A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (28 page)

Roger edged forward; his body poised for an attack, eyes though, still looking at the black leather shoes.

“Go on,” Weston said, “go on; give in to it. Lunge man; let’s see how yeller your blood is, eh?”

“How did you get hold of my fingerprints?” Roger asked.

“You fucking coward.”

“Come on, how did you get them into the girl’s house, huh?”

“Yeah, I can see it now; Chris Hutchinson cuddled up nice an’ cosy on your settee with Yvonne by his side. He slips an arm around her neck, slips a hand up her skirt.” Roger flinched. “She coos at him, and starts groaning as her bra strap falls away—”

Roger leapt from the plank and ploughed into Weston. They fell to the cold floor, a whiff of piss and disinfectant stung in Roger’s nose. Weston’s fist caught Roger around his left ear. His glasses skittered across the floor. And Roger was on his back, looking up into a blurred image of Weston.

A roomful of shouts, echoes, and screams. Of fists and bared teeth.

Weston grabbed Roger’s neck, gold-encrusted fingers digging into the flesh. It felt like Weston’s thumbs were touching the front of his spine. Roger began turning red; his eyes closed and seconds later, his pawing hands fell away from Weston’s arms.

“Got you now, you wanker.” Weston’s words echoed in the silence. His thumbs relaxed.

A whistle of cool air poured through Roger’s clenched teeth, and as Weston tried to regain his grip, Roger smashed his arms down, breaking Weston’s hold. They rolled, and Roger had Weston’s head in his hands, rammed it into the sticky cell floor. He lifted it, screamed into it and rammed into the floor… and then he stopped.

Weston’s body relaxed.

Panting, Roger saw the blood on the cell floor; droplets had sprayed outwards, and there were more droplets on the knee of his white suit. He let go of Weston’s head and fell off him, rubbing his burning neck.

The cell door was open.

Fifteen years.

It kept bouncing back like an echo. Fifteen years. Could he really hack fifteen years inside? And if it
was
a fuck up, it had already gone this far, who was going to stop it going all the way through the courts?

The cell door was wide open.

Weston didn’t move.

Roger picked his glasses out of the piss stain near the toilet. Like a rubber man, he stumbled out of the cell and down the corridor. He heard other prisoners shouting, thumping their doors. At the end, he peered around the corner. The place was empty. Mercifully so. Or had it been planned like that? Roger wondered.

On the sergeant’s desk was a phone. Roger grabbed it, punched numbers. He listened. “Come on, baby. Answer me, please.” His heart banged and his neck throbbed.

Eventually, he dropped the phone, left a red smear across the handset, and got moving. Ellis could walk in any second. And that’s when his troubles would truly begin. Roger staggered back up the corridor. The prisoners’ shouts were dull echoes. When he returned to Weston’s side, he searched his pockets, found his car keys, and his wallet. He closed the cell door. Locked it, feeling a wicked satisfaction, and put his shoes on. They were still damp.

Inside the cell, Weston’s eyes snapped open. Through bloody lips, he croaked. “Don’t let me down, Beaver.”

The custody area was still quiet. But he knew it wouldn’t be for long.

The monitor showed Roger the empty transit bay. He ran behind the custody sergeant’s desk and smacked the door release button. Then he stopped. How much more trouble could escaping custody cause him?

Seconds later, he blundered through the iron door leading from the custody area into the transit bay. With a heavy metallic ‘clang’, the door latched behind him; its significance – no return – wasn’t lost on him. In his panic, he dropped Weston’s wallet. Store cards and credit cards scattered, spilled like playing cards across the gritty floor. “Fuuuck.” He bent, dropped the keys. He scooped the keys back up, searched through the cards, found Weston’s warrant card, and slid it through the transit bay’s reader.

The roller shutter door creaked up. “Come on, come on.” Rusty metal grinding on its spindle. Roger cringed at the noise and ducked beneath it, felt his tangle of hair brush against it, and ran up the ramp into the wet, floodlit car park. Icy air punched him. He waited by the concrete bulkhead as two officers locked their car and disappeared through the back entrance to Wood Street. He wondered when Ellis would return.

Stamped into Weston’s brass key fob was a registration number. “P312SYG, P312SYG.” He scanned the car park, head flipping around so quickly that he missed it twice. It was right in front of him. The car park was clear now. He ran.

With shaking hands, Roger closed the door and the world was mute except for his wheezing. He breathed the smell of stale cigar smoke. One last check around and all seemed clear.

He started Weston’s patrol car, turned on the headlights and took it quickly around the bend, towards the erect barrier—

A dazzle of headlights blinded him. Roger stamped on the brakes.

The width of a matchbox separated the two patrol cars. Smoke and steam from the tyres drifted past his window. His heart hammered. And now he thought he was going to vomit into his own lap.

Micky looked at him through both windscreens. Expressionless.

Roger held his breath.

After what felt like minutes, Micky swung his car out and pulled up alongside, and wound his window down. He stared at Roger, and then said, “You’re going to end up in some serious shit if they catch you.”

He let the breath go. “I didn’t do it, Micky.”

“This isn’t the way, mate. The system will—”

“Fuck the system! It’s flawed, Micky, and it’s going to send me down.”

Micky thought for a moment, and asked. “What’re you going to do, then?”

“Pay Weston’s home a visit.”

“What?”

“He’s the key to all this crap, and I’m going to prove it.”

“Roger, you can’t just—”

“Any better ideas?”

Micky shook his head. “None. Just stay away from your home. They’ll put a plain car somewhere on your street. Watching.”

“There is one more thing you could help me with.”

Micky didn’t seem impressed, but he didn’t seem surprised either. “What do you want?”

“Your mobile phone.”

“My..? I want it back,” he said, passing it through the window, “in one piece. It’s my own personal phone, is that. Helen bought it for me.”

“Thanks Micky. If I can ever…”

“I still think you’re—”

“I know. I have to try.” Roger revved the engine.

“Oh,” Micky shouted, “and you never saw me. Okay?”

Roger could only nod his gratitude.

Four minutes after Roger took possession of Micky’s phone in the car park, Sergeant Ellis Coldworth swiped his card through the reader next to the custody area door. The gate closed behind him and he walked towards his desk, newspaper tucked under his arm, aroma of tobacco drifting from his face. He craned his neck to get a look up at cell 6, but couldn’t really see too much without making a detour, and his paper was far more interesting than the goings-on inside a cell.

Ellis slid his chair back, filled it with his generous backside and put his feet up on the counter, shook the newspaper out, and started at the sports pages. On the desk just beyond his feet was his telephone. Smeared red.

Lenny Firth pressed the intercom button and called, “Let us in, Ellis.” The cell area gate clicked and Firth swung it open, then let it shut behind him. He heard Ellis shake his newspaper. “Busy, then?”

“Aye. Always bloody am.”

“We want Roger back through now. Break time’s over.”

Only Ellis’s eyes moved. Then all of him moved – quickly. “Roger Conniston? The SOCO? In cell 6?”

“Problem?”

“Problem? No, don’t be daft.” Ellis excused himself. He marched up the corridor, keys swinging in his hand, glancing back.

Firth leaned over the desk to look at the paper. And as he did so, he noticed it. On the phone. It was a strange enough sight for him to forget the paper, to lean further over and look properly. Ellis shouted something from up the corridor. “Oh God. Now what?” Firth said, and walked up the corridor and in to cell 6.

Sergeant Coldworth looked up. “Call an ambulance, Lenny,” he said.

“Shit,” Firth stared at Weston’s body, and then ran out of the cell, pulling his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. “Shelby’s going to fucking kill you, Ellis.”

“Oh thanks a lot, Lenny.” Ellis put Weston in something approaching the recovery position, and then he scuttled back to the phone behind his counter, grimaced at the blood on the handset and called the ACR. “Yeah, it’s Sergeant Coldworth from the cells at Wood Street— what? Yes, just listen, will you. We have an escaped 10-12— yes, dammit, are you fucking deaf?” And then he stopped. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to— yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m very sorry. He’s called Roger Conniston…”

Firth told Shelby, and after he calmed down, Shelby gave the order to the patrol sergeant. Moments later twelve police officers dashed along the corridor towards the car park, pulling on their body armour. Firth flattened himself into the wall to avoid the stampede.  “Oh, Christ,” Firth said, and walked down the corridor to where Shelby stood, eyes blazing, jaw pulsing.

If ever Shelby wanted to thump someone, it was now. He knew it wasn’t Firth’s fault but that didn’t matter. Right now, Shelby wanted to beat the living crap out of someone, anyone, and Firth was the nearest. Only the fear of Firth hitting him right back, stopped him.

“I found these,” Firth held out a stack of credit cards and a brown leather wallet. A Gold MasterCard on show with Weston’s name on it.

“So they’re in the cells,” Shelby said, “they have a fight, Conniston wins, takes Weston’s wallet and uses his ID card to get out, right?”

He looked at the MasterCard, “These were in the transit bay, sir, so yes, we’re supposing so.”

“You’re supposing so! What was Weston doing in there in the first damned place? Oh, don’t tell me, I can guess. And now Conniston’s gone.”

“Long gone.”

“How long, Lenny?”

“Custody camera says he went at 1644.”

“Great. He’s got a quarter of an hour on us.”

“Weston’s got concussion, and he’s—”

“Whoa, Lenny. Hold it there. You’re under the impression that I give a sideways toss about Weston.” He glared at Firth. “I don’t want to know. Okay?”

“Sir.”

“Right, get a guard at Weston’s bedside. And do it now. I don’t want
him
doing a bunk as well. He’s got some serious shit coming his way.”

“There’s er, there’s something else too, boss.”

“Am I going to want to hit you for this, Lenny?”

Firth nodded. “I think so, boss, yeah.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Weston’s patrol car keys are missing.”

Shelby closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath and held it before saying, “I hate this job sometimes.”

“I know—”

“Get the fleet number. Contact the Radio Custodian and ask him to disable the radio in that car, I don’t want Conniston to know what’s happening.”

“Right, boss.”

“And then get a car outside Weston’s house,” Shelby screamed.

Lenny stood there, stunned.

“Lenny?”

“Boss?”

“You’re still here?”

Shelby knocked quietly, hoping Chamberlain wouldn’t hear him, and he could creep away off the face of the earth.

“Come in.”

He groaned and entered Chamberlain’s smoke-filled lair for the hundredth time during this enquiry. He felt the heat prickle on his face as he stood at his desk while Chamberlain stubbed out a cigarette and opened a window.

“Sorry about the smoke,” he said. “I thought it too chilly to open a window. Now I can barely see my desk,” he giggled. “Suppose I’d better get cold, eh?”

“Sir,” Shelby said.

“You seem pensive, Graham? Is everything in order with the Bridgestock case? Haven’t come to beg more staff, have you, because if you have—”

“No, sir. I haven’t.”

“Has he admitted to Delaney’s murder yet?”

“Well, sir, I’m still—”

“Never mind,” Chamberlain waved a hand, “put it in the report and we’ll convene a meeting on Monday.”

“Sir—”

“I’m on with the Home Office paperwork now, Graham, so I trust your report will be forthcoming before the end of tomorrow?”

“About the report, sir—”

“Interview strategy working the way you hoped?”

“Well, I—”

“Good.”

Shelby closed his eyes and counted to ten.

Chamberlain retook his seat, folded his arms. “But something is wrong, Graham. I can tell, because you are not creeping around me. Do you have a telephone directory down the seat of your trousers in preparation?” Chamberlain smiled. Then he gripped the desk, “Conniston has hanged himself hasn’t he? I
knew
—”

“He’s escaped custody, sir.” Shelby braced himself.

It took a while for Chamberlain to react. From his drawer, he pulled a packet of cigarettes. He lit one, breathed deeply, exhaled and then screamed, “How?”

“We’re not entirely sure yet. Inspector Weston was found unconscious in Conniston’s cell—”

“What on earth was
he
doing in there? He’s not a gaoler!”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Don’t know?
Why
don’t you damned well know, Inspector Shelby?”

Shelby shifted his weight. “Weston’s patrol car is missing, sir.”

Chamberlain spat smoke out and broke into a coughing fit. Shelby moved to slap him on the back and then thought better of it. Instead he stood uncomfortably still until his senior officer stopped coughing and his colour approached normal again. “You are trying to get me into medical retirement, Shelby, aren’t you?”

“No, sir—”

“Now you listen to me, man.” Chamberlain stood up and pointed aggressively, “You get me Conniston. Summon the Chief’s Reserve, get them involved, get… get
everyone
involved.” Chamberlain appeared unwell, eyes red, face green. He kicked his chair aside and marched around to Shelby.