In Her Blood

by Annie Hauxwell

  Unmoved, he checked out her battered face. ‘Looks like you’ve got quite a few pre-existing injuries,’ he said.

  A smart-arse. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms.

  He reached into his pocket and tossed a small brown paper bag onto the table. She heard the five ampoules chink against each other. There was a silence.

  ‘I’m a registered addict,’ she said finally.

  ‘I know what you are.’

  From his inside pocket he produced Lazenby’s prescription pad, secured in a plastic evidence pouch. She registered that the brown paper bag and ampoules were not sealed in a similar manner.

  Mrs Ranasinghe, thought Berlin. But she was wrong.

  ‘Home Office database,’ said Dempster. ‘All those scripts have to go to a central collection point. A spike in the number from one GP raises a red flag. When they inquired they were told the doctor in question was recently deceased.’

  ‘He signed them before he died.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The indentation of his signature went straight through the pad. You just had to trace over it. Made it easy for you, but hard for us.’

  She waited to see where he was going with this.

  ‘But not that hard for a forensic guy, as I’m sure you’re aware.’

  ‘So what’s the charge? Forgery?’ she snapped.

  He gazed at her for a long moment. ‘No. Murder.’

  Berlin shot out of her chair so fast it would have tipped over if the wall hadn’t been right behind her. ‘You’re fucking joking! Why would I kill the goose that lays the golden egg?’ Her mouth was very dry, her heart racing.

  ‘You could have a point.’ He shrugged.

  He was too relaxed. He hadn’t brought a file, wasn’t recording the interview, wasn’t even using his notebook. If he was going to charge her with murder he would have stuck rigidly to procedure, leaving no openings for a clever-dick lawyer to exploit on appeal. The whole thing was a set-up. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Okay. I get it. What do you want from me?’

  He laid it out.

  Berlin followed Dempster back down the corridor towards the custody suite, where he intended to deliver her into the arms of her arresting officers – who by now would no doubt be very pissed off.

  He moved briskly. She had told him to stick his so-called deal where the sun didn’t shine, so she would be charged for forging the prescriptions and processed by the matching pair of surly constables. Maybe she shouldn’t have given them a two-fingered salute. She was walking into a dead end.

  Dempster was about to key in the security code to open the door on her less than rosy future. She decided it was worth trying to up the ante.

  ‘Hang on.’

  He turned, his fingers hovering above the keypad.

  ‘What you’re asking of me is worth more than just a walk on these minor offences,’ she said.

  ‘A conviction would finish your career. And I could always add a few charges if these are too trivial for you. How about obstruction of justice and resisting arrest, for starters?’

  ‘In your dreams,’ said Berlin, although she was afraid he might be right.

  ‘So what else do you want? Apart from what I’ve already put on the table,’ he asked.

  ‘You have someone here in custody. A bloke called Doyle. DCI Thompson brought him in. I’d just like to know what’s going on, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s the case you were working on, right? Your informant. The floater?’

  She nodded. He hesitated and she thought she’d pushed her luck.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  He loped back down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. She heard a door open, close, then open again. Then he stuck his head around the corner and beckoned.

  17

  DEMPSTER USHERED BERLIN into a dark room, illuminated only by a monitor high on one wall. On it she could see Doyle facing two detectives across a table. Their backs were to the camera, but she knew it must be DCI Thompson and DS Flint. A woman in a smart suit was sitting beside Doyle, taking notes.

  The image was grainy and the whirr of the tape machine in the room was a background to the scratchy sound of their voices. It was like watching a film from the fifties. Or maybe from the nineties, but on a knock-off DVD.

  ‘Honest, guv’nor,’ said Doyle. ‘Would I lie to the law? Not a bit of it. I’m a great respecter of law and order. I voted for Mrs Thatcher. A great lady.’

  ‘How was that then?’ said Flint. ‘When you’re not even on the fucking electoral roll?’

  Doyle felt he was winning. The young detective was coming on with his best hard-man persona, and he was deflecting it with a hurt, reproachful demeanour.

  ‘I put it to you, Mr Doyle, that you were identified by this woman, now deceased, as operating a moneylending business without a licence,’ said Flint.

  Doyle spread his hands out on the table in a gesture of submission and innocence. The young bloke was leading the interview and Doyle knew that if he addressed his responses to the other detective, it would irritate the shit out of him. So that’s what he did.

  He focused his wide-eyed look on the older man. ‘Guv’nor, I’m not denying I’m an entrepreneur, but I don’t know anything about moneylending. On the night you’re asking about I was at the Romford Dogs.’ He sighed. ‘I had fifty quid to win on Dicky’s Mentor and he came second. I’m clean, I’ve got nothing to hide. Happy to help with your inquiries.’

  Flint reacted as Doyle knew he would. He thumped the table and shouted.

  ‘You’re a loan shark and we know it, you know it, the whole fucking manor knows it!’

  Doyle affected a look of shock and spoke very quietly. ‘Language, please, detective. There’s a lady present.’

  Flint flushed. The lawyer smirked. Thompson raised his hand a fraction in a gesture of restraint. Flint slumped back in his chair. Satisfied, Doyle clasped his hands in his lap, patient and relaxed.

  Thompson opened a file and with care extracted a bunch of ten-by-four colour prints, which he laid out on the table in front of Doyle. Doyle knew this trick. He didn’t look down. Thompson was all business, his tone even.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape I have displayed on the table before Mr Doyle four post-mortem photographs of the victim. Mr Doyle, would you please look at the photographs and tell me if you recognise the deceased?’

  Doyle was a bit squeamish, but he knew this would work in his favour. It would look odd if he didn’t react to photos of a dead girl who’d just been fished out of the lock. He took his reading glasses out of his pocket, slipped them on, then glanced down.

  The shudder that shook him was violent, uncontrolled. He took off his glasses, dropped them on the table and picked up one of the head shots. His hands were trembling.

  ‘Mr Doyle?’ barked DS Flint. ‘Do you know her?’

  Doyle didn’t understand Flint’s question. He didn’t know what was happening. He looked back at the photo. He was shaking so much that the photo of the girl on the mortuary slab was juddering in his hands. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth. A band of steel tightened around his chest.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he managed to get out.

  Flint looked as if he was about to shout but Thompson raised a hand to restrain him. He leant towards Doyle.

  ‘Who is she?’ he said, very softly.

  ‘It can’t be,’ said Doyle. ‘It looks like her but it’s been so long.’ He felt the band of steel snap. He sprang to his feet and emitted a guttural cry.

  ‘It is, it’s her. My girl! My daughter! That’s Gina!’

  18

  DEMPSTER TOOK BERLIN out the back way, to avoid her arresting officers. He said he would sort it with them later.

  ‘Jesus Christ. So Juliet Bravo was actually Gina Doyle,’ said Berlin. ‘It was clear she knew a lot about Doyle’s operation from the inside, but I had no idea it came from as close as that. She grassed up her own father.’

  Stunned by
Doyle’s revelation, her mind raced with the possibilities.

  ‘If he was acting, he deserves an Oscar. He looked genuinely shocked,’ said Dempster.

  ‘But if it wasn’t him that killed her, or someone working for him, who the hell was it?’ asked Berlin.

  Dempster released the steel door that opened onto the car park. He shrugged. ‘It’s not your problem,’ he said. ‘Leave it to the professionals. Just because I gave you a heads up this once doesn’t mean it will be an ongoing thing. It’s not part of our deal. It was a demonstration of good faith, that’s all.’

  Berlin hesitated in the doorway. ‘Good faith? This so-called deal between us is serious for me. I’m not just a pawn in some copper’s game, am I?’

  He handed her a business card.

  ‘I can count on you, right?’ she asked.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  She glanced at the card and frowned. ‘Homicide Task Force, New Scotland Yard. Which means?’

  ‘We support the taskings of the local Murder Investigation Team,’ came Dempster’s neutral reply.

  ‘I bet they love that.’ She held out her hand, palm up.

  ‘Oh. I nearly forgot,’ he said with a grin.

  Berlin didn’t smile. He put the brown paper bag in her hand. She slipped it straight into her pocket, turned on her heel and walked out into the biting wind.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Dempster called after her, but she didn’t look back.

  She kept walking until she heard the door close and then began to jog in an awkward limping fashion, anxious to put as much distance as possible between her and the police station. She kept one hand in her pocket, holding on tight to the brown paper bag.

  She slowed down as she emerged from the alley that led to the car park and turned onto Commercial Road. She was just in time to see Doyle stumble down the worn granite steps of the station and run towards a black Merc parked on the other side of the road.

  A young bloke got out of the Merc, clearly alarmed at the sight of Doyle running. His cigarette fell from his lips as Doyle shirt-fronted him and thrust him back against the car, shouting. The wind whipped away his words, but the youth was obviously frightened.

  Another lad had jumped out of the back of the car and wrestled the distraught Doyle off his mate. Doyle practically collapsed into his arms, and the lad steered him into the back seat and got in after him. The other one gave the police station a quick glance and got back into the driver’s seat. The Merc took off.

  It was a genuine display of grief and fury. Berlin was now convinced that Doyle hadn’t killed his daughter, and if he was somehow involved, he hadn’t known the identity of the target. Thompson had no doubt come to the same conclusion, and had to release him. She was also certain that Doyle would try to find out who had done it and why.

  She made a note of the Merc’s number and descriptions of the two lads. Old habits die hard.

  19

  DOYLE COULDN’T STOP shaking. He curled up in the back seat, his arms clenched around his body, trying to hold in his feelings.

  ‘Turn the fucking heater up!’ he wailed.

  ‘Where to, boss?’ asked one.

  ‘The lock! I want to go to the fucking lock!’ screamed Doyle.

  The Merc did an illegal U-turn in the middle of Commercial Road, back towards the Limehouse Basin.

  Doyle left the lads in the car while he walked to the final lock on Regent’s Canal before it reached the Basin. The lock was a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with a fall of eight feet. It opened in 1820. Frank had taught him all this. Jesus, Frank.

  How was he going to tell the old man that his granddaughter, his only grandchild, was dead? She had been the only thing Doyle had ever got right in his whole miserable life, according to Frank. Gina had blamed him when her mum left, then when she ran away, Frank had blamed him for that. Probably they were both right.

  He tried to clear his mind, get the sequence of events right. First up, he had spotted those bald blokes in the car watching his block of flats. After he’d spoken to Ahmed he knew the fucking Financial Services Agency were onto him.

  There’d been a crackdown of sorts recently on the activities of unlicensed moneylenders. He’d seen posters in the bus shelters encouraging people to ring a hotline and grass up so-called loan sharks. Someone had noticed that blokes like him were competition for the corporate tally men and high street payday lenders. It was just big business fighting back.

  Him and Frank had been at it for over twenty years without any trouble. Until now. It made him sick. The government made a big song and dance about protecting people from sharks but Fernley-Price had told him the UK was the only country in Europe with no legal limit on interest rates. He’d said it was a truly free financial market.

  The price of freedom was proving steep, thought Doyle. It was bloody toe rags like Fernley-Price that had got the country into this mess and now it was blokes like Doyle that were getting it in the neck. He’d been going along nicely until he got mixed up with that prick. It was a thought that gave Doyle pause.

  He gazed down into the filthy water, flecked with yellow foam from some toxic shit. His little girl had lain in that muck. His tears stung as they coursed down his squirrel cheeks and dribbled into his mouth. They were bitter. Someone would pay.

  20

  THE ATMOSPHERE AT the Agency was toxic. It was the sort of environment in which Senior Investigator in Charge of Operations Johnny Coulthard thrived.

  Coulthard had jumped before being pushed from a regional force where he’d been a wooden top, a common or garden constable, for thirteen years without advancing in rank. He had worked with probationers, king of the kids, and had taken his coaching duties with a female trainee very seriously. Hence his move to the Agency and civilian waters, which he found gave him more freedom to get the job done without a lot of nancy-boy lawyers breathing down his neck.

  An action man who didn’t like much action, he was a smooth talker with a charming northern accent that perfectly complemented his self-deprecating, ‘I’m a no-bullshit, genuinely nice guy’ persona. Coulthard’s delivery would be the envy of many a sociopath. He had honed it to compensate for a face that not even his mother could love, and a beer belly he seemed to have been born with and which grew with him, no matter how long he spent in the gym. A real prince.

  The tension in the office of late suited Coulthard. He would reassure his lads, give them little treats, turn a blind eye to their weaknesses. Love, not fear, was Coulthard’s weapon.

  Delroy Jacobs didn’t feel the love. Although his sole ambition was to lead a quiet life, he was cursed with a strong sense of fair play. His placid temperament and desire for tranquillity were a reaction to his heritage: his mum was Jamaican, his dad was Jewish. They had opinions.

  Against his own better judgement Delroy had felt compelled on occasion to express concern about the team’s dubious operational methods. This hadn’t endeared him to Coulthard.

  Del was at his workstation, but could see what Coulthard was up to out of the corner of his eye. He made sure he never turned his back on him. Coulthard had been on the phone for some time, talking in a subdued tone. He wasn’t usually that quiet. Now he hung up, clicked his mouse and sat staring at his computer. He didn’t usually sit still that long, either.

  When Coulthard stood up he went straight to the glass box that was Nestor’s office and strode in without knocking. Delroy saw him gesticulate, apparently urging Nestor to look at his computer. Nestor did as he was told.

  While they were busy, Delroy slid his chair along to Coulthard’s desk. He jiggled the mouse as he dialled 1471 on Coulthard’s phone, then 3, ringing the last number to call Coulthard. No one could see him over the desk partition. The screen saver melted away to reveal a post-mortem photo of a woman. Delroy stared. He was startled when his call was answered.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Flint speaking.’

  Delroy hung up and rolled his chair back to his desk just as C
oulthard emerged from Nestor’s office.

  ‘I’m to conduct an inquiry into Investigator Berlin’s unauthorised activities,’ Coulthard announced. The rest of the team exchanged glances. Delroy was gobsmacked.

  ‘Boss’s orders,’ said Coulthard, smirking at Delroy. He glanced at his watch, then grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Drinks on me!’ he said.

  Delroy watched as the other blokes scuttled out of the office after Coulthard. Finally he got to his feet to follow them. He couldn’t afford to get any more offside with Coulthard than he was already. When he glanced back, Nestor’s door was shut and the blinds were closed.

  21

  BERLIN WALKED FROM Limehouse down to the Ratcliffe Cross Stairs. It was a quiet stretch of the river. She stood at the top of the ancient watermen’s slipway and watched the tide rise. The masonry was slick with ice. One slip and you could disappear under the freezing mould-green water or break your neck with a snap that no one would hear.

  She had agreed to assist Dempster with the Lazenby investigation by conducting covert inquiries. In other words, by becoming his snout. She was perfect for the role: a heroin addict with the necessary professional skills and experience.

  Her first distasteful task was to approach Lazenby’s other patients and see if anyone had pharmaceutical-grade heroin for sale. Dempster thought it possible one of them had got greedy. She knew it wouldn’t end there.

  In return, Dempster had said he would forget about the forged prescriptions and would let her keep the heroin. She thought he would have trouble making the forgery case against her anyway. She had worked with the Crown Prosecution Service, and it was highly likely that if he took it to them, they would live up to the more popular version of their acronym, CPS: Can’t Prosecute, Sorry.

  But she couldn’t afford to take the chance. It was blackmail, pure and simple, a reliable investigative method employed by the police every day.