To Dream of the Dead

If I was a cop? Mother of God, had it come to this?

The back of the Land Rover was like a cell. Vinyl-covered bench seat along one side. No windows. Jason Mebus sharing the seat with Andy Mumford in a donkey jacket.

‘You worked it out now, boss?’

Still finding it hard to contain his delight, Mumford looked fondly at Mebus, who was staring down at his hands like they were already locked into cuffs. Didn’t look up when Jumbo Humphries started the engine and drove them round the back of the estate, into a field entrance. Jumbo was programmed for fields.

‘This all right for you, is it, Mr B?’

‘Safer,’ Bliss conceded.

Jumbo, a before picture for WeightWatchers, got out, squelched through the puddled ground to open the galvanised gate. This way they’d only be disturbed by some farmer, and there weren’t many farmers Jumbo didn’t know. Bliss sank back, hands behind his head: how to play this…

Or even whether to play it. What any copper with sense would do was get on his mobile and summon the troops. Back off, let them deal with it, hoping a result would save his career.

Two possible reasons for what Andy had done. One, excitement: lower-ranking cops were still being pensioned off at fifty — the new thirty, too young to be thinking the most exciting time of your life was history. Yet Bliss had thought Mumford, who’d looked more than a bit pipe-and-slippers at forty, would’ve been able to handle it better than most.

Which suggested it was more likely to be the second possible reason.

Charlie Howe.

It was conceivable that Mumford still had a conscience about helping Charlie cover up that death, way back, maybe nursing a feeling that Charlie should go down one day for something. Wasn’t exactly uncommon, that need to tie up a few ends before you left the service.

And maybe it was actually easier, these days, to come back and tie them: no rules, no stifling paperwork, and you still had all the skills.

Bliss looked over the back of his seat at Jason Mebus. Just a kid. A cold-eyed, corrupted kid, still just about young enough to be at school but with many years of criminal experience. His upper lip was puffed out on one side.

‘I really think,’ Bliss said, ‘that you have to give me a name, Jason. Or, to be more specific, you have to give me the name.’

‘Don’t even know his name.’

‘We think you do, Jason,’ Mumford said.

Mebus flinched slightly.

‘What happened to his mouth, Andy?’

‘Resisting a chat.’

Bliss sighed. No paperwork, no rules.

And a strong element of serendipity.

It came down to history. And fear.

It was not a result that Mumford would have obtained if he’d still been in the job and history hadn’t cut as deep. Jason Mebus knew too much about the tragic death of Mumford’s nephew, Robbie Walsh. Therefore Mebus was afraid of Mumford in a way he wouldn’t be afraid of a serving copper.

Mumford had the look of a brooder.

As it turned out, Jason was already in a state of deep unease. What he’d thought would be no more than some drug-trade disposal had turned out to be part of the highest-profile crime in this town in living memory.

‘Jittery from the off,’ Mumford had whispered. ‘I’m talking about cocaine, and his eyes are all over the place and wondering who Jumbo is. I didn’t do no introductions.’

‘Just fishing at this point?’

‘Trying to get you a bigger fish, boss. I know this bastard. He’s vicious, but he en’t over-ambitious. No way he’d go uptown on his own.’

‘Right.’

Good detective, Mumford. Looking across at the Plascarreg’s prison-block profile, it had already occurred to Bliss that there was no way Gyles Banks-Jones would come down here on his own.

There was someone else in this. A middleman.

‘Go on, Andy…’

‘And I’m saying things like, bit out of your league yere, en’t you, boy? And I’m tossing names at him.’

‘Which names in particular?’

‘The names you give me: Gyles Banks-Jones, Steve Furneaux, Charlie Howe. And that was when he… when he first tried to get out of the vehicle.’

And hurt his mouth on the dash, apparently. And other parts you couldn’t see, Bliss suspected.

Starting to feel queasy right down to his gut. The information better be solid as a rock because — as Mumford, presumptuously, had already apparently conveyed to Jason Mebus — no way was this going anywhere near Gaol Street.

‘I never killed him,’ Mebus said. ‘You gotter believe me, dad. Why would I? Why would I do an ole feller like that? I en’t never even heard of him.’

‘Now, that’s not true, is it, Jason?’ Mumford said. ‘You had every reason to wish him no good.’

Bliss could tell that Mumford hated it when Mebus called him dad. Even the thought of having a son like this…

‘Him being a magistrate and all,’ Mumford said. ‘You don’t remember?’

Bliss smiled, pretty sure that Ayling had come off the bench a good ten years ago, but Mebus wouldn’t know that.

It was about pressure.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t recognise his face?’ Mumford said.

‘I didn’t fucking look at his face.’

‘Squeamish?’

‘I used to work in a slaughterhouse, dad.’

That was how thick Jason was.

‘Who was with you?’ Bliss said.

‘Justin. My brother. But all he done was drive, yeah?’

‘So the bloke you met…’

‘Never seen his face. Head to foot in waterproofs, and a black balaclava with eyeholes.’

‘No kidding,’ Bliss said.

‘Swear to God—’

‘Where’d you meet him?’

‘In the forest, as arranged.’

‘Which forest?’

‘Dean. In this… where they been clearing trees?’

‘That would be called “a clearing”, Jason. And this was arranged by?’

‘Birmingham.’

They’d been into this. All controlled substances, including supplies to be delivered to Gyles Banks-Jones’s jeweller’s shop, came in from ‘Birmingham’. Mebus was just a distributor, he didn’t know the people he was dealing with. This was normal; if he was nicked, that was where it ended, nobody he could finger to the cops. It was just ‘Birmingham’.

At least, Mebus assumed it was Birmingham.

‘So you’d had a call on the mobile,’ Bliss said. ‘From Birmingham.’

‘I knew the voice.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Male. Brummy accent.’

‘And he asked if you were up for something a bit different. Tell me exactly what he said.’

‘He said somebody was gonner to be topped, kind o’ thing, and—’