Gagged & Bound (6 page)

Reaching for a pad and pencil, Trish jotted down a list of questions. Even though Bee had asked her to gut the diaries for evidence of the real Baiborn’s identity, she couldn’t help thinking that an easier way to persuade Lord Tick to withdraw his claim might be to find out more about his own life.

Several famous libel trials had collapsed when juicy secrets from the claimants’ pasts were revealed by the defence teams’ questions. If the basis of Tick’s case was that being linked with a terrorist outrage would lower him in the eyes of right-thinking people, it would help to show that right-thinking people could have other reasons to look askance at him. There must be something. Hardly anyone reached middle age without doing anything embarrassing.

As she walked into the kitchen to find something to cook for supper, Trish decided she’d better meet Tick. She already had a picture of him as a greedy exploiter. Chopping an onion with unusual vigour, she decided it must be the combination of his names that had created the picture. The surname made her think of biting insects swelling on their victims’ blood, while ‘Simon’ had overtones of medieval priests taking money from the poor for indulgences that would do them no good in this world or the next.

Could she engineer an encounter with him in a way that wouldn’t betray her real interest?

 

Simon was in his bath when the phone rang. He lay in the hot water, with his head cradled on the big natural sponge Camilla had given him when she came back from a holiday in the Greek islands, and waited to hear who wanted him. Only when her voice rang out from the answering machine did he find the energy to get out and wrap himself in a towel.

‘Hi! I was in the bath. How are you?’

‘OK, Daddy. But what about
you
? What has Beatrice Bowman said about the libel?’

‘Nothing so far.’

‘Haven’t your solicitors done their stuff yet? You need to put a bomb under them. Bugger! Sorry. I didn’t mean that. But you do need to keep after them. We all know what lawyers are like. It’s too important to let them dilly-dally around, taking—’

‘They’ve done everything they can at this stage. These things always take time. We’ve already issued what’s called Letters of Claim. Now we’ve just got to wait to see what Bowman and her publishers offer me. Then we decide whether it’s enough.’

‘And if they don’t offer anything? What’ll you do then? You can’t just leave it here, Daddy. It’s too dangerous. Think of your reputation.’

‘Camilla, you’ve got to learn a little patience. There are more important things to worry about than this.’

‘But we have to find a way to make the world see that it wasn’t you who killed those children.’

Simon laughed. ‘Apart from you and Dan and whoever else you may have told, no one does think it refers to me. No journalist has been asking questions, and none of the papers have even referred to the book. Each time I pass a shop I go in to see if there are any copies on sale, and there never are. You’re exaggerating the risk, sweetheart.’

He suddenly thought how that would sound in court, if the claim ever got that far. ‘But whatever you do, Camilla, don’t tell anyone I said so or it would ruin our whole case. OK, sweetheart?’

‘Of course, Daddy. And I haven’t said anything to anyone else. Nor has Dan. But you must promise you won’t let that bitch get away with it.’

‘I promise. Now go to bed. Sleep well and forget it. Have you decided whether you’re in love with Dan Stamford yet? That’s much more important.’

Her breathless giggle reassured him a little. ‘Not yet. He is
rather
gorgeous, though, isn’t he?’

‘Doesn’t do it for me, but then I suppose he wouldn’t. Goodnight, Camilla.’

‘Come on, Steph,’ called the sergeant. ‘Aren’t you ready yet? You’re holding up the whole squad.’

‘I hate these vests,’ Stephanie Taft said, bending round awkwardly to do up the straps of her bullet-proof chest protector. It didn’t help that her breasts were bigger than the designers had expected. They hurt already, but she wasn’t going to complain too loudly. It was a long time since she’d been out on a raid. Even though her firearms training had been topped-up last year, she hadn’t been allowed near a gun on duty until today. Being picked for the team showed that at last she’d served her time in Coventry for getting the bully pushed out of the force.

‘I’m not surprised, with tits on you like a she-elephant’s,’ said young Mac Fraser, raising a whooping laugh from the rest of the pumped-up mob in the squad room.

The blokes revelled in these early morning outings. Better even than a screaming car chase, one had said only yesterday. Crashing into a house full of sleeping villains, yelling, ‘Go, go, go’ while the telly cameras recorded your heroics was a real turn-on. And sometimes you got to loose off a shot or two, which made it even better.

Suddenly Stephanie forgot her loathing of the way this lot insulted women and just enjoyed their excitement, and liked
them for letting her back in. They were on the side of the angels, after all, even if they could be sexist pigs when they were trying to wind her up. Today, she’d show them she had a sense of humour, too, and could join in with the best of them. She flashed a grin at Mac, who was a good lad, even if he did have red hair and freckles.

‘At least I don’t have my crown jewels dangling so dangerously outside my body that they have to be nestled up into a bullet-proof jockstrap.’

‘Way to go, Steph!’ shouted one of the others.

‘Settle down,’ said the sergeant. ‘You all done up now, Steph?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Come on then into the vans.’

In winter the raids were even more exciting because it would be inky dark and the frosty air would turn your breath into vapour trails like a top gun’s war plane. Now, in spring, it was already getting light at five in the morning. Still, the driver was slinging the van round corners as if he was at le Mans, and the squad were sitting on the benches, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, psyching each other up. This was a good raid to be on, much better than the usual sort on any old crack house full of maddened boys spiralling off into space. The intelligence people had pinpointed the target house as the nerve centre of a very nasty bunch of thugs, who’d been roughing up other dealers as well as the punters who owed them. They were thought to be holed up together, all four of them, ready to be taken by a determined team.

Stephanie wasn’t the only woman today, she was glad to see. There were two others, both younger than her, but no fitter. It was part of her creed that if you were going to take on the dinosaurs in the job, you couldn’t trade on your physical difference. Some of the women couldn’t compete, of course, the little thin ones with bird bones, who could be picked up and
thrown bodily across a room; they had to go about things differently. But for anyone like her with good big shoulders and long legs, it was wimping out not to keep trained and tough.

The driver pulled up, resisting the temptation to squeal his brakes and burn the tyres. All the jokes stopped. They were still three streets away from the target house, but quietness was crucial. Stephanie could see the TV lads, almost as pumped-up as the squad, jiggling in the background, desperate to get going. The sergeant beckoned her and Mac and gave them the plum jobs. Mac would bash open the door, and she’d be the first one in and up the stairs. Mac gave her a thumbs-up and a friendly grin, then they set off side by side at the head of the silent, jogging squad.

The street was quiet and empty, except for a black cat that poured itself down from an extension roof on to a wobbly dustbin lid. Luckily the bin was plastic, or the lid would have clattered as it fell, waking everyone within earshot. Mac raised a hand to keep them all quiet. Stephanie could hear her own breathing as well as feel it. At last Mac started moving again. She stood aside and watched him swing the heavy battering ram.

The door must’ve been reinforced with steel because it didn’t budge until the fifth swing; the noise would have woken everyone in the house. Even so, she burst through the gap as soon as it was wide enough, hearing the familiar shouts from behind her. She was up the stairs and on the landing before there was any noticeable movement from inside. Mac was behind her. Once again, she stepped aside, flattening herself against the wall as she’d been taught. He smashed open the main bedroom door and she swung round to go through.

Something hit her in the throat. Her legs collapsed and she was on the floor. She couldn’t breathe. Her throat was burning as if someone had stuffed a red-hot poker down it. Liquid poured down her neck. Her eyes wouldn’t work. She tried to
move and screamed as more pain ripped through her, but no noise came out. Through the fog and agony someone was shouting her name. Why didn’t they stop her body burning up? She was on fire. She tried to pass out but the pain kept her conscious. People were trying to hold her back too, shouting her name and grabbing at her. All she wanted was no more pain.

‘Stephanie! Stephanie! Hang on in …’

 

Caro had been in a meeting in the superintendent’s office since nine o’clock and was on her way back to her overflowing desk when she noticed the atmosphere. At first she couldn’t work out what it was. Then she saw fury in some of the faces she passed, and an unpleasant mixture of excitement and shame in others. She’d only ever seen that particular combination when someone unpopular had been injured.

‘Who’s been hurt?’ she asked Fred Walley, her favourite sergeant.

‘Stephanie Taft. You know, the one-woman cleaner of the sewers.’ Caro felt as though she’d been dipped in an ice bath. For a moment she couldn’t breathe or move.

‘What’s happened to her?’ she said at last, amazed to find that her voice worked in spite of the clenching in her throat.

‘Shot on a drugs raid.’ Fred looked curiously at her. ‘Are you OK? You weren’t a friend, were you, Guv?’

‘I’ve met her once or twice. Is she dead?’

‘Yeah. It was only a .22, but they got her in the neck. She lived longer than if it had been a head shot, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do. You can’t put a tourniquet on a neck. Must’ve been bad luck. They were probably aiming at her head, filthy toe-rags, and were too out of it to shoot straight.’

Unless it was someone who knew what he was doing, Caro thought, and had been aiming at the most vulnerable spot just above the bullet-proof vest. The use of a .22 could mark him out as a professional in itself. For anyone who could shoot straight,
a small bullet was always preferable – much more likely to disintegrate within the victim’s body and so provide no evidence to identify the rifle that had fired it.

‘Poor cow,’ said Fred. ‘I didn’t always like what she did, but she didn’t deserve this.’

‘Was anyone else hurt?’

‘You ought to sit down and have a cuppa.’ His voice told her he was still wondering why she’d taken his news so hard. ‘It’s been a shock.’

Caro frowned to get his face back in focus. ‘What? No, I’m fine. Was anyone else hurt?’

‘Not that I’ve heard. Bad luck, like I said.’

‘Who was the target of the raid?’

‘God knows.’

‘I heard something about the Slabbs causing new trouble on the street. Was it them?’

‘Not as far as I know, but I doubt it. They don’t go in for shooting us, Guv. They bag-and-gag their own. Or they did in the old days.’

‘True.’ Caro made an effort to smile and said she mustn’t keep him. She waited until he was out of sight before making herself walk back to her office. She wasn’t sure she could keep a straight line and didn’t want to arouse any more suspicion than she already had.

Was Stephanie’s death an accident? Or an attempt by the Slabbs to stop her talking to anyone else about their man inside the Met?

 

Three hours later, in an office on the north side of the river Thames, James Grogan, one of the selectors for the liaison job, strolled in to have a word with the chair of the panel.

‘I’ve just heard about the death of this woman, Taft. Is there anything for us to be concerned about, Martin?’

‘In what way, James?’

Grogan moved to the window, looking out at the depressing view of a back yard furnished with immense rubbish bins and inhabited only by pigeons and the odd rat that was too lazy to patrol the sewers.

‘She’s been trying to sell a story that John Crayley is bent. I wondered whether this might have had something to do with an attempt to stop her.’

‘Sell? Are you speaking metaphorically or suggesting that she’s trailed her fantasy in front of the newspapers?’

‘The former,’ Grogan said.

‘Ah. Good. No, we have nothing to worry about. It has been raised and looked into and we’ve been given the all-clear.’

‘But she’s dead.’

‘So I hear. Poor woman.’ Martin sounded politely sad, but not remotely worried. ‘I’ve raised that, too, and am reliably informed that it was a deeply unfortunate accident. It is, of course, particularly unfortunate that there seems to have been one more inhabitant of the house than was actually caught.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Fled over the roofs, taking his rifle with him.’

‘That sounds altogether too neat and well planned.’

‘Perhaps. Even so, it’s still considered to be no more than an unhappy accident.’

‘Why?’ Grogan’s voice was almost harsh.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I just wondered why everyone is so sure Taft was wrong about this.’

Martin Wight sighed. It was right that his officers should be dogged, but it was tedious to have to make explanations one would really prefer to keep private.

‘I mean,’ James went on, ‘I’ve heard that although she was a highly tiresome woman, her campaigns against individual officers were always sincere and often successful in the end,
once the powers that be got over their shock at what she was telling them. Couldn’t that be the case here?’

‘Apparently not. She’s been banging this particular drum for some time, and I understand it stems from an incident when she and Crayley were living together. He couldn’t cope with her conviction that there was conspiracy hiding behind every filing cabinet and sexism inside every jockstrap. He left and married her best friend. The calls to the whistle-blower’s helpline started only a month or so after the marriage.’

‘I see. Poor woman.’

‘Yes. But poor Crayley too. The accusations, which had been vague in the extreme, became more detailed and grimmer each time she reported them. The latest batch has been accompanied, I understand, by a suggestion of corroboration. The woman was vindictive. She didn’t deserve to be shot, but she’s been a damn nuisance for well over a year.’

James Grogan saw a rat climb to the top of one of the tall bins and begin to insinuate itself under the lid.

‘Ugh!’ He walked back to stand in front of the desk. ‘So, are you still inclined to take Crayley on?’

‘I haven’t yet had all the vetting reports or the psychiatric assessments. Once they’re in, we can meet again and make our decision. You’ll be fully informed.’

‘But I take it he is still your preferred candidate?’

‘On balance, yes. He’s had more experience than any of the women.’ Martin rubbed the loose skin under his chin. ‘And I feel a certain sympathy for him over this long-standing campaign to discredit him. If there
is
anything doubtful about him, it’ll surface in the positive vetting. I’m keeping an open mind until I get the reports.’

‘So I see,’ said Grogan, trying to avoid sounding sarcastic.

 

Trish got the news when Nessa came back to chambers with their lunch. She’d heard it on the radio in the sandwich shop.

‘A police officer’s been killed,’ she said, disentangling her cheese-and-pickle on brown from Trish’s roast-vegetable ciabatta. ‘On a drugs raid this morning. Shot, poor woman. It’s all over the news.’

Trish felt her eyebrows snapping together in the frown she still had to fight, even now. It
can’t
be Caro, she told herself. She’s far too senior to go out on drugs raids.

‘Did you get a name, Nessa?’

‘Stephanie something, I think. I wasn’t really concentrating.’ Nessa looked apologetically at Trish as she handed over the sandwich. ‘You know how it is when you’re juggling coins and knowing everyone in the queue wants to throttle you for taking so long. Here’s your change.’

‘Great. Thanks.’ Trish took a bite, and felt slippery red pepper squishing out of the side of her mouth. It was hard to eat something like this cleanly at the best of times, and impossible to make conversation while you did it. Luckily Nessa was already back at work. Trish pushed the pepper back into her mouth with her left thumb and tried to follow her example, looking down at the notes she’d made on her car-leasing contract brief. They were almost done. And very dull.

She was still chewing when Caro phoned, wanting another meeting in the Café Rigoletto.

‘Wouldn’t you rather come to the flat?’ Trish said. ‘We’ll have free run of it till at least seven, so we’ll be able to talk more easily there than in the café. I’ll open a bottle.’

‘OK. Fine. I’ll be there at five.’ Caro put down the phone. Trish blinked at the peremptory tone.

 

When Caro reached Southwark, she was still wearing the tidy, practical dark trousers and jacket she favoured for work, with well-polished flat loafers on her feet. Her hair was as tidy as ever, but her expression belonged to someone on the brink of losing control. There were new lines running right across her
forehead, her eyes were darkened by the dilated pupils, and her lips kept moving as though she was trying to pick the right word out of a mass that wouldn’t do.