Yates smiled.
Vicary held up a finger. ‘Don’t get cocky, Curtis, because we don’t have to prosecute you for all of them.’ He paused. ‘Just think about that. You’ve only got one life, so all we need is one conviction, and right now we’re looking at three murders which are covered in your dabs.’
‘You can’t link me to them.’
‘Yet.’ Vicary smiled briefly. ‘Not yet. Just needs one of your firm to do a deal for themselves. Like I said, just one conviction will get you a life stretch. I tell you, if I was one of your firm, and I thought you were going to topple, then I’d be squealing very loudly, very, very loudly. You can forget getting out in five years; career crims like you don’t get past the parole board.’
‘That’s coercion.’ Worth smelled of expensive aftershave.
‘It’s the truth.’ Vicary turned to Worth. ‘I am just doing Mr Curtis the favour I said I would do for him if he let me. Now, should he wish to turn Queen’s evidence. .’
‘Use your loaf,’ Yates sneered.
‘It depends how much you want to rescue,’ Vicary explained. ‘You see, it’s not just the loss of liberty. . you’ll be in high security, no soft category D for you. . Parkhurst, Durham, Peterhead. . right up there in Scotland, and in the far north of same. Porridge for breakfast and veggies which have had all the goodness boiled out of them for lunch, with a bit of meat. Same for supper. No women — I know how you like the ladies — and nothing to come out to.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A proceeds of crime order. Get a team of forensic accountants into your books, your computer database, and everything you cannot prove you came by legitimately can be seized: house, contents therein, cars, everything. The lot, the whole works. That’s how it works. You do twenty as a guest of Her Majesty, come out, fit as a fiddle after all those years of prison life and do you go back to your posh house in Virginia Water? No. . no, you don’t. You come out to a hostel for the homeless and destitute — Salvation Army living. They’re not in the
Curtis Yates’s pallor paled.
‘Of course you could avoid that. Jump before you’re pushed.’
‘I’ll still end up in the slammer.’
‘Yes. . yes, you will, but the difference is that if you jump, you jump into a safety net. A guilty plea will work towards a parole, but if you’re pushed, that can be messy. . you fall from a great height on to a hard surface.’
Yates remained silent.
‘So far we’ve chatted to Clive Sherwin and Gail Bowling. You’ve got good friends there, they didn’t tell us anything, but that’s only the first two, and you’ve got a lot of geezers working for you. We still want to talk to Rusher, but really it just needs one to see sense and you’re on your way to the Old Bailey.’ Vicary paused. ‘Go to the pub tonight.’
‘The pub?’
‘Yes, up the East End, with the villains, or wherever you sup in Virginia Water. Buy a beer and then look around you, and then think that you can’t take this for granted because it’s liberty. Think that it could be the last time you see the inside of an English pub again, and choose what you want to watch on the TV for the last time. . and retire for the night when you want to. . also for the last — well, maybe the last — time for twenty years, because tomorrow at seven a.m. I’ll be knocking on your door with a warrant for your arrest.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘Or the next day, or the day after that, but stop taking the good life for granted. We’re closing in on you, Curtis. You should think about working for yourself.’
SEVEN
The man let the phone ring twice before he picked it up.
‘Forensic laboratory, sir.’ The voice on the other end of the phone line was crisp, efficient.
‘Yes?’
‘Just to let you know beforehand that the DNA tests on the cigarette butts you sent came back negative. No record at all.’
‘I see.’
‘Just thought I’d let you know in advance. We’ll be faxing the report in an hour or two, once it’s been written up.’
‘OK,’ the man replied warmly, ‘appreciate the notice.’
He replaced the phone and returned his attention to his monthly statistical returns.
Penny Yewdall slept late. She woke and looked about her in the shadows and the gloom of the room in which the Welsh girl had been murdered — the room which was now her room. She felt isolated. Alone. Vulnerable. She said as loudly as she dared, ‘I am a copper. I am a copper. I am a damn good copper, police woman Yewdall of the Murder and Serious Crime Squad, New Scotland Yard.’ She rose and clawed on a few items of clothing — underwear, jeans, a tee shirt — and walked into the kitchen, where she found a nervous looking Billy Kemp, whom she’d met in passing, sitting at the table, occupying the same chair that Josie Pinder had occupied the previous morning, and, like Josie Pinder, he also drank a mug of tea and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette.
‘We have to stay in today, you and me.’ He spoke with a trembling voice.
‘Have to?’
‘Yes. The manager of WLM Rents called round earlier and told me that we have to stay in. You and me.’
‘Why?’ Penny Yewdall sank into a vacant chair at the table.
‘Dunno, but I think someone’s going to get a kicking.’
‘Oh. .’
‘And we’re going to watch.’
‘We. .?’ Yewdall’s voice failed her.
‘We. I’m in the same boat as you. I’m a gofer being trained up. Trained and tested. I’ve delivered a few packages, three in all.’
‘I delivered one — to an address in East Ham.’
‘Chaucer Road?’
‘Yes.’
‘Same as me. I don’t reckon it’s some big important address, they’re just testing us. They won’t let us go to really important addresses until we’re further in.’
‘I thought you were established. It was just an impression I had.’
‘Yes, I have been here a while. . just not getting anywhere with Yates. He’s still not certain of me. Have you had a slap yet?’
‘No.’
‘I have, Yates slapped me round the head and punched me on the nose. . just enough to make it bleed and said, “No one leaves me, remember that”.’ Billy Kemp paused and gulped some tea. ‘Then he sent a couple of guys to check on my home address in Norwich.’
‘Think they did the same to my old dad in Stoke.’
‘Yes, I think that he’s not checking on you so much as letting you know he can get to your kin if you do a moonlight.’
Yewdall gasped.
‘Well. . maybe he’s doing both. Checking on you and also letting you know he can hurt your family if you allow yourself to drop off his radar. I’m in too deep.’
‘Me too.’
‘What do I do? What do we do? That bitch upstairs, the butch lesbian, Sonya Clements, she told me that you only get to be a proper gofer, get paid and all that, once you’ve seen someone get a kicking. Then you’re in the firm. Bottom rung of the ladder, but you’re in. But you need to see what happens to someone who gets out of
