Death Trap (27 page)

‘It’s me! Officer Blake!’

The figures threw themselves to the ground when several were pumped in their direction. Lumps were chewed out of the brickwork and glass shattered and scattered across the courtyard.

Rio yelled, ‘Jenkins, ceasefire.’

Rio, Blake and his men now all hugged the wall.

‘Sorry, boss, we got the wrong place. The hedge we followed went down into a hollow,’ Blake explained breathlessly, ‘so we couldn’t see the target anymore. We followed it along, turned right along the next hedgerow and found ourselves at the oast house – only it wasn’t the right one, it’s the next place a couple of hundred yards away. When we heard the shooting, we tracked back.’

‘Radio?’

‘No signal in the hollow. When we got back within range, I radioed the command vehicle but you were gone. Where’s the gunfire coming from?’

‘Not sure. Let’s use some grenades and go and clear the ground floor.’

Rio threw the grenades. Flashes, vibrations and smoke shook the air. Rio and the team rushed inside, guns raised. The place was silent.

Inside they flicked switches by torchlight to get lights working but nothing happened. No electricity. They moved gingerly down the corridor. Paused by the first door they came to.

Blake whispered, ‘There’s no one in here DI Wray. I think all the shooting came from our side.’

But Rio kicked the door back. She levelled the Glock up and around. No movements; no sounds. One of the others shone their torch behind her striking the room with a vein of light. She went inside. A kitchen. The room was empty, except on a long oak table, as if set out for inspection, were knapsacks and holdalls. Rio let her gun drop and went over to the table. She opened one of the bags. Inside were silver plates, figurines, jewellery and other valuable items. Blake was by her shoulder. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that it’s some of the gear that was stolen by the Greenbelt Gang,’

‘They were here then? They must have got away.’

‘Maybe. Let’s clear the house.’

They left the kitchen. Some of Jenkins’ team were now congregating in the corridor. They were ordered to search the rooms one by one. Rio took the upstairs alone.

The stairs groaned under her feet. On the landing at the top were various rooms with their doors closed. But one door was slightly open. Silence was interspersed with shouting – ‘Armed police’ – from downstairs, and doors being kicked open. Rio kept her gun up and her torch breast-high in her other hand. She kicked the door further back, breathing heavily in her nose. There was already a small light in the room; the orange glow of a cigarette and the stub of a cigar on a side table. Sitting next to it was a tumbler of booze with ice still floating in it. When Rio shone her light around the air caught in her throat; illuminated was the pale, astonished look of a man slumped in an armchair. Further down, two large holes gouged by bullets were soaked in blood and jagged flesh. Rio’s torch moved on. Another man, also dead, by a window shattered by gunfire. He was lying contorted on the floor, his head half blasted away.

‘Jenkins? Billy? Sir?’ Rio roared.

No response.

She called again. Silence. She knew she should wait for someone to join her, but she didn’t. Rio hit the stairs to the next floor, stopped when the torchlight shone onto the feet of another dead man dangling on the landing above. Probably gunned down trying to escape upwards into the oast house’s tower. He gripped the bannister tightly, his lifeless fingers holding on more powerfully in death than they’d been able to in life. His face was frozen in terror and two shots blasted open his chest.

Rio couldn’t get her head around the scene of death around her. If this was the Greenbelt Gang, why had someone murdered them? Rio picked up a trail of blood with her torch that led into an attic bedroom. Inside was another victim. He lay face down on a bed as if taking a demonic nap amid the terror. This body had taken more punishment than the others. He’d been shot multiple times. Riddled with holes in his right arm and leg. Another bullet had hit his shoulder and the shot that had probably finally killed him had gone through his heart. In his hand was a grey object, which was being held by the victim like a talisman. Rio knew what it was – an asthma pump.

She grabbed the victim’s jacket and pulled the body over. Shone her beam into the dead man’s face.

Gary Larkin.

thirty-five

11:09 p.m.

‘This is one hell of a mess,’ Billy Jenkins told Rio angrily as they entered the operations room back at The Fort.

No one else spoke. There was none of the feeling of high elation of a job well done. Four men were dead and someone was going to have to pay the price.

Rio answered as she pulled off her stab-proof vest. ‘I’m telling you that they were already dead—’

‘But you weren’t meant to have a gun for fuck’s sake.’

Hearing Commander Jenkins turn the air blue, everyone stopped and looked openly at them. Billy was one of the coolest leaders of any unit in the Met, one of the reasons he’d been especially chosen to manage an arms response unit. He had the deep respect of his team and superiors, led by example not by insult and cursing.

Rio strode towards Billy as if being nearer to him would make the truth of her words sink in. ‘Someone else killed them. You were there when I saw someone outside.’

Jenkins shook his head in disgust at her. ‘I told you at the time, I didn’t see anyone—’

‘Then how did they all die?’ Rio threw back. Then she saw the look on his face, which made her gasp and rock back. ‘What? You think
I
pulled the trigger? I—’

‘Rio, are you alright?’ Heart still beating badly she turned to find Jack Strong striding towards her. His face was tight and slightly red with confusion, eyes deep blue with concern.

‘I just heard what happened,’ he continued when he reached her. Then his large palms were sliding up and down her arms as if to make sure she was really there.

‘I’m fine.’ But she knew she wasn’t.

Their gazes caught and held.

‘Out,’ a strident female voice commanded.

All eyes turned to the doorway where AC Tripple and DSI Newman stood. Tripple looked furious, while Newman’s face was stamped with annoyance and worry.

‘You and you,’ the Assistant Commissioner continued, pointing a finger first at Rio, then at Billy Jenkins, ‘stay put. The rest of you, out.’

Strong gave Rio a reassuring squeeze before he let her go. No one hung around and soon the room held only four people. Rio knew she was about to get the bollocking of her life, so straightened her back ready for the battering. She didn’t have to wait long as her former mentor reached her in clipped strides.

‘Tell me the reports of you handling a firearm are
not
true, Detective Inspector.’

Rio dipped her head. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am—’

‘Look at me when I’m addressing you.’

Rio instantly raised her head, but didn’t dare look the older woman in the eye.

‘You silly, silly . . .’ Tripple railed, shaking her head as she tried to find the words. Then she turned her head in fury towards Billy Jenkins. ‘How the hell did she manage to get hold of a firearm? You were meant to be organising that team with absolute precision—’

‘It wasn’t Billy’s fault—’

Tripple swung back to Rio. ‘Don’t. Speak.’

The tension tightened with the tautness of an elastic ready to snap as the AC paced backwards and forwards, forwards and back. It gave Rio the space she needed to realise that her actions had jeopardised not only her own position but that of the whole team. Billy was a man who had taught her so much when she’d been part of his team and it hurt now to think that her behaviour might mean he’d earn a strike in an exemplary career.

AC Tripple finally stopped pacing. The expression on her face was back to the one Rio associated her with – professional calm.

‘You’re suspended.’

Rio rocked back. ‘What?’

‘Commander Jenkins, I want a full report on my desk in two hours. Now please leave us.’ Billy nodded once, then made for the exit.

‘That includes you, DSI Newman,’ the other woman added.

Seconds later Rio and the woman she’d admired above everyone else were alone.

Rio wasn’t someone who could keep her mouth zipped when there was something that needed saying, even to a superior officer, so she spoke. ‘This was no one else’s fault but my own. I decided—’

But Pauline Tripple cut over her. ‘If anyone asks, you’re to say that you were defending yourself while you were being attacked.’

‘Ma’am?’ Rio was startled by the suggestion.

‘And that you took your firearm’s refresher training this year—’

‘No,’ Rio responded with fire in her words. ‘I can’t do that. I come from a community that always feels that the police are colluding and twisting the truth against them. Do you know how many times my friends were stopped and searched by the police when we were growing up? I was stopped? The police weren’t the police, they were cops roaming the streets like any other gang, except they could do what they wanted because they had the law on their side. One of the reasons I joined was to change all that. I need to be able to look the people I serve in the eye. So, with respect, ma’am, don’t stop me being able to do that.’

‘But you’re part of another community now as well.
Our
community.
Our
rules.
Our
ways of working together. You broke those rules so you’ve put at risk everyone in our community. You decide to walk a straight line on this then we’re all going to be walking right on behind you, except the rest of us will be falling one by one as we’re crucified.’

The other woman stared at Rio with a determined glint in her eye, waiting for her to say the magic words. But Rio couldn’t do it. Couldn’t lose that one part of herself that had remained pure and true – her integrity. People could point out other shit she might have done, but her understanding of right from wrong? No fucking way – no one was going to take that away from her.

‘Then be prepared,’ Tripple said softly seeing Rio had made her decision, ‘because you might go down. I’m not going to be able to protect you from those who’ve just been waiting for a chance to say “I told you so about that Rio Wray. Got where she was going because of some positive, ethnic and gender monitoring initiative, not on her own merit.”’

Rio tipped her head back. ‘They’re already saying that, so let them now come out of the hole they’re hiding in and tell me point blank to my black, magic woman face. I learned integrity from you and I’m not about to let you down.’

An emotion crossed the other woman’s face that Rio found hard to identify. Pain? Sorrow? Regret? Whatever it was it made Rio’s belief in herself grow.

‘I only took the gun because I saw someone – whoever that person was gunned down every last one of those men. I was trying to protect them. Trying to make sure that they stayed alive to face a fair trial.’

‘So there’s clear evidence that they were the Greenbelt Gang?’

Rio nodded, shedding some of the weight that had been clinging to her since the end of the disastrous raid. ‘There were firearms and other items that will easily be tied to the crime scenes. And our main person of interest, Gary Larkin, was among the deceased.’

‘Well, we’ll be able to use that to deflect from everything else. Knowing that the gang are no longer active will keep the public on our side.’

‘But something’s not right here. Why would someone kill the gang?’

The AC looked at her sternly. ‘Our business is to make sure that the crime was solved, which is what we’ve done. Anything else can be sorted out. Obviously you’re still suspended pending an internal investigation—’

‘But if there’s something we’re missing here, a hitman could still be on the trail of Nikki Bell. Something’s not right here—’

‘You’re suspended Detective Inspector Wray. As far as the service is concerned, the perpetrators have been identified and no longer pose a threat. That’s the story I’m going to tell, Commander Jenkins will tell and you better be telling too. If there’s a contract killer still out there we will find him, not you.’

‘What’s going to happen to Nikki?’

‘The girl’s not your concern anymore. It’s already late so best to leave her with Calum Burns for the remainder of tonight. I’ll send a unit over in the morning to get her. You’re to stay away from her.’

She moved her face closer to Rio and menacingly whispered, ‘If you go anywhere near this case while you’re suspended, you’re finished.’

thirty-six

The Hit: Day Three

Midnight

The last time Rio tried getting drunk was three years back; the night she’d found out her dad was dead. And look how that had turned out! Shagging Calum and doing one of the craziest things in her life. Now here she was – playing crazy again - willing herself to get smashed out of her head, in a low-lit bar where the patrons were interested in only one thing - the volume of liquid in their glass. Neat, dark rum, that was her poison – booze her mum had called the Devil’s Juice. The only problem was, she hated the taste of spirits. Disgusting stuff. How anyone became a slave to it she would never understand. Rio sat at a stool at the bar, facing the twin shelves of drinks housed in bottles so colourful she thought they were fireworks standing to attention, getting ready to blast off. Just like her career exploding before her eyes and she could do fuck all about it.