Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2) (15 page)

In an elegant Victorian building overlooking the well-manicured gardens of Montpelier Crescent in the Seven Dials district of Brighton, DI Henderson lived in a two-bedroomed flat on the top floor. Archie didn’t mind the climb as he was as fit as a flea, but it exhausted his elder brother who arrived a few seconds later and out of breath.

‘You need to get fitter, man,’ Archie said. ‘Join a gym or go out running or something.’

‘I go out running,’ he said as he put the key in the lock and opened the door, ‘but when I’m working on a big case like this one, I end up spending all my time at work.’

‘If you can’t get out as much, why don’t you set up a home gym?’

‘Now there’s a good idea, but where would you and my other visitors sleep?’

‘I take it from that remark, I’m in the spare room again?’

‘Just because you’re risking life and limb over there in a far-flung section of the globe, doesn’t entitle you to the best bed. Call it big brother privilege.’

‘Spare bed it is. I’ve slept in worse, a lot worse if I’m honest.’

He left Archie watching television with a four-pack of beer and a chicken curry they’d bought earlier and drove to John Street. It could be a peculiar place to walk into at any time of the day, as it was the main police station for Brighton and Hove, a city of more than two hundred and fifty thousand souls, a number that could double during summer months and bank holidays.

Often in the afternoon, there would be a steady stream of visitors coming through the door with all manner of queries and complaints and by midnight, and fortified with alcohol, it could be bedlam with much shouting, arm waving, and the occasional punch-up.

Tonight, a large group of elderly tourists were surrounding the desk and blocking the way forward, the contents of a tour bus, which had been in collision with a lorry. He stood taller than many of the old biddies and the desk sergeant Alex Patterson soon spotted him and waved him over.

‘Bloody mayhem in here,’ he said, raising his voice above the noise. ‘I was hoping for a quiet night so I could watch the Albion’s match on the portable that we’ve got in the back. It’s the first time they’ve been on the box this year and the way they’re bloody playing, it might be their last.’

‘You’d be putting yourself through purgatory if the match I saw a couple of weeks back was anything to go by. Can I see the prisoner?’

‘I’ll call PC Carter, he brought him in.’

The desk sergeant was talking to Henderson over the ranting of an elderly lady with a fine mop of curly grey hair, who was demanding better treatment for her and her husband, as they were law-abiding citizens and had contributed to taxes and National Insurance all their lives.

‘Madam,’ Patterson said, trying to control his temper as he picked up the phone. ‘I’ll deal with you in a minute. I know you’ve been hanging around here for ages, but I said I’ll deal with it. Now please let me make this phone call.’

Henderson stepped back and let them get on with it. He found it hard to ignore the animated conversations and the variety of expressions on display, ranging from frantic anxiety, worried they would be forced to sleep on the floor of the police station and miss their favourite soaps on television, to the laid-back cool, whose only concern was what time the bar in the hotel closed and whether they would be offered room service.

‘Hello there, DI Henderson?’

He turned in the direction of the voice. He saw a young face with a mop of dark brown hair and two rows of gleaming choppers that had never enjoyed the delights of filling-inducing Brighton Rock, or had been on the receiving end of a kick or a punch from an aggressive drunk.

He said something that Henderson couldn’t hear and when he started walking towards a set of double doors, the DI followed.

‘That's better,’ Carter said when the doors were closed and the noise level diminished below ear-splitting. ‘What a commotion out there, I couldn’t hear myself think.’ He thrust out a hand. ‘PC Bob Carter.’

‘DI Angus Henderson. Good to meet you, PC Carter.’

They walked towards the interview rooms.

‘What can you tell me about this guy you picked up?’

‘His name is Thomas Harding. Have you heard the name before?’

‘No, should I have?’

‘The Harding family are notorious around Brighton for drinking and fighting, and the younger ones like Tom here, are into drugs. They’re a right bad lot and he’s as bad as the rest of them with an arrest sheet as long as a snake, and he’s still only twenty-six. Shall we go in?’

Sitting on the other side of the scratched table inside Interview Room Three was a heavy-set bloke with a round face and scruffy black hair, a vain attempt to hide sticking-out ears. He wore a practiced scowl, the like of which Willem Dafoe or Mark Wahlberg would do well to emulate if they wanted to receive another Oscar nomination; but to his surprise, no brief.

This could only mean one of two things, either Harding wasn't a bright lad and didn’t realise the mess he was in, or he was confident of getting out and didn’t need one. Based on what PC Carter had told him, it was possible he was a bit light in the brain cells department but his body language exuded the confidence and cockiness of man who knew exactly what he was doing.

‘Tom,’ Carter said, ‘this is Detective Inspector Henderson, the Senior Investigating Officer on the car-thieving case we were talking about earlier.’

‘Hello Tom,’ Henderson said, ‘how are you?’

‘I’m pleased to see you mate, providing you can get me out of this fucking place. These bastards are saying they’re gonna send me down for a five stretch.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what you know about the car thieving gang,’ Henderson said, ‘and we’ll see what we can do about the charges?’

He laughed, although it sounded more like a sneer. ‘Pull the other one mate. I’ve been here before and I know how this works. We’ll play it my way. You give me what I want and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’

‘What are the charges against Mr Harding, PC Carter?’

‘Assault and battery, possession of a knife, breaking bail conditions.’

‘You knocked a taxi driver unconscious Tom,’ Henderson said, ‘because he wouldn’t take you home and you did it while you were out on bail for another serious assault. Possession of a knife is an automatic five-stretch in the eyes of many judges.’

He folded his arms and grunted. It irritated even the most hardened criminals when the crimes they were responsible for were laid out in front of them. Not that they saw them as crimes, more like mistakes which could cost them jail-time or involve big fines that might eat into their illegal gains.

‘No court is going to look at this lot favourably,’ Henderson continued, ‘they’ll take one look at you and see a violent thug who needs to be locked up.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Let’s assess the value of your information. First of all, let’s see if we’re talking about the same car-thieving gang.’

‘Course it’s the same fucking gang. It’s the fuckers who are stealing all the expensive motors like Ferraris and Porsches, the ones smashing the doors with sledgehammers, and beating up the people inside. Ring any bells?’

‘I have to admit; it does sound like the gang I’m after. What do you know about them?’

Harding shuffled in the seat. It was difficult for cons to rat on one another but in the end, self-interest would prevail. ‘I know one of the guys in the gang and the way he tells it, he’s the leader.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Ha, good try,’ he said pointing a finger at him. ‘You can’t trick me so easy, no fucking way.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘I live in Whitehawk, right and he comes down to Brighton now and again to see this bird. We got talking and now he looks me up whenever he’s in town.’

‘He admitted to you that he nicks expensive cars?’

‘Don’t be a fucking idiot. We told him about the sort of things we’re involved in and he told us what he does, fair trade. You never know, we might do some business together in the future.’

‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it, you won’t. How does this car nicking operation work? What do they do with the cars they nick?’

‘They used to sell ‘em to this guy in Hackney for a grand a pop but according to him, you lot closed it down.’

He went on to describe how a crash recovery firm in Holland would contact them with details of up-market write offs, recovered from motorway crashes across Central Europe and the gang would be instructed to nick the same car. This level of detail had not been released to the media and it wouldn’t be until the trial, which meant Harding, probably for the first time in his short, offence-laden life, was telling the truth.

Henderson wrote all the charges against him on a piece of paper and scored out each one except ‘assault,’ and slid it over to PC Carter. To his surprise, as he expected more resistance, he put a tick against it. Clearly the young man realised the importance of the information without having it explained to him.

‘PC Carter here will reduce the charges against you to one of common assault, for which you would normally receive a community sentence, but you’ll have to take your chances with the magistrate about breaking the terms of your bail. There’s nothing we can do for you there.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Fair do’s, it’s a deal.’

‘Ok, what’s this guy’s name?’

‘He’s one of your countrymen, in point of fact, a Glasgow fella by the name of Rab McGovern.’

Henderson thought for a moment, but it wasn’t a name he recognised. While working for Strathclyde Police, he came into contact with numerous villains in Glasgow but he had been away from the place for four years and by now, many young guns would have moved up to replace the old timers. In any case, it was a city of about a million people and with best will in the world, he couldn’t know or remember them all.

‘Like I said, he comes down to Brighton now and again to see this bird who lives on the Whitehawk Road.’

‘When do you expect to see him again?’

‘He’s there now.’

For the second time in a month, DI Henderson was preparing to go out on a raid. On this occasion, there were no armed cops and a former para leading from the front, only him, DS Walters and six heavily clobbered individuals. He would have liked to have had one or two more, but with a similar operation going on in Worthing, he was lucky to have any.

His boss, Chief Inspector Steve Harris was jubilant when he called him last night and told him about Harding's confession and the fingering of Rab McGovern. However, his bonhomie did not extend to the CI showing up for the briefing at five-thirty this morning, as the man was fearful of turning forty and needed all the beauty sleep he could get.

It was a positive briefing, although there were plenty of yawns due to the early start, but the promise of a full cooked breakfast when they returned, kept everything up-beat. Yet again, he had been in a quandary about using an armed response team but in the end, as the gang had never used guns, it was decided for him. Several police forces who had deployed firearms in the past, were now in the middle of investigations, high profile public enquiries, and in one instance, a court case after the death of a suspect. Even though this wasn’t far from his mind when making the decision, operational considerations won out.

McGovern’s piece of seaside candyfloss, Sarah Benson, lived on the top floor of a block of flats in Whitehawk Road. In terms of a raid, it looked like a good location as it limited McGovern’s avenues of escape, but it had the disadvantage of providing the team with only one point of entry. At the risk of sounding choosey, he preferred a house with a back and front door, as even though there were more exits, it restricted the area of activity, giving less opportunity for the inquisitive kid next door to be hit by ‘collateral damage,’ as Archie would call it, but in the DI’s world this was not an artillery shell or a bullet, but a flying bottle or a stray fist.

When first told of McGovern’s name, he didn’t recognise it, despite it being a common surname north of the border but it wasn’t until he searched the Police National Computer that the realisation hit him. A younger and perhaps more healthy Angus Henderson nicked him while working for the Football Intelligence Unit as McGovern had been spotted watching a football game at Parkhead, the home of Glasgow Celtic, while banned from doing so by the courts. No wonder they banned him, as he was an archetypal football thug, running all the way from his Doc Martins, red braces, severe crew cut, to the large ‘no surrender’ tattoo covering most of one arm.

The second time he ran into McGovern was a couple of years later when Henderson was working for the Strathclyde Drugs Squad. McGovern had become an enforcer for a well-known Glasgow drug dealer by the name of Jimmy Banks and contrary to the rules of employment in his chosen profession, employees were banned from setting up on their own account.

It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do. Banks was nothing but a bigger and more violent version of his protégé and thought nothing of slashing faces with open razors or sticking a stiletto blade in someone’s gut, wounds in themselves that were not life threatening, but served as a permanent reminder of the person they once crossed.

The last he’d heard, McGovern was on the run from Banks after his little slice of private enterprise had been discovered. Word on the street, suggested Banks was incandescent with rage at the insolence of the little rat, one he lifted out the gutter and earmarked for bigger things, for having the temerity to bite the hand that once fed him. He threatened that whenever he caught up with him again, he would blow off both kneecaps with a hollow nosed bullet and throw acid in his face, crippling injuries that even titanium replacements and years of plastic surgery could not hope to rectify.

The raid team parked around the corner from Sarah Benson’s flat and decamped from their vehicles. Henderson pressed the buzzer of an apartment on the ground floor, but it took an age for a grumpy old bugger with no love of the police, to reach for his intercom button and open the communal door. They piled upstairs, the semblance of stealth and secrecy all but destroyed as heavy shields and body armour clanked and scraped along the walls of the narrow staircase, making more noise than an army of feral kids.

Without too much ceremony, the door banger moved into position in front of the door and three strikes later, they were inside. Three men turned right into what looked like the main bedroom while the rest swept through the other rooms as fast as the impediment of heavy clothing would allow.

Henderson walked into the bedroom and his ears were immediately assaulted by an expletive-loaded exchange between the commander of the assault team, demanding to know where McGovern was, and a young woman. She was wearing no more than a see-through negligee but incandescent with rage and shouting something along the lines of, ‘what the fuck are you fucking people doing in my fucking house?’ Charming, I’m sure.

Even from a cursory glance, it didn't take the skills of a detective to deduce that two people had been sleeping in the double bed and unless McGovern was hiding under the bed or cowering in the wardrobe, places where the team were checking now, he wasn’t here.

‘Sir?’

Henderson backed out into the hall and at the door of the lounge, one of the lads was beckoning him forward.

‘I think he might have scarpered through here,’ he said pointing to an open patio door leading to a small balcony at the rear of the flat.

‘How, we’re three floors up?’ he said as he strode over to take a look. He was half-expecting to see a blood-splattered body lying on the ground below but instead, caught a glimpse of a figure disappearing around the corner of the building.

It would be incongruous to call it a balcony as he had seen bigger coffee tables, with only enough room to position three or four plant pots. In any case, the view it provided over the backs of houses and rubbish strewn rear gardens was another good reason for the occupants to stay indoors.

‘Help me up,’ he said to the copper. He couldn’t be sure for all the protective gear hiding his face, but it looked like PC Fenwick.

Henderson stood on the balcony railings for a couple of seconds with one hand on the wall to steady himself, and leaned over to grasp the handrail of the fire escape with the other hand. He manoeuvred his right leg over to a rung, before shifting his weight towards the fire escape and then bringing over his other leg. It was a bit tricky to him and he wondered how a little old lady or someone with a fear of heights would manage it, but he guessed with flames licking at the bottom of their nightdresses, people were capable of doing extraordinary things.

Hoping his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him when he saw the figure legging it around the base of the flats, he descended. If not, McGovern would be standing on the roof laughing his head off at the stupidity of the dozy cops.

He jumped the short distance from the ladder to the ground and ran towards Whitehawk Road. It didn’t take long to spot McGovern, as there weren’t many people running around in their pyjamas at six o’clock in the morning. It was a good job he didn’t sleep in the buff or at this moment Lewes Control would be inundated with many calls from alarmed residents as they opened their curtains.

His pyjamas were not the long, stripy cotton type, shame, as that would have made him look like the man he was, an escaped prisoner. It was shorts and t-shirt, ‘Loungewear’ as the marketing gurus at M&S called it and from a distance, resembling loose-fitting running gear but the illusion was spoiled as he wasn’t wearing any shoes. Running barefoot might be de rigueur on the sun-soaked beaches of Jamaica or Hawaii, but it was plain stupidity on rain-streaked pavements in Brighton on a chilly May morning.

Henderson sprinted after him and as he did so, pulled out his radio. ‘Suspect running south, along Whitehawk Road. All cars, all cars.’

McGovern was running past the Whitehawk Inn when he suddenly pulled up, holding his left leg as if he had just stepped on a piece of broken glass or a sharp stone. He glanced back to see Henderson running towards him, some two hundred yards behind and realising he couldn’t outrun him now, limped into a large building next door, the Whitehawk Bus Depot.

Henderson arrived at the entrance a minute or so later and stopped running and peered inside. It was a large and gloomy cavernous place, designed to hold a couple of double-decker buses at the same time but at the moment it was empty; no buses, no passengers, no mechanics. The workers were probably taking advantage of a lull in operations to have breakfast or perhaps they hadn’t started work yet, or keeping well out of the way of the strange bloke who had run into their place wearing only his jim-jams, in case he was an escaped nutter or a student prank.

It was dull inside, partly the result of the weather, a cloudy morning with no sign of the sun, but also because it was a large building without many windows. The exception was the far end of the building, where light was pouring in through a second entrance, for buses to come in one way and exit the other. He jogged towards it, his head turning left and right, looking for the fugitive.

When he reached the end of the garage he walked outside, wary of McGovern hiding behind a wall, waiting for his pursuer to emerge. He wasn’t there and he couldn’t see him up or down Henley Road. This could only mean one thing, he was still inside the garage. He turned and retraced his steps.

He walked through the centre of the building slowly, stopping to peer into dark corners behind pillars or the gloomy spaces at the side body of panels or giant tyres, his senses tuned for any extraneous noise. Suddenly, a figure appeared in his peripheral vision. He turned to see McGovern running towards him brandishing an enormous bus wrench.

Before he could get out of the way, he swung it, whacking his shoulder and knocking him to the ground. His shoulder felt on fire and he moved a hand to grip it but when he looked up, McGovern was coming towards him, ready to take another swing.

This time, the crazy bastard raised the wrench above his head, intent on smashing the DI’s brains to a pulp, but before it struck, Henderson rolled away. The noise of metal striking concrete filled the silent air, jarring the slim frame of McGovern, and Henderson used the few seconds gained, to get to his feet and scramble towards a rack of tools.

He ignored the club hammer, which would make been a great weapon if only he could swing it, and instead selected the claw hammer. McGovern walked towards him, the wrench swinging at his side.

‘C’mon copper,’ he said, raising his hand in a ‘come here’ gesture, ‘fancy your chances, dae ye?’

‘Give it up McGovern, you’re beat.’

‘I’m beat am I? Why don’t you try and prove it, then?’ He held the heavy wrench in two hands, a slugger heading up to the plate, and moved closer. ‘You’re gonna die here mate, because see me, I’m no’ going back to chokey, no fucking way.’

He lifted the wrench and swung it behind him, in readiness for making that final, deadly blow.

At the same time, the figure of DS Walters appeared in silhouette at the entrance to the garage. ‘Stop! Police!’ she shouted.

McGovern glanced round. Henderson leapt forward with the hammer and brought it down hard on McGovern’s hand, right at the point where he was holding the wrench, in what McGovern’s old drug dealer boss Jimmy Banks would have called a metal sandwich.

The garage resounded with an animalistic howl, a sound to scare the living daylights out of the fiercest Rottweiler, and the wrench fell to the floor with a resounding clang. McGovern bent double, clutching his injured hand but before he could recover and do any more damage, Henderson punched him in the gut and threw him to the floor. Despite much screeching about broken fingers and police brutality, no sympathy was in evidence as he slapped on handcuffs and hauled him to his feet.