Dark Tides (13 page)

Sometimes you wonder what it is about the island that makes its inhabitants feel so secure. Naturally, the low crime rate is important, but there must be something else that reassures people on a subliminal level. Perhaps it’s the island’s geographic isolation. Or perhaps it’s the low population. Eighty thousand people really isn’t very many, and you can understand why most people would imagine that the vast majority of residents would be normal, law-abiding types. That doesn’t account for you, of course. But then, you could live in a densely populated area like London or New York and still be unique. On balance, you’re sure multiple factors play a role, but you also suspect it has something to do with habit, with laziness, with complacency.

Not that you’re complaining. The tendency islanders have to feel secure is very helpful to you. It might seem remarkable to anyone living elsewhere, but the truth is many people don’t lock their homes on the Isle of Man. Like, for instance, the target you’ve selected. Your target went out without securing their back door on several occasions last week. That was very convenient. It made it oh-so-simple for you to steal a set of car keys so that you could open the rear door of their vehicle just now and complete the two tasks you needed to complete.

The island’s low population also means that there are comparatively few potential witnesses. And people on the island don’t tend to be overly suspicious. So if anyone did happen to spot you as you raised the boot lid of your target’s car – not that you believe anyone has seen you, because you’ve been particularly careful today – you doubt very much that they’d feel compelled to investigate once the lid eased back down and you were no longer standing behind it.

The space you have available to you isn’t large. It’s dark and cramped and it smells of diesel and plastic. But that’s nothing you didn’t expect. It’s something you can easily endure. The only thing left to do now is wait and, really, nobody can deny that you’re an expert at that.

Nothing ever stayed still in Lord Street police station. People were always rushing around – officers, support staff, members of the public. Objects moved, too. If you managed to keep track of a pen or a desk chair or a computer mouse for two days straight, it was a miracle worth celebrating. It often felt as if the entire station was in perpetual motion. And sometimes, things collided. Like me, for example, and like DI Shimmin.

I stepped out of the female changing room just as Shimmin was striding along the corridor. I didn’t see him and he can’t have seen me. I was adjusting my hat, fiddling with a bobby pin, when he slammed into me from the side and I ricocheted away.

Shimmin swore and grabbed for my arm. He was a big man. Tall, with an ample gut. He was strong, too. Not because he was physically fit but because of his mass – his thick arms and big hands and natural brawn.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Lucky I didn’t flatten you, Cooper.’

He was still clutching my arm. It seemed to take him a while to notice. When he finally did let go, he stared at his open hand as if he was unsure what to do with it. My arm stung but I wasn’t about to rub the pain away. I ducked and gathered up my hat instead.

Shimmin’s face was flushed but that was nothing unusual. His complexion was ruddy, his cheeks and pug nose networked with broken veins. He carried a lot of weight in his bloated cheeks and jowly throat, and his eyes were set deep inside heavily pouched sockets. He often looked, to me at least, as if he was suffering from an extreme allergic reaction.

I guess some men would have tried to compensate in other ways but Shimmin never made any effort with his appearance. His grey hair was grown long over his ears, probably shorn by a backstreet barber every couple of months. His dark suit was worn shiny at the elbows, his shoes dirty and scuffed. His striped tie was knotted loosely around an open collar, the fabric stained with coffee or tea.

‘Ready for the, er, interview?’ His speech had a halting cadence – fast at the beginning of a sentence, tailing off towards the end. He also had a habit of making even the most straightforward of statements sound like questions. Or perhaps it was just me. Perhaps he felt awkward because I was a junior female officer in the process of applying to be part of his team.

‘Ready as I can be.’

‘Still keen then? I didn’t put you off?’

‘Afraid not, sir.’

He’d tried very hard to dissuade me. It was nothing personal and I was sure his motives had been genuine. Policing had changed on the island just as it had in the rest of the UK. These days, uniformed officers were valued every bit as much as CID. Some said even more. Fact was, there was a much better chance of promotion if I didn’t try to make the sideways move into becoming a detective.

Shimmin had mentioned all this when I’d approached him in his landfill of an office a couple of weeks back. Not that I didn’t know it already. But I’d listened and I’d nodded and I’d hummed and hawed where it seemed appropriate to do so. And then I’d ignored all his advice and applied for the post of detective constable anyway.

True, police work would never be my first passion, but I was smart and I was capable, and I knew now that if I was going to stay in the Manx Constabulary, then I wanted to work cases and solve mysteries. Of course, it wouldn’t take a visit to my head doctor to explain my evolving Nancy Drew complex. Anyone could figure out that my decision to apply to become a detective had something – maybe everything – to do with the unresolved mystery of what had happened to Mum. But that didn’t make it any less legitimate in my eyes, nor in Shimmin’s. He hadn’t worked the case when Mum vanished but he knew of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. He’d mentioned it to me once – a simple acknowledgement of what I must have been through as a child and the darkness my father must have endured – then never again. Since that time, he’d treated me no differently to anyone else on the force.

I owed him for that. Respected him, too. Plenty of my colleagues felt otherwise. Shimmin had a reputation as a shady operator. He got results, but there was talk of him taking justice into his own hands and bending the law for his friends. There were whispers, even, of bribes. I didn’t know if any of that was true but it had cost him all the same. With a different reputation he would surely have climbed higher up the ranks. But then, maybe he didn’t care about rumours. Maybe that was why I liked him so much.

‘Listen, Cooper.’ Shimmin winced and fiddled with his tie. ‘I know this is a rough day for you. Nobody would think any less of you if—’

‘Tell me about it,’ I cut in. ‘I’m still on attachment to the RPU. I have night duty with Hollis.’

I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders, trying to ignore the stab of disappointment in my chest. I’d never asked him for special favours. I didn’t want them now.

Shimmin considered me for a moment longer, as if debating whether to finish what he’d planned to say.

‘Christ.’ He raised his hand and set off along the corridor with the tails of his jacket trailing behind. ‘No wonder you want to join my team,’ he called back. ‘I wouldn’t wish a night in a patrol car with Hollis on my worst enemy.’

Your planning has been detailed but there are variables you can’t control. You always knew that would be the case and you were prepared to be flexible. Take, for instance, the golf bag in the boot of your target’s car. You’ve managed to push the bag away from you and roll on to your side so that the clubs aren’t jabbing into you, but you have less space than you anticipated. It’s hot, too. You didn’t expect temperature to be an issue in late October. You didn’t factor in the way your body heat would fill the cramped interior, how you’d begin to sweat. You would have dressed in lighter clothes if you’d known.

But you have your penlight. That was very sensible. It allows you to look down and spy the training shoes on your feet. The shoes are a size too big for you, which is not surprising, since they don’t belong to you. You took them from the back of the wardrobe in your target’s home last week. Reaching down awkwardly, you untie the laces and slip off the shoes and place them together beside the golf bag.

A faint muddy scent wafts up from the shoes. They smell that way because you walked across a sodden grass bank just behind where the car was parked before climbing into the boot. That was also deliberate. It was a necessary component of your plan. And while you don’t truly believe the police will go to the trouble of taking mud samples to try to establish where the substance came from – that’s something only a detailed planner like you would consider – you’re pleased with the level of care you’ve taken.

The one thing that bothers you is the organic evidence you’ll leave in the boot. You’re wearing plastic gloves but you’ll be shedding hairs and skin cells and clothing fibres. You thought about that, too, but decided it was unavoidable. The extreme unlikelihood of anyone trawling the boot for your DNA strikes you as an acceptable risk. But it’s a risk you don’t like. You’re determined to leave behind as little evidence as possible – except for the evidence you intend to leave, which is a separate matter entirely – and it’s for this reason that you’re very thirsty now, because you weren’t prepared to bring a drink with you just in case you spilled it.

But despite all your planning, despite your care, you can’t deny that the wait and the confinement and the heat and the stale air and your thirst are unpleasant. So it’s a relief when you hear footsteps approaching, followed by the clunk of the driver’s door and the sudden slump of the suspension as your target climbs in behind the wheel. There’s the swish of a seatbelt and the click of the buckle being secured. Then a key turns in the ignition, the engine ignites, the chassis hums and vibrates, and the rear light cluster behind your head bathes your coffin-like surroundings in a dim red tinge.

I had a gun in my hand and I was about to shoot at a vehicle. The vehicle was approaching from beyond a snaking curve in the road. I could hear the hum of its engine and see the wash of its headlamps creeping up the tall, rain-blurred trees in the distance.

It was full dark outside, after ten o’clock at night, and it had been drizzling throughout most of the evening until a little under thirty minutes ago. The tarmac was slick and waxy and I could smell the wetness all around me. The radio had forecast heavy showers for later in the night and a mass of bruised clouds had been pressing down from above for hours now, brimming with intent. The streets were empty. Earlier, I’d seen no more than a few kids shuffling about in sodden costumes, their heads bowed, the plastic bags of sweets they were carrying stretched thin and dripping. It didn’t seem as if Hop-tu-naa had been much fun this year.

I was standing at the edge of the cone of light being cast downwards by a streetlamp, wearing my reflective uniform jacket over my stab vest. The oncoming driver would see me soon enough, assuming they were taking care and paying attention. And I liked to play fair. I liked to be reasonable. But the outcome could be messy if the driver was going too fast. Bad for them. Bad for me, too. There’d be a lot of paperwork involved. A fine, probably. And sometimes, in extreme circumstances, there might be an arrest, a prosecution, even a jail term.

Union Mills was a built-up area. I was positioned just along from the post office, opposite a small independent petrol station. There was a 30 mph speed limit in force. If the driver was obeying the law, it would be an easy enough shot.

The engine note grew deeper. The headlamps bounced up into the clammy dark, then swooped back down as the vehicle came round the sloping corner. It plunged into the second curve and its dipped beams swung towards my waist, glittering off the blacktop. The pearly light bloomed in my face and I squinted against the dazzle.

I could tell right away that the driver was going too fast. The vehicle drifted out towards the centre line, tyres scrabbling on the satiny surface, and I readied myself to shoot a fraction earlier than I’d planned.

I stared hard across the road towards the brightly lit petrol station and waited for the vehicle’s grille to jab into the corner of my field of vision. I squeezed down on the trigger and hit it plumb in the middle of the front wing.

The readout flashed red on my speed gun. Forty-eight mph.

The driver was a blonde woman. In that very first instant, I thought it might be Rachel. But the woman was older. She was holding a mobile phone up to her ear and when she saw me – way too late – she dropped the device.

The vehicle buzzed past. Its brake lights bloomed red, lighting up the Mercedes badge on the rear. But the driver didn’t stop. She was just moderating her speed. Trying to make amends.

Try next time, I thought, and turned to wave at Hollis. But he was already standing half out of the driver’s door of our patrol car, a silver Ford Focus with yellow-on-blue Battenberg markings on the sides. He was yelling something that I couldn’t hear over the hum of the Mercedes engine and the swish of its tyres. He beckoned me towards him, the reflective strips on his black nylon jacket glinting in the dark, and I started to run.

You’ve had to brace yourself with your arms and legs pressed hard against the interior of the boot. It’s important you don’t make any noise, and just at the moment, that’s a challenge. There’s been a lot of hard braking and sharp acceleration. There’s been a huge amount of inertia from fast corners and unexpected bumps in the road. But you know the route your target will take. You know that once your target has driven out of Douglas, into the countryside, the stop-start acceleration and sudden lurches will smooth out. Plus, your target has the car stereo turned up very loud, tuned to a radio station playing Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’. Right now it’s one of the best tracks you’ve ever heard because it’s going to mask any unintended sounds you make.

So you wait. You keep yourself rigid. You try very hard to plot the strange movements of the car against the route you have mapped out in your mind. It’s a difficult task. You’re travelling blind and you know you’re likely to make a mistake. The important thing is not to move too soon, so even when you think you’re out of town, even when you’re sure that the feedback through the chassis and the hissing tyres tells you that you’re close to where you need to be, you hold on for just a little longer.

Then, at last, you ease the tension in your limbs and you roll towards the golf bag. You can’t use your torch now, so in the ambient red light from just behind you, you press very gently against the rear of the seat nearest to your head. The seats in the back of your target’s car are arranged in a 60/40 split. The portion you’re pushing on accounts for 60 per cent of the rear bench. It’s on the side of the car located immediately behind the driver. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t be able to open it from your current position, but releasing the necessary catch is one of the tasks you completed when you ducked inside the back of the car before climbing into the boot.

You ease the seat forwards by a fraction and Del Rey’s vocals sweep in. You glance out of the rear window, seeing only darkness and streaming beads of rain against the glass. There are no streetlamps. No passing vehicles. You’re no longer in town.

This is it, you tell yourself. This is the moment. And as you feel the first heady spike of adrenaline, the sudden lurch and thump of your heart, you push the seatback flat and scramble through into the darkened cabin and surprise yourself by screaming very loud as you surge up and wrap your arms around your target’s throat.