now thoroughly confused jury.

  ‘Davey stabbed my partner, then I took the knife off him. I administered first aid to Jimmy, then I seized the knife, the real knife, not the one your client paid someone off to swap. I should arrest you both for perverting the course of justice right now.’

  My voice rose at the end, and I spat the words at him as if they were sharp things that would cut and tear at him. I stepped towards him, intent on carrying out my threat, and I’d made it halfway across the court when the insistent hammering of the judge’s gavel brought me back to myself and I remembered where I was.

  ‘PC Bell!’ he shouted, spit flying from the corners of his mouth. ‘You will not treat my courtroom like a police station. There are rules here and you will follow them. You are dismissed from court while we adjourn to sort this mess out. The police’s mess, I might add.’

  I froze, my fists still clenching as I saw the barrister throw a quick, knowing look at Davey. He must have been in on it. Somehow, God only knows how, they had managed to find someone in the Nick who was dirty enough that they would screw with the evidence in a case that involved another copper being stabbed. Just thinking about it made me want to throw my head back and scream in anger.

  Game, set and match to Davey and his empire.

  I turned and strode from the court before I could do anything they’d regret, kicking open the door to the police waiting room. DI Jones had been in the back of the court but was now standing in the corner of the room on her mobile, a look of sick fear mixed with anger on her face. As I slammed into the room she snapped her mobile shut and glared at me, as if this was somehow all my fault.

  ‘We’re going back to John Street; the chief super wants to see us. What kind of wanker would do something like that to the evidence?’

  The look she gave me clearly said that she thought I might be that kind of wanker, and I felt my hackles rise in response to the implied accusation. ‘Don’t look at me. I’ve been working with Jimmy for years. I don’t think we’ll help each other by throwing shit and arguing, so let’s get back and see what Pearson has to say, huh?’

  Jones picked up her bag and strode past me without another word, leaving me to follow in her wake as her heels clicked angrily down the stairs towards the exit.

  3

  THIRTY MINUTES later, I found myself sitting on one of the far-from-comfortable chairs that occupied a little alcove near the chief superintendent’s office on the second floor of John Street police station. My only companions were a photocopier the size of a car and a ball of cold fear and anger in my guts which dwarfed the machine a hundredfold.

  DI Jones had been in the office with the chief super, Derek Pearson, for about ten minutes and I could hear raised voices through the wall, albeit not well enough to make out what was being said.

  I tried to look relaxed and casual as people walked past, but I could tell from the looks I was getting that the rumour mill had once again beaten any other form of communication and everyone already knew what had happened.

  I loosened my tie and top button, then did it up again as the smell of my own nervous sweat hit me. This was a copper’s worst nightmare. Not only did it look like a criminal who had stabbed one of us was about to go free, but evidence had gone missing in a high-profile case. It would be all over the news by evening and the force would be looking for a scapegoat. It was either me or Christine Jones and, knowing the system, I felt that she was more likely to get the chop as the OIC. Not that it made me feel any better; I wanted blood for this and, by hook or by crook, I was going to get it.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and DI Jones came out looking flushed and angry. She didn’t speak to me as she walked past, looking down instead at the faded blue carpet and avoiding my eye.

  Pearson’s PA, Sarah, came out from her adjoining office and fixed me with a sympathetic smile. ‘Gareth, he’s ready to see you now. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.’

  I smiled back, a weak attempt, and entered the room with a heavy feeling in my heart.

  Derek Pearson was a tall man in his mid-fifties, with dark hair going grey and the build of a scrapper. As with all officers, he had spent his time on the street before rising through the ranks and, as far as senior officers went, he was one of the good guys. Usually.

  Today, however, he had a face like thunder and his hands were folded carefully in his lap as he sat behind the desk in his otherwise bare office; a sure sign that he was angry and wanted to hit something. ‘Gareth, sit.’ I sat.

  ‘What do you think happened today?’ His voice was low and even, and I had the strong feeling that if I were to say the wrong thing. he would explode, his tightly controlled temper unleashed.

  ‘I think that Davey found someone in the Nick that he could get leverage on or pay off, sir.’ I wa
s proud of how calm I sounded.

  ‘And do you have any idea who that might have been?’

  I shook my head. ‘Haven’t a clue sir, but I can assure you I intend to find out. Jimmy is still weeks away from even leaving the hospital, and I can’t let it stand without justice being done.’

  Pearson stared at me over his desk for so long that I began to get nervous before he finally spoke. ‘I’m sorry Gareth, but I’m going to have to put you on restricted duties. PSD will probably want to suspend and interview you, maybe even have you arrested, but I personally don’t think that you have anything to do with this and you’ll have my support. That’s all.’

  I stood and left the room, my anger and fear surrounding me like a swarm of biting insects, all attacking me at once. The Professional Standards Department are the English version of Internal Affairs, and they have a horrendous track record of ruining officers’ lives and reputations and then discovering that the charges they were trying to bring were false. They were every honest copper’s nightmare, but they never seemed to find the bent ones, few though those were.

  Restricted duties meant that I wasn’t allowed any contact with the public, so I would have to stay in the office for however long it took, stewing slowly in my own juices as Davey sat around drinking, laughing at us and selling drugs. As soon as I walked into DIU, Kevin waved me over and ushered me into the inspector’s office, which was empty owing to the fact that our guv’nor was off long-term sick with stress. He thought his job was stressful; he should have been where I was standing.

  Kev sat down in the chair, leaving me to perch on the edge of a filing cabinet. ‘Talk to me.’

  I shrugged. ‘What can I say? Someone found their way into the evidence and planted a rubber knife. God only knows what they did with the real one.’

  He stared off into space as he asked, ‘Do you think it was someone from this office?’

  I shook my head. ‘No way. No one in here would do that to Jimmy. I’d bet my job on it. My guess is that it was one of the temps they’ve been using in the store.’

  The property store, or G83 as it was known to us, was one of the dullest places in the building to work, and owing to the heavy lifting, long hours and lack of daylight, we had a hell of a time retaining store clerks, so over the last eighteen months or so we had had a string of temps come in to do the job. It made it confusing as they all seemed to use a different system and personally, I had already wondered how good a security check they were given before they were allowed to work in the building.

  ‘That’s not a bad thought, I’ll pass it on. You know you’re on restricted duties?’

  I nodded. ‘Word travels fast, huh?’

  Kev smiled and shook his head. ‘Not really. Pearson came down to see me, and I told him that that if you were suspended you’d probably end up chasing after Davey on your own. He agreed, and decided to restrict you instead.’

  ‘No way!’ I exploded. ‘He told me it was his decision to just put me on restricted duties and that he was on my side! Just goes to show who you can really trust, doesn’t it?’

  Kev just looked at me, smiling the smile that told me that he agreed, but wouldn’t say so openly.

  ‘I’m sure the chief super would never take someone else’s idea and pass it off as his own Gareth. Who would ever dream of a senior officer doing that?’

  It’s well known that if someone wanted a promotion, they either stole someone of a lower rank’s idea or invented a new form that made life for the lower ranks even more complicated. After that it became something of a habit for them.

  I shook my head in disgust and headed back into the office, throwing myself into my chair hard enough that it almost tipped over.

  Sally turned to look at me, sympathy written all over her face. ‘Are you okay Gareth?’ she asked, and for once I had no wish to drown in her eyes.

  ‘Not really. Someone screwed around with the evidence, I’m stuck in front of this damn desk for God knows how long and Davey is probably in a bar somewhere drinking champagne and laughing at us right now.’ I tried hard not to sound like a whining teenager but I could hear it in my voice.

  ‘Has anyone told Jimmy yet?’ she asked as she turned back to her computer.

  ‘I hope not. I’ll grab a car and go and tell him. I’m sure they won’t mind me going up to the hospital.’

  I jumped up and out of my chair, glad to be getting out of the office. Kev threw me a set of keys when I checked in with him, and within ten minutes I was walking into the ward at the Royal Sussex where Jimmy was being looked after.

  His little curtained off cubicle was awash with flowers, grapes and books of crossword puzzles, all sent by concerned colleagues and friends, and somehow they made Jimmy himself look smaller, as if he were shrinking under the weight of the gifts. His usually tanned complexion was pale and he had lost a good stone and a half since he had been in hospital. Where he used to be all gym muscle and sense of humour, he was now pale and skinny, a shadow of his former robust self.

  ‘How’s the knife magnet?’ I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed near his feet.

  ‘Almost ready to go home apparently,’ he said listlessly, not bothering to put on a brave face; we knew each other too well. ‘How did the court case go?’ A hint of hunger entered his voice as he asked, a need for closure on what was probably the worst experience of his life.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes as I explained the whole debacle, but I could still see his face drop as he realised that any hope of that closure was now gone forever. Even with our statements and Davey being at the scene, the loss of evidence effectively stopped us from ever prosecuting him for what he had done to Jimmy.

  ‘Any chance you can pop round to his house and cut his balls off?’ Jimmy asked, sensing my distress and trying to make me smile. That was typical of Jimmy. He was always the one to bring people out of bad moods with a joke or some idiot act that made everyone laugh. On the morning that my marriage had finally fallen apart, he had strapped one of our removable blue lights to the top of his helmet and walked into a briefing for a murder inquiry. I laughed so much that I nearly choked and he got stuck on for inappropriate behaviour, but it had helped and I’d been pulled out of the depressive mood I’d been in.

  I smiled at him and picked a grape off its stem, throwing it at his face with pin-point accuracy. ‘Don’t be a knob. I wish I could but they’d know it was me and then I’d be in a cell next to one his friends, I have no doubt.’

  He nodded and lay back, rubbing at the cannula embedded in the back of his left hand. ‘It’s a shame we can’t destroy his business then. Can you imagine what would happen if he started having trouble with his suppliers? They’d do the job for us!’

  I started to laugh, then stopped as the idea ran through my mind, gathering speed as it went. We had details of his whole operation; who was working for him, where they dealt, who bought from them. In fact, there was so much information that we simply couldn’t deal with it all and we left many of his dealers in place purely so that we knew who to watch.

  If someone were to use that information to make life difficult for Davey, it might indeed have the effect Jimmy had just mentioned. Suppliers were notoriously hard on people who had difficulty paying, so maybe it was time to get a little old school and let them solve our problem for us.

  As usual Jimmy knew what I was thinking before I did and he threw me a warning look. ‘Don’t even think about it, fella. If you start screwing around using police intelligence, they’ll fucking crucify you. And besides, he’s not worth it. His time will come.’

  I nodded distractedly, still thinking about how best to get hold of the information without it being traced back to me. All the Sussex computer systems had a keystroke program built in so that they could trace who was doing what and when. The only way around it was to find someone who hadn’t shut their computer down and use it, while making sure that you hadn’t used your swipe card to get into that office, effectively making you invisible to t
he system.

  ‘Oi, Muppet!’ Jimmy’s call made me look up and realise that I had been staring into space. ‘If you even think about doing anything like that, I’m gonna smack you in the face. Just as soon as I can get out of bed, that is.’

  I looked at him with my best innocent smile. ‘Who, me? Wouldn’t dream of it mate. I’m in enough trouble as it is, what with the knife going walkies. It’s typical of Davey that he couldn’t make the knife just disappear; he had to make us look extra stupid in court, the bastard. Rubber knife my arse. You know we’re never going to live this down, don’t you?’

  He nodded, tiring fast from the effort of conversation.

  ‘There’s no point getting so worked up over it, he’s just one of a hundred dealers in the city. I mean, I know he stabbed me and I’d love to see him swing for it, but his time will come, you know it will. And he didn’t stab me because of me, if you know what I mean; it was just because I was stopping him from getting away. It could have been any one of us, and I just haven’t got the energy to take it personally. Neither should you.’

  I nodded, struggling to put what I was feeling into words.

  ‘It just seems to me that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, they keep getting away with it. Drugs took my brother away from me; they nearly took you away from me and I don’t intend to keep watching it happen with my hands shoved in my pockets.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Easy mate. You can’t go taking out all your crap on people like Davey or you’ll end up doing something stupid, and then you’ll be for it.’

  ‘We’ll just have to agree to disagree there, but don’t worry, I promise I won’t go doing anything stupid. Not too stupid, anyway.’ I gave him my best winning smile and he did his best to match it before glancing around hopefully as if he had just remembered something.

  ‘Look fella, you’d better chip off. I’m getting a sponge bath in a minute and I’m hoping it’s gonna be that fit Filipino nurse that’s around somewhere!’