One Dead Witness (28 page)

Sands swallowed. His eyes were transfixed on the figures in
front of them. His cocksure exterior crumbled slightly with the
assistance of Henry’s hammer and chisel. ‘Wonderful thing, this IT
lark,’ Henry commented.

‘
Anything to say, Jack?’

‘
Proves nothing. I needed to speak to her on a work-related
matter. She’d obviously taken her phone off the hook.’

‘
The work-related matter was what, Jack?’

‘
I’ll think of something,’ he said blandly.

‘
Fine, fine.’ Henry’s hand disappeared back into the folder and
pulled out another slip of paper. He gave it to Sands. ‘This is a
copy of the receipt from the florist on Elm Avenue. That’s your
Barclaycard number, your signature and your order for twelve red
roses.’

Sands leaned back, his look of defiance wavering after his
previous rally. ‘Still proves nothing.’

‘
It can stop here and it can stop now, Jack. Believe me, trust
me. This does not have to go on. You can say sorry and walk out of
here and forget it.’

‘
You mean that’s all you’ve got? It’s crap and you know it,
Henry. I have an answer for everything and I’m therefore not
apologising for something I’m not guilty of.’

Henry pointed at Sands. ‘Don’t forget, Jack, I gave you the
chance to save face.’

His hand went into his jacket pocket and extracted something.
He held out his hand, turned it over and slowly opened his fingers
to reveal a small, clear, plastic evidence bag.

In it was the famous three-pointed star seen so prominently on
the front radiator grilles of Mercedes Benz cars. A silence fell
heavy on the three people in the room.

Myrna Rosza looked down at the two dead bodies of Bussola’s
bodyguards. The one sprawled to the right had been taken down by
Mark Tapperman’s double-tap.
Ba-bam!
The other on the left had
been killed by herself. She was painfully aware that the first
bullet which left her gun had basically removed the guy’s throat
and smashed through the back of his neck. He had been dead before
he hit the ground squirming. Myrna didn’t know that for sure, but
she would happily have laid money on it.

She too had attempted a double-tap. The idea of that method of
shooting was to put two bullets pretty roughly in the same hole in
quick succession. Her second shot, however, had gone well
off-target and disappeared to where only God knew.

She stared down at the dead guy, fascinated by the pool of
blood forming slowly underneath his grotesque body. It was going
nowhere fast on the non-porous surface of the parking
lot.

The first man she had ever killed.

Her jawline tightened.

Her time with the FBI had been concerned with more mundane
matters - accounts, financial fraud, the occasional mob-related
paperwork.

Nothing like this.

Never once had she faced a gunman, let alone drawn a weapon in
anger. The only raids she had ever been on were the ones where she
had been armed with folders, and were carried out during office
hours - rifling through suspects’ desks, drawers and computer
files, arresting people possibly armed with a letter-opener at
worst. The only real danger she had ever faced had been from paper
cuts.

Now this.

What surprised her was how little it was affecting her, but
she was intelligent enough to know about delayed shock. A reaction
would come - and she would have to deal with it. For now, she was
cool.

‘
Y’okay?’ Tapperman asked.

She nodded. ‘Yeah, thanks.’

Behind her, this level of the parking lot was a flurry of
police activity. Why the hell did the emergency services love
flashing lights so much? A migraine threatened. She closed her eyes
and held the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘Switch
the damned things off!’ she wanted to yell.

‘
You did good,’ Tapperman said encouragingly. He patted her
arm, squeezed it gently. ‘There won’t be any legal repercussions.
I’ve already spoken with the DA and the Coroner. Nothing to worry
about.’

She pulled her arm out of his fingers. Courts and the American
legal system were a long way from her mind. ‘You’re still an
asshole,’ she said bluntly.

A crime-scene photographer pushed past and began taking shots
of the two dead men. He was followed by another with a
camcorder.
Crack!
With a noise like a firework, a huge arc lamp exploded into
life, illuminating the scene, shining right into Myrna’s
eyes.

‘
Fuck!’ she hissed angrily. She turned sharply away, blinking,
literally seeing stars. Then, vision regained, she heaved Tapperman
out of her way and walked over to talk to Steve Kruger.

She arrived at the moment before the plastic undertaker’s bag
was zipped up with him inside. Briefly she saw his horrendous head
injuries. Kruger had taken three bullets smack in the face. They
had been of a type designed to explode on impact, and succeeded in
removing both the front and back of his head, splattering his
brains everywhere. The man who had killed him had been
good.

Myrna reeled at the sight. She had to reach out for a car to
lean on to support her woolly legs.

With Steve Kruger dead she suddenly felt she didn’t want to go
on living. She cursed the cruelty of it all and wished she had
actually told him she loved him when she had the opportunity. If
only she hadn’t been so pigheaded.

Now there was no chance.

She clung shaking to the car, tears pouring out of her eyes as
a migraine dug cruel fingers into her skull, mercifully blocking
out the scene.

Chapter Eleven

‘
I’m gasping for a drink and a fag,’ Danny said. It was noon
and not too early for either by any means. ‘I need something to
steady my nerves. I’m shaking like a leaf.’

‘
Right,’ said Henry, ‘let’s do it. We deserve it.’ He picked up
his personal radio, turned it on and clicked the volume onto low -
just in case.

They left his office and went to the lift. As the doors
opened, the Police Constable who had taken the report of Claire
Lilton missing from home again stepped out, almost barging into
Danny.

‘
Been looking for you, Danny.’ He waved the completed MFH
report in her face. ‘It’s that little cow you’ve been dealing with
... she’s gone AWOL again. You know - that Claire
Lilton.’

‘
When?’ Danny asked, a little knot of concern in her
stomach.

‘
Sometime last night or early hours of this morning. What do
you want me to do about it? Circulate it or what?’

Danny’s mind, which was really somewhere else, made a snap
decision. ‘Just drop the report on my desk. I’ll see to it later -
thanks.’ She stepped into the lift next to Henry who was holding
the doors open. They closed; descent commenced.

‘
Claire Lilton: shoplifter and persistent misper?’

Danny glanced at Henry, quietly respectful that a busy DI
should know this. Henry prided himself on knowing most
things.

‘
Yeah, that’s the one,’ she nodded. ‘Been a real pain for a few
weeks now, but I can’t get to the bottom of why she’s going.
Something odd at home, I suspect.’ She looked away from Henry,
suddenly realising she was slightly in awe of him. Not only did he
know things that most DIs wouldn’t give a toss about, but there
were not many police managers who would have had the bottle to do
what he had just done on her behalf. Taking on Jack Sands - a
tough, well-respected man’s man so admired by so many gullible
people - and confronting him head on. No, not many people would
have done that. No wonder his team worked their backsides off for
Henry Christie.

They walked out of the police station towards Blackpool town
centre. It
was a clear, sunny day. Danny
breathed the warm fresh air into her lungs, expanding them to their
full capacity. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry, the perfect
manager, saw Danny’s ample chest rise and fall.

Danny giggled. For a second he thought she had clocked him
giving her the eye, but when he looked at her he saw he was
mistaken. With her chin lifted high, she was staring dead ahead, a
look of sheer happiness on her face.

‘
I don’t know if it’s done the trick, Henry, but I feel as if a
great weight has been plucked off the top of my head - and it’s all
down to you. The look on Jack’s face when you showed him the star
and told him you’d found it taped under one of his desk drawers -
and that you’d been accompanied at the time. He looked like he
wanted to disappear down a plughole. It
was
a picture. Thanks, Henry.’

She grabbed his elbow, stopped him in his tracks and planted a
kiss firmly on his cheek.

‘
Thanks,’ she said again, genuinely.

‘
All part of the service,’ he replied, colouring up slightly.
He was very glad it was merely an innocent kiss of thanks. He knew
that had there been anything more to it, he would probably have
been daft enough to try and follow it up and get himself into
lumber yet again.

They carried on walking and reached the corner of Bank Hey
Street, one of Blackpool’s busiest shopping streets.

‘
What you got then?’ the weasel-faced man asked. His name was
Benstead. ‘C’mon, I don’t have time to fuck around. I’m a busy
man.’

A slightly breathless and ruffled Trent glanced cautiously
around the smoke-filled taproom of the pub. Although there were
only a few people in it, every one of them, Benstead included, had
a cigarette on the go. The ceiling was a dark brown,
nicotine-stained colour. ‘Here?’ Trent asked Benstead.

‘
Yeah,’ the little man nodded. ‘Here. But, y’know - be
discreet. Don’t flash everything round for every Tom, Dick ‘n’
Arsehole to see. Show me under the table, out of sight.
Right?’

Trent nodded and took a long draught from the pint of mild in
front of him. He was very tense, hyped up. He wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand, then took a small paper bag out of his
pocket. He edged to one side and shuffled the contents out onto the
space on the tatty benchseat between him and Benstead.

A driving licence and some credit cards.

‘
Is that all?’ Benstead sneered. ‘I thought you’d robbed
fuckin’ Barclaycard headquarters from the way you were
talking.’

‘
Yeah, that’s all,’ Trent said. All but the ambulance driver’s
cash card.

‘
Where’d you get ‘em from?’

‘
Why?’

‘’
Cos I want to know. It’s all relevant to the price, innit?
Things that’re really hot, I don’t spend much money on. You know -
high-profile stuff. It’s the bog standard things that interest me .
. . things with a bit of a shelf-life.’

‘
Oh, right,’ Trent said, understanding. He wiped his face with
his hand, momentarily holding his fingers under his nose, inhaling
deeply.

Inwardly he gasped. God! He could smell her! It was
wonderful.

‘
Oh right,’ Trent said again. ‘These things are only lukewarm -
almost cold, really. Come from a break-in down south
yesterday.’

‘
Mmm.’ Benstead picked up one of the credit cards by its edge
and tilted it to the light. Suspiciously his eyes rose to Trent.
‘You sure?’

Trent took another drink of beer. ‘Very sure.’

‘
Hmm,’ the dealer murmured dubiously. ‘Even warm stuff’ - he
pronounced ‘warm’ as ‘worm’ - ‘don’t last long, a day, maybe two,
in the right hands.’ He dropped the credit card back onto the seat
and picked up the driving licence in the same careful way. ‘Now
driving licences go on much further, and a driving licence and
credit card in the same name. ..’ He pondered and regarded Trent.
‘How much?’

‘
I don’t fucking know. Name a price.’

Benstead clicked his tongue thoughtfully. He already had a
buyer in mind for this little lot, a guy who had a nice line -
nationally - of defrauding car-hire companies by renting good
quality motors and selling them on to a ringer. He would love this
combination. Probably worth fifteen hundred.

‘
Fifty quid.’

‘
Don’t take me for a fool. I may not have the sell-on contacts,
but I know you do. These are worth good money to the right people.
One-fifty.’

‘
Okay,’ Benstead relented easily. ‘One hundred.’

‘
One-two-five.’

‘
One-fifteen.’

Trent nodded. Benstead pulled a roll of banknotes out of his
jeans pocket and peeled off the required number, handing them
across under cover of the table. ‘Now fuck off,’ he said,
concluding business.

Trent grabbed the money and stuffed it into a pocket. He stood
up and left the place through the back door.

Benstead shuffled the purchase back into the paper bag and
dropped it into his anorak pocket. He picked up a copy of
the
Daily Mail,
unfolded it and relaxed. . . for about a second. . . until he
read the headlines and saw Trent’s face staring dangerously at him
from the front page.