‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ve got no reason to lie about that, we’ve got you bang to rights on everything else. What have you done with it?’
Torrance leaned forwards. ‘Come on, Dean, what you done with it?’
Foley paused again. Then answered. ‘I haven’t got the money.’
The solicitor started to speak. Foley waved him silent as if batting away a fly.
Torrance again. ‘What you got to lose, Dean? Tell us what you’ve done with it.’
Foley, for the first time in the interview, displayed an emotion other than assumed boredom. Anger. He leaned forwards. ‘Why don’t you talk to Mick Eccleston, eh? Or whatever his real name is.’
‘Why would we do that, Dean?’
‘Because if anyone’s got it, he has.’
The two detectives shared a glance. ‘And why would he have it, Dean? Why not you?’
Foley sat back again. ‘You’d have to ask him, wouldn’t you? Maybe you don’t pay him enough. Maybe he wanted some overtime. I mean, he’s not earning with my anymore. He’s going to be skint from now on, isn’t he?’
The detectives kept questioning him, pushing. But Foley just slumped back in his chair, the flare of anger gone, indifference assumed once more.
He said nothing but ‘no comment’ for the rest of the interview. But he didn’t need to say anything more. Constable Annie Blake had heard all she needed to.
Dean Foley, she decided, was a man she would keep an eye on.
The next day in Manchester
She had to show her warrant card to be admitted to the hospital room. Even then she had to justify why she was there. The uniform on the door was following his orders to the letter. She would have to be clever if she wanted to pass and not show up on the official log. Squeeze the tears out, pretend to be his girlfriend.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t let you in. He hasn’t given his statement yet. He can’t have anyone talk to him until he’s done that.’
Turn it up a notch. ‘Please, he’s . . . he’s all I have . . .’
The uniform checked the corridor both ways then, with a sigh that said he was charting new territory but wasn’t without a heart, said, ‘Go on, then. But don’t be long. I’m supposed to mark everyone in and out.’
She gave him a smile so radiant the red face he was left with could have been sunburn. That’s how easy it is to manipulate men, she thought. They’re fucking idiots.
The only time Blake had previously been into a private hospital room was when her grandfather was dying of cancer. All the grandkids were trooped in and presented, told to stand at his bedside looking suitably upset. The man had been an absolutely tyrannical bastard before the cancer had slowly crippled him and robbed him of his power. Most of them, those who had been on the receiving end of his wrath, including her, were there just to see that he wasn’t coming back.
Then, the room had been bleak, like he was just place-holding the bed until a proper, more deserving occupant came along. Blake had managed to squeeze tears out then, too. It didn’t work. He was too far gone to notice and she still got nothing from his will.
She often thought she had joined the police because of her granddad. Regretted he didn’t live long enough to see her in her uniform. To continue his family reign of terror when she was able to physically fight back, have him arrested if necessary. Or just hurt him. A lot.
She entered the room. It was completely different from her last visit. As if she had walked onto a movie set, except in a Manchester hospital. With tubes and wires hooked up to sighing, pinging, flashing surrounding machines. Foxy lay on something more like a science– fiction life support pod than a bed. Blake was impressed. But at the centre, the recipient of all the life-sustaining attention, looked nothing like the man she used to know.
His face was mummified with bandages, tubes poking out of his nose and mouth. His arms and body were similarly covered, with plastic casts and bandages, one arm supported. His legs were under the cover. She didn’t want to look. She sat down in the chair beside the bed.
‘You stupid bastard,’ she said, surprised to find herself crying. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard . . .’
Undercover, he had said. With Dean Foley’s gang. This is it. This is my glory job . . .
He shouldn’t have bragged about it. Could have compromised the operation. And his head seemed to be in the wrong place from the start. The glory job. You should have just done what you were supposed to . . .
All that time spent together in the academy. They had bonded straight away. Recognised something in the other that was there in themselves. An ambition, a hunger to succeed. They almost tore each other apart, when their relationship started. They were inseparable.
Both posted to Manchester’s inner city, Blake found opportunities for advancement harder to come by than Foxy did. And when he was posted undercover, part of her – quite a large part, if she was honest – resented him. The way he celebrated without taking her feelings into account.
She had watched him, preening before a mirror, trying to get his manner, his attitude, his clothing right. You’ve only got this job because you’re black, she wanted to say. They only want you in the gang because you’re officially representative of the racial mix in that area. That someone somewhere is getting a pat on the back for ticking a box on a racial quota form. But she didn’t say any of that. Because that would have been the end of their relationship. And Foxy, if he stopped to think about it, might even have agreed.
At first he had been keen. Going along with the gang, delivering his reports on time, crammed with as much detail as he could manage. But he wasn’t getting anywhere near the top of the organisation. He had been working his way up, trying to worm his way onto the right side of Dean Foley, when this bloke Mick Eccleston arrived out of nowhere and was fast-tracked up the promotion ladder. That was the turning point for Foxy. When he saw all his hard work come to nothing, when he mentally said fuck it and decided if he was supposed to be a gangster then it was time he made some money as a gangster. That was when he went to the dark side.
Blake noticed straight away. He changed. Became harder, more callous. He brought her gifts. She rejected them.
‘What the fuck is this supposed to be?’ she said, throwing some expensive, trashy earrings on the sofa while he stared at her, angry enough to punch her. ‘I’m not some gangster’s moll. And you’re not a gangster. You’re a copper. Remember that.’
They grew apart. Blake moved out of the flat they shared, found her own place. He called in fewer and fewer times, eventually stopped coming round at all. She didn’t know where he was.
And then this happened. No one knew all the facts yet, but there was a dead girl involved, a crashed car, a missing gun. And, if he came round, a potentially very expensive and very ugly court case. When he came round. Keep saying that, she thought. Keep saying that.
She kept staring at him. Almost wanted to reach out, hold his hand.
She didn’t know how long she sat there but after a while she realised that the room was now dark and she was holding his hand.
He wasn’t going to wake up and even if he did, she had nothing prepared to say to him. So she stood up, left the room.
Thought about him lying there. Look what the job had got him. Thought of those two detectives just going through the motions with Foley. Look what the job had done to them.
Thought of what Foley had said about Mick Eccleston. The undercover cop was in the wind now, gone. But that didn’t mean he was untraceable to police like her. And it didn’t mean Foley couldn’t play a part in finding the money either.
She knew what to do. It wouldn’t be easy but it could be done.
Find a copper in Witness Protection with over two million of stolen money.
Whatever happened to her on the force, she wouldn’t let it grind her down.
Because this would be her own glory job.
50
It was the coldest, bleakest day Tom had
experienced in months. And he felt it even more keenly out on Blackmoor.
The day was in perpetual twilight. The sun absent, the wind pricking exposed skin like a fistful of needles, heavy grey clouds scudding across the expansive sky, threatening storms. Down below, Tom stood to one side while Cunningham led a team of police detectives and forensic officers as they searched for his hidden graves.
Tom stood back with a couple of prison officers who had spared no blushes telling him, and anyone who would listen, what they thought of this whole business. The whole party, leaving their parked four by fours and heading to inaccessible places on foot, looked like the most reluctant team of ramblers he had ever seen. Except for Cunningham.
Bundled up in heavy-weather clothing, he kept looking back over at Tom, waving at him, checking he was still there, like a dog not wanting to go too far from the person who feeds it. Smiling all the while. He looked like a malevolent Michelin man. He was giddy, looking round constantly as though he could barely believe he was there.
‘What’s he need you for then, anyway?’ asked a guard, clearly unhappy at being outside when he could be on the wing with a cup of tea.
Tom shrugged. ‘Hand holding, I suppose. I’m his cellmate. He opened up to me about wanting to show where the graves are. So he could visit his sick mother.’
‘Cellmate, eh?’ said the other officer, a suggestive leer on his fat features.
‘Yeah,’ said Tom, his tone of voice indicating that their innuendo or insinuations weren’t welcome. ‘Cellmate. The prison shrink asked for me to be put in with him. Said he would talk to me.’
‘That all he’s done, then?’ said the first one, clearly not picking up on Tom’s warning.
Tom stared at the man until he backed down, blinked.
The two officers had made a point of not sharing their snacks and flask of hot coffee with him, nor the illegal bottle of brandy they kept taking nips from when they thought he wasn’t looking. They had also told him he wasn’t to stray from their sight. Tom complied. He had nowhere else to go to.
At least not yet.
He was working all the time he stood there. They had parked their minibus at the bottom of the slope Cunningham and the police had walked up. It led to some rocky tor, Tom had been told. Good views for miles around. If the weather was better than this. Tom was more interested in the road they had travelled up on. He tried to get what bearings he could from the weak sunlight, tried to work out where he was on the compass, what direction his home was in. If this were going to be his only method to escape, then he would have to take it. Deal with whatever paperwork, or supposed illegalities cropped up afterwards. He could cope with anything as long as he was free again.
So far he hadn’t found a way. Too many police with Cunningham, the prison officers too wary. Thankfully there wasn’t any media presence. Their scrutiny would have made escape impossible. He was biding his time. He would spot the opportunity when it came.
The first prison officer checked his watch. ‘Nearly lunchtime.’ He turned towards Tom. ‘Want yours?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ He was hungry, but he wasn’t about to let these two know that.
The other leaned into a bag at the back of the minibus, brought out three wrapped packages. He kept one of the two biggest for himself, passed the other big one to his partner, the smallest one to Tom.
‘There you go.’
Tom opened it. Prison mystery meat on cheap white bread.
‘Eat up.’
Theirs were shop bought along with a chicken leg each and a bag of crisps. They grinned as they ate.
Tom turned away, looked at the roads once more.
Made calculations.
51
DC Annie Blake waited until she heard the sound of the shower then knelt by the side of the bed, pulled something out. Opened it.
Her go bag.
Everything she had planned for led up to this moment. She had known it would come, worked for it, added to it. The bag contained everything she would need to walk out of this life, start another one. A better, richer one.
Passport, credit and debit cards with untraceable money in those accounts, clothes, even a small amount of gold that she could sell.
She had worked next to criminals her whole career. Learned from the best. The ones who never – or rarely – got caught. She had studied their methods, noted what had gone well for them, what hadn’t. Vowed not to make their mistakes.
She was near to Foley’s money. She knew it, could feel it. And with Killgannon now out with Cunningham, she had to move. Time for her endgame.
She took something else from the bag. An untraceable Desert Eagle XIX in .44 Magnum. It was loaded. She racked the slide. Put it down at the side of the bed on top of the bag.
The shower stopped. After a short while, DCI Harmer stepped out, towelling his hair.
‘This is disgraceful, not going into the office, yet,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘We should have been in hours ago.’
‘Didn’t hear you complaining.’
He laughed, threw the towel onto the bed. ‘No. You wouldn’t.’
He looked up, realised that she was standing there naked. He smiled. ‘Ready to go again?’
Wouldn’t take long with you if I was, she thought. ‘No. We’d better get going.’
He stood there, staring at her. ‘God, you’re gorgeous.’
‘Come on. Work.’
He had come round to her flat the previous evening. He had stopped bringing wine, she noticed, and other presents. Now he just came and went. Literally, she thought. And it took about that long. Maybe he was getting bored of her. That was fine with Blake. Because his usefulness was very nearly at an end.
She had used him as much as she could. He was a good smokescreen for her activities. Even toyed with asking him to join in her scheme but ultimately decided not to. If he said no she would have had to take care of him. Just like Sheridan. And that might attract too much attention. She had also considered doing something similar to his computer as she had done to Sheridan’s. But something different. Kiddie porn. That would be more his kind of thing, she thought.
But no, she would just breeze out, leaving him behind. Wondering, like all the rest, where she had gone.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Killgannon’s got Cunningham talking. We’d better get ready to pull him out.’ He picked up his phone from on top of his neatly folded clothes. Checked the screen. ‘Oh.’
‘What?’
‘That psychologist who never turned up last night? The one who wanted to talk about Killgannon? She hasn’t turned up for work today.’
Blake shrugged. ‘So?’
He kept looking at his phone, reading something. ‘It’s more serious than that. Her car was found off the road on Blackmoor, a few miles from the prison. That’s why she didn’t turn up. Why she didn’t answer her phone when I called.’
Blake thought she should express concern. ‘What? Is she dead?’
‘Thankfully not. She was discovered in time, taken to hospital. Looks like someone forced her off the road.’
Blake tried to mask her true feelings. Bradshaw was still alive. That fucking idiot couldn’t even . . .
Harmer’s voice cut through her thoughts. ‘I wonder if this has anything to do with Sheridan’s murder?’
‘Why should it?’
‘One accident, one murder close together. Killgannon the common denominator. Suspicious, don’t you think?’
‘I’ve been following the investigation into his death. There’s nothing there to point towards Killgannon.’ I’ve seen to that, she thought.
‘Nevertheless . . .’
‘What?’
‘I think we should consider it. Come on. You’re right. Let’s get to work.’
Blake looked down at the gun lying on top of her bag by the side of the bed. Harmer couldn’t see it. But if he said anything else she didn’t like, he might just feel it.
She felt as if she was having an out
of body experience and was looking down on herself. Things were starting to unravel. She had to get a grip. And fast.
‘I’ll get dressed and go straight to Blackmoor. See what’s going on.’
‘No need for that. Just give them a ring. And then when – or if – Dr Bradshaw improves go and see her then.’
‘It’s still our jurisdiction. We should be—’ The sound of a text came pinging from the burner phone in her go bag.
‘D’you need to get that?’
‘Dan, I should check this out. It might be important.’
He was dressed now. He looked at her. Torn about what to say. ‘Go on, then. I’ll see you back at the office later.’
No you won’t. ‘Thank you, sir.’
He crossed to her, wanting a farewell kiss. She moved forwards so he didn’t see the bag, the gun. She let him kiss her. It was like having synchronised slugs running over her lips.
He left. Once she was sure he had gone she checked the phone. Saw the text:
Out of prison on the moors. Come right now.
She went. Taking the bag with her. And the Desert Eagle.
Two million was plenty if it was shared.
But even more if it was just for one person.
52
‘So where are they from here, then?’
Dean Foley stood in front of the car, the prison officer’s own Audi, surveyed the moor ahead of him. He was dressed for the city streets, not the open countryside. Immaculate grey chalkstripe three-piece suit, crisp white ironed shirt, tie, polished, handmade shoes. A Crombie overcoat that cost more than the monthly wage of the officer accompanying him. He knew it was impractical for where he was, but he didn’t care. They were the clothes he wore entering prison, his business, cocktail reception, court appearance suit, and he wanted to wear it now. Inmates were allowed to wear their own clothes when they were escorted outside the prison and Foley wanted to feel something different to the cheap, itchy prison sweats against his skin, to remind himself of who he used to be.
Who he could possibly be again.
Baz stood next to him, shivering in his prison issue sweats and an anorak. Chris, one of his tame officers, stood with them.
The Sinner Page 25
