Ambush (16 page)

His voice tailed off because of the look on Hoyle's face.

‘What is it?'

‘No,' Hoyle said.

‘No what?'

‘Just not for me,' Hoyle said tightly.

‘What's not for you?' Flynn demanded, perplexed.

‘Going after this guy. This could go on for ever. Weeks, months. I got a home life, y'know?'

‘So do I, but sometimes—'

‘Sometimes what?' Hoyle interrupted sharply.

‘Sometimes things got to be done,' Flynn answered simply. ‘Your wife will understand. This guy needs nailing to the wall and we're the ones to do it. He's a bad fucker. We go after bad fuckers.'

‘Nah, nah,' Hoyle shook his head. ‘He's a London guy and we'll be down there all the time by necessity. We won't be able to go to work every morning and come home for our teas every night.'

‘Jack,' Flynn pleaded, ‘we don't do that now.'

‘Exactly – and you know what? I shat myself when that car rammed me. I shat myself when we saw Tasker with a tongue in his hand standing over Don Braceford's body. These are dangerous guys, Steve. I mean, really dangerous. They kill cops—'

Flynn opened his mouth to protest, but Hoyle held up a finger to stop him, the second time Flynn had been silenced by a digit in a short space of time. ‘Don't tell me that's why they need catching. I know it is … I just don't want to do this job this time.'

Flynn could tell from his friend's face his resolve was unshakeable.

‘If that's what you want.'

‘It is, but don't let me stop you, Steve.'

Flynn backed off, a bit confused. He could see Hoyle's point of view. He had a wife and two kids; Flynn had a wife and young son; neither saw enough of their families as it was. They worked long and hard and with dedication. Spending more weeks away would not be good for either family and although Flynn wasn't happy about the prospect of leaving his home for a long period of time, and especially about not seeing his son, he also thought it might be a good thing for his marriage. Maybe give his wife a bit of a breathing space to cope with the phase she seemed to be going through with him. A period of work-enforced separation might be helpful.

However, there was no guarantee how long it would take to hunt down Tasker.

This time tomorrow he could be in custody. Flynn argued this point with Hoyle.

‘And this time next year we might still be chasing him,' Hoyle argued back.

Flynn shrugged, defeated.

Santiago gently rubbed Flynn's belly with her warm bottom. He thought she had fallen asleep while he retold these events, but her movement told him otherwise.

‘So that was the start of Operation Ambush.'

‘Yeah.'

‘And how did it end?'

‘Badly.'

In essence Flynn spent the next four months in and around London and in Spain, chasing the shadow that was Brian Tasker. He seemed to revel in being a man on the run.

The Ambush team, led by Craig Alford and with the assistance of Jerry Tope (brought in to run the intelligence cell), together with DS Dave Carver and DCs Jimmy Blue and Lincoln Bartlett, all from Lancashire, formed the core of the squad.

Flynn put in time and effort, but Tasker always seemed to be one step ahead and his business was flourishing according to the contacts and sources the police plundered remorselessly for information.

Flynn was patient. He knew one day Tasker would make a mistake and he hoped that he, Flynn, would be there to step in and snatch the bastard.

At the end of a four-day stretch of surveillance and the following of four known associates around London, Flynn returned home on the Friday of the sixteenth week of the manhunt, drained and lacking enthusiasm. At headquarters he checked into the incident room from which Ambush was being coordinated (other satellite offices were in London and Birmingham) before going home for the weekend. It was ten days since he had been in the north.

He was eager to get home and hug his son, maybe take him to Blackpool Zoo over the weekend, and with any luck relations between him and Faye might begin to thaw, although he did not hold out much hope on that score.

The incident room was deserted bar one lone figure. Jerry Tope sat hunched at a computer terminal, head down, concentrating. He did not initially notice Flynn behind him and jumped out of his skin when Flynn cleared his throat.

‘Don't do that!' Tope said humourlessly. He looked drawn, tired and at the end of his tether.

Flynn leaned over his shoulder. ‘What're you doing?'

Tope blew out his cheeks. ‘Following the money, but getting nowhere.'

Flynn knew that Tope had been able to access some bank accounts belonging to Tasker, but they had ceased to have any transactions on them soon after the manhunt began. They had been virtually emptied of all funds and the inference was that Tasker had opened new accounts in false names and/or was using accounts belonging to others, as well as using cash to buy stuff instead of debit or credit cards.

A list of transactions filled the monitor.

Tope pulled a face. ‘What are we missing, Steve? Even here, surely, there must be something we can pin him down with.' He wafted his fingers at the screen, infuriated. ‘Pissed off, so pissed off.' He slumped back in his chair.

‘Yeah.' Flynn looked at the numbers and stood up stretching. ‘Keep at it, mate … no one else around?'

‘All gone … and I'm with them now.'

Tope made a point of shutting down his computer with a flourish, collected his briefcase and stood up. He looked at Flynn. ‘You still here?'

‘Good point.'

Flynn lay in bed alongside his wife. He was tight-lipped and unable to sleep following the stand-up row the couple had had earlier in front of their son, who had watched open-mouthed, then run away screaming.

Flynn had not picked the argument – or at least he didn't think he had – but it had escalated like a rocket launch.

Later in bed (he had climbed in after her to find her asleep or feigning it) he had reached over to her with the idea of reconciliation through lovemaking but she had shrugged him off and failed to respond to his trite, ‘Sorry' (although in his mind he added, but did not vocalize, ‘for whatever it was I did').

Eventually he slid out, grabbed his dressing gown and, after checking on his son, went downstairs, found whisky and necked a shot of the burning spirit. He decided he would try to woo her back and make firm promises about the future; he'd try to get a transfer to something more local and with better hours. A job on Blackpool CID would be a good move, he thought.

First thing, though, was to melt Faye's heart.

Corny as it sounded – and because he was a simple man – he thought a bouquet of flowers in her favourite colours would perhaps be a good step, followed by lunch out – just the two of them. As his mind drifted around possible venues, he suddenly sat up and swore.

He scrambled for the phone and dialled Jerry Tope's home number.

‘Saturday morning, six a.m.,' Tope whined. His hair was in disarray and there was a certain indefinable smell about him. He was unshaven. ‘This better be worth it.'

‘When I came in yesterday evening you were scanning some of the bank accounts Tasker was using before he went off the grid. Put them on screen again,' Flynn said, businesslike.

The two of them were back in the incident room and Flynn towered over Tope's shoulder. It had taken a lot of persuasion to lure Tope back into the office that morning, especially as Flynn had called him up at two a.m., only four hours previously.

‘You can always go back to bed,' he added.

‘I will do.'

He switched the computer on and after a couple of minutes' searching found the page he thought was on display when Flynn had been there the previous evening.

Flynn leaned forward eagerly, certain he had seen something of interest which had only registered later while he was sipping whisky and thinking about treating his wife.

It was just a page full of numbers, bank transactions from an account that had belonged to Tasker but which had been emptied of all funds, some £4,000, and not used since.

‘Is this the one?' he said into Tope's ear.

‘Yep,' Tope answered with weary lack of interest.

‘Move.'

Flynn nudged Tope out of the chair, sat down and scrolled through the figures. He wasn't the greatest at numbers; sometimes they became a blur to him and he could easily lose concentration. He had not been great at maths at school.

‘I'm sure I saw something …' He stopped scrolling and said, ‘Yes.'

It was Tope's turn to lean over. ‘What?'

‘Tasker doesn't have a mother, does he?'

‘She died a few years back according to the intel on the Tasker clan. Breast cancer. She was the old matriarch of the family but had disowned cute little Brian when his murderous methods made even the Taskers blanch.'

‘OK, when did she die? What month was it?'

Tope thought and gave Flynn the approximate date off the top of his head. Sometime in April, possibly four or five years ago.

‘So, even though Tasker was disowned by his family of criminal cretins, he may have felt something for his dear departed mum and maybe on the anniversary of her death he'd buy flowers for the grave … maybe?'

‘Who knows?'

‘Any idea of the month of her birth?'

‘Er … again, April, I think.'

Flynn tapped the screen. ‘This entry refers to the purchase of flowers, online from Interflora, for a cost of fifty pounds.'

‘But that entry is from September last year.' Tope frowned.

‘Exactly. It doesn't correlate.'

‘So?'

‘Who were the flowers for? Himself?'

‘A girlfriend?'

‘Do we know of a girlfriend?' Flynn asked. ‘We've tracked down a couple of exes and we've been leaning on them down in London but neither of them have seen or heard from Tasker in a long time.'

‘So why would a guy like Tasker buy flowers?' Tope asked, going with the flow.

‘That's exactly what I was wondering last night.'

The two men looked at each other. Because Tope was still leaning over Flynn's shoulder their faces were only inches apart, which was just a tad too proximate for them both. They reared away from each other.

‘Who would he buy flowers for, the old romantic devil? A girlfriend we don't know about, I'd hazard.'

‘Worth following up,' Tope said.

Flynn read the bank statement entry again. ‘And not only that, this refers to a purchase from an Interflora shop in Blackpool.'

Again their eyes met … this time from a suitable, male distance.

‘He's got a girlfriend up north,' Flynn declared.

It was Tope's turn to shove Flynn off the seat and retake his rightful position at the desk in front of the computer. He cleared the screen, began tapping away and after a few moments said, ‘It's a flower shop in Blackpool North, an independent florist with an Interflora concession.' He angled the screen so Flynn could see the internet home page of ‘Flower Girl', based on Red Bank Road in Bispham. There was an Interflora logo at the top of the screen.

‘Well, the big old softie,' Flynn muttered. ‘We've been looking in all the wrong places for this bastard. He's right under our noses, I'll bet.'

Tope glanced at Flynn with something approaching veneration. ‘What made you think of this?'

Flynn gave him a knowing, smug look. ‘Just a great detective's mind,' he said, but then could no longer retain his seriousness. He burst into a lion's roar of laughter.

S
he lived on Shoreside estate. Her name was Ellie Davenport and she was twenty-three years old. She had a council flat and was the mother to a twelve-month-old baby boy called Callum. She lived exclusively on benefits and had never, officially, had a job, although as Flynn found out a little bit more about her he discovered she did a lot of bar work when she had time. A drug user and shoplifter, she was wafer thin and pretty in a wasted sort of way, he thought. Like a very hungry Twiggy.

Flynn discovered all this relatively easily. His search for information began that Saturday morning. Two hours after he and Tope had been at the computer in the incident room he was sitting in his car outside Flower Girl waiting for the shop to open up for business.

In those intervening hours Flynn had been to the police training centre gym and punished himself with half an hour on a rowing machine and twenty minutes on a cross trainer before showering and changing into the fresh jeans and T-shirt he had brought along.

It had taken him twenty minutes to get back across from Preston to Bispham, just north of Blackpool, to be outside the florist at about ten minutes to eight.

He saw a figure behind the shop door opening up for business, a young woman, early twenties, frizzy hair and a round, pretty face with wide eyes and no make-up. She was dressed in a blouse and jeans.

Flynn gave her time to set up the display outside the shop – bouquets in buckets and other floral displays – before climbing out of the car and following her inside, where it was very chilly and smelled of water and fresh flowers.

She turned at the counter and watched him walk in, appraising and coming to a pleasant conclusion.

‘Can I help?'

Flynn liked the look of her, too. Fresh and innocent. He knew both characteristics could just be a front for something more sinister, but he doubted it.

He flipped out his warrant card and county badge, although the latter, while looking good, had no legal standing. The warrant card carried the weight. He introduced himself, then said, ‘Are you the Flower Girl?'

‘Oh, yeah.' Her voice sounded husky and breathless.

‘I wonder if you could help me?' His voice, unaccountably, sounded the same.

She proved to be of great assistance and though clearly busy – she had two weddings that day and her assistant was off sick – she took the time to help.