by GB Williams
‘Is that what the rest of the gang will say when I ask them?’
‘You’ll have to catch them first, Superintendent Broughton,’ Towers pointed out. ‘And even then, you have voice recordings where my client is threatened with being set up if he does not comply. Until you have actual evidence of any wrong-doing on my client’s part, may I respectfully suggest you back off?’
Charlie watched Towers. He was totally reasonable and clear and level, but for the last moment, his voice had deepened and for a second the steel and the danger of his edge was clear. Charlie was oddly proud of the man.
‘And perhaps you can also explain why there is, since your officers searched my client’s home, two hundred pounds missing from his personal possessions?’
It was a first for Charlie to see Broughton look as if he was actually internally squirming.
‘We only have his word the two hundred is missing.’
‘At this point, that’s enough.’
Broughton’s eyes narrowed. ‘Two hundred is a lot of money to keep lying around.’
‘It’s really not.’
It struck Charlie that this really could only have been said by the best paid man in the room.
‘In fact, if I open my wallet now,’ Towers went on, ‘I suspect I’m carrying nearly that much in cash, just to have that much in cash on me.’
Broughton offered a tight smile. ‘You having that much cash, I can understand. But him? In his job? Perhaps your client can explain why there was two hundred pounds in cash in his home to, allegedly, have been taken.’
Towers and Broughton turned to him.
‘Emergency stash.’
‘What for?’
Huffing out a sigh, Charlie tipped his head, hardly able to believe they were wasting time with this nonsense. ‘Emergencies.’
‘What emergency,’ Broughton snarled, ‘were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know.’ Charlie’s response dripped with sarcasm. ‘That’s why they’re called emergencies.’
He received a warning look from Towers. He was pushing it a bit with the attitude. He almost wished he hadn’t mentioned the money to Towers now. ‘Look, I just kept back a little cash when I could to make sure I had a fallback in case something unexpected and expensive turned up. It’s not like I’ve got good credit any more. I can’t just whack a charge on a card and pay it off on payday any more. So I was building up a stash of—’
He cut himself off as DCI Piper walked into the room.
‘Did you find Teddington?’ Broughton asked.
Charlie was a little surprised. The DCS wasn’t renowned for caring that much for people he didn’t know. It was particularly peculiar when it was known that he wasn’t impressed with anyone involved in last year’s prison riot and its fallout.
‘We did.’
‘I’ll let Sheldrake—’
Piper put his hand on Broughton’s shoulder, kept him in the chair. Charlie’s heart sank. Broughton’s concern was about the rungs above him, but not Piper’s. Piper’s move didn’t bode well. Looking tired and near his limit, Piper sat down next to Broughton and quietly told the other three men what had happened.
Charlie felt like the blood had washed out of him. He struggled to believe what he was hearing.
‘She deliberately crashed the car?’
‘Yes.’
A car crash that had killed Beamish and seen both Carol and Teddington rushed to hospital. According to Piper, it wasn’t clear how they were at this point.
‘That’s either extremely brave or extremely stupid.’ Towers’ even, rational voice brought Charlie back to the present.
A present that he found was over twenty minutes later, when Piper’s voice chimed into his consciousness, announcing the termination of the interview. He had obviously sat there like an idiot as the others had carried on talking.
‘But aside from the established emotional connection between my client and Mrs Teddington, I have to point out that you have no reliable evidence to continue to hold my client, let alone accuse him of anything.’
Though he hadn’t been arrested on returning to the station, Charlie was very glad of Towers’ continuing efforts to ensure that he wasn’t. Breaking the conditions of his parole was not in Charlie’s interests. Charlie knew Towers, Piper and Broughton were still talking, but he wasn’t listening. Teddington was hurt and it was his fault. Guilt hit like a sledge hammer. She’d said she wasn’t sure she could forgive him and he realised he didn’t deserve her forgiveness. He wasn’t sure he could forgive himself. Every time their paths crossed, she got hurt. He had to stay away from her.
‘Are you even listening?’
Broughton’s sharp demand pulled Charlie’s attention to him. ‘Sorry, sir, I was thinking about Teddington.’
‘And I was telling you to stay away from her. Understand?’
He swallowed. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was probably what Teddington needed. ‘I understand.’
42
Despite his exhaustion, Piper wasn’t sleeping well, much to his wife’s discontent. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Teddington driving into that wall, and the way she looked when she was brought out of that wreck. He’d made a call just before midnight to find out how everyone at the hospital was. It wasn’t a great result. Lincoln, Beamish and Grimshaw dead; Freeman, Carlisle and Teddington severely injured, all in high-dependency care. Then there was Bell, who was probably in need of hospital treatment and not getting any. On the positive side, they had Carlos De Silva, the driver, and Martin Stubbs in custody, Bell had walked free, and Piper still had his job. He doubted his prospects had survived, but he could live with that. He was happy to be a DCI for the rest of his working life.
Walking into the observation room, Piper found Siddig reviewing the interview videos of De Silva and Stubbs. Neither had been overly helpful. They hadn’t said much, but they’d each reacted to different pieces of data. Stubbs had spat feathers when he’d heard that Beamish had at least one other identity. De Silva had reacted, which was to say that the tension in his musculature increased, when he heard that the money had been intended for Mansel-Jones.
‘He knows something.’
Piper looked at the image on the screen. The recording of De Silva’s interview.
‘But what does he know?’
‘More than we do.’
‘That wouldn’t be difficult.’
Siddig nodded. ‘The problem is with everyone else dead, and Bell having to stay quiet, we’ve got next to nothing on them.’
‘We’ve got enough.’
‘True,’ Siddig allowed, ‘but it doesn’t solve our biggest problem.’
Piper dragged a breath in. No, it didn’t, and he was beginning to think nothing would.
‘I spoke to the forensic team when I first got in,’ Siddig said after a moment. ‘They’re going to run Beamish’s prints and DNA as a priority.’
‘So we’ll get the ID on a dead man.’
‘Hopefully.’ Siddig slowly turned to him. ‘And that might lead us somewhere.’
‘Or it might not.’
‘Do we give up trying then, sir?’
He considered it. ‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘That’s just the bad news. Here’s some good news. Carlisle has come round, the doctors are very positive for his recovery.’ He watched her smile—it was good to see hope in anyone’s eyes at the moment. ‘And then there’s this.’ He held up a trifold of paper. ‘I’ve got a warrant for Simon Lincoln’s residence. Hold on.’ Piper stopped her when she moved to stand. ‘I want your help on this, but it has to stay under the radar. I need to log all this evidence back in and you need to get back to your day job. I’ll brief you when I get back.’
The rules required that Piper waited while the TAC team went into Lincoln’s house first and did the initial sweep to ensure it was empty. They’d given any occupant a chance to answer the door, but with no response after a full minute, they were cleared to break in.
Five minutes l
ater, Andrews came back out. His usually expressionless face was twisted into a glower.
‘Nothing.’
Piper frowned. ‘Nothing? How can there be nothing?’
‘It’s been swept clean,’ Andrews said on a sigh. ‘There’s some personal stuff, bank accounts, bills, the usual. But nothing that’s not the usual stuff. At least not yet.’
‘All being bagged and tagged?’
‘All being bagged and tagged. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.’ Andrews looked back at the house. ‘Whatever secrets Simon Lincoln was keeping, he took them to his grave.’
43
‘I don’t understand.’
Piper wasn’t overly surprised. He sat at Teddington’s bedside. It was Friday. Teddington had regained consciousness the evening before, and at police request, she’d been placed in a single side room. He’d claimed consideration for her health and her mother’s need to take care of her daughter as an excuse for telling the team not to interview her. The truth was he’d wanted to be the first to talk to her for very different reasons. She had suffered a broken leg, arm and two broken ribs—caused by the crash, not Grimshaw. The doctors said the only way to know if the skull fracture was caused by the knock against the chair or the way she head-butted the steering wheel in the crash was under autopsy, so they were all happy to leave that mystery unsolved.
What was clear was that the concussion was very real, and the reason she was still being kept in hospital. Now she had a surprisingly small scab on her forehead and facial skin in a variety of interesting colours.
‘You want me to lie?’
Piper was uncomfortable with the word, but glad Teddington had kept her voice down even though the door was closed. He took a breath and tried again. ‘I want you to say you didn’t see Charlie in the bank.’
She looked down at her pale hands as they gripped and twisted together on top of the thin blankets. There was still a saline drip in her hand. She was chewing on her bottom lip and controlling her breathing carefully. Finally, she looked up at him. ‘Mum said you visited her on Tuesday.’
Piper nodded.
‘Thanks for doing that, taking care of her. She’s been through enough.’
‘You mean your brother?’
Now she nodded.
‘That picture wasn’t in the front room the last time I visited.’
‘No.’ She carefully exhaled. ‘It used to sit upstairs on the landing, but because the frame is silver, it was taken by the lodger we made the mistake of letting into the house. She stole it and a load of other stuff. Now we have it back, Mum keeps it downstairs so she can’t easily lose it again. That frame’s so distinctive that when I saw it in the pawnbrokers I knew it was ours. I showed the guy inside a picture of Terry that I keep in my purse, and he held the frame back while I brought your lot in. When they finally decided to listen to me.’
As she spoke Piper felt his frown deepen. ‘Finally?’
She nodded. ‘I made several complaints about that bitch of a lodger, but they weren’t that interested. I guess I didn’t make friends last year.’
‘I’m sorry about that. They shouldn’t have treated you any differently than they’d have treated anyone else.’ And he was going to chew the ear of whoever hadn’t helped.
‘I’m not sure they did,’ she told him. ‘I’m sorry, but…’ she sighed and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s sorted now. Anyway, how’s Carlisle?’
The switch surprised him. ‘He’s okay,’ Piper reported. ‘He’s still in a great deal of pain—he lost sections of his lung after all. But he’s alive and getting stronger.’
‘And he’s agreed to this?’
‘His statement has been that he didn’t recognise any of the armed men that invaded the bank that day.’
She was frowning at him. ‘So what’s the official version of events?’
‘Charlie provided all the details but was double-crossed and shot before anything started. Had he not been wearing a bulletproof vest, he wouldn’t have survived.’
‘Well at least that’s true.’
He understood her cynicism. What he didn’t understand was why she wasn’t happier to know Charlie was alive. ‘The story is that the bank job was done by five men who were heavily disguised and a sixth getaway driver. While visual identification of the perpetrators is impossible, their proximity to you, and now their own testimony puts them in the bank, except Carlos De Silva, the driver. We have evidence of Lincoln saying he’d set Charlie up, and that’s what he did.’
‘What about Mr Orange, Martin something?’
‘Martin Stubbs? He was on the motorbike and sustained minor injuries when he was stopped, but nothing significant. Unfortunately.’ He saw her slight smile at the unprofessional comment. ‘Both him and Mr De Silva are swearing blind that Charlie was there.’
‘Have to ask, I’m still not clear what he was doing there.’
‘Charlie?’
‘No, Martin Stubbs. He wasn’t much use.’
Piper smiled. ‘Not in your view perhaps, but if Presswick hadn’t opened the safes, Stubbs would have cracked them.’
‘Ah, that makes sense. Andrew Beamish said he always had an out. What about Carol? I suppose that bitch survived?’
‘She did,’ Piper said on a sigh. ‘Actually, there’s a bit of twist. Things are going back and forth like a bit of a tennis match with her. She originally claimed that she was nothing to do with the heist. Charlie states that she was the make-up artist that changed their appearances. Then she says she was forced into doing the make-up because she was afraid of Andrew Beamish. They were in an abusive relationship and she had to do what he told her.’
Teddington gave an odd look as she stared at her hands.
‘What is it?’
‘It probably was an abusive relationship. Andy said some things to me about liking beaten women.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Piper allowed, ‘there’s one of the major difficulties of abusive relationships, they’re often too easily and too well covered up. There again, there’s no evidence of Andrew Beamish actually existing.’
Teddington blinked at him, frowned briefly before putting her hand to her forehead; apparently the move pulled at her injury. ‘Can you run that by me again?’
‘Andrew Beamish was a false name. No one seems to know him, or have heard of him, except Carol and that’s the only name she has for him. We’ve come up blank on fingerprints, and the DNA is being checked, but since the guy is dead, it’s not high on anyone’s agenda.’
‘And that’s it? That’s all the information you have on the man?’
Piper nodded. ‘Pretty much. We have an incident record that records his name as Neil Grey, but that’s all at the moment.’
‘Well he said he always had an out, I suppose not existing is the best out of them all.’
Piper had to agree with that.
‘So you’ve got eyewitness reports that can’t be trusted because we know make-up was used. The testimony of two surviving men which can be countered by recorded evidence that Lincoln was going to set Charlie up anyway. And you have a convicted murderer who says he was shot in a warehouse in the morning, while the others say that happened in the afternoon. The evidence can support the shooting; what about the timing? What about the testimony from the doctor who examined Charlie’s chest?’
‘Charlie hasn’t exactly got many friends on the Force, and that includes the particular medic who checked him over. That’s why the guy wouldn’t prescribe painkillers even though he could, and why he didn’t take a timestamp of the bruising. He was just happy to know Charlie was in pain.’
‘Jesus, I get that cops don’t like the idea of a rotten one, but that seems over the top.’
‘Charlie was a bright star in his time. People respected him. Possibly hero-worshipped him. His betrayal was bad enough, but after Sheldrake’s campaign, and what happened last year…’
‘Rubbed salt into the wound?’
‘For most, yeah. For othe
rs he ripped it open and bundled a load of nettles in.’ He was relieved that she understood at least a little of what was going on.
She was nodding and biting her lower lip. ‘I might just have a bit of seasoning to add to that.’
Now Piper was worried, the pain in his stomach burning again. ‘Why?’
‘It’s one of the things Beamish said, before I got concussed, he mentioned me wearing a wire during the prison riot. As far as I was aware, that little snippet is known only to the police.’
Piper took a breath. Have to tell Siddig that. ‘I’ll look into it.’
‘So what do you need me to lie for?’ she asked. ‘Is it Charlie’s identity and the timing of the shooting?’
Piper tilted his head. ‘That and the time you were pulled into the manager’s room.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll need to take an official statement, but that can wait.’
‘You can take it now if you like,’ she offered. ‘I didn’t see Charlie Bell inside the bank, and in that office nothing much happened. I was just kept separate, I don’t know why. Maybe it was a plot to set someone up.’
Piper nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him any more. ‘Thank you. So, what happened to the last man?’
She looked from her hands to the man sitting beside her. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Ari—’
‘Chief Inspector,’ she cut him off and she looked more like the Officer Teddington he had first met when he walked into HMP Blackmarch—strong, honest and dependable. In many ways, formidable. ‘I suffered a head injury during the raid and I sustained a concussion. I even fell before I reached the van, though I’m not sure anyone who survived can testify to that.’
Piper didn’t tell her that the snipers had already made statements to that effect.
‘By the time I was actually bundled into the van, everything was hazy. I don’t actually remember the move from one van to another, I don’t know what happened to the other man. I just don’t know.’
