A Time For Justice (52 page)

‘
Aaah!’ It felt like his brain had come loose from its
fittings.

‘
Never ever call me that,’ said Ritter angrily.

‘
She wasn’t onto you,’ Kovaks mumbled. ‘You were
paranoid.’

‘
Crap,’ said Ritter, dismissing the statement. Suddenly he
became buoyant. ‘Hey, that Lisa Want! What a fuck, man! She gives
head ree-al good ... But you already know that, don’t
you?’I

‘
Right, so you’ve been feeding her stuff too,’ Kovaks grumbled
through the palms of his hands.

‘
Couldn’t resist, man. Just could not resist. She needed an
inside source, so she got me. A fuck for information. Fair trade,
I’d say.’ He laughed heartily.

‘
You have very high morals,’ said Kovaks. His mind rattled: so
that was how Ms Want was always up to the minute with Bureau news
and information. Wow - she was really scraping the barrel with
Eamon Ritter.

‘
I even fed her all that stuff about Karl Donaldson and his
English buddy screwing those policewomen. Y’know, that sex-crazed
FBI Agent shit?’

For a moment Kovaks wondered what he was talking about. Then
he remembered. And recalled how Ritter had joined the two agents
for a drink one night soon after Karl had returned from England a
few months before. No doubt killing two birds with one stone:
picking up information for Corelli as well as titbits for
Lisa.

He looked at Ram, then Ritter. ‘So what’s next?’

‘
Sit back and enjoy the ride,’ Ram suggested.

‘
It’s the last one you’ll be takin’,’ laughed
Ritter.

Ram looked quickly at Ritter - his expression puzzled Kovaks,
for it seemed to have a significant meaning - then turned to face
the front.

Kovaks settled down and began to figure out how he was going
to get out of this ... if he was going to get out of
this.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

At the same time as Henry and Karen had entered the bedsit,
the national and international news had just finished on BBC1. A
couple of minutes of local news followed; the lead story concerned
the death of John Abbot in a police pursuit. The item showed a clip
of FB being interviewed about the incident, recorded earlier on the
steps of Blackpool Central police station. FB was fairly vague
about everything, though he did state that Abbot had been driving
a stolen Metro which actually belonged to a police officer. FB
offered no explanations as to the cause of the explosion. ‘We’re
keeping an open mind at the moment,’ he said. ‘We don’t really know
anything for sure until tomorrow.’

The reporter pressed him for details of why the Bomb Squad
were looking at the car.

‘
Just routine,’ he said patronisingly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse
me.... ‘He walked out of shot, revealing the officer who was
standing directly behind him: Henry Christie, looking rather
ill.

Hinksman, sprawled in a chair in the safe house in Blackburn,
sat bolt upright. Up to the point where Henry appeared on screen he
hadn’t really been taking too much notice.

‘
Motherfucker. You’re still alive then.’

He threw himself back into his chair in frustration, clenching
and unclenching his fists angrily. Finally, however, he couldn’t
help but laugh.

‘
You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Sergeant Christie,’ he said to
the ceiling. ‘But I ain’t finished with you yet.’

There was a knock at the front door. For a second, Hinksman
froze. He checked through the curtains before answering and letting
Lenny Dakin in.

Dakin looked flustered and agitated.

‘
It’s tomorrow. The ship’ll be coming through tomorrow. We’ll
meet it in the Irish Sea, collect my consignment and hand you over.
From there it’ll sail to Eire and you’ll be able to get a flight
from Dublin to Paris, then to New York. It’s all arranged - false
passports, money, everything.’

‘
Good.’

‘
What a fuckin’ day I’ve had,’ breathed Dakin. He helped
himself to a Scotch and soda. ‘I’ve had cops crawling all over my
property looking for you. It’s a damn good job I didn’t put you up
at the farmhouse.’

‘
Have they got you all worked up?’ Hinksman chided.

‘
You bet they fucking have!’

‘
I thought you were a no-nonsense big-time criminal who could
handle the pressure,’ he teased.

‘
I can handle the pressure when necessary, but this isn’t. You
are a right royal pain in the arsehole at the moment and
I’ll
be glad to get shut of you. You be
here at nine tomorrow and you’ll be picked up, OK?’

‘
No.’

‘
No? What the fuck do you mean?’

‘
Things to do, people to see ... lives to wreck,’ smiled
Hinksman sweetly. ‘You just tell me where and when you’ll be
sailing and I’ll be there, probably with a passenger.’

‘
What?’
screamed Dakin. ‘Who? Are you
fucking mad?’

Hinksman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t call me mad.’

By the time Dave August got back to his office at police
headquarters it was midnight. He’d had a long, tiring day visiting
grieving relatives, being bombarded with tears, questions and
disbelief. He was worn out by the effort of appearing sympathetic
on the surface whilst having to deal with his own inner turmoil at
the same time. Once or twice he’d had the urge to blurt out, ‘Blame
me -
I’m
the one
responsible.’

He’d been informed of John Abbot’s death during the evening
but had left it to FB and the ACC (Operations) to deal with. He’d
look at it tomorrow. He couldn’t believe it - what the hell else
could happen? He was presently the head of a police force under
mounting pressure and it didn’t help that he was going through his
own agonising crisis.

August sat down at his desk. He pulled a small bottle of
Bell’s out of a drawer and took a sip. The heat of the spirit
seemed to revive him. He looked at the large pile of papers in
front of him which constituted Hinksman’s file. He opened the first
folder and began to read by the light of his table lamp.

Somewhere in here, he hoped, was the answer.

At five minutes past midnight, a delayed flight from Miami
touched down at Manchester Airport. It was some eight hours behind
schedule, held up by ‘technical problems’ - a vague term which did
not endear the company to the passengers in any way.

Tired and disgruntled, they disembarked and filed woodenly
through the terminal building towards Passport Control.

Near to the front of the queue was a middle-aged woman who was
in heated, but subdued, conversation with her timid husband. They
were having a disagreement of sorts. She wanted him to do
something, and as usual he didn’t want to get involved. All he
wanted to do was I get home and get to bed.

‘
You are useless!’ she told him - and not for the first
time.

When they reached the desk and handed their passports over,
the woman said icily to her husband, ‘Well, if you won’t, then I
shall have to.’ She looked at the Customs officer and leaned
towards her with a conspiratorial air. ‘Is there someone I can talk
to?’ she hissed, so that other passengers would not overhear. ‘In
confidence?’

‘
Yes, of course, what about?’

‘
One of the other passengers, who I think is on
drugs.’

Henry Christie and Karl Donaldson completed their witness
statements relating to John Abbot’s death at about one o’clock that
morning. The process had taken a couple of hours over numerous cups
of sweet white coffee. Both men were exhausted, Henry in
particular. He hadn’t slept properly for almost two days and his
mind was beginning to play tricks with his eyes.

He finished rereading his statement, blinked repeatedly and
said, ‘I’ve got to get some kip. My head’s a complete
shed.’

‘
Me too,’ agreed Donaldson, yawning and stretching. His
clothing reeked of smoke.

They were sitting at desks in the deserted CID office at
Blackpool Central. Karen had left them about an hour before,
completely wrecked herself.

Henry stood up. His joints creaked and clicked like an old
man’s. He walked across to a window, rolling his shoulders. He
watched his reflection as he approached; he hardly recognised
himself, wasn’t sure I who he was seeing. A stranger. Someone who
had changed drastically in the last eight months. A man who’d gone
from being happily married with two beautiful daughters and a
beautiful wife, a contented lifestyle and good job, to a rundown
adulterer who hardly saw his kids and lived like a hermit in a
shit-hole of a flat that smelled of cat piss.

The only constant was that he still had the same
job.

He tried to pinpoint the exact moment at which his life had
changed for the worse. He reckoned it was that bomb on the
M6.

He gazed blankly out of the window; in his mind’s eye was
every detail of that explosion and the faces of those kids. He knew
now they were images that would stay with him for ever. And now
he’d come full circle. Another explosion. Another motorway. And the
link was I the same two men:
himself and
Hinksman.

You’re out there somewhere, he thought, and I want to find
you. I want to hunt you down, but I don’t know where to
start.

He sighed and turned back to Donaldson. ‘Where do we go from
here?’

Before the FBI man could reply, the phone on the desk where he
was sitting started to ring. Henry walked across and answered it.
Two minutes later he hung up.

‘
Delete that last question,’ he quipped. ‘I might just have
the answer to it. C’mon, grab yer coat.’

‘
Just one of those lucky things, really, if it turns out to be
of any use that is,’ the detective said to Henry and Donaldson as,
forty minutes later, he led them through Manchester Airport to the
police holding area.

‘
Initially we just thought she was a run-of-the-mill punter -
y’know, trying to get a bit of stuff through. We searched her
luggage and found some coke, a bit of crack, some heroin. Then we
searched her body orifices. Well, not me personally, but I’m told
there wasn’t anything there that shouldn’t have been.’

‘
So why call us?’ Donaldson asked. He was beyond exhaustion.
Really irritable.

The detective wasn’t to be fazed. He had a bit of a story to
tell and he was going to tell it, no matter what. ‘Anyway, it was
while a couple of female officers and a doctor were trying to
search the girl that she started dropping names. She was
scratching, kicking, all that shit, see, and she had to be forcibly
restrained. Now she’s threatening them, saying they’ll get wasted
for this, that she knows a hit man. A lot of rubbish on the face of
it, but not when the names start coming.’

‘
Names like?’ asked Donaldson.

The detective smiled. ‘Hinksman? Well, we didn’t attach much
importance to that one. Every bugger in Britain knows his name. But
then she was bawling about Corelli, Dakin, Stanton, you, Sergeant
Christie, someone called Kovaks and you, Mr Donaldson.’

‘
Oh,’ Henry and Donaldson said together.

‘
Starting saying things like the Mafia are giving you the run
around. It was a lucky chance, really - she could easily have
slipped into the system. It’s just that one of the female officers
she was wrangling with remembered the names from the last time you
two guys were down here.’

‘
And what’s the prisoner’s name?’ Henry asked.

‘
Er, Janine something-or-other. Fit little piece. If she
wasn’t a druggie, I’d give her one.’

‘
Has she said anything else?’ asked Henry.

‘
There was one thing. She said she’d fucked your Chief
Constable’s brains out. A lot of crap, like I said.’

‘
Let’s talk to her,’ said Henry.

The detective shook his head. ‘She’s still floating in the
stratosphere.’ He pointed up to the sky. ‘Not fit to be
interviewed.’

‘
But this is urgent,’ Henry said.

‘
Then you’ll need a Superintendent’s authority.’

Henry turned to Donaldson. ‘Karl, you are hereby promoted to
the rank of Superintendent. Do you accept this?’

‘
I do.’

‘
May I interview the prisoner?’

‘
You may.’

Dave August was getting nowhere slowly. He had spent over an
hour leafing through the Hinksman paperwork, and his eyes were
getting gritty, his concentration drifting.

He closed the folder he was reading and picked up the next
one, headed
Unused Material.
It contained all sorts of scraps of information,
intelligence and musings even, which hadn’t been used in the court
prosecution. It was a real mish-mash of stuff.

August swore softly and flicked through the contents with a
grimace on his face. Then he closed the file, clasped his fingers,
knuckles down, palms up on the desk-top and laid his forehead on
the soft cushion they formed.