Garston spotted some nasty looking stains on the bedsheet, but he didn’t say anything and Winston was too ill to even notice. As they covered him in a thin, grimy quilt, his feet and ankles protruded beyond the mattress and hung uncomfortably over the end of the bed.
When Angela peeled back his dressing, she was shocked to see that only about a third of his stitches remained intact. The rest had popped, and the inflamed wound had already started to leak.
Leaving Winston to rest, the others retired to the living room. Rodent was given an impromptu shopping list and sent out to get some supplies, including paracetamol and fresh bandages from a nearby chemist in Barking Road.
When Rodent returned, about forty minutes later, Angela was given the unpleasant task of washing the wound with warm salt water and then changing the dressing. She applied two whole packets of steri strips, but most of them quickly came undone.
Winston complained throughout, and he threatened to hit her more than once if she didn’t start taking greater care.
The chemist had advised Rodent that if the patient was in considerable pain, he could alternate between paracetamol and ibuprofen, and that would allow him to take pain medication every two hours.
When Angela had finally finished administering to Winston’s needs, Garston instructed Rodent to give her have a wrap of Brown as a reward. She hungrily snatched it from his hand and retreated to the bathroom to shoot up.
After injecting the smack, Angela returned to the living room and crashed out on the imitation leather sofa. Before long, she had slipped into a fitful slumber.
While Rodent put the kettle on, Garston turned on the TV. To his horror, the breakout was plastered all over the news. As he watched, the screen filled with a custody record photo of Claude Winston, taken when he was charged with the two attempted murders back in November. The usual ‘this man is armed and extremely dangerous, and should not be approached by the public’ rhetoric was quoted by the newsreader.
Ignoring Angela’s snoring, Garston buried his head in his hands and asked himself: what the fuck was Claude thinking? How could his barbaric uncle have been stupid enough to think he’d get away with killing a defenceless cop in cold blood.
If the bloodthirsty idiot had just left everything to him, they would all be safely ensconced in a remote little Sussex cottage right now, chilling out as they waited for their contact to come and collect Winston for his night-time jaunt across the channel. Once in France, he would have been free to jump on a plane to Jamaica and disappear forever.
Hopefully, Garston could still make that happen. While Rodent had been out shopping, he’d spoken to his fisherman contact. The man was still willing to help, but he was now demanding more money. Winston wouldn’t be fit to travel for a few days, and they had agreed to leave the passage across the channel until the end of the week. Until then, they would rest up here and let Winston recover.
Logistically, now that Winston was public enemy number one, and his ugly mug was being plastered all over the television, it was going to be much harder to move him. The trip to the coast would have to be made under the cover of darkness, and he would have to hide Claude away in the back of a van.
By tomorrow, the story would be all over the papers and everyone would know what his stupid thug of an uncle looked like. Garston considered asking Claude to chop off his precious trademark dreads. That would make him marginally less conspicuous. Somehow, though, he just couldn’t see the cantankerous bastard agreeing to that.
As much as he hated the grubby little flat, Garston didn’t feel that he could trust either Angela or Rodent to take care of Winston without supervision, so he resigned himself to staying there with them, at least for the first night.
His mind turned to Errol. He’d tried calling him, but the idiot’s phone just rang until the answerphone kicked in. Then he’d made the mistake of ringing Errol’s other half, Sonia – a brassy woman with an attitude to match – only to have the stroppy fat bitch give him a massive ear-bashing, ranting that she hadn’t heard from Errol all day and promising that he was in big trouble when he finally showed up.
There had been a worrying segment on the news about a man being shot and seriously injured by police following an armed incident in East India Dock Road, but they hadn’t revealed anything about the man’s colour or identity. Nor had they disclosed any further information about the incident.
Surely, that couldn’t be anything to do with Errol – could it?
Chapter 13
Tuesday 11th January 2000
The briefing in the conference room at Arbour Square was due to kick off at eight o'clock sharp, and Jack only made it with a couple of minutes to spare.
The room was crammed full of people when he entered, and although he knew most of them, there were a few that he didn’t recognise. He assumed they were detectives drafted in from the host borough to assist with the enquiry. It wasn’t uncommon for AMIP to do that, especially with a major enquiry like this one.
At the front of the room, five chairs had been arranged to face the assembled officers. Quinlan sat front and centre, nervously adjusting the Joe Ninety spectacles that gave him such a professorial look. Nearer to fifty than forty, there wasn’t a single strand of grey visible in Quinlan’s shiny mop of black hair, which made Jack wonder if he secretly dyed it to keep it that way.
The matronly figure of DI Carol Keaton and DS Susie Sergeant occupied the two seats to his left, and DCS George Holland sat on his right,
