Closer Still (24 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Closer Still
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Mills frowned. ‘Who's that, then?'
The courier shrugged. ‘Beats me. But this is the address on his suitcase.'
There was a covering note from the airline. The case had been found on a carousel in Luxembourg. There was nothing to be gained by speculating how it had got there. They were now returning it, with their apologies and some complimentary air miles, and hoped its temporary absence
had not impacted too much upon Mr Salma's holiday.
Before he was a civilian SOCO, Billy Mills was a uniformed sergeant at Battle Alley. He'd learnt the science stuff, but he'd always known about crime. After the courier had gone he turned to Reg Vickers who was helping him. ‘Salma is Daoud?'
Constable Vickers had no ambitions to be a detective. He liked dealing with what Deacon referred to as ‘The bastard public'. But Uniform see a lot of criminals too, and criminal practice is second nature to any police officer who's been paying attention. ‘Well, he wasn't travelling as himself or he'd have been picked up. Did you find a passport?'
Mills shook his head. Usually it takes surgery to separate law-abiding travellers from their passports. If Daoud's wasn't found on his body it was because he'd hidden it somewhere.
‘And this is his bag.' Vickers thought back. ‘The cousins said something about a missing bag. They thought he was ripping them off – that he'd never had their heroin.'
‘And maybe he hadn't,' rumbled Mills. ‘Maybe what he had was Semtex.'
‘Oh shit,' said Reg Vickers fervently, taking a step back.
Which is when they radioed Battle Alley.
 
They stood in a cautious circle round the table Mills had placed it on, watching the suitcase closely, listening for ticking.
‘If it's Semtex,' ventured Vickers, ‘shouldn't it have
been picked up at the airport?'
‘If it's heroin it should have been, too,' said Voss. ‘But we know security measures only pick up a fraction of what comes in.'
‘It's a battle of wits,' said Mills heavily. ‘The smugglers find ways round the measures we have in place; we find ways of improving those measures to catch them next time. And so on, ad bloody infinitum. Whatever else he was, Daoud was no amateur. He could have protected either of those substances against a routine airport inspection.'
‘Or it could still be his underwear,' murmured Daniel.
The others regarded him sourly. But it was true. Even mass murderers are doing other things most of the time.
‘I'm going to have a look,' decided Voss.
‘What?!' Vickers' voice climbed. ‘Not while I'm standing here you're not.'
‘Fair enough,' said Voss. ‘But I'm not calling in the Army, and having guys with robots and body armour sealing the street off while they go through a dead man's smalls. This town has been on the point of meltdown for forty-eight hours. One more incident – in particular, one more incident
here
, where people look more like Daoud than they do like you, Reg – and we'll have a race riot on our hands. Well, if I crack open that case and see wires I'll risk it. But if it's heroin – or underwear – we can handle the situation ourselves. At least we won't make it any worse.'
‘It's a gamble, Charlie,' rumbled Mills. ‘If it got through airport security, there are no tests I can do on the outside to tell you what's on the inside. If it's a bomb, opening the case a crack might be all it needs to detonate.'
‘But why would it be a bomb? It was supposed to be on the same flight he was – why would he risk carrying an armed device? Even if it is explosives, surely he'd get them safely here and arm them at this end. This house isn't the target, it's the factory – or not, as the case may be, but Daoud had no interest in blowing it up. I don't think it's a bomb.'
‘I don't think it's a bomb either,' said Billy Mills. ‘But I wouldn't want to bet my life on it.'
Voss gave a nervous grin. ‘OK. This isn't going to take all of us.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Goodness – it's time for tea and doughnuts! You want to get them, Reg? And maybe Billy could help you carry them. And Daniel …'
‘And Daniel,' said Daniel firmly, ‘has no intentions of explaining to Detective Superintendent Deacon what happened to his sergeant, his crime scene and half a square mile of his manor. You open that case, Charlie, you do it with me here.'
In the end, no one went for tea and doughnuts.
Vickers watched the door. Any more delivery men, window cleaners or elderly ladies collecting for charity would be hustled away to a safe distance with the time-honoured explanation: ‘We think it's a gas leak.'
Daniel held the case steady on the table. He kept saying to himself,
Underwear
.
It's just underwear. Even terrorists need a change of underwear when they travel.
Once he saw a worried expression cross Voss's freckled features and was horribly afraid he'd said it aloud.
Billy Mills produced a variety of small cutting tools and some plastic gloves. ‘Whatever's in it, I'm going to want to
swab it when we're finished. I don't want the DNA tests showing that it was put together by a ginger Irishman.'
‘I'm only half Irish,' said Voss defensively; but he pulled the gloves on.
‘And I might not have enough fingers left to swab anything by then,' muttered Mills, ‘but let's look on the bright side.'
In one respect they were lucky. Daoud's bag was not rigid fibreglass but soft-bodied, made of well-used leather. This told them two things. That whatever it contained was not very volatile – if it had been, the ordinary rough-and-tumble of baggage sorting would have set it off. And that it would be possible to peep inside without disturbing the lock and hinges, two prime sites for anti-handling devices.
After some deliberation Mills chose a little craft knife with a non-magnetic blade. The blades didn't stay sharp as long but were a safer option when you didn't know what you were looking at. He ran his fingers over the outside of the bag, finally picking a spot – away from the corners, which would be a good place to locate something a bit delicate, but not in the middle which would be an obvious place to catch out someone who knew to avoid the corners. He made a sliver of a slit that at first didn't even penetrate the leather. Then he pinched an edge of the cut in non-magnetic tweezers and lifting it away from the contents made the first minuscule penetration.
‘Pass me the …' He'd laid them all out ready before he started, but Voss didn't know their names. ‘Third from the left.' Mills inserted the tip of a fibre-optic probe into the tiny opening.
‘Mm,' he said thoughtfully.
‘What?' whispered Voss, but there was no reply.
When he'd seen all the probe could show him, Mills, with fingertips as delicate as a girl's, pushed it a little deeper and looked again. ‘Mm,' he repeated.
‘
What
?' demanded Voss. ‘What can you see?'
‘Not sure.' Mills moved the little probe around cautiously. ‘Something … A label.'
‘Oh shit,' whined Reg Vickers.
‘Semtex?' asked Voss. ‘Or …Semtex written in …whatever alphabet they use in the Czech Republic?'
‘No,' said Billy Mills slowly. ‘It's written in English. It's …hang on a minute, I've nearly got it …that's better … yes. It's Marks & Spencer.'
Charlie Voss straightened up slowly. The sweat was running down his face; which was odd when he felt cold to the bone. ‘You're saying it really is his underwear.'
Mills shrugged. ‘That's all I can see. I don't think there's anything that'll blow my hand off if I open it up.'
Still struggling for composure, Voss nodded. ‘Do it.'
For safety's sake he continued the slit across the top of the bag, extending it into a Y-shape he'd learnt by attending autopsies. Then he sat back on his heels. There were no boxes with wires protruding. There were no unreasonable quantities of deodorant cans. There wasn't even a toy camel labelled
A Present from Islamabad.
There were shirts, T-shirts, sweaters, socks, a pair of shoes, a wash bag. Any one of them, packing for a week away, would have thrown in the same things.
‘There isn't enough,' said Daniel softly.
Voss looked at him with disfavour. ‘We do have shops. If he'd run out he could have gone back to M&S.'
‘That's not what I mean. Look at the size of the bag, and what he's got in it. And it's full.'
He was right. It was a big bag and should have held more. SOCO hunted for his tape-measure. ‘We're missing about two inches at the bottom.' He might have to work in centimetres but he didn't have to think in them. ‘And the bag's …' More measuring, a bit of calculating. ‘There's half a cubic foot unaccounted for. That's enough to be useful.'
‘To a drug smuggler?' asked Daniel.
‘To any kind of smuggler. It could still be Semtex. You could get enough sticks in there to make a nice big bang.'
‘How big?' asked Voss uneasily.
Mills considered. ‘Not really the right question, Charlie. It's more a case of how many? Three will make you a useful bomb. There's room in there for fifty.' He looked at Voss. ‘What do you want to do?'
Voss steeled himself. ‘I want to know.'
Billy Mills nodded. ‘OK. We'll keep going.'
The same procedure, this time going in through the false bottom of the bag. The blade, the tweezers, the probe, and SOCO venting his pent-up breath in a long sigh. ‘Well now,' he said heavily. ‘Even at Christmas, even if you've a lot of aunties to visit, how much talcum powder does a man need to carry?'
Daniel finally found a voice. ‘It's heroin?'
‘It's heroin.'
Heroin doesn't weigh a lot. But stuff enough of it into
the bottom of a bag and you'll soon have a kilo. Voss, typically, had the figures in his head. ‘It'll be pretty pure – you wouldn't bother carrying make-weight. One K at ninety per cent purity will have cost him forty thousand dollars. Cut to ten per cent, it'll sell on the street for half a million quid.'
Behind the thick glasses, Daniel's eyes were saucers. ‘That's quite a mark-up!'
‘He took quite a risk for it. His life, in fact. And he lost.'
‘But …' Daniel frowned. ‘That can't be right.'
Voss nodded grimly. ‘I know. He was smuggling heroin. International terrorists don't, on the whole, smuggle drugs.'
‘But …'
Voss nodded again. ‘Dave Salmon knew him – knew Daoud worked for al-Qaeda. But first time they met he was running drugs. Maybe at some point he became disenchanted with
jihad
and went back to his old career.'
‘Then …'
‘No,' agreed Voss. ‘Take Daoud out of the equation and there is no terrorist plot. It was a reasonable assumption – that's where the intelligence was taking us – but a lot of it was coincidence. Unconnected events that just
looked
liked a conspiracy. For the last three days we've been jumping at shadows.'
‘Shouldn't we …?
Voss nodded. ‘I'll get word to the chief right away. And Superintendent Fuller needs to start reassuring people. Daniel …'
‘That's OK,' said Daniel with a sly grin. ‘I know you couldn't have worked it out without me.'
The streets were no longer empty. No private vehicles were moving in the middle of town, but many of those who'd had to leave their cars on the jammed arterials were wandering round on foot, trying to find out what to do, looking for someone to blame.
Now their numbers were being swelled by a second influx of anxious and angry people, this time from the Romney Road area. They too wanted to know what was going on. They were tired of being blamed for something they knew nothing about. Despite Voss's best efforts, someone noticed fresh police activity at the Dhazi house and saw Voss and Daniel leaving with a large leather case. They wanted to know what was in it. They suspected, at least some of them did, that having failed to find any actual explosives the police had planted some. As Voss's car headed towards the town centre, a number of local residents followed it.
By now Deacon's party had negotiated the knot of traffic on the Guildford Road, by the simple expedient of abandoning his own vehicles and commandeering more on the other side. There they were joined by DCs Meadows and Meredith arriving back from Cheyne Warren with
Evie Stretton under caution and Brodie Farrell under the impression that her presence was required. They all arrived in Battle Alley together, filling the narrow street with a harlequin mix of vehicles, and climbed out and immediately began talking, trading snippets of information.
After a minute Deacon, looking over Voss's shoulder and down the street, said suspiciously, ‘Who are they?' Everyone turned and looked.
They were a crowd on the cusp of turning into a mob. Actually, two mobs; and little as they liked the police, they liked one another even less. One thought the other was a bunch of suicidal murderers, the second thought the first a gang of racist thugs. One knew the cops had got the al-Qaeda bomber who'd tried to kill them all, the other knew it was a fit-up because what the police were going to claim was the bomb was only delivered to the house in Romney Road an hour earlier. The more they poured into the neck of Battle Alley, the closer the two groups were forced and the angrier they became.
‘We need to get inside,' Deacon said tersely. ‘Now.'
But there were a dozen people on the police station steps, including some in high heels and one in handcuffs. Deacon wasn't even sure who some of them were but he knew that the street wasn't the place to be working it out. He grabbed people at random and pushed them up the steps ahead of him. One was Brodie, which should have surprised him but didn't. Another was Daniel.
By now the mob wasn't just jostling, it was advancing. And it was shouting. Almost, it was baying. In all the chaos, no one was able to say – even later, after studying
the CCTV footage – who, or even which faction, threw the petrol bomb.
It might have been aimed at the police, it might have been aimed at their prisoner. But anyone who knew Jack Deacon could have guessed who would be last into the safety of the police station. People who disliked him with a passion, who disliked his manner and his mannerisms and his approach to the job, and especially disliked his way of being right more often than seemed reasonable, still grudgingly admitted that in a tight corner, needing someone at your back, there was no one they'd sooner have there than Deacon. It was common knowledge – more, it was a matter of faith – that he'd cover your back if all he had to do it with was his own.
So that was where the petrol bomb landed, burst and sprayed its flaming cargo: across Jack Deacon's back.
If Dev Stretton hadn't still been wearing his overcoat he'd have had some protection. But all he had was his suit, and the flames enveloped him.
For just a second. Because if you regularly risk your neck for people, sooner or later someone will return the favour. Several of those above him on the steps, whose own best interests demanded that they get indoors at once, instead turned and – working on instinct because it was faster than thought – headed back towards the angry crowd and the fire-demon that was Detective Superintendent Deacon.
Daniel and Charlie Voss reached him first. Daniel was already swinging his own jacket round Deacon's shoulders to smother the flames as Voss rugby-tackled him, bore him backwards down the steps and rolled him in the street,
the weight of his own body flattening him against the pavement. And then the flames were out.
By then the rest of the party had reached them. Strong hands grabbed Deacon and bundled him unceremoniously up the steps and inside. Voss, still dusting dirt and embers from himself, thought he was bringing up the rear – then realising he was not, turned back once more to grab Daniel who was gazing bemusedly at the remains of his jacket held in spark-singed hands. Five seconds later everyone was inside the police station and the door was locked.
And five minutes later there was no one left on the street, just some broken glass, some charred clothing and a black mark in the shape of a man to show what had happened.
 
‘Well, this is different,' said Daniel carefully.
It takes a man of a certain mettle to glare while lying face-down on a hospital trolley with a burn dressing on his backside. Deacon was that man. He glared as if tomorrow was No Glaring Day, and after that the council were introducing a glaring charge within the town boundaries. His injuries weren't life-threatening, and his dignity was a lost cause, so there was nothing to stop him.
‘Spare me,' he snarled, ‘the home-spun philosophy. Don't tell me things could have been worse. If you were going to tell me about last time you were here, and which wards have the best beds, and which coffee machines can be relied on to produce something recognisable as coffee, don't. I don't want to hear it. I want a shot for this' – he tried to gesture with his left ear at his singed posterior –
‘and then I want out of here. You want to do something useful, tell the medics that. Tell them I don't have time to be in hospital.'
‘I can tell them,' said Daniel mildly. ‘I don't think they'll care. I think you're going to be here for a few days, whether you have time or not. Look on the br …' He stopped himself just in time. There was nothing wrong with Deacon's hands: he'd have shoved the platitude back down Daniel's throat. ‘Look at it this way. If you're here, and Detective Inspector Salmon is here, and Charlie Voss is here, to all intents and purposes this is CID. Tie up the loose ends while you're healing. Police interviews have been conducted in hospital rooms before.' Daniel knew this as a fact.
‘Because the suspect is injured, or maybe a witness is,' hissed Deacon viciously. ‘Not because the SIO has a blister the size of the Millennium Dome on his bum!' Belatedly he heard what Daniel had said. ‘Charlie's still here?'
‘Well – back here. He's all right,' said Daniel quickly. ‘They let him out earlier today on the basis that he'd sit quietly at home and watch some television. Wrestling you down the police station steps opened the wound again. They slapped a patch on it and he'll be fine. They're only keeping him overnight to stop him doing it again.'
‘That was Charlie.' Deacon's recollection of those few hectic seconds in Battle Alley was understandably fragmented. He remembered the hands, hadn't until now had a face to put with them. Then his brow creased. ‘Daniel, why are you wearing Brodie's jacket?'
‘Oh. Er …' Daniel blushed. He'd forgotten.
Deacon was a detective. ‘It was you too, wasn't it? Putting the flames out. Yours got burnt and she made you put hers on.' He thought for a moment, trying to remember what came next. Oh yes … ‘Thanks.'
Daniel shrugged, embarrassed. ‘It was all over in a second. If Charlie hadn't been there, I wouldn't have known what to do.'
Deacon knew better. ‘Oh, you would. Or you'd have worked it out. Or you'd have done it
while
you were working it out. You weren't hurt?'
‘No.' Then, more honestly, ‘Not much. They've got a spray here. I want to take one home.'
Deacon chuckled darkly. ‘That's one idea. Another would be,
Stay the hell out of trouble!'
He heard another echo. ‘Loose ends? We're down to loose ends? Not last time I heard!'
Daniel wasn't sure how Deacon would take the news that his case had been solved for him. ‘Well, Brodie was talking to the Strettons … And then a courier turned up at Romney Road …'
Deacon gave what he thought was a patient sigh but actually sounded like the venting of an over-stoked boiler. ‘Tell me what you know.'
 
It had the ring of authenticity. None of it contradicted his own conclusions. Dimmock had teetered on the edge of the abyss as a consequence of coincidence and misunderstanding. ‘There never was a bomb plot?'
‘It doesn't look like it,' said Daniel. ‘Salmon was right about Daoud – he was involved with al-Qaeda for a time. Then at some point he drifted back to drug smuggling.
What the Dhazi boys were telling you was the truth. Joe Loomis paid them to find him a new source of supply, and they found Daoud. They gave him Joe's deposit, but then the airline lost his bag.'
‘If we'd found the drugs at Romney Road we'd have known which string of his bow Daoud was playing,' Deacon said slowly. ‘But last time Dave met him he was into terrorism and we assumed that was still his game.' He frowned. ‘So why's Joe dead?'
‘Not because of his involvement in the drug deal,' said Daniel. ‘We think – with both of them dead we're never going to know for sure – that Daoud went to The Rose to tell Joe the airline had cocked up. No one was trying to cheat him, he'd get his consignment as soon as it turned up. You have him going in and coming out on CCTV, don't you? But he didn't kill Joe then, and he didn't kill him later.'
‘Well, Dev Stretton didn't kill him. He wants me to think he did, but he didn't.'
‘No.'
‘His mother?'
‘His sister.'
Deacon hardly remembered that Stretton had a sister. Now he thought, he recalled someone skittering mouselike through the margins of the picture. ‘She can't be more than about fourteen!'
‘She's twenty,' said Daniel. ‘Joe was her father. That's what he was trying to tell Brodie when he died. D was for Daughter.'
Deacon was wrestling with the new information. ‘Why?
I mean, apart from the obvious reason that most people would rather be known as a murderer than a relative of Joe Loomis's.'
Daniel sighed. ‘We think that for once in his life he was trying to do something good. Evie spent months trying to find out who her father was. When she finally came up with a name, she thought there'd be a touching reunion and they'd get to know one another. But Faith was terrified the girl would get drawn into Joe's world. She went to warn him off. That was the meeting I saw.
‘And it seems he was listening. He decided the best thing he could do for his only child was scare her half to death. He met her in a dark car park and offered her work as a prostitute. He cornered her against his car and pulled out his knife. Evie thought he was going to rape her. She grabbed the knife, and the rest is history.'
Deacon was shaking his head in bemused disbelief. ‘My God. And I thought I left a lot to be desired as a parent!'
‘It was self-defence,' Daniel pointed out. ‘But she didn't think anyone would believe her. By the time Faith learnt about it she thought it was too late to explain and walk away. And then, no one was looking for Evie. No one knew of any connection between her and Joe. We all expected his killer to be another gangster. Faith thought she just had to get the girl out of sight for a bit. She arranged to send her to friends in France.
‘Only when Detective Inspector Salmon spotted Daoud and thought a terror attack was imminent, suddenly that got harder. Stations, ports and airports were being watched. You might have been looking for nervous Arabs, but Evie
knew she was wanted too – if she'd started twitching at passport control, someone would have wondered why.
‘So Faith asked Pervez Tarar – Dev's father – to take her in his helicopter. She didn't tell him why. He knew she was in trouble but he'd no reason to link her with Loomis either. He agreed.'
‘And then the no-fly zone was imposed,' realised Deacon. ‘If he'd taken off he'd have been intercepted, and even if Tarar didn't know what it was all about I'd have found out.'
Daniel smiled at the unconscious pride in his voice. ‘Which is when Dev got involved. Faith only told him what had happened when she thought Evie was going to have to face the music. Until then he didn't even know Joe was Evie's father.
‘He needed to get that no-fly zone lifted. He hoped that if you thought you'd cornered the mad bomber, Evie could get safely away. There's a streak of nobility in that boy that was always going to get him into trouble sooner or later. Faith agreed, but once she'd got Evie off to France she meant to tell the police Dev was covering for her – that she killed Joe. I think she was past caring what happened to her if Evie was safe and you understood the reasons for Dev's actions. Grand gestures seem to be a Stretton speciality.'

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