To Kill Or Be Killed (31 page)

The key fob was
VW. It took him an annoying half an hour to find the white VW
Beetle. It was in a car park on the corner of Gloucester Place and
the Marylebone Road. The ticket was in the wallet. He adjusted the
seat, started the car, cleared the punch ticket barrier and turned
the car for Vauxhall. It was three in the morning, traffic was
light and sparse and it didn’t take him long to get there. He
parked up two streets away from the Priory Arms, tilted back the
passenger seat and settled down. It would be ages before the pub
opened and he could meet the contact.

Chapter
81

Albany Street Police
Station London

3 a.m.

April 19th

It had taken
much less time than Tony Deany had expected to get through the
interviews at The Underworld Night Club. They had worked through a
hundred or so club goers. They showed Mason’s photograph and asked
a set pattern of questions.

“Do you
recognise this man?”

“Did you see
this man in the club?”

“Did you see
this man talking to anyone in the club?”

A number of
‘are you sure?’ questions were added. If they had seen him the
‘where?’, ‘what was he doing?’ and other related questions were
added. Trained in observation the DIC duty team members, tired as
they were, applied their full training to the task, checking body
language and tone of voice at various points.

They came up
blank. He had been seen and with a girl, but none of the people
interviewed knew her.

“Well that’s
that.” Deany said wearily. “I can’t believe that we didn’t get a
single link or lead.”

“Time to get
back and get some rest.” Ellie yawned.

“Oh no. We’ve
to go to the police station and interview the people they arrested.
They’ve had a hard time containing them as it goes.” Liam said, he
was logged into his laptop.

“Didn’t another
duty team go?” Deany was tetchy and tired.

“No. DIC are at
full stretch right now.” Liam replied.

“I take it they
checked the CCTV here?” Deany asked exasperated.

“Yeah. Tape
went over when we started. Look.” Deany and Ellie looked over his
shoulder at the isolated footage on the laptop screen. The footage
showed Mason arriving, the next clip showed the girl arriving with
friends, the short conversation and the walk to the band room, the
final clips were of their return to the bar a little later, their
quick leave taking and lastly Mason leaving with a jacket.”

“Well for one
we need to find the thin guy and the fat girl. Second he started
the fight to get the jacket, but dropped it. What did he take?”

“Keys!” Ellie
shouted then added, “ Bike keys it’s a heavy metal club. He took a
motorbike.”

Liam tapped in
a message, check tube station footage for motorbike for Mason’s
leaving time. The reply was swift, Easy, we have Mason and girl on
motorbike leaving. Registration PN07 GYP. Will have camera checks
on road CCTV for last hours run through. Good Luck. Diane.

“We’d better
get going to Albany Street.” Liam said.

Back at DIC
centre activity was intense. Diane was exhausted and Jack wasn’t
due back until nine in the morning. Cobb was still being searched
for and nothing was showing up. A full London cab check was being
done. CCTV watchers had been taken out of the rooms and sent to cab
companies with pictures. Every CCTV camera was being checked, but
there were too many hours of footage and not enough people. Diane
had called in every DIC watcher in the country to work the night
shift and log into the system to check an area’s film footage. She
had excluded McKie and Jaz from the mailing list. When a section of
the city had been checked and cleared from one time to another it
was automatically logged. Diane had been in contact with the
coastguard and Navy, but the stolen boat had not been seen. It was
dark though and a boat without lights at night was invisible except
to radar, but she needed a visual check.

When Deany,
Ellie and Liam got to Albany they were faced with only thirty
interviews, but Deany knew who he was looking for. They looked in
each cell until they found the fat girl and thin guy.

It was three in
the morning when the club goers arrested in the fight were allowed
to leave, some cautioned, some pending trial.

Leah and Jack,
‘Leash’s’ friends were taken to an interview room. All three DIC
came in and sat down.

“Is this about
that man ‘Leash’ hooked up with?” Jack asked.

“Whoa! Slow
down mate. Have you seen this man?”

“Yeah that’s
the man Leash was with tonight!” Leah practically shouted. “Oh my
god he’s not a murderer is he?”

Ellie sat down
in front of Leah. “Who’s ‘Leash’?”

“She’s my
friend. I share a house with her on Fortress Road, number 23. Is
she in danger?”

The three DIC
looked at each other. Liam left the room.

“Tell us what
happened tonight, from the beginning.”

“Hadn’t you
better go and help her.”

“My colleague
will deal with that right now. Tell me about this man.”

Outside Liam
spoke to the Superintendent, who in turn called armed response.
Liam called Diane and she told him to let the armed police handle
it. She knew they were tired and didn’t want casualties. Liam was
relieved. He went back into the room.

“… then they
went for a drink and didn’t come back and then the fight broke out,
that’s all I know.” Leah ended and looked at Liam.

“Armed response
are going to deal with it, Diane says we step aside on this one,
tiredness can kill and all that.”

“Oh my god poor
‘Leash’”

“According to
CCTV footage she happily got on the motorbike with him.”

“Typical
‘Leash’ always looking for excitement.”

Jack said and
shook his head in disbelief.

“Well she’s
found it now, probably too much.” Ellie said.

“Is there
anything to eat, I’m starving.” Leah said. The three DIC officers
and her friend Jack gave her withering looks.

CHAPTER
82

South West Coast of
England

Close to Torbay

4 a.m.

April 19th

Stanton’s eyes
were glazing over. He’d pushed the boat as fast as he could and the
currents down the west coast had helped him. He was low on fuel and
exhausted. He’d taken off the wet clothes and put on Dean’s
waterproofs. The clothes weren’t drying. The yellow rubber trousers
and top were uncomfortable and he’d taken the boots off. Dean had
no other clothes on the boat. He wanted to get to the mouth of the
Thames before day light, but knew he wasn’t going to make it. He
couldn’t take the boat through channel waters in daylight as he
assumed the boat’s owner and the passenger would be reported
missing and air sea recue, coastguard and lifeboats would be
alerted on the assumption that the boat had run into trouble. He
was unaware of Dean’s survival.

Come daylight
the Navy would be scouring the ocean. He had to have another plan,
a plan B. He didn’t want to get back on land. He fancied sailing in
and sailing out. He ran into less people that way and he liked it.
He might be tired, but in the dark at sea he felt safe from
capture.

Once he’d
turned the boat left at, right angles, skirting the needles and
land’s End he calculated the time and fuel and knew he wouldn’t
make the Thames Estuary by daylight.

He put the boat
on autopilot and made a coffee then he checked the charts.
Southampton was not too far away, full of boats. He could moor up,
dump this craft and steal another. The navy wouldn’t be looking in
a harbour for it. He checked the currents on the chart. It looked
complicated and could take hours, what he needed was an open
harbour in a bay. He ran his finger back along from Southampton and
stopped it at Torquay. It was close enough for the fuel to last as
well. He had made up his mind.

Chapter
83

London

4 a.m.

April 19th

The smash of
the door had woken Aliesha from a sweet dream. She didn’t have time
to get out of bed before an armed policeman with an MP5 shone his
barrel torch in her face and screamed at her not to move. There
were shouts of ‘clear’ all over the house and she was dragged,
wrapped in her duvet down to the lounge. They’d let her dress,
cuffed her and taken her to Albany Street. She was left alone in
the interview room for half an hour. Tony Deany, Ellie and Liam had
been called back to Euston Tower, where they gratefully went to
their rooms and slept. Tony didn’t even take his clothes off he
just laid down on the bed and fell asleep.

The wait at
Albany Street station for Aliesha was for Diane Peters and the DIC
psychologist Else Patrick to arrive. Else wasn’t happy at being
woken up and called out in the early hours.

Else was a PhD
in Psychology, Masters in Psychotherapy and had numerous
qualifications in Occupational Health. She was a sixty year old
short blonde woman from Lancashire. Her short, neat stature, belied
a giant mind, but she was a woman of regular habits and disliked
being woken at odd hours.

She and Diane
were let into the locked interview room. They both sat down
opposite Aliesha. Diane put, stereotypically, a brown cardboard
docket on the table.

“Who are you
two, you don’t look like police?”

“I’m Mrs Peters
and this is Mrs Patrick, we’re from a government agency.”

“Oh spooks eh?”
Else raised an eyebrow.

“We’d like to
know about Peter Mason, the man you took home from the
nightclub.”

“There’s
nothing to tell. He came to the hair salon, where I work, I cut his
hair, and I fancied him so I told him the night club I was going
to. When I got there he was sat at the bar, I got off with him and
he wanted to go back to my place. We went to my house had sex and
when I woke up he’d gone.” Aliesha spread both hands out in ‘a
that’s it’ manner.

“Did he tell
you anything about himself?”

“Not much?”

“He told you
his real name at the salon though?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie!”
Diane’s voice was like a whiplash in the room and left a thick echo
for a moment.

“I’m not
lying.”

“He booked and
paid for his hair cut in the name of Marc Townshend, but you knew
he was Peter Mason. So he must have told you later. That tells me
there’s some connection between you that’s more than casual sex for
both of you.”

“Clever bitch
aren’t you.” Aliesha folded her arms and stared into mid
distance.

“If Peter Mason
told you his name then you’re either lucky to be alive or you mean
something to him and I’d bet on the latter and as that’s true it
means you can tell me about him.”

“I’m telling
you nothing. You have nothing on me and you’ll have to let me go in
twenty four hours.”

“That’s not
true. I’ve got a link between you and Mason and that means I can
hold you on the prevention of terrorism act. I can hold you here
for 42 days, well when I say here I mean I can have you put in a
prison cell and transported between there and here every day, so
don’t get cocky with me Miss Jones!”

“I haven’t done
anything. I just met him and … he was a bit rough, he scared me… he
even told me his name… but I don’t know anything else I swear…”
Aliesha’s switch to a half pleading earnest, innocent victim from a
confident young woman would have drawn sympathy in most people, but
Diane knew her job and she looked left at Else, who was sitting,
hand over her mouth thoughtfully gazing at Aliesha.

“She’s lying.”
Else said slowly.

“What?” Aliesha
stood up. “What the hell is she, a psychic or something?”

“She’s an
insecure young woman, probably fell out with her parents, the usual
East West clash, her brothers got all the attention. She’s changed
her name by deed poll to ‘Jones’ to make the break complete,
probably at seventeen, it’s usual when legally free for the unhappy
to do that. The black clothing and pseudo anarchic culture of Goths
and metal appeals to her because of the occult links which fly in
the face of the gentle and respectable values of what would have
been a Hindu upbringing, but being genetically inclined to seek
adventure the family life didn’t appeal and drove a wedge. Now she
thinks she’s a night life good time girl, but really she’s just a
naughty little girl inside. If she didn’t know who Mason was when
she met him, she does now and she’s protecting him because he’s
like the father figure she wants…”

“You Bitch!”
Aliesha went to slap Else, but Diane had risen and executed a neat
block, grab and twist, spinning ‘Leash’ into the chair.

Else continued,
“… he’s lied to her and she believed him. It’s typical really and
somewhat predictable. He’ll have known they’d find her so why
didn’t he kill her…?”

“He wouldn’t
have killed me. He loves me! We’re in love!” Diane looked at Else
again.

“Hmmm yes that
is a sensible suggestion. Though he more likely likes the idea of
having a girl with him, perhaps he’s getting past his prime. She
does love him though or rather she’s smitten, little girls can’t
tell the difference.”

“____ off you
bitch.” ‘Leash’ hugged herself and yet managed to look like a
cornered cat.

“That hit home.
Okay Else thanks you can go. Sorry to wake you, but this was
crucial.”

“Don’t make a
habit of it Diane.”

“Is that it?”
‘Leash' asked stunned.

“No.” She
paused as Else left the room. “She’s something of an expert. Rarely
wrong. Now I know the situation we can get down to what you can
tell me… oh and before you say you haven’t committed a crime you’re
an accessory to the theft of a motorcycle okay.”

“He had the
keys how was I supposed to know it wasn’t his.”