‘Not much we can use. Sharon said there were two of them for most of the time. They had automatic rifles, access to at least three vehicles and they were highly organised. It sounds like they were communicating with Bobby from the same house they were holding his family. I don’t think she helps us much.’
‘So we need to go to where they were found. See if there’s anything left that might give an idea where they went. Or who they are?’
‘I don’t think so. They told Sharon where she was and to call the police. Then they left. If you know the police are coming to a location you clean it real good. There won’t be anything there other than whatever they want us to find. Besides, it’s still a scene — there’s a search team due in there at first light.’
‘So what now? I can’t just sit here and do nothing.’
‘There isn’t much else you can do. I suggest you try and get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. I’ll go back in and see what’s been updated on the log. There might be something useable.’
‘You can’t tell anyone about this, George. I trusted you. I don’t really know why. I just thought if anyone would understand how important it is to play by their rules for now, it might be you.’
‘Don’t worry. I know we have to be clever about this. Or subtle at least. I’ll talk to you in the morning.’
The conversation ended and Shaun stared at his phone. He knew George Elms by reputation only. And that reputation was not of one for subtlety.
Chapter 12
‘Tee’ was even bigger than Jake Jones had expected. Not just tall, but thick set, with electric-blue eyes that stood out from tanned skin and darker stubble. He was older too, late forties Jake guessed. His age helped with his presence, even his walk exuded confidence. Tee was his street name. No one seemed to know much about him. Jake certainly didn’t. Jake had been doing some work on the outskirts of the ‘Tee Line’, as it was known, but had recently stepped up to become a bigger fish. But he was well aware that it was Tee’s pond.
He had been told to meet with Tee tonight. The location was phoned through to him at the last minute. The message he had received was that tonight was all about loyalty. He had no idea what this meant and as Tee approached him, emerging from the darkness into the headlights of two parked cars, he had a sudden sense of dread — like this might not prove such a good career choice after all.
Jake was a drug dealer. Small time. He had been a labourer until recently. He was getting regular work on sites around the county, mainly prepping land for new housing. He worked with large crews, mainly groundwork. It was tough graft and the men and a few women worked hard and played harder. Drugs played a big part: the crews had a demand for cocaine, amphetamine and cannabis that Jake had been able to fulfil almost accidentally. He had kept in touch with an old school friend who he had known to be involved in something the wrong side of the law and somehow it had escalated and brought him to this place. It had once been a road that linked Dover with Ramsgate, but was now a dead end with grass growing up its middle and sliced in half by the building of a new bypass.
Jake held his hand out to shake with Tee. It was ignored.
‘You’re the new boy I understand? You want to work with me?’
‘That’s right. It’s good to meet you, man.’
‘I’m not your man. I’m your boss. You should call me boss.’
Jake took his hand back. ‘Boss it is.’
Tee’s face broke suddenly into a wide smile that reflected the headlights pointed at Jake’s back.
‘I wanted you to see something tonight, new boy. This is a lesson. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how connected, big or fucking clever you are. I just want you to be loyal. Can you manage that, new boy?’
‘Yeah, I can do that.’
‘People tell me you’ve got a good market. People tell me I should work with you. We can grow this thing together. But before I work with anyone I always have this same conversation. I think it’s better if we both understand each other from the start.’
Tee turned and walked away. Shadows either side of him moved and he was flanked by two men in dark clothing. Jake hadn’t even noticed them. He could see the red taillights of a car further down the road. Tee walked towards them and called out, ‘Let’s take a walk!’
Jake started after him, taking time to peer right and left as he walked. Dark woodland leered back at him, green leaves and brown branches soon gave way to thick trunks of mature trees; beyond this was just a solid blackness. Ahead, and some way in the distance, he could hear the dull roar of the new bypass. He felt for the phone in his pocket for a crumb of comfort. It didn’t have the desired effect; there was no one he could call that could help him now.
Jake made it to the rear of the parked car. It was a Ford, an old black Mondeo. The paintwork blended with the night; the round red lamps stood out like evil eyes, watching his approach. The boot lid was up. Some carrier bags and dried mud littered the inside. Tee stopped level with the driver’s door and called back, ‘I want you to meet two other people that I had a similar conversation with! They were new boys, too.’
Jake peered in through the windows. The interior light was on and he saw the man in the driver’s seat first: a white male, mid-twenties, around his age. He had a tattoo on his neck and behind his ear. His skin was a shocking white, no doubt worsened by the harshness of the interior light. His eyes bulged wide with terror, his head pointed forward like it was held by some invisible force, and sweat ran freely from his temple. Jake stooped to take in a better view. He could see a second man in the front passenger seat. He was similar looking and had the same tense stare forwards. Both took hurried, shallow breaths.
‘We can talk.’ The driver spoke with effort in a heavy, Eastern or Central European accent. He didn’t deviate from staring forwards. Jake looked ahead to where the headlights of the Ford arrowed up the road. ‘We can still talk,’ The driver said again.
Jake stepped back. Tee pulled gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He reached through the open window. The engine of the Mondeo fired.
Tee leant on the door. ‘Put it in drive.’
‘We can still talk!’
‘Now you want to talk? Now you want to talk to me? Do you have any idea the problems you’ve caused me? The humiliation? You think I went to all the trouble of bringing you back from your hidey-hole in Paris so you could talk? I brought you back so you could die.’
Tee stood away from the car and turned to Jake. ‘You get good at this sort of thing you see.’ He stepped around Jake and beckoned to him from the rear of the car. Jake walked dubiously over.
‘Cable. Strong cable,’ Tee said, and he leant down and pushed down on thin, grey cable that ran up into the car from the darkness. Jake had missed it as he had approached the car, but he could see it now. He could see that it rose up through the boot and creased the top of the driver’s headrest. And there was another one too, running over the passenger’s headrest. Jake walked back up the side of the car. He leant into the front window. He could see now that the wires were looped tightly around the necks of the two men. The man in the driver’s seat thrust his eyes right, straining to see.
‘Please. Please help us,’ he whispered to Jake.
Jake was suddenly aware of Tee close behind him.
‘Help you?’ Tee called out, ‘but then he’d be sat in the back seat. I don’t think that’s going to happen, now is it? Nobody’s here to help you. I think it’s time.’
‘I got children. Two children.’ The man spluttered. The sweat had pooled on the end of his chin. The man in the passenger seat stayed silent. He’d scrunched his eyes shut and seemed to be battling with his breathing.
‘Yes you have. And you remember what happens to them if you don’t do what you’re told right? You’re lucky I didn’t bring them back, too. This is merciful.’
Jake stepped back, it was like it wasn’t real. Like he was watching a recorded nightmare.
‘You’ve got
twenty metres or so. Make the most of it.’ Tee’s voice carried sudden authority. This was an instruction. ‘That’s more than enough to get up enough speed for it to be quick.’
‘I can’t do this.’ The stricken driver raised his voice. ‘I CAN’T do it!’
Tee’s hands made a slapping sound as they came down hard on the roof.
‘This is what you get. You think you can betray me? There’s nowhere you can hide from me. This is where it ends. Now you have a choice and I will only offer it once more. It ends like this, with you at the controls, quick and easy. Or we move onto much slower methods. I know you’ve seen that. LAST CHANCE!’
‘LET IT GO!’ Tee shouted to the rear of the car. Jake could her a rustling in the wooded area, some twigs snapping. The cable that had been taut fell slack instantly. A man appeared from the woods and threw two coils of the wire on the floor under the boot. Two ends still trailed into the woods. Suddenly the Mondeo revved, though it stayed where it was, shaking on its chassis as it fell back to idle. It revved again, but this time the front wheels spun as the gear was engaged. Jake heard a terrible shout from inside the car. It surged forward. The coils of cable quickly unravelled in front of him as he watched the car surge away. His attention turned back to the quickly unravelling cables. Both tightened within a split second of each other. Then they dropped to the ground. The Mondeo still moved away but the revs dropped. It veered to the left, the rear taillights bucked into the air and stayed at an angle. The car came to a sudden stop with a terrific noise.
Jake felt physically sick. Tee looked very satisfied.
‘We just need to be sure the matter’s finished and then I think our meeting is concluded. I think you understand what it means to be working for me, right? It’s Jake, right?’ Tee’s hand was now extended. Jake was on autopilot as he reached out. Tee’s crushing grip shouldn’t have been such a surprise and he locked Jake in an intense gaze.
‘Are we walking?’
Jake had to swallow hard to form words. ‘Yeah, boss.’
They walked side by side towards the car. The engine had stalled but Jake could still pick out the lights in the darkness. It was thirty metres ahead. The night sky was clearing and the moon peeked out to provide sufficient light for Jake to follow the road and to pick out some details. He could see the two cables trailing up the middle of the road. He stepped over one of the wire loops where the cable had pulled tight. It was still whole, it’s surface slick with something, enough to reflect the moon. His stomach churned like he might be sick, his mouth filled with saliva and he had to swallow a couple of times for it to pass.
‘In every walk of life you get tested,’ Tee said. ‘You take any job for any company they’re going to come test you somehow. You go work for a bank they’re going to test your mental agility, you work for a newspaper, they’re going to test your ability to structure arguments in your written work. I run a business, just like them, but loyalty’s what matters to me. That’s all that matters. These two men you see tonight, they failed my test and they put my whole business at risk. I don’t accept that, I can’t accept that. You understand?’
‘Never clearer.’
‘Good. Then you’ll never be driving hard into the darkness.’
Tee produced a torch and shone it on the back of the Mondeo. They were just a few paces short now, the car had ridden left until it had come to a sudden stop against a tree. Jake braced himself as he walked up the offside of the car. Already he could see the rear window had a red hue. Tee shone the light into the front and beckoned for Jake to peer in first. It was unreal, like a scene mocked up by a special effects team. A torso, a red fleshy lump on top of it that had once been a neck, eyes gazing up from the severed head that had gathered in the footwell. Blood still dripped in clumps from the roof lining. Jake could fight it no more, he spun away from the car and wretched. Tee thrust him a bag.
‘In here. We leave nothing.’
Jake took the bag. Bent double, he dry retched. He got control of his breathing and he could hear laughing. The bastard was laughing! It stopped suddenly, sudden enough for Jake to turn around where Tee was leaning into the car.
‘What the FUCK?’
‘What’s the matter?’ Jake said.
Tee straightened up quickly and swung the beam of his torch into the woods beyond.
‘Where’d he go? Where’d he fucking GO?’ Tee moved to the front of the car. His torchlight picked out some trampled grass leading away. He plunged into the woods to follow. Jake peered back into the car. The interior light was still on. It was dulled by a slick layer of blood but it was bright enough to see that there was nobody in the passenger seat.
Chapter 13
George Elms had come to hold a deep dislike for night and the silence it brought. For a man suffering a constant whooshing and whistling in his ears, silence could be a form of torture. Since tinnitus had become a part of his life, he’d learnt to function with very little sleep, most of the time dozing through the night on his sofa with the television on low or in bed with the radio on. He was dozing when his phone rang. The sound of the television remote control falling onto his wooden floor was what shook him awake.
‘George Elms.’ He sat up, opened his eyes as wide as he could then squinted against the flickering light of some shopping channel. It was 2 a.m.
‘George, sorry to wake you. It’s Shaun.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I can only assume it’s important.’
‘It might be, yeah. I couldn’t sleep. I took my police radio home and I’ve been listening in tonight. I know no one’s out looking for my family but they might have got away . . . I don’t know what I was hoping . . .’
‘You don’t need to explain to me, Shaun. I’ve been there, I’ve got a good idea of how you’re feeling. What’s happened?’
‘A traffic patrol came over to the local channel. They found someone walking along the motorway, back towards Langthorne. This bloke was covered in blood and when they picked him up he said it wasn’t his. He said that someone had killed his brother.’
‘Okay.’
‘The update didn’t have much detail on it, it was just a summary over the radio. But this bloke asked for police protection. He said that the people that killed his brother meant to kill him too. He knows they’ll be out looking for him. He said he was smuggled back into the country with his brother earlier today. He was smuggled through the port. On a lorry.’
‘And you think this might have been the same lorry that you made sure got through?’
‘I do.’
‘People get smuggled through the port all the time, Shaun. Don’t pin your hopes. But I agree, this is worth a look.’
‘I think I’ll go into the nick near me. Have a look at the log and see if there’s any more detail on there.’
‘Don’t do that. You can’t walk into a police station in the middle of the night without prompting questions — and you can’t give a good reason. Where is this bloke?’
‘They arrested him. I assume he’s at Langthorne House custody.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose. Best way of making sure he’s safe while they do some more enquiries. He’ll probably be there most of tomorrow too. We have a small window to get to him.’
‘We can’t just walk down there and talk to him though. Major Crime will be all over him. Neither of us will have a good reason.’
George stood up from his sofa in a stretch and walked towards the kettle. ‘That’s true. It might need a little creative thinking. I’ll think of something. Is that all we know from the radio updates?’
‘So far. They’re still looking for where he’s come from. He’s a foreign national. He was lost when they found him and he doesn’t know how to get back there.’
‘Nationality?’
‘Polish. He’s known though. I heard them run him through PNC. He has an intel marker.’
‘Any details on that?’
‘It was an urgent interest marker. Any stops were to be reported to t
he Op Vapour intel team. Do you know it?’
‘Yeah. It’s the county team combatting the movement of class-A drugs around the county and from outside.’
‘The marker said that if the stop was in office hours they had to call direct through to a DC Ryker from the Vapour intel team The log has been tagged for him, so I guess he’ll pick it up in a few hours.’
‘Her.’
‘Her?’
‘DC Ryker. She’s a her. Emily Ryker.’
‘You know her?’
‘I know her, yeah. I know her very well.’
Great. So she’ll help us?’
‘She might help you.’
‘Why would she help me? She doesn’t know me.’
‘She doesn’t like me.’
‘You’ll try though, right?’
‘Yeah, of course. First thing in the morning.’
‘The marker has her hours as eight ’til four. I think we need to speak to her straight away.’
‘I’ll call her earlier than that. We need to get to her before anyone else does.’
‘Won’t that piss her off even more? We need to be careful about it all, George. About what we say. How are you going to explain your interest?’
‘We’ll need Ryker on board, Shaun. She’s the best intelligence officer this force has. The only way to get someone like that on board is to tell them something they don’t already know. We need to tell her everything.’
‘We can’t do that! I’ve taken a punt telling you. The circle of knowledge needs to stay at just us two.’
‘I trust her, Shaun. There are very few people I would say that about. We’re up against it with just the two of us. The rest of Lennokshire Police are running investigations into the same people we are, but they don’t know your family are still part of it. Ryker could be very useful in keeping us up to speed with what’s going on.’
‘I don’t know . . . I just don’t know what to do.’
‘We’ll meet her. You can judge her for yourself. I’ll set something up for around 7 a.m. We’ll meet at the nick first. I’ll drive you out so no one follows. Keep your phone on for details.’
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