Blindside (29 page)

The room was quiet after the call. Webb sat back in his seat and looked at Hunter and Collins and then across the table at Logan and Cahill.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask both of you to leave again,’ he said, fixing his gaze on Cahill. ‘You understand.’

Logan knew for sure that Cahill would
not
understand. He waited for his friend’s retort.

‘I mean,’ Webb continued, ‘we have an operation to plan for first thing tomorrow morning and we don’t have much time.’

Cahill stood and Logan thought that, for the first time, his friend was going to go quietly. He started to get up and felt Cahill’s hand on his shoulder pressing him back down into his seat.

So much for that thought
.

‘You’re going after a soldier, am I right?’ Cahill asked Webb.

‘Correct.’

‘Do any of you have military training or experience?’

No one answered.

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘We don’t need military training to plan an arrest operation in town,’ Grange said. ‘We do this all the time.’

‘I’m sure you do. I wasn’t offering tactical advice.’

‘Then what?’

‘I can tell you how he thinks. What he’ll be looking out for. What he might do if he thinks something is up. So that it goes down as smooth as possible. I mean, that’s what we all want, isn’t it?’

‘What exactly are you saying, Mr Cahill?’ Webb asked.

‘Keep me in the loop on this. I’ll help you get inside this guy’s brain.’

‘Sort of like a consultant?’

‘Whatever you want to call it.’

‘I can see how that might be useful.’

Cahill grinned.

5

Friday

There was no record of any current address for Jack Butler that Irvine could find. She checked all available sources but nothing turned up. She was alone in the office at Pitt Street at seven with only her desk lamp and light from her computer monitor illuminating the place.

She didn’t want to wait for Moore to arrive before giving Armstrong the heads-up about Johnson’s death, Butler and the Colorado connection. It didn’t matter how they had left things yesterday, he deserved to know what was going on.

Except maybe Frank Parker’s late-night house call. That might not go down so well with him.

Armstrong sounded wide awake when she called his mobile.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘At home.’

Sounded like he was still pissed off.

‘I need you to get to Pitt Street now.’

‘Why?’

‘New lead. Something big. You should get the DG here as well. He’ll want to be in on it.’

She knew that would get him interested.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t have time to get into it right now. I’ve got to speak to the Super.’

‘What time do you want us there?’

‘Soon as.’

‘I’ll call the DG. This better be worth it.’

‘It is.’

Liam Moore arrived at the office fifteen minutes later. He was still taking his jacket off when Irvine came into his room.

‘I called Armstrong,’ she said. ‘The SCDEA guy. He’s going to come in with the DG.’

‘You work fast. As always.’

‘I thought, you know, it was the right thing to do.’

‘It was. When will they be here?’

‘As long as it takes to get organised and drive over.’

‘Okay. I suppose you’d better bring me up to speed on everything before they get here.’

Irvine nodded, walked to the chair across the desk from Moore and sat down. She had her file and put it on the desk. It was overflowing with new material so she ordered it as best she could and told him what she knew.

She did the same thing for Armstrong and the DG, Paul Warren, half an hour later.

When she was done, Warren looked at Moore before he spoke.

‘It’s just the one guy running things here?’ he asked Irvine.

‘So far as I’m aware, sir, it is now. But the FBI may know more.’

‘Do we have an address on him?’

‘No. But I’ve got this.’ Irvine took copies of a photograph of Butler from her file and passed them around.

‘I got this from the MOD this morning. It’s maybe four or five years out of date but it’s the best I could do.’

‘Priority number one has to be getting this guy in custody,’ Moore said. ‘Are we agreed?’

Warren nodded.

‘We can’t have him running around out there killing everyone who can
identify him. It’s bad enough already. The last thing we need is more bodies piling up.’

‘What should we do?’ Irvine asked.

Moore pointed at the file in her lap.

‘Go through everything on him. I mean, service history, family, previous addresses. Everything. Run down every lead. If you need more bodies to do it, let me know. I’ll authorise the manpower for it.

‘Do you want me to speak to press relations?’ Irvine asked. ‘You know, to get his name and picture out there?’

Moore leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Warren.

‘My inclination is not to do it. Not just yet anyway. I mean, if he sees it, he might go right off the deep end. Could be a bloodbath.’

Moore nodded.

‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’ Armstrong said. ‘Look at what he did to Johnson, to Russell Hall and the accountants. How much worse is it going to get?’

‘We don’t know,’ Moore said. ‘That’s the problem. We have no idea how many more people he’s likely to target. So let’s not give him a reason.’

‘Who’s going to speak to the FBI?’ Irvine asked.

‘I’ll handle that,’ Warren said. ‘Can you give me the names of the agents over there?’

Irvine nodded.

‘Okay, people,’ Moore said. ‘Let’s get to work and get this bastard locked up.’

6

Irvine went back to her desk and shuffled through her file again. She focused on what little information she had on Butler, but it was insubstantial and led nowhere, no matter how many times she went over it. The guy was a ghost.

She went back through the file one last time from the start. After ten minutes she came across the handwritten sheet of notes she had made when trying to get her head around the case earlier in the week. One line jumped out at her:

Suzie Murray – is she lying + does she know the dealer?

It wasn’t so much the content of the note, but the thought process that it triggered: about working girls and where they lived. She picked up her desk phone and called the Stewart Street police station.

‘Stewart Street,’ a male voice answered.

‘Superintendent Pope, please,’ Irvine said.

‘Who’s this?’

‘DC Irvine with CID.’

‘Hold on.’

She did. A minute stretched to two, stretched to three.

‘Pope,’ a voice said.

‘Sir, it’s DC Irvine from Pitt Street.’

‘I know. What’s this about?’

‘We spoke earlier this week. About a murder inquiry.’

The line went quiet. Irvine heard Pope breathing but he said nothing.

‘Sir?’

‘Is this about the prozzies?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘You wanted information on other girls, that kind of thing. Connected to your stiff.’

‘Yes.’

She heard the sound of papers shuffled on a desk.

‘Two names and an address,’ Pope said after a little more shuffling.

Irvine wrote down the names he gave her and the address of a flat in the east end of the city, not far from where Russell Hall’s body had been found. She wanted to ask how long Pope had been sitting on the information, bit her tongue instead and thanked him. He hung up without replying.

She thought about going over to the address on her own. Remembered the last time she had done that and put her hand against the bruised part of her face. Decided to find Armstrong and go over together.

Armstrong was still in with Moore. Warren was nowhere to be seen. She stuck her head around the door.

‘Kenny,’ she said.

He turned, slightly startled. She held up the piece of paper with the names and addresses on it.

‘I got an address for other girls that Joanna Lewski and Suzie Murray worked with.’

Armstrong frowned.

‘From the Super at Stewart Street. I called him before, remember?’

‘He called you back now?’ Armstrong asked, looking at his watch.

‘No. I called to chase him.’

Armstrong turned from her to look at Moore, who said nothing.

‘Okay,’ Armstrong said. ‘I need to be in on the call with the FBI in an hour. Then we’ll get over there.’

Irvine stared at the back of his head after he turned to Moore. She went back to her desk and looked at her computer monitor as the screensaver
came on. Someone had been on to her computer and changed it to a topless shot of some Z-list female celebrity.

She found it kind of funny. Wasn’t sure why.

Strange days.

7

‘I think they let us in on the bare minimum to keep us happy,’ Logan told Cahill as they rode the elevator down from the eighteenth floor at close to midnight.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Allowing us to sit in on the preliminary stuff and then telling us to get lost when they were going to have the call with the cops back home.’

‘You’re probably right.’

Logan was surprised that Cahill was so calm.

‘That doesn’t piss you off?’

Cahill turned to him, flicked his eyes above and to his left and said ‘no’. Logan looked in the same direction quickly and saw a camera in the corner of the elevator car. He said nothing else until they were in the car and driving back to their hotel.

‘What’s going on?’ Logan asked.

‘I got everything that I needed from those guys already.’

Logan concentrated on the junction ahead, the traffic system still feeling alien to him. After safely negotiating a left turn, he glanced at Cahill.

‘Alex, this is serious stuff and we need to back off now. Leave it to the FBI.’

‘Like at Ruby Ridge? Or Waco?’

Logan had never heard of Ruby Ridge and thought that WACO was an ATF operation so far as he could remember. Not that it mattered.

‘So what? This isn’t our fight. We got to the truth about your friend. Let’s go home.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Can’t you let it go for once?’

Cahill said nothing. Didn’t look at Logan.

‘What is it with you and this thing?’ Logan asked, almost shouting now.

Cahill sighed.

‘It’s just me.’

‘What does that even mean?’ Logan said, pulling the car to a stop at the side of the road.

Cahill turned in the passenger seat to face Logan. In the harsh light from the streetlamps outside he looked older to Logan than he had before. The lines on his face more prominent. A roadmap of his life in service.

‘What I mean is, it’s who I am. I don’t back away from anything. I never will.’

Logan held his friend’s gaze.

‘A good man died. Maybe not directly at the hands of this Raines and his crew, but close enough. And not just a good man, but someone who put his life on the line for others and for his country. Who served with me. If it had come down to it, we would have died together defending what we believed in.’

‘But …’

‘And I know that Webb and Grange and Hunter and the others are the same. But that doesn’t matter to me. It’s personal for me. And that means that I can’t let it go.’

Logan twisted his hands over the steering wheel.

‘You’ve been through enough with me now to understand.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand, Alex. I guess we’re just built different.’

‘If I ask you to stay in this with me, to cover my back, will you do it?’

‘You know that I will.’

Cahill put a hand on Logan’s shoulder.

‘Not so different,’ Cahill said.

When they got back to the hotel, Logan called Ellie’s mobile. He knew she would be up, getting ready for school.

‘Hey, Ellie. How’s things there?’

‘Okay. But I miss my own room. I mean, having my own stuff around.’

‘I know. Me too.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘Soon. Probably tomorrow.’

Assuming I’m not in jail. Or dead
.

‘Cool.’

Do kids still say that? he wondered.

‘We’ll do something when I get back, okay. Go out for dinner or whatever.’

‘Shopping?’

He laughed.

‘If you like.’

‘I like.’

‘Okay. Look, it’s late here so I’m going to go to bed now.’

Cahill was watching him when he ended the call.

‘That sounded nice,’ he said.

‘It was.’

‘You miss her.’

‘Of course.’

‘Then make sure you get back to her. That girl needs you.’

‘I’m not quitting on you, if that’s what you’re saying.’

‘I wasn’t saying that. We’ve all got families.’

Nothing bonded one human being to another like blood.

Logan went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. It had been a long day. He dried his face and went back out to the main part of the room. Cahill was sitting at the small table by the window looking at the TV. Logan was sure he wasn’t taking in what was on. There were two handguns on Cahill’s bed, nestled tightly in nylon holsters with a box of bullets beside them.

‘This was your errand?’ he asked. ‘When I went to get the car.’

Cahill looked at him and nodded.

‘Are they legal?’

‘No.’

‘Where did you get them?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘I mean, it wasn’t from a criminal or anything, was it?’

Logan heard how stupid the question sounded even as the words formed in his brain and left his mouth. Wished he could have it back.

Cahill laughed. It sounded genuine, not like he was mocking Logan.

‘Stupid question,’ Logan said.

‘I know what you meant,’ Cahill told him. ‘She’s an ex-cop.’

‘And how did she get into the business of selling illegal weapons?’

Cahill shrugged.

‘She wanted to do some good.’

Logan shook his head and sat on the bed.

‘One of these is mine?’ He picked up one of the holsters and slid the gun out, feeling the weight of it in his hand. ‘And you loaded them already.’