Big City Jacks

Nine

Henry Christie rubbed his tired eyes and focused them on his friend. The two men were sitting in a public house within walking distance of Henry’s home, a hostelry called The Tram and Tower in deference to a couple of the main attractions of the resort of Blackpool. Of course, Henry was not drinking alcohol. He was still on-call and was sipping a pint of lemon and lime, with ice. His friend was on something stronger, having just downed his second Jack Daniel’s double, a third sitting conveniently in front of him, ready for consumption.

Henry’s friend was Karl Donaldson. They had met several years earlier — their paths had crossed when Donaldson, then an FBI field agent, had been investigating American mob activity in the north of England. Since then their paths had continued to intercut and at the same time their friendship had grown, even though Henry hated Donaldson’s guts for being such a good-looking bastard. Donaldson had been posted to the US embassy in London for a number of years and had married a high-ranking British policewoman he’d met on that first investigation.

Donaldson looked more drawn out than Henry, and definitely more emotional. It was usually the other way round. In fact Henry had never seen the normally cool, laid-back Yank so stressed and uptight.

There was good reason for his condition.

‘Unbelievable,’ Donaldson was saying, shaking his head despondently. ‘God, if only I’d pulled the right truck. . maybe they could’ve been saved.’

‘They could have been dead for a long time, Karl,’ Henry said softly. ‘You shouldn’t punish yourself.’ He could see Donaldson was going through that cop-type thing — blaming yourself for something that was impossible to prevent.

‘I know, I know, but it’s so hard not to.’ He could clearly envision the opening of the rear of the container, could not eradicate it from his mind. ‘It was awful. . I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my life, H, but this is up there in the top five. Twenty dead bodies, suffocated because of an electrical failure. . just imagine their suffering.’ He took a mouthful of the JD. Henry noticed Donaldson’s right hand was quivering ever so slightly. He was in a bad way, Henry thought.

‘What has the driver to say about it?’

Donaldson blew out his cheeks. ‘Nothing — yet. He’s terrified and probably with good cause, because I have a damned good idea what was in the bag which was stolen from him.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Millions of pounds worth.’

‘So he failed on both counts. . didn’t deliver the human cargo, nor his other package. Do you think he knows much?’

The American shook his head. ‘Doubtful. Just a mule, a fool. . or maybe a man who didn’t have a choice.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘Will he talk?’

‘Maybe, but my guess is he’ll say nothing.’

Henry poured some of his cold, sweet drink into his mouth, wishing it was Stella Artois. It was approaching ten p.m. and so far his evening had been quiet. Roy Costain was still on the loose and the husband-murderer from the night before was tucked up in bed, ready for court next day. He hoped it would stay like this, because he needed a full night of beauty sleep.

‘Hope you didn’t mind me turning up out of the blue,’ Donaldson said glumly. ‘Been a bad day in more ways than one.’

‘Not at all. You can crash out in Jenny’s bed if you want. She’s out for the night at a pal’s.’

‘Appreciated. . I was gonna go to a Travelodge. . you saved me that agony at least.’ He tipped his head back and downed his third JD.

‘So what drove you to Hull in the first place?’ Henry asked.

‘Same old, same old.’

‘Ahh,’ said Henry knowledgeably, tilting his head and looking down his nose at Donaldson. ‘If I’m not mistaken, your friend and mine. .’

‘Mendoza,’ they said in unison.

‘Can I get you a refill for that?’ Donaldson said, pointing at Henry’s light-green drink.

Detective Superintendent Carl Easton had convened an emergency meeting of his team at a pub not two miles away from the Greater Manchester Police Training Centre at Sedgeley Park. Easton knew the landlord and he was allowed to use the upstairs function room. Easton arrived first, together with DS Hamlet. They quickly set out a few chairs to accommodate the others who would be arriving soon.

Easton and Hamlet reflected on the day. One that had gone very badly. They were worried men.

‘I know I keep saying it,’ Easton pondered, ‘but it is not good, not good at all.’

Hamlet took a deep swig of his pint of Boddington’s Bitter, wiped his mouth and agreed. ‘Puts us in a very delicate position.’

Two men wandered in through the double doors, pints in hand — two members of Easton’s close-knit team. They acknowledged each other and, sombre-faced, seated themselves. Within minutes, four more arrived, all equally worried-looking, then a woman, then finally the last member of the team, who ensured that the doors were closed properly.

‘OK, thanks for coming at such short notice, everyone,’ Easton began. ‘By now you all know what’s happened at Lancaster Crown Court today. . it’s across all the papers and on TV.’ They all nodded or murmured. ‘Sweetman is back out on the streets again, a free man.’ He let the words sink in and tried to catch everyone’s eye. ‘This is a very bad thing.’ He inhaled deeply. A couple of the team lit cigarettes. Smoke rose languidly in the still air. ‘It affects us on two fronts. . firstly because Sweetman is back out there, it means we have to be very careful about how we operate. I don’t want anyone to think they’re safe, because they’re not. Sweetman will want his revenge and so will his backers. . and I was called in to see the chief constable this afternoon. To say he was pissed off is an understatement. I argued that any inquiry into this matter at court should be kept internal. . but he wouldn’t have it.’

‘Shit!’ was one reaction.

‘Bollocks!’ was another.

‘Another force will be coming in to investigate us,’ Easton announced.

A collective groan filled the air.

‘Who?’ someone asked.

‘Our Chief has asked the Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary. He had already done that before I saw him, so it was a done deal. He’s taken this measure because it was such a high-profile case and he needs to be seen to be doing things right. I can appreciate this point of view.’

‘So we’re going to be investigated by a bunch of fuckin’ country bumpkins,’ one of the detectives ventured. He laughed. ‘We’ll run rings round the fuckers.’

‘No doubt we will,’ Easton said cautiously, ‘but we have to be seen to be cooperating as much as possible, and that means we have to get the house in order as of now. We need to have answers ready for the questions we’re going to be asked. And not only that, we need to ensure that every door that needs to be closed is closed, that every report is sanitized. . outside detectives sniffing around in our dirty washing makes us very vulnerable indeed.’ He looked knowingly at his team. ‘And not just because of what might be uncovered in relation to the way Sweetman was investigated.’

It must have been the time on remand that did it. That was all Rufus Sweetman could put it down to, but he was finding that as he probed and thrusted himself into Ginny’s willing body, he could not come.

‘Fuckin’ prison,’ he blasted, sitting up on the edge of the bed. ‘Screws your mind, does your head in. . my mind’s all over the place.’ He stood up and crossed to the en suite, where he relieved himself and stepped into the shower. Just too many things going on in his head, competing, making him feel disconnected and slightly spaced out. He knew he needed to make an effort to calm down and think normally again, if there was such a thing as normal in the world of Rufus Sweetman.

So immersed was he in his thoughts that Ginny had to knock hard on the shower door to attract his attention. It did not help that the power shower was pulsing hot jets of water into his tensed-up shoulders and back muscles. He switched it off and opened the door. She held out a mobile phone.

‘Grant,’ she said distastefully.

‘Thanks.’ Sweetman reached for a towel and skim-dried himself before taking the phone from her. ‘It’s me.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘So-so.’ He glanced at Ginny. She was sitting naked on the edge of the bed, filing her nails.

‘Got news for you. . in fact, have you seen the news on TV?’

‘No, been a bit tied up, if you know what I mean?’

Ginny looked up and giggled.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘What’s the news?’ Sweetman asked.

‘The consignment’s gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

Sweetman started to look round the bedroom, finding the TV remote and aiming it at the portable.

‘It’s been taken, is what I mean.’

Sweetman perched on the corner of the bed, his breathing shallow. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, the undertone dangerous.

‘The lorry got robbed on Birch Services. The goods were stolen. . and that’s not all. . the cargo is no longer alive. . all dead. It’s very big news.’

‘Murdered?’

‘Suffocated.’

‘Christ! And the shit’s all gone, has it?’

‘Yeah. . look, it’s all over the TV. . watch News 24. . it’s massive. . well, the deaths of the immigrants is. . there’s no mention of anything else, obviously.’

‘But it’s gone for sure?’

‘Yeah.’

Sweetman flopped back across the bed. ‘Who did it?’

‘No idea.’

‘We need to meet. . usual place. . one hour. . I want Theodore and Tony there. . we’re going to find out who’s responsible and crush the bastard.’ He paused. ‘Does the big man know about this?’

‘I haven’t told him. . but he may know something.’

‘He needs to be informed. . and he needs to be told that I’m back on the case, not fucking running things from a cell, for shit’s sake.’ He hung up and looked at Ginny. ‘Has Grant been coming on to you?’

Donaldson returned to the table and placed the drinks down. Henry looked enviously at his friend’s and wished he wasn’t on call. It was tempting to have just a wee one, but Henry knew it would be a mistake. Even after a pint he tended to drive as though he was Michael Schumacher and he could tell his judgement was impaired even from such a small amount of alcohol. He knew that fine judgement was an essential for an on-call SIO and did not want to take any chances. His own judgement and decision-making had been savagely questioned in the not-too-distant past and he was sharply aware that while several people in the organization were out to knee-cap him he had to be cleaner than clean at all times.

The wide American sat down and glanced around the pub. Henry clocked the sly looks he was attracting from most of the women, the good-looking bastard. Secretly Henry hated him for being such a handsome twat and also because he was such a goody-two-shoes; Karl would never have considered cheating on his wife, whereas Henry, despite his commitment to being such a changed man, remained weak and vulnerable around a pretty face.

‘How’s work?’ Donaldson asked.

‘Fraught,’ Henry admitted after some consideration. ‘Always being watched, always being tested, always being treated with suspicion.’

Donaldson nodded, knowing what Henry was referring to. ‘I thought FB said you’d be working to him? Anything come of that?’

‘Six weeks in and I haven’t had two words from the guy. He’s been too busy being a chief constable, I suppose. Still, he let me get back on the SIO team, so I can’t complain too much, though I do detect an undercurrent of resentment across the force in my direction.’

‘Like you’ve been given some sort of favouritism?’

Henry nodded.

‘Don’t let it get you down. . you’re a good detective.’

‘With a history. . and everyone’s just waiting to see me fall off my pedestal again.’

‘You won’t,’ Donaldson said confidently.

‘We’ll see.’ Henry sipped his lemon and lime, wiped his mouth, raised his eyebrows. ‘You were saying. .’

‘Oh, yeah, developments on the Spanish front. . mm, let me see. . none really after today.’

‘What about your informant?’ Henry probed, aware that the American was playing footsie with a guy very high up in Mendoza’s organization. As a seasoned — some would say ‘long in the tooth’ — detective, Henry knew how fraught informant handling could be, but this was the way in which the FBI had chosen to get to Mendoza, coupled with hi-tech approaches. Other ways had proved disastrous. Two undercover agents had been compromised and then ruthlessly murdered by Mendoza, which was why Donaldson was so focused on the target: Donaldson had personally managed the second u/c operative and when the man — codenamed Zeke — had been discovered and killed, Donaldson had taken it badly, personally. He now wanted Mendoza’s blood and it was becoming an obsession with him, one that Henry hoped would not destroy his friend in the process.

‘Ahh, my informant.’ Donaldson had bought himself a pint of San Miguel lager — a special promotion at the bar — which he raised cynically and toasted.

Whitlock was being held at Rochdale police station, the one with the jurisdiction over that section of the motorway on which the robbery and subsequent discovery of the bodies had occurred. He was only too glad to be sitting alone in a cell, his hands holding his head as his predicament whirled around in his mind like a sandstorm. How had it all happened? How had he been sucked in and duped? How had he got into a position from which it was impossible to extract himself?

He thumped his forehead into the base of his hands, but found this was not doing the trick. He stood up and on trembling legs he walked to the cell wall and began to smack his head against it.

Once Rufus Sweetman had realized he was going to be released from court, the quick plan of the day sketched in his head had been to spend time screwing Ginny — which he had done, though not as successfully as he would have liked; then he planned for them both to go into the city for a meal in Chinatown, then on to one of the clubs in which he held an interest to begin networking again, plan how the new stash would be distributed, then get totally and utterly smashed out of his head.

But suddenly, the goalposts moved.

The loss of the consignment was a major blow. It was a situation that demanded urgent attention.

Following the phone call from Grant, Sweetman dressed quickly. He tossed a couple of hundred pounds at Ginny and told her to go and meet some friends, have a good time, and catch up with him later. Naked, still, she eagerly grabbed the cash and ran giggling into the dressing room.

Sweetman’s face was hard as he pulled on his leather jacket, paused by the mirror and considered his reflection. He had lost a lot of weight whilst inside the joint, but this had given him a razor-sharp edge to his features. His close-cropped hair gave him the appearance of being haunted and desperate. His piercing green eyes stared sunkenly back and he quite liked what he saw. But he wasn’t standing there just to preen himself. He reached out to the edge of the mirror and touched a hidden catch. The mirror swung away from the wall on concealed hinges revealing the front of a push-button safe fitted flush with the wall. He prodded the four-digit number and the safe door opened silently to reveal its innards.

Stashed in there were bundles of tightly packed banknotes, a mix of sterling and euros, sitting on which was a small revolver and two speed loaders. Sweetman pulled out the gun and flicked out the cylinder. It was fully loaded with soft-nosed.38s. A good gun, easy to conceal. He slid it into his waistband at the small of his back, the speed loaders into his pockets, then relocked the safe, pushing the mirror back into place.

Then he ran his hand over his hair and gave himself the final once-over. ‘Definitely back in business,’ he said.

Karl Donaldson could have reeled off every known fact about the Spaniard: that he was believed to be one of Europe’s most successful criminals, that his wealth could be counted in millions and that most of his money had come from human suffering, be it drugs, illegal immigration, gambling, whoring or guns. That he was fluent in Italian and English. Donaldson could even tell you the Spaniard’s current mobile-phone number from memory. He knew that Mendoza’s tightly run organization dealt in everything on a big scale. He was known to have close links with the Sicilian Mafia and their American brethren. It had been those connections which had brought Mendoza to the attention of the FBI and caused two agents to be infiltrated into the organization — which ended up with those two agents dead. Donaldson was confident that the contract killer who had actually pulled the trigger had been dealt with, but that still left Mendoza, the man at the top, the man who drove it all. Mendoza was also suspected of ordering the assassination of a gangster from the north-west of England, a young man called Marty Cragg, who had welched on debts to Mendoza. He had been murdered at the same time and place as the second of the undercover FBI agents, and this double murder was still an ongoing investigation being handled by Lancashire police. However, because of its lack of success, it was being scaled down. . something else which made Donaldson even more determined to nail Mendoza.

There was no way in which another undercover officer would ever be put into Mendoza’s organization again, so other methods were being used against him, one of which was to cultivate informants who could provide damning evidence against him. . hopefully.

‘The information I had,’ Donaldson explained, ‘was precise. It detailed the lorry, everything.’

‘And yet it was duff gen?’

‘Duff gen?’

‘Y’know — bollocks.’

‘Bollocks? Jeez, you English crease me up.’ He paused, a smile playing on his face. He loved English phrases and slang and whenever possible used the vernacular himself. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted eventually, ‘it was wrong.’

Henry knew some peripheral things about Donaldson’s source and had previously been able to adduce from the American that the informant was high up in Mendoza’s food chain, that he was empowered to order hits and, not least, he possibly knew where the bodies of two Greater Manchester detectives might be buried. Henry had promised himself that he would pursue this with Donaldson, but had not really had the chance since returning to work. They had been two young surveillance officers who had been unfortunate enough to stumble on Mendoza’s hitman burying the body of a drug dealer who had just been culled on the order of Donaldson’s informant.

It was all complicated, delicate stuff, but made no less easy by Donaldson’s personal desire to nail Mendoza and the fact that informants are very easily lost. Donaldson knew he had a gem and was loath to jeopardize the relationship by pumping him for information he did not want to give. . such as information that would incriminate himself.

The only good thing was that Henry knew that the man who had murdered the detectives was the same one who had killed the undercover officers, and Henry knew how sticky and fiery his death had been. He also suspected that Donaldson knew a lot more about the demise of the killer than he cared to divulge. Secretly Henry suspected that Donaldson had some part in the death, but he could not be sure of this. . and part of him did not want to know, if truth be told.

‘So what you gonna do?’

‘Meet, see, talk with him.’

‘What’s his agenda? What’s he going to get out of this relationship?’

‘That’s something I need to ask him, I guess.’

The reasons why people become informants varied. Usually it was for financial reasons or revenge or the thrill of it. Rarely was it for altruistic reasons. Every informant had a personal agenda and it was vital that the officers who managed them knew the reasons, or the whole relationship could easily go shit-shaped.

‘You must have some sort of inkling,’ Henry said.

Donaldson screwed up his face. ‘He’s playing a game, but. .’ He bit his lower lip. ‘And this is only a feeling. . I guess he’s out to stuff Mendoza. I think he wants the business.’

‘And if you act on what he tells you and you bring about Mendoza’s downfall, the business might just revert to him. He might just end up stepping into a dead man’s shoes, as it were.’

Donaldson nodded. ‘And that’s not the idea of an informant, is it?’

‘No.’

‘But yet it doesn’t fully explain Hull.’

‘Unless he’s playing some sort of double game?’

‘The trouble with us, Henry, is that we are too suspicious of people, aren’t we?’

Henry raised his glass. ‘No bad thing.’

Carl Easton’s team drifted back into the main bar of the pub, having been thoroughly briefed about what was expected of them when the outside force came in to investigate. In essence it was that they should be as helpful as possible — on the face of it — but actually be as obstructive as possible below the surface. It would be a fine balancing act, but he knew his team was up to it. They had been scrutinized before but had come out of it smelling of roses.

Easton and Hamlet sat alone in the function room, saying nothing to each other, deep in thoughts of strategy and tactics.

‘We’ll be OK,’ Easton said at length. Hamlet nodded. ‘It’s Sweetman himself that bothers me more than anything. He’ll be like a raging tiger now.’ His lower jaw rotated. ‘We may need to deal with him for good.’

‘I was thinking the same.’

‘Any ideas who?’

Just then the door opened. One of Easton’s team re-entered the room, carrying a refilled pint. He came in and sat opposite the detective superintendent. He looked haggard and drawn, ready to drop from exhaustion. Easton and Hamlet exchanged a quick glance.

‘Leave us,’ Easton said to Hamlet. He took no offence, collected his drink and left. When they were alone, Easton said, ‘You look knackered.’

‘Been busy.’ He stifled a yawn.

‘Got some good news, I hope?’

‘Very good news.’

Karl Donaldson had to be eased out of the Tram and Tower and guided into the front passenger seat of Henry’s car. It was one of the few times that Henry had ever seen his friend the worse for wear from drink. It was good to see there was some weakness in the Yank’s armour after all. On the other hand it made Henry worry slightly because it showed just how much the obsession with Mendoza was getting to him.

Henry jumped in behind the wheel and watched his inebriated mate tugging on his seat belt, making the inertia reel lock repeatedly as he pulled at it. Henry let him struggle just for a while longer before taking the seat belt out of his hand, letting it run back on to the reel, then fastening it for him.

‘Thanks, pal,’ Donaldson slurred, slumped back in his seat. ‘Guess you think I’m an asshole.’

‘Not at all.’

Suddenly Donaldson went silent. He was asleep.

Henry emitted a long, weary sigh. As he engaged first gear, his mobile phone rang. Shit! he thought. ‘First death of the night coming in.’

The meeting convened by Rufus Sweetman was perhaps less than two miles away from the pub in which Easton was meeting his team. The venue was a shabby hotel near to the motorway junction at Prestwich. It was a place he often used, because he owned it.

Sweetman and Grant, the solicitor, arrived first and together. They walked through the reception area of the hotel, making towards a conference room. Once inside, Sweetman positioned himself at the head of the oval-shaped table and helped himself to a bottle of fizzy water from the tray on the table. The door opened. The other two people Sweetman had ordered to attend sauntered in. Theodore Jackman and Tony Cromer, Sweetman’s top negotiators and influencers, as he referred to them.

Solemnly they shook hands with Sweetman, then both men could hide their emotions no more and they hugged their boss with tears in their eyes. Sweetman’s cold front evaporated and a lot of weeping and backslapping went on for a long time until Sweetman said, ‘Enough, enough, you blabbering idiots. Anyone’d think I’d been banged up for the best part of a year on a trumped up charge.’

‘But you have,’ Theodore Jackman said, missing it completely.

‘Yeah, I have. . but I’m back out now and there’s some wrongs to put right. Are you guys up for that?’

There was no hesitation: both were.

‘OK, we need to prioritize here,’ Sweetman said when all four men had settled at the table. The first thing we need to do is find out who ripped us off. . five million quid’s worth of coke. . any ideas? Who’s got the connections to deal that amount? Guys?’

Jackman — known as Teddy Bear — and Cromer looked blank. ‘It’s all been really quiet,’ Teddy Bear said, his nickname belying his looks. He was nothing like a Teddy Bear, more an angry, hungry, grizzly bear.

‘Well, it’s time we were knowing. . someone’s got very cute in a way which could put us out of business. All that dope is on the drip and the man we owe the money to will not be very happy if we don’t deliver. I think someone is trying to bring us down. .’ And even as he spoke a thought whacked him like an uppercut. He knew it was an assumption, but he kicked himself for never having thought of it before. His voice trailed off, eyes narrowed. ‘Shit. . I think I’ve just added up two and two.’

It had been bad enough getting Donaldson into the car in the first place, but extracting him — a guy well over six foot tall and built like a cooling tower — was no joke either. Then guiding him into the house and up the stairs was even less amusing. His legs and feet seemed to have disconnected themselves from his brain and it was as though the steps had come to life at the same time. The big Yank simply could not coordinate himself to climb them and it took the joint effort of Henry and Kate to literally drag what was almost a dead weight up and into Jenny’s bedroom. They dropped him on to her bed, where he began to snore immediately.

Panting and sweating, Henry and Kate surveyed their handiwork.

‘I’ve never seen him drunk before,’ Kate said. She bent down and eased his shoes off.

‘I have, but for a different reason.’ Henry attempted to get Donaldson’s jacket off him, but could not manipulate his arms. Eventually he gave up.

‘He’ll be OK,’ Kate assured him. ‘How much has he had?’

‘Not too much. He’s just not used to it.’

‘So what’s up with him?’

Henry shrugged. ‘I think that to say he’s had a bad day is an understatement.’ He had no desire to tell Kate exactly what his friend had experienced over the last twenty-four hours. ‘I need to go into Blackpool. There’s someone come in to see me, says they have some vital information about something.’ He raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. ‘Not sure how long I’ll be. Not long, I hope. I could do with a good night’s sleep.’

Kate touched Henry’s face with the tips of her fingers, a tender, loving gesture. She tiptoed up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You look tired, sweetheart.’

Henry took hold of her and kissed her hard on the mouth, letting his lips and tongue linger. She pushed herself into him and their mouths crashed together, but the moment of passion was destroyed irrevocably by one of the loudest and longest and perhaps most perfect farts either of them had ever heard, which emitted from the arse of the sleeping drunk.

‘Middle C,’ Henry said. In a fit of giggles the pair backed out of the room and closed the door behind them. ‘Hope you have a good supply of air freshener,’ he added.

Sweetman was standing and pacing the conference room like some executive on a creative roll, banging a fist into the palm of his hand, making points, spinning on his heels as he tested his hypothesis on his workers.

‘Just think back — two and a half, three years. What was happening to us?’

‘We were establishing ourselves across the city,’ Grant ventured. ‘We set up the contract with the spic.’

Sweetman pointed, nodded.

‘And we had a whole lot of trouble with the niggers in Stockport,’ said Teddy Bear Jackman. ‘Soon sorted them out, though.’

‘Go on,’ the boss urged.

‘We dealt very firmly with a couple of them.’

Sweetman laughed. ‘Yep, we did.’

‘We professionalized the organization,’ Grant suggested.

‘And as a result of that, what happened?’

All three faces remained blank. Sweetman closed his eyes despairingly, opened them and said, ‘We got our best ever supplier, yeah, and we built up a business which stretched from here to Birmingham and across the hills to Sheffield. . yeah?’ he finished hopefully.

They all nodded enthusiastically.

‘We got the contact, we got the goods, we crapped on the opposition, we forged new links, we set up good structures with firewalls and we made real money. . yeah?’

More enthusiastic nods.

‘So who came into our lives?’

‘Mendoza,’ blurted Jackman.

Sweetman glared hard at the man. ‘No names,’ he warned him. ‘No names. . never trust that anywhere could be safe unless you can put your hand on your heart and say it is.’ He waved his hands at the conference room. ‘It’s two years since we’ve been in here, so you never know. . OK, who else?’

Blankness returned to their faces.

‘How much heat did we start to get from the cops?’

‘A lot,’ Cromer ventured.

‘Too much,’ Sweetman corrected him. ‘Who’s the guy that’s been harassing me all the time?’ He held up a finger to stop them from replying, even though he was beginning to think that any reply would be good. So far it had been like trying to get blood from millstone grit. ‘Do we now know who we’re talking about?’

They nodded unsurely, but guessed he was referring to Detective Superintendent Carl Easton.

‘So why has he had a vendetta against me for the last two years?’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t like you.’

‘Or perhaps he had another reason? Perhaps it’s not personal, perhaps it’s business. Y’know, c’mon, let’s think outside the box here. I’m put into bat for a crime I definitely did not commit, one you all know I didn’t commit, which he knows I didn’t commit. . why? What’s his agenda? A cop with a grudge? OK, they exist, but it’s going a bit far, don’t you think?’ Sweetman’s eyes narrowed. ‘So I ask again — why?’

‘Perhaps we should ask him ourselves,’ Teddy Bear said. All eyes turned to him. ‘I could put the squeeze on him. He’d chat then.’

‘That,’ said Sweetman, ‘could be a bloody good idea.’

‘Hang on, hang on,’ Grant cut in, dissatisfied with this thinking. ‘Is he not just a cop who wants to be the one that catches the big bad wolf? Y’know — career aspirations. You’re not suggesting he stole your consignment, are you? That’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’

Sweetman considered this, then relented. ‘Yeah, I suppose you could be right.’ He sighed, scratched his head. ‘He’s just a mean bastard prepared to break the rules for a big result, nothing more. . you’re probably spot on there. Maybe my thinking’s skewed because I hate the twat so much. It’s a bit much to think he’s after my business, isn’t it?’

* * *

If he was honest, Henry Christie would say that he could have done without traipsing into Blackpool police station at that ungodly hour on the strength of some half-baked message or other. He would very much have liked to crawl into bed with Kate, clamber all over her for a while, then get some sleep and hope there would be no call-out during the night.

However, he was on-call, no escaping that. Blackpool nick was only a few miles away and he fully intended to fob off the person and head back home ASAP to a warm bed.

It took him less than ten minutes to get to the station. He parked in the basement car park, making his way into the multi-storey building past the entrance to the custody office. There was a lot of noise emanating from there. He took the stairs to the ground floor and went to the back office of the enquiry desk where the front counter clerk was closing down for the night: it was midnight and, like most stations in the county, the enquiry desk closed down at that time.

Henry did not know the woman clerk, so he introduced himself.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said to his query, ‘I’ve put her in the waiting room.’

Henry thanked her, sauntered to one of the rooms just off the public foyer and walked in.

His heart literally sank in his chest. He felt it drop to the floor, like a lift hitting the basement. His throat dried instantly and he found it hard to get the words out of his mouth, even though they were only short ones.

‘Tara,’ he said. ‘Hi.’