Dark Side (12 page)

‘You could have a nanny.'

‘James might say that I was, well … abandoning her or something.'

I too had entertained such pathetic lines of thinking, which I explained to Joanna. Baby blues. ‘And yet he's said to me on more than one occasion how good Carrie, a professional, is with ours,' I finished by saying.

‘It might be a good idea to sound him out about it, then.'

‘Have you
no
idea where he's gone? I mean, he might just have gone out for a drive or a walk for some fresh air.' Not to mention getting away from the howling sprog for a while.

‘No, he went very early this morning taking his car and said I wasn't to worry.'

Of course, how stupid of me – two cars are normally parked in the drive.

‘Have you tried phoning him?'

‘No, I hate the idea that he'll think I'm checking up on his movements.'

Ye gods. I took a deep breath. ‘Joanna, you used to be a
cop
. You are
not
some air-head housewife who freaks out every time her husband goes out of the door. If this man who you used to work with closely on serious criminal cases can't weather a little checking up on for his own safety and welfare then he's not the James I know.'

Joanna stared at me for a few moments and then said, ‘There's something else you ought to know – but you and Patrick must promise me that you won't tell anyone else.'

‘Of course.'

‘I had some photos through the post yesterday – you know, prints.' She uttered a slightly hysterical hiccupping sort of laugh. ‘A bit odd these days with digital cameras and computers, isn't it? They're of James, with a woman in a night club. She's half naked and crawling all over him.' She burst into tears again and was still weeping, inconsolable, when Patrick reappeared with the tea.

I whispered the latest developments to him and for a few moments I think he was engaged in the same mental exercise as I was: inventing slow and excruciating methods of removing Cooper from the land of the living. Impalement on a red hot spike up his backside? Far too kind.

‘Can we see them?' Patrick asked when Joanna had been persuaded to take a mug of tea.

‘They're in the top drawer of that desk over there,' she mumbled.

‘Did you have words about this?' I asked as Patrick fetched them.

‘Well, yes, sort of. I showed them to James straight away – I did freak out a bit – and he was furious and said he remembered it but had no idea who she was. He'd been out with the team at Jingles, a night club in the city, on a regular outing they have, and this trollop, who was drunk, or acting drunk, just flung herself at him.' After a big sniff Joanna went on, ‘I have to say I believe him. I used to go on these bashes myself when we worked together. We'd all have a meal somewhere and then go to a club. There were often little tarts who gave him go-to-bed eyes.'

‘I take it the place was crowded,' I said. ‘People wouldn't necessary have noticed anyone taking pictures with a mobile phone.' And after all, the man had once been described to me by a friend as ‘wall-to-wall crumpet'.

‘I'm sure it would have been. My real problem with it is that he seems to be enjoying himself.'

Patrick was looking at the three photos. ‘And what man who had at least three whiskies inside him wouldn't laugh if something like this happened?' he enquired with a quirk to his lips. He handed them to me.

‘At least four whiskies,' I decided. The girl looked about eighteen years old and had long dark hair. One of her breasts had fallen out of her dress, the southern end of which was so short it revealed, as she half lay across the DCI, a wisp of black lace not by any means covering her bottom.

‘Was there a note with these?' Patrick wanted to know.

Joanna shook her head. ‘No, nothing.'

‘You've kept the envelope but unfortunately it's of the self-seal variety. There might still be some DNA on it, though.'

‘Please don't show them to anyone. It's not as though anyone's trying to blackmail us. Perhaps Cooper, or Mallory, is just trying to break us up.'

‘Joanna, we have to—'

‘But I don't know what James is doing!' she cried. ‘He was so angry he might be killing this man right now!'

‘He isn't,' Patrick said. He replaced the photos in the envelope and gave it to her. ‘But I respect your wishes. Will you keep us informed – as friends?'

She assured us that she would.

Shortly afterwards I received an email with the information that DNA taken from the body discovered in the ditch at Woolwich was a good match with that taken from several human hairs found on and inside Sulyn Li Grant's husband's rucksack. This fairly certain identification meant that work on the case could move forward. I emailed the sender to inform or remind him that a shooting had recently taken place at the deceased's business and that three officers from SOCA, including a commander, had been on the premises at the time.

‘It doesn't get us very far, though,' Patrick commented. ‘OK, he was murdered and his widow can be informed of the fact. Perhaps she'll tell the police a bit more now.'

‘You think she's been withholding information?'

‘I simply can't believe she's completely in the dark. But for now we shall have to let the Met get on with it.' He paused in what he was doing, staring at nothing.

‘What is it?'

‘The shooting at the café bar – they
must
have been after Greenway. The owner's wife gave you the strong impression that she was giving protection money to a Chinese outfit and her husband had insisted when she spoke to him about it that he wasn't paying anyone.'

‘Yes, but he was involved with crime and she thought he was in some kind of trouble.'

‘But he'd been dead for months by then. If anyone was after him they'd have gone in and hunted him out instead of firing from outside. If you start introducing
another
set of mobsters who didn't know he was dead it gets a bit far-fetched.'

‘So you reckon he was murdered by whoever he'd upset in his own outfit and the attack was nothing to do with the café bar at all.'

‘That's my theory.'

‘It's possible but still a bit iffy. How could anyone have known Greenway would be at that particular place just then?'

‘They couldn't. But by his own admission he goes there quite a bit as it's just around the corner from HQ and all someone had to do was put a casual watch on the premises during normal working hours,
his
working hours.'

‘Perhaps we ought to call him.'

‘I have already voiced my concerns. I can't tell him to stay away from anywhere.'

He contacted the Met instead, asking for an update on the case but the person in charge of it could tell him very little. Sulyn Li Grant had been told of the confirmation of her husband's death and she had remained outwardly unmoved, unable to offer any further information about him or his suspected criminal contacts.

I found myself unable to blame her if she was keeping anything she knew to herself.

DI Campbell was taking the assault on his boss very seriously and the whole car park was cordoned off with personnel doing an inch-by-inch search of the ground. He was not there personally but Lynn Outhwaite, Carrick's sergeant, dark-haired, petite and clever, was. She greeted us with a wary smile.

‘Have you seen the DCI this morning?' Patrick asked her very quietly.

She looked surprised. ‘No. I thought he was recovering at home.'

‘He's supposed to be recovering at home. Lynn, when you recently had a team bash I understand you all had a meal and then went to Jingles night club.'

‘Yes, we had a really good evening.'

‘A little bird tells us that some tipsy dimbo draped herself all over him.'

‘She did. Mind you, he's a good-looking guy. I have to say, though, he wasn't very amused about it even though he laughed at the time.'

‘Any idea who she was?'

‘No, none.'

‘Or whether she worked at the club or was just a customer?'

‘No, sorry. Why, has this any bearing on the case?'

‘It
might
have. Found anything of interest here?'

‘Just a shirt button and a tooth. I know who the latter belongs to as one of the suspects has a fresh gap where a front one used to be. The button is made of bone or horn and might belong to someone who got away, but it's hardly evidence.'

‘It could be off the shirt I was wearing, which is in a bin somewhere at the nick.'

‘I hadn't really pinned any hopes on it,' Lynn said with a sigh.

Patrick gazed around. ‘As I said to the DI, it's worrying that those issuing the orders to these thugs must have known, despite our disguise, who we were. Up until now I've been at pains to hide my identity from both Benny Cooper and Paul Mallory, who are in the frame for this, mostly because of their past form for this kind of harassment. That cover's gone now – blown. Mallory lives on the first floor of this terrace and that's why we were here. Have any of the residents been interviewed?'

‘They have and the people who aren't away, or were when it happened, all said they were asleep and didn't hear anything. Except for one, a Miss Braithewaite, who said she's a light sleeper and had thought she heard people running around in the car park some time during that night. She didn't get up to investigate further.' Lynn paused for a moment. ‘I have to tell you that the DI doesn't go along with this London mobster connection. And as far as he's concerned Cooper's just a grubby local newspaper reporter with a criminal record. Glasgow's full of them, he said.'

‘So what does he reckon was the reason for the attack on us?'

‘Well, as you know they all said they'd all been drinking. He thinks that at the time they just felt like having a little fun with some drop-outs and it all went wrong for them.'

‘It had to be premeditated, surely, as they all refused to answer questions other than to say they were too drunk to remember what had taken place. They'd cooked up that story
beforehand.
'

‘I tend to agree with you. But Campbell's the boss right now.'

‘And you? Have you heard any gossip about someone calling himself Raptor? He's also been known in the past as Nick Hamsworth, Craig Brown and Shane Lockyer. He likes the nickname Raptor because he was once in that gang.'

‘Sorry, no again. They were a London mob, weren't they?'

‘That's right.'

‘You could try tracing the other members of it. One of them might know where he is now.'

‘Carrick always says you're a real star,' Patrick said, blowing her a kiss.

She went bright pink.

‘I should have thought of that,' Patrick said angrily when we had paused at a bistro to eat a light lunch. ‘But it means hitting police records again, staring at yet more computer screens instead of breaking down Cooper's front door and—' He broke off abruptly, got his temper back under control and took a large, vengeful bite out of a beef sandwich.

‘You'll get ulcers if you carry on like this,' I observed mildly.

‘Please programme the oracle to make constructive remarks,' he retaliated through his mouthful.

‘Well, actually, I think that's a really, really constructive opinion for me to air right now.'

‘Look, those shits were out to half kill us!'

‘Patrick—'

He got up and walked out, leaving the rest of his lunch on the plate.

Bloody hell, I thought. Cooper's winning, hands down.

This was not a time to report the latest state of affairs to Michael Greenway as he would no doubt see it as a silly domestic spat rather than his most dangerous operative having possibly raged off to chew the landscape and/or Cooper. Anyway, what could the commander, who really did not need someone else's domestic spat right now, do even if I wanted him to know what had happened?

Come to think of it, did I have the first idea what Patrick might do?

No.

I went home and Patrick wasn't there. I had been praying that he had cooled down and taken a taxi – the Range Rover was where we had left it in a car park – then seen sense and decided to work on the computer.

‘I hope I'm not turning into one of those mothers-in-law who pops up every time their offspring have a bit of a problem,' Elspeth said, coming upon me in the garden where I had gone to see if Patrick was engaged on some kind of anger working-off project like sawing up the newly-felled dead ash tree into logs for winter fires. ‘Only you look a bit worried and I was just about to make some tea. Would you like a cup?'

‘Lovely,' I said truthfully, there being no sign of him.

‘John's taking a funeral and they've asked him along to the village hall afterwards,' she continued chattily. ‘I hope he doesn't eat too much or he won't want his dinner.' When we were in her kitchen she went on, ‘A strange thing happened the other day when John and I were in Bath. We went for a walk in Victoria Park after lunch and there was a tramp – a homeless man, drop-out, whatever you call them now, dozing on a bench. Now even I can tell the difference between an unwashed body and …' She petered out when she perceived me nodding like one of those dreadful toy dogs people used to have in the back windows of cars. ‘It
was
Patrick! I knew it!'

‘As he said, working undercover to help your favourite copper.'

‘And the pair of them were beaten up by horrible thugs.'

‘Four were arrested, which was a good tally in the circumstances.'

‘Ingrid, he shouldn't have to do things like that now!'

‘James really needs his assistance.'

‘Oh, so it is official. I do sometimes wonder with Patrick …'

‘It wasn't, but is now,' I told her, realizing on reflection that that, at least, was one good thing to have come out of it.