A Time For Justice (45 page)

Tommo was sitting in the Bucar, chain-smoking, eating a
hamburger and sipping a coffee, all at the same time, whilst
listening to a cassette which blared country music out
deafeningly.

Kovaks slid in beside him. ‘You’re a slob,’ he
observed.

Tommo screwed up his hamburger wrapper and tossed it out of
the window. ‘Thought you said you’d only be a coupla
minutes?’

‘
Sorry,’ said Kovaks, offering no explanation.

‘
So was she worth it?’

Kovaks stiffened. ‘Tommo, just shut the fuck up and drive. As
I told you, it’s my sister. She’s gotta few domestic problems and
she’s holed up there to get her head together.’

‘
My ass,’ snorted Tommo with a belch. He reversed the car out
of its parking space and hit the road. ‘There was a radio call for
ya, by the way.’

‘
What did it say?’

‘
Dunno. I said you’d radio in when you’d finished fucking your
little sister. I said you’d be about two minutes.’ He cracked up
with laughter.

‘
Don’t push it, Tommo,’ warned Kovaks. He reached for the
cassette player and switched off Dwight Yoakam. Then he called
in.

The radio operator was a sexy-voiced Texan lady.

‘
Yeah, Joe, urgent call came in for ya, ‘bout ten minutes ago.
Caller said he’d call ‘gain exactly on ten-thirty.’

‘
Who was it?’

‘
Don’t rightly know. Refused all details - but he sounded
scared. Thought I recognised the voice, but can’t place
it.’

‘
Received,’ said Kovaks. ‘I’m on my way in.’

‘
You dickin’ that piece of ass too?’ Tommo asked with a leer.
Kovaks gritted his teeth and decided to ask for another partner
until Karl Donaldson came back from England.

‘
Why the hell did they go via Galgate anyway?’ Henry
asked.

FB, pale, shaken, said, ‘It was the Chief’s suggestion. We had
a meeting about it yesterday and we worked out the best route with
the driver of the lead car.’

‘
But surely it would have made more sense to get on the
motorway north of Lancaster? It’s more direct. No winding, narrow
roads. No towns to negotiate...’

‘
The Chief’s argument was that if there was going to be any
sort of attempt, they’d expect us to go that way. Going via Galgate
was the less likely option, therefore safer.’

‘
It was a fucking stupid decision,’ said Henry.

They were both sitting in the back of a traffic car which was
speeding them to the scene.

‘
Not only that,’ persisted Henry, ‘whoever sprung the bastard
was
expecting
the
escort to go through Galgate. They were all set up and ready. They
weren’t just hanging about on the off-chance. Something’s not right
here.’

‘
I know,’ said FB with a heavy sigh.

‘
Who actually knew that the escort would be taking that
route?’

‘
Me, ACC Warner - Jack Crosby’s replacement, the driver of the
lead car, and the Chief Constable. We were the only ones at the
meeting yesterday. The idea was that everyone else involved - the
rest of the officers on the escort and the ones manning points -
would get about fifteen minutes’ notice just before the escort set
off from prison.’

‘
Quarter of an hour,’ mused Henry. ‘Not long enough to put
that sort of ambush operation into effect. Which 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 her fault he died. It was his
own.’

‘
Hm,’ snuffled FB, unimpressed.

‘
And she nearly caught Hinksman last time. If she’d got the
support she deserved, he would have been caught much sooner and
maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t have this...’ Henry let his words
sink in.

FB put his head to one side and said, ‘You’ve changed your
tune about her, haven’t you? Don’t forget, she disciplined you and
kicked you off the initial enquiry.’

‘
I don’t mind learning things about people,’ Henry admitted.
‘She knows as much as anybody about Hinksman, and Karl Donaldson is
encyclopaedic. Let me have them. Give them a chance.’

FB nodded impatiently. ‘OK, OK, I haven’t the time to argue -
but you keep me informed of every move you make, every breath you
take... ‘

‘
Don’t tell me,’ said Henry. ‘You’ll be watching
me.’

‘
Too fucking right I will.’

‘
Are you DS Christie?’ A uniformed Constable had sidled up
next to Henry.

‘
Yes.

‘
There’s a message for you from the hospital. The PC who was
shot in the guts has asked to see you. I’ve been told to pass on
the message urgently. Apparently he doesn’t have much time
left.’

August stood by one of the screens which protected the scene
from onlookers. He was hot and sticky and worried.

I’ve really done it now, he thought. Blood on my hands.
Innocent men mown down like rats because of me. Because I was
desperate to protect a career and a reputation. Everything gone
through one lousy night with a whore. And I walked right into it,
eyes closed, cock erect. What a stupid fucking bastard I
am.

August looked at the driver of one of the cars, still slumped
across the steering wheel. Part of the side of his face was
missing, but his eyes were intact, wide open and staring
accusingly. Right at August. He tore his gaze away with a little
whimper.