Jamaica Plain (9780738736396) (6 page)

eight

Freddy Sullivan
was a
low-life piece of shit whom Grant had been chasing all his service without much success. He burgled houses big and small. He screwed shops and supermarkets. He dealt drugs and dabbled in prostitution. He had a sheet as long as your arm but absolutely zero criminal convictions. How on earth the little fuck had persuaded America to let him and his brother immigrate was a mystery.

The last time Grant had spoken to Sullivan had been over the garden fence of a house on Ravenscliffe Avenue in Bradford. There had been insufficient grounds for an arrest but plenty of reason to exchange harsh words, most of them from Grant. That had been five years ago. Sullivan didn't look happy to see his hometown cop now. “I'm stuck in this shit 'cause of you. Fuck me.”

Kincaid had gone back upstairs, but Sergeant Rooney listened with undisguised disdain. The custody sergeant was processing another prisoner further down the counter, handing a bag of personal possessions to an Irishman with a black eye and a torn shirt. Grant's tone was friendly even if his words weren't.

“You're in this shit because you're a burgling bastard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but today's your lucky day. And I'm your get-out-of-jail card. So don't try my patience.”

Sullivan looked skittish. The Bradford burglar's eyes flicked around the custody area. He had developed a nervous twitch that Grant didn't remember from his days on Ecclesfield's most-wanted list. That list might not be as high profile as Whitey Bulger making number two on the FBI's most wanted, but back in Bradford it was big enough.

Grant didn't like burglars. He didn't like thieves. He didn't like anyone who took what wasn't theirs from people who barely had enough to make ends meet as it was. Robbing banks was one thing. Stealing from little old ladies something else. He didn't like Sullivan but wanted to make this as simple as possible. The smoother this went, the sooner he'd be on a plane home.

“Let me make this easy for you. Try receiving instead of transmitting for a change. First, there'll be no charges against you. Second, you answer all my questions in the negative and you'll be walking out of here in half an hour.”

Sergeant Rooney coughed loudly and shook his head. He held one finger up.

Grant amended his speech. “One hour. So let's keep things simple.”

Sullivan twitched. The Irish prisoner with the black eye took his property bag and glanced at the nervous Englishman. Rooney barked an order and the prisoner tucked the bag under one arm and left. Grant tilted his head to one side. “Okay?”

Sullivan nodded, which wasn't much different than his twitch, so Grant pressed for an answer. The skinny wretch spoke in a whisper. “Okay.”

Grant waved a hand at the sergeant. “We're good to go. That way, is it?”

Sergeant Rooney pointed at the door into the station and pressed the release button. The lock buzzed and Grant pushed the door open. He gestured for Sullivan to go through, then followed, carrying a sheaf of papers and a pair of audiotapes. The door slammed shut behind them.

A short walk down two internal corridors and they were at the door he'd gone through twice already, in the opposite direction. There was a lock-release button on the wall next to it. He pressed it and led the way into the reception area. It was still busy. He navigated through the crowd to a room at the far end marked
Interview 1
. He used the key he'd been given and opened the door. Sullivan threw nervous glances at the faces around him, then went inside.

Grant followed and closed the door.

Outside, a figure wearing a grey sweatshirt with the hood up looked through the glass of the front doors, then signaled to someone around the corner. There were just twenty-five minutes to go.

The interview room
was
cramped and square and completely functional. There was a solid metal table pushed against the far wall, with two heavy chairs on either side. A twin tape-recording deck sat on the table with the tape caddies open and empty. A wired glass window with vertical shades let in morning sunshine from Washington Street. Apart from that, the room was empty.

Grant indicated for Sullivan to sit on the far side of the table, then pulled out a chair nearest the tape deck. He waited for Sullivan to sit down, then sat himself. He shuffled the papers into a neat square and began unwrapping the cellophane from the twin pack of tapes. “Right, Freddy. Here's how it goes.”

He looked for a waste bin for the cellophane. There wasn't one.

“This is a formal interview just so we can say it's been done, but the objective is this. There's no evidence. No witnesses. You deny everything. Interview over. You go home. I write the crime off. Undetected.”

It went against the grain. Grant put a brave face on it, but this was the opposite of everything he stood for. Bad guys did bad things. It was up to the good guys to stop them. Grant was one of the good guys. Always had been. This didn't feel like being a good guy.

Sullivan looked like he was giving serious consideration to Grant's words. The concentration on his face was nothing new. Grant remembered it from the days before the Sullivan family emigrated, a great day for Ravenscliffe. If someone asked Sullivan whether the sky was up or down, he would still spend a long time making his mind up. “I say that—then I'm out of here?”

“Gone baby gone.”

Sullivan smiled. “Filmed that around here.”

Grant stopped loading the tapes. “What?”

“
Gone Baby Gone
. They filmed that in JP.”

“The missing kid film?”

“Yeah. Set in Boston. Some of it in Jamaica Plain.”

“You get a part in it? Walk-on? Background?”

“Naw. They didn't want my face getting seen.”

“Then what the fuck's it got to do with anything?”

Sullivan looked embarrassed and Grant suddenly felt ashamed, like he'd kicked a puppy or something. The smile went out of Sullivan's voice. “Just saying, is all.”

Then he brightened. “My brother was an extra. Crossed the street in one scene.”

“How come he crossed the pond with you? You twins or something?”

“You know we ain't. He's my kid brother. We go everywhere together.”

“Oh yeah? What's Sean doing these days?”

“He stamps car number plates.”

“In prison? That's what they do over here, isn't it? Like sewing mailbags.”

“Naw. At Delaney's over in West Roxbury. He don't do prison. He's the good brother.”

That last part came out soft, almost soulful. Grant finished loading the tapes and snapped the caddies shut but didn't start recording. Instead he took the record of interview sheet and filled in the names at the top. They weren't the official West Yorkshire forms, but they'd do. This wasn't going to court anyway. He filled in the spaces marked, location, date, name of interviewee, and interviewing officer. He left the time blank.

“Okay, Freddy. You ready?”

Sullivan nodded. The look of concentration was back on his face. He looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like a man with a serious decision to make, and it wasn't coming easy.

Grant leaned over and pressed the Record button. He waited for the tapes to spool past the leader before he began the official preamble. “This interview is being tape recorded. The date is …”

He stated the date.

“And the time is …”

He stated the time and wrote it down on the form.

“I am PC three-six-seven Grant of the West Yorkshire Police and I am interviewing—will you state your name and date of birth for the tape, please?”

Sullivan gave his name but stumbled over his date of birth. He had to repeat it twice before he got it right.

“Thank you. We are in an interview room at District E-13 in Boston, USA. Can you please confirm that there is no one else present?”

“What?”

“That there's nobody else in the room.”

“There's nobody else in the room.”

“Thank you. Right, Freddy, I am investigating a report of burglary at Patel's Grocery Store, Ravenscliffe Avenue, Bradford, between the times of …”

He stated the time and date of the burglary, then went on to describe how CCTV footage showed a white male approach the front of the shop at night, kick open the front door, then steal money from the cash register and cigarettes from the display. A witness saw this male leave the premises and walk behind the shops, out of sight. The description of this person matched that of Sullivan, leading to him being circulated on suspicion of burglary.

“I thought you said there weren't no witnesses.”

“The witness was unable to make a positive identification through personal knowledge or photographic records.”

“Oh, right. Yeah.”

This was more information than Grant would normally give out at the beginning of an interview. Best practice was to simply state what offense he was investigating, then ask open questions about the suspect's movements at a specific time and date. Get them to commit to a story before producing evidence to prove it was a lie. Even small lies could undermine the best defense. Get them caught in a lie early on, and it made it easier for the bigger lies later on.

This was the opposite of that.

This was laying it all out to get a quick denial.

Only Sullivan didn't deny it.

Grant was taken aback
for a moment. The confession had been blurted out in one short sentence, and it blew Grant's strategy right out of the water. Under normal circumstances the suspect admitting the offense was exactly what you wanted. It was the whole purpose of an interview. Box them into a corner until they confessed everything, then get details that only the thief would know so they couldn't say they made it up later.

These weren't normal circumstances.

Ten seconds ticked by.

Fifteen.

Then Grant spoke firmly into the speaker. “Interview terminated at”—he stated the time and wrote it on the form—“for the interviewee to take legal advice.”

He snapped the recorder off. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘I did it'?”

“I did Patel's.”

“All this ‘it's a fair cop, guv' bullshit only happens in the movies. What the fuck are you playing at?”

Sullivan wasn't afraid of Grant. Never had been. But there was fear in his eyes now. Nerves twitched in his left eye. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the table. He was sweating. “I can't stay here. You got to take me back.”

“Take you back where?”

“Extricate me. Back to Ravo.”

“They aren't going to pay to extradite you for a corner shop burglary.”

“They paid for you to come over here for a corner shop burglary.”

Grant ignored that and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You've never admitted your name and address before. What you confessing to burglary for all of a sudden?”

Sullivan glanced at the window, then at the door. He looked like a junky on a comedown seeing spiders on the walls. He began to bite his nails. There weren't any nails left to bite, so he nibbled his fingertips. Grant sat upright and pushed his chair back from the table. It scraped across the carpet. “What's going on?”

Sullivan stopped nibbling. He stared at the table and shook his head slowly. “This shit ain't my fault.”

Grant looked blank and kept quiet.

“I was just the importer.” Sullivan was almost crying. “This long in the nick. They ain't gonna believe I said nowt. I'm dead.”

“Slow down, Freddy. What you talkin' about?”

“Extricate me. Get me out of here. But promise me.” He was practically wringing his hands. “Officer Grant. Promise you'll protect my brother. He's nowt to do with this.”

Grant leaned back in his chair to give Sullivan some space. He didn't want to crowd him. Keeping his voice conversational, almost friendly, he tried to take the sting out of the situation while still getting an important piece of information.

“What you been smuggling, Freddy? Dope again?”

It was Sullivan's turn to look blank. His lips moved, but no words came out. Grant was about to probe with gentle questions when a loud bang on the window snapped his head around.

The wired glass splintered. A large hand, fingers splayed, was silhouetted black against the daylight. It was the size of a baseball glove. A giant's hand. Slivers of glass from the inside dusted the carpet but the window held. Sullivan's eyes were bulging out of his head in panic. Grant was halfway to his feet and turning towards the window when the door opened.

The distraction was complete.

Neither of them noticed until the door slammed shut. The nasty black object bounced across the carpet and under the table. Sullivan screamed and stood up so fast he flipped the table forward. Grant recognized the grenade a split second before it exploded, then the world was full of light and pain.

nine

i was a typist.

The words echoed through Grant's brain.

i hate guns
.

The follow-up words boomed just as loud.

and i'm not that struck on bombs either
.

In his mind's eye he saw legs clad in desert camouflage combat pants. Dusty boots laced up beneath canvas anklets. Blancoed webbing belt and straps with dull, tarnished brass fittings. Sand and stones and debris choked his lungs.

i was a typist
.

The camouflage pants became faded blue jeans and the boots transformed into dusty black K-Swiss tennis shoes. The sand and stones and debris remained the same. It choked his lungs, and he coughed himself awake. He could barely open his eyes. His ears were ringing like Quasimodo in the bell tower. He coughed harder and cleared some of the obstruction from his throat, but his mouth was dry and claggy. He tried to spit but couldn't create any moisture.

Pain filled his world.

He kept still. First thing to do was take stock, but since everything hurt it was difficult to know where to start. Visual examination. After a traumatic experience, your physical senses could lie. Amputees often felt like they still had their limbs. Fingers and toes were notoriously fickle about transmitting data to the brain. It was all just pain. How many toes were left was impossible to gauge until you counted them. There was something heavy lying on top of him.

His eyes. He blinked them clear, but they stung with dust and scratches. They worked, though. He ignored the pain and did a quick circuit of the room without moving his head. Grant was lying in an awkward twisted position against the back wall with the table upside down across his lower body. The pain down there was worrying, but he argued that he had to be alive to feel pain. That was the first positive.

The second was that he still seemed to have both hands.

Sullivan was missing at least one. It was curled on the floor in the middle of the room. Red stringy blood vessels and white shards of bone protruded from the severed wrist. Grant wondered where the rest of him was and how badly he was injured. Then he glanced up and stopped wondering. A squashed eyeball stared down at him from the ceiling with a swatch of flesh and one ear.

Grant concentrated on his own situation. He had two hands, both eyes, and his head moved without snapping his neck. The table felt like a dead weight across his chest and legs, but at least his senses were reporting that he had legs—he hoped. The solid metal table was hard to move. He pushed with his arms, but shock had robbed him of his strength.

The window had blown out into the street, and Grant became aware of sirens rushing from the outside world. Air horns indicated the fire department was on its way. The ringing in his ears toned down a notch. Somebody knocked on the door.

“You gotta be kiddin'. Come in.”

His voice was harsh and rasping. There were situations where gallows humor helped save the day and situations where silence was the only answer. This was one of those situations—the interview room demolished, Freddy Sullivan blasted apart, and pain wracking Grant's body. He couldn't believe somebody was knocking on the door. Then he realized it wasn't a knock on the door. It was someone outside trying to knock their way through the door.

The door shook but didn't budge. Dust was dislodged from the door frame and the ceiling with each kick, but the door wouldn't open. Faces looked in through the hole where the window used to be. Voices called into the room, but Grant couldn't make out the words. His ears were still out of focus. He glanced at the base of the door and saw why it was blocked.

The biggest part of Freddy Sullivan lay amid a pile of bricks and plasterboard and a twisted metal chair. His torso, or most of it minus one shoulder, was laid on its side like he was resting. The door banged again and thumped the corpse. Grant felt anger ball up in his throat. The indignity of Freddy being abused even after death was too much for him. He shouted for whoever was kicking the door to stop, mustered enough strength to push the table off his legs, then crawled over to the door.

He paused. Words should be spoken, but now wasn't the time. He took a deep breath through his nose—his mouth was still too dry—and gently rolled Sullivan onto his back. He tried to take his orange windcheater off to cover him but couldn't flex his shoulders enough. Instead he scrabbled the bricks aside, then slid backwards on his ass.

“Come in.”

Not joking. Deadly serious.

The door opened six inches, then caught on the chippings. It closed and then was forced open wider. Twelve inches. Two feet. On the third attempt it opened all the way, and Sam Kincaid barged a shoulder into the room.

“Christ almighty.”

The big detective took in the scene with one glance. He ignored the corpse and went straight into first-aid mode. He crouched beside Grant and began checking him for major cuts and fractures. It was chaos outside. The reception area had been full of milling bodies. Shock had turned them into a panicking mob. Grant could hear O'Rourke yelling orders. Other cops responded by herding the crowd into the street for triage.

Sirens grew closer. Ambulances racing to the scene. The air horns were deafening, but Grant didn't think the firefighters would be needed. As far as Sullivan was concerned, the paramedics wouldn't be needed either. Grant noticed Kincaid glancing around the room, his eyes noting everything and appearing to tick them off one thing at a time. Good police practice. This was a crime scene. As soon as the fire department and paramedics got in here, there'd be no evidence left.

First priority was always to preserve life or put out the fire. There was no fire, but they'd still have to check and maybe damp the room down. Preserving life would mean treating Grant. Kincaid was making a mental note of what the scene looked like for later use. Grant had already done the same with his initial scan.

The sirens stopped. The air horns too. The emergency services had arrived. Heavy boots crunched into the room, and the new arrivals began to prioritize. Make sure the building was safe. Treat the patient. Grant was the patient, but he was impatient. Being injured wasn't an option.

The ambulance was big
and square and roomy. It made the ones he was used to in Bradford seem like pedal cars in comparison. By some miracle Grant was the only injury. Everyone else—the crowd in the reception area and the pedestrians outside—were simply shocked, not injured. The other ambulances had been released after triaging the crowd. Strapped to a backboard, Grant was carried and loaded into the last one.

Kincaid stood over him so they could talk without Grant trying to crane his neck. He argued with the paramedic that his neck had been okay when he was moving the mutilated torso, so why wasn't it okay now? It didn't wash. Procedures were set in stone. In a country where you could sue the microwave manufacturer for not stating you
couldn't
dry your poodle in it, litigation-proofing was almost as important as saving lives.

It was half an hour before Grant could give his first account, the one that would be in any file created about the bombing of the police station. The one that would set the tone for the forthcoming investigation.

He told Kincaid about the interview and the unexpected confession. He detailed the conversation after the tapes were turned off. He described the slap on the window for distraction and the grenade through the door. Sullivan jerking upright and flipping the table that had saved Grant's life. The retelling of it brought a sense of calm. Grant began to feel more like his old self. Survivor guilt transferred into giddiness. Gallows humor resurfaced when Kincaid mentioned the hole in the police station wall. Grant smiled. “I suppose the police are looking into it.”

Kincaid scratched his chin. Grant finished with the traditional follow-up. “If it had blown out the toilets, the police wouldn't have anything to go on.”

Kincaid wasn't going with the flow. “Yeah, well, we don't have anything to go on yet. So stop fucking about.”

“Sorry.”

“Look. You know how this goes. Best time to get at your memory is as soon as you can talk. Deep memory trawls up little details anything from twenty-four hours to a week later. We need a statement as soon as you can.”

“Get me out of this, and I'll write one now.”

Kincaid shook his head. A WCVB news helicopter hovered, trying to get one last shot of the breaking story. The noise was deafening, so he closed the back door. It didn't help much. He raised his voice.

“Can't. Once they've checked you out at the hospital, I'll drop some statement forms off. Oh”—he jerked a thumb at the helicopter noise—“and don't talk to the press.”

Grant would have shaken his head if it hadn't been strapped tight. “Me and the press—not on good terms.”

“Snake Pass?”

“Among other things.”

“They're not going to make you a police spokesman, then?”

“It's spokesperson in the UK now.”

“Here too. But fuck 'em, I say.”

“D'you still have manholes in the US?”

“Only the ones we shit out of.”

“So long as you don't say fuck them too.”

Kincaid laughed. It was a deep, booming sound that rivaled the helicopter. It gave Grant hope for the future. A laugh like that meant Kincaid was a man's man. At a time like this, men's men were what you needed. Call it sexist, but Grant was a man's man too. The door opened, and throbbing helicopter noise filled the ambulance. It slowly died away as the chopper gained height, then flew off.

Miller stood on the step and looked inside, concern etched on his face. Grant could only see him if he depressed his eyes. Miller's concern touched him. He was a good kid—would no doubt make a good cop.

Kincaid climbed out the back. “Miller will ride with you. In case you give a dying declaration.”

“Here's a declaration.” Kincaid waited for the parting shot, but Grant was being serious. “Sullivan said to look after his brother. You know where he is?”

“We're working on it. Get well soon.”

Miller climbed in. Kincaid stepped back and shut the door. He slapped the side of the ambulance, and it set off for the hospital.