False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) (31 page)

“Have you ever lost someone, Detective?” he voiced his feelings.

Steel clenched a gloved fist as the memories started to come back—he could almost smell the gunpowder in the air on the day it all happened. Remembered the faint cry from his mother before she was taken. Then his eyes blurred as he could see his wife, her beautiful pale skin glistening in the sunlight of a cloudless summer’s day.

He wanted to reach out to touch her once more but the image grew dark and her eyes clouded over. Steel stumbled backwards slightly as he crashed back to reality. His hand was slightly outstretched, as if to grasp something.

Steel gathered his wits and pulled his arm back to his side. He noticed from the reflection in the window that Tooms was staring at him, puzzled at the display.

“Yes, my w...world was taken from me many years ago,” he answered the judge’s husband truthfully. Mathews could sense the man’s pain was possibly far worse than his own, and for a moment he almost felt grateful that someone was more bereft than he was.

“What do you need, Detective?” Mathews asked.

Steel pointed a thumb backwards towards the picture over the fireplace that he had noticed on entering the room.

“We need to see the contents of your wife’s safe.”

The club was in
partial darkness as DC had only left a few lights on. He had closed the club forthe night, even though Tyrell had said not to. However, DC figured that a fire fight and people dying would be bad for business.

No, it was easier to put a sign on the door saying it was closed because of a private party which they catered for from time to time. The clubbers didn’t mind, as he would have a ‘happy hour’ the next day to make up for it.

A long mirrored corridor brought the guests from the paying booth to the main dance floor. The nightclub was large with a huge bar that stretched along the left wall, and this had blue neon lights on the front and mirrors on the back wall. An assortment of different bottled spirits and liquors sat on glass shelving which filled the back wall and almost covered the mirrored wall space. The dance area was a glass floor that resembled something from the seventies, with its colour-changing panels. The seating area surrounded the dance floor like a coliseum, and the DJ booth, far at the back on the right-hand wall, sat high above, like a preacher’s pulpit, facing the bar. High above it all, heavy metal trusses held the lighting and speakers firmly in place.

Darius looked at his watch. It was at least an hour since they had entered the club and he was getting anxious.

“Okay, Tyrell, what now?” Darius grunted, still not convinced that bringing the teacher back with them was a brilliant idea.

“We lay low for a while,” Tyrell explained as he stood behind the bar and racked up some shot glasses. “We have another safe house. You’ll like this one, it’s out of town, in a quiet place. We bide our time, wait for things to cool down. We got money, passports and a plane out of here. All we need now is Lady Luck.”

“Sorry, boys, looks like you’re fresh out of that one.”

Everyone spun around to see McCall, Agent Lloyd and Tony, walking in with armoured vests on and their weapons drawn. McCall ushered Tyrell to get from behind the bar by waving her custom Glock towards the others.

“Okay, hands up where we can see them!” she instructed.

The four men raised them high, while Darius shot a distasteful look at Brian.

“This is all your goddam fault, man!” he growled, but Armstrong said nothing.

McCall walked over to Brian while the others covered her. Tony was holding his 12-gauge combat M870 shotgun aimed at them, while Lloyd used her 9mm Sig to do the same.

“Brian Armstrong, you are under arrest for murder and escaping police custody,” McCall said. She would read him his rights later when there was less of a crowd. She could not believe the charges herself but all the evidence pointed to him.

“I guess you know I am being set up, Detective?” Armstrong said. “What am I saying? Of course you do. You’re with
them
.”

McCall said nothing, she just used the handcuffs she’d taken earlier from Tony and Agent Lloyd to secure everyone’s hands. Once they were in the cuffs, McCall was able to breathe easily again, for she had been nervously anticipating trouble.

“Detective, you called for backup?”

Sam McCall looked over to see the newcomers, as her two colleagues were walking back towards her. Out of the shadows walked Officer Bennett and six of his men. The cavalry had certainly arrived, causing McCall to raise an eyebrow.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little over the top, Bennett?” she asked in surprise. “Are you expecting trouble?” She was joking, one effect of the release of tension.

“So how did you get your team together so fast?” Sam asked as she slipped her hand down slowly towards the drop-leg holster where her pistol normally sat. Bennett and the others were armed with shotguns.

“Uh, uh, Detective, step out where we can all see what you’re up to,” Bennett announced, smiling as he quickly aimed the 12-gauge. His team did the same thing.

Understanding what was happening, McCall and the others knew that they wouldn’t stand a chance against so much firepower. They would be liquidated before they could fire a shot.

“So it was you all along,” Sam said furiously. “Why? What has any of this got to do with you?”

McCall reflected bitterly that she had been betrayed by the very man she was going to send the girl to. Her heart froze. Had he gotten to the others as well, she wondered? She couldn’t say anything, for fear of letting the cat out the bag. If he didn’t mention anything about Steel and the others she knew they were safe. For now.

“So what’s the plan, Bennett?” she asked him. “We die in a shoot-out because you were too late to save us?”

Bennett smiled as he rocked his head back and forth. “Mmm, something like that, yes. But don’t worry, McCall, you and your team will get full honours.” He laughed as his team members disarmed McCall and the others, before returning to their posts around the room.

“Why did you do it, Bennett?” she asked him. “You used to be a good cop. What happened?”

Bennett thought about McCall’s question as he scratched his ear with the barrel of his service weapon. “I guess that things get done and careers get made. For years I have been bustin’ my balls doing my job and for what? Two failed marriages and nothin’ to show for it.”

She could see the bitterness in his eyes—he was a shadow of the man she once knew.

“Why did I do it you ask? Simple, Detective McCall. Because I want to have money in my pocket and I want to go places. What about you, McCall? Why did you stay whiter than white?”

She couldn’t answer. The possibility of compromising her integrity had never entered her mind. But now she considered the idea she realised she was content. She was where she wanted to be and if some day she moved up in rank, great.

“At least I’m not a dirty cop,” she told him. “You’ll go to jail for this and you know what they do to cops in there.”

Bennett laughed at the situation. “Who’s gonna report me? You, Sam? It’s me who’s got the firepower here.”

The bent cop and his team spun around as the front doors swung open and a six-man Strategic Response Unit, or SRU, came rushing in and surrounded him and his men.

“Nicely done, Detective, nicely done!”

The voice came from the shadows, and they heard the sound of clapping. McCall saw the man’s silhouette break from the darkness. It turned out to be the Chief of Detectives, Jack Doyle, in person. Sure, she was used to the Feds taking over but never One Police Plaza or 1PP.

The man was tall and well dressed in his thousand-dollar suit and had neatly styled hair. He was dressed more for a press conference than a bust. Was that why he was here, she wondered? So that when they walked out with the bad guys the press would be showing him on the front page and not them?

“Well, you and your team have done an excellent job, really,” Chief Doyle went on. “But rest assured we have got it from here.” The Chief was smiling, showing a lot of pearly white teeth.
The only thing missing is the forked tongue
, McCall thought to herself.

“Respectfully, sir,” she insisted, “I have some questions for Detective Bennett.”

The Chief rubbed his hands together, as if to calm himself. “And be assured, Detective, that we shall get those answers for you.”

Sam suddenly became uncomfortable with the situation.

Something was wrong.

Suddenly the lights went off and they were all plunged into darkness. The room became silent. Nobody dared to move, just in case scared people with guns decided to open up in panic.

The darkness was suddenly broken by a floodlight that shone in the centre of the room, engulfing them all, except for the support team in the wings. Everyone shielded their eyes from the blinding light.

A new voice rang out in the starkly lit gloom, booming out from a loudspeaker:

“The thing that I could not figure out about this whole case was why everyone was separated on the bus. Now we all thought it was planned out for an escape, but it wasn’t, was it?”

Bennett and the rest of them looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from, all except for McCall and her team who had their eyes firmly fixed on the others. To McCall’s surprise, the Chief marched over to Bennett.

“You said it was done,” he said to the dirty cop. “You said that he had been taken care of, you idiot!” The Chief’s face was now red, betraying a mixture of anger and fear.

“Chief? It was you?
You
did all of this?” McCall shouted in astonishment, feeling physically ill at the thought. Chief Doyle ignored her, too busy looking around in the darkness for the newcomer.

“Who is that? For God’s sake identify yourself!” screamed the Chief.

McCall smiled and the Chief noticed. He ran forwards and grabbed her.

“You know who that is, don’t you?” he snapped. “Tell me who it is!”

The woman detective could see the panic in his eyes.

“Sure I know who it is. It’s a nightmare, a wraith, a pain in the ass!”

Doyle shoved her away from him, just as the voice boomed over the loudspeaker once more:

“It wasn’t an escape, it was an assassination. What better way of getting rid of all three men? Now if they were to be shanked in the prison courtyard it would have been too obvious and questions would have been asked, but an accident? Perfect.” The voice boomed out, making it impossible for them to get a fix on the man’s whereabouts in the shadows.

The voice echoed around the room as it leaked through more than one loudspeaker. It appeared that the newcomer was talking through some kind of tannoy system. Chief Doyle made a slight nod towards the DJ booth, hoping that one of the SRU team had seen and understood that the man must be in there.

“But something went wrong, didn’t it?” the voice went on. “The bus missed its mark, it was too wet. But it didn’t matter, did it?”

Doyle laughed to himself at the theatrical absurdity of the situation.

“Humour me, Detective Steel,” he called out. “Tell me why it didn’t matter?”

Chief Doyle was standing still, aware that his men were close by and would soon kill the British detective.

There was a muffled grunt, then another. Doyle listened carefully, hoping to see the lights come on and Steel lying on the ground with a blade in his chest. But after that there was nothing—just silence. Then from the other side of the room there was another muffled grunt, then the clatter of something metal hitting the ground. Then more silence.

“Detective Steel,” Doyle was taunting his enemy. “I hope you have made plans to get out of here. Because how do you think it is going to look when you and your team walk out of here with me dead on the ground? Surely you realise that’ll make
you
the criminal.” Doyle was now beginning to sweat, and his collar felt like a noose.

“Answer me, damn it!” he yelled out. “I am your superior officer!”

The silence was broken by another muffled noise to the rear of McCall, whose eyes were firmly fixed on Chief Doyle and his men.

“Okay, I’ll answer,” Steel’s voice went on. “It didn’t matterbecause their escape afforded you another opportunity, to tie off loose ends.”

Chief Doyle smiled cockily, as if Steel’s ramblings were mere speculation and theory.

“An ex-teacher, a journalist and a judge?” the Chief answered. “Really? How would killing them benefit me?” Doyle motioned for the rest of his men to surround him.

“It became clear when we got the financials from everyone.Oh, by the way, you made a brilliant job of clogging up the works with pointless stuff.”

Doyle began to sneer, but it turned into a snarl.

“Anyway,” Steel continued, “when I got the figures I found that our first vic had no income. So how was he paying for the apartment, his food, everything?” His voice still echoed through the speakers, making locating him impossible.

“The answer was that he was being paid off. His career as a teacher was coming to an end due to an injury, so you found him and recruited him. His task was simple: he had to be a false witness.”

Chief Doyle and the others said nothing, each man looking around in case of a surprise attack.

“The journalist. I liked that guy. You fed him false information and he put it to press. The trouble was he found out he was being used. What could he do? He could hardly say that a dirty cop had given him false information, he would be laughed out of a job, and his integrity as a journalist lost forever. Then you found out he was going to do a story on Brian Armstrong. And this you could not allow.”

Doyle began to clap, a smile on his face, as if he was almost impressed by Steel’s deductions. “A brilliant story, Detective, most brilliant. However, why did I kill the judge?” Doyle felt confident that Steel had no concrete evidence: all of his ramblings were nothing but pure conjecture.

“The judge? Well, for her we have to look back. You see as a cop you had to make yourself shine, so having several criminals who you could not put away just wasn’t looking good, so you set them up, quite well in fact.”