A Time For Justice (12 page)

‘
Why?’ he asked.

‘
We think he killed a lotta people - including a busload of
kids – on Corelli’s orders.’

Whisper winced. ‘I don’t know him.’

Kovaks stood up, disappointed. ‘Shit.’

‘
I mean I don’t know him personally, but I know he’s Corelli’s
top hired killer. Jimmy Hinksman, that’s his name. Corelli keeps
him pretty much tucked away. Talk is he used to be Special Forces
but got kicked out for some girl trouble. That’s all I know about
him. Real mystery figure. Ahhh...’ He gasped as he adjusted his
position slightly. He waited a moment for the pain to
settle.

Someone walked down the ward and stopped near to Whisper’s
bed. Kovaks heard the sounds of the doctor’s voice murmuring in
muted conversation. A female voice replied - a nurse. Footsteps
walked past the bed. Kovaks returned his attention to
Whisper.

‘
I only seen him once and I got the evil eye when I asked who
he was. Real arrogant bastard. Did he do Danny Carver?’ asked
Whisper.

‘
How the hell did you know that?’ said Kovaks, taken
aback.

‘
News travels fast - even in here.’

‘
Where do we find him?’

Whisper shook his head slightly. ‘In America he could be
anywhere. But if he’s in England, I know somewhere you could
try.’

Chapter Eight

Donaldson perched on the Allocator’s desk in the incident
room, a phone cradled between his left ear and shoulder. ‘Hey,
Joe,’ he was saying, ‘you done good, pal. I’m real sorry about your
injuries.’

The fax machine in the corner of the room beeped into life.
‘It’s coming through now,’ Donaldson said into the
phone.

At the machine, Karen Wilde and Ken McClure stood
bleary-eyed.

It was 7.30 a.m. They had worked through the night
interviewing the man arrested at Lytham the evening before. They
had pushed to the limits allowed by the Police and Criminal
Evidence Act, initially denying him access to legal representation
in the hope of making a quick breakthrough. They had also broken
the rules during the course of the interview - by their oppressive
and intimidatory conduct, but in the end they had nothing on him.
His driving licence had either been lost
or
stolen but he didn’t know where
or
when. They dusted him down at 5 a.m.,
promised to pay for any damage caused at his home and sent him on
his way without an apology. They hadn’t been in the mood to
apologise to anyone.

As they packed up, the phone rang.

Kovaks.

The first sheet came off the fax. It read,
With the compliments of Joe Kovaks, FBI, Miami,
Florida, US.
There was a little photo of
him beneath the wording. Karen groaned as she saw it. Under her
breath she muttered, ‘Another idiotic Yank.’

The next one came through with excruciating slowness. It was
so damn slow that Karen was sure the machine had gone on the blink.
She tapped her toes angrily. When the printing was complete, she
grabbed the paper and read it several times before handing it to
McClure.

She could hardly contain herself.

McClure read it out loud:
‘Fingerprints identified from military file as belonging to
James Clarkson Hinksman.’
He looked up and
grinned. ‘Got the bastard.’

Page three came off the machine. It was the photo from
Corelli’s file, showing the big Italian and Hinksman at a
restaurant.

Page four showed an old photograph of Hinksman, passport size,
dressed in a military uniform. Page five contained brief details of
a military career which had come to a halt four years previously
when he was dishonourably discharged following a court martial. The
next four pages were an expanded summary of his service record. The
last page listed all the murders of prostitutes that the
fingerprints linked him with.

There was nothing else.

‘
At least now we know who we’re looking for,’ said Karen,
‘although we haven’t got a clue where he is. He may no longer be in
this country.’

‘
Perhaps we should get his mug splattered all over the media,’
McClure suggested.

‘
We will.’ Karen turned to Donaldson. He was still on the
phone, scribbling something on a scrap of paper.

‘
Thank your colleague for me,’ she said. ‘He’s done a
fantastic job.’

Donaldson finished writing. ‘My new boss says thanks, Joe. Me
too.

Great job.’

He hung up and, smiling broadly, picked up the fax of Corelli
and Hinksman. ‘I knew I’d seen that face before. We have literally
thousands of photos of Corelli but I remembered this one. I think I
did quite well.’

‘
I do too,’ Karen conceded with more warmth than she
intended.

‘
So, we’ve got a real top hit man on our hands. Now, what’s
all this nonsense about not knowing where our Mr Hinksman is?’ He
held up his scrap of paper. ‘He’s on vacation in Blackpool.’ He
attempted a poor Lancashire accent. ‘Land of cloth caps, donkey
rides and mucky postcards, tha’ knows, lass.’

‘
Give me that!’ laughed Karen. She snatched the paper. She
read it and punched the air with a fist. ‘Yes, YES,
YES!’

Joe Kovaks leaned back in his chair and interlocked his
fingers behind his head. He chuckled in disbelief, but consoled
himself that even the best brains sometimes failed to see simple
solutions to complex problems. He couldn’t believe they’d never
checked the military file, yet all it had taken was the press of a
button on Damian’s magic fingerprint machine and - hey presto! Mr
James Clarkson Hinksman, Mafia killer extraordinary, was exposed.
Jeez, how could they all have been so dumb, he thought. That
bastard could have been fried over a year ago. If that harpy Lisa
Want ever got hold of this, she’d have a field day exposing the
inefficiency of the FBI.

He sighed at the stupidity, but wasn’t too upset because it
wasn’t normal procedure to cross-check the military
files.

Just then, Sue appeared in the doorway, virtually filling it.
She’d just showered in the ladies’ rest-room and changed into a
jogging outfit which she kept in her locker. At least she would
smell all right for a while, Kovaks thought cruelly, but then
regretted it. She’d more than proved her worth today.

‘
Good result,’ he said pleasantly, his voice carefully
low.

‘
Yep,’ she agreed.

‘
Good ole Damian. Workaholic, that guy.’

‘
I like him,’ she admitted.

Kovaks took a deep breath and consulted his watch. ‘Look, I
know it’s late and all that, but would you like a drink on the way
home? Just a quickie, by way of celebration.’

‘
I’d love one,’ Sue said, ‘but. . . I’ve made other
arrangements.’ As if on cue, Damian appeared at the office door.
Hair combed, jacket brushed, tie straight. Like a nervous teenager
on a first date.

‘
Damian’s offered to take me home,’ Sue said
apologetically.

‘
Raincheck?’

Relieved somewhat, Kovaks nodded. ‘Raincheck.’

Sue danced as lightly as was possible towards Damian, breasts
bouncing uncontrollably, lighting up Damian’s eyes with lust. She
gave Kovaks a salacious wink, then disappeared with the slightly
built fingerprint expert, arm threaded through his.

‘
Rather you than me, pal,’ Kovaks said under his
breath.

As he pulled on his jacket the phone chirped. It was the
switchboard operator. ‘Joe?’

‘
I’m just on my way home.’

‘
Dade County Correctional Institute left a message for you.
You went to see one of the inmates earlier.’

‘
Yeah?’ Kovaks’ stomach dropped.

‘
He’s been knifed to death.’

It was 11 a.m.

The unmarked police car raced at 120 mph down the motorway
towards Blackpool. The driver was a PC from the motor driving
school. McClure and Donaldson sat silently in the back of the car
rereading the faxes from America. Karen Wilde sat in the front
passenger seat, brooding, staring intently ahead. Angry.

The confrontation she’d recently undergone with Crosby and
Fanshaw-Bayley had set the whole thing back several hours, although
in the end she’d got her own way and a firearms team had been
deployed to Blackpool for a briefing.

After receiving the information from America, Karen had
decided to see Crosby face to face to ask for a team this time. She
walked straight into his office. Fanshaw-Bayley was also
there.

‘
Ahhh,’ said Crosby looking up from his desk. ‘I was just
about to summon you, miss.’

‘
I need authorisation for a firearms team,’ she began
breathlessly.

‘
We think we’ve located-’

Crosby slashed his right hand through the air as if he was
executing a karate chop, stopping her in mid-sentence.

‘
You deliberately disobeyed my orders yesterday, miss, and now
you want me to sanction another team?’

‘
What d’you mean, sir?’

‘
I said “No” to your request yesterday.’

‘
You did, yes.’

‘
Yet you utilised the Blackpool ARV,’ he stated.

Her mind whizzed. What was going on here? ‘It was a
compromise,’ she said defensively.

‘
It was disobedience of a direct order,’ he shouted. ‘Implicit
in my “No” was the fact that you were not, repeat
not,
to use armed
officers for your little fiasco.’

She looked quickly at FB who smirked, enjoying her
discomfort.

‘
I didn’t use a team,’ she said, trying to regain her
composure. ‘You used armed officers!’

‘
Yes,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I used the ARV. They are on
twenty-four-hour cover in every division and can be used for
day-to-day jobs just like any other patrol in the county. They were
there as insurance. They didn’t draw their weapons, neither did
they get involved in the raid. It was a sensible move, if you ask
me.’

‘
No one’s fucking asking you! You disobeyed my orders, pure
and simple.’ His face was red with rage; he was screaming in
classic Scouse.

‘
I protected my men,’ she insisted. There was no way she was
going to back down and admit she was wrong - particularly with FB
looking on.

‘
And it wasn’t even the man you were after, just some poor
innocent bloke...’

‘
Whose driving licence was used by the biggest mass murderer
since Lockerbie.’

Crosby wasn’t to be diverted now. He was in full flow. ‘You
used excessive force in entering his house and now I believe we’re
faced with a huge bill for trashing the place.’

‘
Trashing is not the term I would use. Damage was caused, yes,
but it was minimal. The cost of repair will be relatively
small.’

‘
I am tempted to have you disciplined for this,’ Crosby
growled.

‘
What? So you can have your investigation back? Because your
beloved CID aren’t running the show? Grow up, Mr Crosby . . . I
know you don’t like me, or the fact that I’ve got this job, but I’m
doing it to the best of my ability and I’m
that
far off getting a result.’ She
held up her thumb and forefinger with just a sliver of daylight
between them. ‘And I won’t be browbeaten or bullied by the likes of
dinosaurs like you two...’

‘
Dinosaurs!’ he blasted.

‘
If you want to sulk, then do so. But if you hinder the
investigation, so help me God, I’ll bring you down - and you, FB.’
She pointed a finger at Fanshaw-Bayley.

‘
So what’s it going to be?’ she demanded. Her mouth was a
tight angry line. Her eyes had large bags under them the colour of
prunes and she’d been wearing the same outfit for a long twenty
hours. Her hair felt like straw and she needed a bath followed by
twelve hours’ sleep. What she
didn’t
need was this
shit!

‘
The answer’s no,’ Crosby said.

She wheeled round and marched out of the office.

Two minutes later the tension that had been welling up inside
Crosby’s chest reached a climax. It burned up through his arteries
like razor blades on fire, from his heart to his left arm and up
the side of his face.

He clutched himself.

Then keeled over off his chair onto the floor with a crash,
taking the contents of his desk with him.

FB looked on bemused for a moment before he realised what was
happening.

His boss was having a major heart attack.

Whisper had been moved to a side ward, but other than that no
one had touched him. He still lay on the hospital bed in his dying
position: head lolling to one side, arms hanging loosely off the
bed. The nurse who’d discovered him had tried to save him. She’d
ripped the bedclothes off him and torn open his pyjamas, but it had
been too late for Whisper. Despite all his gurgling and blowing of
bubbles of blood through his nose and mouth, he was already
dead.