by GB Williams
Piper could have contradicted his superior officer, but he held back. ‘No, sir.’
‘The sixth man,’ Sheldrake said softly, ‘was the driver.’ She made no comment when both men ignored her.
‘In fact.’ Broughton was deceptively calm all of a sudden. ‘It seems that while we were fucking ourselves over in Glenister Street, the whole fucking bunch of them were off God knows fucking where. And what about your fucking informant? He’s suspiciously quiet.’
‘Dead men tell no tales,’ Sheldrake mused.
That stopped Broughton in his tracks and Piper’s heart hammered at the prospect. Both men turned to Sheldrake.
‘I admit, gentlemen, that it’s not a pleasant prospect, but at this point it’s one we need to consider.’
She spoke so calmly, Piper knew it could only be said by someone who had no personal connection to the man, who could afford to be so detached.
‘Even if we don’t want to,’ she persisted gently.
‘Charlie’s not dead.’ Piper had to say it: the sound made the denial more tangible. Besides, Charlie wasn’t the robber corpse on the back floor. He was under that overhanging brow and Piper didn’t think he was dead. Yet.
‘Look,’ he said when Broughton went to speak, ‘Constable Siddig called, said that while they were plastering Lucy’s leg, the girl told her that the four others were all alive as were the two hostages. Yes, this lot have demonstrated a willingness to kill, but I don’t believe Charlie is just another victim. If he’s still alive and he’s still involved, he’ll do his damnedest to get Teddington and Arden out of there alive.’
Broughton looked at him like he didn’t know, or believe, what Piper was saying. ‘How can you continue to defend that fucking man?’
Easy. ‘I trust him.’
The DCS surged to his feet. ‘How the—’
‘Broughton.’ Sheldrake stepped forward, her tone so calm that it seemed out of place. ‘I appreciate that this is your office, but would you mind moderating your language just a little?’
The older man looked to the elected official and took a moment to control the rebellion in his eyes before obeying her mute indication and sinking back into his chair.
‘Chief Inspector,’ she redirected her attention. ‘Why do you trust Charlie Bell?’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘He’s a murderer.’
Ignoring Broughton’s grumble, Piper kept his attention on Sheldrake. ‘Bell always does the right thing.’
‘Even when the “right thing” is against the law?’
He swallowed. Bell certainly waded into grey areas deeper than Piper was usually prepared to dip his toes. ‘Apparently.’
‘So, to summarise,’ Sheldrake said, ‘we have a bank heist gone wrong, a dead robber, an officer with a bullet in his lung, an injured child, and two hostages, one of whom may well be concussed, gone God knows where. Oh, and an informant we’re going to choose to believe is alive, but is currently off radar.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You can see how this could be construed as a set-up, by Charlie Bell, to make us all look like idiots?’
‘I don’t believe that to be the case,’ Piper said, ‘but yes, ma’am, I can see your point.’
‘Good.’
They all turned when Broughton’s desk phone rang. As he answered, Sheldrake spoke in lowered tones to Piper.
‘Right now, the two remaining hostages must be our priority.’
As Piper agreed, Broughton was signing off.
‘The pursuit team got lucky. Car two managed to get out from behind the crash and cruised around looking for the van. They managed to pick up the tracker,’ he announced. ‘Clearly their jammer wasn’t up to much.’
‘Good.’
‘Not really,’ Broughton told them. ‘Apparently, the team followed the tracker and found the van in a derelict farm building thirty miles away. They figure the gang had a second getaway vehicle there, but it’s gone now. They’re away clean.’
The phone rang again.
29
It didn’t matter what she looked at. Whether her eyes were open or shut, all Teddington could see was that horrific moment when Charlie fell back from a bullet to the chest.
Something special inside her was gone. She didn’t quite know what, but she suspected it might be the last vestige of hope. She thought she’d given up in the bank, but like the man walking while leading a horse, she’d had a backup. She knew now she had been hoping Charlie would get her out safe.
No hope of that now.
A face landed on the floor in front of her.
Her stomach rebelled, but she hadn’t eaten since breakfast so it had nothing to throw up. She blinked and realised she was looking as a prosthetic mask, a latex face.
‘Easy,’ Blue grumbled. ‘That’s strong stuff.’
Looking up, Teddington saw the non-blonde removing the last vestige of make-up from Mr Blue’s clean-shaven face as he removed the gloves, then started picking a thin layer of something from his fingertips. When done, the other woman picked up the mask and dropped it into a wire mesh bin she pulled from under seat. No wonder they hadn’t bothered to hide their faces. She hadn’t recognised Charlie under the contacts and caveman brow, but she was only now beginning to see the implications. Apparently her brain hadn’t been functioning even before she’d cracked her skull on the chair arm. Mr Blue looked like a completely different man and clearly, he hadn’t left any fingerprints behind. She thought about Charlie—when he’d touched her face, it hadn’t felt unusual. No, he’d been wearing latex gloves when they’d walked in. He’d taken them off because they were making his hands itch. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t matter anyway, he was dead and beyond the reach of the law.
As she watched, Mr White pulled back his light wig to reveal a much darker head of lightly greying hair beneath. The wig went into the mesh bin along with the face. A thin veneer of even white teeth followed.
Mr White ran a wet wipe over his hands and face, revealing skin darker than in his disguise. As he finished with the third wipe and took another, she realised that the olive tone suggested either a really good tan, or Mediterranean blood in his family tree. There was no way any of the witnesses in the bank would pick these men out in a line-up. But she could. Which meant she was too dangerous for them to leave alive.
Shit.
‘You missed a bit,’ she said as Mr White threw the wipe down and didn’t move to take another.
He glared at her.
‘No, really, your ear is whiter than the rest.’
He looked to the other woman for confirmation. She nodded and he grabbed another wipe. Teddington turned to the window. She didn’t notice their location as she watched Charlie fall again. And again.
The van came to a halt. Mr Blue and the woman opened a side door and started unloading their bags of swag. The other side door was opened by the driver. As Teddington stared forward, she remotely registered the man and his bulk as he reached in and dragged out the full wire bin. A small movement caught her eye. The keys still hung in the ignition. If there was any chance of her escaping this, that might just be her best hope. Driving with concussion wasn’t a good plan, but it was a better plan than dying.
The van shifted as Mr White stepped down. She heard some fluid being poured, then that distinctive whoosh of ignition. It took her back to that warehouse again, Charlie falling. They were burning the evidence and Charlie was dead on the floor beside it.
‘Ari!’
At the sharp repeat of her name, Teddington refocused on Mr White. It occurred to her that she should call him Mr Olive now. It occurred to her that something was wrong—very wrong—with her.
‘Get out!’
‘Oh, just lock the bitch in there.’
The voice was female and it only dimly registered that she’d obviously pissed the non-blonde off. Knowing that gave her, however oddly, a glimmer of hope. She might not survive this, but this lot had been pissing her off all af
ternoon. If she had a chance to get a little of her own back, so much the better. Galvanised, she stepped out grabbed the car for support and found herself almost at eye level with Mr White. She was wearing three-inch heels so he must be five ten.
Mr Blue handed the woman one of the bags. The driver was taking the others, and the three headed away together. The Caravelle was parked near a wall, but the sound suggested to Teddington that there was open space behind them in the rest of the garage. She didn’t see the point in looking around to see if anything was there. Instead she just looked at Mr White. He was easily as emotionless as she felt.
‘Are you going to kill me?’
He didn’t even blink. ‘Yes.’
‘Now?’
He paused. She guessed he was considering it.
‘No.’
‘Then can I use a bathroom?’
No change of expression.
‘I didn’t get the bathroom trip the others did.’
He still didn’t respond.
She huffed, a bitter smile twisted one side of her mouth up. ‘You must be a hell of a poker player.’
Without a word, he moved the gun and pointed for her to follow the others. She did, a little unsteadily, but she was finding her sea legs. The large garage opened into a house, a working corridor into the ‘servants’ area. This was a dark, cold space, lit by a flickering fluorescent bulb about halfway down. Doorless storage rooms opened off the corridor. Ten yards down, she saw two doors, one directly ahead, another to her left.
‘In there.’ Mr White indicated to the left-hand door.
Teddington opened it to find a cold, damp wet room, where there was still enough ambient light to see, but only just. The shower and drain, the gritty surface of an insufficiently cleaned floor, suggested this was where they came in and cleaned before going into the house proper. She stepped through and turned to close the door, only to find Mr White in the way.
He met her eye and then meaningfully looked behind her. She frowned, then turned. There was a big unlockable window above the toilet.
‘Oh.’
She moved over to the pan, turned, already tugging at the top of her leggings. She paused, looking up at Mr White.
‘Any chance you could actually turn your back?’
‘Nope.’
For a moment, she didn’t move. Oh well. The guy was going to kill her at some point and her bladder was pressing. As long as he didn’t shoot her on the throne.
‘I don’t want to die like Elvis,’ she muttered as she pulled the jersey fabric and panties down in one. It was embarrassing peeing while being watched, but the relief was too great to dwell on it.
As she realised there was no way to avoid twisted panties pulling her clothes back up, she decided quickest was the best option. That was a mistake. Her head swam as she tried to stand and she went heavily back down. Her left hand on the mildewed wall, she took a moment to steady herself. She was safe sat down, but she had to get back up. She wanted to minimise exposure, so she pulled her leggings and panties as high as she could, and yanked both up in one as she stood. When she’d finished wriggling, Mr White came to stand before her. She was effectively blocked from moving away from the toilet. He maintained eye contact. Teddington wasn’t sure what was going on and frowned in mute question.
‘I need to go, too.’ A small movement of gun and head pointed her attention downward.
Teddington felt her brows rise then she looked meaningfully down at his crotch, then back to his face.
‘You’re going to kill me,’ she said. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I hurt you while I was down there?’
She was somewhat surprised when he actually smiled.
‘I see why Bell liked you.’
Apparently it had been a test. When he grabbed her arm and took her out, she wasn’t sure if she’d passed whatever test it was.
30
‘Sir!’
Piper turned at the call, surprised to see Constable Siddig rushing down the corridor towards him. She’d removed the utility hi-vis and bulky stab vest to show a good, sturdy figure beneath. She also had a worried expression on her face and a piece of paper in her hand.
‘Sir, have you got a minute?’
Heading for his office, Piper wasn’t sure he did have a minute, he was half surprised he still had a job. Though his continuing assignment on the current case owed as much to Sheldrake’s intervention as to his own capability. Who else is going to be so motivated to sort it all out? she’d asked Broughton. Piper wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a condemnation. He didn’t want to spend time working it out, right now—that would be demotivating. ‘Sure.’ He was at his office door. ‘Come in.’
Siddig followed him into the small office where he could at least get some privacy. Siddig closed the door on her way in, apparently that privacy was needed now. She stopped in front of his desk as he slumped to sit on the edge of it. She wasn’t exactly to attention, but she was close to it, her hands behind her back, and he wondered if they were clasped loosely or tight.
‘What can I do for you, Constable?’
‘I thought you’d want to know that Dominic came through his surgery well, though he’s likely to stay in an intensive care unit for at least a couple of nights, then he’ll have to spend a while in the high-dependency unit.’
For a moment Piper had to stop and think. He didn’t know anyone who called Carlisle by his first name and it was a long time since he’d heard it. No, wait, it had been earlier than afternoon, he just continued to think of the man as Carlisle not Dominic. ‘That’s good news. Are you and he…’ Not wanting to put a name on it, he let the question trail off.
‘No, sir.’ She looked momentarily away. ‘Not any more, I mean we were just… you know.’
He nodded. Station romances weren’t uncommon; sometimes they were just the result of long hours or tense situations. They happened, they didn’t necessarily mean anything. He’d never indulged himself, being married. That was the one aspect of police life his wife wouldn’t understand and he’d never risk losing her.
‘And the Bartons are happily reunited. I feel a little sorry for Lucy, though. Not sure her mother will ever let the girl out of her sight ever again.’
He nodded. ‘Typical parental reaction. She might ease off in a year or so. Whatever, that’s not our problem.’
‘No, sir.’ She brought her hands forward and held out a piece of paper. ‘I thought this might be of interest.’
As he took the folded paper he saw the crush creases, so her hands had been tightly clasped after all. He opened the sheet. It was a photocopy of her original notes, plus a grainy CCTV picture and a couple of additional handwritten notes. The picture wasn’t very clear, but it was clear enough to know that the face Siddig had circled in red might be said to belong to Neil Grey, but as far as Piper was concerned, that face belonged to the man he knew as Andrew Beamish.
The whole operation had been kept quiet. Only he, Carlisle and Broughton knew all the details. CHIS had various bits of logged evidence—Charlie Bell was one informant, an operation that Piper had wanted to keep very close to his chest.
He turned back to the young woman, Neil Grey’s arresting officer.
‘What significance do you assign this?’
‘I saw the suspect profile in the incident room. His was on the top of the clipboard.’ Her lips were a tight straight line, and her eyes held a sudden note of caution. ‘The guy was a suspect, albeit one that wasn’t actually at the robbery as expected. But you have one name, I have another, which means he’s hiding more than we know about.’
Piper didn’t react.
‘When I got off shift, I checked the records. I thought it might give us the opportunity to find out something about him. The address details on the report are what he gave on arrest, but I checked it this evening. The address exists, but the house was condemned seven years ago.’
Which would let it pass the cursory checks undertaken on arrest.
‘He coul
dn’t have lived there, not even as a squat. It’s a dead end.’
It was. ‘So why bring this to me?’
She swallowed. ‘I thought you should know.’ This time she licked her lips, gave an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘All information helps. Even if just to illustrate a subject’s personality, or eliminate a line of enquiry.’
‘Who else have you showed this to?’
Now she looked worried. ‘No one.’
Observant, intelligent, discreet. Just what he needed. ‘You’re off shift?’
She nodded.
‘I can’t authorise overtime, and you can’t tell anyone else what I’m about to ask you to do.’
The door burst opened and Broughton stormed in. He didn’t look happy.
‘I just had a call from Doctor Harding. Apparently, when they went to move the body of the dead gang member from the bag into the mortuary, he noticed something odd. Then he realised that the hair was a wig and the skin tone was make-up.’
Siddig looked from Broughton to Piper. Her eyes were wide and she looked a little surprised. ‘He’d effectively hidden his true identity.’
‘That’s why they weren’t wearing masks,’ Piper surmised. ‘All the men in the mugshots we’ve got… could’ve been in the bank this morning.’
‘Which,’ Broughton was a bit too happy to point out, ‘puts your mate Charlie right back in the frame.’
‘Charlie?’ Siddig asked.
‘Charlie Bell.’
‘What’s Charlie Bell got to do with this?’
Mr White took Teddington out of the wet room, through a kitchen and to a large room that might once have been a proper dining room, but now held some beaten sofas and a rather scrappy dining table with no chairs. The table was lit by an unshaded standing light with an old style iridescent bulb. The day outside was quickly fading to night, though a bright moon still gave some illumination.
The remaining gang members were at the table, the five bags open, the contents spilled across the table top.
Mr White pushed her towards the nearest sofa. It sat opposite another one, a large hearth to her right, the table to her left. Teddington sat where she was told to and watched as the spoils were divided. The number five rang with all the other bells in her head. Her eyes rested on the gun Mr White had left so casually by his right hand. There was her future, just there, hidden in a little slug of lead. Though in all honesty, she wasn’t sure if bullets did in fact contain lead. Not that it mattered: she wasn’t afraid she was going to die of lead poisoning.
