Faithfully: Chase & Halshaw #1 (29 page)

Halshaw parked the unmarked Astra at the end of the ragged
line of police vehicles on the pitted and puddle-strewn forecourt, turned off
the engine, and looked around. The forecourt formed a rough square, with a
single storey warehouse on each of three sides. One was in darkness, the second
was boarded up, but lights shone out of the third. There was no sign of any
other police officers. She shrugged, opened the door, and climbed out. An air
horn sounded, and she flattened herself against the side of the car just as an
articulated lorry roared past, its headlights blazing. She watched as it turned
on to the main road and disappeared from view. The white trailer was decorated with
the Swedish flag and bright blue lettering which read:

Svensson
Overnight Express
A Logistical Group Company

“DC Halshaw?” asked a voice.

Halshaw looked round and saw a tall uniformed constable. His
face was in shadow and she didn’t recognise his voice. “That’s right.”

“This way, please,” he said, and marched off towards the
lights of the central warehouse.

Halshaw plipped the central locking of the Astra and hurried
after him.

At the warehouse, he held the door open for her, and ushered
her inside. “Thanks,” she began, turning to look at him. But all she saw was
the door closing behind her.

She shrugged, and strolled toward the centre of the
warehouse. The space was largely empty, except for a couple of pallets piled
high with unmarked cardboard boxes and an orange forklift truck parked tidily
in one corner. A heavy chain dangled from a roof girder in the centre of the
room. A number of dark stains, marked with chalk, discoloured the grey concrete
floor.

“We must stop meeting like this,” chuckled a voice from
behind her.

Halshaw turned, and saw a slim young man walking towards
her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Where is he?”
she demanded.

“Nice to see you again too, Lauren,” replied Fenway, with a
sardonic smile.

“I got a message saying that Dmitri was here,” she insisted.
“Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

“You mean you’ve let him go again?” she asked, incredulous.

Fenway shook his head slowly. “He went away in the back of a
black Transit van. About five minutes ago.”

Halshaw looked back at him, the awful realisation slowly
dawning. “You mean...?”

“’Fraid so.”

She sighed. “What happened to him?” she asked.

“We had a call about an hour ago,” he said. “From this
Swedish truck driver called Lukas. He said he’d come to pick up a load from
next door and saw the lights on in here. He looked through the window and saw
two men. Quarrelling, he said.” He glanced towards a low building behind him.
“So we came haring round, and found Dmitri hanging from one of the beams.”

“Dead?”

“Not quite. He’d been stripped, chained up by the wrists,
and beaten around the groin and stomach. With a baseball bat, maybe. Something
like that, anyway. He was still alive when we got him down, but he died a few
minutes later. Massive abdominal bleeding, the pathologist thinks.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Only one thing. It sounded like
Svensson
.”

“
Svensson
?”

“Yes. The name on the side of the truck.”

“But why would he...?”

“Say that? Beats me, love. Maybe it was just what he could
see.”

Halshaw shrugged. Fenway looked back at her with a quizzical
half-smile.

“Did he have any other injuries?” she asked.

“Only a bang on the head.”

“No damage to his face, his hands?”

“No.” Fenway frowned. “You mean like our Darren?”

She nodded. “And what about the other man? Did the lorry
driver see him clearly at all?”

“No. A big black guy. That was all he said.”

“What happened to him?”

“The black guy? Lukas said he took off just a few seconds
before uniformed arrived.”

“What sort of car was he driving?”

“An old Golf GTi.”

“Registration?”

“What do you think?” scoffed Fenway.

Halshaw shrugged. “When did you say the lorry driver
phoned?”

He glanced at his watch. “Couple of hours ago. Why?”

She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t what I meant. Sorry. What
I meant was this. How long was it from when he phoned you to when Dmitri was
found?”

“Gotcha. Let’s think. Phone call came in at quarter to,
uniformed went to have a look first... let’s say twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.
Good enough?”

“Yes. That’s not long at all, is it? I mean, if Dmitri was
really still standing when Lukas phoned?”

“True enough, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Not really. Maybe the guy’s a fast worker.” Fenway grinned.
“How long does it normally take you to beat someone to death, Lauren?”

She didn’t return his smile. “Did the lorry driver see
anything else? Or hear anything? You know, like screams or shouts?”

“He didn’t say so.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was in the cab of the truck, on the phone to his boss,
he said.”

Halshaw shrugged again. “And what about the cigarettes? Any
luck there?”

“No. Not a sausage.”

“What was in those boxes on the pallets?”

“One pallet’s electronic components: circuit boards, that
kind of thing. The other’s kitchen stuff: washing-up bowls, scrubbing brushes,
drainers. No-name Chinese crap, of course.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Where’s Dmitri’s car?” she asked.

“Over there.” Fenway pointed out of the window. Halshaw
peered into the gloom, and saw a dark BMW convertible lurking in the shadows
next to the boarded-up warehouse.

“Who was the lorry driver?”

“A Swedish bloke called Lukas, like I said. Lars Lukas. He
gave us an address in somewhere called...” he glanced at his notebook, “
Norrköping
.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s gone. That was his truck that nearly squashed you just
now.”

“Why did you let him go?”

“He had to get to Harwich. Late for his ferry, he said. And
we had no reason to keep him, of course.”

She nodded again. “What was he like?”

“A big guy. Tanned. Shaven head. Good English, too. Way better
than mine.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Jeans, boots, and a green bomber jacket.”

Halshaw felt a sudden chill clutch at her innards. “And was
he carrying anything?” she asked.

Fenway shook his head.

“Nothing at all?”

Fenway looked her quizzically. “Well, he had a walking
stick,” he replied. “A stainless steel affair. But you know what’s funny,
darling?”

“What’s that?”

“If I didn’t know better I’d have said it was a golf club.
Like a putter, but upside down. You know?”

*

“So what happens next?” asked Halshaw, as they walked slowly
back to their cars.

“Dunno,” replied Fenway. “But Dmitri gave us quite a few
things to check up on.”

“Like what?”

“For one thing, he told us the gear’s coming into Europe on
one of the ferries between Spain and Morocco. We knew that, although we didn’t
know which one.”

“And which one was it?”

“They use a different route every time, he said.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“We thought it was being trucked here from Spain by road,
through the Channel Tunnel. But Dmitri told us they usually use the ferry up
from Santander.”

“Mmm.”

“But the big news is that the operation’s run by a group of
expats on the Costa del Sol.”

“Expatriate Brits, you mean?”

“Yeah, mostly. With a few Scandinavians and Germans, he said.”

“Any names?”

“No. When the Guv asked him, he went as tight as a
virgin’s...,” he grinned apologetically, “he clammed up, I mean.”

“Why?”

“Scared shitless, I reckon. A gang like this needs an
enforcer. Some hard case to deal with people who step out of line, you know?
And he was right. The black guy must have been the enforcer.”

“I guess so. But I thought Dmitri was supposed to be hard?”

Fenway chuckled. “Out of his league, darling,” he said. “Way
out of his league.”

“So what’s the connection with the warehouse?”

“When a consignment comes in to the UK, it goes to one of
three, maybe four warehouses.”

“All near here?”

“Yeah. Dmitri gave us the addresses. We’ve got people
staking out all of them.”

“Found anything?”

“Nothing so far. So anyway, he and his crew break the load
down into smaller batches, which they sell on to a network of distributors.”

“All in London?”

Fenway chuckled. “No, darling. In different parts of the
country. Wolverhampton, Bristol, you name it. The last one we traced was in
Evesham.”

“And Dmitri and company take a mark-up, I guess?”

“Of course.”

“So why would the gang send their enforcer after him? Did
they know he was talking to you?”

“How could they? No, maybe Dmitri was getting greedy. Maybe
he wasn’t paying up. Maybe he was up to something else, on the side, like. Who
knows?”

“So why did you let him go?”

“He was due to meet one of the big cheeses this evening.”

“The enforcer?”

“Who knows? Dmitri said there was a consignment due in
tonight too. The Guv wanted to catch him, the big cheese, and a truckload of
ciggies
all together. But...”

“...it didn’t quite work out that way?”

“True. But it’s still been a good evening, in my humble
opinion.”

“Why?”

“Well, like I said, we’ve got some fresh leads to
investigate. Might even get a trip or two to Spain out of it, too. But that’s
not the best part.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve disrupted their network. Big time. They’ve got to
find new warehouses, maybe even set up a new team at the UK end. So there’s a
chance they’ll make a mistake. And when they do....” He squeezed his hands
together as if crushing an egg and grinned triumphantly.

“And what about Dmitri?”

“That scumbag? He got what he deserved. Just like that
tosser Darren Hitchins. Don’t you think, darling?”

Halshaw gritted her teeth and said nothing.

“So anyway,” Fenway continued, oblivious. “How do you fancy
joining the big league?”

She looked round at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“The big league, like I said. DCI Hopkins gets all the big
cases round here. Royce uses your guvnor as a dogsbody. Like that time he sent
him off to the sticks for two weeks, on a wild goose chase over some murder in
Kensington.”

“That murder wasn’t around here?”

“No. Royce wouldn’t even let him take Ken Thomas with him.
Had to make do with some local uniformed hayseed instead.”

I’ve never been called that before, Halshaw smiled to
herself, as they arrived at their cars. “So why was DI Chase assigned to the
case?” she asked.

“Because none of the other Supers could spare a DCI or DI.
Royce only did it for the brownie points.”

“But DI Chase solved the case, didn’t he? He managed to get
a conviction, too.”

Fenway snorted derisively. “Got lucky, that’s all.”

“He’s a good mentor, though.”

“Yeah, maybe. But once you’ve qualified, an ambitious girl
like you doesn’t want to get stuck with a loser like him.”

“A loser?”

“Yeah! Like I said, you wanna join the big league, girl.
Take my advice. And if you want me to put in a word for you...”

Halshaw chuckled. “Thanks, Rupert,” she replied, as she
opened the driver’s door of the Astra. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Are you awake, Al?” she whispered.

Chase turned away from the ceiling, which he had been
staring at ever since Anna had slipped off him and immediately fallen into a
deep, sated slumber.

“What is it, Anna?” he asked.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said, propping
herself up on one elbow. “Something I should have told you before.”

“Go on,” Chase sighed.

“This isn’t easy for me to talk about. And I know I should
have told you earlier, but I didn’t think it was relevant at the time. But you
need to know. It’s about Lucy Faith.”

Chase felt his freewheeling brain click into gear. “What
about her?” he asked.

“Did you know she knew my husband rather well?”

“I had a shrewd idea,” he replied, cautiously.

“Very well, actually. By the end of our marriage, Chris
found it very hard to make love to me. He said I was fat and repulsive, not to
mention hopeless in bed.”

“Bastard! I can’t believe...”

“Let me finish, please, Al. He could only bring himself to come
near me after he’d been whipped by a particular girlfriend.”

“Lucy Faith, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you know before you went to her as a life coach?”

“Yes. Well, it wasn’t hard to find out about the whipping,
of course. I think Chris got a kick out of showing off his wheals. He wouldn’t
tell me her name, of course, but I wormed it out of him in the end, one evening
when he was out of his head on booze and God knows what else.”

“So why did you agree to go to her?”

“Because I didn’t realise it was the same person. Amy only
knew her as Lucy Kelmarsh, of course. So imagine my reaction when I found out
the truth.”

“When did you find out?”

“At our first appointment. She gave me her business card. I
recognised the name immediately.”

“What happened? Did you confront her about it?”

“In a way. I asked her if she knew Chris. She admitted that
she did. I told her about Chris’, er, special requirements. She said she knew.
But by that time our marriage was over and Chris was no longer one of her
clients, so it was all a bit academic, really.”

Wordlessly, Chase shook his head, in what he hoped was an
appropriately sympathetic way.

“That was how I was able to persuade Chris to pay up in the end.
I told him that if it went to court, I would tell everyone about him and Lucy
Faith. I had nothing to lose. And the media would have had a field day, of
course.”

Was that how Chris Birkdale settled his debt to My Lady?
Chase wondered. Paying up rather than going to court, to protect her privacy?
He slipped an arm around Anna’s bare shoulders and gently pulled her towards
him. “Does Amy know?” he whispered.

She nuzzled into the base of his neck. “Some of it, yes. But
the business with Chris and Lucy happened years ago, of course, when Amy was
away at University. I only told her about it earlier this year.”

“How much does she know?”

“I told her about Chris’, er, problem. I didn’t want to turn
her against her father or anything, but it kind of came up in conversation one
day.”

“How?”

“Oh, I can’t remember,” she chuckled. “We were having a
girls’ night in, you know, lots of fizz and soppy DVDs.”

“Was this recently?”

“Not particularly. About this time last year, I think.”

“And does she know it was Lucy?”

“I’ve never told her, Al. She’s very friendly with Lucy’s
husband Dave, and I know it would ruin their friendship.”

“I can see that.”

“She might have worked it out for herself, though. Or asked
her father, perhaps.”

Chase nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I know I should have been
honest with you to begin with. It would have helped, I’m sure.”

He kissed the top of her head. “No it wouldn’t, Anna. DC
Halshaw and I would have spent days, weeks even, following up on your
relationship with Lucy Faith, to the exclusion of everything else. We’d
probably have ended up going to Spain to interview your ex-husband, for
instance.”

“A few days in the sunshine with the lovely Lauren? At
taxpayer’s expense? Can’t be bad!” she smirked.

Chase sighed wearily. “A few days in the sunshine sounds
great,” he yawned. “Where would you like to go?”