by Nick Oldham
He rubbed his temple with forefinger and thumb. In his mind’s eye he saw Morton, Conroy and McNamara looking pityingly down at him as he made his plea. They would never willingly let him go. He was too much of a prize. Another bent cop in their pocket.
Yet Henry did not want to be a bent cop, was not a bent cop and never would be… He slammed the gearbox into first and accelerated out into the stream of traffic. There was no way he could allow his life to be compromised and dominated by people who had an illegal hold on him.
He would fight them.
But he knew he could not do it alone.
Five minutes later he was parking in the rear yard and walking towards the police station. He dashed up to his office and took a piece of equipment from a drawer in his desk, and after checking it worked, he went down to the custody office, avoiding any meetings with his friends from the NWOCS.
It was unusually peaceful in the charge office. The afternoon Custody Sergeant lounged in a chair behind the custody desk. Henry knew the Sergeant well, but she seemed distant and slightly wary of him.
‘ You OK, Sal?’
‘ I’m OK, Henry,’ she said, emphasising the ‘I’m’.
Henry shrugged off her attitude; he couldn’t be bothered. He asked to see Rider.
She made an entry in the custody record. ‘Use interview room two, will you?’
‘ Sure.’
Henry waited in the room until a tired-looking, slightly bedraggled Rider was steered sleepily in.
‘ I’ll lay it on the line, John,’ Henry began without preamble. ‘I want to know everything you know about Ron Conroy’s criminal activities and corrupt connections with the North-West Organised Crime Squad, and anything else you’ve got on him. The more I know, the more evidence I gather, the more chance we both have of getting out of this by the skin of our teeth.’
‘ You’re asking a lot, mate. What do I get in return? Charged with murder, then iced by Conroy at some non-specific time in the future?’
‘ No — you won’t get charged.’ Henry shook his head. ‘I’ve decided that if you do what I ask, tell me what I want to know, then I’ll stick my neck out for you. I promise that you will not be prosecuted for the murder of Charlie Munrow.’
‘ Do you have the authority to make that promise?’
‘ Probably not — but believe me, John, if I have the power to fabricate evidence to convict you of a crime, then I also have the power to get you off a charge. But I believe that if you come across, I’ll be supported one hundred per cent by the people I go to with the information.’
‘ Who will that be?’
‘ Probably my Chief Constable.’
Rider sat back. ‘That’s not enough. These are dangerous people. They kill.’
‘ I know.’ Henry marshalled his thoughts for a few seconds. ‘I’ll guarantee that, if you want, you’ll get put on a witness protection scheme. Isa too, if you like. New identities, new locations, some cash, new job… whatever we can do. That is my second promise to you.’
Rider nodded thoughtfully. His eyes locked into Henry’s. ‘And what about you? Just ‘cos you’re a cop doesn’t mean you’re not a target.’
‘ I imagine,’ said the detective, ‘that we’ll probably both end up stacking shelves in Asda in Newcastle in our new lives.’ He grinned. ‘So what about it? It’s a lot to ask.’
‘ Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t,’ Rider said pragmatically. ‘Having said that, I’m not sure how much help I’ll be to you. Ten years ago I knew everything. A lot of what I know now is third-hand.’
‘ Just start blabbing. I’ll be the judge of what’s useful and what’s not.’ Henry produced the hand-held tape recorder out of his pocket and placed it on the table. ‘Let’s have a quick preliminary chat here… just to get going.’
And the tiny radio mike which had been secretly fitted underneath the wall microphone of the official tape machine picked up everything that was said and relayed it to the speaker and tape recorder in Tony Morton’s temporary office.
He was expecting it, but when the knock came Eric Taylor nearly jumped out of his skin. He trailed reluctantly to the door and opened it. He recognised Karen Donaldson immediately from her Lancashire days.
‘ Ma’am,’ he said nervously. ‘Come in.’
She stepped across the threshold accompanied by her husband who nodded curtly at Taylor.
‘ This is my husband, Karl Donaldson. He’s with the FBI in London. He’s assisting with this matter.’
Glumly Taylor nodded.
‘ Where’s the money?’ Donaldson asked.
Taylor picked up the briefcase he’d been given and opened it.
‘ Sit down, Sarge,’ Karen said.
All three sat. Taylor alone in the middle of the settee, the others on chairs.
‘ What we need to do here, Eric, is come at this from a different perspective than you simply taking a bribe, even though that’s the bottom line, isn’t it?’
Taylor remained tight-lipped. He wriggled his shoulders pathetically.
‘ In order to clear your good name,’ her voice was sweet and hypnotic in its rhythm, ‘we need to apply some creative thinking, don’t we? I suggest we go from the premise that you simply played along with these people who "bribed" you, because, in fact, you were acting on our behalf by gathering evidence of corrupt and improper practice. Do you get my general drift?’
‘ You mean I was sort of acting for you?’
‘ Spot on. You’re a bright boy,’ Donaldson said impatiently.
‘ Henry won’t suffer, will he?’ Taylor said. ‘I feel really bad about that.’
‘ No, because he’s doing the same thing — working to expose corruption at high level. Now, all you need to do is make a detailed written statement outlining your role in this investigation and then what happened and who gave you the money. Simple.’
‘ What if I don’t do it?’ His eyes narrowed as he tested the waters.
‘ You’re fucked,’ Donaldson rasped darkly.
Henry knew he was taking a risk by spending so much time talking to Rider. Siobhan could come down at any time. Still, he reasoned, the time for inaction had gone. If he wanted to get out of this thing, then a risk it would have to be.
Rider told a good story. It covered his early years and association with Conroy and Munrow which blossomed in the late 1970s, early 1980s, based on drugs and guns. By 1982 they had a big, lucrative empire which was growing in all directions, legit and otherwise. But when the gangland territorial wars started, catching the attention of the forces of law and order, the empire began to crumble.
Rider left.
Munrow got busted.
And Conroy saw it as an opportunity to expand even further, this time protected properly by his police and political friends who he had been nurturing and working alongside for years. Rider named names.
‘ I hadn’t seen Conroy for a good while,’ he explained, ‘though I kept tabs on what was happening. I never wanted to go back to that life, so Ronnie and his activities didn’t bother me one way or the other — until last weekend, when he contacted me and asked for a meet. He wanted to get a toehold into my club — for drugs, I thought. I told him to piss off.’
‘ He wanted to sell drugs through your place?’
‘ That’s what I thought originally… then I saw that thing about Dundaven in the paper the other day and put two and two together.’
‘ Whoa, hold on,’ said Henry. A light dawned. ‘You mean Conroy and Dundaven are connected?’
‘ Yes — I thought you’d know that.’
‘ Only sort of.’
‘ And instead of drugs, I think he wanted to store those weapons at the club, probably as far away from himself as possible.’
Henry shook his head in disbelief.
‘ That meeting between me and Conroy took place at the zoo, incidentally.’
‘ When?’ Henry blurted. ‘Last Sunday? When Boris got shot?’
‘ Yeah… proper sa
d, that.’
After twenty minutes Henry had enough to be going on with. He switched the tape recorder off.
‘ Now what?’ asked Rider.
‘ We go to the Custody Sergeant and I’ll tell her that there’s no evidence against you, and you are to be released immediately. Then we’ll get out of here as quickly as possible. Pick up Isa, my wife and kids, then we run to the Chief Constable — hopefully before we get a bullet each in the brain.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
De la Garde had developed a speciality which ensured that, occasionally, just to supplement his drug-derived income, he made a nice bonus.
His specialism was drive-by shootings.
He was a gun for hire.
A plague in the States, but a rarity in Britain until recently, the DBS — as it has become affectionately known — is now a fairly common feature of the inner cities. Liverpool has experienced its fair share, as have Manchester and Leeds. Lancashire, trailing behind these urban areas in terms of violent crime, had never had one — yet.
The DBS was often used as a tool to frighten and intimidate, the message often being more important than the injury.
But De la Garde had been given specific instructions: this time there was no message to deliver, just sudden death. ‘Ensure that your target dies,’ he had been told in no uncertain terms.
He had not even blinked or asked why. He was paid two and a half grand up-front and promised the same amount on completion. Not much, but well above the going rate for most of the killers who roamed the streets of north-west England. It would pay for a pleasant holiday to Jamaica he had planned for next week.
His target was the prostitute called Gillian, the one causing so much anguish to McNamara.
It had taken De la Garde some time to hunt her down.
He had been patient and let it be known he was seeking her through his contacts. She had gone to ground since killing her pimp, Saltash, but De la Garde knew she would reappear soon. People like her couldn’t hide for ever, nor could they run. They were trapped on a hamster wheel and had to make a living the only way they knew how.
So patience, shaking down a few hookers and petty drugs dealers eventually put De la Garde on the right track and led him, unusually, to a pub on the main road between Preston and Blackburn.
De la Garde had been waiting in a strategic position on the council estate in Shadsworth where Gillian lived, and the information he had obtained proved correct. The fucking cheek of the bitch. She was still driving around in Saltash’s car, though she’d had the brains to change the plates.
Eventually, as he knew she would, she drove past his observation point. He followed her to the pub, waiting for a chance to kill her, but she managed to park up and get inside before he could move in.
Not that he cared. Sooner or later she would come out and he would make his money. He sighed at his driver, his usual one — another black man who called himself Rufus T. He was the best in the business at present, constantly in demand for shootings and blaggings. De la Garde had negotiated fifteen hundred for him — less ten per cent commission.
They were in an extremely hot Jaguar XJS in the pub car park, tucked away in one corner, listening to the owner’s Abba collection on CD.
On his knees De la Garde had laid his instrument of death.
In this case an HK MP5.
Lovely. Light. Accurate.
Morton’s head was in his hands. The cassette player on his desk clicked off, ending the recorded conversation between Henry Christie and John Rider, in which Rider had blabbed everything he knew about Conroy, his organisation and contacts, and naming a few names including Tony Morton and Harry McNamara.
Across the room, Gallagher and Siobhan sat quietly, waiting for instructions.
Morton looked up. ‘Get down to the custody office now and do something before they both walk out of here!’ he shouted. ‘If Conroy falls, we fall too. I don’t need to tell you what that means.’
‘ What shall we do?’ cried Siobhan.
‘ Fucking think of something.’
Henry and Rider had to queue up at the custody desk. Four other prisoners and their arresting officers were ahead of them.
‘ Just what we don’t need,’ Henry moaned, looking at the queue. He was feeling jumpy and very, very vulnerable. They had to get out of here as soon as possible.
One of the prisoners ahead began to complain loudly to the Custody Sergeant about how badly he was being treated.
Eric Taylor read his statement through very carefully. He placed a firm full-stop at the end, signed his name and initialled one or two corrected errors.
‘ That’s it then,’ Karen said. ‘For your own sake don’t tell anyone else you’ve made this statement — not yet, anyway. These are very dangerous people we’re dealing with here, and we need to keep this under wraps until the rest of the operation bears fruit — which might be a couple of days yet.’ She spoke to give the impression there was an organised investigation on-going.
‘ I understand.’ He pushed the money-filled briefcase across the coffee table towards them. ‘Take it. I’m sick of looking at it.’
‘ We need to count it and give you a receipt.’
‘ Fair enough. But I can assure you it’s all there — all five thousand pounds of it.’ Taylor didn’t bat an eyelid when he said this, but a trickle of sweat ran down the middle of his back and made him cringe a little inside.
There was only one prisoner ahead of them now.
Siobhan strolled casually into the custody office.
Henry stiffened and suddenly felt like a schoolboy who’d been caught smoking by the cycle sheds. He actually blushed.
‘ What’s going on, Henry?’ she asked.
‘ Just about to take his fingerprints,’ he replied quickly. ‘That is all right, isn’t it?’
She surveyed him through slitty eyes. Her mouth hardened. But even so, there was no doubt about it. She was totally desirable. Once again Henry experienced regret at not having gone all the way.
‘ You can forget them. He has to be taken to Preston.’
‘ Why?’
‘ Because the officer in charge of the investigation is screaming at Tony Morton to bring him over,’ she lied crisply. ‘That’s where he should be lodged anyway, as you well know. The crime happened there.’
‘ Doesn’t usually bother you that procedures aren’t followed,’ Henry pointed out.
She gazed blandly at him. ‘We’ve borrowed a section van — so get him booked out and we’ll meet you out back. Make sure he’s handcuffed.’
‘ It’s a uniform job, transferring prisoners.’
‘ We’re going to do it this time, so stop messing about and be ready to roll in five minutes.’
She spun on her heels and exited.
‘ At the first opportunity in Preston I’ll get you released,’ Henry said quickly to Rider. ‘We’ll go along with them for the time being. Don’t want to make them suspicious.’
The prisoner in front had been dealt with. Henry presented Rider to the custody officer, who firmly believed, because the NWOCS had told her, that Henry was suspected of corruption in a big way. That was why it had been necessary to bug the interview room. But just act natural. Don’t let him see you suspect him of anything, they had instructed her.
Gillian laid a hand on the shoulder of the other woman in a consoling. gesture.
They made an unusual pair, one which attracted inquisitive glances from the other customers in the pub. The young black girl, dressed provocatively in a cheap, bust-revealing blouse, micro skirt and long leather boots contrasted with the slim, anxious white woman in her mid-thirties dressed conservatively, but expensively, in a black suit by Dior.
‘ I’m really, really sorry,’ Gillian said inadequately. And she meant it. Never in a million years would she, as a prostitute, contact the wife of one of her clients, no matter how sick and depraved the man was. And she’d met some real weirdos in her time who would probably have been
perfect gentlemen with their wives. Sickos she could handle. But this was completely different. Here was a man who, she was certain, had murdered her friend and it would only be a matter of time before he killed again.
‘ I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something. I couldn’t go to the police because…’ Gillian broke the sentence and paused hesitantly. Because I’ve killed my pimp and the cops‘re after me, was what she almost said. ‘For certain reasons,’ she eventually said. ‘It’s been going around and around my head for days, ever since he.. stuck a knife next to my cunt.’
The other woman squirmed with distaste at the last word. Even Gillian winced, but it was a word she used every day and she couldn’t think of anything less offensive. She was what she was.
The other woman’s head was bowed in shame. She was trembling all over. Tears poured out. She looked up. ‘Don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘I’ve suspected for so long… prostitutes… but murder?’
‘ He told me Marie was going to go public about their relationship unless he paid her big bucks. He didn’t actually say he’d killed her, but said he’d made her suffer. Like he’d make me suffer if I told anyone. That was when he did his demonstration with the knife. I’m sorry, Mrs McNamara. I didn’t know what else to do.’
Rider held out his hands. Henry snapped on the rigid cuffs, not too tightly, letting them be as comfortable as handcuffs could be.
The Custody Sergeant gave Henry Rider’s custody record, having made a copy for filing. The original always went with the body.
Donaldson’s bleeper informed him to phone the Legat in London, which he did as soon as he and Karen returned to Henry’s house after taking the statement from Eric Taylor. He was told to ring an international number. He dialled it immediately after clearing it with Kate.
His heart leapt as he recognised the language spoken at the other end Portuguese. He falteringly told the woman his name. He was reconnected successfully.
‘ Santana,’ came the gruff voice.
