The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  I nodded, knowing he was right but wanting to be doing something, anything, now that we were so close to finding Jimmy and getting this whole ordeal over and done with. ‘You’re right sir. I’m sorry.’

  He nodded and ushered us out, promising to come straight down when he received a phone call from the telecoms unit.

  Kev and I rushed back downstairs and he called every officer into the inspector’s office. We could barely move once everybody was in and several of us had to slide out of the way to close the door while Kev explained the situation. ‘So,’ he concluded, ‘we’re going to be ready to put teams into the area once we have a location, just to observe and locate, not do anything stupid. Ding says he saw the outside of the farmhouse, so we should be able to identify it almost immediately as long as there aren’t dozens.’

  Rudd piped up. ‘There shouldn’t be, cell-site normally gets it down to about a hundred metres.’

  Kev nodded. ‘Yup, so hopefully we won’t even be needed, but in rural areas it can stretch up to a couple of miles and that’s a lot of ground to cover.’ He kicked us all out and I swear the swivelling of heads in the office was actually audible as Pearson walked into the room.

  He motioned myself and Kev back into the office. We followed him in, closing the door and ignoring the curious looks we were getting through the windows. ‘South Godstone,’ Pearson said, taking the only chair.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Kev asked, looking at the map of Sussex hanging on the wall.

  ‘It’s in Surrey, not far from Redhill. The tech chap says that it’s the closest antenna that the phone is pinging, but it’s also hitting another couple further out at Oxted and Edenbridge, so he thinks there are a good few square miles to cover. I will speak to my opposite numbers in Surrey, and in Kent. This could end up in either county. How quickly can you get your officers out there looking?’

  Kev glanced through the window and made the hand signal for ‘kit up’, pulling his fists together across his chest. There was a flurry of activity as all the officers began putting on their covert gear. ‘About five minutes. We’ll travel in pairs sir, we’ll cover more ground like that than with full cars. We’ll be on B-Div-Events-Gen6,’ he said, giving the superintendent the radio channel we would be working on.

  Pearson stood, holding out his hand for us both to shake. ‘Good luck. Wish I was going with you, but I’m briefing the firearms team in half an hour and I won’t make you wait.’

  We both smiled, catching each other’s eye as we left. While Pearson was a good senior officer, it was rare to see him anywhere other than behind a desk and rumour had it that he quite liked it that way. Personally, I would have chewed my own arm off to get away from a desk job, but luckily most of my time was spent out and about so I didn’t need to worry about that yet.

  Just before we left, Pearson called Kev and insisted that he and Rudd stay behind too, to help with the briefing, (Rudd is firearms liaison for the office) and instead I partnered up with Tate who was as eager as I was to get out and looking for Jimmy.

  We had been given instructions to search the area, being given maps that had been divided into grids by Sally so that we wouldn’t just be searching blind.

  The tech chap from the telecoms unit had promised to keep checking and would update us if the phone moved or was switched off, so we left with high hopes of bringing Jimmy back in one piece, even if Davey got wind of us and decided to move him. Despite our care, there was still a chance that the mole had tipped him off, and we were no closer to discovering the identity than we had been first thing that morning.

  38

  BY THE time we got to the village of South Godstone, the clock on the dash said that it was 0932. The day was cloudy but hot already, and it was nice to be driving through country lanes instead of the main road. I’d opened my window and the fresh smells of summer woodland floated into the car on the light breeze as Tate drove through the pleasant morning. Our conversation had been limited, partly due to the nervousness that we both seemed to share and partly because of the unease of knowing that someone on the team was working for the man we were trying to find.

  Tate could pretty much rule me out unless I’d cut myself up for show, and I could rule him out unless I was a worse judge of character than I thought I was. There were few people more solid or dependable in the office and he had saved me from being badly hurt on more than one occasion.

  ‘Our map says we should go east and cover the area out towards Crowhurst,’ Tate said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Yeah, it’s that road,’ I said, pointing to a small lane with a half-concealed road sign in white.

  He obligingly turned into the lane and I did my window up as branches from the steep verge whipped into the car and clawed at my face.

  The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, turning everything golden for a moment but, instead of making me feel happy as it usually did, it made me think of Jimmy, lying alone in that room, stinking of infection and his own mess. I silently vowed that when we found Davey, I would make him regret every moment of pain and hurt he had given Jimmy, paying him back a thousand fold. Of course I would have to find a way to do it through a full armed assault team, but I was sure I would think of something. If not, all sorts of accidents could happen to a man in prison. I stopped that thought almost as soon as I had it. Just because I had stepped outside the law once didn’t mean that I should ever let myself do it again. That way lay madness.

  I could only hope that Davey wouldn’t spill the whole story if caught, hoping that he would still be able to get his drugs back if he kept quiet, but I wouldn’t put it past him now to tell everything and take the heat so that I would go down with him. As we drove along the lane, looking for any side turnings that would lead to a farmhouse, I ran through in my mind any evidence that he might be able to use to get me in front of a court.

  He could get the Budds to identify me as the person who had attacked them and stolen their heroin, but not only would that mean them admitting possession and doing time themselves, their evidence would be viewed with suspicion as they worked for Davey.

  Other than that, he had nothing – but what little he had was probably enough to ruin me. Thinking about it though, I couldn’t bring myself to care as long as we got Jimmy back in one piece.

  ‘So how long you been shagging Sally then?’ Tate asked, disrupting my chain of thought.

  I looked at him sharply, a little annoyed at his choice of words.

  ‘We’re not shagging, we’re seeing each other,’ I replied, not bothering to hide my annoyance.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding anything but, ‘so she hasn’t let you shag her yet then?’

  ‘Of course she has… You git!’ So much for me keeping the details of our relationship quiet.

  Tate smirked. ‘Come on mate, I know you may be seeing each other and obviously, being a gentleman, you won’t want to talk about it, but how did a scruffy oik like you manage to charm your way into the bed of someone like Sally?’ I heard a hint of wistfulness in his tone that I had never seen in Tate before. Usually he was quiet and workmanlike, rarely involving himself in conversations that didn’t concern the job.

  I looked out of the window as I spoke, hoping to catch a glimpse of something that looked familiar. ‘She got stood up by one of her string of idiots and I offered to take her out to dinner. She said yes and we got on really well, far better than I’d hoped or expected to be honest.’

  ‘So it’s true that women don’t always go for looks then?’

  ‘Shut up and drive.’

  A little over an hour later we had almost finished our area, having checked out three farmhouses that weren’t at all familiar, and my pencil scratchings covered most of our area of the map.

  ‘There,’ I said, pointing to an overgrown driveway that showed recent signs of use, the plants overhanging the road bent and torn by vehicles.

  Tate pulled over a little way down the road and we scrambled up a bank and into a field, makin
g sure to stay close to the hedgerows to stay out of sight of any buildings we might find. We jogged along the edge of the field and through a clump of trees, coming eventually to a rutted farm track that turned sharply to the left and disappeared down a dip before rising again and heading off towards a group of buildings in the distance.

  I looked at Tate, who shrugged, and we began to jog along the dried mud of the track, slipping occasionally and adding to the build-up of mud that already caked our shoes and the bottom of our jeans. After we had gone less than a quarter of the distance, my wind ran out, proof that I was far from being healed after my ordeal. I walked along for a bit with Tate hovering worriedly over me like a mother hen.

  ‘Leave it Tate, I’ll be fine, I just need to get my breath back.’

  He nodded and moved away, then called up over his radio as we should have done when we stopped. ‘Kev from Tate, receiving?’ he asked, but I only heard it out loud rather than in my earpiece.

  ‘You’re not coming through,’ I said. ‘Let me try.’

  ‘Kev from Ding, receiving?’ I shook my head. ‘Nothing. We must be in a dead spot.’

  Tate fumbled his radio out of its concealed holder and looked at it. ‘Dead,’ he said with disgust.

  ‘Did you have GPS on?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you tell if you do?’ he replied.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ He tossed me his radio.

  I tried turning it on, a process that is harder than it should be, and discovered that he was right. It was totally dead. ‘Can you get mine out?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, stand still a minute.’ I stood still and he managed to free my radio from where I had hidden it in the small of my back, passing it to me.

  I checked it and it showed a signal bar of one, which is about as good as using two cups and a piece of string. ‘Bollocks. Should we go back to the car and update with the mobile set?’

  Tate looked at how far we had come and shook his head. ‘Nah, let’s just check this out and get it over and done with, then we can get back and report in.’

  I nodded, turning to let him put my radio back in its holder before we continued to walk down the track, my head aching more and more with every step. Finally, we reached the end of the track and it became a mixture of concrete and gravel. We edged forward carefully with me in the lead, being the one who would recognise it if it was the right place. The yard came into view and I felt a thrill of excitement as I realised that it was indeed the house that I had left only a few hours before. ‘This is it!’ I whispered to Tate, turning to share the news.

  ‘I know,’ he whispered back, and the world went dark.

  39

  I AWOKE to the taste of blood in my mouth and the sound of two men arguing. My head felt as if it was about to split open, and as I tried to raise a hand to feel a particularly tender spot on the back I found that once again my hands were tied.

  Suddenly the memory came back, and I cursed as I realised that Tate must be the mole.

  I was in a different room this time, this one with a window that spilled the morning sunlight across mouldy walls that were too grimy to make out the colour of the wallpaper. The room smelled damp and musty, but at least this time I hadn’t added the smell of my own piss to the mix.

  Depression wrapped me in its miserable embrace as I thought about my situation. Davey would now know about the phone and switch it off, leaving the others with no clue as to our location. I was so upset by Tate’s betrayal that I couldn’t even muster up a single spark of anger, instead berating myself for being too trusting. I had always prided myself on being a good judge of character, but here I was lying on a bare wooden floor with my hands tied up tightly enough to cut off the circulation to prove that my trust had been misplaced. I tried to wriggle around so that I could see the rest of the room, but the movement made my head spin and I was almost sick. I laid my head down carefully, recognising the effects of concussion, and wondered what Tate had hit me with. Lying there with nothing better to do, I closed my eyes and focused on the argument, slowly beginning to make out the two individual voices as Tate and Davey, both sounding tense and angry.

  ‘…we’re screwed. He knows it’s me now, there’s no way we can let him go back, but I can’t let you kill him either. He’s my friend for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you let me clear up your gambling debts. Look, don’t worry, we’ll sort something out.’

  ‘Oh yeah, like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe we can make it look like he was the one who was working for me?’

  ‘Don’t be daft; they all saw the state of him. Anyway, what about you? They all know it was you now, so you’re done too.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me; I’ve got houses in three different countries and enough money to keep me comfy for a while. I can’t stand the weather here anyway.’

  ‘Oh I see, so you’re just going to piss off and leave me in the firing line, is that it?’

  Silence, then Davey’s voice, threatening and low. ‘If you’d done what I asked you and kept them off my back in the first place, none of this would have happened. I told you I needed to be left alone that day and instead you turn up with the whole lot and jump me. You may as well have stabbed that bloke yourself. All this blood is on your hands and don’t you forget it!’

  Tate’s voice lowered so that I had to strain to hear it. ‘Hang on; I swapped that knife for you, didn’t I? I risked my job, my freedom, everything. And now you accuse me of not doing what you ask me? Are you crazy? I work my…’

  There was a shout then the sounds of a scuffle as pots and pans banged below, making me guess that they were in the kitchen. The fight went on for a few seconds, then I heard Tate cry out and the noise ceased.

  ‘That’s right, you forgot I always carry a knife. Don’t you ever call me crazy again or I’ll cut your fucking ears off.’

  ‘All right, all right, I’m sorry. Let’s just get this over and done with and I’ll think of something to tell them. Maybe I can say we were both jumped and they killed him but I managed to get away. I’ve got the wounds to prove it now.’

  Davey laughed. ‘You’re cleverer than you look. Grab the others and we’ll go and find out where your man is hiding my gear, then I can start up again, keep my suppliers from cutting my throat and sod off to Portugal.’

  I heard footsteps and a door slam and waited in silence, feeling numb after what I had heard. Tate was doing this because he owed Davey money? Since when did money count more than friendship, or loyalty or even honour? I was saddened in a way I can’t explain by the betrayal and, finally, as I lay there waiting for them to come and finish it, the anger came back. How dare he? How dare he do this over money? I freely admit that I had started this by doing over the Budds, but at least I was fighting for the right reasons. I was trying to make my city safer and get some justice for what had happened to Jimmy, never mind the fact that it had nearly got him killed. But Tate, he was doing this because of a debt, and that made him so dirty that I wanted to wash myself until the stink of sitting next to him in the car was gone. What hurt the worst, though, was the fact that he had swapped the evidence so that Davey could get away with stabbing Jimmy. He’d crossed the line and there was no way I would let him get away with it. I decided then that no matter what else happened, I would find a way to drag him to PSD in cuffs and give him over willingly.

  My plotting was interrupted by the creak of a door opening somewhere below me followed by the sounds of several sets of footsteps on the stairs. Moments later, I heard the door to my room open and four pairs of legs walked into view.

  Tate leaned over and hauled me upright, refusing to look me in the eye. He stepped back as if he could feel the heat of my anger and I found myself looking at Davey and the two Budd brothers, one still in a cast and looking as if he wanted payback. The double-barrelled side-by-side shotgun one of them was carrying reinforced this image, and for the first time since I had awoken, real fear took roo
t deep inside me and I began to tremble.

  Davey crouched down, careful to stay out of range. ‘Well well, lookie here. And I thought you weren’t going to come back.’

  I forced myself to meet his gaze, drawing on the anger that still lurked behind the fear as if using it for a shield. ‘I haven’t got time to play games with you Davey, so say what you have to say and either kill me or get out.’

  He laughed the grating laugh that made my head hurt and pulled his knife from inside his jacket. ‘What I’ve got to say, Gareth, is best said with a little dose of pain to help the truth along.’

  I looked at the blade, trying to force back the memory of how much it had hurt when he had cut my arm. ‘That won’t help you; I’ll bite my tongue off before I tell you where the drugs are.’

  He took a step forwards, moving too rapidly for me to do more than blink as he seized my jaw with his left hand, the fingers digging painfully into my face.

  ‘You won’t do that, because if you do I’ll go and find your girlfriend before I leave and take the money those drugs cost me out of her pretty little arse, get me?’

  I couldn’t disguise the fear in my eyes as I thought of this psychopath going anywhere near Sally. ‘You touch her and you’re dead,’ I blustered, knowing how weak the threat was, even before he laughed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what. Being the good employer that I am, I’ve promised my lads here that they can have a bit of quality time with you, kind of payback, like. I’m going to give them a few minutes, and all the while I want you to be thinking about Tate here giving me your girlfriend’s address. Maybe when I come back you’ll have something to tell me.’

  I looked up at Tate who was staring fixedly at a point on the wall above my head. ‘You can’t do this Simon, don’t let this psycho near Sally.’

  Tate looked down at me for a moment, his eyes radiating pain, then they hardened again and he walked away, leaving me with the two grinning brothers who owed me payback.