Big City Jacks

Six

The identification of the body of Renata Costain had gone as well as it could have done, given the circumstances.

Henry and Rik Dean drove Troy Costain to the mortuary at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and the dirty deed was carried out in the identification suite. Once away from the confines of his family, Troy had chilled considerably and been pretty indifferent to the point of apathy at the sight of his dead cousin, whom he had loved so deeply less than twenty minutes earlier. He merely blinked, nodded and said, ‘Yeah, that’s her,’ with a shrug of his shoulders. The whole of that family-induced emotion seemed to have evaporated in the early-morning sunshine.

Back outside the mortuary Henry said, ‘Sit in the car,’ to Troy.

‘No, it’s right, Henry — I’ll be on my way.’ He made to walk off, but the detective clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder. A very worried expression smacked on to Troy’s face.

‘Uh-uh, no chance, pal,’ Henry said. ‘Let me rephrase that — sit in the fucking car — got that?’

Troy wilted visibly under Henry’s hard hand and slunk to the car. If he’d had a tail, it would have been tucked between the cheeks of his backside.

Rik Dean watched the interaction, puzzled, his dark eyebrows in a deep furrow over the top of his nose, trying to get the measure of the relationship between the two men. It was plainly obvious they knew each other quite well. Henry smiled corruptly at Dean, noticing his expression. ‘Old friends,’ he said, which in no way explained a damned thing to Dean.

When Troy was seated in the car, out of earshot, Dean said, ‘What’s the plan, boss?’

‘Strategy, you mean?’ Henry corrected him. ‘Plans go wrong, strategies get tweaked.’

Dean shrugged. ‘And the strategy is. .?’

‘OK — the big issue here is that someone has died in a road accident after being pursued by the cops, yeah? The fact that it was a stolen car and they were joyriding doesn’t hold much sway anymore, and neither does the fact that it wasn’t much of a chase. The added complication is that the girl who dies and the offender who killed her and then legged it are members of the same shit-house family, a family who happen to be one of the biggest trouble-making clans in Blackpool.

‘They will blame the cops for everything, and therefore we need to handle this carefully with the media. We know we’re not to blame, but we’re never that good at proactively defending ourselves. . so, as soon as we can, we get our heads together with your divisional commander and our media people and put a strategy together before facing the media out there. Are you with it so far?’

Dean nodded.

‘So that’s the PR, public bullshit side of it — that and the community reassurance and hi-viz patrols on Shoreside to quell any disturbances that the Costains might like to ignite.’ Henry took a breath. His brain was feeling slightly woozy, having now been on the go for twenty-four hours. ‘The real policing side is to get good, strong statements from the officers who chased the stolen car and any witnesses in our favour; then we need to trace our chum Roy Costain and nail the little bastard to the wall. Still with me?’

‘Yep.’

‘And I need to speak to Troy here.’ Henry nodded at the cowed Costain in the back of the car. ‘Because I think I might have some influence on him.’

Following the introduction of the Human Rights Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (also known as RIPA), the handling of informants by the police — now termed Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) — is tightly regulated. The days of informal ‘snouts’ are, by and large, long gone. Informants are now formally registered and dealt with by handlers who have day-to-day responsibility for dealing with the ‘source’, and by the controller who has general oversight of the source. All information or intelligence from these sources is then sanitized and forwarded to local intelligence departments who then forward it for operational action. It is a system commonly referred to as the ‘firewall’ or the ‘sanitized corridor’.

However, some informants slip through the loop. And one of them was called Troy Costain. He had been Henry Christie’s only unregistered informant for about fourteen years. Henry was acutely aware of the disciplinary tightrope he was walking with Troy, but he was loath to register him because he would lose him.

He had first met Troy when he had arrested him for an assault, when Troy was a mere teenager. Troy’s subsequent introduction to the inside of a police cell had sent the youngster almost insane as he suffered from severe claustrophobia. Seizing gleefully on the condition, Henry had seen an opportunity. Troy was a member of the Costains, one of the most feared criminal clans in town, and Henry realized that an informant in their midst would be a godsend. So, with ruthless efficiency and calculated threats, Henry gave young Troy an option: get banged up and go mental or get talking and go free.

A desperate Troy chose the latter option and Henry had exploited him ever after. Troy had provided Henry with masses of information about low-level crimes and criminals over the years, and some higher-level stuff too. At times, when it looked as though Troy was about to stray from the path of righteousness, Henry had administered an appropriate short sharp shock to keep him in line.

The downside of the relationship was that Troy had moved into drug dealing. Though it was common for cops to protect and turn a blind eye to the activities of their snouts, Troy had gravitated into territory which Henry disapproved of and Henry knew that there could be problems if Troy’s activities got out of hand. It was a question of proportionality. Was it worth letting him carry on, weighed against the quality of information he could give? Henry had not yet decided Troy’s future.

Henry slid into the front passenger seat of the car. He twisted round and scowled at Troy, whose eyes dropped.

‘I’m sorry about Renata.’

‘Yeah, sure you are,’ sneered Troy. ‘You’re making a habit of getting me in to ID my dead relatives, aren’t you?’ He was referring to a couple of years earlier when his younger brother had been murdered and Henry had got Troy to identify the corpse. ‘I think you get a kick from it.’

Henry arched his eyebrows.

Troy knew that what he was saying was pure bollocks. He spat a ‘Tch!’ and his mouth twisted down at the corners.

‘How’s the drug dealing going?’

Troy’s face became bland and expressionless. He chose not to be baited. Henry sighed, recalling how not very long ago he had confiscated a revolver and a bag of drugs from Troy, which he had subsequently, and illegally, disposed of. Henry said, ‘Next time I find you with dope in your hands, I won’t be so lenient. You understand that, don’t you Troy?’

Troy merely looked bored, feigned a yawn.

‘So now we come to our present predicament.’

‘You bastards will suffer for this,’ Troy said gleefully.

It was Henry’s turn to look indifferent. He sighed. ‘OK, battle lines drawn. . what can you tell me about Roy? Such as where can I find him, for a start?’

‘Dunno.’ Troy’s thin shoulders rose and fell.

‘OK. . how come he was in a stolen car from Manchester?’

Troy squirmed ever so slightly and fourteen years of harassing him suddenly seemed to come good for Henry as he knew he could read Troy’s body language like a large-print book. Henry smiled slightly. ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, Troy?’

‘Nope.’

‘Did Roy go to Manchester last night and come back in a stolen motor?’

‘How the bleedin’ hell should I know? I’m not his keeper.’

‘But that’s exactly what you are, Troy. At the moment you are head of the Costain household. You said so yourself.’

‘Look,’ Troy said, beginning to get uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know what he’s been up to, all right? He comes ’n’ he goes as he pleases. He’s bloody fourteen for fuck’s sake.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Erm. . tryina think. . em. .’ Troy’s mind was whirring now as he tried urgently not to drop himself in anything smelly. ‘Probably about six last night. . tea time. . yeah, that was it.’

‘Hm, interesting.’

‘Why?’ Troy asked worriedly.

‘If you saw him at six, the car was only stolen at seven in Manchester — he made bloody good time to the city.’

‘Didn’t he just. . well, maybe someone else stole it and-’ Troy began, but stopped himself on a sixpence.

‘Good theory. Go on,’ Henry urged him.

‘No, nothing,’ he said with a wild back-pedal.

‘OK — so where do I find him, Troy? You know we have to talk to him sooner rather than later, don’t you?’

‘Henry, if I knew where he was, I’d tell you.’

‘Not a terribly good answer.’

The wind screamed into the port of Hull from the River Humber and beyond from the North Sea, carrying with it stinging particles of sleet. It was bitter cold and driving hard, making Karl Donaldson burrow down even more deeply into his thick reefer jacket, tug up his collar and wish he’d had the foresight to put on a further couple of layers. The sea was running high as the weather deteriorated and Donaldson felt as though his recently acquired tan was being stripped from his face. It had been difficult to hear the voice down the mobile phone, but eventually Donaldson confirmed everything twice, then hung up. A slight change of plan, but not drastic.

He squinted out across the murky sea, but could see nothing other than low cloud and high waves. His ship had yet to come in, though he knew it was not far away.

With a judder, Donaldson turned his back to the wind and made his way to the permanently sited Portakabin on the quayside adjacent to the customs channel through which all vehicles rolling off the ferries must pass. There was some warmth in the hut provided by the meagre portable gas fire, but this was having to be shared around the six people inside, all attempting to get a few therms for themselves.

Donaldson nodded at a few of the raised pairs of eyes, but none returned the greeting. They were all miserable — and Karl Donaldson was responsible for their plight.

He edged over to the kettle, flicked it on and selected a coffee from the mouth-watering selection of freeze-dried drinks on offer. As he poured steaming water into it, he saw there were no spoons so he stirred it with a pen, then took a sip. It tasted dreadful, but at least it was hot.

He took a few moments to look around the ‘building’. There was a real cocktail of people therein, a genuine multi-agency approach, and yes, he was the one who had brought them all together to the salubrious Port of Hull.

There was a pair of surly individuals from the Immigration Service, a customs officer, a cop (a rather deliciously attractive female, Donaldson noted innocently), a social worker and some low-ranking bod from the Home Office who had come close to being punched by Donaldson on two separate, but recent, occasions. Nearby and on call was a customs search team with dogs and all manner of specialized equipment. They were housed in the main customs building where there was real heat and coffee to be had.

And they were all there because of him.

Donaldson, an American, worked for the FBI’s Legal Attache Department at the American Embassy in London. Much of his time was spent in liaison with law-enforcement agencies in the UK and Europe and it was acting upon information he had personally sourced that this pleasant bunch of people had been mustered. The information was that a particular lorry would be landing in Hull and would contain a number of illegal immigrants and a large stash of drugs. It had taken Donaldson a lot of cajoling to bring them together because these days there was a fair degree of apathy in response to such information. Illegal immigrants? So what? Hundreds came across every day. It was easier to let them in. Drugs? Not sure if we have the resources. Get in the queue, our priorities are not your priorities. These were the types of responses he’d had to field. Eventually he’d shamed the other agencies into pooling their resources in this ragbag team who probably wouldn’t scare the skin off a rice pudding. They had been sent along merely as a sop to the Feds.

It didn’t help matters that the boat carrying the expected illicit cargo did not land the previous day when expected due to extremely rough seas. At the last moment the team were all forced to find accommodation in Hull for the night. It wasn’t the most sociable of evenings and Donaldson, exasperated, had retired early for a restless night.

Donaldson stood awkwardly in one corner of the hut, concentrating on his coffee and thinking through why he had engineered this operation. The hope was, of course, that illegal immigrants would be prevented from entering the country and that a haul of drugs would be seized and there would be some arrests too. But even as he stood there, he concluded that was not enough for his purposes. It would not go deep enough into the organization he was looking to destroy. It would be a minor blip for them, nothing more, but it might just open up some alleyway into their structure that he could then begin to widen into a six-lane highway. . his thoughts were interrupted by the woman detective who stood up and sidled across the room to him, rubbing her chilly hands together.

Donaldson gave her a weak smile. She returned it with a warmer one.

‘Not long now,’ she said hopefully.

‘No.’

She dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘You went to bed early. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.’

‘Needed the shut-eye.’

‘Hm. . what’s it like working for the FBI? Dead exciting, I bet.’

‘I’m mainly office-bound, to be honest. I used to be a field agent — over in Florida — but I’m too old for that now, on a regular basis, that is.’

‘What made you come over here?’

‘Love and marriage.’

The detective seemed to be taken aback by this remark. She was about to say something, but the cabin door opened and a high-viz-jacketed customs official stuck his head in and announced, ‘Your ferry is due in ten minutes.’

There wasn’t quite a groan from the assembled team. . but almost.

‘Hold on,’ Donaldson said before any of them moved, ‘the target has changed. . I’ve just had some up-to-date information. .’ He reeled off the new gen to them and they listened as though they were having needles stuck into their eyes.

When he had finished, Donaldson tossed his plastic cup into the bin, excused himself and eased past the female detective who, he thought, purposely did not make his passage easy. He wanted to watch the ferry dock.

Donning a hi-viz jacket himself, he walked out to the quayside of King George Dock and waited, peering into the low cloud.

Suddenly a ro-ro ferry, the Nordic Pride, emerged like a bull elephant out of a thicket, huge and impressive, the dark shape looming larger and larger as she approached port.

From that point on it took only minutes of well-rehearsed manoeuvring before she was moored, the ramp lowered and the vehicles starting to spew out on to dry land. It was a very smooth operation.

‘You definitely know which one you’re going to pull,’ one of the pair of sulky immigration officials said into Donaldson’s ear. ‘Only I wouldn’t like to think I’ve wasted my time. I’m very busy, y’know. I’m working on the cockling disaster.’

Donaldson nearly snapped something back, but held his tongue.

‘They’re out of control — immigrants. Bugger all we can do about them, if truth be known. They outnumber us by the thousand. I’ll bet when we stop your lorry and there’s, say, twenty on board, another hundred’ll get through just from this landing. Happenin’ all over the country,’ the official moaned. ‘Hundreds of the fuckers every day.’

‘I know,’ Donaldson sighed. ‘Bit of a problem.’

‘A bit!’ he blurted, flabbergasted. ‘It’s a major social and political scandal, compounded by the ineptitude of a weak-kneed government which cannot get its own bloomin’ house in order. .’

Donaldson held up a hand with a very sharp gesture. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘We have work to do here.’

Open-mouthed, the officer watched the American muscle past and make his way towards the ferry. ‘Twat,’ he said quietly.

The heavy lorries had just started to roll off.

Henry Christie worked out that he had been on his toes for about thirty hours and that he was no longer a fully functioning human being. The morning had been spent in a whirl of hastily arranged meetings and briefings both to deal with the inevitable media onslaught and to get the bones of the investigation set up. He had even given two press interviews, one for local radio, one for TV, and he cringed when he thought about how he must have come across. Like some half-brained dimwit, he imagined. At least they were done and out of the way.

Attempts were in hand to trace Roy Costain, who had gone well to ground, and to encourage the Costains to hand the little bugger over. Troy had been unshakeable in his unhelpfulness towards Henry, who felt that whacking him might not be the best approach under the circumstances. But Henry was not impressed by his informant and could tell he was lying to his back teeth. As a result of Henry’s frustration, he had let Troy walk back from the hospital.

At one p.m. Henry decided he had had enough.

He called Dave Anger to let him know where he was up to.

‘Henry, we’re just talking about you,’ Anger said on hearing his voice.

‘I thought my ears were burning.’

‘They should be,’ Anger said darkly.

‘Anyway,’ Henry said, clearing his throat, ‘I’m calling it a day. I’m off home to bed for a few hours, but I’ll be ready for on-call at six. If that’s OK with you.’

‘Yeah. . you’ve done a pretty good job actually,’ Anger said reluctantly. ‘Oh, Jane Roscoe’s here. Do you want to say hello?’

‘I’ll pass,’ Henry said, feeling his stomach grind over. ‘I’ll be back on at six.’ He ended the call and stood there thoughtfully, his nostrils flaring. Jane Roscoe, not really a name he wished to be associated with any more, particularly as it seemed she and Anger were gunning for him.

What worried him most, though, was that they had a smoking gun and lots of ammo for it.

The crossing on the Nordic Pride had been rough and unpleasant. Whitlock, the lorry driver, was surprised they had been allowed to sail — but perhaps it was more that he would rather not have sailed with his current cargo.

As the ferry docked at Hull, Whitlock dragged himself reluctantly back to his vehicle in the belly of the ship and clambered into the driver’s cab, aware that for the first time in his life he did not want to get in.

He loved driving. He loved his lorry. But not today.

He wondered how the people stuffed into the container were doing as he turned on the ignition and started the engine.

The massive doors which formed the bows of the ferry opened with painful slowness, revealing the Port of Hull, a place Whitlock had passed through on hundreds of occasions.

With trepidation he wondered if he would actually pass through it today.