group of Holtz thugs. No-one was hurt, but she was given a letter containing photos of her going in and out of the shop where she worked, plus the nursery where she dropped her baby off every day. And then, the very same night, Benson, who knew nothing about the visit, was getting into his car outside a pub when a man with a scarf round his face leant in the window and stuck a gun against his head. The shooter said, “This is a message from the Holtzes to their favourite copper,” and pulled the trigger. Thankfully the gun was empty, but Benson knew they were serious. When he saw the photos, that was it. He resigned on the spot.’
‘I remember Malik telling me something about that when I first met up with him,’ I said, emptying the rice into a colander before adding it to the mix in the wok, and giving it another stir. I was getting hungry now. ‘I didn’t know the guy had had anything to do with Stegs, though. Not that it necessarily means anything.’
‘Except that Benson’s certain Stegs was the leak. He said that within days of him telling Stegs, his contacts within the Holtzes began to shut him out of things. Meetings were postponed, the information he was gathering seemed to dry up. Then obviously all this other stuff happened, and that was it. Another career beckoned. He left within days and refused point-blank to tell his controller what he’d found out. The Holtzes knew what they were doing. He’s still scared now, even though they’re no longer a threat. I visited him at home today. He’s moved south of the river and become head of security for an investment company in Kent. A lot less money, but at least he sleeps at night. The thing is, he blames Stegs for what happened, without a doubt. They’ve never spoken since, and they were good friends.’
I thought about that for a moment. ‘There’s never been any evidence that Stegs had anything to do with the Holtzes, though, has there?’
‘I asked Benson about that and he said no, not that he was aware of. That’s why the controller didn’t buy it. But he’s sure, John. Benson’s sure Stegs set him up, and let’s face it, Stegs is not exactly whiter than white, is he?’ She took another long drag on the cigarette.
‘But if he did work for the Holtzes, then how come when we first used Stegs to set up Slim Robbie, Robbie didn’t recognize him?’
Tina shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps Stegs was only known to a handful of people in the organization, and Slim Robbie wasn’t one of them. It still doesn’t seem right, whatever you might think.’
I could hardly disagree with that. ‘We’ll need to keep our ears to the ground, but we’ll also have to be careful. He’s going to know we’re asking questions, but it’s important we make him believe that it’s only routine, and we don’t rattle him.’
I dished up and we ate at the kitchen table while steadily draining the bottle of wine. The conversation remained on the case for a few minutes but, with some prompting on my part, finally moved on to other things, and after we’d finished eating I brought up the idea of a holiday together.
‘It sounds nice,’ she said carefully, ‘but it means everything’s going to end up out in the open, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s going to have to come out eventually. And anyway, I think most people in CID have got a pretty good idea of what’s going on. They are detectives, after all. I’d be a bit concerned if they hadn’t.’
‘But at least they’re keeping quiet about it at the moment. If we come right out with it, then people are going to be asking all sorts of questions. Let’s leave it a few weeks, eh? See how it goes.’ She put her hand on mine. ‘I don’t want it to sound like I don’t want to — I do — but I want to play things slowly where work colleagues are concerned. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’
I wasn’t going to push things, thinking that gentle persuasion would be far more effective, so I told her that, yes, I did understand. ‘But if you ever did decide to go, where would you fancy?’
She thought about it for a few moments. ‘I think I’d like a week on safari, and then maybe a week somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The Seychelles, or Mauritius. That way you get a good combination.’
‘A good combination and a bad bank balance.’
She lit another cigarette and poured the last few drops of the wine fairly evenly into our two glasses. ‘Don’t be boring, Mr Gallan. You can’t take it with you when you go, and you can’t put a price on memories. You know, the days when I travelled after uni are still the best of my life, even though all I have to show for them are boxloads of photos and a massive overdraft that I’m still paying off now, seven years on. But so what? I wouldn’t have changed those days for anything. That’s the attitude you’ve got to take, John. We’ve only got the one life.’
I didn’t like it when Tina mentioned her travelling days because, if I’m honest, it made me jealous. I often look back — too often — and wish that I’d gone off and seen something of the world and experienced what it had to offer while I was still young and free enough to be able to do it. Instead, I’d left school and joined the Force straight away; got engaged at twenty; was married at twenty-two; and became a dad at twenty-four, rendering such thoughts utterly redundant. But now and again I still imagined myself stretched out on a far-off palm-fringed beach, drinking a rum punch while some gorgeous local girl rubbed suncream on my back. I’d just got used to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.
Maybe now was the time to live a little and stop feeling sorry for myself, something I’d been doing far too much these past couple of years. ‘You’re dead right,’ I told her. ‘You can’t take it with you. Safari and the Seychelles it is. If, of course, you change your mind.’
She smiled at me through the smoke, and I got the impression that she was tempted. ‘Let’s see how we go, eh?’
I took a gulp of the wine. ‘Sure.’
At that moment, her mobile rang. I’d switched mine off, having done more than enough work on the taxpayers’ behalf that day. She stood up, saying she’d better take the call, and picked the phone up off the kitchen sideboard. The conversation was short, with her doing most of the listening, but I could tell that whatever she was hearing was significant. I could read it in her animated expression. Something, it seemed, had happened on the case.
When she put the phone down she turned to me, smiling. ‘That was Flanagan. It seems our killer wasn’t so clever after all.’
I felt an immediate surge of excitement. ‘Go on.’
‘A witness approached the officers manning the Portakabin down at the scene a couple of hours ago, while the meeting was still in progress. Apparently, she saw someone come through her garden and then climb over her wall and into someone else’s at about half-five on Wednesday afternoon. Her garden backs on to the one next door to Slim Robbie’s building. She thought it was odd because the guy was dressed in a suit and didn’t look much like your typical burglar. He’d disappeared before she could challenge him, but she did manage to give a description. White, twenty-five to thirty, with dark, curly hair. Looking agitated. It’s got to be our man. No-one else is going to be clambering over back gardens at that time in the afternoon. It’s too much of a coincidence.’
I grinned. What we had didn’t sound like much, but it was a start. Now we could concentrate on asking potential witnesses who lived in the surrounding streets if they’d seen the same guy. From there, we might get a better physical description, or even a description of a car he got into. I remember a case I worked on once south of the river where a rapist had gained entry into a house through an open back window in broad daylight and violently sexually assaulted a nineteen-year-old student who’d been in there on her own. The student, who’d been made to wear a blindfold for most of the ordeal, had only managed to give the most basic of descriptions: skin colour and a rough age (twenty-five to forty if memory serves me correctly), but a retired lady who lived three streets away always made it a habit to write down the registrations of cars she didn’t recognize, and to note down the descriptions of any suspicious-looking strangers. Obviously the rapist fitted that last criterion, and he’d also made the unfortunate mistake of parking his car in her street. She saw him get into it, tagged the number, and when we publicized what had happened shortly afterwards she supplied us with the details we’d needed. The rapist had been driving his brother-in-law’s motor but he had a couple of prior convictions and was quickly apprehended as a result of her information.
There might not be many people around like our amateur detective, but there were enough to make me hopeful that from this first step on the trail of our killer we could take some larger ones.
And I couldn’t help wondering whether the trail would eventually lead all the way back to Stegs Jenner.
17
