means someone blabbed, someone inside the police…’
He looked at FB who had aged about ten years in the last ten minutes.
‘ I’m going to think out loud now,’ said Henry, ‘and I’m going to say something pretty uncomfortable. It’s unlikely that the driver of the lead car talked to anyone because he’s dead now, so it’s either you, the ACC or the Chief.’
The traffic car reached Galgate.
FB and Henry did not immediately get out. They sat in silence for a few moments.
Eventually FB said, ‘Well, I know one thing for sure.’ He reached for the door-handle.
‘ What’s that?’
‘ It wasn’t me.’
Kovaks was sitting at his desk poring over some surveillance reports on Corelli. There was nothing particularly interesting in them, nothing he didn’t already know about the man, but he looked through them anyway, just in case there was something important he’d missed. It annoyed him that Corelli wasn’t a man of regular habits. He needed to know where and when Corelli was going to be in a specific place and for how long, otherwise how could he plan his execution?
Corelli had many favourite haunts, but he visited none of them at a regular time. He was a butterfly. Flitting here, landing there, then taking off again. This was one of the reasons why the FBI had never caught and prosecuted him successfully.
Obviously he spent a great deal of time at his homes and places of business, but these were times when his protection teams were at their strongest and no one could get through the ring uninvited. For Kovaks’ purpose, he needed to be away from these places, out in public.
Kovaks drew up a list of the places in Miami where Corelli ate and the amount of time he spent at each one. Then he averaged the times out.
In most places he spent less than an hour. But in two restaurants he had a tendency to linger for about three hours at lunchtimes. The problem was that he hardly ever visited them. He’d been to both four times in the last two years.
It did seem, though, that whenever he did, he took his time.
Kovaks raised his eyebrows. ‘Interesting,’ he whispered to himself. ‘If I knew when he was visiting one of them, things could maybe start rolling.’
Suddenly, for no accountable reason, the image of Sue’s badly mutilated body snapped vividly into his mind’s eye. The cops had still failed to track down Damian. Why didn’t he come forward? Could Damian really be a murderer?
Kovaks found that very difficult to believe…
The phone rang, interrupting his musing.
‘ Special Agent Kovaks, can I help you?’
‘ Joe?’ came a quiet, frightened voice.
‘ Yes, who’s that?’
‘ It’s me, Damian.’
‘ Damian!’ Kovaks spluttered. ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘ Joe, I need to talk to someone I can trust. Can I trust you?’
‘ Yeah, sure you can. Where are you? I’ll come and-’
The line went dead; Damian had hung up. Kovaks looked sourly at the phone in his hand. He slammed it down and swore.
‘ This is the saddest tragedy that the Lancashire Constabulary has ever faced and mark my words, we will spare no cost and no effort to bring the perpetrators to justice. We will be relentless in our pursuit and everyone of those responsible will be caught — every single one. Now, if you gentlemen will forgive me…’
An emotional Dave August wiped a tear from his eye, and ignoring the barrage of questions from the assembled press and TV men, he strode towards the scene.
The whole of the centre of Galgate had been cordoned off in a 200 metre radius of the incident on the road. On the railway line, all trains had been cancelled for the foreseeable future. High screens had been erected around the crime scenes so that no prying eyes or lenses could see anything they shouldn’t as the forensic teams, Scenes of Crime officers and search teams began their gruesome tasks. None of the bodies had been moved yet.
August was in full uniform, looking proud and erect. He walked behind one of the screens and saw what lay beyond.
Nothing he had heard prepared him for what he saw.
What have I done? he thought frantically. Oh Christ, what have I done?
Clearly devastated by what he’d seen, he sank down to his haunches, removed his cap and wiped his sweating forehead with his sleeve. He wanted to cry. He wanted to run away. He wanted to bury his head in sand.
‘ Boss?’
August looked up. ‘FB… this is awful. My men, slain in the streets like it’s the fucking Middle East, not the north of England
… Christ!’
‘ Yes, I know,’ said FB. ‘But can I just have a quick word with you about something else?’
‘ By all means,’ August said, rising to his feet, his knees clicking, glad of the change of subject.
‘ I’ll come straight to the point. It’s already been mooted that this is an inside job, that information about the escort route was leaked from either me, you or Mr Warner. I know it’s all bullshit, that it must have got out some other way, but we should be prepared to be investigated, to allow whoever follows this up whatever access they need to our private lives, don’t you think?’
‘ Absolutely,’ said August, and thought: Is this where the shit hits the fan?
He gave FB an odd look which FB interpreted as follows: Hellfire! He thinks I did it!’
Henry stood by the front car of the escort with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, half-watching the conversation between FB and August, but not able to hear.
He stared vacantly at the killing field in front of him. This was a scene from Chicago, from the Bronx, not from Galgate, a one-horse place with a community copper who was wandering around the periphery of the scene as distraught as anyone.
His thoughts were curtailed by the arrival of FB who strutted up to him. He was unsettled, Henry thought.
‘ Y’know — I think the Chief thinks leaked this!’
Henry chuckled, despite the situation. ‘So, what’s the plan of action for this?’
‘ Twofold, as I see it. One to recapture that bastard Hinksman and one to track down the people — who did this.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.
‘ They’re obviously pros,’ observed Henry. ‘I’ve heard there’s an international team operating who specialise in this sort of job. Pulled that one early this year down south when that IRA man got sprung. To the best of my knowledge the cops in Hampshire haven’t got the sniff of a result on that. It was much the same MO — but fewer dead cops. I think they did something in France too, just before Christmas.’
‘ Great,’ said FB despondently. ‘Anyway, I want you to take on the task of getting Hinksman back — if he hasn’t already left the country.’
Henry held back a smile. It was just what he wanted. ‘Can I pick one or two members for my team?’
‘ Yeah, why not. Who’ve you got in mind?’
‘ Karen Wilde and Karl Donaldson.’
Henry didn’t have to wait long for FB’s reaction. He boiled over immediately.
‘ No fucking way, Henry. That bitch killed Jack Crosby and I won’t forgive her for that. And as for that Yank, the supercilious bastard he isn’t even a cop.’
Henry waited for the outburst to subside. Calmly he said, ‘Jack Crosby killed himself. He smoked too much, drank too much, he was overweight, didn’t take any exercise, worked too hard and pushed himself too far. It wasn’t
