Unlawfully At Large, page 23
part #2 of DCI Tyler Series
He found an unoccupied park bench, sat down and lit up a cigarette. Letting out a smoke-filled sigh of contentment, Murray pulled his collar up, leaned back and watched the world go by.
Unsurprisingly, there was hardly anyone else around. In fact, other than a skinny woman walking a shivering Chihuahua along the footpath, and a bearded man who was being dragged towards her by a powerfully built English Bull Terrier, he had the park all to himself.
The Bull Terrier was a mean-looking bastard, with piggy eyes and a set of teeth that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the mouth of a Great White shark. Apart from a splodge of brown on one side of its face, the dog’s coat was white, and he was reminded of Bullseye, the dog owned by Bill Sykes in the film Oliver!
The woman with the little Chihuahua must have realised that the dogs were locked on a collision course because she suddenly did a quick about-turn and started heading back the way she’d come, dragging the confused animal behind her.
Wise move, Murray thought. That evil-looking fucker would eat your scrawny mutt for breakfast.
Stubbing out the cigarette, Murray ripped open the bag of cheese and onion crisps and started stuffing them into his mouth. He was just tipping in the dregs when the Bull Terrier appeared beside the bench, sniffing at his food and licking its lips. He was on one of those extendable lead things, and his owner was lagging way behind.
“Sod off, you ugly git,” Murray said, shooing him away with his hand. “You’re not getting anything from me.”
The dog stopped sniffing, growled deep in its throat, and then abruptly squatted next to his foot and began to defecate.
“Really!” Murray said, drawing his feet away to avoid them being crapped on. He turned on the bearded man, face flushed with anger. “Your dog’s got the whole park to take a shit in, so why are you letting him do it right next to me?”
The man shrugged apologetically. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said, blushing with embarrassment. “I’m looking after him for my neighbour while he’s on holiday. Only been gone a couple of days and already I can’t wait for him to come back.”
The dog had finished its business and was now jumping up at the bench, trying to steal Murray’s chocolate bar from the plastic bag.
“Can’t you control the damned thing?” Murray complained, snatching the bag away before the dog could get a good grip on the chocolate.
“I’m trying,” the man grunted, fighting a losing battle to bring the dog to heel, “but he’s very strong and incredibly stubborn. He just doesn’t listen to a word I say.”
Murray was gobsmacked. “Well try harder,” he ordered. “You can’t go around letting your dog shit on people’s feet.”
“I’m really sorry about the poo,” the man said, sounding crestfallen. “Did any of it land on your shoes?”
Murray quickly checked. “No, but that’s not the point, is it? Look at the mess he’s made. Kids play in this park.”
“Don’t worry,” the dog walker reassured him, “I’ll pick it straight up.” He reached into his coat pocket and produced a clear plastic bag. “I always come prepared.”
Steam was coming off the turd, and the smell wafting up was worse than some of the decomposing corpses he had dealt with. “Oh my God!” Murray said, fanning his nose. “What are you feeding him on? Dead rats?”
The bearded man grinned sheepishly. “Bronson can be a bit stinky at times, can’t you boy?” he said, reaching down to ruffle the Bull Terrier’s neck fur. “If you think that’s bad, imagine how I feel, being stuck in the same bedroom with him every night.”
Glancing down at the dog, who had grown bored and was now sitting next to his temporary master, Murray suppressed a shudder. “Rather you than me,” he said.
Holding his breath, Mr Beardy bent down to scoop up the dogshit and then, trying not to get any over his hands, clumsily tied the bag as tightly as he could to keep the rancid smell locked inside.
“There, all done,” he said, holding it at arm’s length. He looked around, trying to locate a bin, but there were none in sight. “Oh dear,” he moaned. “Looks like I’m going to have to carry this all the way home.” The bag was sagging under the weight of its unpleasant content, and he was clearly worried that it might not survive the journey.
He eyed Murray imploringly. “Don’t suppose you know where the nearest bin is, do you?”
“No, I bloody don’t,” Murray snapped, wondering why Mr Beardy was still standing there like a gormless idiot. Perhaps he was hoping that Murray would offer to dispose of it for him.
Not much chance of that happening, Murray thought, scoffing at the very idea.
But then he had his Eureka moment.
◆◆◆
His watch said it was almost 4 p.m.
Garston moved away from the bay window and let the curtains slide together. It was growing steadily darker outside and the streetlights had just come on, bathing the street in a pale-yellow glow. The intermittent rain that had been falling all day had started again, and this time it was coming down with more intensity.
According to Rodent, who had called him in a panic a few minutes earlier, the police were out in strength, visiting anyone and everyone who knew Winston and putting pressure on them to reveal where he was holed up.
He’d told Rodent not to worry, but the news had left him feeling vulnerable.
Winston had spent his whole life screwing over people on both sides of the law and, as a result, he didn’t have many friends. Not only was he despised by rival dealers; he was disliked and feared by almost everyone who worked for him, and Garston knew it was only a matter of time until someone found out where he was staying and phoned Crimestoppers.
Being cooped up in the same tiny flat as Winston and Angela was sending him stir crazy. His uncle had been in a foul, confrontational mood all day, and the whore had been whining non-stop because she was going through withdrawal and needing a fix to take the edge off.
He was almost at the end of his tether, and he decided that as soon as Rodent returned from Tesco, where he been sent to stock up on food, he would borrow the boy’s car and shoot back to his place for a change of clothes and a shower.
Angela had been easy enough to deal with. When her whinging had finally become too much, he’d simply given her a bag of smack and allowed her to shoot up. Since then, she had been asleep and out of his hair.
His uncle was a different proposition altogether. The man was insufferable. Nothing anyone said or did pleased him, and all he wanted to do was argue and pick fault.
Out of the kindness of his heart, he’d taken Winston a mug of coffee and a cheese and pickle sandwich about an hour ago, and the ungrateful swine’s response had been to moan that there was too much milk and not enough sugar in his drink. Then he’d thrown a strop because he’d wanted ham, not cheese. After kicking up a huge fuss, he’d devoured the sandwich in four bites and demanded more. When Garston had told him there was no more bread, he’d gone into one, threatening to break Rodent’s legs for not having a better-stocked larder.
Garston had been sent back to the kitchen to forage through almost empty cupboards in search of something else for him to eat. He’d reported back that the only two options available – unless he wanted Garston to cook him the mummified remains of the mouse he’d found in a trap – was a mug of oxtail flavoured cup-a-soup or a king-size bag of cheese and onion crisps. Winston had opted for the crisps, but he’d made it clear that he would have preferred salt and vinegar.
After he’d eaten, Angela had been allowed in to bathe and change the wound. Throughout her ministrations, Winston had cursed at her clumsiness and criticised her inability to do anything right, and she had left the room in tears, having been reduced to a bag of nerves.
Finally, back in the lounge, and indescribably grateful to have escaped from his uncle’s energy-sapping negativity, Garston had switched the TV on and flopped down in the armchair with the dodgy spring.
That had only served to depress him more. The policeman’s murder at the hospital, along with the subsequent helicopter hijacking, was still being featured on every news bulletin, and all the unwanted publicity Winston was receiving was going to make it very hard to move him when the time came. It had even displaced the manhunt for the soap star who had strangled his girlfriend as the top story.
There were no significant updates regarding the shooting near the BTNA, except to announce that the suspect had now died, the next of kin had been informed, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission had been informed.
Just thinking about the logistics of getting his uncle down to Sussex made Garston feel physically sick. He groaned and buried his head in his hands. Massaging his throbbing temples with his fingers, he could feel the blood pounding in his ears as a nagging stress headache began to set in.
“How the fuck am I going to move you from here to the coast when your godawful face is being splashed across the telly every five minutes?” he asked the grainy colour image of Winston that now filled the screen.
It stared back at him malevolently.
Resisting the urge to throw the remote at it, he stood up and strode back to the bedroom. He found Winston sitting up in bed, arms folded angrily across his huge chest. “What?” he demanded, petulantly.
Clearly, this wasn’t a good time to have a rational conversation with his uncle, but then, when was? Sitting on the edge of the bed, Garston took a deep breath. “Claude,” he began delicately, and then hesitated, wondering if it might be wiser to wait until his uncle was in a marginally better mood.
“WHAT?” Winston shouted, making him flinch.
“Maybe we should talk later,” Garston said, making to stand.
Winston grabbed hold of his wrist and pulled him close, grimacing at the pain the sudden movement had caused him. “If you’re gonna run my business while I’m away, you’d better grow a pair of balls and stop acting like a fucking pussy, because I’m telling you, unless you do, you won’t last five-fucking-minutes in this game. Now, what do you want?” He released his grip on Garston and leaned back against the pillows.
Garston swallowed hard. “You’re right, Claude,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “I’m going to give it to you straight. There’s no way we can move you at the moment because your hairstyle is just too distinctive. What I propose is that, before setting off to Rye on Thursday night, you to let me shave off your dreadlocks. That would really change your appearance and it might give us a fighting chance of getting there without being spotted.”
To his surprise, Winston laughed heartily. “I was wondering when you would work up the courage to ask me that,” he confided.
Garston was confused by this reaction. He’d been expecting an outburst of pure rage. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be really angry,” he confessed.
Winston shook his head. “I’m not angry, boy. What you’re asking makes perfect sense.”
“So, you’ll let me do it, then?” Garston asked. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“No,” Winston said, still laughing. “There’s no way in hell that you’re doing that. And just so we’re clear, I would rather cut your head off than my dreadlocks, and if you bring it up again, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Now, be a good little boy and fuck off.”
Chapter 18
Tyler ambled along the corridor, intent on having a quick word with Andy Quinlan before setting off for home. It was only 5 p.m. but there was nothing more for him to do at the office so he’d decided to call it a day. It looked like Kelly was going to be working silly hours again, so he figured he would be all alone for a second night on the trot. He couldn’t justify having another takeaway – that would be too much of an overindulgence – so perhaps he’d stop off at the supermarket and get himself one of their freshly cooked chickens, and then treat himself to another Bond film. Thunderball would do very nicely.
The door was ajar and Andy’s office was empty so Jack went looking for him. He wasn’t in the MIR or the main office, and no one had seen him for a little while. Curious. Maybe he was in the loo, but Jack wasn’t so desperate to talk to him that he was prepared to check in there.
Returning to his own office, Tyler logged off his computer and put the docket he had been reading back in the filing cabinet. He was just slipping his jacket on when his mobile rang.
“DCI Tyler,” he said, slipping his man bag over his shoulder and flicking the switch to kill the lights.
“…Jack…” It was Andy, but he sounded like he had his head in a bucket, and he was out of breath as though he had been sprinting.
Tyler stopped in his tracks, frowning. “Andy…?”
“BBBLLLUUURRRGGGHHH!”
As if the retching wasn’t bad enough, the unmistakable sound of projectile vomit splashing all over the toilet turned Tyler’s stomach, and he instinctively snatched the phone away from his ear in revulsion.
After a few seconds of heavy breathing and low moaning, Quinlan was back on the line. His voice sounded pitiful. “I think that egg sandwich must have been off…I can’t stop throwing…” the sentence was interrupted by another violent bout of sickness.
“Jesus!” Tyler said, looking at the phone in horror. Quinlan was obviously in the toilets with his head stuck down a bowl, and he wondered if he should go in and help. But what could he do? Besides, if there was one thing that Tyler couldn’t stand, it was the smell of puke.
He recalled that Susie Sergeant was a trained ‘First Aider at Work’, so he decided to find her and turn her loose on Quinlan. That would either kill him or cure him, he thought wryly.
“Sorry…” Quinlan said when he came back on the line. “Listen, Jack, I’m gonna have to go home but I can’t leave poor Carol running a Cat A enquiry. Would you mind taking over for a …” Quinlan threw up again, so loud and so hard that Tyler was afraid he’d ruptured something internally.
“Bloody hell mate,” he said, worried. “You really don’t sound good. Do you want me to call out the FME?”
“No point,” Quinlan moaned, sounding very weak. “I just need to let it run its course and then rest.”
He was probably right, but Jack didn’t want him being left alone in that state. “I’ll get someone to drive you home,” he said, thinking that they would need to make sure they had a bloody big bucket with them.
“Thanks,” Quinlan said, breathlessly. “Listen, can you step in and take over as SIO until I come back to work? I know it’s a bit of a liberty for me to ask…”
“Don’t be silly,” Tyler said. “I haven’t got anything on the go so it’s no trouble at all.”
“You’re a star,” Quinlan said, and then chortled mirthlessly. “Come to think of it, are you sure you didn’t poison me just to get me out of the way? I know how much you and Dillon wanted this job.”
Jack laughed. “You poisoned yourself, you brainless wally. I told you not to eat that sandwich, but you wouldn’t listen. So much for you having the constitution of an ox.”
“I do have the constitution of an ox,” Quinlan insisted. “A very sick ox.”
◆◆◆
It turned out that Susie Sergeant was unavailable to do her Florence Nightingale routine as she was still tied up interviewing Mullings. Luckily, one of the DCs on Andy’s team had also gone on the course, and between them, she and Jack managed to get Quinlan out of the toilet and into the first aid room.
Returning to his office a few minutes later, Jack phoned Holland to let him know that he was temporarily taking over the investigation. Thunderball would have to wait for another night.
There was no reply, so he left a voicemail for the boss to call him back.
That done, he went straight into Quinlan’s MIR and asked his Office Manager to give him an in-depth briefing on where they stood with the investigation.
Quinlan’s OM was a fair-haired man in his late forties called DS Tom Wilkins. For some bizarre reason, Wilkins had a thing about wearing bow ties instead of regular ones, and today he wore a burgundy number with a swirl leaf pattern. His accent betrayed his Lancashire origins, and his weathered complexion suggested that he was a man who liked spending time outdoors. Wilkins had a fairly high-pitched voice, and when Jack closed his eyes it was just like listening to George Formby.
“As far as I’m concerned boss,” Wilkins beamed, “everything’s tickety-boo.”
Jack frowned disapprovingly. “Not sure PC Morrison or his grieving family would say things were tickety-boo,” he pointed out.
That wiped the smile from the OM’s face. “No, no, of course not,” he said, looking down at the floor, embarrassed. “What I meant was, from an evidential perspective, we’re doing really well. We’re only one day into the investigation and we already know who three of the four people involved in helping Winston to escape are. We’ve gathered all the CCTV from the hospital, and it’s fantastic. We’ve got the baddies arriving, going in, and then hijacking the helicopter a short time later. Basically, their every movement inside the hospital is captured on tape apart from the murder itself, but that happened in a private room.”
Jack grunted. “When I spoke to Reg Parker earlier, he was hoping that the scene outside Winston’s room and the fight with Tony Dillon might have been caught on camera too. Do you know if he’s managed to access that footage yet?”
The OM nodded solemnly. “Aye, he has, and it’s chilling to watch. The jury will probably convict them on that alone.”
“I’d like to see it if possible,” Jack said.
“If you pop into the CCTV viewing room and speak to Darren Blyth, he’ll play it for you. You can’t miss Darren, he’s a deep-voiced Manc, and he looks like someone stuck an owl’s head on the body of a scarecrow.”
Tyler smiled at the apt description, recalling Blyth from that morning’s meeting.
“I’ll do that, thanks. What about key witnesses? I’ve had an update about the pilot, Peter Myers, but what about the ward sister and the two drugged officers?”
