The Nothing Job (29 page)

‘Glad you could make it,' was the most original greeting he could manage.

‘Morning, guys,' Donaldson beamed as Georgia rushed to Bill and gave him a big hug. Bill responded in kind and held on for just a moment too long for decency, but she didn't seem to mind. They exchanged a few how-are-you's and then Henry introduced her to Jerry Tope, who was mesmerized.

‘Jerry,' Henry cut into his reverie, ‘I believe you've got some IT-based things to pull together?'

‘Yeah, boss.' Reluctantly he slunk away, tearing his eyes from Georgia only as he went out through the door.

Henry did have to admit she was stunning, dressed in tight jeans, a loose blouse and denim jacket. He scowled at Donaldson, who winked playfully at him, then they all sat at a table whilst Bill scurried about getting more coffees.

‘What's the plan, H?' Donaldson asked, stretching and yawning.

Henry gave him a double-take, then took a breath to clear his mind of the horrible image he had of the Yank and the Cypriot ‘doing it'. He had never been so utterly jealous of a man having sex with a woman before. Just wasn't like him.

‘I'll go down to the custody office and check where we're up to with Scartarelli. He should be about ready to be taken over to court and I reckon the time he spends waiting in a holding cell will give us the opportunity to speak to him.'

‘How much time could that be?'

‘Depends how many people are up this morning. We'll just have to suck it and see.'

Donaldson nodded. ‘OK, bud.'

‘If you guys want to wait here, I'll go down and see what's happening.'

Although Leyland police station is the one used by Lancashire Constabulary to house suspected terrorists and other serious offenders, it is still a fairly quiet nick in comparison, say, to Blackpool, where chaos reigns 24/7. It is one of the force's most recently constructed stations, comparatively speaking, and was built with extra security because it was an opportunity not to be missed as no other station in the county had high security. And it was handy geographically, being so close to the motorway network.

Making his way down the flight of stairs to the custody office on the ground floor, Henry bumped into no one, even in the corridor leading up to the cell complex.

He buzzed at the steel door, looked at the security camera, flashed his warrant card and was allowed in.

The custody sergeant was a bruiser called Eccles. He glanced up from his paperwork – literally, he was reading the newspaper – and smiled. He knew Henry from old. They had about the same length of service and their careers had intersected occasionally over the years.

They greeted each other warmly and asked brief questions about families and shared friends.

‘So, Henry, what can I do you for? Scartarelli, I'll bet.'

‘Yeah. I want to arrange for some people, including myself, to have a chat with him for intelligence-gathering purposes.'

‘No probs.'

‘Has he had his brekkie yet?'

‘Had everything,' Eccles confirmed.

‘I'll go and get my colleagues,' Henry said enthusiastically. ‘One's from the FBI – whoow! – and another's a Cypriot cop.'

‘Only one thing …'

‘What would that be, Chris?'

‘He's already gone to court.'

Henry's eyes automatically rose to the clock on the wall, which read 8.27. Court didn't start until ten, so Scartarelli's transfer across was early by any standards.

‘Yeah, I thought that, too,' Eccles said, reading Henry's mind. ‘The escort came early and wanted to take him, so who was I to refuse? I made them take the other remand prisoner, too, even though they weren't interested in him. Another one you were involved with, by the way – Downie?'

‘I know him all right.'

‘He's been charged with some jobs over here, indecency and deception. Looks like he'll be in for a long stretch, as will the Italian, of course.'

‘That's good to hear. Er, who actually came for Scartarelli?'

‘A new security company …' Eccles rooted out the custody record and flicked it open. ‘DellHouse Security. They've just taken over the SecSer contract, apparently, though I hadn't heard about it. Must be keen to make a good impression, hence the earliness.'

Henry scanned the custody record which showed a company stamp and a scribbled signature on the line indicating that Scartarelli had been handed over.

‘I'll just mosey through, if that's OK. I'll fix up the interview with the guards.'

‘Whatever.'

‘Buzz me through.'

Henry walked across to the steel door which was the entrance to the short underground tunnel leading from the police cells to the holding cells underneath the Magistrates' Court next door. It was a brightly lit tunnel, concrete-lined, less than twenty metres in length. Henry walked briskly along it and came to the next door, which opened into the holding area. This contained a number of cells, interview rooms and an office as well as an electric shuttered door for the prisoner loading bay, big enough for a large, single-decker prison bus to reverse into.

The first strange sensation for Henry came when he was able to get through to this complex through a door which should have been locked and manned by someone controlling it. He could just push the tunnel door open and it swung gently on its well-oiled hinges.

He stepped into the holding area.

All the lights were on … but there was no one at home.

At the least there should have been a guard in the office, clearly visible through the big plate-glass window. No one sat there.

Henry crossed to the office and looked in through the window, just to confirm it was empty and that a guard wasn't tying shoelaces or something.

It was empty.

‘Hello,' he called.

No sign of any of the prisoner escorts.

He walked over to one of the cell doors and looked through the window. The cell was empty, too. The next cell along was also empty. However, much to his relief, the third cell contained the two prisoners who'd come across from the police cells.

Scartarelli was inside, as was the other remand prisoner, Downie, sitting side by side on the bench.

As Henry's face appeared at the toughened-glass window in the cell door, both prisoners turned their heads to look sourly up at him. Neither gave him a welcome smile. Both still had their wrists shackled by rigid handcuffs.

Downie recognized him first and jerked a middle finger at him. Scartarelli had a tense expression on his face.

Henry gave them a little tinkle of his fingers, turned away and went back to the office. He picked up the phone and dialled through to the custody office next door.

‘Chris, it's Henry …'

‘Boss,' the custody officer said before Henry could speak, ‘can you make your way back … something odd's just happened.'

‘Uh – yeah … shouldn't the escorts still be over here with the prisoners?' Henry asked.

‘Yeah, well that's what's odd. The escort's turned up.'

Henry frowned. ‘Be there in a sec.'

He hung up and hurried back down the corridor, being buzzed back into the custody office by Eccles. There he immediately saw two uniformed security guards with ‘SecSer' emblems on their tunics.

‘What's happening?'

‘These guys are from SecSer. They've come for the morning remand prisoners. Seems a bit of a cock-up. They say they've never heard of DellHouse Security and that SecSer still have the contract. What do I do now?'

Henry stood stock still for a moment, pondering this, mulching it slowly.

‘There's no sign of the escorts in the court holding area,' Henry said, jerking his thumb in the direction.

‘Eh? They should be there.' Eccles screwed up his nose.

‘Or maybe they just snuck off for a brew?' Henry suggested. ‘Or maybe not …' A feeling of dread coursed through him. He got his mobile phone out of his pocket and as he tabbed through it for a number, he crossed to the court-corridor door and said, ‘Let me back through, Chris,' as his hand wrapped around the handle.

‘What shall we do?' one of the SecSer guards asked.

‘Sit tight,' Henry said, yanking the door open on the buzz and entering the corridor with his phone pressed to his ear. ‘Bill, it's Henry … Get down to the cells … Bill? Fuck!' The signal had disappeared as Henry entered the corridor, but he hoped that the brief, urgent message had got through before the signal let him down. He moved up a gear and trotted down the corridor.

Ahead of him he heard two dull thuds close together, then two more, then one more … and he knew what had made the sounds.

Gunfire.

His trot became a compelling spurt and he flew through the door into the holding area.

Now his dull-dumb brain had got into gear and his sharp eyes took in everything: the fact that the shutter door to the prison bus bay was now three-quarters open, that a black Range Rover with smoked windows had reversed into the bay; that the door of cell number three was open. But above all that a masked man was backing out through the cell door, holding a semi-automatic pistol of some sort and that a sliver of smoke rose from the muzzle of the gun.

The guy was wearing overalls and trainers and for a fleeting second did not notice Henry as the detective pirouetted through the door. But that didn't matter, because there was a second man, similarly dressed, standing by the rear of the Range Rover who did see Henry and uttered a shouted warning. That man, too, was armed with a pistol and it was aimed at Henry.

Henry caught a scream in his throat as he dived to one side and rolled towards the toilets as two bullets whooshed past him, embedding themselves just above his head in the wall.

The man coming out of the cell pivoted in his direction, and suddenly Henry was very open and unprotected, nothing between him and this gunman except for a few metres of open space. As the guy swivelled, he went into a low crouch and swung his arms around and pointed the sharp end of the isosceles triangle formed by his rigid arms at Henry – meaning Henry was in the sights of the gun.

But Henry still had some momentum, and scrabbling like a demented sprinter, he rolled on to one knee and threw himself at the toilet door, crashing through it into the gents and rolling towards a cubicle just a second before the man fired.

Henry scrambled down to the far end of the lavatory whilst at the same time trying to get his mobile from his jacket pocket. At the far wall, he regained his feet and stepped into the last cubicle, turning and peering out to see if he had been followed and was about to be executed. He was in no doubt that was the fate which had just befallen one, or both, of the prisoners in their cell.

He knew for definite that Scartarelli was now a dead man.

He was more than all thumbs as he tried to redial the last number he'd called. Holding the phone clamped to his ear, Henry waited for the gunman to appear and dispatch him, tremors of fear pulsating through him.

But all he heard was an engine revving, the screech of tyres on the shiny concrete surface of the bus bay.

They'd gone.

Henry stepped out of the cubicle.

Bill answered the phone.

‘Bill – two, possibly three gunmen escaping from the holding cells under the courts. Black Range Rover, fogged windows, 54 reg – that's all I know – get it circulated now! Possible deaths down here. Get the helicopter up, too.'

Henry was speaking as he walked out of the toilet, stopping just beyond the door. There was the smell of cordite in the air. A wisp of exhaust smoke rose in the loading bay, the only evidence that a vehicle had just been there, together with the tyre marks on the surface.

Nostrils flaring, heart pounding, he stepped slowly towards the open cell door, knowing he'd come across an assassination squad conducting business. He was right.

Scartarelli was dead. He had taken four of the bullets, by the looks of him. Two to the chest – bang-bang – right over the heart, two in the head as compactly aimed as the other two. Both had entered the front of his skull and removed the back of it, splattering it all over the cell wall behind him. He was slumped on the bench seat, having slithered sideways to his left, leaving a trail of blood down the wall.

The last bullet had been fired into Anthony Downie, just one into the side of his head. He was as dead as Scartarelli.

Recalling the brief conversation Henry had had with Scartarelli on the plane in Cyprus, Henry mumbled, ‘Oh yes, mate, it definitely was you they were after.'

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, inhaled a steadying breath and stepped out of the crime scene as the corridor door opened as Donaldson, Georgia and Bill burst through. Their morning-time sexual haze was now very much wiped off their faces – or so Henry thought with satisfaction.

H
enry had to fight the instinct, which had occasionally served him well, to commandeer a cop car and go out in hot pursuit of the Range Rover. He knew he would be more useful and effective staying put at the court and the police station. There was a hot crime scene to protect and preserve and a manhunt to coordinate. On top of that there was a double murder enquiry to get up and running – but first things first.

Trusting Donaldson to protect the murder scene, Henry dashed back to the custody office and phoned the Force Incident Manager in the comms room at HQ. He filled her in succinctly with the current situation and after that left the hunt for the Range Rover down to her to sort. Then he snaffled a PR from Sergeant Eccles in custody, promising to return it. He was on his way back to the crime scene when he heard a local patrol call up.

‘Charlie Five – urgent.'

‘Go ahead,' the comms operator responded.

‘Behind a Black Range Rover, 54 registered, just turned into Worden Park, vehicle now accelerating away from me …'

‘Roger that … Other patrols to acknowledge and make to the area.'