The Crime Trade

by Simon Kernick

  28

  DCS Noel Flanagan leant forward in the seat and put his head in his hands, holding the position for several minutes, the pressure in his chest almost unbearable as the terror battered away at him. In all his days as a police officer, he had never felt as helpless as he did at that moment. Suddenly he had absolutely no control over events, events that could indelibly shape his future and that of his family.

  His daughter, his beloved daughter, was in grievous danger, and all he could do was obey the instructions he’d been given and, by doing so, break the laws he was paid to uphold, thus putting his colleagues right in the firing line.

  Was it that bastard Jenner? Was he behind it? The slippery little fuck had always hated him, ever since that time with Frank Rentners. But that hadn’t been his fault; there’d been nothing he could have done about it. Sometimes things just went wrong on an op, even with the best will in the world, and an undercover copper had to be prepared for that, not lash out at his superiors the minute he was put in danger. Jenner hadn’t played by the rules and had paid the price, but could he really hate Flanagan so much that he’d resort to kidnapping his daughter? If he had, Flanagan would kill him. Tear the bastard apart for putting him through this.

  But what if it wasn’t Jenner? What if it was someone else who had Judy? What if they’d killed her? Surely they wouldn’t do that. There was no need. He was going to do everything they said. Anything to protect his child.

  The terror kept battering away at him, and his heart felt like it was on fire, but he forced himself to calm down, deliberately slowing his breathing until it was normal again. Then he got to his feet, composed himself, and returned to the lounge where his wife was reading the latest Danielle Steel, oblivious to the predicament he was in.

  29

  Stegs arrived at Tino’s holiday apartment at six a.m. the following morning, this time by car. He’d driven the back routes through Harlesden and down into Maida Vale before joining the Marylebone Road near Regent’s Park, keeping a careful eye out for any sign that he was being followed. He’d already made that mistake once with Boyd, and it had almost cost him everything. He wasn’t going to make it again, especially now that Flanagan’s suspicions were up.

  There was an underground car park beneath the block of flats, constructed several years previously in an effort to flash the place up a little, and Stegs drove up to the entrance. He punched in the code Tino had given him and drove inside as the barrier went up, finding the spot for Tino’s pad at the far end on the right, conveniently close to the lift. Not surprisingly, for that time in the morning, there was no-one about and the car park was only half full. Stegs yawned, parked up and got out, making his way to the lift.

  The missus had given him serious grief that morning about waking her up at quarter past five and had demanded to know where he thought he was going. He’d told her it was a new assignment and that it wouldn’t be lasting long, and in an effort to placate her had added that he was going to take her advice and leave the Force. ‘I don’t need this hassle any more,’ was his explanation. She’d just mumbled something unpleasant and gone back to sleep, and he’d taken the opportunity to throw on some clothes and leave.

  He didn’t run into anybody on his short journey through the building to Tino’s apartment, which was just as well. They were going to be transporting Judy Flanagan back this way to his car, almost certainly blindfolded, so the last thing they needed was to bump into one or more of the neighbours. Stegs wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what to do if they did. He was carrying a replica Browning automatic pistol which had more chance of doing a dance routine than firing a shot, but the sight of it would hopefully put off any would-be heroes. However, it would also draw attention to what was going on, and possibly fuck up the whole thing, and he couldn’t have that. He therefore chose to rely on his foolproof method of dealing with all such eventualities: hope they didn’t happen and not think about them. It usually worked.

  He knocked gently on Tino’s door, and a few seconds later the Dutchman answered, wearing his now trademark worried expression. Without speaking, he ushered Stegs inside.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ whispered Stegs when he’d shut the door.

  ‘I had to put her under again, man. She was coming round, but I can’t keep doing this.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘Sleeping. What do you think?’

  ‘Don’t get fucking cheeky. Have you been giving her plenty of water?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. She’s OK, but she hasn’t eaten.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. She’s hardly anorexic.’

  ‘You’re a very cruel man, Mark,’ said Tino, glaring at him with an intensity he’d never displayed in any of his films.

  ‘And you’re my wicked accomplice. In fact, you’re the one who’s held this poor young lady hostage and drugged her, so don’t give me any of that shit. Now, get her up. We’re going to take her down to my car.’

  ‘And that is it for me then, yes?’

  Stegs nodded, as keen to see the back of Tino as Tino was to see the back of him. ‘That’s right.’

  Tino sighed, then turned and went into the bedroom, Stegs following.

  Judy Flanagan was asleep in pretty much the same position she had been the other morning, and Stegs had to admit that she was looking very pale and wan. He got a flash of guilt, then pushed it away. Tonight she’d be back in the family seat and all this would be nothing more than a bizarre dream. Judy Flanagan had had more than a passing flirtation with drugs, like so many middle-class girls from good homes, and there was a story going round that she’d been found once by her old man in the parental bed, out of her head on coke, Ecstasy and God knows what else, naked and semi-conscious as she received the attentions of two of the local dealers. A most shocking sight for parents anywhere, particularly when Daddy was senior Old Bill, only a step or two away from an assistant commissioner post. Judy would probably assume that she’d had a bit of a relapse, and had indulged a little bit too much. Either way, she’d be in no position to press charges.

  As they stopped to watch her, she stirred, murmuring something.

  ‘I think she’s coming round,’ said Tino.

  ‘Well, let’s get her down quickly then. Throw some clothes on her.’

  Tino pulled back the covers, and Stegs couldn’t help but take a quick admiring glance at her naked body. She was slim with pale, smooth skin and curves in all the right places. Her pussy was trimmed neatly as well and she was sporting a ‘Brazilian’, which Stegs thought was a nice touch. The missus, who tended to go for the more unkempt ‘Congo’ look, could have taken a leaf out of that particular bush.

  Judy moaned vaguely and Tino pulled a top over her head while Stegs located her knickers and tugged them on. A couple of minutes later and she was fully clad in the garments she’d been kidnapped in, but her eyes were flickering now and Tino was looking nervous.

  ‘We need something to blindfold her with,’ said Stegs, looking around quickly. He spotted one of Tino’s socks in the corner, and grabbed it. ‘This’ll do. It’s not nice, but we’ve got no choice.’

  ‘That’s my sock, man.’

  ‘Just get it on her, for fuck’s sake.’

  Tino lifted her head gently and tied the sock – a sky-blue number with Tweety Pie on it – around her eyes.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The voice was an exhausted whisper, but it was enough to scare them both. In a few minutes she’d be getting her faculties back together, and by that time they were going to have her in the car. Stegs looked at his watch. Ten past.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he growled in a voice that sounded like a cartoon monster. ‘Just go back to sleep. You’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Tino . . . Tino . . .’

  Stegs gave Tino a shocked glare. ‘You gave her your real name?’ he hissed.

  Tino responded with a helpless look. ‘I couldn’t think of anyone else,’ he whispered back.

  ‘Fuck me, a
nd you’re meant to be an actor.’

  ‘I’m an erotic actor.’

  ‘Well, you’re a shit one. You’d have trouble acting scared at your own execution.’

  ‘Tino . . . what’s happening?’

  Judy’s hand reached out, pawing uselessly at Stegs’s arm, and he suddenly had an urge to burst out laughing. It was all going wrong, the whole thing. It could end up costing him everything: his job, his marriage, his liberty. And the thing was, at that point in time he truly couldn’t give a fuck. He was actually enjoying himself for what seemed like the first time in months.

  ‘All right, come on, get her to her feet.’

  They lifted her up, and each took an arm to walk her slowly to the door. She stumbled once but quickly regained her footing.

  ‘I can’t see,’ she said observantly.

  ‘Just keep walking,’ growled Stegs in his monster voice. ‘Do what we tell you and you’ll be home in a couple of hours.’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  Stegs felt like telling her to shut it, but Tino intervened, talking to her soothingly, and without any attempt to disguise his voice. ‘It’s going to be OK, baby,’ he cooed into her ear, as if preparing her for one of his trademark anal assaults. ‘There’ll be no problem at all. Just come this way down to the car. You’re on your way home.’

  Stegs pulled open the door, took a quick look in both directions down the corridor and, seeing nothing, led Judy outside. They hurried her to the lift, encountering little resistance, and stepped inside. Stegs pressed the button for the basement.

  ‘Where am I? Please tell me.’ The words dripped with fear, but were still delivered quietly enough to suggest that she was going to be sensible. ‘I don’t feel too good.’

  The lift doors shut, and once again Tino whispered sweet nothings of reassurance into her ear. Stegs hoped that she wasn’t a porn film connoisseur, otherwise the Dutchman was going to be faced with some very difficult questions. Still, it seemed to do the trick; she even rested her head against Tino’s shoulder, as if his very presence made her feel better. Stegs couldn’t understand it. If it was him in her position, he’d be well pissed off, but then the psychology of womankind had never been his strong point. Tino put his arm round her and kissed her head. Stegs gave him a look that said, ‘Don’t get too fucking friendly, we haven’t got time for any shenanigans.’ Tino glared back at him, and for the first time Stegs thought that the bastard might suddenly decide to give him trouble, which would not be a good thing. Tino had a six-inch height advantage and a couple of stone in weight as well. Plus he looked mighty pissed off. A bookie wouldn’t have even bothered taking bets. Still, Tino didn’t have a gun.

  The doors opened into the car park and Stegs motioned towards his battered red Toyota, a motor that appeared to befit his lowly status in the pecking order of things. They walked over to it, and Stegs unlocked the boot quickly, eager to get out of there as soon as possible.

  ‘Man, she is not going in there,’ said Tino.

  ‘Where am I going? Where?’ Judy asked.

  ‘It’ll just be until I release her. It’s only down the road. She’ll be in there ten minutes tops, that’s all.’

  ‘In where?’ she continued.

  ‘In the boot of the car.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Look, just get the fuck in.’

  All this growling was doing Stegs’s throat in, and he was getting impatient. He pulled Judy by the arm, and she gasped loudly, as if he’d just burnt her. She was a lot better actor than Tino.

  ‘I’ll scream. I will.’

  ‘Put her in the car, not the boot. It is cruel otherwise.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Tino.’

  Stegs half expected her to add ‘I love you’ and plant a big smacker on his lips. It was that sort of conversation. It made him feel like he was playing fucking gooseberry. It was also highly dangerous, conducting a conversation with an agitated young woman blindfolded with a brightly coloured sock in the middle of a car park that was in regular use. There’d be CCTV cameras in here too, and Stegs didn’t want to give the operator an excuse to have a look at them and pick out his grainy mug.

  So he pulled the replica Browning, and that did the trick. Tino stiffened and his eyes widened.

  ‘One more fucking word,’ said Stegs, pointing the gun at Tino’s head, ‘and you die. Understand?’

  Tino nodded frantically, his bravado deserting him at an alarming rate.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Judy. ‘I want this blindfold off.’ She reached for the sock, but Stegs pushed the barrel of the gun against her cheek, and she too got the message pretty sharpish.

  ‘Get in the boot now if you want to get home outside of a coffin.’

  As soon as Stegs had finished speaking he realized he’d forgotten to growl, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about that now. He pushed her inside and she went without complaint, lying down in the foetal position amid the various bits of bric-à-brac, including an empty box that had once contained a baby bottle sterilizer. For some reason, the contrast between the box and Judy made him feel slightly sick.

  Tino went for him fast, trying to knock the gun out of his grasp, but he was definitely a lover rather than a fighter. Stegs had been prepared for such an assault and he slammed the boot shut and jumped out of the way, leaving Tino flailing at air. As Tino continued coming after him, keeping low, Stegs brought his knee up hard into the other man’s gut, and at the same time smacked him over the head with the gun. Tino kept coming, so Stegs allowed him to grab him round the waist, before turning the gun round in his hand and smacking him with the butt this time. Tino let go and fell to his knees. Stegs took a step back, then kicked him full in the face, knocking him sideways.

  Muffled screams came from within the boot, which made Stegs wonder what the fuck Tino thought he was doing. If he wanted to get caught for this, he couldn’t have made a better job of it. What was it about people that they suddenly got a burst of morality long after the damage had already been done? Tino had drugged this poor bird up to the eyeballs and kept her prisoner for two days solid, and now, without warning, he was prepared to fight to the death in order to get her the best possible method of transport home. It beggared belief, it really did.

  ‘Tino,’ Stegs said, grabbing the Dutchman by the hair and shoving his head into the car next to his, a nice silver-coloured Merc, ‘you seem to forget that I’m the one with the fucking gun. Now stay there, and when I’ve gone, if you know what’s good for you, go back to your room, pack and get the fuck out of the country. It doesn’t seem to suit you here.’

  Stegs couldn’t see Tino’s face because it was buried in the wheel arch, but it sounded like he was crying.

  ‘My God, what sort of a police officer are you?’ he sobbed.

  It was a good question, and one that Stegs couldn’t readily answer, so he didn’t bother trying. Instead, he turned away and got in the driver’s side of the car before reversing out of the space. As he did so, he saw a red-faced businessman come out of the lift not more than twenty yards away. Stegs resisted the urge to give him a wave, put the car into first and headed for the exit, ignoring the banging coming from the boot. It was 6.15 a.m., and things were just about going to plan.

  30

  At 8.20 a.m. that morning, Paul Richards – a small-time, north London-based career thug with links to organized crime whose claim to fame was that he’d once bitten another man’s ear off in a fight – received the confirmation he was looking for. He’d been standing just inside the tree line for the last three hours, facing a large, modern, white brick bungalow set well back from the road south of the village of Blindley Heath, and he was cold and tired, the early-morning sun having done little to warm his creaking bones. He’d already seen a man in his thirties, dressed in a white rollneck jumper and black leather jacket, come into the kitchen and make a cup of tea an hour earlier, before disappearing again; and then, just as he’d been thinking about going off to find a ro
adside caff for a much-needed cup of his own, he’d watched, smiling, as Jack Merriweather appeared in the kitchen window wearing a white dressing gown, his shiny bald head still wet from the shower. He too began to make himself a cup of tea.

  Bingo. Richards reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile and made the call his boss had been waiting for.

  ‘Make the most of it, Jackie,’ he whispered when he’d finished, watching Merriweather sip his tea and share a joke with the copper in the rollneck who’d come in behind him. ‘This is the last morning you’re ever going to see.’

  31

  ‘You had a girlfriend recently, Mr Panner. One of your bitches, by the name of Fiona Ragdale.’

  It was me speaking. On my right was DI Malik. We’d wanted Flanagan to be in on this interview as well, but he’d phoned in sick this morning, saying that he’d had palpitations in the night. The timing was bad, but there wasn’t a lot that could be done about that. The way he’d looked the previous evening, no-one thought he was bullshitting. Across from us sat Robert Panner, along with the duty solicitor, a youngish bloke called Vernon Watson who was often seen skulking round the station and who always appeared to be sweating whatever the weather conditions.

  ‘What about her?’ demanded Panner.

  ‘You were arrested in connection with an attack on her at her flat that took place seventeen days ago, on the twenty-seventh of February. You’re currently on bail, awaiting charges in connection with it.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he answered, seemingly uninterested.

  Watson, meanwhile, was staring fascinated at the nails on his pudgy fingers. I felt like telling him to pay attention, but it was probably better for me if he wasn’t interested in the proceedings.

  ‘A shot was fired into the ceiling during the course of that assault. Fiona Ragdale claimed that it was fired from a gun you were carrying at the time, and that you were the individual who fired it.’

  ‘I didn’t fire no gun. No-one ever found one, did they?’