Long Way Home (34 page)

Marie Gavin was in the middle of the yard now, shouting as she was cuffed.

‘You can’t come in here without a warrant.’

‘We’ve got one,’ Adams told her.

‘This is harassment, we’ve got rights.’

‘Don’t come the innocent, missus.’

‘Don’t you missus me, you shite.’

Adams laughed. ‘Fucking charmer, this one.’

‘If anything gets broken in my place you bastards are paying for it,’ she shouted. ‘And I know what’s in there so keep your thieving fingers to yourself. That china’s worth more than you earn in a year.’

They dragged her away as well, spitting and cursing them all to hell.

The point man went into her caravan, two of his team following, moving slowly, crab-stepping and hand-gesturing.

Her husband hadn’t surfaced yet. Ray Gavin – fifteen years in Broadmoor, false imprisonment, torture, murder.

Shouts of ‘clear’ rang out then something smashed and a light flashed in a darkened window a split second before a shotgun blast ripped through the night. Black-clad figures piled into the caravan, their boots like thunder on the wooden veranda.

‘What do we do?’ Ferreira asked, her eyes huge and shining.

‘Nothing,’ Zigic told her, making it an order. ‘This is their job. Not ours.’

She looked to Adams and he shook his head.

‘Shouldn’t we start opening the cabins up then? Get the men out.’

‘Not until the site’s clear.’

She was jittery and Zigic felt it too, the adrenalin pumping with nowhere to go while they waited in the deserted yard with the dead dogs and the faces of locked-up men looking out at them. There was no more noise from inside Marie Gavin’s caravan but no movement either. The seconds leaked by with the helicopter circling overhead, its beam sweeping into the dark fields beyond the yard.

Then the floodlights shut down and Zigic was momentarily blind, negative impressions superimposed over the black, but his eyes adjusted quickly enough to catch a blur of movement as a man darted out from behind a four-track and bolted for the gates.

‘Fuck. He’s away,’ Adams shouted.

But Zigic was already running. The helicopter banked sharply above him, isolating the man in a circle of light as he broke through the gate and hit the road, his footfalls fast and light.

Kelvin Gavin – a born runner. He’d run from foster homes and security guards and the police. Ten months ago he ran from the Serco team escorting him to court on a rape charge and hadn’t been seen since.

Until now.

Zigic lengthened his stride, aware of Adams at his heels, the sound of more bodies joining the pursuit, and drove himself on, feet pounding the compacted dirt track.

Kelvin Gavin was becoming a smaller and smaller figure in the distance, the white stripes on his Adidas glowing. Suddenly he veered off the road and the helicopter lost him.

‘Where is he?’ Adams shouted.

Zigic slowed for a few seconds, heart hammering, and then the beam swept across a farmyard on the right side of the road, catching Kelvin as he vaulted the metal barrier closing off the gateway.

‘He’s heading for the barns.’

Zigic cleared the barrier and landed badly, pain shooting up into his groin. He pushed it away. Kept running. Kelvin Gavin was thirty feet ahead of him, tugging on the door of an old cattle shed with corrugated-tin walls.

Twenty feet.

The door slid open with a metal clang and Kelvin disappeared inside.

Zigic kept running, heard voices behind him, Adams telling the others to go round the back.

He slipped through the narrow opening and stopped dead. He could see the hulking shapes of machinery, dark and indistinct to his left, and ahead of him a run of pigpens where a couple of dozen animals snuffled softly in the gloom, smelling of shit and straw.

‘There’s nowhere for you to go, Kelvin.’ His voice echoed to the distant roof.

He heard something moving to his right, turned to face the noise.

‘We’ve got the place surrounded. You might as well –’

A weight struck him between the shoulders and he hit the floor. Kelvin was on him, fists driving into his ribs and chest. A glancing blow split the skin above his left eye and the blood came quickly, blinding him. He threw a wild elbow and felt it connect. It slowed Kelvin for a second and Zigic moved fast, got astride his hips and punched him in the face. Cartilage snapped and he felt blood between his fingers when he hit him again. Kelvin squirmed, tried to kick out, but he had him pinned. He grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and smashed his head into the barn floor, blinking through the blood running down his face.

Kelvin stopped moving and Zigic reached for the cuffs at the back of his belt, fingers brushing the holster and he realised too late that it was empty.

Kelvin jabbed the muzzle into his neck and black spots popped in front of Zigic’s eyes.

‘If you shoot me you’ll never get out of here,’ he said.

‘Think I give a fuck?’

‘We didn’t come for you, Kelvin.’

‘Get off me.’

Zigic climbed to his feet. His knees were liquid and he felt he might fall at any moment.

Kelvin kept the gun on him as he stood, none too solid himself.

‘Just give me that thing and we can pretend this never happened.’ Zigic held his hand out. ‘We’re not interested in you, Kelvin.’

He shoved the gun in Zigic’s face. ‘You know what they do to blokes who shoot coppers in the nick?’

‘No.’

‘Fucking nothing. We’re kings.’

Zigic heard the gunshot and felt blood spray across his face and then he was falling through blackness, unable to see or breathe and the last thing he registered was the impact of the barn floor against the back of his head.

FERREIRA SAT ON
a desk at the back of CID, waiting for Adams to emerge from DCS Riggott’s office and start the morning briefing. A young WPC, with blonde hair and black roots, brought her coffee and offered her a doughnut from a bright pink paper bag. That was Adams’s style, cheap gimmicks to get people where he wanted them. He’d fill his team up with caffeine and sugar and then send them out onto the streets all hyped up to do his dirty work.

‘Go on,’ the woman said. ‘They’re custard.’

‘I’m good.’

‘There’s nothing in them.’ She shook the bag. ‘You might as well.’

‘Are you deaf?’

The WPC gave her a squinty-eyed look and Ferreira willed her to say something else. The mood she was in she could rip the woman’s head off in front of everyone. But she only smiled and walked away, went over to a tight knot of people at the front of the room and whispered something which provoked a burst of harsh laughter.

Fuck her.

Ferreira sipped her coffee and tried to tune out the background noise.

It was too insistent though. Most of them were fresh in this morning, all perky as hell from a good eight hours and a proper breakfast. Only DC Carr had been on the raid and he was sitting as his desk a few feet away, working through a bacon sandwich, talking about POSH’s home game at the weekend with an ancient sergeant in a bad suit and a claret tie whose accent was so thick Ferreira could barely penetrate it. Peterborough had won. She got that much.

Like she cared.

She’d been to see them play once, dragged along to London Road after drunkenly agreeing it might be fun. It wasn’t. They’d been promoted since, got a new manager, but she doubted they were much better to watch. Bobby was a diehard, he’d had a season ticket since he was a kid and she told him he wouldn’t know good football if it nutmegged him.

Around her the voices kept going, laughter breaking through the hum, and no one seemed to be talking about the raid or the men they’d broken out of those wretched cabins. It was all bullshit about films and last night’s telly, what he’d like to do to that brunette on
Hollyoaks
and did you see that thing on 4 about the kid with the growth?
Oh my God . . . it was soooo sad
.

She saw Zigic on the barn floor. Motionless. Blood on his face. Adams squatting down next to him, pressing his fingers into his neck, searching for a pulse. She blinked it away.

Adams strode into the office, clapping his hands.

‘Alright, you lot, bit of fucking hush.’

Riggott came in, wrapping up a conversation on his mobile, and trousered it as he slipped unobtrusively down to the back of the room. He gestured at Ferreira and she shuffled along the desk, giving him space to prop one buttock on the corner. He smelled of cigarettes and peppery cologne and she noticed a small nick from a razor low on his skinny neck.

Up front Adams launched into a debrief of the morning’s raid, his voice stagy, his north London accent more pronounced than usual as he ran down the arrests made and outlined the plan of action for the rest of the day.

Ferreira took her tobacco tin out of her pocket and started on a cigarette, half listening to him, thinking about the men from the site, the expressions of disbelief and fear as the doors were smashed open to let them out into the cool morning air. A couple of them tried to run but they were caught quickly, not enough energy in their raddled and emaciated bodies to get beyond the gates. Several of them were illegals and Ferreira felt a deep stab of pity for them.

Once they’d given their statements they would be bussed to Oakington detention centre, where they would wait for a few days or a few weeks, in more comfort than they were used to, but still imprisoned. Then a van would come and they would be taken to Stansted airport, manhandled onto planes and sent home to countries where they still owed money to the gangsters who’d brought them over here.

For now they were being cleaned up and fed at Fern House. It was more than the Adus could cope with but when Ferreira suggested taking some of the men to the soup kitchen at St Mary’s, Joseph wouldn’t hear of it, insisted they would call in extra volunteers to help.

She licked the edge of the paper and sealed her rollie.

‘You know you can buy them ready-made now,’ Riggott said.

‘I prefer them like this.’

He produced a gold Zippo from his pocket and held the flame out to her.

‘Go on, I’m the boss.’

She leaned in and took the light, catching DC Carr smirking at her.

Fuck him too.

Adams was dispatching his officers in teams, ordering translators and people from social services to be sent to Fern House. He wanted statements from the Gavins’ prisoners by the end of the day, everything neatly wrapped up and ready for the CPS.

It was open and shut now. No denying what they’d found at the site at Knarrs End Drove. There were unlicensed guns inside the vans, a couple of grand’s worth of coke and weed, bundles of fake twenties wrapped in cling film and stowed in panels under the beds.

Nobody was talking though. The Gavins were on a group vow of silence, waiting for their solicitors.

‘Mel.’ Adams pointed at her. ‘I want you to get Mr Perez out of City and find this building site where his mate’s buried.’

Heads swivelled and she felt eyes on her.

‘They’re not going to let him out for that,’ she said.

‘So persuade them.’

He held her gaze until she nodded, then started giving orders to a couple of men standing near him, pointing at the sheet on the board.

She walked out of the office and went down to the car park, flicked her cigarette into the flower bed and got into the car. The radio blared when she started the engine and she turned it up higher, Left Lane Cruiser banging and wailing as she turned out onto the parkway.

She shouldn’t be doing this.

The clock was ticking on Phil Barlow; twelve hours to go before they had to release or charge him, and he was still sitting in his cell, finishing his breakfast and building his strength for the coming day. She should have him sweating blood in an interview room right now, make him look her in the eye and admit that he’d burned Jaan Stepulov alive and then gone right back to his warm bed and slept like a baby.

Adams’s case was the headline grabber though, and everything else stopped until he had a result worthy of the six o’clock news.

By the end of the second song she was pulling into City General.

On Ward 7 there wasn’t a nurse in sight and the guard from Paolo’s room had disappeared too, leaving a crumpled copy of the
Daily Mail
on the chair behind him. She knocked out of courtesy and went in.

Paolo was sitting up in bed, the remnants of his breakfast pushed aside on the high white table, toast crumbs on a plate and a mush of leftover cornflakes in a bowl. He’d had a shave since the last time she saw him and he looked younger without the grey-flecked beard, closer to his actual age but still older than thirty-one. It would be a while before he recovered, lost that gauntness and the weary expression he’d earned living under the Gavins’ tyranny.

The sight of him pushed all thoughts of the Barlows out of her head.

‘Good morning, Sergeant Ferreira.’

‘You can call me, Mel,’ she said. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Well enough to get up?’

He cocked his head. ‘Am I going home?’

‘What did your doctor say?’

‘He doesn’t speak to me,’ Paolo said. ‘But I feel strong enough to leave now. Marco has a place where he’s staying. I will go with him.’ He looked down at his chest. ‘Unless you need me.’

‘You’ll have to come to the station and make a formal statement,’ Ferreira told him. ‘We’ve arrested the people who were holding you.’

His expression darkened and he tugged nervously at the blanket across his legs.

‘They are in prison?’

‘In custody, yes. Which is as good as.’

‘But they will be given bail?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’ She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, knowing it was more than possible, it was almost a certainty, and once they were out they were very likely to come looking for him. It was how people like the Gavins operated. Intimidation, murder, whatever it took to make charges go away.

‘Look, if you’re up to it, I’ve been asked to take you to find this place you were working when your friend died.’